Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Another late summer, another flash drought
Back in 2021 I wrote about the new-to-me (and relatively new to everybody) concept of a "flash drought." That sounds like an oxymoron since “drought” usually reflects accumulated dryness rather than a quick-hit event. But as we saw last summer and fall, it doesn’t...
Science Cafe Nashua: PFAs
Science Cafe in Nashua will discuss PFAs at their session Sept. 16 (a Tuesday). This is a topic that has grown from "there's one bad place in Merrimack" to "those things are absolutely everywhere" which makes the response much more complicated. Discussion starts at 6...
It’s so dry that Hubbard Brook sampling is affected
News from Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, where low water flows are making it hard to collect samples, which has been done for decades: Tammy Wooster of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is based at Hubbard Brook and travels into the Forest to collect...
Betty & Barney Hill’s UFO abduction could be a big-budget film
NHPR has an interview (here) with a UFO podcast guy - a serous one, not a goofball - that reminded me how Betty & Barney Hills' alien abduction could eventually be hitting movie theaters: "Toby Ball is an author and host of the podcast “Strange Arrivals” about the...
Wet spring made fireflies happy
I haven't seen many fireflies at my house this year but perhaps I'm an anomaly. The Monitor has a story saying their numbers are good in New Hampshire - you can read it here. On top of that, the northeast experienced a wetter-than-average fall two years ago, which was...
N.H. patents through Aug. 24
(Links to each patent can be found here, using the patent number or inventor’s name.) By Targeted News Service WASHINGTON – The following federal patents were assigned in New Hampshire through Aug. 24. ***Fluid Detection Systems and Methods Using the Same WATTS...
Nashua displays public A.I. art, perhaps a first (it’s on trash cans, which seems appropriate)
Nashua, N.H., has put out some of those Big Belly solar trash cans onto the street; they compact the trash to reduce the amount of times staff has to empty them. Paul Shea, a member of the Nashua Board of Public Works who has long been active in the city, put up a...
N.H. GOP kowtows to Trump’s anti-wind power fixation
The state has taken "offshore wind" out of the title of what is now the Office of Energy Innovation, part of the Trump Party's irrational tirade against wind turbines, as Canary Media reports. New Hampshire's GOP-controlled (but just barely) House has plunged deeply...
N.H. sweeping-but-vague ban on cell phones in schools has everybody flummoxed
New Hampshire legislators have jumped on the cell-phones-are-bad-for-kids bandwagon (which is a legitimate bandwagon, BTW) but they did it in a such a sweeping and vague way that everybody's confused. Basically the law says that cell phones aren't allowed in the...
This nasty invasive bug suddenly isn’t very invasive – what happened?
Gather round, dear readers, and let me tell you the story of a nasty invasive insect. No, wait, don't run away — this is a happy story. And it involves a cute dog named Izzy. Our story concerns the Asian longhorned beetle, a beetle native to east Asia that, no...
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