Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Rural broadband gets a big boo$t from Biden administration
The New Hampshire Executive Council has unanimously agreed to accept $50 million from the federal government to help the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC) to extend fiber-optic broadband to 73 of the 118 towns in its service area. The landmark grant is the...
Football? Boring! Soil judging is where the action is
I will never use the phrase “common as dirt” again. My cliche vocabulary has been expanded. Common as silt loam? Sure. Common as sandy clay? Absolutely. Even common as sandy clay loam, although that’s a mouthful. These are terms I learned after stumbling across an...
A really good recycling project shows how the whole concept of recycling is broken
A pilot program for curbside collection of hard-to-recycle items like power cords and coffee capsules has been launched in Vermont and may come to Concord someday, keeping them out of the trash and turning them back into useful material. But while it is an admirable...
NH finally going to spend some of that ‘dieselgate’ money on EV charging
More than four years after New Hampshire announced that it would use $4.6 million from the “dieselgate” settlement to build public electric-vehicle charging stations, a contract has finally been signed to build one. The contract, announced Thursday, would install...
When it rains, it pours. Thanks a lot, climate change
From EurekaAlert: "They found that when it’s rained in recent decades, it’s rained more. In most regions, the intensity of the rainfall has shifted from lighter to more moderate and often heavy deluges. When it rained east of the Rocky Mountains in recent decades,...
N.H. almost got one of the “genius grants”
The most genius thing associated with grants from the MacArthur Fellows program was labeling them "genius grants," thus guaranteeing coverage even in places that don't have geek in the title. The 2022 group was announced yesterday. There were no New Hampshire...
PFAS in deer meat
I've got a hunter coming to my property this season to hopefully thin the eat-everything-in-sight herd. She does it for the meat, but perhaps that's not a good idea - PFAS, those incredibly useful chemicals that were put in everything before we realized they were...
Panic!!! It’s only 18 months to the total eclipse!
The biggest solar-eclipse booster in New Hampshire – perhaps the biggest on the Eastern Seaboard – has a confession to make: “I may have started a little early.” Rik Yeames has been eagerly anticipating April 8, 2024, when a total solar eclipse will cross New...
Delivery robot with NH roots gets nixed
The Union-Leader reports. (story here, behind paywall; why not subscribe to the state's biggest newspaper?) FedEx is ending the research and development of “Roxo” — a same-day delivery robot that was being developed with Manchester’s DEKA Research & Development...
Maine to get 1st engineered-lumber office building
MaineBiz has the story (here): The first commercial office building in Maine that will primarily use cross-laminated timber will be funded in part by a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The 150,000-square-foot office building, at 100 Rock Row,...
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