Sci-tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire by David Brooks
When it hits the ocean, Merrimack River water mostly turns right
When reporting on last week’s sewage spill from Haverhill, Mass., I queried Woods Hole for an expert on the likelihood of polling leaving the Merrimack River and going north along the coast, affecting New Hampshire beaches. Rocky Geyer, an emeritus professor in the Applied Ocean & Engineering Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, got back…
Can ‘fabricated seeds’ restore the American chestnut tree?
As regular Granite Geek readers know, there has been a long and complicated, and so far unsuccessful, effort to bring back the blight-eradicated American chestnut back to our forests. Traditional cross-breeding hasn’t been able to create a blight-resistant tree, and a promised GMO effort in New York and Maine, which injected a common gene to…
Granite Geek: Why is historic preservation a good thing, anyway?
Whenever I register my car, I have to maneuver through an old building in the center of my small town that isn’t really designed for the job. It’s kind of inconvenient, awkward and definitely inefficient, especially if there’s an after-work rush. But I have voted at town meeting to keep it that way, even though…
NH patents through July 5
Links to each patent can be found here, using the patent number or inventor’s name. By Targeted News Service The following federal patents were assigned to companies in New Hampshire for the week ending July 5. *** Transformer-Based Isolator With Sense Coil ALLEGRO MICROSYSTEMS, LLC, Manchester, New Hampshire has been assigned a patent (No. US…
Ayotte signs ‘balcony solar’ bill
Gov. Ayotte has signed the bill allowing “balcony solar” – solar panels that can be plugged into a standard socket without needing an electrician or permission from the power company. These panels are touted as a way for individuals to quickly get some benefit from solar power, cutting their electricity bills. They are especially useful…
WHO IS THE GEEK? David Brooks has written a weekly science/tech newspaper column since 1991 – yes, that long – and has written this blog since 2006, keeping an eye on geekish topics in and around the Granite State. He joined the Concord Monitor in 2015. Brooks earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics but got lost on the way to the Ivory Tower and ended up in a newsroom. He has reported for newspapers from Tennessee to New England. He was inducted into the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2024.
Monitor parent company joins suit against copying of material for training A.I. systems
Newspapers of New England has joined a civil suit against OpenAI and Microsoft for taking content without permission to train their artificial intelligence programs, violating the Copyright Act.
Of course the heat wave is due to climate change. Duh!
When it comes to climate change, most of us are the Jim Carrey character in “Dumb and Dumber.” As you may know even if you haven’t seen the movie, since it has become an internet meme, Carrey is told the odds of dating a girl are a million-to-one and responds gleefully: “So you’re telling me…
Since 1888, the Appalachian Mountain Club has been part of N.H. outdoors, for better or worse
The Appalachian Mountain Club has had a significant impact on New Hampshire’s outdoors, from building the first White Mountain hut in 1888 to its role in helping preserve the state’s North Country and shape the cultural embrace of outdoor recreation.
Granite Geek: UNH is an ocean fisheries leader, even if we don’t have much access to the ocean
UNH has been chosen by NOAA to lead a national effort to increase US seafood production through aquaculture research, which will involve research universities around the country and focus on species that are culturally important to each region.
In support of EVs, we’re No. 27 or so!
You will be astonished to learn (ha!) that New Hampshire is the laggard, by a long short, among Northeastern states in a ranking of how welcoming and receptive we are to electric vehicles. As I learned from this Canary Media report, the Brookings Institutes looked at ways various states promote vehicle electrification and gave each…
Annoying lack of women’s clothing sizes is dangerous when a chainsaw is involved
Woman have long faced the problem of using products that were designed for people with the average size and shape of males. This is often an inconvenience (ask any woman about pocket sizes) but when you’re talking about safety equipment, it’s a real danger. A good example comes up in a recent Monitor story about…
Granite Geek: What happens if you cross a demographer, a forest scientist and a marine biologist?
If you wanted to know more about cyanobacteria blooms, those nasty bursts of microscopic creatures that can turn a lake into a scum-topped mess, where would you look? It’s obvious: Census data. OK, so that’s not exactly obvious. For Ken Johnson of UNH’s Carsey School of Public Policy, this is why it’s so cool. Johnson…
Granite Geek: Doing more with less is smart, buzzwords be darned
The City of Concord is embracing the idea of “negawatt” through its Weatherize Concord campaign, which aims to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions by weatherizing at least 100 homes and businesses this year.
Granite Geek: How can we be in a drought if my lawn is too thick to mow?
Despite recent rainfall, New England is still facing a long-term drought due to a lack of effective precipitation, which is needed to recharge groundwater and aquifers.
Mass. tiptoes into using electric school buses as big battery packs
If there’s any vehicle that should be electric, it’s a school bus. Getting rid of local-pollution-tailpipe when children are around is a big plus, and from an operational standpoint they have all the virtues of fleet operation that makes recharging feasible: regular routes, lots of stop-and-go, no long runs, usually returning to the same place…
Cutting down 400 ash trees before the beetle kills them and they fall on us
Norwich, Vermont, is biting the bullet and making a painful decision that many places are making: It will cut down almost 400 big, mature ash trees, most along well-traveled roads, before they die from emerald ash borer and fall on somebody. It’s one of the first big ash-removal projects in the Upper Valley area of…
Net metering for solar remains iffy, changeable in New Hampshire
Net metering – paying rooftop solar for electricity that gets exported to the grid – has been a political punching bag in New Hampshire for years. And it still is, reports New Hampshire Bulleting (full story is here). At a May 4 open house at a nearly complete, 5 megawatt solar array in Warner, developer Chad…
Granite Geek: A solar ‘barn-raising’ for Concord food pantry
A crowd formed at the Friends of Forgotten Children food pantry in Concord on Sunday, but not because meals were being served inside. The crowd was outdoors. “We had about 30 people there. We had probably a dozen on the roof, four on scaffolding, four on the ground … a number filling out paperwork,” said…
Hey kids, want to build a flying airplane?
The Aviation Museum of New Hampshire is looking for the next school to host its student plane-building program. Begun in 2019 in partnership with the Manchester School of Technology, the program gives young people the opportunity to build a real flyable airplane. Working alongside volunteer mentors, students assemble a two-seat all-metal aircraft as part of…
There’s no limit to anti-renewable goofiness: Solar hurts potatoes! (Potatoes?!?!)
Canary Media has an article about an almost unbelievable anti-solar conspiracy theory, although I guess there’s no conspiracy theory that people won’t run with any more. I says that farmers can’t grow potatoes on land where solar developments were sited because of “leaching” of something or other. The whole article can be read here, if…
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