The New Hampshire Department of Transportation is starting a Twitter feed for I-93 traffic alerts, (http://twitter.com/nhdoti93) which makes a lot of sense (although they add sternly, “NHDOT strong encourages motorists to use this new service responsibly” - meaning, I think, Don’t Tweet And Drive!).
They say they’ll be adding more heavily trafficked roads as time goes on, thus providing the sort of real-time traffic advice that radio-show helicopters have been trying to give for years. Very cool.
The press release assumes a relatively small amount of Twitter knowledge, as you can see:
Twitter is a widely known and accepted website that many states are using as part of their transportation management programs for notifying the public of critical traffic alerts. Twitter gives the NHDOT’s Transportation Management Center the ability to notify travelers of real-time traffic and road conditions before they encounter a congested area by sending a text message directly to phones or emails, providing an immediate one-way notification to “followers” when an event occurs.
Researchers at Southern New Hampshire University say they have uncovered a method to use the implicit association test (IAT), used by social psychologists as a measure of subtle prejudice, to reveal more about the cognitive processes involved in lying. The school reported it as follows:
As originally developed, the implicit association test showed participants a [...]
Maine is considering enacting the nation’s first law mandating stickers on cell phones warning of brain cancer, and as the Portland Press-Herald reports, it’s drawing lobbyists like flies to honey.
I think the warnings are unnecessary and kind of silly, but if they make people use their cell phones less then maybe it’s a good thing [...]
One of the most visible signs (visible to us landlubbers, anyway) of stresses in the ocean ecology is “fishing down the food chain” - the way that commercial fishing operations, having helped destroy stocks of desirable species like cod, take aim at species that they once ignored.
The Portland Press-Herald, which like a good newspaper in [...]
This week, the Telegraph had a particularly ridiculous bureaucratic run-in with the advance folks for the Obama visit to Washington: they sent advance folks to talk to scores of teen-agers at Nashua High School South, where Obama later appeared - but then told us that we couldn’t report on anything at the event because it [...]
The official age of “Herbie” - the American elm in Maine that was officially the tallest of its species in New England until it finally succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease - is 217, reports the Press-Herald. From the story:
The 110-foot tree survived 14 bouts of Dutch elm disease thanks to its caretaker, Frank Knight, who’s [...]
A proposal is being floated for a 30-megawatt wood-burning power plant in Hopkinton - which is fine. The interesting part is that it would also build 20 acres of greenhouses and pump CO2 and excess heat there, to boost growth of whatever the business plan calls for (maybe cut flowers, which make big profit on [...]
“Blogging is for old people, Pew report finds” is the wonderful - but kind of painful - headline on this San Francisco Chronicle story on a survey. Here’s part of the story:
The results indicate blogging has become so 2006, when 28 percent of the two groups studied, teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18 [...]
The word “energy” gets tossed around a lot by folks who don’t really know what it means - most annoyingly, in the goofier alternative therapies. (”These crystals focus your body’s internal energy field and enhance energy flow, blah blah blah”). During my classes to become an EMIT I’ve been hearing the word plenty in a [...]
You’ve probably heard that the Lancet, the most prominent British research journal, has retracted a flawed 1998 study linking certain vaccines with autism, saying that the science was wrong and the main researcher misbehaved. (Coverage here, and here, but there’s plenty more online) That paper pretty much launched the modern anti-vaccine hysteria, and thus indirectly [...]
During my period of volunteering here in Florida, I like to listen to NPR most of the time. However, I’m in an area that would be best described as ‘fringe’. FM radio works fine for screaming rock, shouting religious evangelists and country and western music. Not even close to what I want to listen to. [...]
As a person who produces “content” for a living (ugh, what a phrase) and who has watched the monetary value of his work plummet in the Web 2.0 era, I’m not exactly an impartial observer of the interesting tussle between Amazon.com and the publishing house Macmillan. (Summary: The publisher wants the right to raise prices [...]
A new research paper argues that converting coal-burning power plants to using biomass can be an effective way to fight greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels. I read about it in the NY Times’ very fine Green Inc. blog (read it here) - which cites PSNH’s 2007 conversion of part of the Schiller Power Plant [...]
The FAA has released its database of bird strikes at airports (here it is, spotted via BoingBoing). Naturally I ran the state’s airports (much easier if you know their International Civil Aviation Airport code - wikipedia to the rescue!) and looked for bird strikes that did “substantial” damage or “destroyed” the aircraft. It doesn’t include [...]
I encountered this interesting discussion on DSLreports (read it here) which talked about Verizon using its upcoming 4G network called LTE - it starts tests launches this year, in Boston among other cities - to return to Northern New England and scarf up more customers from FairPoint. The writer thinks Verizon ripped everybody off with [...]
Click here to see my Google map showing large-scale solar, wind, hydro and nuclear plants in and around N.H., plus some intriguing alternative-power items in the region.
About this blog
David Brooks has written a science column for the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph since 1991 (see recent ones here). It is now in the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, as well. He has overseen this blog since 2006. (E-mail him or call 603-594-5831).
Also contributing:Earle Rich is a jack-of-many-trades engineer with experience in wind turbines.
Shareware Report - now, alas, retired.
