As reported here in the Portsmouth Herald, the lionfish, a beautiful beast unfortunately bedecked with venomous spines, has been discovered in Rhode Island waters. It was only a month ago that this native of the Indian Ocean was noticed as far north as Long Island Sound, so this is distressing. It is assumed that [...]

Ten years ago, the story was getting any Internet service west of Mount Monadnock, up the Connecticut River Valley, or north of the notches - now it’s getting broadband there. The New York Times looks at the issue in northeast Vermont, but the news hook (Verizon dumping its landlines) applies to New Hampshire, too.
On [...]

Even the upper bits of Coos County aren’t as far north as Iceland, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from an interesting project in that country’s capital, Reyjkavik: It is turning off all outdoor lights for half an hour to improve the view of the night sky, while an astronomer lectures over national radio [...]

Prompted by everything from perceived anti-science attitudes in Washington to the creationism debate, scientists are making more noise these days about participating in - sigh - politics. The most overt move is a just-announced group called Scientists and Engineers for America. Its "Key Races" page is still under construction, but a Washington Post article [...]

UPDATE: I got the names wrong; they have been corrected since the first posting
I have long lamented in the past that nobody in New Hampshire has ever won an Ig Nobel Prize, which I regarded as a blight on our state’s fine reputation. So imagine my excitement when I was told recently, by Ig founder [...]

This Portsmouth Herald story describes NH’s contribution to this push by the group Clean the Air. The whole thing is a little vague on details - "reducing global warming pollution in the next 10 years,ensuring reductions of 60 percent to 80 percent by 2050" leaves a lot of wigle room - but it’s nice and [...]

As reported by the Keene Sentinel here. A ompany called NHWiFi Inc. put up three receivers in the spring, and if it gets tired of the cost, the Keene Downtown Group says it will step in. (The state’s leader in freebie downtown wireless remains Portsmouth, which started it way back when eCoast sounded cutting-edge.)

Purple loosestrife may be the prettiest invasive species around, but it’s still knocking out native plants and reducing biodiversity here and elsewhere - as I can testify from my property. It drove out cattails from my small pond, and anything that can out-compete cattails is not to be fooled with.

For several years the state has [...]

As Anousheh Ansari enjoys being the first female space tourist (although that depends on your definition of tourist, as indicated here), I’m going to indulge in the common exercise of aging - er, experienced newspapermen and revisit a column I wrote in 2001, when Dennis Tito did his orbital jaunt. I wondered whether we should [...]

The latest press release from Airmap, the UNH air quality monitoring program that has accumulates data from Durham, the Isles of Shoals and Mount Washington, concerns their "smart balloons". These carry ozone sensors aloft and can be raised or lowered from the ground as they drift with the currents, providing interesting data about what gunk [...]

You can’t beat that Concord Monitor headline, so I won’t try - it’s on this story about the 45th anniversary of Betty and Barney Hill’s "alien abduction", a tale that set off a craze which lingers today. New Hampshire’s contribution to the, shall we say, more eccentric side of life.

It’s early to think about skiing for most of us, but it’s never too early at Snow Journal, an online gathering of mostly-New England ski freaks. Today they have an interesting discussion about how much water it takes to create enough snow for a ski area to operate. The conclusion: At least 660,000 gallons over [...]

A lot of people have an idea that it uses less gas to keep a car’s engine running at idle for a few minutes than to turn it off, then on again. If this was ever true, it isn’t with today’s engines - and nothing drives me crazier than to see a car or pickup [...]

"Inventiveness is a wondrous thing, no matter the topic it tackles - and that includes liquid body waste."

That’s my lede on this week’s Science from the Sidelines column in the Telegraph, and darned if I can think of another one! I also can’t think of a suitable illustration to accompany this post …

I regard football as one of American society’s least-interesting creations. But Dartmouth College has found a clever way to tap into the public’s inexplicable interest in the collision of pituitary giants - its faculty holds pregame lectures that have nothing to do with Knute Rockne.
They’re meaty lectures, too, on topics like reforming Social Security and [...]