… is a World Without Oil! That’s the title of a new alternative-reality game funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that combines online and real-world activites in a game designed to figure out how the U.S. would act if we were cut off from all oil imports. The organizers say it’s the first such [...]

It still has governmental hurdles to overcome, but what could be the nation’s first offshore wind farm is moving ahead.It proposed 130 turbines between Nantucket and Cape Cod, producing up to 420 megawatts - 17 times the size of the moving-ahead Lempster Mountain Wind Farm near Keene.

So say New Hampshire Fish & Game wildlife biologist Eric Orff in the 3/27 posting on his blog, which has the boring title of New Hampshire Nature Notes but is a wonderful example of a knowledgeable person sharing his experiences online. The end of winter brings huge numbers of ducks moving through the state and [...]

At a hearing in Concord this week, Hampton-based Unitil said it would like to be able to partner with large customers, like manufacturers or hospitals, to build small (10 MW or less) renewable power plants, which presumably means wood-burning, or maybe solar. N.H. utilities were forbidden from owning power plants a decade ago as [...]

That’s the question being debated in Gilford on Lake Winipesaukee, where the fight to contain lake-strangling milfoil continues. Is it worse to have your cove turn into a milfoil bog, or have folks in hazmat suits occasionally spray it with chemicals that mean you can’t swim there for a while? (That’s a picture of a [...]

New Hampshire Audubon has announced that Manchester’s peregrine falcon pair laid their first egg of the season on the morning of March 26. That’s a full three weeks earlier than in 2006, probably due to the female being more mature and not some climate-change shenanigans.You can see it on the birds’ Web cam - just [...]

Just south of the border, UMass-Lowell has made a surprisingly big name for itself in nanotech research, considering its size and academic heft. So they’re going to show off at a public event Thursday, April 12, from 2 to 5 p.m., when more than 30 facultry members, including directors of the school’s Nanomanufacturing Centers, will [...]

The biggest drawback of electricity is that unlike oil or other energy sources, it’s hard to store. That’s especially a problem for wind towers, which produce electricity intermittently. Battery technology is pretty mature and unlikely to change radically (alas), so there’s a hunt on for other ways to store power and release it as [...]

This study says a pandemic like the 1918 outbreak could could shrink the state’s economy by 5.3 percent, with $2.9 billion in losses. That’s better than most of the U.S., though; the Granite State is 44th for estimated economic impact. Being small and somewhat rural helped in the calculations: when you’re spread out, you infect [...]

The 29-year-old tech news publication is going entirely digital, not for journalism reasons but due to the real driver of change in media these days - decline in advertising.

Lots of people believe there are despite lack of hard evidence, as the Portland Press Herald and National Geographic have found. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife is even reconsidering the status of the cougar / puma / mountain lion.
The press release about the federal announcement throws some cold water on our hopes, however: "As [...]

That’s the question being asked in this Globe story. For those not paying attention, Verizon wants to spin off its residential landlinesin New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, and merge them withFairPoint to create a company that would serve about 1.6 million lines. Hearings should start in late summer.
Sort of Update: An NY Times story [...]

I enjoy juggling, although I’ve never mastered anything more than three balls or clubs, which is the juggling equivalent of skiing the bunny slope. A couple of years ago, trying to spread the enjoyment down a generation, I took my son to visit the MIT Juggling Club (which despite its high geek factor has a [...]

No local angle, but this is too different to miss: A Washington Post story about how Miss Delaware - as in the Miss America pageant - is a chemical engineer. This combination mixes better than you’d think: "Even in a scientific community where Nobel Prizes are more likelyto be the preferred fantasy, being declared the [...]

This story says that a study by theProctor Maple Research Center at the University of Vermont has confirmed what most folks tapping maple trees already know: the month-long maple syrup season has gotten about three days shorterover the past four decades. This is putting economic pressure on a small but phsycologically important industry.
Will we spend [...]