National Grid is asking the Massachusetts Public Utilities Commission to let it test 15,000 “smart” meters in Worcester, Mass., reports that city’s paper, the Telegram.
They’re not wicked smart, however - no two-way interaction with the utility for price changes on the fly or remote-controlled appliances. What they’ll do is make it possible to charge different [...]

This summer, Britannica will open a Web site where people can edit articles - sort of like wikipedia. The big difference, reports the Globe: Britannica Online articles will be overseen by professional editors. In addition, there will be no anonymity: Authors and editors will be identified by name.

I’m gathering numbers from ISO-New England (the regional power grid) which seem to indicate that turning lights off for Earth Hour had little effect on total power consumption. They will be in my Telegraph column Wednesday, but as part of my “research”* I found a video that shows the fabled Citgo sign going dark:
The video [...]

Electric motors are still crummy when it comes to range, compared to fossil-fuel engines, but they’ve got much better torque - which makes them wonderful for short, powerful runs. You can see this in the Formula Hybrid automotive competition, in which college teams build electric-gasoline versions of small race cars. After two years of competition [...]

The state’s new Climate Change Action Plan (my analysis is here) is enthusiastic about alternative energy - but switching from fossil fuels is expensive, although calculations of cost are complicated, as this excellent N.Y. Times article notes (power storage is part of the solar/wind cost, and how do you calculate the environmental impact of coal?)
Which [...]

In December I wrote about how I was too fumble-fingered to replace my battery with the kit I bought from iPodJuice.com. The company president, who obviously runs a Web scanner for his firm’s name, offered to do the replacement for free, but as a good ethical journalist I eventually decided to pay the full price, which isn’t much: $19, on top of the kit. So for about fifty bucks (I forget how much the battery was, and they look like they’ve changed their prices) I have my old iPod mini back in working order! 4 gig of songs - who needs more than that?

Today is EarthHour, the global environmental statement and/or pointless stunt (choose one) designed to demonstrate that reducing energy usage isn’t that hard by getting as many people as possible to turn off electrical devices from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Last year, as I have noted, the first EarthHour was largely ignored here: New England’s grid actually saw power usage increase slightly during it. But this year, Boston and Concord, N.H., have joined cities making official proclamations,

This won’t affect me, because the baby-steps caving I’ve done has shown that crawling underground is not my thing, but the national Fish & Wildlife Service is asking for a “voluntary moratorium” on entering caves in areas where bats have white-nose syndrome. That includes New Hampshire (although we’re not much of a caving region, due [...]

Boston.com has a great photo spread (here) of about 70 right whales feeding in Cape Cod Bay recently. The New England Aquarium has a ton of information about this hunted-almost-to-extinction species here; incidentally, the “right” name was given by early whalers because it was easy to hunt and floated on the surface when dead.

(RELATED ITEM: The NY Times has a debate here about how Americans have stopped buying small cars because the price of oil is down, which is why U.S. carmakers, finally moving to smaller cars, have switched their tune and want a gasoline tax.)
Even as New Hampshire gets an official Climate Change Action Plan (my story [...]

SORT-OF-RELATED ITEM: Here’s a story about hearings of health concerns from people living near the Mars Hill wind farm in Maine, due (it seems) to audible and low-frequency noise disrupting sleep and/or causing other stress.

Researchers say turning off wind farms in low winds would greatly reduce the number of bats killed by the spinning blades, [...]

My science column today (read it here) is a perhaps over-long celebration of academic high-school competitions, like math teams and FIRST robotics. It mentions three items from recent competitions but doesn’t explain them due to lack of space - but sends readers here for more info. So here goes:
Fermi Question: I hate to say it, [...]

The latest attempt to build a wind farm in New Hampshire, a 99-megawatt proposal sprawling across a long ridgeline in Coos County, has plenty of fans and plenty of haters, as this Union-Leader story about the final public hearing makes clear. It’s a boon to a poor region or a boondoggle for the environment, depending [...]

With spring comes the chance to get involved in reptile and amphibian conservation by taking part in the Reptile and Amphibian Reporting Program (RAARP), a “citizen science” volunteer activity, part of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department’s Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Program, in which people report sightings of reptiles and amphibians to help biologists determine the distribution of species in New Hampshire. All observations, from spotted salamanders to spotted turtles, will help.

Here’s another link to math and physics humor building on the “Don’t drink and Derive” form.
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199810/zero-gravity.cfm