http://www.physorg.com/news202626863.html
Research by Cornell on the threat to our Ash trees.
Earle Rich            Mont Vernon, NH

We went kayaking on Haunted Lake in Francestown today. The weather was about perfect for temperature although the wind came up as we headed back. It was blowing the wrong way, of course.
Along with lots of flowering water lilies, there seemed to be a lot of strange growths on the bottom of the lake. We [...]

There’s an interesting auction taking place in Vermont to help conservation efforts, according to this Burlington Free-Press article:
The Landscape Auction for Vermont’s Working Landscape will be the first such event to be held in the United States. The new conservation fundraising tool has been used in Europe to raise hundreds of thousands [...]

The Gulf of Maine Institute is mounting a campaign saying that fish caught in the Gulf of Maine can be eaten without any liberal guilt (that’s not quite how they  phrase it), because stock management plans have made its harvest largely sustainable. (Here’s the Portland Press-Herald story.) It’s always hard to know how much of  [...]

If all goes well, this morning (Monday morning) I will accompany folks from the American Chestnut Foundation as they hand pollinate a “mother tree” found in Hudson, N.H., near the Mass. border. These trees have the blight that has virtually destroyed the American chestnut, but still flower - they have some sort of natural resistance. [...]

The Burlington Free-Press has a story (read it here) about a researcher who found one of the 15 bobolinks previously tagged with transmitters in Vermont, which carries information about the yellow-headed songbird’s annual flight between Vermont and his wintering grounds in South America. From the story:
“For the first time, we’ll know — did they get [...]

New Scientist has an article (here it is) about two Dartmouth researchers doing a real-world experiment manipulating reality to see what it does to evolution - in this case, to some small lizards on some tiny Bahamas Islands. Among other things, they wrapped some islands in mesh to keep out predators, and imported predators on [...]

IT and playwrights don’t seem to have much in common, but the ultimate geek school has been trying to link to the humanities for a while. The latest effort is “From Orchids to Octopi,” a play about evolution, which is at the Central Square Theater through May2. I
Melinda Lopez, commissioned by the National Institutes [...]

BoingBoing has a post (read it here) linking to a “bio-acoustician” who has recorded the sound that trees’ vascular systems make as they move material up and down the circulatory system - as maple trees are doing right now, much to the joy of syrup makers. From the article:
The xylem and phloem of the tree [...]

Seacoast Online reports that recent storms washed away sand at the northeast end of Jenness Beach on the N.H. seacoast, revealing stumps of trees that are several thousand years old.
The instance of extremely low ebb tide and periods of increased storm activity have revealed the stumps of the cedar and pine trees, dating back more [...]

The above map was taken from this blog post, which sources it to U. Vermont and Sea Grant researchers. The caption says it all: There are 48 invasive species identified in lake Champlain, and at least another 136 - 136 of them!!! - in waterways that connect to the lake, the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway and Hudson River.

I don’t know what else to say except holy cow.

If you ever wonder why stuff needs to be pasteurized, the above picture is a demonstration. (It looked much better in person than in the picture.) The swollen jug on the right holds apple cider that we made with friends, which was left in the fridge for a month or so. The jug on the left is a normal jug, for comparison.

Unpasteurized cider only seems to last a week in the refrigerator before enough microbes grow to alter the taste.Then they start emitting various gaseous byproducts of digestion, which swells up the jug. I don’t know whether it ever would have burst - probably not, that plastic is pretty tough.

University of New Hampshire microbiologist Louis Tisa has received two grants totaling $498,115 to advance understanding of the actinorhizal plants, widespread woody plants with potential to enrich nutrient-poor and contaminated soils.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded Tisa, a professor of molecular, cellular and biomedical sciences, $399,000 to explore the symbiotic relationship between the [...]

Two University of New Hampshire assistant professors — microbiologist Vaughn Cooper and mechanical engineer Christopher White — have received prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grants. The grants aim to jump-start the careers of promising junior faculty, and the dollars, one million to Cooper and $400,000 to White, have certainly given their research efforts a [...]

We all know that piles of stuff gets smaller as it decays, but don’t usually get to see the difference. I have a graphic example every fall, however, in my leaf pile. I’ve estimated that over the course of one year the leaf pile reduces in volume by 90%-95%, and over the following year, they reduce in volume by another 50%.