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Pilgrim nuclear plant in Mass. gets its license extended
Posted by David Brooks | Friday, May 25, 2012
The Globe reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has extended the operating license for Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station in Plymouth, Mass., just south of Boston.
The initial, 40-year operating license run outs June 8. The new license is good for 20 years. Here's the story.
The story notes that the the NRC "has never rejected a license renewal application of a nuclear plant." No wonder anti-nuke folks in Vermont are fighting so hard to keep state oversight on Vermont Yankee.
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Dartmouth professor making software to spot Photoshopped pictures
Posted by David Brooks | Friday, May 25, 2012
I've written about Hany Farid of Dartmouth many times over the years, because of the interesting way he uses mathematical algorithms to help spot photos that have been digitally altered.
I leared from Craig Silverman's column Regret the Error that he's got a company called Fourandsix that will be releasing a beta of software to spot faked photos. They call it Photo Forensics Software. (I guess "Fourandsix" is a verbal joke on "forensics")
The column talks about ways to spot fakes and is worth a read: Check it out here. A key point: Search shadows and reflections. When it comes to manipulated photos, Connor said, “it’s really hard to get everything right.”
Birds have been expanding a nest in my barn for 15 years; I wonder if they're the same birds?
Posted by David Brooks | Thursday, May 24, 2012
For at least 15 years, phoebes, a drab songbird common in the Northeast, have been living on a beam of the first floor of our barn. Their nest, made of mud lined with grass, sits empty all winter, and in the spring they build a new layer atop it, then lay four or five eggs.The babies are currently overflowing the nest; one of these days I'll go into the barn and it will be empty.
This process means the nest grows slowly every year. About 5 or 6 years ago, the nest got so close to the ceiling that they started a new nest, attached to one side. It looked like an in-law apartment. This year, the new nest has gotten as tall as the original one; I wonder if we'll have another extension next year? A triplex, perhaps.
The question is I have, though, is whether it's the same birds, or rather (since they only live a few years) the same extended family, returning each year? Or maybe it's just random birds; the first one who finds the nest each spring moves in? Do phoebes return to the nest where they're born, like salmon? And if so, which of the four or five babies gets to move in?
A bit of Google-ing finds no answer ... maybe I'll have to bug NH Audubon.
Sheep like to turn right (as do people, at least in stores)
Posted by David Brooks | Thursday, May 24, 2012
We have a couple of sheep in residence most years, borrowed from farmer friends to crop the grass and let me pretend that I'm rural. So naturally I took interest in the latest posting on the wonderful Improbable.com blog: "Which way do sheep turn?"
It discusses a research paper in which white-face ewes were taken through simple mazes, to determine which way they choose to turn at a T intersection. The result: They turn right two times out of three.
Stores in the U.S. assume people will turn to the right when they enter, and circulate counter-clockwise, when making decisions about product placement in aisles. I had assumed this was a function of our right-hand driving and thus would differ in Britain, but maybe not. Maybe mammals have a hard-wired bias for turning right. At least, sheep-like shoppers do.
Shutting Vermont Yankee would not de-stabilize the region's electric grid, after all
Posted by David Brooks | Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Thanks to the recession cutting electricity use, upgrades to the power grid, and an increasing level of "demand response," in which companies agree to shut down during peak electricty usage, the folks who oversee New England's power grid say that the loss of Vermont Yankee nuclear plant would not de-stabilize the grid, after all. In past years ISO-New England had cautioned that the 600-megawatt plant, which produces the equivalent of half the electricity used by Vermont, couldn't shut without overloading parts of the grid in peak summer periods.
The news is in the second page of an assessment (PDF here) produced after the latest annual "forward capacity auction," which includes bids to produce electricity in the upcoming years based on various scenarios. ISO-NE uses the auctions to plan ahead.
The report says Vermont Yankee could "de-list" itself (stop producing power) in the 2015-16 period without harm. Since it was written, further information has led ISO-NE to say it could VY could de-list as early as 2013.
The news has been gleefully embraced by anti-nuclear groups (whose press release brought it to my attention; shame on me not noticing this before).
Vermont Yankee wants to renew its 40-year license, but the state must give its OK, which it hasn't so far. Vermont is unique in the country for giving state officials some regulatory oversight of nuclear plants.
Sticky purple kites (don't touch them) put in trees to spot emerald ash borers
Posted by David Brooks | Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The state is putting out traps for emerald ash borers, the nasty invasive beetle which will probably eradicate ash trees from the Northeast in coming years. The Asian invader was spotted in Detroit in 2002 and has spread, as so many invasives do. It recently was found on our side of the Hudson River, which some had hoped with provide a barrier.
It will probably arrive in New Hampshire in a year or two, alas. The purple traps are designed to spot first arrivals so we can try to contain them.
The survey traps are nothing fancy: A three-sided cardboard prism painted purple (the color attracts the beetles) and placed in mid-canopy level of ash trees at the edge of forests, a placement that studies like this one have indicated are most effective. They are dabbed with oils that mimic the smell of distressed ash trees, and are wicked sticky to hold whatever insects land - so don't touch them.
For more information, here's a Telegraph story.
Clouds made life hard for NH-based NASA ships that watched SpaceX flight
Posted by David Brooks | Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Two ships that are temporarily based in Portsmouth, NH, went out into the Atlantic to document the launch to orbit of the SpaceX rocket. NASA says it "was the first time a launch has been documented with detailed imaging equipment from aboard a ship."
Clouds got in the way of a lot of it, but the Portsmouth Herald reports that the "former space shuttle solid rocket booster recovery ships reportedly got 'good radar data' while monitoring the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket and deployment of the Dragon capsule." Here's their whole story.
The two ships, with the boring names Liberty Star and Freedom Star, have their own wikipedia pages, but they haven't been updated for SpaceX yet. The ships are based in the port associated with Cape Canaveral.
Only one commenter says "shame on you" for pro-dissection column
Posted by David Brooks | Tuesday, May 22, 2012
My column in The Telegraph this weeks looks at the question of dissection in high school biology class. It's light on details (like how many kids opt out) because I got very little response to my queries. This is a hot-button, I believe. You can read it here- with a video of a cat-dissection class.
It only drew a few comments - the number of comments our articles get has plummeted since we switched to Facebook commenting, for better or for worse - and only one said "shame on you, Mr. Brooks."
Each illegally downloaded song is worth - ready? - $22,500, as BU student finds out
Posted by David Brooks | Monday, May 21, 2012
Boston Globe is reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court won't hear an appeal of an eye-popping $675,000 award against Boston University student Joel Tennanbaum, who was found guilty of illegally downloading a bunch of songs from various online sites.
The court, without comment, refused to hear Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum’s challenge to a law that let the recording industry collect thousands of dollars from individuals for such downloading. The jury was told to impose damages, set by US copyright law, of between $750 and $150,000 per violation. Jurors set a rate of $22,500 for each of 30 songs he downloaded.
Tenenbaum said individual downloaders who don’t make money from sharing songs shouldn’t be treated the same as companies whose business is to steal copyrighted content. A US appeals court rejected that argument, ruling that all illegal downloaders, regardless of their motives, are subject to the same range of penalties.
Where to find more background? The wikipedia article, of course.
Would you like an office full of spiders - thousands of them? (Plus Harry Potter trivia!)
Posted by David Brooks | Monday, May 21, 2012
Spiders have, I fear, never been my favorite creature. I have to try very hard to overcome the "eek!" factor when I see them - which is too bad, because they're cool beasts in many ways. I was reminded of that this weekend when we were given a tour of the "spider lab" at Cornell while picking up my son.
The lab is run by Prof. Linda Rayor - this is her site. It's basically three interconnected offices filled with terrariums, holding literally thousands of spiders, from tarantula-ish beasts the size of an outstretched hand (some of them very beautiful - who knew?) to an entire room full of thousands of social huntsman spiders. Those are the world's only social spider that doesn't spin a web (they live under bark of trees) which makes them of great interest to arachnid fans.
The place was creepy and fascinating, and exactly the sort of astonishing collection that makes universities so wonderful - and so expensive to operate. I'm very glad I visited, although I'm also glad the terrariums were closed.
So what did I learn, aside from the fact that spiders can be pretty? That the spider "killed" by a curse in one of the Harry Potter movies wasn't a spider at all - it was another arachnid, called an amblpygi, a.k.a. whip scorpion. Further evidence that almost everything connects to Harry Potter in some way.
Steampunk convention coming to Nashua June 8-10
Posted by David Brooks | Saturday, May 19, 2012
Years ago I attended King Richard's Faire down in Mass., one of those "re-enacting ancient times while selling you stuff" events built around Renaissance-era life. It was fun, but hasn't drawn us back.
A vaguely similar, although smaller, event is coming to Nashua, this one built around steampunk, the alternative Victoria Era genre that has become a major force in science fiction. Could be interesting.
Here's an advance from The Telegraph, which is a little light on details. The website for the event is supposed to be here, but it's down at the moment.
Flies to control weeds lead to more mice-carried virus: Biocontrol gone wrong, chapter II
Posted by David Brooks | Friday, May 18, 2012
My previous post mentioned an example of a nice-sounding biocontrol of invasive species and how it can fail, which I learned from this week's Science Cafe. Here's another tale that is particularly interesting because the unintended consequence is so off-the-wall. It was told to us by post-doctoral fellow Jeff Evans of Dartmouth.
A gall fly that eats the seeds of a nasty invasive called spotted knapweed was released in Montana in the 1970s. It sounded like a perfect biocontrol, and it sort of worked. The flies multiplied and laid their larvae in the flowers, and the larvae spent the winter eating the seeds.
Alas, they didn't enough seeds to make a difference in the population of knapweed, which like many weeds produces millions and millions of excess seeds - so many that not even insects can keep up. All that happened is that the scads of knapweed flowers now contained some tasty protein tidbits. And who liked that protein? Mice seeking winter food.
As a result, the population of deer mice soared. This is bad because out west they can carry hantavirus, a nasty virus they carry which can be transmitted to humans with sometimes fatal results. Cases of hantavirus in humans has also soared. (Hereabouts, deer mice a the biggest vector of Lyme disease, so anything that helps them is bad for us.)
In other words, using a fly to control an invasive weed not only failed to control the weed but has resulted in more human disease from a virus that's carried by mice. Who would have predicted that?
Nobody, of course, which is why biocontrols which sound so wonderful to us laymen should be approached with caution.
Giant mutant carp are, alas, not an easy answer to pond-choking milfoil (as Science Cafe learned)
Posted by David Brooks | Thursday, May 17, 2012
Excellent Science Cafe last night about invasive species. I thought I knew all about the subject, which I have written about many times, but I learned plenty. Notable were two tales of how biocontrol can go wrong. Here's the first - I need to nail down details of the second, so it will come later:
Variable milfoil, as I'm sure you know, is an invasive weed that can rapidly turn ponds into green goop. Everybody in New Hampshire is fighting it.
One idea is to put triploid carp, which can't reproduce because their eggs have been zapped, into the water body so they'll eat it all. Sounds great! But Jeff Schloss of UNH, an aquatic specialist and one of four panelists last night, pointed out a problem: The carp don't really like milfoil all that much.
As a result, they only eat milfoil after they've eaten everything else - which means that the only way they can clear milfoil from a lake is to complete denude it of all vegetation. Schloss talked about ponds that have turned into empty mudholes because the carp wiped out everything in them. Plus, he said, these "sterilized" fish sometimes manage to reproduce, creating a new invasive species problem, which makes him cautious (to say the least) about using them as a milfoil solution.
Schloss also pointed out something else: The milfoil in New Hampshire (variable milfoil) is native to southern states of the U.S. and is different than the invasive milfoil in much of the rest of the country (Eurasian milfoil). Irony of ironies, variable milfoil is endangered in Ohio! We're trying to kill it, they're trying to save it!
Schloss said side-by-side tests have shown that the variable milfoil from NH seems hardier than the same species from elsewhere in the country. In a weird way, that made us all feel proud.
Red Sox pitching great Curt Schilling is having trouble with his video-game company
Posted by David Brooks | Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Boston loves Curt Schilling, the former Red Sox pitching of "bloody sock" fame, but Rhode Island might be getting a little wary about him. Deadspin, among varous places, reports that Schilling's video-game company called 38 Studios (after his uniform number) doesn't look too promising, despite taking a $75 million loan from that state.
An interesting tidbit:
Last year Schilling told Reuters that he had invested "$30 million to $35 million" in 38 Studios. A disclosure filing obtained by WPRI shows that Schilling advanced the company $4 million of his own money, and has already been paid back—with funds from the Rhode Island loan.
Mass. wants to shut wind turbine because it's too noisy, near homes
Posted by David Brooks | Wednesday, May 16, 2012
An interesting wind-power development in Massachusetts. As the Boston Globe reports (read it here), the " state Department of Environmental Protection, in a long-awaited response to Falmouth residents’ complaints about noise from two turbines, released a report Tuesday finding that one turbine less than 1,500 feet from the nearest home repeatedly exceeded allowable noise levels."
Two turbines in Falmouth, at the wastewater treatment facility, produce about 3 megawatts of power at maximum output. They were built three years ago. One is going to shut down, the other only operate during the day.
The Globe quotes an official saying "There are other turbines operating in residential areas, which have not led to similar complaints. So these results do not implicate turbines everywhere.’’
Still, it's bound to encourage believers in Wind Farm Syndrome, or whatever the nostrum-peddlers call it.
Invasive plants (practical and theoretical) are the topic of tonight's Science Cafe - see you there
Posted by David Brooks | Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The latest free, wickedly intellectual Science Cafe New Hampshire is tonight (Wednesday, May 16) at 7 p.m. in The Barley House on Main Street in Concord, across from the Statehouse. (Don't shout "seig heil.")
The topic is invasive plants and we have folks from the practical side, including a Conservation Commission member who has been yanking up milfoil from a local pond for years, and the theoretical, including a guy who does mathematical modeling of populations to find their weak points. (I wrote about him Monday.)
It should be interesting. Plus, there's beer and food! See you there.
Ships leave NH harber to keep an eye on SpaceX launch to space station
Posted by David Brooks | Tuesday, May 15, 2012
From the Portsmouth Herald: The Liberty Star and Freedom Star left the Port of New Hampshire early Tuesday morning, headed out to sea for this weekend’s SpaceX launch.
Both NASA ships left port around 8 a.m. and will head to different support locations in the North Atlantic to help document the upcoming mission, according to Kathy Barnstorff, media relations specialist for NASA.
The teams aboard the two NASA ships are preparing to capture high-definition video and thermal imagery of the SpaceX launch, which involves a Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon capsule climbing through the atmosphere en route to the space station.
SpaceX, as I'm sure you know, is trying to be the first private spacecraft to make it to the space station. Its launch has been delayed, but should happen later this week.
The Russians just launched a three-man team to the space station.
Why is Hitler, rather than Stalin, the default Internet insult?
Posted by David Brooks | Monday, May 14, 2012
A local high school had some minor online vandalism yesterday, as we reported (calling it a "prank" rather than fussing about hate speech or finding one person to criticize it so we could put "community outrage" in the headline, which would give it way too much gravitas).
The prank involved putting a picture of Hitler on a Facebook page that looked like the school's official page - it was actually a "community" page, which can be created by almost anybody. Somebody also dumped the Hitler picture on the school's Wikipedia page around midnight (labelling it "school mascot"). The Wikipedia change was undone almost immediately, and Facebook removed the Hitler picture within a few hours of our reporting on it.
This led me to ponder something, however: Why is it always Hitler? Why not Stalin?
Josef Stalin who was just as horrible a human and caused the deaths of at least as many people as Hitler, and the gulag system was as mind-numbingly, deliberately awful as the Holocaust. So why doesn't Godwin's Law , which says that any Internet conversation invariably degrades into comparisons with Hitler, also cover Stalin?
There are other awful folks in history which could be cited, of course: Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Caligula, but they're not as well known or are historically distant. And then there's Mao, who cause many many millions to die horrible deaths; but perhaps a comparison with Mao might also be misread as some sort of comment about modern China and politics.
But I can't think of any argument that makes Stalin less suitable as a metaphor for "as bad as humanity can be" than Hitler.
Governments might be unsure about the value of solar panels, but thieves aren't
Posted by David Brooks | Monday, May 14, 2012
The White Mountain National Forest says more than $10,000 worth of solar panels and related components were stolen from campground and recreation sites along the Kancamagus Highway over the winter, according to the Associated Press.
Spokswoman Tiffany Benna was quoted as saying thefts along the scenic highway through the White Mountains have included eight 2-by-4-foot panels; three 12-volt electrical panels; charge controllers; inverters; and deep cycle batteries. The items were taken between October and March.
The solar systems provide electricity for lights and exhaust fans. They also provide water for campgrounds and bathroom facilities at forest recreation sites.
Do-it-yourself solar power? These solar panels can be plugged in
Posted by David Brooks | Sunday, May 13, 2012
SpinRay Energy has developed a system that lets consumers install up to five solar panels and plug them into an outdoor power outlet. People can install one panel at a time, and get up to 1,000 watts of power with five installed. It costs $1,100, each panel I think.
So says the story from Cnet; click here to read more.
Caution is required. As the story notes, other companies have made similar promises without following through. Still, this system appears to be actually for sale via Amazon. The company has a feeble website, which it says is "undergoing a redesign" - a message dating to May 7. That's a little worrisome.
The story also notes there's a shortage of reports about whether the panels actually deliver the power they promise. The efficiency of the inverter (which turns DC into AC) can make a huge difference.
I'd love a solar panel or two, but I think I'll hold off on this one until there's more of a track record.
Volunteers find dragonflies 18,000 times - including the ringed boghaunter
Posted by David Brooks | Friday, May 11, 2012
Last October I wrote about the nearly finished New Hampshire Dragonfly Survey, a citizen-science project in which volunteers gamboled through the state's woods, fields and riverbeds, carrying bug-catching nets and counting the types of dragonflies they snagged or spotted.
Now the survey is finished, reports New Hampshire Fish & Game. Roughly 100 volunteers collected "more than 18,000 records" of insects of the order Odonata, which means dragonflies and damselflies. They found 157 of thw 162 species known to live in the state.
They aren't finished, said Fish and Game in a press release: "two volunteers kicked of the season in style by finding emerging Hudsonian Whitefaces in southeastern New Hampshire on April 4 – fully 10 days earlier than any previous record of any dragonfly in the state. By the end of April, 10 species had been recorded including the state-endangered ringed boghaunter."
Ringed boghaunter! How can you not like dragonflies?
Here's my story from October. Here's the state's official dragonfly site.
New Hampshire Press Association 2011 Best Blog
These free, informal get-togethers at The Barley House restaurant in Concord features discussion among the audience (everybody is welcome) and experts in various fields. Check the website here.
NEXT CAFE: Wednesday, June 20, 7 p.m.: "Arsenic in our environment"
PAST TOPICS:
May: "Invasive species in New Hampshire" April: "Nanotechnology in business and the lab". March: "Lyme disease in NH". Feb: "Seasonal Affective Disorder." Jan: "Biomass energy". Nov. 2010: "Science of Polling." Oct.: "Digital Privacy." Sept: "Vaccinations." June: "Future of Food." May: "Climate Change."
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