Can you control noisemaking chaos? Brazilian planners hope so.

They'd rather not have the ear-splitting vuvuzela which took over the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Tens of thousands of those instruments blaring in packed stadiums became a major annoyance, disrupting players and even fans watching on TV. 

There has been a snowfall decrease in Canada's subarctic regions and that has led to worrisome desiccation of the regions' lakes - this has happened in the past also, of course, but it was less noticeable. 

Researchers came to this conclusion after studying 70 lakes near Old Crow, Yukon, and Churchill, Manitoba. Most of the lakes studied are less than one metre deep. According to the analysis, more than half of those located on relatively flat terrain and surrounded by scrubby vegetation show signs of desiccation. The problem stems chiefly from a decline in meltwater; for instance, from 2010 to 2012 average winter precipitation in Churchill decreased by 76 mm compared to the averages recorded from 1971 to 2000.

Will fish stop swimming due to global warming?

It's not the craziest mainstream media headline you are likely to read, but researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University say that fish share something in common with people; when it's hot, they just want to lay around. 

Researcher Dr. Jacob Johansen noted that fish rely on swimming for almost all activities necessary for survival, including hunting for food and finding mates. "However, global warming may reduce the swimming ability of many fish species, and have major impacts on their ability to grow and reproduce."

A $500 
three-dimensional
 "nano-camera" that can operate at the speed of light has been developed by researchers in the MIT Media Lab and was presented at Siggraph Asia in Hong Kong. It could be used in medical imaging and collision-avoidance detectors for cars, and to improve the accuracy of motion tracking and gesture-recognition devices used in interactive gaming.

If pharmaceutical companies are unethical, scientists are just tinkerers and doctors are educated by marketing, why would parents sign up their kids for medical research?

Those concepts are perpetuated in both mass and science media so it's no surprise that only 5 percent of parents have ever participated in any kind of medical research, and a large number of those are already ill. The downside that that is that healthcare for kids can't be improved. Animal models can only do so much when everything you eat at Thanksgiving contains a rodent carcinogen.

I’m getting a little tired of writing about the relationship between science and philosophy when it comes to ethics, as I’ve made my views abundantly clear on this blog and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, more than one of my readers has exhorted me to take on Richard Carrier’s arguments to the effect that science can answer moral questions, as these arguments are allegedly much better than those advanced by more prominent skeptics, such as Sam Harris and Michael Shermer.

When a star goes supernova, it shines brightly for a few weeks or months before fading away. Yet the material blasted outward from the explosion glows hundreds or thousands of years later, leaving a picturesque supernova remnant. But how?

Tycho's supernova was witnessed by astronomer Tycho Brahe in 1572. The appearance of this "new star" stunned those who thought the heavens were constant and unchanging. At its brightest, the supernova rivaled Venus before fading from sight a year later. Modern astronomers know that the event Tycho and others observed was a Type Ia supernova, caused by the explosion of a white dwarf star. The explosion spewed elements like silicon and iron into space at speeds of more than 11 million miles per hour (5,000 km/s).

While driving to my doctor's office to get some persistent Toxicodendron diversilobum (that's poison oak) looked at, I listened to NPR. Just as you would expect of me, my radio stations will all have buttons for NPR, country music, whatever station carries Rush Limbaugh, and a variety of others. On NPR I was intrigued because the guest chef was preparing a meal for alternative Thanksgiving lifestyles, that being vegan and gluten-free.

Methane has 30 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide but lacks the press awareness of its greenhouse gas cousin. 

And a new study in
Nature Geoscience has found that the seafloor off the coast of Northern Siberia is releasing more than twice the amount of methane as previously estimated - the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is venting at least 17  million tons
(teragrams) of methane into the atmosphere each year. 

Can you artificially strengthen a marital bond? 

Scientists at the Bonn University Medical Center found that if oxytocin is administered to men and if they are shown pictures of their partner, the bonding hormone stimulates the reward center in the brain, increass the attractiveness of the partner, and strengthens monogamy.