Swans on Tea

To Deter Plague of Bark Beetles, A Boombox Blasting Bug Sounds
[T]he NAU scientists started by blasting rock music and backwards recordings of Rush Limbaugh (presumably because playing the Rush Limbaugh recordings forward is a punishment too terrible even for the beetles). Unfortunately, the beetles quickly became immune to the sounds of heavy metal and heavy [...]

Watch out, Colorado
Altitude Causes Weight Loss Without Exercise
The scientists ferried 20 overweight, middle-aged men by train and cable car to a research station perched 1,000 feet below the peak of Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze. During the week-long stay, the men could eat and drink as much as they liked and were forbidden from any exercise [...]

Birds jousting at the birdfeeder while I was home for the holidays.
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Chemistry Drives Convection
Convection occurs when lower density fluid is located below higher density fluid–the lower density material rises, and the higher density material sinks. The best known case is where the lower density fluid is warmer, but it need not be. Since the 1980s researchers have been studying convection triggered by “autocatalytic” reactions, which are [...]

NASA’s Prophet Will Give You Nightmares
Professor Hansen has been driven into a strange situation, and produced a strange book. For one-third of a century now, this cantankerous scientist has been more accurate in his predictions about global warming than anyone else alive. He saw these disastrous changes coming long before others did, and the U.S. [...]

Fast Animals in Slow Motion
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Bubbles Break Spherical Mold
Not all bubbles are round. In fact, a new laser-based technique has been developed to make square bubbles, donut bubbles, and V-shaped bubbles. The researchers claim in the January Physical Review E that many other shapes can be made on-demand. These vapor bubbles and the liquid jets they create could have practical [...]

Break Up Doesn’t Keep Hydrogel Down
Using little more than water, clay and a new, designer compound, scientists have created a moldable gel that is both strong and can heal itself in seconds when split in two. The gel may advance efforts in tissue engineering and environmentally friendly chemistry.
h/t to the toasty one

Oil Drop Navigates Complex Maze
Diffusion of the chemical gives you a concentration gradient, which gives you a chemical potential gradient. It’s all “downhill” from there.

Aquarium lowers water levels after feeding turtles brussel sprouts
[T]he turtles, like humans, are prone to heavy bouts of flatulence after eating the vegetables.
Last year a turtle at a Sealife Centre triggered overflow alarms in the middle of the night after the splashes from gassy bubbles hit overflow sensors.
Now the Yarmouth turtle tank -12 feet in [...]

The Bloop, which has its own Wikipedia page (OK, what interesting subject doesn’t, the Wikipedia Paradox notwithstanding?)
Aaaaanyway …
[T]he sound is believed to be coming roughly from 50oS; 100oW. After reading that, I wondered how close that was to the coordinates given in “The Call of Cthulhu”. Allow me to quote: “Then, driven ahead by curiosity [...]

That’s ice fishing