Nitrous oxide, which is also called laughing gas, can be used in many ways. Dentists use it to reduce the anxiety of their patients. The chemical compound is also used as fertilizer. But too much of anything is bad, and it seems that we’re generating too much nitrous oxide.

While carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for about 10 times more warming than nitrous oxide, laughing gas is 300 times more potent and stays in the atmosphere for a century or more. To get serious about the matter, an international team of scientists from 48 research institutions banded together to investigate the impact of this versatile chemical compound. The team have called the study the most comprehensive picture to date of N2O emissions.

For the study published in Nature, the team measured natural and human-caused N2O emissions between 1980 and 2016. Overall, global N2O levels have risen by 20 percent from pre-industrial levels, with a surge in the last half-century.

These emissions are increasing at a faster rate than the goal set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to limit warming by less than 2°C (3.6°F), with an ideal scenario tightening that limit to less than 1.5°C (2.7°F). Instead, emissions are in line with a scenario that is above 3°C (5.4°F) from pre-industrial levels.

Where does this large amount of nitrous oxide emission come from? How can we reduce the emission?

Answers over at IFL Science.

(Image Credit: barskefranck/ Pixabay)

Is it really possible to compose a great piece by relying on chance? It turns out, it is possible. This composition method, called ‘aleatoric’ or ‘chance’ music, was made popular in the 20th century by composers like Charles Ives and John Cage, but its roots can go back as far as the 18th century, at the time of Mozart.

Today, there are still a few musicians who use this method in composing their music. One such man is Edward Chilvers.

Read about his story over at Classic FM.

(Image Credit: erik_stein/ Pixabay)

Legends told about ghosts and hauntings often involve restless spirits who were treated terribly during their lives or have unresolved business to attend to, which is why they hang around, looking for vengeance, justice, or just simple recognition. So it stands to reason that a lot of these spirits would be women. One of the more notorious, at least in the US, is the Bell Witch of Tennessee.

The story says that the ghost responds to the name “Kate,” the name of a woman the patriarch of the family had cheated. According to various accounts, the Bell’s former neighbor, Kate Batts, was a strange woman who was mocked by her community. This positions Kate in the typical profile of the witch: an older woman who is an outcast existing on the margins of her society. Though historical evidence suggests that associations between the real person Kate Batts and the ghost don’t line up (she was still alive at the time of the hauntings!), the association has stuck and the story is rooted in the tradition of a woman wronged by a man and getting revenge in the afterlife. It’s worth considering why it is this story that resonates more than any other version of the tale.

Read about the Bell Witch and four other ghostly legends of women asserting themselves from beyond the grave at Folklore Thursday. -via Strange Company

(Image credit: M. V. Ingram)

The growth of cities in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries led to problems that all demanded new thinking to solve, such as sewage treatment, transportation, garbage collection, and overflowing cemeteries. The cemetery problem crept up gradually, as burial plots were centered around churches and were there presumably for eternity. When cemetery expansion became impossible and more people died, the earliest solutions were not the best.  

When all the plots in a graveyard were full—as was happening more and more by the end of the 17th century—sextons added another layer, digging graves two, rather than the customary six, feet under. The bodies of the poor, or plague victims, were dumped, en masse, into pits. Most corpses were clad in only a fabric shroud as coffins were considered a luxury.

All it took for the dead to rise was a heavy rainstorm, a pack of marauding dogs, or a sloppy drunk gravedigger (see: Hamlet). Some were withered down to the bone while others appeared ruddy and well-fed, more lifelike than when they were gasping on their hollow-cheeked death-beds. Medical science failed to explain these such post-mortem anomalies but folk tradition had a name for the undecayed, revenant, from the French verb revenir, ‘to come back’. The Slavic term was ‘Vampyr’ or ‘upyr’.

A notorious case of an unearthed vampire in what is now Serbia led Europeans to diagnose these better-preserved corpses as vampires. Read how that happened and what it led to at Smithsonian.

(Image credit: Theodor Josef Hubert Hoffbauer)

Because of the pandemic, most live events are cancelled for everyone’s safety. That’s why most of us can’t go to live concerts and experience seeing our favorite artists perform their songs live. A new innovative speaker called Oda might just be an alternative way for concert goers to listen to their faves’ live music, as Fast Company details: 

Oda is unique in that it’s more akin to having Zoom on sleep mode all the time, and musicians can just walk up, activate it, and play.

The Oda speaker is paired with a membership ($79 for a three-month “season”), which gives the listener access to programming that plays through the speaker—and nowhere else. 

Musicians are paid for evening performances or weekend residencies. The artist is in charge of the experience: They simply press a button to activate the speakers and play direct to listeners. Just like a live tour or a ballet, there’s a calendar of performances, so there’s no changing the channels, but listeners can check out the lineup online before buying a membership. Listeners can put the speaker on “do not disturb” mode if they don’t want to listen to music; they can also use the Oda speakers to play their own music via Bluetooth or a line-in connection.

Image via Fast Company

It's a hot summer day in Anytown. Kids are playing in their own or neighbor's yards and running through the sprinklers. From a few blocks away, the faint strains of the "The Entertainer", "Pop Goes the Weasel" or "Camptown Races" can be heard drifting down the street. Kids burst through their front doors begging parents for money or go running for piggy banks. The music gets louder, and like a Pied Piper, the ice cream truck draws the neighborhood kids (and even a few adults) to come buy the tantalizing frozen treats being offered. The electronic music box inside the truck has done its job.

One company, tiny Minnesota-based Nichols Electronics, controls not just a vast majority of the ice cream music box market; it is the market. Owner Mark Nichols estimates that the company, which he inherited, is responsible for up to 97% of the music boxes in circulation.

Original owner, Mark's father Bob Nichols had no experience with music boxes. After founding Nichols Electronics in 1957, the WWII vet set his sights on testing TV and radio parts and manufacturing a few one-off products, like a coin-operated foot massager.

But when ice cream driver John Ralston asked him if he could put together an electric music box, Bob decided to give it a go.

They worked out a deal together: Ralston, who was well-connected in the ice cream vending scene, would promote the new music boxes for Bob in exchange for a small cut of profits. 

Within just a few years, orders started pouring in from across the country.

Bob never did any print advertising — he didn’t have to. Word spread so quickly in the tight-knit ice cream truck world that ice cream music soon became Bob’s main business.

Convincing ice cream drivers to buy his electronic music boxes wasn’t always smooth sailing.

Read about the history of ice cream truck music, running a niche ice cream business, the art of choosing ice cream truck music, how the ice cream truck business has a strange quirk: it typically sees a bump in the wake of a financial meltdown, and how the current pandemic that has produced a record unemployment rate has been good for ice cream trucks signing up people to drive them with booming sales at The Hustle.

Image Credit: GRUBBXDN via Wikiemedia Commons

Nichols’ current music box (it looks like it comes straight from the 1970's) — called the Omni 2 ($225) — is preloaded with 32 songs, all in the public domain. Image Credit: The Hustle

Dunkin’ Donuts has introduced the Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut. The donut is topped with strawberry frosting laced with ghost pepper, and it will only be available until December. Whether you look at it as a Halloween prank or a new nirvana in indulgent eating is up to you, but  Josh Gondelman  tried one out and reports his findings.

At the very least, it’s a fascinating experience. Even though it’s not complementary to the donut’s sweetness, the level of heat is, strangely, perfect. It falls halfway between a lie (“This isn’t even spicy!”) and a dare (“It’s free if you can finish the whole thing!”). My wife, after taking a bite, wondered how many spicy donuts one could eat before tapping out. And that’s it exactly: The Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut feels engineered to be consumed en masse as part of a donut-eating challenge between high school students, or a technically-not-abuse fraternity initiation ritual. That said, I have to imagine that the lingering warm sensation pairs terribly with hot coffee or even “the morning” in general. But other than that, eating one is pretty enjoyable.

He's got a lot more to say about the new pepper donut at The Ringer.

If asked for a pop song from 1993, I would not be able to name one, as I was working in country music that year. However, once you hear the 60 songs in the latest mashup from The Hood Internet, you'll remember them well. It was a good year for pop! There are several folks in the comments at YouTube who took a stab at naming them all, in case you need some names and titles. -via Laughing Squid

A company has created a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create a lot of designs for urban developments in a short time. Delve, created by Sidewalk Labs, generates options based on different criteria such as budget, location, and size. The program then ranks the designs it generates so developers can pick the most plausible design for their projects, as Dezeen details: 

The project leverages machine learning, an application of artificial intelligence that uses a base set of data and learns and improves with experience. To create the basis for Delve designs, Sidewalks Labs made a starter model of core components typically used in neighbourhood developments.

"City neighbourhoods have unique personalities, but they also share a lot of the same core components," Sidewalk Labs' director of product management Okalo Ikhena told Dezeen.

"Our team has built a model of these core components that includes buildings, open spaces, amenities, streets, and energy infrastructure," Ikhena added.

"By applying machine learning to that model, Delve explores millions of design possibilities for a given project, measuring the impact of these designs to help development teams arrive at the one that's right for them."

Image via Dezeen

We humans need comfy beds to rest after hours of back-breaking work from home. Our pets need comfy beds, too, after they spend the whole day spreading happiness, joy, cuteness, and love. 

And what better way to show your pets you love them than to get an IKEA bed to snooze in. I'm talking about the IKEA 'DUKTIG' doll bed. The perfect size for a cat or a small dog.

The IKEA 'DUKTIG' is made of fiberboard and solid pine, and it comes complete with a pillow, mattress, and blanket.

According to the product details on IKEA's website, it's made for children ages 18 months and above. It also "encourages make-believe play".

Well, if you don't have any human children, I bet your cats (or small dogs) would appreciate it.

Check out more details and see the photos over at Mashable.

(Image Credit: IKEA Malaysia/ Mashable)

A human-like robot designed to do manual labor is now for sale at Agility. Get ready to break the bank if you want to buy one, though, as the robot costs $250,000.

Most of the robots that have been built in recent years are for research purposes. Scientists all over the world are striving to give them more and better capabilities. On their web page, the team at Agility claim that it is time for robots to start getting out of the research lab and into the real world where they can start doing useful things. They note that Digit has been engineered to do just that, and it is ready right now, for customers.

Learn more details about this robot over at TechXplore.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Agility/ TechXplore)

Time flows forward the same way around the world, but the way people measure time and communicate it varies more than you might realize. When the day begins, how long an hour is, and what you call this time of day can be different depending on where you are. These timekeeping systems are only easy if you've done it all your life. -via Digg

An ATM user outside a Redwood City, California, bank noticed that there were things going on inside the closed lobby. Two young raccoons were trapped inside, apparently after climbing through the air ducts to get into the bank. Bank managers and staff from the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA went inside and chased the critters around for ten minutes before driving them outside.

“It’s not every day an animal organisation gets called to deal with a bank break-in, but since the bank robbers were masked bandits of the wildlife kind, we were indeed the appropriate responders,” Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA communications manager, Buffy Martin Tarbox, told the ABC.

The raccoons left behind a path of destruction, but no funds were missing. Read the news report at The Guardian. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA)

Losing a toy is one of the most painful experiences that you can have as a child. It causes a lot of tears to be shed, as well as a few sleepless nights. Fortunately, there are adults who know just how valuable a toy is to a child.

When staff at Lavish Dog Day Spa found this lost plush toy outside their establishment, they decided to treat it inside their spa.

A bubble bath, shampoo, a good combing, and a shiny blue bow were all part of the toy’s big day.

By Sunday morning, the pampered pup was back in its owner’s arms.

“Thank you so much for looking out for my son’s puppy,” the boy’s mother wrote on Facebook. “He was so happy to be reunited with him.”

Wholesome!

(Image Credit: Lavish Dog Day Spa/ Facebook)