Editing Guide to technical writing (section)

===Uncountable objects===

If something cannot be counted then in English there is no plural (even if there is a plural when translating from another language). Nouns such as 'water' and 'oxygen' are uncountable so we keep these singular.  Also 'work' and 'research' are uncountable. Many students  
make the mistake of trying to force 'research' to be countable and incorrectly write 'researches'. This is sounds strange to a native English speaker. If you want to force it to be countable you should write 'research studies' or simply 'studies' will do.

Some words can sometimes be countable and sometimes be uncountable; for example you might say 'I heard strange noises in the night'. These are countable because you heard a number of sounds that you can count.  However, when talking about a noise signal in engineering it is  uncountable so we do not say 'noises'. My advice is to always avoid saying 'noises' in a scientific paper when talking about noise signal. When you are forced into talking about countable cases use phrases like 'noise types' or 'noise sources' or 'noise outputs'.  Saying 'noises' sounds very strange to the native English speaker in this scientific context.