Death, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 22, 2016

Time of Death? Check the Body's 'Necrobiome'

It's a line you'll hear in almost any crime show after someone finds the body — the detective turns to the medical examiner and asks, Time of death? But in real life, medical examiners don't have a very precise method for figuring out how long ago someone died. Now, researchers...

Jan 26, 2017

Some Parts of Body Stay 'Alive' After Death, Evidence Suggests

Even after someone is declared dead, life continues in the body, suggests a surprising new study with important implications. Gene expression — when information stored in DNA is converted into instructions for making proteins or other molecules — actually increases in some cases after death, according to the new paper,...

Feb 6, 2017

Sperm Bank Death: How Does Liquid Nitrogen Kill?

A sheriff's deputy in Augusta, Georgia, recently died after inhaling liquid nitrogen while trying to save an employee inside a sperm bank. Sgt. Greg Meagher, 57, died Feb. 5 and several other officers from the Richmond County Sheriff's Department were injured, the Augusta Chronicle reported. Two liquid nitrogen tanks, which...

Feb 24, 2017

US Drug Overdose Deaths Continue to Rise: Here Are the Numbers to Know

The rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States continues to rise, with a particularly sharp spike in heroin-related deaths in recent years, according to a new report. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the rate of U.S. drug overdose deaths more than doubled...

Mar 27, 2017

Book Excerpt: 'Surviving Death' (US 2017)

In Surviving Death, Leslie Kean reveals stunning and wide-ranging evidence suggesting that consciousness survives death. Kean explores the most compelling case studies of young children reporting verifiable details from past lives, contemporary mediums who seem to defy the boundaries of the brain and of the physical world, apparitions providing information...

May 16, 2017

Teen's Death: How Caffeine Can Kill a Healthy Person

A teen in South Carolina has died after drinking three caffeinated beverages over a 2-hour period. The 16-year-old boy drank a large diet Mountain Dew, a McDonald's cafe latte and an unnamed energy drink in that time, USA Today reported today (May 16). The Richland county coroner, Gary Watts, said...

Jun 1, 2017

'Death Cap' Mushrooms Sicken 14 in California

More than a dozen people in Northern California recently became seriously ill from eating wild death cap mushrooms that they gathered themselves, according to a new report. During the first two weeks in December 2016, the California Poison Control System received reports of 14 people who had to be hospitalized...

Jun 18, 2017

Shootings Are Now the 3rd-Leading Cause of Death in US Kids

Gun-related injuries are now the third-leading cause of death among children ages 1 to 17 in the United States, according to a new report. The results show that almost 1,300 children in the U.S. die from gunshot wounds yearly, and an additional 5,790 children are treated for gunshot wounds and...

Jul 3, 2017

Common Heartburn Meds Linked to Increased Risk of Death

People who take a popular type of heartburn drug may be at an increased risk of dying over a five-year period, a new study finds. People in the study who took proton-pump inhibitors, or PPIs, had a higher risk of dying over the more than five-year study period than people...

Aug 2, 2017

Penis Enlargement Surgery Leads to Man's Death: What Went Wrong?

A man in Sweden died just after penis enlargement surgery, according to a new report of the case. As a part of the procedure, doctors injected fat into the healthy 30-year-old man's penis, according to the report, written by pathologists who examined the man's body after his death. Some of...

Aug 3, 2017

'Harry Potter' & the Deathly Obsession? Series May Help Fans Cope with Death

WASHINGTON — For many Harry Potter fans, rereading the books or rewatching the movies over and over may serve as an entertaining way to escape the real world or get a bit of a thrill. But a new study suggests that for some, an obsession with the Harry Potter franchise...

Aug 16, 2017

Teen Drug Overdose Deaths Increased 19% in 2015

Drug overdose deaths among U.S. teens edged upward in 2015, after declining for several years prior, according a new report. The report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), looked at drug overdose deaths among Americans ages 15 to 19 over a 16-year period, from 1999 to 2015....

Jan 2, 2018

News Flash: Lightning Deaths Hit a Record Low in 2017

Deaths from from lightning strikes hit a record low in 2017 in the United States, according to a new report. There were 16 lightning-related fatalities in 2017, breaking the previous low of 23 deaths in 2013, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The records go back to the 1940s,...

Jan 9, 2018

Man Declared Dead Snores to Life Right Before His Autopsy

A man in Spain who was declared dead by three doctors was actually still alive, which doctors discovered only when he began snoring on the autopsy table, according to news reports. The man, 29-year-old Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez, was a prisoner at a jail in northern Spain. He was found unconscious...

Mar 29, 2018

The Opioid Epidemic is Getting Even Worse, As Fentanyl Deaths Soar

The number of Americans dying from opioid overdoses continues to rise, with deaths from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl doubling in just a year, according to a new report. The report, published today (March 28) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found that in 2016, there were...