Death, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 10, 2018

After Death, Your Microbiome Could Still Help the Living

You don't need to be alive for your microbiome to be useful to science. After years of studying the populations of bacteria on living people, researchers are now turning their sights on the dead. And they're finding that the postmortem microbiome is useful not only for forensic investigations, but also...

Apr 24, 2018

Why Dead Fingers (Usually) Can't Unlock a Phone

In March, two detectives went to a funeral home and asked to see a body. The reason? They wanted to unlock the man's phone and needed his fingerprints, according to news reports. And though the detectives were granted access to the man's body, they couldn't unlock the phone. The man,...

May 2, 2018

1st Death Tied to Outbreak of E. Coli in Romaine Lettuce — How It Kills

Health officials have reported the first death in connection with a nationwide E. coli outbreak tied to romaine lettuce. The death occurred in a California patient, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Overall, the outbreak has sickened 121 people in 25 states since mid-March, and 52...

Jul 5, 2018

Woman Declared Dead Found Alive in Morgue Fridge

A woman in South Africa who was declared dead after a grizzly car crash and placed in a morgue refrigerator was actually still alive, according to news reports. She was eventually found breathing in the morgue fridge. The woman had been traveling in a car with four other people on...

Aug 13, 2018

Scientists Calculate the Speed of Death in Cells, and It's Surprisingly Slow

Cells in our bodies die all the time, and now we know just how fast. Scientists found that death travels in unremitting waves through a cell, moving at a rate of 30 micrometers (one-thousandth of an inch) every minute, they report in a new study published Aug. 10 in the...

Aug 16, 2018

Does Drinking Ayahuasca Really Feel Like a Near-Death Experience?

The edge of death is a lot like drinking a cup of tea. That, more or less, is the conclusion of a paper published yesterday (Aug. 15) in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Of course, it depends on the tea. The researchers were focused on ayahuasca — a tea from...

Jan 10, 2019

Drug Overdose Death Rates in US Women Rise 260% in 2 Decades

Drug overdose death rates in women in the United States have increased by 260 percent in the past two decades, according to a new report. The authors of the report, published today (Jan. 10) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), described the drug overdose death rates among...

Jan 30, 2019

How Does a Person Freeze to Death?

This week's polar vortex has brought bitter cold — even Arctic-like temperatures — to parts of the Upper Midwest and Eastern U.S., and this frigid air may have you feeling like you could freeze to death. Indeed, when temperatures dip this low, frostbite and hypothermia are real health concerns. Weather...

May 9, 2019

What Happens in the Hours Before Death? Most People Don't Have a Clue.

Benjamin Franklin famously quipped that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Today, most people could justifiably add, and I don't understand either of them. This is all to say that a new survey of nearly 1,000 people in the U.K. found that a majority of people are...

Sep 16, 2019

Why Some People Have Endless Thoughts of Death. They May Be 'Existentially Isolated'

Feeling as though nobody gets you may be linked to persistent thoughts of death. People who frequently feel alienated, isolated and misunderstood are more likely than others to have thoughts of death and dying swirling around in their minds, new research finds. It's not yet clear whether these feelings of...

Jan 31, 2020

'Stench of death' compound helps your body feast on its own rotting cells

The scent wafts from busy roadsides, broken meat lockers and grisly crime scenes; it's the signature stink of rotting flesh. Despite its putrid aroma, the chemical compound may serve an important purpose in the living human body, new research suggests. The compound, known as putrescine, flips a switch in certain...

May 21, 2020

Death mask of King Henry VII is brought to astonishing life in a digital restoration

The somber face of Britain's King Henry VII was recently given a digital makeover, in an astonishingly photorealistic reconstruction. Graphic artist Matt Loughrey produced the image of the deceased king from Henry VII's death mask, which was cast in 1509. Loughrey is the founder of My Colorful Past, a project...

Jan 29, 2021

'Flatliners' still have heartbeats left. But death comes within 5 minutes.

Death is not a linear process. New research finds that it's fairly common for the heart to restart — usually just for a beat or two — after a person initially flatlines. No one in the study, which took place in intensive care units (ICUs) in three countries, survived or...

Feb 2, 2021

Horse tranquilizer emerges as new and deadly street drug in US

A horse tranquilizer is increasingly popping up as a street drug in the U.S., and it is now involved in nearly one-third of fatal opioid drug overdoses in Philadelphia, according to a new study. The tranquilizer drug, called xylazine, is not considered an opioid, but it is often found mixed...

Jun 6, 2021

What was the deadliest day in US history?

If you think of the deadliest day in the United States' history, your mind is probably drawn to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the calamity that followed Japan's strike on Pearl Harbor or perhaps a battle from the Civil War. Or maybe you think of more recent days during...