[pinkacademiaprincess]

straight-a semester 🧠✏️🎒💗

[thezenangel]

cozy studies

[ensismoodboards]

[aprocrastinatingperfectionist]

[fuzzyghost]

[mindblowingscience]

Household dust harbors forensic DNA info

Finding DNA in household dust could offer a way to help investigators get leads in difficult-to-solve criminal cases.

It’s possible to retrieve forensically relevant information from human DNA in household dust, a new study finds.

After sampling indoor dust from 13 households, researchers were able to detect DNA from household residents over 90% of the time, and DNA from non-occupants 50% of the time. The work could be a way to help investigators find leads in difficult cases.

Specifically, the researchers were able to obtain single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, from the dust samples. SNPs are sites within the genome that vary between individuals—corresponding to characteristics like eye color—that can give investigators a “snapshot” of the person.

“SNPs are just single sites in the genome that can provide forensically useful information on identity, ancestry, and physical characteristics—it’s the same information used by places like Ancestry.com—that can be done with tests that are widely available,” says Kelly Meiklejohn, assistant professor of forensic science and coordinator of the forensic sciences cluster at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of the study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

Continue Reading

[morbidology]

Luminol is a powder which is made up of oxygen, hydrogen,nitrogen, and carbon. It glows luminous blue when it comes into contact with blood, even minuscule amounts of blood and even after the area has been cleaned. The glow of luminol only lasts for around 30 seconds but it can be captured through a camera. It’s often used as a last resort because the reaction can destroy the evidence.

[cassandrajean]

The full Dragon series!! Each creature from a different biome… I had a lot of fun coming up with the different types of dragons and imagining what it would be like for these warriors to face each one. The fire dragon being particularly destructive. The night dragon near impossible to see coming in the dark. The ice dragons the size of mountains. The river dragon’s keen eyes. The sand dragon’s deadly poison. The mist dragons forcing the battle into the sky. The water dragon hiding in the deep. The garden dragon is chill though. Good lad.

Fire Dragon

Komodo

Mage / Staff

Night Dragon

Wolf

Samurai / Sword

Ice Dragon

Bearded

Viking / Axe

River Dragon

Crocodile

Thief / Dagger

Sand Dragon

Cobra

Archer / Bow

Mist Dragon

Eagle

Knight / Spear

Water Dragon

Eel

Sailor / Harpoon

Garden Dragon

Iguana

Healer / Potions

[cassandrajean]

Prints are now available on Society6!

[roastie]

[cryptonature]

Vultures are holy creatures.

Tending the dead.

Bowing low.

Bared head.

Whispers to cold flesh,

“Your old name is not your king.

I rename you ‘Everything.’”

[airandangels]

[parentheticalaside]

The stunning rise of cremation reveals America’s changing idea of death

Cremation is now more popular in the United States than a traditional casket burial, and twice as common as it was two decades ago. What does that say about us?

Dude, some of the people quoted in this article are being real dicks about this!

“‘Some people want it over and done with. You wonder if they’ll come to regret that later,’ Moylan says of cremation. ‘With cremation families, a lot of them don’t want to know what we do or how we do it or don’t care to know what you can do with a cremated body. This generation just doesn’t want to do the three-day-long funeral home thing.’”

“‘People want the body disappeared, pretty much. I think it reminds us of what we lost.’ In the United States, Lynch notes, ‘this is the first generation of our species that tries to deal with death without dealing with the dead.’”

I agree with Caitlin Doughty:

“Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, advocate and author, says funeral directors haven’t done enough to address contemporary Americans’ wishes.

“‘The cremation rates are telling us something. They’re screaming at us that people are not happy with what is available,’ she says. ‘Cremation is more a rejection of the traditional funeral industry than an acceptance of cremation.’ She craves innovation and meaning: ‘We need safe, beautiful ways to engage with death.’”

Embalming and fancy coffins and overpriced services are what I hear people mentioning when they talk about not wanting to be buried. I personally don’t want to pay a bunch of money to have my body preserved beyond death and I don’t think that doing so honors death. I think it denies that death has happened. 

This ridiculous and somewhat insulting article is a gift link. Everyone can access and read in full.

[lostinhistory]

This. Not only are places running out of room, a lot of people don’t have $10000 lying around to bury someone. It is also perfectly possible to have a meaningful death ritual without all the bells and whistles.* I had the death conversation with my mum and stepfather, and they will be getting cremated in an alternate cremation container (read; cardboard box) because 1. they don;t care, and 2. if I spent $3000 on a casket my mother would rise from the dead to chew me out for wasting money. Ideally, human composting would be available by then, because she’s a gardener and that would be a beautiful way to memorialize her.

*this is where I shill the Ask a Mortician youtube channel, where there are multiple videos on this very subject.

[romancefairy]

no YOU live in a society i live in this frame of pride and prejudice

[justpastryvideos]

x

[kaijuno]

MA THE CHOCOLATE GUYS AT IT AGAIN

[hungryfictions]

anne carson, plainwater: essays and poetry / raw (2016) / lara williams, supper club / nathan biehl - cover photograph for nightbitch, 2020 / noah b by michiyo yanagihara for metalmagazine.eu 2016 / stella lucia by bettina rheims for dazed magazine 2017 / kim sang in by j. dukhwa for ceci korea june 2016 / jenefer shute, life-size / guillermo lorca garcia-huidobro - the banquet, 2013-14 / alex lemon, another last day / samantha margherita - stem peels & pits collaboration with stephanie gonot, 2019 / anonymous - tantalus, 17th c. / ovid tr. henry t. riley, the story of erysichthon from metamorphoses / queen of the damned (2002) / jennifer’s body (2009) / margaret atwood, you are happy

hunger and rage

[midnight-cosmonaut]

STEM DARK ACADEMIA

I'm a little upset at the lack of stem in dark academia, so here's my list of aesthetic science things, STEM ACADEMIA (dark edition)

• relating a little too much to the mad scientist trope (and telling everyone "no, no I would never do anything like that, I just want to help people" but like imagine if we could resurrect people)

• rereading Frankenstein every year, specifically in the month of october

• "why is STEAM a thing?? Art? who that?"

• minoring in classics because you still like mythology and history and reading

• finding the science in art (why things make you feel a certain way, how they do that, what effect they've had on health and medicine) and finding the art in science (isn't it incredible that dna knows how to tell plant cells to break down chlorophyll and this makes the gorgeous fall colors)

• reading every book that mentions at all a scientist or has a character who is interested in stem (they are few and far between)

• enjoying the structure of math and engineering but thriving off the chaos that is science

• where are the mad scientist women? I need this

• people being surprised when you tell them you're majoring in something "really science-y" after being an absolute bookworm and musician all throughout your childhood and having to defend what your heart desires (no? just me?)

• CARDIGANS are peak stem culture

• "why aren't you a doctor? why aren't you going to med school? why are you doing insert reasonable science degree here and not becoming a doctor? don't you want to help people?"

• wanting to go into genetics but wanting to go into botany but wanting to go into theoretical physics but wanting to go into astronomy but wanting to go into geology but wanting to go into chemical engineering but wanting to go into astrophysics but wanting to go into wildlife biology

• for some reason having a huge obsession with morals, ethics, and philosophy

• watching true crime just for the forensic bits

• watching mythbusters as a kid

• LISTENING TO TCHAIKOVSKY, BEETHOVEN, BACH, AND MOZART those are the stem classical musicians change my mind

• doing all your homework and frying your brain then getting to read a simple book that really refreshes you

• you had the astronomy and archaeology obsession as a kid

• listening to synth wave instrumentals

• MITOCHONDRIA IS THE POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL

• when people tell you that one cool science fact they learned and you try your hardest to encourage them but girl that wasn't even close to being correct

• ScienceDirect and PubMed are your go-to databases

• having lots of intrusive, existential thoughts that sometimes suffocate you, because you know better than most how much dark dna there is or how small we really are in the universe or knowing how much math explains and how little room there is for free will or thinking about how we are made up of mostly four types of atoms

• reading science or math textbooks for fun

• reading the fountainhead by ayn rand when you were way too young and didn't understand it but now parts of it emerge from the depths of your memory and you are struck by the power

• watching marvel and x-men and jurassic park just because

• reading sci-fi because it's the closest thing to real science in literature

• knowing a little too much about radiation poisoning and how to really dissolve a body in chemicals

• wearing white to make up for how little your professors make you wear lab coats

(sorry, I don't know that much about technology and I'm a literal grandpa when it comes to using it myself)

[jessie-and-the-dead]

Forensic Taphonomy and Ecology of North American Scavengers compiles research on vertebrate scavenging behavior from numerous academic fields, including ecology and forensic anthropology. Scavenging behavior can displace remains from their depositional context, confound postmortem interval estimation, destroy osteological markers, and inflict damage that mimics or disguises perimortem trauma. Consequently, the actions of vertebrate scavengers can significantly impact the medicolegal investigation of human remains. It is therefore critical when interpreting a death scene and its associated evidence that scavenging be recognized and the possible effects of scavenging behavior considered.

[baratheonpilled]

archeology student / unpopular dark academia aesthetic 1/5