Human Decomposition

One thing is absolutely in life, death. No matter what goes on in life, one will eventually take their last breath and die. After a person dies many, religions discuss what happens to the soul, but what about the body? The question becomes what happens to the body after it decomposes? Science and research have advanced into the 21st century and made it possible to figure out step by step what happens to the body.

You’ve probably heard the old saying. “Only two things in life are certain: death and taxes” It’s true: at some point, we all will die. Although you may think death is an unpleasant subject, it is something that everybody must cope with. People are different all over the world, but death is one thing that everyone has in common. ( Stair, choosing a career in mortuary science and the funeral industry 6)

Cindy Anthony retracted her previous testimony, regarding her opinion on the stench of the car by now saying that she without a reason blurted out that statement during her 911 call in an attempt to get police on the scene as quickly as possible (Mann). With respect toward the positive testing of the smell of decomposing remains, Cindy disputes the forensic findings, claims the evidence has been misinterpreted and that the smell most likely derives from a moldy pizza (Michels). In general, the defense disputed the odor analysis due to it being admissible evidence for the first time in a Florida court. However, from the actual findings of Dr. Vass, the defense questioned the absence of the remaining compounds associated with a decomposed body. In particular, it was questioned why undecane, the primary compound found in human decomposition was not found in Dr. Vass’ analysis. These absences were not explained by Dr. Vass. With that, the defense attorney introduced their own expert witness, Dr. Furton, a professor that studies the chemistry of human decomposition and the scent of human remains. He testified that there is no instrumental method that validates whether there was a presence or absence of a decomposed body in the location at question. In fact, he believes Dr. Vass’ findings

As the search continued in the car, there was a smell of decomposition in the car. When Cindy Anthony first called the police she claimed “There’s something wrong. I found my daughter’s car today. It smells like there’s been a dead body in the damn car.” (Tru TV) later on when the car was taken by the police she said that the smell could have come from garbage in the car. The County Sherriff’s Detective Yuri Melich testified in court saying “I was a homicide detective for 2 years and in my opinion the smell coming from the car was the smell of decomposition.” (Examiner) To investigate the odor in the trunk, they brought in Dr. Vass who used a new technique to define the odor in the trunk. This was debated in court because it is a new technique. However the FBI laboratory used gas chromatography mass spectrometer, it isolated the compounds found in the car and 67% of the compounds were found linked to human decomposition. There were also high levels of chloroform found in the trunk, but the evidence could not be cleared as chloroform from a decomposing body or from that of something else.

The purpose of this experiment is to exemplify how differences in molecular weight allow separation of polymers from their monomers. Methods of dialysis and gel filtration chromatography will be used to separate a glucose monomer from a starch polymer. Colorimetric glucose oxidase assay will be used to monitor the presence of glucose and a colorimetric iodine assay will be used to monitor the presence of starch in prepared solutions after separation

In the Casey Anthony case Jeff Ashton who is a former state attorney in Orange county Florida, and also the first prosecutor in the United States to get a conviction based on DNA decided to use a new Forensic method in the Anthony case. The smell of death would be the allowed as evidence for the first time ever. In the trunk of Anthony’s car was a stained area on the carpet and an odor. Ashton stated that the smell was that of human decomposition. That piece of carpet was removed, sealed and sent to Dr. Vass, a forensic anthropologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Voss has been studying human decomposition at the University of Tennessee’s “body farm”.

When that was done, the five different plastic bags labeled A through E containing fiber samples from the five different suspects were identified. One by one, fiber samples A through E were placed on a slide under the microscope. The fiber samples were then observed and sketched at the total magnifications of 10X, 40X, and 100X. After evaluating and sketching each fiber sample under the microscope the table was then set up to burn each sample. With the careful use of a lit candle as the fire source, and forceps to hold the pieces of fiber, fiber samples A through E were burned, and their different properties were recorded in a data table. Next chemical testing was started.

" The Sculptor's Funeral", a short story by Willa Cather, emphasizes the behavior and idea of parochialism & provincialism. What's interesting is that this idea is shared by Harvey Merrick, the main character, as well as the townspeople who resent him for leaving. " Harve never was much account for anything practical and he shore was never fond of work" (Cather par. 56) Why is this? Could there be different levels of parochialism? One person may feel that home is where the heart is, but you must also explore the world around you. On the other hand, another individual may only recognize hometown pride in people who remain to live in the town in which they were born.

The theme in Poe’s short story, “The Premature burial ‘ is one of extreme fear and its effect that it can have on the human mind and the resulting quality of life. The main character narrates the story in first person and suffers from an internal conflict because he is subjected to an unusual disease he tells us, “for several years I have been subject to the disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy.” So he sporadically becomes catatonic, which leads him to develop a fear of people assuming that when he is in this state, he is dead and therefore they might mistakenly bury him alive. Consequently, he persuades his friends to promise to check whether he is alive or not and asks “that under no circumstances they would bury me until

Mary Roach has written many other books about the afterlife and science, outer space, human sexuality and science, and human anatomy. In the book Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers Mary Roach explores what has happened to human cadavers from as far back as ancient Egypt. Mary Roach’s introduction is persuasive in nature, Roach is inclined to do something useful with corpses, “Why lie around on your back when you can do something interesting and new, something useful” (Roach, 9). She perceives that donating your body to science is much more helpful than a regular burial or cremation, “To me, ending up an exhibit in the Mutter Museum or a skeleton in a medical school

Inside a morbid place was the living and the dead. The pathologist, a burly bearded bifocal wearing man, had scheduled cadaver 9252012 for autopsy that day. It was stored inside drawer F, one of twenty-one refrigerated cabinets. It is a grim place, the laboratory where these butcheries are conducted. Lingering in the air is the foul stench of death, the chemicals used to suppress the ghastly odor only intensifying it, rendering a fusion of ammonia, chlorine and rot. Positioned in the center of the room is a cadaver dissection table, a polished slab of steel surrounded by troughs to catch the oozing blood and bodily fluids that escape the corpses during the process. Detective Ron Burlingame of the Lake City, Florida Police Department, requested

Throughout our lives, we have buried our dead. It is a normal process, embedded into our culture since, to what seems so to us at least, the beginning. However, we never thought to ask ourselves when actually this practice began. Also we never thought to ask if we were the only ones to entomb our dead in a ritualistic way. There is evidence of our distant cousins Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthal, exhibit similar burial practices that we do to this day. Neanderthal sites often have artifacts and possible different burial practices which can means that they have the ability to do ritualistic burials. They are one of the links that may play a huge role in understanding our past, and how our concept of death and the treatment of them began. The topic of burying the dead is a big subject being because it is proof of some higher thought in our ancestors. One of the major questions of human evolution is when we gained the ability to conduct more complex and advance thought. By understanding our past we can have a better understanding of our future. If we understood how our minds developed and formed we may be able to better predict where it is going or at the least understand how our brains came to be up until present day.

I chose the novel Sitff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach for my summer reading. I chose this book, not because of it's title but because the author's last name was Roach. I'm not going to lie. Why did I continue to read even though I knew what it was about? I love history and I love the parallels between past times and modern times. With that being said, Roach's novel related historical events to the experiences she wrote. For example, she associated the attachment between student and cadaver with the story of Herophilus, the first "physician".

At 9:30 p.m. on August 21, 1986, a devastating phenomenon took place at Lake Nyos, Cameroon. On that night the locals were sleeping in their beds, unaware of the danger that was surrounding them. Over 1,700 people and thousands of cattle and other wildlife were killed by a seemingly non-existent force. Although the locals thought the killings were the work a spirit woman’s wrath, scientists were perplexed as to what could’ve killed all the people without leaving a trace. Upon further inspection, scientists found that the victims suffocated, most of them in their sleep. Scientists came to the conclusion that they were suffocated by carbon dioxide, which leaves no real distinct smell and is virtually invisible. The noxious mist had risen from

ANT 2511: Biological Anthropology Name: Ali Kanaan 08-29-17CASE STUDY #1: The Case of the Headless CorpseTo prepare for this case study, please read:1. The Scientific Method. http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html (availableas pdf on course BB)2. “The Case of the Headless Corpse” (This is Chapter 5 in Bass and Jefferson’s Death’s Acre; available as pdf on course BB); 3. Read/ view the materials in the online resources for Chapter 1 in our text (Jurmain et al), particularly the sections on critical thinkingand the Scientific Method.Answer the following questions. Note that you are able to write more than the spaces provided (download this document from BlackBoard and type on it)!1. There are typically four steps