death

Patients with alcohol in their blood are less likely to die from head injuries, according to a new study in Archives of Surgery, a JAMA/Archives journal.

The researchers found that the patients who tested positive for alcohol were less likely to die than patients who had no alcohol in their bloodstream. They were also generally younger and had less severe injuries. But patients who had drunk alcohol did suffer more medical complications during their stay in the hospital.

A new website lets you figure out how you might die, by sorting death data by cause of death, sex, and age. For American males ages 20-29, the most common cause of death is accidents (40.2 percent of deaths), followed by homicide (17.5 percent), and suicide (11.7 percent). Urinary tract infections? 0.3 percent.

Two women in China have achieved the dubious honor of being the first humans to be killed by nanotechnology. The women, who worked in a poorly ventilated factory spraying a paint that contained nanoparticles, reportedly inhaled the particles over a period of months. The tiny compounds infiltrated the workers' lungs and skin, causing lung damage, fluid buildup, and eventual respiratory failure.

Researchers are now profiling the chemicals released from decaying bodies, in an effort to create a sensor that might be able to sniff out corpses in the rubble, or determine a dearly departed's precise time of death.

The legal profession has a term for the way juries regard forensic science--they call it the "CSI Effect." Juries expect to see nothing less than DNA matching for even the most minor infractions. If the forensic evidence isn't overwhelming, they will acquit, even in the face of reasonable doubt. Without question, the CSI and Law and Order franchises have reshaped the popular imagination by elevating science as the ultimate arbiter of truth. That, in and of itself, is good for science. What's dangerous about the proposition, however, are the standards and lengths to which the television shows hold the science they portray.

While it's undoubtedly important for people to know what's fact and what's fiction in crime scene investigation, here’s a look into just what the present day facts of forensics science entail (we’ll leave the fiction to the experts… in TV production, that is). In 2005, Congress tasked the National Academy of Sciences to survey the landscape of forensic science. The result, this past February, was a 255-page report. Here are a few of the surprising facts they found.