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Could a tree help find a decaying corpse nearby?:
Since 1980, the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center has plumbed the depths of the most macabre of sciences: the decomposition of human bodies. Known colloquially as the Body Farm, here scientists examine how donated cadavers decay, like how the microbiomes inside us go haywire after death. That microbial activity leads to bloat, and—eventually—a body will puncture. Out flows a rank fluid of nutrients, especially nitrogen, for plants on the Body Farm to subsume.
That gave a group of University of Tennessee, Knoxville researchers an idea: what if that blast of nutrients actually changes the color and reflectance of a tree's leaves? And, if so, what if law enforcement authorities could use a drone to scan a forest, looking for these changes to find deceased missing people? Today in the journal Trends in Plant Science, researchers are formally floating the idea—which, to be clear, is still theoretical. The researchers are just beginning to study how a plant's phenotype—its physical characteristics—might change if a human body is composing nearby. "What we're proposing is to use plants as indicators of human decomposition, to hopefully be able to use individual trees within the forest to help pinpoint where someone has died, to help in body recovery," says UT Knoxville plant biologist Neal Stewart, coauthor on the new paper.
Also At ScienceDaily
Journal Reference:
Holly Brabazon, Jennifer M. DeBruyn, Scott C. Lenaghan, et al. Plants to Remotely Detect Human Decomposition? Trends in Plant Science, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2020.07.013
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @07:51PM (2 children)
Dead people are losers!
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @08:57PM
Nother nutherguy sub? About death and such? Death Eaters, now in the form of trees! Republican Second Leafery Trees!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @06:25PM
I think the trees should leaf them be.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday September 06 2020, @07:57PM
What if you got plants to regrow body parts, instead [comixology.com]?
Disclaimer: same artist from Chew [comixology.com], winner of the 2010 Best New Series Eisner award [comic-con.org] and a personal favorite, so I beg your indulgence for the undisguised shilling.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday September 06 2020, @08:12PM (3 children)
Sounds feasible, it might just take quite some time for the trees to grow. Interesting that they hope there will be a difference between a human and a mammal corpse in colour, possibly. Nutrients will be nutrients tho so there might be a lot of false positives. What about animals that are really close to humans such as pigs? Not to mention a lot of old cities and places that might once upon a time have been the scene of a battle, graveyard or just someplace they where not to particular about where they put their corpses. It's not an uncommon find when building to find remnants of the old and dead. Builders hate it and the archeologists seem to love it.
Do trees that re-grow on battlefields have different colours? After all that is usually one giant deposit of nutrients? Sure all the vegetation might have been blown away but eventually things will regrow.
So all the future serial killers are then going to go back to eating their victims or stuffing them in barrels? Instead of plopping them down in the forests.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 06 2020, @10:15PM (2 children)
Trees respond to nutrient changes within a single growing season - not gonna tell you much in the winter in a leafy forest, but within a few months in Spring the new growth will differentiate based on significant soil nutrient availability.
Possible confounds: shallow graves indistinguishable from large dead animal remains like deer, nutrient rich soil where an extra push from a corpse doesn't matter (particularly near riverbanks), nutrient leaching by high water tables, I'm sure there are more.
Still, it could work sometimes.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday September 06 2020, @11:09PM (1 child)
I'm not sure if they intended to like plant a tree and see, cause that might take a while before the tree grows large enough for it's roots to hit pay dirt (or a corpse) or if they somehow just wanted to bring in some trees to some potential killing field and see if they get something. Like some kind of arboreal cadaver dog. I doubt it will replace actual dogs.
If they just want to sit around looking at satellite data or drone photos then that should be a never ending job but if it turns out it works then one could probably just train an AI for it. Still I suspect a lot of false positives to come out of it since as noted there could be a fair amount of dead deer, boars, elk, or whatever other local critters there are of substantial size -- I doubt they get much from like rodents or rabbits unless it some kind of genocide. But I guess if they score some hits they could send out the dogs or real people to take a look. Still one wonders then for how long a corpse shows up on the leafs. Shouldn't there be a lot of trees and such around their body farms they can look at? Or don't they recall what the trees looked like before they started dropping bodies there?
That said it might still be a far fetched idea but it could be interesting anyway. I figure they know a fair bit about decomp etc so if they think it sounds feasible, or at least good for a research grant then I say go for it. If it doesn't work then at least they know it doesn't work and they can move on.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 06 2020, @11:49PM
I'm thinking they might try high res foliage captures with a drone flyover, then plant cadavers here and there like murder body dumps (they've got plenty) and see if/when a differential analysis to the baseline shows them where they planted the bodies.
I know when I sprinkled organophosphate ant killer in the yard it clearly showed a much deeper green in the grass that could reach the fertilizer for several months - presumably until the fertilizer all washed out.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: -1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @08:44PM (14 children)
The Forest Swastikas: They Keep Coming Back, Again and Again and Again [nationalvanguard.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @04:50AM (13 children)
Linking to an actual fucking Nazi site? Fuck you "Interesting" mods.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Bot on Monday September 07 2020, @08:12AM (11 children)
Apart the obvious bias in reporting the story, the article looks informative. What problem do you have exactly with that? that the authors have a supremacist, expansionist, undemocratic political view? Like globalists? like socialists? like islam? like zionists? OOOOH THE HORROR. What sets the nazis apart is having (luckily for us, probably) lost the war. Any other distinction is hypocritical.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday September 07 2020, @03:12PM (10 children)
> globalists socialists islam zionists
> What sets the nazis apart is having lost the war
NO!
What sets the nazis apart is systematic murder of 6 million civillians from their own (and neighbouring) countries.
I realise some islamic people, and some globalists, and some socialists have done nasty stuff. BUT nazism is *specifically* associated with massacre of jews and other minority groups.
For example, Louis XIV massacred the Huguenots, loads of Christians were involved in KKK evil, etc. BUT catholicism (christianity) is not *specifically* set up with the intention to massacre protestants, or black people, or whatever minority.
I don't usually swear, so apologies to everyone else reading this, but Bot *FUCK OFF*.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday September 07 2020, @09:14PM (9 children)
The atrocities that make Hitler the biological father of Israel are special, why? Because he declared his aims in advance? because IBM counted the numbers? You should set a proper multiplier factor for the value of Jewish civilian lives, because your math does not work if one death = one death. As a random example, look what I found on that nazi white supremacist search engine, google, and remember that assassin is an Arab word.
The Greatest Murder Machine in History
By Mike Konrad
When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.
The enormity of the slaughters of the "religion of peace" are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none.
The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. -- Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.
Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.
According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). -- Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site
80 Million?! The conquistadors' crimes pale into insignificance at that number. No wonder Hitler admired Islam as a fighting religion. He stood in awe of Islam, whose butchery even he did not surpass.
Over 110 Million Blacks were killed by Islam.
... a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. -- John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue
Add just those two numbers alone together, and Islam has surpassed the victims of 20th-century totalitarianism. However, it does not end there. Add the millions who died at the hand of Muslims in the Sudan in our lifetime.
Much of Islamic slavery was sexual in nature, with a preference for women. Those men who were captured were castrated. The mulatto children of the women were often killed, which explains why Islam was not demographically shifted towards the black race, unlike slaves in the West, who bore children to breed a mestizo class. Add in those dead children; and we arrive at well over 200 million.
Remember that in the 7th century, North Africa was almost totally Christian. What happened to them?
By the year 750, a hundred years after the conquest of Jerusalem, at least 50 percent of the world's Christians found themselves under Muslim hegemony… Today there is no indigenous Christianity in the region [of Northwest Africa], no communities of Christians whose history can be traced to antiquity.-- "Christianity Face to Face with Islam," CERC
What happened to those Christian millions? Some converted. The rest? Lost to history.
We know that over 1 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary Pirates. How many died is anybody's guess.
...for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 - BBC
In the Middle Ages…
…many slaves were passed through Armenia and were castrated there to fill the Muslim demand for eunuchs. -- Slavery in Early Medieval Europe.
The same practice ran through Islamic Spain. North Europeans captured from raids up to Iceland, or purchased, were butchered in the castratoriums of Iberia. Many died from the operations that ran for centuries.
The number of dead from the Muslim conquest of the Balkans and Southern Italy is unknown, but again the numbers add up, surely into the millions over the centuries. Don't forget the 1.5 million Armenian Christians killed by the Turks during WWI. We do know that over five centuries, vast numbers of Christian boys were kidnapped to become Islamic Janissary mercenaries for the Turks. Add those in, too.
Muslims prized blonde women for their harems; and so enslaved Slavic women were purchased in the bazaars of the Crimean Caliphate. In Muslim Spain, an annual tribute of 100 Visigothic [blonde] women was required from Spain's Cantabrian coast.
For decades, 100 virgins per year were required by the Muslim rulers of Spain from the conquered population. The tribute was only stopped when the Spaniards began fighting back -- Jihad: Islam's 1,300 Year War Against Western Civilisation
Add in the death toll from the Reconquista and the numbers climb higher.
Research has shown that the Dark Ages were not caused by the Goths, who eventually assimilated and Christianized:
…the real destroyers of classical civilization were the Muslims. It was the Arab Invasions... which broke the unity of the Mediterranean world and turned the Middle Sea -- previously one of the world’s most important trading highways -- into a battleground. It was only after the appearance of Islam... that the cities of the West, which depended upon the Mediterranean trade for their survival, began to die. -- Islam Caused the Dark Ages
Add in those unknown millions who died as a consequence.
How many know the horrors of the conquest of Malaysia? The Buddhists of Thailand and Malaysia were slaughtered en masse.
When attacked and massacred by the Muslims, the Buddhists initially did not make any attempt to escape from their murderers. They accepted death with an air of fatalism and destiny. And hence they are not around today to tell their story. – History of Jihad.org
We may never know the numbers of dead.
After Muslims came to power in the early 15th century, animist hill peoples eventually disappeared due to their enslavement and ‘incorporation’ into the Muslim population of Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java via raids, tribute and purchase, especially of children. Java was the largest exporter of slaves around 1500. -- Islam Monitor
In the same manner, Islam arrived in the Philippines. Only the appearance of the Spanish stopped a total collapse, and confined Islam to the southern islands.
The coming of the Spanish saved the Philippines from Islam, except for the Southern tip where the population had been converted to Islam.-- History of Jihad.org
Again, the number of dead is unknown; but add them to the total.
The animist Filipinos were eager to ally with the Spanish against Islam. In fact, much of Southeast Asia welcomed the Spanish and Portuguese as preferable to Islam.
....
Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who is not Jewish, Latin, or Arab. He runs a website, http://latinarabia.com, [latinarabia.com,] where he discusses the subculture of Arabs in Latin America. He wishes his Spanish were better.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday September 08 2020, @10:24AM (8 children)
The things you describe are clearly terrible, and the case you make is a good one. I believe that there is a really fundamental difference - I remind you that the five pillars of Islam are:
Monotheism
Prayer
Charity
Fasting
Pilgrimage
I believe that in contrast, nazism has *murder of racial minorities* as a fundamental "pillar". Therein lies a really important difference.
I know you will point out "Jihad", but I don't think it is in the same league. I agree that, even in the modern incantation, Islam has problems with militant activism - but for example, there have been Christian religious terrorist organisations operating in Ireland even up to very recent times.
==
> globalists socialists islam zionists
If the job is simply to list religious/political bodies that have done some nasty stuff, then I think you should add catholics to your list also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion#Death_toll [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe [wikipedia.org]
The counter-reformation in Europe claimed the lives of between 6 million and 15 million Europeans during the 17th century - compared to a total population of about 90 million.
* I didn't bother checking the stats on e.g. the crusades, but I am sure that you can dig them out.
* As you point out, the invasion of South America should be added to the death toll. I expect there is more stuff out there.
* I think it is perfectly valid to argue that the continuing wars in the 18th century between Britain, France and other continental powers are largely religious in nature, certainly up to the fall of the French monarchy.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday September 08 2020, @11:02AM (7 children)
for the sake of simplicity, let's admit catholics to the club of the murderers, you still claim nazi were mainly about exterminating jews. I have big problems with this assertion. National socialists, financed by london, on the ashes of weimar and the soviet republic of bavaria, claim to defend the race, the nation and to fight plutocrats, but as the same old socialists they end up destroying the lower strata of society while the ultra powerful ones consolidate. The socialists of today conveniently hype the racist and nationalist attitude without thanking hitler and mussolini for having bulldozed the way for the progressive ideals, panopticon omnipotent state uber alles.
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(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday September 08 2020, @02:59PM (6 children)
> let's admit catholics to the club of the murderers
Thanks. It's important, because you named quite a politically charged list of folks - for example they all happened to be traditionally on the side of the US Democratic party. If you admit catholics into the group of murderers, then at least it is a bit more balanced. Personally I wouldn't mind if you added all Christians, but that is nuance.
> nazi ... National socialists ... socialists of today
Ah, I see your point now. I think national socialism was named only as a convenience of words - it has barely any similarity with Marxist socialism. Nazi literature is focussed on superiority of Aryan race with a weak mixing of "collective action". Whereas marxism is focussed on class struggle and indeed collectivism. I don't believe Marxism enters into the discussion of which race is best. They are really very different and to conflate them is a bit confused.
Having said that, I never read Marx or any nazi literature, all my info is secondary.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday September 08 2020, @06:38PM (5 children)
Marx did a very good rationalization of society, with one major flaw, probably intentional: considering the capital as it had intrinsic value, without talking about seignorage. For a Jewish guy like him, descendant of the money changers in the temple, ignoring seignorage is quite ironic. After the diagnosis, he intentionally drops the bomb: bourgeois as the enemy, class struggle as the solution. History proves him wrong, the outcome of class struggle is plutocracy (USA) or feudalism (China, Russia), it is logical that pitting poor against poorer will not affect the powerful ones. The middle class has money but is NOT POWERFUL. Being powerful meaning having control, and they don't control food nor energy nor weapons. They depend on the socioeconomic system. A convenient scapegoat.
Cue the 2020, another Jewish guy, Soros, eager to vindicate the holocaust against fascist EU (and conveniently forgetting about the one perpetrated by his very party against palestinians), is again manufacturing the class struggle. We don't hear much about his manifesto but I am sure his gestapo (BLM, SJW) has been extensively trained.
If you bought into the patriarchy and the white man narrative, I don't need to convince you. Time will.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday September 08 2020, @06:57PM (4 children)
Uh and about Christians it is clear that there is no way to be Christian other than to observe the commandments (mark 3:31-35 and a deal of other refs). So by definition a Christian cannot justify breaking the fifth, if it does, it ceases to be one. The clerics, or the pope, are not necessarily Christians, as per warning, e.g. mark 12:38.
Compare this with the two other so called monotheistic religions, which are diametrically opposite, as the mere belonging to their religion gives them rights to be superior to other men and permits asymmetric acts. Yes, the Christians believe that JHVH gave some decidedly violent instructions back in the day, problem being: nobody else has that authority.
The fact that Jews and Muslims are opposite to Christians is natural, from the Christian POV, because both movements originated from denying mr. Jesus as The Son. The chosen people is therefore the Jews that recognized their messiah, and the ones that converted (THEMSELVES) once given the gospel.
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(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 09 2020, @10:24AM (3 children)
Fair enough. Let's just stick with catholics - allowing that primacy of the pope is the defining feature, rather than adherence to christian doctrines per se. My bible knowledge is not so strong on this point.
So the axis of evil is:
Jews
Muslims
Catholics
Nationalist socialists
Globalists?
Protestants are okay though. And Marxist socialists are just misguided.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 09 2020, @01:53PM (2 children)
Technically, being head of the church means being the servant of the church. Servus servorum. Which is eloquently exemplified by jesus washing the feet of his disciples. Interesting in this regard becomes the act of Bergoglio who washed the feet of random immigrants. It is an act that has a bad and a worse interpretation. Bad because you dunno what you are doing, worse if you know and implicit put the church at the service of islamics or maybe want to be the head of them too. Funny that the same knees bending for the immigrant become stiff when in front of the eucharist, but this might be some health problem. Of course mainstream media dismissed the protests as being from haters of the poor immigrants who had their feet washed.
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(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday September 09 2020, @03:08PM (1 child)
> Technically, being head of the church means being the servant of the church.
Nice in theory; but when the pope says "beat up on Germany", well that means that France, Spain and Austria go invade Germany. Likewise for the crusades, and many centuries of war with Turkey, etc etc.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday September 10 2020, @01:46AM
Yeah, really sad. Because after all those campaigns, the pope today could say "defend Greece from Turkey" and be completely orthodox, at least this time.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 07 2020, @10:50AM
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/mystery-of-nazi-swastikas-in-the-forests-a-909726.html
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Sunday September 06 2020, @08:47PM (1 child)
I recall a story on local news less than 10 years ago, about a couple whose garden featured giant sunflowers, fruit and veggies, in the Venezia Giulia region. They gave the seeds to friends, yet the seeds yielded normal stuff. The place also host the biggest war cemetery in Italy. Maybe some extra guys had been put nearby. So, if your mom in law disappears and your significant other behaves strangely sad about the event (which is unnatural, a faking), try planting some sunflowers.
https://ilpiccolo.gelocal.it/trieste/cronaca/2016/08/25/news/girasole-gigante-e-zucche-extra-large-nel-terreno-magico-1.14012018 [gelocal.it]
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday September 06 2020, @10:18PM
Before phosphates were well understood, ground bones were used to fertilize crops. Still works, but phosphates are much easier to mine from sources other than skeletons.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @09:16PM
This seems like ones of those things we may collectively not like to know. Watch as the trees light up all over the forest and along most streets. Kind of like using the FBI body fluids detector in your $300/night hotel room that you just booked for 2 weeks.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @09:27PM (2 children)
Unless trees are affected differently by buried bodies.
Seems pretty far-fetched idea.
But then, it's "forensic."
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday September 07 2020, @02:30AM
World's Biggest Carnivorous Plant Catches Whole Sheep! [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 07 2020, @05:16PM
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @10:26PM (5 children)
Are there a lot of niggers around to murder people and other niggers? If so, this could probably help find the corpses.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @10:33PM (4 children)
Comment like the parent shows that we will have to carry water for the Chinese overlords.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @10:43PM (3 children)
What's wrong? Why are you racist against chinks?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @11:13PM (2 children)
This is America today. Walmart shoppers bitching about the Chinese.
Them "chinks" gonna rule your ass.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2020, @11:38PM (1 child)
Another thing.
"Niigger" is a flamebait, but "chink" is acceptable?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @04:57AM
I guess if the Chinks were enslaved and owned in their own country for a couple of hundred years, that might add texture to that black and white universe.
But no, I guess you liberals are right. We need more racial sensitivity for oppressed Chinamen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2020, @08:13AM
There's a similar technique that can use tree leaves to help find gold deposits:
https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/MRF/Areas/Exploration-through-cover/Techniques-and-toolkits/Sampling-methods/Gold-in-gum-leaves [csiro.au]