duck and cover

Let's assume for a minute that the results of Tuesday's election leave half the population unhappy and worried about the future. What will they think when the U.S. Department of Energy's Public Warning Siren System is activated on Wednesday near the Y-12 National Security Complex?

Don't panic. The Oak Ridge sirens are tested on the first Wednesday of every month. Oh by the way, in the event of an actual emergency, go inside and close all your windows and ventilation systems. Unless of course the actual emergency occurs during the test. Then how would you know?

deep in the heart

They do everything bigger in Texas, which is why they are moving forward with plans for not one but two body farms. An article in The Dallas Morning News today reports that in addition to the newly opened Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University in San Marcos, there's one coming soon to Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. Dr. Jerry Melbye, the director of TSU's facility has a license plate that reads DR4N6. I remember once seeing a license plate in California that was either NNNN6 or NNNNSICS.

Of course the original Body Farm is at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Given that Sam Houston used to live in East Tennessee, it's apropos that his namesake college would get a body farm too. Last month UT opened a new training center at the National Forensic Academy in Oak Ridge with a bang.

Since my last Body Farm update, I've noticed that some kids at Bronxville High School in New York are reading "Death's Acre" and posting their book reports on their forensics class blog. I found this interesting because I used to scoop ice cream at the Baskin-Robbins that was in Bronxville.

howdy pardners

Dr. Bill Bass founded the Body Farm because corpses in Tennessee are different from the ones he had examined in Kansas. In order to determine the time of death, he needed to study the decomposition process. Bodies decayed faster in summer than winter. The rate depends on the climate. The forensic anthropologists in Knoxville came up with a formula based on the average daily temperature. It works pretty well but to truly advance the science, more body farms must be opened in different climates. Dr. Bass has spoken about this in some of our radio interviews over the years. A new article on the How Stuff Works site also describes the dilemma a couple of pages in.

The second body farm after Knoxville's is at Western Carolina University. The climate there is almost identical to here. At least they made an effort. I think It would be more useful to have a body farm on the Carolina shore than in the mountains. Maybe their farm helped convince the next school to try one.

A new body farm is about to open at Texas State University. Their clever logo shows a skull wearing a cowboy hat. You may recall that the locals were concerned about buzzards when the plans were first announced. The Fox affiliate in Austin recently aired a report about the new place. The news anchor said that the San Marcos ranch will be the largest body farm in the world. Texans are always talking about size, aren't they?

Lastly, I came across a blog by someone who attended a summer class at the original Body Farm. It's worth a click if you have a minute.

fallout boys and girls

Given the choice, would you have left your baby teeth for the Tooth Fairy or donated them to science? The owners of almost 300,000 baby teeth in the St. Louis area chose science. The St. Louis Baby Teeth Survey collected primary teeth from 1959 to 1970. The teeth were measured for radioactivity to see if humans were affected by above-ground atomic bomb tests. The results were a factor in the ending of those tests in 1963.

In 2001, a bunch of the old baby teeth turned up in an ammunition bunker at the Tyson Research Center of Washington University in St. Louis. I don't know why a university needs an ammunition bunker but I'm sure they have a good reason.

An article in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that researchers will track down hundreds of the baby teeth donors to see how healthy they are as adults. They wonder if kids with more strontium-90 in their teeth will have a higher rate of cancer.

Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, told the newspaper:

"For this first year, we will be studying only male tooth donors. First, it is much easier to locate males at current addresses, since many girls donating teeth in the 1960s have changed their names. Second, the death rate is much higher for males, and may yield a larger sample of donors who are either living with cancer or have died of the disease. Seven percent of males and 3 percent of females who were young children in the 1960s are now deceased."