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GPS, camera traps and dung expose the secret life of endangered elephants (w/ Video)

"We can only manage what we measure"—that is the key to a unique research project which is working towards scientifically proven, evidence-based, conservation of the Malaysian elephant. It is being done ...

Biology - Ecology

8 hours ago

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How gold nanoparticles can help fight ovarian cancer

Positively charged gold nanoparticles are usually toxic to cells, but cancer cells somehow manage to avoid nanoparticle toxicity. Mayo Clinic researchers found out why, and determined how to make the nanoparticles effective ...

Nanotechnology - Bio & Medicine

May 21, 2013

5 / 5 (1)

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Modern lab reaches across the ages to resolve plague DNA debate

(Phys.org) —From within an ancient German gravesite to laboratories under the harshest extremes of scientific scrutiny, traces of DNA from a deadly disease illuminate the cold pages of history with modern ...

Biology - Cell & Microbiology

May 20, 2013

3.7 / 5 (3)

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Death

Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that define a living organism. It refers to both a particular event and to the condition that results thereby. The true nature of the latter has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical enquiry. Many religions maintain faith in either some kind of afterlife or reincarnation. The effect of physical death on any possible mind or soul remains for many an open question.

Animals almost without exception (see hydra) die in due course from senescence. Intervening phenomena which commonly bring death earlier include malnutrition, predation, disease, accidents resulting in terminal physical injury, or, in extreme circumstances, grave ecosystem disruption. Intentional human activity causing death includes suicide, homicide, and war. Roughly 150,000 people die each day across the globe. Death in the natural world can also occur as an indirect result of human activity: an increasing cause of species depletion in recent times has been destruction of ecological systems as a consequence of the widening spread of industrial technology.

Death in this context is now seen as less an event than a process: conditions once considered indicative of death are now reversible. Where in the process a dividing line is drawn between life and death depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of vital signs. In general, clinical death is neither necessary nor sufficient for a determination of legal death. A patient with working heart and lungs determined to be brain dead can be pronounced legally dead without clinical death occurring. Precise medical definition of death, in other words, becomes more problematic, paradoxically, as scientific knowledge and technology advance.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA

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