MetaFilter posts tagged with dissection

References: Conway, J., 2009. Personal inspection of a real live dead Rhamphorhynchus, really!

brundlefly — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:36:38 -0800

"My cat dragged in what appeared to be an odd-looking bird. Imagine my excitement when on closer inspection, it proved to be a real live dead Rhamphorhynchus! I had to dissect it immediately! Unfortunately, my camera jammed, so I had to paint the whole process." - John Conway's Paleontography

Natasha Richardson Dead at Age 45 From Fall at Ski Resort

WCityMike — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:06:48 -0800

Actress Natasha Richardson died yesterday at the age of 45 after a fall while taking a beginner's lesson at the Mont Tremblant Ski Resort, located 80 miles northwest of Montreal in Quebec, Canada. After starring with Liam Neeson in the 1994 Jodie Foster film "Nell," she married him later that year and would later have two sons, Micheal and Daniel. Richardson was born into a family with a very long history of actors and actresses. Her grandfather was Michael Redgrave, and Michael's daughter Vanessa married director Tony Richardson, a union that brought about Natasha and her sister, actress Joely Richardson (best known to some as Julia in Nip/Tuck). (Natasha's aunt is actress Lynn Redgrave.) Her father, who had a "quiet–if not completely closeted–gay life", died of AIDS at age 63; his wife Vanessa made large contributions to AIDS-related charities, and Richardson became very active organizing and planning fundraisers and other related work for amFAR. An hour after the fall, Ms. Richardson reported she was "not feeling well," and was taken first to a local hospital, then to Montreal's Hopital du Sacre-Coeur, then to NYC's Lenox Hill Hospital, where she passed away. Richardson began her career as a four-year-old flower girl in her father's 1968 film "The Charge of the Light Brigade", and acted throughout her adolescence, breaking into larger-scale starring roles as Mary Shelley and Patty Hearst, as well as the starring role of Kate in "The Handmaid's Tale." She became known to the Disney-watching crowd as the "nasty wife" in the Lindsey Lohan "Parent Trap" remake, as well as a role in Jennifer Lopez's film, "Maid in Manhattan". Richardson has been said to have had "talk and die syndrome," but this is simply a referral to "the fact that we always worry about people with head injuries that don't show up immediately, which is why we like to observe people after a head injury for 24 hours." Scientific American's interview with the chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center indicates that she may have had an arterial dissection in a blood vessel in the brain, possibly leading to a brain stem stroke; an epidural hematoma; or an arteriovenous malformation. While it may be entirely unrelated to the nature of Ms. Richardson's injury, Iraq war veterans have been having similar yet non-fatal experiences where they walk away fine from a brain injury only to feel the effects at a later point. This was covered in Popular Science's August 2008 issue, in a story called "Shock to the System." In it, neuroscientist Ibolja Cernak [...] "believes that blasts may do more than just rattle the head; the shock waves also compress the torso, which may cause pressure waves to ripple through blood vessels like miniature tsunamis, rushing into the brain and damaging tissue." One wonders whether the testing gadget used to monitor for brain trauma might be adapted in the future to civilian use in sports with possible risk of brain injury such as skiing, boxing, etc., in order to prevent the kind of circumstances that may have caused Ms. Richardson's death.

Great white shark dissection

nthdegx — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:44:09 -0800

Scientists at the Auckland Museum will be performing a necropsy of a great white Shark between 11am and 1pm New Zealand time on Thursday. Though they will be examining the contents of its gut, they will also, among other things, look at its sex organs (female) and jaw. The necropsy will be viewable on the web from 2pm NZ time (when's that?). Selected trivia from Wikipedia, and elsewhere:

The only difference between a necropsy and an autopsy is that the word necropsy is more usually applied to animals.
Though reminiscent of the scene from Jaws, Dreyfuss's character was supposed to be examining a tiger shark.
Yes those tedious shark shockumentaries weren't lying. Great white sharks can detect traces of blood from 5km away. Apparently they can also detect a half-billionth of a volt in electric fields generated by moving creatures.
The shark was killed by accident when it became tangled in a gill net. It's against the law in New Zealand to kill a Great White shark deliberately.
At 3m and 300kg, this shark is nearly as big as some great whites.
The great white shark is an endothermic poikilotherm.
Great whites know how to evade dolphin echo location and have varying hunting techniques for a variety of species.
Most attacks on humans from great whites are thought to be "test bites" as they attempt to establish what we are. Humans' unique knack of getting out of the water explains why many attacks are non-fatal. Some have hypothesised that great whites don't like the taste of humans.

The plastic.com it's okay to like?

kosem — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 23:27:23 -0800

Body Worlds is an art exhibition that toured Europe from 2001-2003. Retooled for 'aught five, it has made its way to the New World for stays in Philadelphia and Toronto. The brainchild of Gunther von Hagens, a German anatomist, progenitor and patentee of the plasti nation technique of preservation, Body Worlds features actual human corpses: plastinated, dissected and posed. Nutjob? Artist? Crim inal? von Hagens says his aims are primarily educational. Slate has an informative sideshow about the current exhibit, its origins and predecessors. Criticisms of this work run the gamut from predictable outrage to marxist. But if you're interested, you can request plastination services, or go to the man himself and donate your body(cool downloadable brochure on this page). And, of course, what would a good exhibition be without a shop? Previously discussed, the first time around, here, here, here,and here. Similar exhibit in San Francisco this past summer called "The Universe Within". Plastination is also apparently a musical phenomenon.

tamim — Mon, 16 Oct 2000 21:03:40 -0800

Virtual Pig Dissection.
Requires Shockwave. Not for the faint of heart.