(Press-News.org) Blending cremated remains into tattoos, creating "virtual tombstones" online and displaying "Rest in Peace" car decals or T-shirts are unconventional ways people increasingly are using to honor the dead this century, a Baylor University researcher says.
"With 'do-it-yourself' memorials, people are creating their own ways of memorializing the dead, particularly in a more secularized society," said Candi Cann, Ph.D., an assistant professor of religion in Baylor's Honors College. "Some people are alienated from some common traditions such as a long funeral Mass. Cohesive rituals may not be part of their lives."
She made a presentation on "bodiless" memorials at the recent international conference, "Death, Dying and Disposal," of the Association for the Study of Death and Society.
In research based on interviews with the bereaved, Cann found that such memorials are "the opposite of what occurs in the religious realm with martyrs and saints and with relics," Cann said. "Martyrs and saints bring us closer to holiness and to God through their bodies and narratives of their suffering."
But modern-day bodiless memorials are increasingly "returning" the dead to us through visual or virtual "replacements" that are more personal than a memorial in a cemetery or in nature.
Wearing a tattoo as a tribute is not unlike customs of Victorian England or the Civil War era, when people sometimes wore a lock of a loved one's hair or a photo in a brooch or watch chain, Cann said.
"People simply want to carry the dead with them," she said. "They see a tattoo as forever."
Generally, it's young people who get tattoos to express grief, Cann said. "Often, they choose one of their grandparents that died, because that's their first loss."
Some go so far as to blend cremated remains with tattoo pigment, although medical experts advise against the practice, and many tattoo artists refuse to do them to avoid legal complications.
These days, rather than black apparel traditionally worn at funerals, some people opt for a "mourning T-shirt" that may be the deceased person's favorite color. It may display dates of birth and death, an image, and an affectionate nickname and be worn long after a funeral.
"A T-shirt also is a way for people who aren't family or allowed time off from work to say, 'I am grieving,'" Cann said.
Car decals, as well as shoe polish or liquid chalk on vehicle windows, are being used to pay tribute to the dead.
While it has long been common to leave teddy bears or erect wooden crosses at the scene of a tragedy, people are becoming more imaginative and personal. Cann found a snow-white "ghost bike," festooned with a maroon Christmas garland and placed at the site of a bicycle accident.
But "the bike is a clean, pristine version - not the one that was mangled," Cann said.
Besides funeral home websites that allow "virtual visitors" to sign guest books, online mourning has evolved to include Facebook's "R.I.P." permanent memorials, as well virtual tombstones, which allow people to use their smartphones to scan headstone codes and launch websites with an interactive life story for those who visit the grave in person or online.
While spontaneous public memorials with flowers and teddy bears spring up after such tragedies as the Boston Marathon bombings, "those spaces are becoming smaller in geography and time," with people differing over how much is enough, Cann said.
But when such public memorials are removed, Cann said, they almost invariably return in "the virtual realm . . . The dead will return to haunt us if we do not acknowledge them."
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Alexandria, VA – In the first study of its kind, the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) Workforce Program has published the results of the National Geoscience Student Exit Survey, which documents the experiences of graduating geosciences majors. Initial findings support that these new graduates, at all levels, shared some common traits such as the importance of field experiences and exposure to Earth science at the K-12 level.
The need for continued growth in the geoscience workforce is well documented and supported by its continuance as one of the most lucrative ...
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The device, believed to be the first to pair these functions, uses the advanced electronics material graphene oxide. In clinics, such a device could one day help doctors diagnose cancers, give more accurate prognoses and test treatment options on cultured cells without subjecting patients to traditional biopsies.
"If we can get these technologies to work, it will advance ...
BOSTON (Sept. 30, 2013) — Short-term hearing loss during childhood may lead to persistent hearing deficits, long after basic auditory sensitivity has returned to normal. The processing of sound in the brain is shaped by early experience. New research from Massachusetts Eye and Ear has identified two critical periods occurring shortly after hearing onset that regulate how sounds from each ear are fused into a coherent representation in the brain. Their research is described in Nature Communications.
Hearing scientist Daniel Polley, Ph.D., an investigator at Massachusetts ...
UCLA chemical engineering researchers have created a new synthetic metabolic pathway for breaking down glucose that could lead to a 50 percent increase in the production of biofuels.
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Membrane proteins are responsible for transporting chemicals and messages between a cell and its environment. But determining their structure has proved challenging for scientists. A study by UC Santa Barbara's Han Research Group demonstrates a new tool to resolve the structure of membrane-embedded and membrane-associating proteins using the water dynamics gradient they found across and above the lipid bilayer as a unique ruler.
More than 25 percent of all human proteins are membrane proteins, which perform other essential functions, such as sensing and signaling. They ...
LA JOLLA, CA—September 30, 2013¬–A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has created the first comprehensive roadmap of the protein interactions that enable cells in the pancreas to produce, store and secrete the hormone insulin. The finding makes possible a deeper scientific understanding of the insulin secretion process—and how it fails in insulin disorders such as type 2 diabetes.
"The development of this insulin interaction map is unprecedented, and we expect it to lead us to new therapeutic approaches for type 2 diabetes," said William E. ...
COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— As the oldest of the baby boomers begin to reach retirement age, a large percentage of Americans are thinking more and more about how much money they must save to be able to retire comfortably. Also, more and more employers are changing retirement benefits from defined-benefit plans, which guarantee some level of retirement income, to defined-contribution plans, which require employees to invest on their own for retirement. All of these changes, plus the recent economic recession, have created a difficult financial environment for future retirees. Now, ...
MADISON — Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have made a discovery that, if replicated in humans, suggests a shortage of zinc may contribute to diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which have been linked to defective proteins clumping together in the brain.
With proteins, shape is everything. The correct shape allows some proteins to ferry atoms or molecules about a cell, others to provide essential cellular scaffolding or identify invading bacteria for attack. When proteins lose their shape due to high temperature or chemical damage, they stop working ...
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NASA planetary scientist Conor Nixon explains his discovery of propylene on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Scientists have known about the presence of atmospheric hydrocarbons on Titan since Voyager 1 flew...
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, a chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other consumer products, on Saturn's moon Titan.
This is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient ...
WASHINGTON, DC, September 26, 2013 -- In response to past economic crises such as the Great Depression, Americans demanded government policy solutions to widespread unemployment and rising income insecurity. But a new study in the October issue of the American Sociological Review found that public support for government efforts to address social problems actually declined in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.
"We found it surprising that as the Great Recession emerged, the American public moved quickly toward lower levels of support for government policy solutions ...
