Hacker News Reader

Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

“The thing that nobody tells you is that you can buy a real human skull online (shoutout to skullsunlimited.com). We did that, and then CT scanned it.”

This is an A+

View on HN

“People often quote 22 dB/cm/MHz attenuation of ultrasound. Decibels are a logarithmic scale, so with 1.4 cm of roundtrip skull distance, and typical fUSI frequencies of 10 MHz, this would be 14 orders of magnitude of attenuation! In physics, there's a word for 14 orders of magnitude of attenuation. It's called zero, i.e., you will measure nothing.

But where did the 22 dB/cm/MHz attenuation number come from? We were skeptical…”

Skulls Unlimited really has their branding on point. I might just have to get one for the holidays.

Just a cool $1800 for a Halloween prop.

For that price, it's gonna somehow have to be included in _every_ holiday.

Skulloween, Skullmas, Skullsgiving...

I think there's a Tim Burton movie about that.

All Skulls' Day, Skullster, Kwanzkull...

Reddit claims they do background checks.

But others on reddit claim this is not the case. And their faq, policies, product description, and checkout page make no note of this at all.

Not just no note of background checks, but no note of restrictions of any kind.

There are many words about international shipping and related restrictions. But no “you need to be a doctor” as far as I see anywhere.

This is either a “reddit being reddit” situation, or skulls unlimited had a change in their policies in the past.

When people "donate their body to science", they don't usually expect their parts getting sold to the public. But that's the reality of it.

Well, at least it goes to the user who values it most.

s/the public/citizen scientists/ and all is OK now!

I just recently donated my body "to science" (actually to a medical school). They specifically asked if keeping skeletal parts was a-ok or not as part of the authorization form signed. They also asked if stabbing, burning, or blunt force trauma was ok. I told them they could do whatever the heck they wanted, just not to waste anything. If that includes selling parts to make money for the school, cool by me. The best part of the deal is zero funeral expenses, and they'll even give your family back the cremated ashes for free. Though as part of the additional 'ok to skeletonize' part I signed, no remains would come back to the family.

I’d expect the fleshy parts to leave at least some ashes.

The most common ways to remove flesh from the skeleton avoiding bone degradation as much as possible are maceration (bacterial, enzymatic), or flesh-decomposing bacteria (edit: and beetles). There's not much left for cremation. Mechanically defleshing the bones would be a bit more destructive, still not leave clean bones, and at the very least would be gruesome for the cleanup crew.

The paperwork said they use beetles, though I suppose that they could end up removing the flesh however they liked.

There’s a recent two part podcast about selling bones online, https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-sixteenth-minute-of-fame....

Part 2 has an interview with a law professor that specializes in death and what happens after people die. Fascinating!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com