a v u l g a r p i c t u r e

Karen T. Taylor (b. 1952) is a forensic artist specializing in the human face. Over the years, she has worked with various law enforcement agencies and helped solve numerous criminal cases.

Engineers are taking a counterintuitive approach to protecting future spacecraft: Shooting at their experiments. The image above and high-speed video below capture a 2.8-millimeter aluminum bullet plowing through a test material for a space shield at 7 kilometers per second. The work is an effort to find structures that could stand up to the impact of space debris.

Earth is surrounded by a cloud of debris, both natural — such as micrometeorites and comet dust, which create meteor showers — and unnatural, including dead satellites and the cast-off detritus of space launches. Those pieces of flotsam can damage other spacecraft if they collide at high speeds, and bits smaller than about a centimeter are hard to track and avoid, says ESA materials engineer Benoit Bonvoisin in a statement.

To defend future spacecraft from taking a hit, Bonvoisin and colleagues are developing armor made from fiber metal laminates, or several thin metal layers bonded together. The laminates are arranged in multiple layers separated by 10 to 30 centimeters, a configuration called a Whipple shield.

In this experiment at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics in Germany, the first layer shatters the aluminum bullet into a cloud of smaller pieces, which the second layer is able to deflect. This configuration has been used for decades, but the materials are new. The next step is to test the shield in orbit with a small CubeSat, Bonvoisin says.

The Gathering, 2013

Photographs of a Chinese woman who ingested pesticide as a means of taking her own life. Authorities found her dead inside her own bathroom.

Okay, these photographs pissed me off a bit, because they don’t show off how much of a genius Dr. Harold Gillies, the father of modern plastic surgery, was.  Rhinoplasty, skin grafts, and facial reconstructions have been practised for centuries.  However, it was this New Zealander surgeon who standardized these techniques and established the discipline of “plastic surgery.”

The introduction of more destructive weapons of WWI and WWII resulted in devastating injuries. In addition, in trench warfare, the head was more exposed than the rest of the body, and soldiers’ faces were often shattered or burnt beyond recognition. Despite the best efforts of surgeons, many soldiers were left hideously disfigured. Traditionally, the edges of facial wounds were simply stitched together, but when scar tissue contracted faces were left twisted and disfigured, so a new type of surgery was needed.

Gillies rebuilt faces using tissue from elsewhere in the body. Antibiotics had not yet been invented, meaning it was very hard to graft tissue from one part of the body to another because infection often developed, so Gillies invented the “tubed pedicle,” where he used a flap of skin from the chest or forehead and “swung” it into place over the face. The flap remained attached but was stitched into a tube. This kept the original blood supply intact and dramatically reduced the infection rate.  After many bone reconstruction, skin grafting, and healing, which could take months to years, the tentacle-like tubing would be removed, and (volia!) a new face!

He was also the first to do sex reassignment surgery from female to male in 1946, then male to female using a flap technique in 1951, which became the standard for 40 years.

The “Boy in the Box” murder has gone unsolved since the discovery of his body on the 25th of February in 1957.

On February 25th a nude corpse of what appeared to be a young boy aged between 4 to 7 years was found off the side of a country road near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The body was wrapped in a flannel blanket and was stuffed inside a cardboard box.

The boy still hasn’t been identified to this day and the case still remains unsolved. He was described as having fair complexion, medium to light brown hair and blue eyes. The body and face were both deeply bruised.

The police were sure that someone would report a missing child or that the photograph of the boy would lead to his identity as well as the murderer’s, but that never happened. Nobody ever reported a missing child that would fit the found boy’s description and the boy was eventually dubbed as the “Boy in the Box”.