Bacteria from a decaying body can potentially tell investigators something about how long a person has been dead, and it's the focus of new research by Arpad Vass of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Vass and colleagues are looking at the microbial population, which changes over time and creates a virtual script accented by peaks of activity. Each peak represents a different group of organisms, and, from that data, researchers can calculate how long a person has been dead.
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