June 27, 2021

I have some very weird questions about graveside services

Do cemeteries have a continously open vault available for multi-use graveside services that are NOT at the actual final resting place (gravesite)? for convenience of perhaps parking availability? So, later, the deceased is re-elevated and then lowered into the actual resting place and a displayed cap is then moved from the multi-use vault to then cover the actual grave or are those caps also "faked" as with stick on lettering?

When severe weather disturbs a graveside service at which a canopy over the purported vault was provided, is the service re-scheduled, cancelled, delayed until the storm passes - are the fees charged only for transportation of the deceased to the grave site at the appropriate time for a scheduled grave site service if and when it is cancelled by a relative who has planned one at the time of the interrupting storms? Are the "helpers" from the arranging funeral home paid by the hour, i.e., driver of hearse, handlers of coffin and supplies of, say, flowers to be placed by those attending? Are country cemeteries so busy, have such a busy daily schedule, that a delay of the service isn't possible?

Are these ways commonly used to defray costs of said services? Seems very disrespectful of the deceased and mourners present...I've never had to plan for any services for an internment. Sorry if these questions seem odd...

June 25, 2021

Shifting Sands/Soils and Landscape-evolution

https://phys.org/news/2021-06-shifting-sands-soils-landscape-evolution.html?

Shifting sands, creeping soils, and a new understanding of landscape evolution
by Erica K. Brockmeier, University of Pennsylvania

A new study published in Nature Communications finds that piles of sand grains, even when undisturbed, are in constant motion. Using highly-sensitive optical interference data, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University present results that challenge existing theories in both geology and physics about how soils and other types of disordered materials behave.

Most people only become aware of soil movement on hillsides when soil suddenly loses its rigidity, a phenomenon known as yield. "Say that you have soil on a hillside. Then, if there's an earthquake or it rains, this material that's apparently solid becomes a liquid," says principal investigator Douglas Jerolmack of Penn. "The prevailing framework treats this failure as if it's a crack breaking. The reason that's problematic is because you're modeling the material by a solid mechanical criterion, but you're modeling it at the point at which it becomes a liquid, so there's an inherent contradiction."

Such a model implies that, below yield the soil is a solid and therefore should not flow, but soil slowly and persistently "flows" below its yield point in a process known as creep. The prevailing geological explanation for soil creep is that it is caused by physical or biological disturbances, such as freeze-thaw cycles, fallen trees, or burrowing animals, that act to move soil.

In this study, lead author and Penn Ph.D. candidate Nakul S. Deshpande was interested in observing individual sand particles at rest which, based on existing theories, should be entirely immobile. "Researchers have built models by presuming certain behaviors of the soil grains in creep, but no one had actually just directly observed what the grains do," says Deshpande. (snip)

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