Research

Investigations
> > The discovery of discovery, or our debt to Copernicus
Howard Margolis has made a bold move. Not only has the public-policy professor stepped away from his discipline by writing a book about science, but he's also departed entirely from the prevailing stance among science historians: that the Scientific Revolution didn't exist.
[ MORE ]

> > Reading Clothes
In the punishing heat of the African Sahara, paleontologist Paul Sereno has uncovered the remains of a giant prehistoric crocodile that dwarfs its modern counterparts. Living during the Cretaceous period, Sarcosuchus imperator ("flesh crocodile emperor") grew to a length of 40 feet and weighed eight tons, twice as much as a full-grown elephant. In contrast, modern crocodiles rarely exceed 14 feet and weigh no more than half a ton.
[ MORE ]

> > Touchy text
Leave it to a Brit to bungle the world's most famous sex manual. Explorer and scholar Sir Richard Burton's 1883 translation of the Kamasutra, says Wendy Doniger, contains "lots of little errors that really start to add up." Burton mistranslated passages on the G-spot, downgraded women's role in sex, and diminished the importance of their pleasure, argues Doniger-who sets the record straight this spring with a new translation from Oxford University Press, co-translated with Harvard University's Sudhir Kakar.
[ MORE ]

> > Hand jive
Expressive talkers have an ally: Susan Goldin-Meadow, professor of psychology, believes grandma was wrong when she told you not to flap your hands when telling a story. "Talking with our hands may actually make thinking easier," says Goldin-Meadow, who recently studied such motions with Howard Nusbaum, associate professor and chair of psychology, Spencer Kelly, AM'98, PhD'99, and doctoral student Susan Wagner. The group reported their findings in the November Psychological Science.
[ MORE ]

---