Erin O'Connor

Csikszentmihalyi (1999: 314) argues that 'creativity is a process that can be observed only at the intersection where individuals, domains, and fields intersect'. This article discusses the relationship between creativity and interdisciplinarity in science. It is specifically concerned with interdisciplinary collaboration, interrogating the processes that contribute to the collaborative creation of original ideas and the practices that enable creative integration of diverse domains. It draws on results from a novel real-world experiment in which small interdisciplinary groups of graduate students were tasked with producing an innovative scientific research problem and an integrative research proposal. Results show that while bisociative thinking assists in the creation of original research problems, both disciplinary skills and an interdisciplinary disposition are core to the integration of creative research proposals. Extrapolating from the results of this experiment, the article discusses the feasibility of preparing students for such work and the implications for universities and other intellectual centers

This article presents normative information for the Defining Issue Test Version 2 (DIT2) schema scores and most common summary scores based on secondary data from the last 10 years DIT2 database (N = 73740, Mage = 23.11, SD = 7.87, the age range in year = 12–95) maintained by the University of Alabama’s Center for the Study of Ethical Development from 2011 to 2020. More specifically, the study provides (1) norms by education; (2) norms by gender and education; and (3) norms by gender and age for the DIT2. The norms indicate a general but not consistent trend that moral reasoning scores increase by education level. Additionally, the Personal Interest and Maintain Norms scores are higher for males than females for all education levels and age groups while Postconventional, N2, and Type indicator scores are higher for females than males for all education levels and age groups.

Early in Jonathan Demme's 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs, the novice FBI agent Clarice Starling brings a cocoon pulled from a corpse's throat to the Museum of Natural History for identification. There she finds two entomologists playing chess with live beetles in the dim light of their lab. Interrupting their game to slice open the cocoon, they identify it as that of Acherontia styx, the death's‐head moth, a species that lives only in Asia. The specimen would have been hand‐raised from imported eggs, they note with the special awe of connoisseurs. “Somebody grew this guy, fed him honey and nightshade. Kept him warm. Somebody loved him.”The scene with the chess‐playing bug experts is easy to read as so much Demme grotesquerie. But the cocoon proves to be crucial evidence, a symbol of the killer's desire for metamorphosis that eventually leads Agent Starling to him. The moths fluttering about Buffalo Bill's home are what reveals him to Clarice; in a very real sense, the mystery in Demme's film is solved not by the FBI but by a couple of insect lovers who know a great bug when they see one. As such, Demme's film gives us a rare cameo of what Jessica Snyder Sachs calls “forensic ecology,” the budding field that promises to unlock some of death's deepest secrets.Sachs's Corpse is the first book‐length study of the role anthropologists, entomologists, and botanists have begun playing in murder investigations. A thick but readable stew of lurid crime history and sophisticated science, Corpse describes how these specialists have become the new “Mod Squad” of forensics by reading crime scenes in ways the putative “experts” cannot. Anthropologists can identify victims from bones; entomologists can use the life cycles of the eggs, maggots, and pupae on a corpse to estimate time of death; and botanists can do the same by examining the flora under and around a body. Together, they have quietly revolutionized forensics.With unflappable poise and no little poetry, Corpse tells the riveting if gruesome story of how forensic ecology has taught us to use parasites and plants—those parts of a crime scene that used to be trampled down or brushed away—to calculate that all‐important fact: time of death. According to Sachs, homicide investigators have historically had an especially hard time pinpointing time of death. Modern chemistry and microbiology have made cause of death fairly simple to determine, but time of death has remained elusive. The traditional indexes of rigor mortis, algor mortis, and livor mortis are notoriously imprecise, as are more recent additions to this catalogue such as stomach contents and the potassium level of the eye's vitreous humor. Body fat, age, size, health, ambient temperature, and manner of death can all affect these indicators. Moreover, once a body has been dead more than a day or two—once decomposition has truly begun—all bets are off. Until now, that is. Forensic ecology, Sachs shows, is doing what pathologists could not. Able to calculate time of death weeks, months, and sometimes even years after decease, forensic ecologists are gradually earning the respect and even admiration of the police, lawyers, and academics who once scoffed at their butterfly nets and eccentric ways.Sachs writes about difficult material with near‐perfect pitch. Whether narrating a murder case, describing Renaissance theories of spontaneous generation, explaining the life cycle of maggots, or detailing the process of human decomposition, her prose is crisp and engaging, her point always clear. The result: a book about some of the most unspeakable aspects of death that delights rather than disgusts—not because it dwells morbidly on death, but because it finds in forensic ecology an inspiring and fascinating story of scientists who have been able to see past the gruesome circumstances of their work to a future where murder is easier to solve