To be honest I expected something way overhyped but her research looks really good. They take a bunch of relatively simple physical measurements and come up wit

To be honest I expected something way overhyped but her research looks really good. They take a bunch of relatively simple physical measurements and come up with a mathematical model that can explain the relationship between them. They even make physical models of the process: >"Our model incorporates the known mechanics and organization of elongating axonal fibers (26, 27), as described in the supplementary materials. It predicts that from a purely physical perspective, A_G, A_E, and T are related by the power law T^1/2 x A_G = k x A_E^5/4. (The exponent 5/4 is the only value for which the constant k is adimensional.) [... to supplements ...] To test our model, we made paper balls of sheets of A4 office paper of different surface areas and thickness by dividing sheets in half in a geometric series, and stacking different numbers of sheets before crumpling them. Once each crumpled paper ball relaxed, its diameter was measured along the three principal orthogonal axes and used to calculate the exposed surface area of the equivalent ellipsoid. The folding index for each paper ball was calculated as the ratio between the total surface area of the unfolded paper and the equivalent surface area of the crumpled paper ball." http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6243/74.abstract http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6243/74.abstract As should be expected from useful science, their new way of looking at things make the world seem less complex. All too often bio/etc seems to move in the opposite direction: >"The finding that cortical folding scales universally across clades, species, individuals, and parts of the same cortex implies that the single mechanism based on the physics of minimization of effective free energy of a growing surface subject to inhomogeneous bulk stresses applies across cortical development and evolution. This is in stark contrast to previous conclusions that different mechanisms regulated folding at different levels (7); such conclusions may reflect the traditional emphasis on the relationship between folding degree and brain volume (1, 8), which is indeed diverse across orders, across species, and across individuals of a same species (6, 8)."