Out of Line
Want a shorter wait at the ATM? Stanford researchers might be able to help. A team led by Sam Savage, an engineering professor and director of the industrial affiliates program, is refining a theory that predicts how long customers are willing to wait at an automatic teller machine. The results will help Wells Fargo Bank choose locations for its machines.
In the Beginning
Proponents of the big bang theory say the universe began as an expanding fireball. Stanford physics professor Andrei Linde is challenging that theory with his work on a model called inflationary cosmology. The idea: the universe began as a huge growing fractal -- picture a complicated stalagmite formation -- made up of inflating balls of "space-time," which produce new balls, which continue to reproduce ad infinitum. "The theory is very simple," Linde says, but its supporters have to overcome the public's acceptance of the big bang.
Banking on Youth
Young home buyers hold the keys to the housing market. That's the theory of Business School economist Sven Rady and London School of Economics lecturer François Ortalo-Magné. They found that housing price fluctuations in the United States and England depend on the income of 20-somethings. Changes in bank lending policies can have a huge effect on young buyers' investment capacity and therefore on the whole market.
Wanted
Researchers at Stanford's Complementary and Alternative Medical Program were looking for volunteers ages 25 to 49 with "unresolved interpersonal hurt" to participate in a study on forgiveness. And nutrition researchers at Stanford Hospital needed men with moderately elevated cholesterol willing to eat their weekday lunches or dinners at the hospital for a study on risk factors for heart disease.
