ANN ARBOR — Can companies buying back their own stock time the market to get a better price? This was an unanswered question in corporate finance until now.
New research from University of Michigan finance professor Amy Dittmar indicates that some companies do time their repurchases to buy at a low price. It’s a way companies can make a shareholder-friendly move and a positive return on an investment. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — On opposite sides of the globe over millions of years, the snakes of North America and Australia independently evolved similar body types that helped them move and capture prey more efficiently.
Snakes on both continents include stout-bodied, highly camouflaged ambush predators, such as rattlesnakes in North America and death adders in Australia. There are slender, fast-moving foragers on both continents, as well as small burrowing snakes. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — It’s football, not soccer! Or is it?
Americans use the word soccer to describe the game that just about everybody else in the world calls football, and this duel over semantics enrages purists of the game. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — With precarious particles called polaritons that straddle the worlds of light and matter, University of Michigan researchers have demonstrated a new, practical and potentially more efficient way to make a coherent laser-like beam.
They have made what’s believed to be the first polariton laser that is fueled by electrical current as opposed to light, and also works at room temperature, rather than way below zero. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — As new research documents growing inequalities in health and wealth, the gap between “haves” and “have-nots” is growing in the field of scientific research itself, says University of Michigan sociologist Yu Xie.
“It’s surprising that more attention has not been paid to the large, changing inequalities in the world of scientific research, given the preoccupation with rising social and economic inequality in many countries,” said Xie, research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research and professor of sociology, statistics and public policy. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — When we’re strolling down memory lane, our brains recall just as much information while walking as while standing still—findings that contradict the popular science notion that walking hinders one’s ability to think.
University of Michigan researchers at the School of Kinesiology and the College of Engineering examined how well study participants performed a very complex spatial cognitive task while walking versus standing still. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — It’s an ongoing debate for online publications: How much content should be free and how much should go behind a paywall?
Make the price for content too high and watch customers disappear and ad revenue decline. Give away too much and you could miss out on subscriber revenue. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — Slightly more than 4 percent of people given death sentences in the United States are innocent, according to new peer-reviewed research led by a University of Michigan expert.
The finding shows that the number of innocent people sentenced to death is more than twice the number of inmates exonerated and freed by legal action, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (more…)
