Investigations

> > What's bugging you is bugging me: Finding peace in a globalized world
Riding the El from Garfield Boulevard to the city's northern reaches, languages and skin tones come and go with the neighborhoods: black vernacular and Spanish, dialects from Asia and Eastern Europe, yuppie-speak and slang on the North Side, then up, up to where Bollywood theme songs blare along streets shared by Indian and Pakistani eateries and long-established Jewish and Georgian delis. Riders not absorbed in newsmagazines or cell-phone conversations may also notice an underlying tension, rising and falling with the bubbling of what used to be called the melting pot but which now has a new name: globalization.
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> > A dinosaur's worst nightmare
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.
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> > Warm storage for donor organs
With 77,860 Americans awaiting organ donations, no transplant surgeon wants to hear that a kidney or liver is unusable. Nonetheless, David Cronin, PhD'97, was excited to learn in early November that one such liver-containing 70 percent fat and therefore unsuitable for recipients-had made its way to the University of Chicago Hospitals. This was Cronin's first chance to keep a human liver alive outside the body using a new warm-storage device. The machine, which he's developing with TransMedics Inc., could ease the frenzied pace of organ transplantation, giving surgeons the chance to monitor and repair organs that have lived long lives or are stressed from their donor's death.
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> > Procrastinating retirement away?
Procrastination-that foe of workplace productivity-is also the enemy of employees' 401(k) plans, resulting in lower contribution rates, poorly thought-out fund allocation, and, ultimately, lower long-term returns. So says Brigitte C. Madrian, an associate professor of economics at the Graduate School of Business who studies the effects of automatic enrollment on 401(k) savings and whether financial education changes savings behavior.
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