In fact, he believes his method, which he has tested using computer modeling and real people, would cut boarding times in half.

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Ford Motor, perhaps surprisingly, seems to have caught on the fastest, using computer modeling and U.S. surveys to boost revenues for each sale.

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The USGS scientists, using tide gauge data and computer modeling, believe that a combination of factors, including the pressures of favorable ocean currents, has actually suppressed sea levels for a time, but that time ended two decades ago, and now the trend is headed upward, much faster than elsewhere.

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As a professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he's using a combination of mathematical modeling, computer simulation and behavioral experiments to explain how people learn new things.

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