In the Media

  • Pharmacist on trial for deadly meningitis outbreak

    WGBH -- 09/22/2017

    “Because those steroids were sent through the mail out of state, it became a federal crime,” said Daniel Medwed, WGBH News legal analyst and Northeastern University professor. “The two biggest fish in this enterprise were Barry Cadden and Glenn Chin.”…

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  • New chatbots will help people accept death

    Vice -- 09/21/2017

    Consider the chatbot developed by researchers at the Boston Medical Center and Northeastern University, which was recently presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents in Stockholm. According to the researchers’ paper, the chatbot is explicitly meant to replicate conversing with a “palliative care coach” that answers questions about things like preparing a will and funeral preparations. But there’s a twist: The chatbot can also be very spiritual, if you want it to be. The end goal is to reduce people’s anxiety about dying.

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  • New chatbots will help people accept death

    CNET News -- 09/21/2017

    Consider the chatbot developed by researchers at the Boston Medical Center and Northeastern University, which was recently presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents in Stockholm. According to the researchers’ paper, the chatbot is explicitly meant to replicate conversing with a “palliative care coach” that answers questions about things like preparing a will and funeral preparations. But there’s a twist: The chatbot can also be very spiritual, if you want it to be. The end goal is to reduce people’s anxiety about dying.

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  • The life-and-death consequences of summer job programs

    Politico -- 09/21/2017

    But do these programs really work? For years, no one measured whether summer jobs programs actually achieved what city halls simply presumed they did. Rigorous examination of those claims was hampered by the time it would take to dig through the records from the nonprofits and private companies that provided the jobs, says Alicia Modestino, a labor economist at Northeastern University.

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  • Northeastern joins MLB to help educate minor leaguers

    NBC Boston -- 09/21/2017

    Preston Gainey’s finally found that school willing to educate him from the comfort of his living room. He’s part of a new online partnership with Northeastern University and the MLB, helping professional ballplayers finish up courses or start college for the first time.

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  • Five elevator pitches for bringing Amazon to Boston

    Boston Magazine -- 09/20/2017

    Ted Landsmark Director of Northeastern University’s Dukakis Center for Urban & Regional Policy: Potential competitors for a new headquarters share important characteristics: a critical mass of residents available for varied employment, strong job growth, a deep and well-educated talent pool, available real estate in vacant and readily developable sites, experience in investing in public/private entrepreneurship, a solid transportation infrastructure, and an attractive quality of life.

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  • Boston scientists test ‘chatbot’ that offers spiritual, emotional guidance to terminally ill

    The Washington Times -- 09/20/2017

    A group of researchers in Massachusetts are testing a “chatbot” with terminally ill patients who struggle with funeral arrangements and spiritual questions. Timothy Bickmore of Boston’s Northeastern University has worked with a team of scientists, doctors and hospital chaplains to come up with the tablet-based chatbot. Promising results from a group of 44 patients paved the way for a two-year trial with 364 people with less than one year to live.

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  • Questions remain as the Globe struggles to solve its epic printing woes

    WGBH -- 09/20/2017

    The big unanswered question about The Boston Globe’s printing woes is whether they are merely serious — that is, they remain an agonizing pit of misery for months to come but are ultimately fixable — or if, instead, they are so catastrophic that they will require publisher John Henry to get rid of his new used presses and start over. No one other than a few insiders knows for sure. But the Globe took a good first step toward providing its increasingly disenchanted customers with some answers by publishing an in-depth story by staff reporter Mark Arsenault over the weekend on what we know, what we don’t know, and what we still need to find out.

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  • The American Fix

    The Verge -- 09/20/2017

    The ideal approach would involve integrating addiction treatment with basic medical and mental health access. “Is this the optimal model for providing Suboxone treatment? No,” says Leo Beletsky, an associate professor of Law and Health Sciences at Northeastern University. “I believe maintenance therapy is done best, and the research bears this out, when it’s done at their primary care facility. People who have substance abuse disorders often have co-occurring physical and mental health issues.” But given the reality on the ground, he agrees Groups was far better than nothing. “Access to medication-assisted treatment is dismal and artificially suppressed because of stigma. Anyone who is entrepreneurial and able to provide access is, to my mind, doing a public health benefit.”…

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  • Boston transportation advocates aren’t so sure about their mayor

    CityLab -- 09/20/2017

    “They do just enough to make it appear like they’re making progress,” said Peter Furth, a transportation advocate and civil engineering professor at Northeastern University. Meanwhile, he said, neither the mayor nor his commissioners have empowered a small cadre of energetic mid-level transportation staffers. “They are passionate and bright. They’re coming up with solutions,” he said. “They need a leader.”…

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  • This chatbot could help the elderly make difficult end-of-life decisions

    International Business Times -- 09/20/2017

    A team from the Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, has created a chatbot to help people through their end-of-life decisions. It is set to be trialled with terminally ill patients in the Boston area over the next two years, reports New Scientist. Besides offering spiritual guidance, the tablet-based chatbot helps people who are nearing death, plan funerals and set up their wills, say its makers.

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  • Emerging indie artist Sidney Gish is juggling classes and her career

    Boston Globe -- 09/20/2017

    “I’ll spend my whole life training for one performance,” she adds. “I’m going to book a show in 2097 and just wait until then. It will be a very hot-ticket show, though; I’ll be amping it up for a long time.” Gish is joking, but she’s got enough on her plate at the moment to back up her theory that jazz guitar may have to wait a few decades down the line. A third-year music industry major at Northeastern, the New Jersey native self-released her feature-length debut “Ed Buys Houses” on Bandcamp in December, making a strong impression on local tastemakers like Allston Pudding and DigBoston.

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