When New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski missed the first six games of last season because of a forearm injury, what kept him off the field was not the broken bone he suffered months earlier but rather a persistent infection where he received a metal plate to help repair his arm. Tom Webster, a […]

Mexico, Venezuela, and Japan all supply players to Major League Baseball, but no country accounts for nearly as many of them as the Dominican Republic. On Opening Day this year 83 Dominicans had jobs in the Bigs and many more appear on minor league rosters. In his new book Dominican Baseball: New Pride, Old Prejudice, […]

Northeastern University is launching a one-year graduate program focused on business innovation that will cater to working professionals by holding classes on Saturdays and help students develop actual products and services for their companies. The university’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business is accepting applications for the first class of about 30 students. The program will cost […]

First there was “Big Data,” and then there was “Big Data Analytics.” These terms are everywhere, but there has been a recent media backlash about the effectiveness of Big Data. Tim Harford summed this up in a recent Financial Times article by saying “Big Data has arrived, but big insights have not.” Big Data is […]

Until Thursday, Iranians could purchase up to 16 gallons of gas for just $0.45 per gallon. Now, they are paying $0.83 and, after the first 16 gallons, they’ll pay $1.17 a gallon. That’s because the government is cutting part of the subsidy it provided for gas in an attempt to improve the economy. While the […]

As Western governments edge toward tougher sanctions on Russia, at least one group of European politicians has come to Moscow’s defense: leaders of the region’s far-right parties. Marine Le Pen, head of France’s National Front, visited Moscow this month—her second trip there in less than a year—and lambasted the West for declaring a ruinous new […]

Five leading professors discuss the growth of games education and what needs to happen to better the industry The video game industry is well over 30 years old, but it hasn’t been until the last decade or so that we’ve truly seen colleges and universities taking game design curricula seriously. As the education sector comes […]

In another study, researchers from Harvard, Northeastern University, and the University of California-Riverside found participants who practiced gratitude were more patient than their less grateful counterparts. In that study, which appears in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, participants were given the opportunity to receive immediate cash or wait for a larger check that would […]

Saying the state faces a continuing public health crisis, Governor Deval Patrick’s administration imposed sweeping restrictions Tuesday on prescribing the powerful painkiller Zohydro, just before a ban on the controversial drug was set to expire. A federal judge overturned the state’s ban last week, saying the Patrick administration was overstepping its authority. But she delayed […]

Google flu trends has long been the go-to example for anyone asserting the revolutionary potential of big data. Since 2008 the company has claimed it could use counts of flu-related Web searches to forecast flu outbreaks weeks ahead of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unfortunately, this turned out to be what […]

Off the coast of American Samoa, the tropical sun beats down on a shallow tidal lagoon, heating the water to a sizzling 35 °C for a few hours each day. Such temperatures would kill off most coral reefs, and yet the Samoan lagoon hosts courtyards of antler-like branching corals and mound corals the size of […]

Many colleges are reaching out to students to help stop sexual harassment and assault. They’re teaching what’s known as the “bystander approach,” which marks a shift from relying solely on women to protect themselves to the idea that bystanders, both men and women, have a role to play in preventing sexual violence. On a weekend […]