When Age Matters Northeastern University computer science professor Rupal Patel has discovered a niche in which age really does make a difference, though. If you have to rely on a computerized voice to speak, there aren’t many options. The automated voice of Stephen Hawking doesn’t quite match a teenage girl’s. Patel has found a way […]

By Dennis Shaughnessy Each year for the past six summers, forty undergraduate students studying global social enterprise at Northeastern University have had the privilege of privately meeting with Nelson Mandela’s close friend and fellow Robben Island prisoner, Dr. Ahmed Kathrada. This past year, students also met with the retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a colleague and confidant of […]

Jack Levin, author of the 2008 book, “Serial Killers and Sadistic Murders — Up Close and Personal,” said he found that more than half of serial killers he studied had abused animals, many of them maximizing the suffering of dogs and cats. He did a study comparing 150 animal abusers to those who never abused […]

The Christie’s appraisal shows that its art would fetch a relatively small amount, said Michael Bennett, who teaches intellectual property law at Northeastern University in Boston and is a board member at an art gallery there. Bennett attended the Dec. 3 hearing in Detroit where U.S. Bankruptcy JudgeSteven Rhodes ruled the city eligible for bankruptcy. “If […]

The world is remembering former South African President Nelson Mandela, whodied Thursday at the age of 95. Bostonians are particularly remembering his visit here, soon after he was released from prison. When Mandela visited, Margaret Burnham was a Boston-based leader in the Free South Africa/Free Mandela movement. She recounts that day: June 23, 1990. “It […]

Liza Weinstein The impending demolition of the Campa Cola complex is an opportunity to ask why illegal housing is the norm in Mumbai, for the middle class and the poor. With last month’s Supreme Court order and the impending eviction of 96 families from Worli’s Campa Cola housing complex, Mumbai’s rampant building code violations and […]

SMEARING the place you inhabit with faeces is, among people, an act of desperation rarely seen outside the confines of a prison. Some cockroaches, though, do it all the time. Rebeca Rosengaus of Northeastern University, in Boston, thinks she knows why. As she and her colleagues discovered in a study just published in Naturwissenschaften, wood-cockroach faeces […]

Yale and Brown University are among the latest colleges and universities to promise free tuition to students as part of the Say Yes to Education compact. New York City-based Say Yes announced the addition of 10 institutions on Friday. Say Yes offers locally funded tuition scholarships to Buffalo and Syracuse public school students who attend […]

Before Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora and Newtown, there was the Long Island Rail Road. On Dec. 7, 1993, a gunman opened fire on a train car filled with commuters leaving New York City. By the time passengers tackled Colin Ferguson, his fusillade had left six people dead and 19 wounded. Though other massacres have far […]

We asked Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone what he made of the numbers. BARRY BLUESTONE, Northeastern University:  On balance, this was a good report today, over 200,000 people back to work.  We have got the unemployment rate down from 7.3 percent to 7 percent.  That’s all good news. Of course, many of those were federal […]

The family has accepted help from Margaret B. Drew, a visiting law professor at Northeastern University School of Law and a national expert in domestic violence, who believes Waters should have received court protection. “Alisha’s injuries could have been prevented with proper implementation of the existing DVO statute,” Drew said. “The misinterpretation of civil protection […]

Northeastern University hopes to break ground next month on a $225 million science and engineering research building, joining a growing list of Boston-area colleges and universities making major investments in those fields. Joseph E. Aoun, Northeastern’s president, said the facility will help to meet a surging demand among students attracted to the majors and to […]