Northeastern University Professor James Alan Fox argued that from 2006 to 2009, the violent crime rates for Boston, Mass., spiked on three dates each year: New Year’s Day, Independence Day and Halloween. Writing for the “Crime and Punishment” blog at Boston.com in 2011, Fox stated that not only was Halloween a horrible time for criminal […]

Got it? Gang violence doesn’t count; nor does domestic violence, even when a whole family is slaughtered. And of course, such a tally excludes extremely public mass attacks like the Boston Marathon bombings or intensely private rampages like Saturday’s Brooklyn stabbings, since the suspects didn’t use guns. That rankles Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, who in […]

[VIDEO] Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius apologized for the woes of the government’s health-insurance website, which suffered an outage as she testified in Congress. Louise Radnofsky and John Auerbach, Northeastern University Institute on Urban Health Research director, join the News Hub.  

For many serious fans, social media has enhanced the experience of watching a live sporting event. Dan Lebowitz, executive director of The Center for the Study of Sport at Northeastern University, said sports is naturally a “collective conversation,” and that social media allows fans to immerse themselves even deeper. “It’s sort of the ultimate sports […]

Technological improvements in health care have given us the quality of life we enjoy today. But chronic conditions, end-of-life care, and an aging society will bankrupt the United States if it doesn’t make dramatic changes to its health care system. America — and many other countries — need an audacious goal to get off the unsustainable path. […]

The U.S. Department of Energy has led some of the discussions between policymakers and the industry, and Hoffman thinks the lessons learned from Sandy will be applied moving forward. That concept is appreciated by Stephen Flynn, director of the Center for Resilience Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. “We always pat ourselves on the back […]

Mike Dukakis still remembers the scene like it was yesterday. As a young state lawmaker in 1965, he visited the Fernald school in Waltham and saw a room packed with dozens of severely disabled kids. Many of them were naked, some sitting in their own waste, the stench overpowering. Others just rocked back and forth. […]

• Create more apprenticeships and co-op programs. Enstitute is reinventing apprenticeships for the 21st century. Also Northeastern University’s co-op program allows students to gain up to 18 months of real-world work experience while still in college. Programs and universities that empower students to combine “learning by doing” models make school experiences real and relevant. Favorite commitments: “I will invite our […]

ON THE AIR: Aereo founder and chief executive Chet Kanojia, left, speaks at a Northeastern University event with the university’s president Joseph Aoun last week. Kanojia is a Northeastern graduate. Internet TV company Aereo continues to expand and is looking to Boston to beef up its engineering staff even as it faces lawsuits across the […]

Now these leaders are retiring from the scene, making room for new talent. “The baby boomers took up a lot of space,” says Stephanie Pollack, who teaches public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University. “They stayed in public life and owned it for years.” With the channels clearing, Pollack sees a hunger in her […]

By Cory Bolotsky With the 2013 MassChallenge Awards Ceremony coming up on October 30, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on one of MassChallenge’s major initiatives in 2013: MassChallenge Israel. In 2009, John Harthorne and Akhil Nigam founded MassChallenge with a vision to catalyze a global startup renaissance – a rebirth of inspired, creative innovators who strive to […]

We showed the knives to Jack Dennerlein, professor of ergonomics and safety at Northeastern and Harvard Universities, who offered a one-word explanation: “affordance.” This term, he explained, is what ergonomists use to describe the versatility that we ask of our chef’s knives.