There’s been a lot of public and private handwringing within the legal establishment in recent years. There’s anxiety — and outrage — over the spiraling cost of legal education and the diminishing opportunities and salaries for recent law school grads. And there’s no small dissatisfaction with the ability of those grads to actually practice the […]

(Guest post! Ben Schmidt is the visiting graduate fellow at the Cultural Observatory at Harvard, and a graduate student in history at Princeton University. His research is in intellectual and cultural history and the use of computational techniques for historical research. He writes about digital humanities on the blog Sapping Attention. Beginning fall 2013, he will […]

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston and former consultant to the International Council of Cruise Lines, has testified before congress about cruise ship safety. He said cruises are safe vacation destinations, especially compared with other locations tourists choose, and says crime rates at sea are much lower than on […]

Along with researching papers or studying for exams, Northeastern University students will soon be able to go to the library and create their own iPhone cases or dorm room lamps. The school is opening a 3-D printing lab this fall within its library to give all students access to this trendy manufacturing technology, which has […]

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congressman John Tierney plan to join students and professors to highlight a July 1 deadline when the interest rate on federal students loans are set to double if Congress doesn’t act first. The interest rate on federal student loans is currently set at 3.4%. Warren and Tierney have introduced a […]

At Northeastern, Sean Casto said students from across the campus — from architecture to engineering — constantly talk about start-ups. He started his mobile-app company, PreApps.com, while in school and, with a small amount of seed funding, is running it out of a small Newbury Street office with two part-time employees and five college interns. Casto, […]

Neuroscientists are racing to perfect brain-computer interfaces and as they do, the line between sci-fi and reality blurs. Iron Man exoskeletons, Matrix-style brain downloads and Vulcan mind-melds feel within reach. “I think nothing is impossible up front,” said Deniz Erdogmus, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University specializing in noninvasive brain-computer […]

Justice Department lawyers will soon decide whether to seek the death penalty in the case of alleged Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They will focus on the crime, and perhaps the youth of the criminal (the United States apparently hasn’t executed a teenager in over 100 years) and not on the randomness or value of capital […]

Former Northeastern guard Jonathan Lee made another trip to the Celtics’ practice facility in Waltham Tuesday for his second pre-draft workout with the team. The 6-foot-2-inch guard is pegged to go somewhere in the second round in the June 27 NBA draft. The Celtics have only the No. 16 pick in the first round, but the team […]

Northeastern University civil and environmental engineering professor Ming Wang went with me to visually inspect the Charlestown Bridge, a rusty truss bridge that crosses the Charles River, connecting Charlestown to Boston’s North End. The bridge has six lanes, but two of them are blocked off and there’s a sign posted that reads “No Trucks”. Wang […]

Patricia Illingworth, an editor of Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, believes that naming rights are a mixed blessing from an ethical standpoint. To some degree, “the arts seem to be a place where people from all walks of life and all social classes can gather together in solidarity,” she noted. “So if billionaires are branding […]

Revolutions in computing and communications have produced a relentless flood of information about our world and ourselves—right down to our DNA. Today, Boston’s research and technology sectors generate, process and interpret huge amounts of data across industries, from global business to personal genomics. This information gives us fresh insight and new answers, but presents its […]