If you don’t have a voice, who speaks for you? Today there are more than 60 different options for people who need to use synthetic voices to communicate, but for the majority of people who use them, there is a single answer to that question: “Perfect Paul.” Rupal Patel, a speech scientist at Northeastern University, […]

A group of 57 local economists has signed a letter backing Governor Deval Patrick’s revenue-raising plan to fund $1.9 billion dollars’ worth of education and transport upgrades. This latest endorsement comes after the Governor’s proposals met with resistance last week from House Speaker Robert DeLeo, who called for a much more moderate revenue package. Guest Barry Bluestone, director of […]

Honey bee populations have been diminishing at alarming rates in recent years. Many environmentalists and scientists have brought awareness to the bees’ significant role in the ecosystem. With such problems as Colony Collapse Disorder (attributed to cellular phone towers disrupting communication frequencies of the bees, and to genetically modified foods), pesticide poisoning, ‘super mites,’ and […]

In Massachusetts, remodeling activity could be helping to stabilize construction employment, which has fallen about 30 percent from its prerecession peak, said Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economist at Northeastern University. The Massachusetts construction industry experienced a small bounce in employment from the federal government’s stimulus spending a few years ago, but those dollars have since dried […]

Ultimately, that kind of acceleration in hiring is unlikely without a sustained increase in the pace of economic growth. Indeed, as achingly slow as jobs growth has been in recent years, hiring has actually outpaced the broader recovery. An economic rule of thumb holds that gross domestic product has to rise two points faster than […]

Massachusetts employers added more than 16,000 jobs in January, the strongest pace of hiring in years and a bright note in an otherwise tepid recovery. The state’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.7 percent for the fourth straight month, and remains well below the national unemployment rate of 7.9 percent, the state Executive Office of Labor and […]

Does Ashley Judd have the chops to defeat Mitch McConnell in next year’s U.S. Senate race in Kentucky? Already the possibility of a Judd-McConnell matchup has spawned a mini-tornado of media speculation, not to mention a Karl Rove-sponsored attack ad. If and when Judd actually tosses her hat into the ring, the race would automatically […]

There is evidence that immigrants are overrepresented in local prison systems in Arizona and elsewhere. But overall, violent crime is actually lower than you would expect along the U.S. border with Mexico, says Ramiro Martinez, who teaches criminology at Northeastern University. “In Texas, homicides are actually a little bit lower in border counties than they […]

In the typical hate crime, a group of bored and idle youngsters go out on a Saturday night to search for vulnerable victims to bash. They might, for example, look for someone who is gay or Asian. If they can’t locate their primary target, they might instead assault someone Latino, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, disabled, homeless, […]

While banking was once characterized by quaint features such as the ability to stroll down to the neighborhood branch, where the tellers knew your name and might even give your child a lollypop, the combination of competition in the industry and advances in technology has fostered the simultaneous decline in face-to-face customer service and rise […]

Debate over remote working has erupted since the announcement that Yahoo! will be suspending it, with reactions ranging from Richard Branson’s assertion that it shows outdated thinking, to rebuttals arguing it is the right call for Yahoo!’s specific situation (and if employees don’t like it, they should quit). Companies, and the employees that comprise them, often fall in […]

Northeastern University law professor Richard Daynard says that the country is due for another serious anti-smoking crusade to reduce levels of smoking below 10 percent. Snuffing out the habit is possible, he says, with a few easy steps. Smoking advocates, however, see it as a campaign that’s gone too far.