A new study released by researchers from Boston’s Northeastern University shows that censoring “pirate” sites by blocking or seizing their domains is ineffective. The researchers looked at the availability of various pirated media on file-hosting sites and found that uploaders post more new content than copyright holders can take down. A better solution, according to […]

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Meanwhile, the group’s Employment Index, which measures confidence in hiring, rose to 50.6 in December, a 1.5-point jump. “Employers tend to be relatively confident about the situations of their own operations, but this is less true in times of high uncertainty,” said Alan Clayton-Matthews, professor at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at […]

Nonverbal cues to all kinds of unconscious giveaways tend to occur in clusters – a group of movements, postures and actions that collectively point to a particular state of mind. This is crucially true of dishonesty, where one specific cluster of nonverbal signals has been proven statistically to be a highly accurate indicator of deception. […]

The passport might be a small booklet, but it has a lengthy back story, as detailed by Craig Robertson, Cambridge resident and Northeastern University associate professor of media and screen studies, in his book “The Passport in America: The History of a Document” (Oxford University Press, 2010).  

Major storms are always dangerous. Superstorm Sandy left 132 Americans dead, damaged and destroyed tens of thousands of homes, left millions without power, and crippled the largest metropolitan area in the United States. The massive human and economic toll of this disaster came just seven years after Hurricane Katrina. It marked only the latest in […]

Northeastern’s recent national Innovation in Higher Education opinion poll revealed what academia has known, yet feared, for years: the higher education system needs to change, and it needs to change now. When the survey was first released, Northeastern President Joseph Aoun told the community: In overwhelming numbers, [respondents] are telling us that the system of […]

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, said that while the drop in homicides follows a ­national trend, it is important to look at the long-term pattern and the corrections that usually follow years with dips or surges. “This is more of a correction than attributable to any one factor,” Fox said. […]

Northeastern University’s Terry Fulmer discusses the budget deal’s health-care changes. She speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart.”

If you are performing “The Star-Spangled Banner’’ at a public event, think twice before using it as dance music or as part of a medley. Deviation from the script can mean a $100 fine. Think twice, too, about cursing at sporting events. A prohibition took effect in 1963, when both Red Sox and Patriots fans […]

On Wednesday, House Speaker Robert DeLeo named Jack McDevitt, an associate dean at Northeastern University, to lead a special commission on gun violence with a possible focus on keeping weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill. McDevitt said the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., has galvanized interest in protecting innocent people from gun violence.

The trouble is, when we do not know the context behind something, we project it ourselves, says Lisa Feldman Barrett, director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University. “Our brains do that automatically,” she says. “When information is stripped away, we add it back. We fill in the information when it’s not there.”