“The big story in Massachusetts in the last 10 years is the increase in the foreign-born population,” said Len Albright, an assistant professor of sociology and public policy at Northeastern University. Without immigrants, the state’s population would have fallen over the past decade, he said. Boston’s population in 1990 was about 20 percent foreign born; […]

So your dad’s birthday totally slipped your mind and you haven’t had a chance to call your college roommate to see how her new job is going. It happens—but it may happen less often if you take time to just breathe:Meditating may help make you a more compassionate person, according to a study published in […]

“It’s taking them longer to go from oyster spat to oyster adult,” said Luke Dodd, a doctoral candidate at UNC who put the crabs in a tank with oysters. “When you’re a baby, there’s tons of predators that want to eat you up.” But when they put mud crabs and oysters together in the tanks […]

In 1998, when new laws were passed, 65 murders were committed with firearms. In 2010, the latest figure available, it was almost twice as many: 122, an increase of 88 percent. The reason, says criminology Professor James Fox from Northeastern University, is inconsistent gun laws. “Each state, to some extent, is at the mercy of […]

Years ago, Rice’s behavior might have been shrugged off by many as “tough love,” but this time, “there was a certain sense of outrage” expressed by everyone from sports commentators to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, says Dan Lebowitz, executive director of Northeastern University’s Sport in Society, which advocates for social responsibility in sports.

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives,” Charles Darwin once observed, “but the one most responsive to change.” If only it were true in higher education. It’s interesting to observe, isn’t it, how much higher education is still driven by a “brute force” model of delivery? As much as we might wish it […]

Scientists have mostly focused on the benefits of meditation for the brain and the body, but a recent study has revealed that it also increases compassionate behavior. Several religious traditions have suggested that mediation does just that, but there has been no scientific proof until now. In this study, a team of researchers fromNortheastern University and Harvard Universityexamined the […]

Being first at anything is hard, but being first at college is a bewildering and sometimes terrifying experience. I work with a scholarship program at Northeastern University that funds students from underprivileged backgrounds; all are first-generation college attendees, most are from poor families, and with a few exceptions, either they or their parents are recent […]

Meditation doesn’t just make you a better person mentally and physically, but it could also make you a better person when it comes to compassion. A new study from Northeastern University and Harvard University researchers shows thatmeditation can improve compassion and do-gooder behavior. The new findings are published in the journal Psychological Science. For the study, researchers tested […]

Traditional Buddhists meditate in the pursuit of enlightenment. Non-religious practitioners may try it out in order to find a bit of calm or perhaps to treat anxiety or depression. But whatever their motivation, people who meditate, new research shows, act nicer than those who don’t. Researchers from Harvard University and Northeastern University recruited around three dozen participants interested in meditation. Half […]

My great-great-grandfather Theodore Roosevelt has the accurate reputation of being one of our country’s greatest conservationists. Images of TR embracing the great American outdoors by roping cattle on his ranch, hunting buffalo on the plains, and standing next to the Grand Canyon are just as ubiquitous in American history as the images of him working […]

It’s not often that an entrepreneur strikes gold twice in a lifetime. In this case, the gold was an appearance on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” a show that features business owners competing for investments from successful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur Rebecca Rescate, a 2002 Northeastern University graduate, was the first contestant in four seasons to appear twice on […]