“Language is always in a state of evolution to meet the needs of its users,” said Adam Cooper, a Northeastern University linguistics professor.

“We’ve already learned what moving fast and breaking things can do to society,” said Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, referring to the negative consequences of a tech mind-set that values speed and disruption above all else.

The Northeastern researchers found that adding the nylon layer improved the performance of a DIY mask by between 15% and 50%.

David Lazer (@davidlazer) is University Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University, visiting scholar at the Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science and author, most recently, of “Politics with the People” (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Alexander DePaoli, a marketing professor at Northeastern University, warned against overthinking when choosing to whom and how much to donate. DePaoli, who researches the effects of emotion in consumer reasoning, said you’ll get the most happiness from donating to what matters to you.

Additionally, new research suggests that COVID-19 cases were spreading rapidly in the U.S. far earlier than was reported: researchers at Northeastern University estimate that on March 1, when New York confirmed its first case of coronavirus, more than 10,000 people in the state may already have been infected. 

“In these moments of uncertainty we all suddenly feel the need to police our own behavior, but also police other people’s behavior as well,” says Northeastern University health law professor Aziza Ahmed.

“This is in line with our projections,” says Kate Coronges, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University.

“Between the second half of January and the first half of February,” there were likely enough infected people in Boston “to generate local transmission,” said Alessandro Vespignani, the principal investigator behind the Northeastern model.

 That distribution matters because, say, adding a fifth gun to an already armed household isn’t the same as exposing an entire family to a new and potentially deadly weapon, explained Matt Miller, a professor of health sciences and epidemiology at Northeastern University.

“You’ve got to make driving, you know, the worst option in order to change things,” says Joan Fitzgerald, professor of public policy and urban affairs at Boston’s Northeastern University.

“You’ve got to make driving, you know, the worst option in order to change things,” says Joan Fitzgerald, professor of public policy and urban affairs at Boston’s Northeastern University.