MSN Hackers may hit home for the holidays Northeastern University researchers found some smartphone fitness apps can leak passwords and location information over public Wi-Fi networks. “Our devices really store everything about us on them: who our contacts are, our locations and enough information to identify us because each device has a unique identifier number built into it,” said computer science professor David […]
Boston Herald Experts: Recent violence could spur recruiting efforts “People join terrorism for all sorts of different reasons,” said Max Abrahms of Northeastern University. “You cannot prevent every single attack. There will be lone wolf attacks.”
Complaints against Boston police pile up “Some officers work in areas where they’re going to generate more complaints than others,” said Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice, noting that most officers have few or no complaints at all. Complaints filed by residents can serve as an early warning system. “If lots of people are saying an […]
The looming battle for clean data With the science increasingly certain and environmental rules tightening, the 21st-century contest for a better environment and a stable climate is shaping up to be a battle over clean data. The wider problem of data pollution seems to grow by the hour. Volkswagen has seen its market share (and reputation) shredded over its cheating on emissions […]
32 Americans are chosen as Rhodes Scholars for 2016 The Rhodes Trust has announced the names of the 32 men and women chosen as Rhodes Scholars from the United States for 2016. The scholarships cover all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford, in England. The American winners were chosen from 16 districts across the United States and […]
How to defeat the impulse buy AS Thanksgiving approaches, so does the holiday shopping season. Once again, a day traditionally meant to celebrate gratitude will inaugurate a month of rampant consumerism. As a psychologist who studies decision making, I’m acutely aware that marketers know how the mind works, and they aren’t hesitant to use that knowledge to stoke consumers’ desires and […]
Why people keep saying, “that’s what the terrorists want” On September 11, 2001, I was enjoying the tail end of my summer holiday with family in Connecticut. Over the past year, I had been studying Osama bin Laden’s enigmatic fatwas as a graduate student at Oxford. At the time, al-Qaeda was not well known, so I was surprised to find that in the climate […]
Boston Phoenix publisher donates archives to Northeastern The Boston Phoenix is gone, but the work done by the alternative weekly for nearly four decades lives on. Stephen Mindich, owner and publisher of the pioneering publication, has donated the paper’s extensive archives to Northeastern University’s Snell Library Archives and Special Collections, where they will be available for members of the public to peruse. […]
Quartz Americans care more about Cecil the lion than Syrian refugees In case you think the idea that Americans care about animals than humans is just incendiary speculation, there’s actual research to prove it. Northeastern University sociologists Arnold Arluke and Jack Levin conducted a study in which subjects read news accounts about a crime wave in Boston. The news story would read something like: “According to witnesses […]
Boston Herald The ultimate running game: a Tom Brady play for president “He certainly has name recognition, which is the first and most critical part of what you need to run for office,” said Roger Abrams, an expert on sports and law at Northeastern University and author of the book “Playing Tough: The World of Sports and Politics.” “And he is, to many people, a true hero […]
Mashable Networking for good Pandemics can decimate whole communities and threaten entire countries and continents. When scientists need to stop the spread of an outbreak, big data can plug them into modeling tools that show how disease is likely to replicate across geography and time. At Northeastern University, for example, Alessandro Vespignani is putting his network-science expertise to use […]
NASA wants to make a C-3PO to help colonize Mars, but that may not be a super idea Before that, though, the R5 needs to grow out of its clumsy phase—which is why NASA passed their droids off to the roboticists. “We aren’t really focused on what the robots will be doing in space,” says Taskin Padir at Northeastern University, one of the recipients of a shiny new R5. (The other one went to […]