Rough draft ventures announces the 9 new students spearheading its investment team Rough Draft Ventures has backed more than 30 student startups since launching nearly two years ago. And with a new investment team announced Friday, it’s clear that number will soon be on the rise. The General Catalyst-supported, student-run investment team has helped bring a new source of capital to the city’s college campuses, as well […]
The New York Times: Ebola shocks Europe MobsLab, which is based at Northeastern University in Boston, projected that there is a 50 percent chance the Ebola virus could reach Britain and a 75 percent chance it could reach France by the end of this month. Both countries are scrambling to make sure any cases are identified and contained immediately.
Yahoo! Robots ‘see’ objects with high-tech fingertip sensor Some robots can swim. Others can kick, fetch, jump or fly. But the latest development in the field of robotics lets machines carry out an activity that is somewhat less athletic: plugging in a USB cord. Performing this mundane task may not sound all that difficult to humans, but getting a robotto maneuver an object […]
Marketplace Who is Carl Icahn and what does he do? Icahn has been fighting for decades. “Oh, gee, he goes way back,” says Donald Margotta, associate professor of finance at Northeastern University. In the 1980s, Icahn was known not as an activist, but as a corporate raider, using debt to acquire companies, often to break them up. “The corporate raiders were a little bit different [than […]
NOVA The diseaseome could take medicine beyond the genome When scientists first published the initial results of the human genome in 2001, we seemed to be on the precipice of a revolution in medicine. Researchers could finally discover specific genetic mutations that lead to diseases. Pharmaceutical companies could devise scores of new drugs to target those mutations. Patients could be treated based on their […]
Boston Magazine Watch Northeastern’s annual egg and pumpkin drop Generally speaking, a group of college students with a carton of eggs can only spell trouble. But on Thursday, a bunch of Northeastern students made a sizable splash with eggs and pumpkins behind the Gainsborough parking garage—all with the support and encouragement of their professors. That’s right—it’s college pumpkin drop season, everyone. As is tradition […]
Economists see labor shortage as workers retire Rising poverty and income inequality pose major challenges for Massachusetts, according to the forecast. The state is home to a vibrant technology sector, boasting the highest educational attainment levels in the country and earnings per worker that are nearly 20 percent higher than the nation as a whole. But poverty and inequality have been rising, […]
The Christian Science Monitor FBI asks Americans to help ID masked Islamic State jihadi. Good idea? Since the Boston bombing, police departments in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara County have adopted a technology called LEEDIR, which allows them to solicit and sort through crowdsourced evidence during a crisis. Determining when crowdsourcing helps and when it is counterproductive is still a work in progress, Martin Dias, an expert on information sharing, told […]
Chief Justice Roderick Ireland reflects on 45-year legal career This week, we spoke with Roderick Ireland, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. It was the first in-depth interview he granted since his retirement this summer. At first, Ireland strikes a rather imposing figure. Suit and tie. Wire-rimmed glasses. Salt and pepper hair. And a black three-ringed binder, filled with carefully typed […]
Will a U.S.-India working group do the bidding of the pharma industry? “The US has created IP working groups and other trade working groups in the past,” Brook Baker, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law and a senior policy analyst for Health GAP, an advocacy group, writes us. “And in each instance, the working groups, which include advisors who strongly favor stronger US-style patent… protections […]
The week ahead: Theater, arts FORECASTED: EIGHT ARTISTS EXPLORE THE NATURE OF CLIMATE CHANGE A formidable roster of artists contemplates the future. On that list: painters Joe Wardwell, Cristi Rinklin, and John Guthrie, and conceptual artist Andrew Mowbray. Resa Blatman curates. Through Dec. 7. Gallery 360, Northeastern University
U.S. News & World Report Technology helps ‘locked-in’ stroke patient communicate People who’ve had severe strokes and have a condition called “locked-in” syndrome may benefit from a new technology that allows them to communicate with the outside world, according to new research. The new study reports on a male stroke patient with locked-in syndrome who was paralyzed and could not communicate. With the new “brain-computer interface” […]