“This was an especially important day in France,” said Max Abrahms, a Northeastern University professor and terror expert. “It’s Bastille Day, which is essentially the equivalent to our July 4, so there were a lot of people out in the streets and that made for a very soft target.”

Company founder and CEO Rupal Patel is a speech technology professor on leave from Northeastern University. Her research found that people with severe communication disorders preserve the ability to control aspects of their voices, such as pitch and loudness. Those characteristics — what Patel calls the “melody of speech” — are also important for speaker […]

“The CFAA – a statute suffering from both definitional ambiguities and circuit splits – is, unfortunately, a part of the standard tool-kit of legal threats aggressive attorneys sometimes use to silence researchers attempting to report security vulnerabilities to companies.” – Andrea Matwyshyn, Northeastern University

Josh Levin is remarkably unfazed by his success on American Ninja Warrior. “It wasn’t anything too crazy,” he says. “There’s a lot of cameras and everything, but you don’t really think about the fact that you’re on TV. I was more looking forward to the experience and getting a chance to play around on the […]

After Dallas, threats may seem more threatening to police officers around the country, said Daniel Medwed, professor of law at Northeastern University. “We might be seeing more arrests right now because the police will interpret that they have probable cause to make the arrest,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean in the end that this […]

Crime rates have gone down since 2000, but lethal police shootings of both white and black Americans have increased, says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. In fact, the increase among white Americans has been steeper – “certainly not what one might expect if you believe that blacks are treated differently […]

Research differs on whether better lighting leads to a reduction in crime, though a 2007 meta-analysis of 13 cities around the world, including eight in the United States, showed an overall reduction. “I believe in New York, you would expect to see a positive result,” said Brandon Welsh, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University […]

Still, it would seem foolhardy to ignore the growing footprint of dominant companies, strutting their stuff across the broader economy. The best-understood downside comes from rising prices. John Kwoka, an antitrust expert at Northeastern University, made a study of dozens of mergers that were reviewed and ultimately approved by regulators. In 75 to 80 percent […]

Still, there are those who challenge the idea that online media has dramatically sidelined truth from politics. After all, the popularity of conspiracy theories is nothing new. “Many of the same things were happening before Facebook,” says David Lazer, a computer and political scientist at Northeastern University in Boston. “I have not seen a compelling […]

In Puerto Rico’s hyper-partisan milieu, official holidays are saturated with deeply conflicting interpretations. Typically, Fourth of July commemorations follow a predictable pattern: pro-Commonwealth supporters celebrate it modestly, statehood advocates proclaim it the holiest day on their political calendar and revere it in grand fashion, and those favoring the island’s independence from the United States utilize […]

Legal analysts and some civil rights groups caution against adding police officers to the hate crime statute. They argue it’s an occupation that already receives special protections under the law. There are laws currently that make it a crime to assault public servants, including police officers, and Governor Charlie Baker recently filled a bill that […]

Northeastern University hosted a special screening of “American Ninja Warrior” Monday evening with Josh Levin, who’s competing on the NBC show. Levin was joined by plenty of friends, family — including his parents, who flew in from California for the occasion — and classmates. Watching the television broadcast with an entourage of supporters “was pretty […]