All of these data have enabled casinos to specifically target their most reliable spenders, primarily problem gamblers and outright addicts. Despite those customers’ big losses—or rather, because of their losses—the casinos lure them to return with perks that include complimentary drinks and meals, limo service, freebies from the casino gift shop, golf excursions for their […]

For planet Earth, these are worrying times. Not least because Myron Ebell, a notorious global warming sceptic, is now leading the effort to flesh out President-elect Donald Trump’s talk of dismantling US climate change regulation. Trump and Congressional Republicans campaigned on a pledge to undo all of Barack Obama’s major climate change-related actions, including rescinding […]

Students in WGBH News contributor Dan Kennedy’s Digital Storytelling and Social Media class at Northeastern University recently spread out through the neighborhoods of Boston and beyond to sample some of the best local dessert restaurants. They then wrote up what they found and plotted it on a Google map. Click on any point on the map […]

With post-election discussion focused squarely on president-elect Donald Trump, you may have forgotten that something kind of big happened here in Massachusetts: We passed Question 4, legalizing marijuana for those 21 and older. The initiative saw both passionate support and opposition, with high-profile politicians taking both sides. But where do public health experts fall on […]

Jack Levin, the Irving and Betty Brudnick Professor of Sociology and Criminology Emeritus at Northeastern University, was surprised to hear how Mississippi calculates its recidivism rate. “If you’re going to calculate from prison to prison, a much more accurate measure would be a five-year interval,” he said. “The criminal justice system is very slow with […]

Bitterness. Hostility. Rage. The varieties of anger are endless. Some are mild, such as grumpiness, and others are powerful, such as wrath. Different angers vary not only in their intensity but also in their purpose. It’s normal to feel exasperated with your screaming infant and scornful of a political opponent, but scorn toward your baby […]

The artificial intelligence system was built in 2004 in Mumbai, and has been getting smarter with time. Using social media to predict the results of elections has become extremely popular because of the huge amount of information that can be easily accessed. Nick Beauchamp, a professor at Northeastern University, had experimented with artificial intelligence to over […]

Internally, having a fine-grained understanding of your emotional states can be liberating. Since the 1990s, Northeastern University psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett has developed the concept of “emotional granularity.”Her and others’ experiments indicate that when people can describe their emotional states with complexity — not just “feeling bad” about what’s going on with the water in […]

Anthony Di Mari of Northeastern University’s School of Architecture dreamed up these piezoelectric trees to help irrigate public parks and light them at night. The piezoelectric trees contain a polycarbonate and mesh infill that collects water from rainfall and airborne moisture. The water is then distributed through a shallow underground irrigation system with the help […]

That move, he notes, was a calculated choice by President Obama, who knew he didn’t have the popularity on the Hill that Vice President Joe Biden enjoys. Whether Pence has the opportunity to play such a role may come down to President-elect Trump, he suggests, a view echoed by Northeastern University professor of political science William […]

Northeastern University law professor Daniel Medwed said defendants who ask for a new trial based on the argument that their lawyers were ineffective often face an uphill battle. “It’s hard to prove ineffective assistance of counsel, especially when the trial lawyers did engage in some investigation and may have made a strategic decision to pursue […]

Some of the nuance of the story might have been lost in the media coverage. But Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, said it is not fair to say the press “missed the story.” “I read good, long pieces in several newspapers . . . on this left-behind generation of the white working […]