Forbes Feeling grateful makes you a better saver and investor, study shows How were you feeling the day you had to turn in the form telling your benefits department what percent of your salary you wanted to set aside for your 401K? Or the time you were deciding to rack up $5,000 in credit card debt so you and your spouse could take a two-week cycling vacation […]
Spite is good. Spite works. The “Iliad” may be a giant of Western literature, yet its plot hinges on a human impulse normally thought petty: spite. Achilles holds a festering grudge against Agamemnon (“He cheated me, wronged me … He can go to hell…”) turning down gifts, homage, even the return of his stolen consort Briseis just to prolong the […]
Human faces can express at least 21 distinct emotions Leading scientific thinkers of their time, such as Aristotle, Rene Descartes, Guillaume Duchenne, and Charles Darwin, have long promoted the idea that there are a handful of basic emotions that people express. In recent decades, that group has crystalized into six core emotions: happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. But there are clearly many […]
Joseph Rull is Boston’s new ambassador to the people Marc Kadis was piping mad as he stormed away from the parking counter in City Hall recently. He had been feuding with the city of Boston over a pair of tickets totalling $95 and had come with pictures on his smartphone to prove that he was not in violation. After much wrangling with a parking […]
Google flu trends: the limits of big data Google Flu Trends, once a poster child for the power of big-data analysis, seems to be under attack. This month, in a Science magazine article, four quantitatively adept social scientists reported that Google’s flu-tracking service not only wildly overestimated the number of flu cases in the United States in the 2012-13 flu season — a […]
Patrick, Napolitano to speak at Mass. commencements The University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Northeastern University have announced their commencement speakers for this spring. Governor Deval Patrick will deliver the main commencement speech at the UMass Amherst ceremonyMay 9, the university announced Wednesday. Patrick helped pass a higher education bond bill in 2008 that earmarked $450 million for two new research facilities and […]
What on earth is this thing and how exactly can it help me? Elderly people often have to undergo surgery to replace their old hip joints with shiny new titanium ones. Unfortunately, these hip implants are not as good as they could be – an estimated 15% of hip replacement surgeries in the USA were for already replaced hips. Thomas Webster of Northeastern University is working on a […]
Age-based wages short teen workers It’s hard to talk to Jada McNeio and not wish she earned more money. The senior at Urban Science Academy in West Roxbury, who hopes to study criminal justice in college, had to drop off the basketball team this year to help her mother pay the bills. So now, after school, she heads straight to […]
Google Flu Trends is no longer good at predicting the flu, scientists find Science researchers have discovered a problem with Google’s Flu Trends system: it’s no longer any good at predicting trends in flu cases. According to research carried out by a team at Northeastern University and Harvard University, Google’s Flu Trends (GFT) prediction system has overestimated the number of influenza cases in the US for 100 of […]
Northeastern’s entrepreneurship expo shows signs of a ‘healthy venture accelerator” Whether delivering a monthly themed box of STEM activities straight to your door or creating a solar powered cell phone and tablet charging station, the startups springing out of Northeastern’s venture accelerator IDEA are nothing if not diverse. The word “diverse” continued cropping up at the Northeastern Entrepreneurship Expo held Wednesday evening in the school’s […]
Marathon memorial enshrined A snaking hose from a compact vacuum drooped from Emily Shafer’s shoulder as she moved its filtered nozzle inside a pair of worn, dirt-smudged running shoes. “They’re just kind of gritty,” Shafer said above the soft, steady noise of the vacuum. “There’s plant debris; there’s sand. We’re just trying to get some of that off.” […]
Google Flu Trends is no longer good at predicting flu, scientists find Science researchers have discovered a problem with Google’s Flu Trends system: it’s no longer any good at predicting trends in flu cases. According to research carried out by a team at Northeastern University and Harvard University, Google’s Flu Trends (GFT) prediction system has overestimated the number of influenza cases in the US for 100 of […]