But serial killer expert Jack Levin doesn’t buy such a pure motive. “Getting it off his chest because he’s proud of it — not because he feels he is guilty of anything,” said Levin, a professor emeritus at Northeastern University in Boston. Most serial killers, he said, are sexual sadists who consider their crimes their […]

Ad tech’s intricacy doesn’t mean that brands don’t want to invest in it any more. Now, more than ever, companies want to find ways to optimizing their advertising efforts and maximizing effectiveness, according to Yakov Bart, marketing professor for Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. “They don’t want to miss out on programmatic, because when they do it right, […]

Sometimes, they bully you by saying they’ll notify your family or your employer. Legitimate debt collection agencies usually follow the law, but scammers feel no such compunction. These criminals may threaten to talk with your neighbors, says Coleen Pantalone, a professor of finance at D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University in Boston. “They want you […]

Caps and gowns. The cornucopia of Latin phrases. Words of wisdom (Failure is good!) from a celebrated speaker. College commencements brim with time-honored traditions. But at many local schools, graduates are also ushered into the real world with quirky, quaint, and symbolic rituals. Boston University graduates celebrate by stepping or dancing on the BU seal […]

Even more worrisome for the future integrity of Ukraine’s archives under Viatrovych is his notoriety among Western historians for his willingness to allegedly ignore or even falsify historical documents. “Scholars on his staff publish document collections that are falsified,” said Jeffrey Burds, a professor of Russian and Soviet history at Northeastern University.“ I know this […]

Northeastern University students have some big ideas for downtown Mansfield. And if history is any indication, some of them might just become reality. Seven senior engineering students in the university’s Capstone program presented selectmen with a detailed presentation on how the town could beautify the North Main Street area, simplify traffic patterns and make downtown […]

According to a recent research paper, smaller companies that appoint entrepreneurs to their boards see a number of positive changes. Their stock prices shoot up more than expected in the days following the announcement. Their revenue-growth rates are higher than those at companies that appoint non-entrepreneur directors. And a measure of long-term company value moves […]

Astronauts spend years training before they go into space. The same is true for their robot counterparts, two of which recently arrived in Massachusetts to be put through their paces in preparation for a long-off mission to Mars. Valkyrie is built like a linebacker — 6’2” tall and 275 pounds. Its job is to go to […]

The 16 military personnel — including a two-star general — disciplined for a brutal airstrike on a hospital in Afghanistan last year that killed 42 sends a clear message such mistakes won’t be tolerated, one expert told the Herald. “The higher-ups want to convey that these sorts of mistakes are unacceptable and those that are […]

NASA selected Northeastern University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology through a competitive process open to groups who participated in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. “Frankly, we thought that it would be difficult to get both robots in Boston, but that says something about how big of a powerhouse Boston is in […]

What is it about @realDonaldTrump that has the Internet—or at least 7.5 million of us—rapt? We analyzed Donald Trump’s tweets going back to the beginning, in 2009, and it turns out there’s a lot you can learn about the man, too. *The top four words tweeted by Donald Trump since August. Sources: Trump’s Twitter history, […]

“The draft’s become a huge spectacle,” said Dan Lebowitz, who heads the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. Lebowitz said it is in the NFL’s interest to create a sense of spectacle surrounding football, because it has relatively few games in each of the cities where there are teams. “When […]