Mentally ill doesn’t mean murderer: Column A new Gallup poll taken after last week’s tragedy at the Washington Navy Yard reveals that Americans fault the mental health system for mass shootings, even more than inadequate gun laws. Apparently, according to Joe Public, guns don’t kill, psychotic people do. The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre echoed these sentiments on Sunday: “If we leave these homicidal maniacs on the street […]
Fresh Truck brings affordable produce to low-income areas It’s pretty quiet at 7 a.m. as Dan Clarke steers a white painted school bus through the back roads of Jamaica Plain. Emptied of the seats that once transported children, the bus has been retrofitted with a row of baskets mounted on one side and a long shelf on the other. It is now Fresh […]
Top Undergrad College Entrepreneurship Programs: Princeton Review 2013-14 Ranking It seems like everyone’s watching college students for what business they’re going to start next. The founders of Google met at Stanford University, as did the founders of Snapchat. Facebook was built on the campus of Harvard University. The name of reddit came to mind when one of the founders was sitting in the library at the University of Virginia. Even Time magazine has […]
After Navy Yard attack, D.C. confronts sudden spike in its homicide statistics Criminologist James Alan Fox, of Northeastern University in Boston, said crime statistics are used “as a barometer of safety and of police performance” and said mass shootings should not be left out. Police in Blacksburg, Va., list zero homicides for 2007, the year a gunman fatally shot 32 students, faculty and staff members on the campus of […]
A cyclist’s mecca, with lessons for Boston It was enough to draw stares from four visiting Northeastern University civil engineering students who gawked from a grassy shoulder, taking photos on their iPads of this gleaming vision from a bicyclist’s Oz. “This,” howled Andrew Brunn, a burly 22-year-old engineering student grinning like a kid at Disneyland, “is totally crazy!” To the average American, […]
Where social media and spinning meet When first-time entrepreneur Jessica Bashelor, 25, decided to open her own indoor cycling studio in South Boston this summer, her strategy included a social media plan to create buzz and a “gym culture” that attracted millennials. “Opening a gym isn’t just about laying out different pieces of equipment, but also creating a space that helps […]
Education for a New Generation The Lang Youth commit to Saturday and summer classes at NewYork-Presbyterian. The hands-on courses are taught by Columbia University faculty and students and include clinical rotations and internships. Curriculum covers the human body, diseases and public health. The program, run by the hospital’s Ambulatory Care Network, includes college preparation and help with the college-application process. […]
Discovery News Giving Speechless People a Unique Voice Perhaps the two most famous speechless individuals are physicist Stephen Hawking and the late Robert Ebert, a film critic. To communicate with other individuals, both men used computers that generated synthesized voices, which sounded tinny, stilted and unnatural. Now new technology could give speechless people a natural voice as unique to them as voices are […]
Boston needs to embrace curbside collection of organic waste OVERALL, THE Boston mayoral candidates agree with the city’s goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Several have mentioned that they want to see improvement in Boston’s recycling rate, which, at 20 percent, is 10 percent lower than the national average. But to match recycling rates of 80 percent in San Francisco, 65 percent in Los Angeles, […]
Gratitude Is About the Future, Not the Past When life’s got you down, gratitude can seem like a chore. Sure, you’ll go through the motions and say the right things — you’ll thank people for help they’ve provided or try to muster a sense of thanks that things aren’t worse. But you might not truly feel grateful in your heart. It can be […]
Unemployed increase as Mass. economy slows The Massachusetts unemployment rate is just slightly below the 7.3 percent national rate, which has declined recently. “Recent employment growth has been slow,” said Northeastern University economist Alan Clayton-Matthews. “The number of jobs is not increasing, but people are entering the labor force. That’s driving the number of unemployed up and the unemployment rate.”
In The Future, You May Get An Origami Liver Transplant The ancient Japanese art of origami is useful for making more than just pretty papercranes and owls. In the future, the practice may be used to produce new human organs–an alternative to the 3-D printed organs that scientists are working on today. Carol Livermore, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University, has long studied microfabrication […]