“Data is absolutely essential to make that assessment,” said Max Abrahms, a professor of political science at Northeastern University. “One of the big criticisms of the drone program is that it’s so unregulated and that information has been released in a very ad hoc way,” he said. “It would be useful to know exactly when […]

For years, women have claimed they need to work harder and perform better just to achieve the same rewards as their male counterparts. New research evidence confirms this is true, at least for female hedge fund managers. According to researchers Rajesh Aggarwal and Nicole Boyson, female hedge fund managers are not able to raise capital […]

Dr. Carie Hersh (Northeastern University) also recently launched a blog called Relevanth, where she tries to make anthropological ideas and knowledge relevant to day-to-day life. Dipping primarily into linguistics and cultural anthropology, Hersh’s recent posts have tackled differences between regional ways of talking (“Your Accent Is We-ahd“) and similarities between “The Hidden Cultural Values of […]

“It’s basically like a progressive tax scheme,” says Christo Wilson, who studies algorithms and social networks at Northeastern University in Boston: it redistributes the income of high-earners to low-income individuals. But Wilson has a number of concerns. “If I were really evil, I’d use this to launder money.” Criminals are always looking for ways to […]

Jack McDevitt, director of Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice, said further data analysis controlling for gang behavior and other factors is a critical piece of the puzzle because Boston police are using field interrogations, observations, frisks and searches largely to crack down on gang activity. “The goal would be to see whether that […]

That “annoying” focus on the phone might worry some older parents or mentors about the fate of Gen Z in the workplace, but professor Brooke Foucault Welles of Northeastern University says it shouldn’t. “I understand why people can get frustrated that they’re always looking at their phones, but I don’t think that that’s a signal […]

he space agency has been working on a humanoid robot of its own and is seeking help in readying it (or its successor) for manned missions to asteroids and Mars. NASA needs a humanoid robot because all of the agency’s tools and equipment are designed for humans. That was fine when actual humans did all […]

The lack of capital doesn’t just stunt the growth of the funds run by women, the report says—it’s often fatal for the funds. “Funds with at least one female manager fail at higher rates, driven by difficulty in raising capital,” says the report, written by Rajesh Aggarwal and Nicole M. Boyson, professors at the D’Amore-McKim […]

This month marks the anniversary of the collapse of Bear Stearns, once Wall Street’s fifth-largest investment bank. The demise of the 85-year old institution signaled the real start of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Eight years later, we can only hope our leaders learned something from the experience. The collapse and Bear’s subsequent bailout by the […]

Having debt impacts what an individual can and cannot do, says Coleen Pantalone, a finance professor at the D’Amore McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. “Carrying too much debt limits choice, sometimes self-imposed and sometimes imposed by a low credit score, leading to lenders refusing to lend more,” she says. “We often hear today […]

Halle O’Conor, a fourth-year student at Northeastern University who is traveling abroad in Italy, has been placing and taking pictures of the 8-inch replica of Fallon around Italy’s many cities. She then posts the humorous images to her Instagram account, “Jimmy Fallon Studies Abroad.” She is hoping the stunt will grab Fallon’s attention, and secure […]

That has reduced this fight to one over statistics, which obscures the bigger question: Why were those studies so difficult to do over in the first place? Psychology experiments have to deal with humans—stupid, finicky humans who might act differently depending on the time of day, whether or not they’ve eaten, if they had a […]