They look like they could be cousins of C-3PO of “Star Wars” fame, and now they’re off to college. NASA has awarded two prototype humanoid robots to research groups at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University for development work. NASA’s R5 robots were initially conceived for disaster-relief maneuvers, but now are seen as potential […]

If R5 looks like something out of a science fiction film, that’s by design. The robot — designed by NASA to one day supplement or even replace humans on space missions — is surely one of the coolest humanoid bots ever created. Now two of these six-foot tall robotic superheroes are coming to the Boston […]

The murder trial of Philip Chism is disturbing on so many levels. The teenager is currently being tried in Salem on homicide and other charges stemming from the death of math teacher Colleen Ritzer in 2013 when Chism was just 14 years old. First and foremost, the crime was horrific, involving a brutal attack in […]

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration  has awarded experimental robots to Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where engineers will try to teach the human-shaped machines to do useful work in space. NASA designed the R5 Valkyrie robot to assist humans in dealing with natural disasters. But the agency is also interested in […]

Northeastern University’s Charlotte Campus will work with Fort Bragg to help soldiers transition from the military to civilian careers. The university will offer a fast-track master’s degree in project management. That program can be completed in 18 months, compared to 24 months or longer for a typical master’s degree.

“The president of France has already come out and said this attack was a declaration of war and I can understand why, this is the biggest foreign massacre inflicted on France since World War II,” said Max Abrahms, a terror expert and professor at Northeastern University. “I think it will be a very easy case […]

Of course, sometimes the early polls do get it right. Typically this happens in races with few competitors, as when then–Vice President Al Gore led the Democratic field throughout 1999, or in races with an overwhelming favorite, as Ronald Reagan was in 1979. William Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University, found that in contested […]

Joseph E. Aoun, Northeastern’s president, is fond of telling stories of the cross-cultural friendships formed on his campus (the Turkish and Armenian students living harmoniously as roommates, for instance), but he is quick to emphasize that “our goal is not to get more international students. Our goal is to globalize the university.” In this, Northeastern […]

Immediately after the Paris attacks, French President François Hollande called the terrorism “an act of war.” Then on Meet the Press, White House staffer Ben Rhodes went further, saying, “We’ve been at war with ISIS for quite some time.” How does ISIS conceptualize this state of affairs? On The Gist, Max Abrahms from Northeastern University […]

David Choffnes keeps watch over his online privacy more than most – so much so that he designed a program to block apps on his iPhone from hoovering up his personal data. For instance, said the assistant professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University, companies that request location data can track his whereabouts whenever that app is open, […]

“Our devices have been black boxes — this is something that has frustrated me for years,” said David Choffnes, a professor of computer science at Northeastern University who led one study into app privacy. In a bid to make privacy realities more visible to smartphone owners who aren’t techheads or security experts, Choffnes led development of a […]

This undermining of competition has severely negative effects for consumers and workers. Large outsourcing firms can dominate the H-1B visa program, preventing startups from a crack at skilled workers and driving well-paying jobs overseas. Prices rise when monopolies go unchecked, as groundbreaking research by Northeastern University’s John Kwoka has shown. This also affects quality of […]