Alan Clayton-Matthews, a professor of economics at Northeastern University, said the benefits of the economic expansions are beginning to reach more people. The spread between the unemployment rate of college graduates and high school dropouts has narrowed over the last year, according to Clayton-Matthews’s analysis of federal data.

The first Live Earth event organized by Gore and producer Kevin Wall took place in 2007, and was also big, if underwhelming in terms of results. Back then, climate change was a hot topic. Gore, basking in the success of his climate change blockbuster documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won a Nobel peace prize for his […]

There’s plenty of fulminating in conservative media circles today over President Barack Obama’s unabashedly liberal State of the Union address. Some of it is offered in world-weary tones suggesting that, once again, the grown-ups have to explain to the kids that the president doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “Mr. Obama’s income-redistribution themes are familiar,” […]

Suzanna Walters is an alumna of Mount Holyoke and a professor of sociology and the director of the women’s, gender and sexuality studies program at Northeastern University.  She said that she expects that there was a lot of intelligent debate among students about whether to retire The Vagina Monologues, and she respects their right to produce […]

In the lead-up to last night’s State of the Union address, a number of computational analyses of past SOTU speeches appeared, examining word frequency over time or constructing new pseudo-speeches out of past ones. Even something as simple as a word count or word cloud can communicate important insights into the key ideas in a […]

More recently, botnets have begun to exploit the Tor network which is designed to allow people to communicate across the Internet anonymously. This, combined with the advent of untraceable electronic currencies such as Bitcoin, has led to the rise of blackmail and ransomware that cannot be traced even after a payment has been made. Today, […]

Access to affordable childcare can have a big impact on workers, yet companies have largely stayed out of the debate, beyond offering programs for workers to put away pre-tax dollars to spend on childcare. Seven percent of U.S. employers offer on-site daycare, while 2% provide vouchers or subsidies, according to a recent report . Jamie […]

President Obama said the words “college” or “colleges” 12 times in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, which seems like a relatively high figure for a speech—and a nation—full of issues. How does Mr. Obama’s focus on higher education in the address compare to that of other presidents? The work of Benjamin M. Schmidt, […]

Two weeks ago, a team led by scientists from Northeastern University published a study describing a new class of antibiotics called teixobactin, which they found in the soil of a field in Maine. The Internet subsequently lit up with both excitement and criticism (mostly excitement, though). It’s the first new antibiotic in a long time, […]

The match up for the 2015 Super Bowl has been set. The real challenge for the media over the next fortnight is to find something intelligible to say about the personnel of the two teams. The defending champion Seahawks of Seattle barely made it back to the big game with a comeback for the ages. […]

While the high-profile deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police have drawn national attention, there’s a more insidious threat facing communities of color across the country – environmental pollution. In recent weeks, some environmentalists have drawn a connection, giving double meaning to slogans like “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t […]

The survey is hardly the first evidence that employers don’t think college graduates are adequately prepared. A 2014 study from Bentley University found that both employers and recent college graduates themselves believe graduates are not prepared for their first jobs. A Gallup study released in the same year found that employers doubt colleges produce students […]