Until recently, Google Flu Trends was the poster child for the promise of big data as a tool for social good. Companies from Nielsen to large telcos are offering up their customer data to experts who can mine it for clues about public health and social unrest. The Flu Trends algorithm uses data derived from […]

The same survey indicates this latest generation surpasses previous ones in more than narcissism. They rank high in skills such as creativity, openness to change, and technological aptitude. Though recent graduates may Snapchat from their desks, they also crank through Excel more efficiently than other employees. This aptitude could help 2014-ers gain employment, as many […]

The lesson seems to be that in fields like public health and economics, where there are long-standing information-gathering systems, the smart move is to marry the new data with the old. The new breed of data from the web, cellphones and sensors can be a powerful, knowledge-enhancing asset. But it is a signal, not thesignal. […]

Patagonia’s investment comes through its $20 Million & Change fund, which they launched in 2013 to help innovative, like-minded startups bring about solutions to the environmental crisis and other positive change through business. Patagonia actually helped Bureo get started: the director of Patagonia Chile wrote a letter of recommendation to help them receive a $40,000 […]

The US government has limited authority to quarantine or override a state’s decision to impose one. While federal officials can isolate people entering the country or traveling between states, few cases exist. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t have a presence in all 50 states all the time,” said Wendy Parmet, a professor […]

In its leading index, MassBenchmarks reported the Massachusetts economy is expected to grow at an annualized rate of 2.9 percent over the next six months, or through March 2015. “After a weak weather-affected first quarter and the rebound in the second quarter, both the Massachusetts and U.S. economies seem to have returned to moderate growth, […]

Historically, courts have tended to side with the quarantiner over the quarantinee. But the modern case history is dominated by cases involving tuberculosis, which—unlike Ebola—is highly contagious and easily spread. Still, the TB cases are relevant precedents here, because many of them were less about the current state of the individual being quarantined than their […]

Some political observers say they doubt Baker’s display of emotion is the kind of thing that could swing the election or, as Northeastern University professor Alan Schroeder put it, that it could be a “game-changer.” The story’s actual age “may make it seem a little more calculated … but if he was moved by that […]

Health officials also agree that the best way to protect the U.S. from the disease is to end the outbreak in West Africa. Doctors, nurses and other health workers are badly needed there, and experts worry that imposing quarantines here at home could discourage those volunteers. “Being overboard, being draconian is not necessarily the best […]

Traditionally, the way we know who lives where is the result of national censuses. But those head counts can be expensive and occur rarely, and a new study suggests that the the passive tallying that happens every time our mobile phones check into a cellphone tower can provide a sort of living census that, researchers […]

Health officials also agree that the best way to protect the U.S. from the disease is to end the outbreak in West Africa. Doctors, nurses and other health workers are badly needed there, and experts worry that imposing quarantines here at home could discourage those volunteers. “Being overbroad, being draconian is not necessarily the best […]

“We definitely need to be using better, more real-time labor-market information about where the jobs are, and we need to do this at a very local level,” said Alicia Sasser Modestino, a former senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and now an associate professor at Northeastern University. About 4.8 million jobs went […]