Why is it that every time I try to insert a USB plug it’s backward? Shouldn’t it be right at least half the time by dumb luck? Whatever my problem is, a dextrous new robot doesn’t have it. The robot’s advantage is that its fingertips don’t just feel—they see, too. Researchers at Northeastern University and […]

They say every entrepreneur needs three kinds of capital: financial, human, and social. Financial capital is the funding you need to get off the ground, sustain growth, and develop operations. Human capital is the team that brings value to your organization. And while both are essential resources for your business, social capital — the connections […]

Last march, an annual tradition at UMass-Amherst descended into a melee. Town and campus police officers donning riot gear were called in after a St. Patrick’s Day celebration, known as the Blarney Blowout, got out of hand. Police fired more than 600 rounds of pepper spray and sting balls at unruly crowds, and 21 UMass students […]

For many college students, 8:00 a.m. classes are the end of the world. What’s even worse is not having time to eat breakfast and energize before and during that class. Constantly experiencing this problem, two students at Boston’s Northeastern University questioned, “Why can’t we just eat our coffee?” Co-founders of New Grounds Foods, Johnny Fayad […]

Dan Lebowitz has watched with dismay as the lords of pro football have tied themselves up in knots over their inept handling of domestic violence cases involving their players. America’s favorite sport has turned into a nightmare, the action on the field overshadowed in recent weeks by terrible behavior off of it. Many observers have […]

A Texas man was armed with a knife when he made it into the White House in an alarming security breach that has put the Secret Service under fire as Islamic State terrorists are calling for attacks on American soil. “This was a very serious breach considering the ongoing threat from ISIS. I think that […]

More than 100 students awaiting a vocational education at Greater Lowell Technical High School are part of a statewide struggle of need versus space, a new survey finds. The survey, conducted by Northeastern University law students in conjunction with the Massachusetts Communities Action Network, collected the waiting list length of 36 vocational schools throughout the […]

Professional football stands out from other sports, said Dan Lebowitz, executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sports and Society. In football, there are only 16 games in a typical season — as opposed to baseball’s 162 games and basketball’s 82 games — so each game becomes a major event. The rise […]

We often take it as a given that the Internet is a cruel place, a natural haven for those who seek to harass and threaten others. But to some people, social networks are not mere conduits for our worst impulses. They’re structures whose design can influence how we behave, for good as well as for ill. […]

As the disease increases exponentially, the likelihood also increases that a person carrying Ebola, perhaps unknowingly, travels to the United States before symptom’s appear. Northeastern University professor Allesandra Vespignanini and his research team have developed a computerized risk assessment based on travel patterns, and pegs the risk at no more than 15 percent.

Alessandro Vespignani, a Northeastern University physicist, has looked at the outbreak and studied the response on the ground. He has worked on a model to estimate the growth of the disease, and by the end of this month, he has said, the epidemic could get much worse — as in, “thousands and thousands of cases” […]

Words come and go in popular culture. We say “need to” instead of “ought to” now, and cursing is more acceptable than it was in the 1950s. Ben Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, has now made those trends searchable throughout the history of movies and TV with a new charting tool. The […]