Professor Alex Vespignani, a physicist at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, has developed a computer model that predicts how air traffic affects the spread of Ebola. His team at the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems used a high-resolution map of human populations (3300 locations in 220 countries) and added daily airline […]

Max Abrahms, a professor at Northeastern University who studies counterterrorism, told The Huffington Post chemical weapons may help ISIS enforce compliance among communities like the Syrian Kurds, and scare rival militant groups. He said the finding was unlikely to significantly change the White House calculus. “If they wanted to use this as sort of a […]

Ebola already reached the US when a patient was diagnosed in Texas on September 30. But where is the disease likely to go next? A map from MOBS Lab and Northeastern University shows the risks. To develop these estimates, researchers used a computer model that tracks the frequency of international traffic to different countries, the […]

When climate change comes for Boston, many expect it to come by sea, in the form of rising tides and massive storm surges that will sweep Logan Airport into the Atlantic. The city is already beginning to plan its defense, with proposals for “amphibious architecture,” levees, storm baffles, and pumping stations. But a new study […]

To experts, the incident points both to progress in exposing and rooting out sexual hazing, but also to the need to address a broader “rape culture” that fuels such acts in part because they are seen as normal and happen at “all the schools.” “We need to take a hard look at the way we […]

As you may have already heard, The Providence Phoenix is shutting down, about a year and a half after The Boston Phoenixclosed its doors. Ted Nesi of WPRI covers it here. Awful news, but not entirely unexpected. As recently as a few months ago, I was hearing that The Portland Phoenix of Maine was doing […]

Fall in New England is a special time of year, when everyone becomes a leaf peeper and pumpkin everything infiltrates local restaurants. It also comes with a classic to-do list of activities, from apple picking to a Thanksgiving Day game of touch football. But are the calories burned raking leaves really a workout? “Sometimes, the things […]

Rough Draft Ventures has backed more than 30 student startups since launching nearly two years ago. And with a new investment team announced Friday, it’s clear that number will soon be on the rise. The General Catalyst-supported, student-run investment team has helped bring a new source of capital to the city’s college campuses, as well […]

MobsLab, which is based at Northeastern University in Boston, projected that there is a 50 percent chance the Ebola virus could reach Britain and a 75 percent chance it could reach France by the end of this month. Both countries are scrambling to make sure any cases are identified and contained immediately.

Some robots can swim. Others can kick, fetch, jump or fly. But the latest development in the field of robotics lets machines carry out an activity that is somewhat less athletic: plugging in a USB cord. Performing this mundane task may not sound all that difficult to humans, but getting a robotto maneuver an object […]

Icahn has been fighting for decades. “Oh, gee, he goes way back,” says Donald Margotta, associate professor of finance at Northeastern University. In the 1980s, Icahn was known not as an activist, but as a corporate raider, using debt to acquire companies, often to break them up. “The corporate raiders were a little bit different [than […]

When scientists first published the initial results of the human genome in 2001, we seemed to be on the precipice of a revolution in medicine. Researchers could finally discover specific genetic mutations that lead to diseases. Pharmaceutical companies could devise scores of new drugs to target those mutations. Patients could be treated based on their […]