One million vocalists singing the same song will sound cacophonous to an audience member if the singers belt out the tune at different tempos. “But if you’re listening to one person sing, and he changes his tempo, you’re still going to stay in tune with him,” said Meni Wanunu, an assistant professor of physics in Northeastern’s […]

Tumors are complex systems of cells, only some of which may be cancerous. Also, two samples from different areas of a single tumor are rarely identical. To gather important information about tumors, researchers must analyze very small samples because they are more likely homogenous — enriched for either normal cells or cancerous cells. Barry Karger — […]

Here’s another reason to cheer for the little guy. A new study co-authored by Matthew Bracken, assistant professor of biology in Northeastern’s College of Science, has found that rare species from the bottom of the food chain can have a large impact on an ecosystem’s health. The findings were published in March in the online […]

One million vocalists singing the same song will sound cacophonous to an audience member if the singers belt out the tune at different tempos. “But if you’re listening to one person sing, and he changes his tempo, you’re still going to stay in tune with him,” said Assistant Professor Meni Wanunu.

A study published in December in the Journal of Voice found that female college students have popularized a linguistic fad called “vocal fry,” which has been described as a “guttural fluttering of the vocal chords” with a “lazy, drawn-out effect.” We asked Heather Littlefield, the head adviser for the linguistics program in the College of […]

Janet Randall has ably directed the Linguistics Program at Northeastern for over 20 years. Under her leadership the program has grown from fewer than 10 students to more than 60, and now includes combined majors with Psychology and with English. Not only has the size grown, but also the quality of the incoming and graduating […]

For more than two decades, Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., housed the world’s largest particle accelerator — the Tevatron Collider — which allowed scientists to study the most elementary units of matter. Last September, Fermilab shut down the Tevatron forever. International hopes of understanding some of the most fundamental mysteries of particle physics began to shift […]

By Casey Bayer This weekend we turn the clocks forward an hour for the return of daylight saving time, which means we lose an hour of sleep. We also have to do things an hour earlier than we did before relative to the natural light and dark cycles of the day and relative to our […]

As they drove through the Okavengo Delta in Botswana, a team of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) scientists and three Northeastern physics students encountered a wild elephant attempting to protect his home from the unlikely intruders.

By Angela Herring As they drove through the Okavengo Delta in Botswana, a team of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) scientists and three Northeastern physics students encountered a wild elephant attempting to protect his home from the unlikely intruders. Undeterred, the team ventured on to obtain a single GPS point along the East African Rift, which […]

By Casey Bayer Murray Gibson (center), dean of the College of Science, says that without a leap day every fourth year, summer would drift out of sync about one month every 100 years or so. Today is Feb. 29, the extra day we add to the calendar in leap years. But why do we need […]

By Matt Colette Graham Jones, chair of the chemistry and chemical biology department, says tough FDA standards and slim profit margins for certain pharmaceuticals mean drug shortages are likely, and the global market may worsen the problem. Photo by Mary Knox Merrill. Drug manufacturers and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scrambled earlier this month to […]

By Greg St. Martin Northeastern hosted a lecture on Sunday on the physics of superheroes’ powers ahead of the American Physical Society’s annual meeting in Boston. Over the years, superhero stories have delighted millions of fans through movies, television shows and comic books. But these tales can also teach us a lesson in physics, according […]

By Jason Kornwitz Two weeks ago, boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. caused a stir by tweeting, “Jeremy Lin is a good player, but all the hype is because he’s Asian…” How much of the attention surrounding Lin stems from the fact that the first Asian-American NBA player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent has experienced a historic […]