Reports emerged last week that the Department of Justice had secretly obtained two months’ worth of phone records of journalists at The Associated Press as part of a larger investigation into a failed al-Qaida plot. The news sent shockwaves through the news industry and put the Obama administration on the defensive. Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Robinson, Distinguished Professor of Journalism in the College of Arts, Media and Design and a current Pulitzer juror, explains how this news is indicative of ongoing tensions between the federal government and the press, and what that means for the American public.

Eight weeks ago, local seventh and eighth graders in an after-school science club got an up-close look at real scientific research while visiting Northeastern’s Marine Science Center in Nahant, Mass. The field trip, attended by students from the Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Mass., commenced a semester-long curriculum designed by Northeastern doctoral candidate Daniel Blustein as part of his effort to teach youth how to translate the organizational beauty of nature into control systems for robotic devices.

“I want to inspire students to get into science because I think science is awesome,” said Blustein, who spends most of his time designing robotic lobsters and bees in biology professor Joseph Ayers’ lab. The Biomimetic Underwater Robot Program takes its own inspiration from the neural networks of real animals to design more adaptable robots, he said.

Blustein piloted the Neurobots curriculum two years ago with the students’ teacher, Kelly Schultheis, who holds a master’s degree in biology from Northeastern.

Eighth grade BB&N students Max Wiegand and Ava Boudreau work on their robotic lobster before the race. Photo by Brooks Canaday.

The program consists of two sections. First, the students learn some basic animal biology. They practice observing organisms in their natural habitats by taking objective notes about the animals’ behavior, and they learn about neural networks by playing games in which the students pretend to be neurons passing a signal (in the form of marbles) from one person to the next.

In the second half of the program, they begin to learn basic computer programming and robot design. Using Lego Mindstorms as the platform, the students design a robot that must maneuver through a simple maze. The trick, however, is that its commands don’t come from a remote controller, but rather from the environment around it—just as with real animals.

Blustein has developed a visual programming language to approximate neural networks that interfaces with the standard Lego NXT software. The students can drag and drop bits of this visual code on the computer to tell their robots to do things like moving right if they encounter a wall on the left or moving backward if they encounter a wall up ahead.

This is how most animals work, one of the middle school students said during the final club meeting in which they raced their robots. Cues on one side of the body cause a physical response on the opposite side. Lobsters collect this information with their antennae and claws, but the Lego robots do it with sensors.

Some students designed their robots to respond to the walls using touch sensors. Others used light sensors to track the black tape running along the perimeter of the maze. Still others used a combination of the two.

Kelly Schultheis, left, and Clint Valentine a third-year biology and environmental science major, right, look on as 7th and 8th grade science club students from BB&N watch a competitor’s robot navigate the maze. Photo by Brooks Canaday.

In the end, the Lego robots encountered some significant challenges as they made their way through the maze. One got caught in a spinning loop, or “doing a jig,” as its designer put it. Another was “doing the right thing, it’s just doing it backwards!” exclaimed a student.

Despite the setbacks, a palpable excitement charged the room as the students cheered on each other’s robots and anxiously watched as the victor crossed the finish line.

Blustein’s own interest in marine life began with regular childhood trips to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. He later became interested in research while working with octopuses at the Seattle Aquarium during college. “Science isn’t complete until you form some kind of communication with the public,” he said. “You need to extend what you do, to share it with others.”

President Joseph E. Aoun, more than 400 Northeastern alumni and co-op students, and members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation gathered on Capitol Hill on Wednesday night to honor alumnus Mo Cowan, who since February has served as interim Massachusetts Senator, filling the seat vacated by John Kerry when he became Secretary of State.

Aoun and Jeremy Paul, dean of the School of Law, hosted the Capitol Hill reception in the Russell Senate Office Building’s Kennedy Caucus Room. Aoun said Cowan had been a strong supporter of Northeastern while working as chief of staff for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and now in the U.S. Senate, and he commended the Northeastern alumnus for his bipartisan approach in Washington.

“Both sides of the aisle love this guy,” Aoun said. “We attribute that to the fact that he has a Northeastern education.”

President Joseph E. Aoun hosted a reception for U.S. Sen. Mo Cowan, a graduate of the School of Law, in Washington on Wednesday evening. Photo by Charles Votaw.

Cowan earned his law degree from Northeastern in 1994, then went on to a career in public service, most recently serving Gov. Deval Patrick in a number of capacities, including chief legal counsel, chief of staff, and senior counselor. He will stay in the Senate until a special election, to be held June 25, decides a permanent successor to Kerry.

“It’s an honor to be in the Senate, it’s an honor to represent the people of Massachusetts, and it’s equally an honor to represent that fine institution on Huntington Avenue and be the first Husky in the Congress,” Cowan said.

Members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation in attendance included Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. James McGovern, Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, and Rep. Niki Tsongas. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, chair of the Senate Agriculture committee of which Cowan is a member, also attended.

Aoun’s visit to Washington also brought him to the State Department, where he met with officials to discuss global co-op and opportunities for the federal government and Northeastern to collaborate on future educational and cultural exchange initiatives. He also discussed Northeastern’s Global Health Initiative, which last week brought together faculty members Michael Pollastri, Graham Jones, and Kim Lewis and State Department staff members to discuss applying drug discovery expertise to neglected diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, and sleeping sickness.

After the Cowan reception, Aoun attended a nearby fundraiser for the One Fund Boston, held on the one-month anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, an event that organizers say every member of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation would attend. On Thursday, Aoun will attend a State Department luncheon honoring Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosted by Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden.

Since the heart is such a delicate and critical organ, clinicians usually opt not to intervene with the dead cells that remain after a heart attack or cardiac disease. “But we think that all heart attacks deserve some kind of treatment because it puts so much stress on the rest of the heart,” said Thomas Webster, professor and chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering. Even a square centimeter of dead heart tissue can put significant strain on the rest of the heart, which has to pick up the slack, he said.

Webster’s earlier work demonstrated that adding nanofeatures to an implanted medical device like a titanium knee or hip joint helps the cartilage cells adhere to the device. This promotes tissue growth and allows the patient to heal more readily, he explained. While his team members don’t know exactly why this happens, they have a good idea. They think the nanofeatures allow the surface to more accurately mimic the natural environment in the body, thus providing more habitable accommodations for the new cells.

But titanium hearts aren’t a viable option. Instead, they utilized a hydrogel, which they’d developed previously, to mimic the heart cells themselves. They added carbon nanotubes to the hydrogel, making it conductive, and then injected the material into the heart, where it solidifies at body temperature. Because the hydrogel is “super sticky,” it adheres extremely well to the tissue surface and immediately begins expanding and contracting in sync with the beating of the heart. While the team hasn’t yet tested the material in an animal model, it has simulated these conditions in the lab.

Once again, by mimicking the natural environment, they saw “improved ability of cardiomyocytes  [cardiac muscle cells] to attach, to proliferate, and then to secrete the chemicals they secrete during normal, healthy heart function,” Webster said. They also saw better blood vessel production. Further, the material seemed to dampen the function of fibroblast cells, which are formed in scar tissue. Since scar tissue is thick and inflexible, it is not particularly well suited for the heart, which is constantly changing shape, Webster said.

“We think we’ve gone as far as we can in vitro, perfecting it hopefully every step of the way,” Webster said.

The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 devastated much of the Pacific Rim nation, which faced a huge array of challenges in the aftermath including widespread relocation of citizens who lost their homes and the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Now, Japan is sharing the lessons it learned responding to that disaster—now known to many simply by its date, 3/11—with a traveling exhibition making its sole United States stop at Northeastern. The show, “How Did Architects Respond Immediately After 3/11?—An Exhibition on the Great East Japan Earthquake,” is on display and open to the public through June 12 in the lobby of International Village.

Akira Muto, Consul General of Japan in Boston

“This is a kind of obligation, to share what we went through during and after the earthquake with the international community,” Akira Muto, the Japanese consul general to the United States stationed in Boston, said Tuesday evening at the exhibition’s opening reception. “We wanted not only to engage the experts in the field, but also the students—the young people just getting started looking at issues like this. And we hope that it sparks further collaboration between nations on these challenges that we all face.”

The exhibition, organized by the Japan Foundation, was brought to Northeastern by the Consulate General of Japan in Boston, Northeastern’s Gallery 360, the Northeastern Center for the Arts, and the College of Arts, Media and Design. A meeting last fall between Muto and Northeastern University President Joseph E. Aoun led to the university hosting the traveling exhibit.

Tuesday’s opening reception featured remarks from Muto and Xavier Costa, dean of the College of Arts, Media and Design. Costa said the exhibit is important because it shows how architects can play a crucial role in emergency preparedness and response.

“This exhibit features a strong compilation of the great challenges Japan faces and how architects can be important responders to those challenges,” Costa said.

The exhibit features work from architects in Japan and around the globe.

Japan’s location in the Pacific Ocean makes it particularly susceptible to natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. As a result, the country has historically paid particular attention to disaster preparedness and resiliency, ensuring that the public is prepared through regular emergency drills and protected by infrastructure able to withstand massive disasters, said Susan Gill, who works in the consulate’s information and culture section. Though the preparations aren’t always perfect, Japan believes the lessons they have learned, particularly during and after the 2011 earthquake, are important to share with the international community.

The exhibit is split into four sections, documenting issues of emergency preparedness, temporary housing, reconstruction projects, and foreign proposals. Its curator, Taro Igarashi, Tohoku University professor of architecture and building science, said the exhibition focuses particularly on architectural advances after November 2011, showcasing projects introduced across Japan.

“What you do after a big disaster—an earthquake, a tsunami, a superstorm, or an act of terror—can be very similar even if the cause is different. Bringing this exhibit and showcasing Japan’s response provides what we hope is an opportunity for shared understanding in thinking about architecture’s role in disaster response and resiliency,” Gill said. “It fits in nicely at Northeastern, where people are thinking about these issues and generating new ideas and solutions.”

Northeastern alumnus Mike MacWade urged his fellow Huskies this Spring to participate in the Mission: MacWade Challenge—and alumni enthusiastically answered the call in resounding numbers.

The challenge’s goal was for 3,500 alumni to make a gift toward anything they loved about their experience at Northeastern, and to do it by March 31. In return, McWade, a 1983 graduate and senior executive at Putnam Investments, promised to make a $100,000 gift to the university.

The goal was met and MacWade gave $100,000 to support what he loved the most about his alma mater—the College of Arts, Media and Design. And he didn’t stop there. Energized by the huge turnout of his fellow alumni he issued another challenge: in return for support from an additional 500 alumni he would raise the amount of his own gift by an additional $15,000. The April 5 deadline was once again met with unexpected turnout of passionate Huskies and MacWade kept his promise.

All told, Mission: MacWade brought in more than $400,000 from 4,785 alumni donors since the challenge was launched.

“This gift is a fantastic example of  how collective giving can move our university forward. It was inspiring to see alumni empowering other alumni to give back to their alma mater through annual giving,” said Diane MacGillivray, senior vice president for university advancement.

“The success of Mission: MacWade illustrates how much this university means to every one of us. Mike put out the challenge and thousands of his fellow Huskies answered the call, making a gift to support what they love most about Northeastern,”  said Jack Moynihan, vice president for alumni relations and The Northeastern Fund.

As part of the challenge, alumni could offer their support to the Northeastern Fund or to a specific area of the university most meaningful to them.

The Northeastern Fund is the engine that supports the university’s momentum on many fronts. Annual gifts support operational and academic resource needs that continue to grow as the campus expands and evolves, and annual gifts also serve as important resources to support teaching, research, and scholarship priorities.

“We all have a vested interest in this amazing university, and because of your involvement today’s students, those who are following in our footsteps, will enjoy the same incredible opportunities we had at Northeastern,” MacWade said in thanking alumni for their support.

The tattoos on Ashley Cryan’s ankles depict a chicken and a pig. Since the days of Captain Cook, sailors have donned the animals’ likenesses to help them walk on water and guard against drowning. According to folklore, the animals—which survived shipwrecks more often than humans—had a special power that protected them from succumbing to the sea.

Cryan, whose grandfather taught her to sail when she was 11, got her tattoos after surviving a shipwreck. She said they symbolize strength and survival, two qualities that the recent environmental studies graduate is also interested in from a research perspective.

Cryan won the 2013 Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Expo’s award in physical and life sciences for her work examining the impact of climate change on the incidence and severity of a toxic species of algae called Alexandrium fundyense. According to Cryan, the red tides—as the blooms are commonly known—have been a growing concern since the 1970s when a massive bloom shut down shellfisheries along the Gulf of Maine’s coastline for more than a month during the peak of harvesting season.

Alexandrium naturally produces one of the most potent neurotoxins on the planet: saxitoxin. As this compound accumulates in the bodies of shellfish that consume the algae, the concentration of the toxin renders them unsafe for human consumption. There is no cure for paralytic shellfish poisoning—the life-threatening syndrome caused by ingestion of these contaminated shellfish—and so shellfish beds must be closed for the duration of the bloom. This puts an enormous financial burden on fishers whose livelihoods  depend on oysters, clams, and mussels. If a contaminated shellfish makes it to a human’s dinner plate, Cryan said, Alexandrium becomes a major public health concern.

Cryan first learned of Alexandrium on co-op at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “My supervisor was working on developing a way to suppress blooms by burying the cyst form of the organism in the sediment so it wouldn’t germinate,” she said.

On the WHOI annual cruise, Cryan measured cyst quantity in the Gulf of Maine’s sediment bed. Changes in ocean temperature, average pH level, and carbon content and speciation, she explained, indicate that Alexandrium’s growth and survival may also be changing.

For her RISE research, Cryan examined the entire body of literature on the topic, looking for examples of how these kinds of changes affect the organism. “The focus of many recent studies of the dynamics of the Alexandrium population is on finding ways to prevent, control, or mitigate blooms,” said Cryan. “We need to look at applying this knowledge to blooms in the context of climate change in the future.”

Cryan plans on spending the summer researching toxic algae with WHOI and then setting sail for California, where she hopes to continue her research on the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.

Northeastern University hosted Student Veteran Appreciation Day on Saturday, a daylong symposium featuring a series of discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities for the young service men and women.

Students, state officials, and veterans’ services representatives attended the event, which was held in the Curry Student Center and organized by Northeastern’s Student Veterans Organization. The event took place only a few days before the Student Veteran Advisory Board is expected to release a report recommending how Massachusetts can continue supporting veterans’ education. The seven-member board was established last year and commissioned by the Governor’s Advisory Council on Veterans Services and the state Department of Veterans’ Services to explore the experiences of student veterans in Massachusetts through listening tours and focus groups.

Erik DeGiorgi, chair of the Massachusetts Student Veteran Advisory Board, speaks during Student Veterans Appreciation Day. Photo by Scott Eisen.

At the symposium’s opening ceremony, Erik DeGiorgi described the difficulty of adjusting to civilian life after combat duty in Afghanistan. DeGiorgi, a Marine Corps veteran and the advisory board’s chairman, noted that college has inspired him to succeed, saying, “It wasn’t until I stepped into a classroom that I discovered who I was and what I was capable of.”

DeGiorgi urged student veterans to take advantage of their educational opportunities though financial benefits such as the Post-9/11 GI Bill. “It’s our responsibility to use this gift from our society to become the next generation of leaders within it,” he said.

The opening ceremony also featured remarks from Coleman Nee, secretary of the Massachusetts Department of Veterans’ Services; John W. Polanowicz, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services; Col. Francis Magurn, chief of the joint staff, Massachusetts Army National Guard; and Michael Trudeau, a recent Northeastern graduate and the president of the SVO. Trudeau also serves as a Student Veteran Advisory Board member.

Michael Trudeau, president of the Northeastern’s Student Veterans Organization, speaks during Student Veterans Appreciation Day. Photo by Scott Eisen.

State officials hailed the efforts of the board, which they said exemplifies Massachusetts’ national leadership in providing support and resources to student veterans.

Workshops and breakout sessions held throughout the day focused on a range of topics, from building a student veterans organization to understanding state and federal benefits for student veterans. An exhibition hall also paired prospective and current student veterans with representatives from public and private service providers and colleges and universities.

In January, the Student Veterans of America recognized Northeastern’s Student Veterans Organization as its top chapter in the United States. The SVO offers career services, advocacy, and other programming to student veterans, many of whom participated in a nine-kilometer fundraising run earlier this month in support of the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program.

Northeastern, for its part, has developed a strong commitment to educating student veterans through the federal government’s Yellow Ribbon Program, which currently provides free tuition to more than 130 veterans who have served in the post-9/11 era. In 2009, the university pledged $2 million to help veterans earn a college education through the program, which offers students access to bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and law degrees.

After gathering information through diligent research and reviewing feedback from hundreds of Northeastern community members, a committee comprising students, faculty, and staff has recommended that the university adopt a campuswide smoke-free policy.

The committee submitted its recommendation to the university’s senior leadership team and is currently developing a comprehensive implementation plan for the policy, which will go into effect this fall.

The decision to go smoke-free dovetails with Northeastern’s focus on solving global challenges in health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 443,000 people die each year from smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke. What’s more, tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States.

“This new policy reflects Northeastern’s long-standing commitment to promoting a healthy and safe environment,” said Terry Fulmer, dean of the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, in a campuswide memo on Monday. Fulmer is co-chair of the committee along with John Auerbach, director of the Institute on Urban Health Research and Distinguished Professor of Practice in Bouvé’s Department of Health Sciences. “We look forward to updating the campus community in the coming months and working with students, faculty, and staff as we join the more than 1,100 colleges and universities across the nation—and among the first in the Boston area—that have taken this important step to promote the health of university campuses.”

In December, Northeastern convened a 10-member committee to explore the possibility of implementing a smoke-free campus policy. Since then, the group hosted two campuswide town-hall meetings to solicit feedback and engage the Northeastern community in dialogue about the issue. The committee also sought input through informal surveys and meetings and received hundreds of comments through a dedicated website, social media, and email—all designed to weigh the pros, cons, and feasibility of its ultimate recommendations.

Fulmer said feedback from students, faculty, and staff; campus representatives from the around the nation; and experts at the local, state, and federal levels have helped shape the committee’s ultimate recommendation to adopt a smoke-free policy.

“Feedback from the Northeastern community was extraordinarily helpful and important,” Fulmer said, noting that the committee kept track of every comment. “We even heard from parents near and far who thanked us for looking into the issue.”

One of the most prominent issues raised during the public meetings was the availability of smoking cessation resources. Madeleine Estabrook, associate vice president for student affairs and a member of the committee, noted that students have access to many smoking cessation resources through a new, evidence-based program called Ready to Quit! and through University Health and Counseling Services and the Northeastern University Student Health Plan. Counseling, nicotine replacement therapy, and cessation resources are also available to benefits-eligible faculty and staff through the Employee Assistance Program and their Blue Cross Blue Shield healthcare plans.

Launched in February, the Ready to Quit! program takes a holistic approach to quitting smoking. Participants receive encouraging text messages that support a tobacco-free lifestyle and benefit from weekly follow-up phone calls and coaching meetings twice a month with a registered nurse. They also have the opportunity to meet with a behavioral health therapist for concerns about quitting.

“Ready to Quit! is a new way of looking at smoking cessation and has clearly resonated with our students,” Estabrook explained, noting the large number who have enrolled.

Quitting smoking is ultimately up to each individual, she said, but remarked that the university’s smoking cessation resources and health and counseling personnel have the potential to play an important role in helping students make healthy choices. “First and foremost, we are health educators,” she said. “The best we can do is educate students and make opportunities available to help them quit smoking.”

Along with Fulmer, Auerbach, and Estabrook, the committee comprises faculty member Richard Daynard, University Distinguished Professor of Law and chair of the Senate Agenda Committee; students Nicole Bourque, president of the Health Disparities Student Collaborative, Summer Nagy, senator of the Student Government Association, and Katie Zheng, president of Northeastern’s chapter of the Student National Pharmaceutical Association; and staff members Nanette Smith Callihan, associate vice president of human resources operations and total compensation, Nancy May, vice president of facilities, and Elmer Freeman, director of the Center for Community Health Education Research and Service.

Natalie Dickinson hit a roadblock in her attempt to break into the music industry during the summer before her senior year of high school. For the last three years, she had worked on a street team promoting bands, but her age prevented her from building on that experience through, say, a job at a concert venue or an internship with a music label.

“I was in a position where I wanted to do something different and get involved,” said Dickinson, now a third-year communication studies major at Northeastern. So she started a Tumblr blog called “We Are The Kids” and began writing about her effort to break into the business.

She quickly built a loyal following, amassing some 25,000 readers. Today she spends a few hours each day posting information about internships and answering questions on topics ranging from finding a good college music industry program to securing an internship with scant experience in the field. When she doesn’t know the answer to a question, Dickinson finds an industry expert who does.

For example, Dickinson recently conducted an interview with the press coordinator for the Warped Tour based on questions posed by her followers. The strategy has helped her build a network of industry contacts, which could come in handy when she applies for co-op positions.

Dickinson is currently working with IDEA—Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator—to develop a business plan for the blog, which also helps readers find jobs in the music industry. “Having this team behind me is exactly what I need right now,” she said. “I’m not looking to make a living off of this, but I do think there’s a lot more I could do with it.”

Dickinson’s readers often approach her at concerts, telling her of their decision to major in music industry or the great job they found through her blog.

“I started this project trying to learn more about the industry and find internships for myself,” Dickinson said, “so there’s nothing better than having people tell me I’ve made a difference in their lives.”

The Obama administration and federal courts are wrangling over changes to the regulations governing access to emergency contraceptives. The administration supports new rules that would allow girls as young as 15 to purchase the drug without a prescription, while a New York judge has ordered it be made available to anyone, regardless of age. With those changes pending, we asked Todd Brown, vice chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences, to explore the issue.

Earlier this month, the U.S. government declared that the emerging H7N9 bird flu “poses a significant potential for a public health emergency.” The virus, a relative of other bird flus we’ve seen previously like H1N1 and H5N1, originated in China and results in a severe respiratory infection and, in some cases, death. While the virus is not, at this time, transmissible between humans, researchers believe that just a few genetic mutations could change that. Network scientist Alessandro Vespignani, the Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor of physics, computer science, and health sciences, is mapping the disease’s progression in his lab. We asked him to discuss the pandemic potential of the virus and explain how this strain differs from those in the past.

The infographic demonstrates the current state of the impact of H7N9 on global health. The image was created by Nicole Samay, a graphic designer on Alessandro Vespignani’s team. Click for larger image.