USA Today (Jul. 29)
Study of Twitter Users Finds Daily, Hourly Mood Swings
In a study yet to be published, researchers Alan Mislove and Sune Lehmann and their team from Northeastern University in Boston studied more than 300 million tweets from September 2006 to August 2009. The group wanted to find out whether they could measure the moods of millions of people using the social networking site.

EnterpriseNews.com (Jul. 29)
Mass. Would See Thousands of new Jobs From Legalized Gambling
While lawmakers have refused to offer even a hint of what’s going on in their closed-door casino talks, there’s one line senators love to repeat: that 15,000 Massachusetts jobs are at stake. It’s a long-term jobs estimate that’s been used all week, but experts say the figure is on the high-end and may be unrealistic.

The Morning Call (Jul. 29)
Fear Influences Attitudes in National Immigration Debate
Data compiled by the FBI show that violent crime is on the decline across the United States, most dramatically in the states along the Mexican border. A 2008 study by the nonprofit Immigration Policy Center found that legally registered immigrant males were only one-fifth as likely to be arrested as native-born American citizens of the same age.

ENC Today (Jul. 29)
'Race matters' in N.C. Death Penalty
A new study by two university researchers has found that a killer convicted in North Carolina has nearly three times greater a chance of receiving the death sentence if the victim is white rather than black. “It’s just kind of baffling that in this day and age – race matters,” said Michael Radelet, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who compiled the report alongside Glenn Pierce, a research scientist in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston.

MSN.com (Jul. 29)
Mars vs. venus: Which Sex Runs the Better Business
Anyone out there still think there’s no difference in the way men and women behave in business? Well, think again. Besides the obvious arguments over the differences between men and women, there’s even physiological research to prove the existence of gender-based management styles. Kimberly Eddleston, professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern University in Boston, comments on the topic.

The Vancouver Sun (Jul. 28)
Researchers Use Twitter Tweets to Measure Mood
Using millions of Twitter messages, or tweets, from the popular social networking site, researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have created a Twitter Mood Map to measure the moods of the nation.

The New York Times (Jul. 28)
What Bolstering Gun Rights Will Mean
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual’s right to bear arms applied to state and local laws. The case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, involved Chicago’s longtime ban on handguns. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the 5-to-4 majority, said the decision does not imperil every law regulating firearms, like those prohibiting gun possession by felons or bans on firearms in schools. But the court left unanswered just what other types of gun control laws beyond an outright ban on handguns might also violate the Second Amendment. James Laan Fox, Lipman Family professor of criminal justice, comments.

San Francisco Chronicle (Jul. 27)
Whitman Agrees to 2 More TV Debates with Brown
Californians craving more detail about how their next governor plans to address the state's problems will get more face time with the candidates this fall as Republican Meg Whitman Tuesday agreed to two more televised debates with her Democratic opponent Jerry Brown. More debates would be beneficial to Brown "because it provides a level playing field for both candidates to get out their ideas," said Alan Schroeder, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University.

OhMyGov.com (Jul. 27)
Can Twitter Really Indicate Our Collective Happiness?
Studies looking into who uses the site and why are pervasive, however a new study released last week takes a different angle, examining how happy Twitter users are as the day goes on. The study is entitled Pulse of the Nation – U.S. Mood Throughout the Day, as inferred by Twitter, and was conducted by the College of Computer and Information Science at Northeastern University in conjunction with Harvard University.

The New York Times (Jul. 27)
Beyond the Reach of Our Understanding
A family dead in Staten Island, four children and a young mother, their home up in flames. At first, the news that came in on the morning radio shows seemed tragic but comprehensible: These were deaths that could have been prevented, investigators reminded the public, with a simple, cheap fire detector. Jack Levin, a professor at Northeastern University who studies familicide, is quoted on the topic.

NECN (Jul. 26)
Lawyers for Mass. Teen Convicted of Killing Classmate Want Judge to Reduce Conviction
A Massachusetts teen convicted of killing a classmate will be back in court Monday. Lawyers for John Odgren want a judge to reduce the teen's conviction from a first degree murder, to second degree. And In a statement, Alenson's family said: "To seek a reduced verdict seems unfair, as our son does not get anything less than death." Prof James Fox, Northeastern University: "States around the country are rethinking their juvenile justice systems and deciding we shouldn't be treating all these juveniles as adults."

ABC News (Jul. 26)
Search for Kyron Horman: More Questions Than Answers as Mystery Nears Second Month
After thousands of tips from across the globe, the search for missing Oregon second-grader Kyron Horman wound up this weekend right back where it started, at his Portland elementary school. "It is very possible that there is simply no evidence in this case," Northeastern University professor and criminologist Jack Levin said. "My sense is there may not be a body or blood or crime witnesses and the police were hoping by playing a good cop approach to get a confession from the stepmother. But she hasn't confessed, she lawyered up."

Fayobserver.com (Jul. 26)
Justice-Death Penalty Data Show Need for Racial Justice Act
The proof is in the killing, and a newly released study of death sentences in North Carolina proves that our year-old Racial Justice Act was not only well-motivated, but urgently needed. The study, covering death sentences from 1980 through 2007, was conducted by researchers from the University of Colorado in Boulder and the Northeastern University school of criminology and criminal justice in Boston.

The Wall Street Journal (Jul. 26)
Does Crime Rise in tandem with the Mercury?
As far back as 1897, Willis L. Moore, chief of the United States Weather Bureau, commissioned a study on the correlation between crime and hot weather because he "was convinced that there was a close connection between atmospheric conditions and the physical and moral welfare of the people." James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University, said the correlation with temperature is not simple.

The Brown Daily Herald (Jul. 26)
Free to Work
Just as students and employers began to finalize summer plans last spring, the New York Times decided to burst their bubbles. In April, the Times ran a piece suggesting that many unpaid internships at for-profit companies may be illegal. The result, as the president of Northeastern University recently noted, is that many internships are robbed of the “experiential learning” element that makes them valuable. And as one Labor Department official told the Times, there “aren’t going to be many circumstances” in which unpaid internships are legal.

The New York Times (Jul. 26)
When Life is Sweet, According to Our Tweets
If your posts on Twitter were among 300 million included in a study by researchers at Harvard and Northeastern University, you’re probably happiest in the morning and least satisfied about noon. Analyzing words in those posts, researchers found that Thursday is the saddest day; Sunday, the happiest.

EurekAlert.org (Jul. 26)
Reducing the Health Risks of Obesity Without Serious Side Effects
The drug rimonabant was developed as a treatment for obesity and its myriad of serious health consequences. Despite having its desired effects on weight, which it decreased, and on levels of glucose and fats in the blood, rimonabant was never approved for use in the US because of serious neurological side effects including depression and anxiety. Now, a team of researchers, led by George Kunos, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, and Alexandros Makriyannis, at Northeastern University, Boston, have developed a drug that has the same positive effects in mice on levels of glucose and fats in the blood as rimonabant but none of the neurological side effects.

New Scientist (Jul. 26)
Social Networks: The Great Tipping Point Test
Every move you make, every twitter feed you update, somebody is watching you. You may not think twice about it, but if you use a social networking site, a cellphone or the internet regularly, you are leaving behind a clear digital trail that describes your behavior. "The data revolution is here for social science," says Albert-László Barabási of Northeastern University in Boston. "For the first time, scientists have a chance to study what humans do in real time and in an objective way. It's going to fundamentally change all fields of science that deal with humans."

The Boston Globe (Jul. 26)
Odgren's Attorneys Ask for Verdict to be Scaled Back
Prosecutors who won the first-degree murder conviction of John Odgren asked a Middlesex Superior Court judge today to let the decision stand, opposing a defense request to scale the verdict back. Odgren had a long history of mental illness. His parents told Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox in a story in Sunday's Globe that they were haunted by his incarceration and his mental illness.

Winston-Salem Journal (Jul. 23)
Tobacco Suit Rules Change
The biggest legal storm hanging over the tobacco industry -- about 8,000 smoker lawsuits in Florida -- may have begun to dissipate yesterday. The combined compensatory and punitive jury awards in the 18 plaintiff victories is about $287 million, according to Ed Sweda, a senior lawyer for the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.