Monthly Archives: September 2014
Professor Ben Schmidt and his Anachronism Machine

Written on September 30, 2014 at 1:55 pm, by NULab Administrator
Assistant Professor of History and NULab core faculty member Ben Schmidt has developed a quirky invention which he has dubbed the Anachronism Machine, whose function is to detect time-period errors in film and TV scripts. Read the full article in Northeastern Magazine.
Discussions @ DSC to feature NULab core faculty Professor Isabel Meirelles
Written on September 23, 2014 at 6:02 pm, by NULab Administrator
The Digital Scholarship Commons will offer a series of informal discussions this semester exploring the role of digital technologies in teaching, learning, and research. Faculty and graduate students are welcome. Bring a bag lunch to 211 Snell. Light refreshments will also be served. The first Discussion of the year is on Data Visualization and will Continue Reading »
Professor Ben Schmidt and database Bookworm
Written on September 19, 2014 at 7:01 pm, by NULab Administrator
Professor Ben Schmidt has created a database that can pinpoint with accuracy when vocabulary enters into and gains usage in television and film– and this has uncanny social implications. Read more on the Washington Post blog The Intersect.
Xinru Page to speak at Northeastern on “Overcoming the Privacy Paradox and Designing for Adoption of Location-sharing Systems”
Written on September 19, 2014 at 4:41 pm, by NULab Administrator
Overcoming the Privacy Paradox and Designing for Adoption of Location-sharing Systems Xinru Page, Ph.D. Center for Complex Network Research 2pm – 3pm, Monday, September 22 In recent years, location-sharing systems have become widely available (e.g. Foursquare, Glympse, Google Latitude). Sharing one’s location can serve many purposes, such as safety, coordination or staying connected. Nonetheless, Continue Reading »
Matthew Brashears to Speak at Northeastern
Written on September 17, 2014 at 5:49 pm, by NULab Administrator
Matthew Brashears of Cornell University will present the following talk at Northeastern on Thursday, September 18 at noon in 540 Holmes Hall. Social Networks, Compression Heuristics, and the Evolution of Human Intelligence Matthew Brashears, Cornell University 12pm on September 18, 2014 (a light lunch will be served) 540 Holmes, Northeastern University The ability of primates, including Continue Reading »
Prof. Ben Schmidt creates searchable Simpsons database
Written on September 12, 2014 at 2:07 pm, by NULab Administrator
Using a database he created called Bookworm, Ben Schmidt, Professor of History and core NULab faculty member, has created a tool for searching every word ever used in the history of popular television show The Simpsons. Read more about the project here and check it out here.
Katherine Bode presents “Digital Humanities and Digitized Newspapers: The Australian Story”
Written on September 10, 2014 at 6:51 pm, by NULab Administrator
Katherine Bode, from the Australian National University, will present a talk on September 30 at noon in 342 Curry Student Center. Please join us! This presentation focuses on a project that employs one of Australia’s leading digital resources, the Trove database. Created by the National Library of Australia, Trove contains the largest holding of digitized Continue Reading »
Social Network Processes in Collaborative Decision-Making
Written on September 10, 2014 at 6:42 pm, by NULab Administrator
How do we best organize agents to solve difficult problems? Should they compete or collaborate? If they collaborate, who should collaborate with whom? While organizing problem-solving work as a competition can provide strong incentives to exert high levels of effort and allows exploring multiple solutions in parallel, collaboration can allow learning from others and leverage Continue Reading »
Issues of Categorization in Citizen Feedback Systems

Written on September 10, 2014 at 6:35 pm, by NULab Administrator
Classification schemes can tell us a lot about organizations, their politics and practices. For citizen feedback applications, incident categories are a central component that negotiate between the ways in which users perceive an incident and the formats that the city’s organization can process and act upon. Currently, there is no default taxonomy for Open311-based incident Continue Reading »
Volunteer Science Project
Written on September 10, 2014 at 6:11 pm, by NULab Administrator
Volunteer Science is an online platform enabling anyone to participate in social science research. The goal of Volunteer Science is to build a thriving community of research participants and social science researchers for Massively Open Online Social Experiments (“MOOSEs”). The architecture of Volunteer Science has been built to be open to researchers, transparent to participants, Continue Reading »
Digital Humanities Open Office Hours: Spring Semester 2015
Written on September 10, 2014 at 5:26 pm, by NULab Administrator
Digital Humanities Open Office Hours Digital Humanities Open Office Hours will be held this spring semester on Tuesdays* from 2:00-3:15 pm in the Digital Scholarship Commons (2nd floor of Snell Library). *note: the first meeting will take place on Wednesday, January 21th from 2:00-3:15. DH Open Office Hours are opportunities for students, faculty members, and librarians to Continue Reading »