Nick Neville

Sen. Dean Tran, R-Fitchburg, has spent his entire life breaking boundaries. After spending just two years in his native Vietnam, Mr. Tran and his family set out to escape the communist confines of their home and come to the United States.

As lawmakers begin thinking about how to best integrate self-driving cars in the coming years, a pair of Worcester Polytechnic Institute researchers are developing the technology behind these vehicles.

With various communities failing to meet the state’s affordable housing requirements, lawmakers on Beacon Hill are working with local officials to address what Gov. Charles D. Baker Jr. called a housing crisis in the state.

Sandra Madden didn’t know much about concussions or brain injuries until one day when her life changed in an instant. Ms. Madden, a Douglas resident, sustained a brain injury in a bicycle accident in June 2006, and her post-concussive syndrome went undiagnosed for 18 months. Now, 11 years and multiple falls later, she still feels the lingering effects of traumatic brain injury.

Dozens of high school students from around the state gathered last Thursday at the Statehouse, urging lawmakers to pass a bill that would require any school offering sex education to use a “medically accurate, age-appropriate” curriculum with the hope of fostering healthy relationships.

With the number of homeless families in Massachusetts nearly doubling in the past 10 years, and chronic homelessness continuing to be an issue in cities including Worcester, legislators and advocates are calling for more state funding to assist those in need.