Parents tell their kids, “Shut the front door, I’m not paying to cool the entire neighborhood.”
But research shows that, during Phoenix summers, we do pay to heat the neighborhood — to the tune of 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit — thanks to waste heat vented by our air conditioners.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
Air Conditioners Heat Up Metro Phoenix Nights
No one expects the machinery of progress to roll backwards, but sometimes it seems that no one is watching the speedometer (or manning the brakes, assuming any exist). Is this a fair assessment? If so, should we be worried — and what can we do about it?
In this feature, experts on technology, risk, science, policy and neuroscience discuss risk, innovation and how our values affect our conceptions of both.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
ASU Experts Weigh the Risks of Innovation
Every six months, the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station southwest of Phoenix, Arizona shuts down one of its three reactors for refueling and maintenance.
Join me in this feature-length venture into the belly of the beast, from the storage casks to the open reactor itself.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
http://science.kjzz.org/node/472070
Video game localization has come a long way since a sub-par port of Zero Wing gave us the classic “All Your Base are Belong to Us” meme. As game companies have gone international, and as their products have ballooned from small-batch text-and-sprite diversions to interactive blockbusters, the industry that makes those games accessible to other cultures has done its best to keep pace – despite too often being treated as an afterthought by game companies .
Find out how this process has evolved from basic text translation to fully embrace cultural norms, preferences and taboos as I explain …
How Video Game Localization Works
In the real world, disasters aren’t just a matter of scale – they’re a question of preparedness and of a society’s capacity to handle the fallout. Vaccines, rapid-response teams and early-warning systems can move the needle from calamity toward recovery, while poverty, corruption and ignorance slide it toward catastrophe. So, cue announcer: “In a world … where real disasters aren’t single events that arise from simple problems that are solvable in 93 minutes …”
