Month: May 2022

Enlarge (credit: Chuchart Duangdaw)

Spring has brought remarkably extreme heat to India and Pakistan this year. Unusually extensive heatwaves have followed one after another since March and are continuing well into May. The situation presents a conundrum for rapid studies of the role of climate change in this event, as we can’t yet put an end date on it. Nevertheless, a pair of studies have looked into the influence of the climate on March and April's heat.

Daily and monthly temperature records have been broken in many areas. Thermometers have hit temperatures as high as 120°F (49°C), and the heat has been accompanied by abnormally dry weather. Record-breaking heatwaves often coincide with drought, as the dry ground heats up even more without the cooling effect of evaporation. However, the lower humidity has reduced the heat's threat to human health, though at least 90 deaths have been reported so far, and that number is expected to rise.

Working outdoors has been extremely challenging, and the impacts of the slowdown have added up as the heat drags on. The effect on agriculture has been significant, with wheat yield losses already estimated at 10–35 percent in areas of northern India, for example. With Ukrainian exports down because of war, India had previously been planning to increase its own exports but instead instituted an export ban this month.

Lori Garver and Eric Berger on commercial space at Ars Frontiers 2022. Click here for transcript. (video link)

During the Ars Frontiers conference earlier this month, former deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver spoke about her efforts to change the space agency when President Obama came into office.

Large bureaucracies are resistant to change, of course, and NASA had been around for five decades in 2009. In particular, Garver and other appointees from the Obama administration sought to help NASA take advantage of the country's emerging commercial space industry.

Enlarge / The end is coming for two of Nintendo's digital storefronts.

Back in February, Nintendo announced plans to shut down the digital eShops on the 3DS and Wii U, two consoles that it said have "become less used by consumers over time." After today, the first phase of that plan will go into effect, and players will no longer be able to use a credit card to add new funds to their eShop wallets.

Physical eShop gift cards, which can still be purchased at major retailers, will be redeemable until August 29. But today marks the last chance to add eShop funds directly without going through an outside retailer.

Players who add funds today (or who use funds in a linked "Nintendo Account wallet" as used on the Switch) will still be able to make purchases until "late March 2023," Nintendo said. Purchases made before that cutoff will still be available to redownload "for the foreseeable future" as well, though demos and "free-to-start" games will no longer be downloadable after that date.

Enlarge / The Thomas C2 Jouley is a popular electric school bus. (credit: Thomas Built Buses)

Although much of President Joe Biden's plans to fight climate change have died thanks to obstruction from the Senate, he did manage to squeeze in a few sops to our ever-warming planet. Among those is a $5 billion program to replace dirty diesel school buses with more environmentally friendly options.

It's called the Clean School Bus Program, and it's administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, which began formally accepting applications this past Friday.

Specifically, the EPA is aiming to replace older (model year 2010 or older) diesel-powered school buses, which must be scrapped in order for a clean bus to be bought to replace them. Oh, and the old bus has to be fully functional—this isn't intended as a way to make the government pay for broken junk to be replaced with shiny new buses.