March 5, 2017

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Business March 5, 2017

Does Nintendo's New Console Signal A 'Switch' For The Video Game Market?

There’s hype surrounding Nintendo’s first home-to-handheld hybrid console, Switch. Wall Street Journal technology reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles says this could be a make or break moment for Nintendo.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Moving on to technology…

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SUPER MARIO THEME”)

MARTIN: “Super Mario” and “The Legend Of Zelda” are all part of the Nintendo legacy. But now, beloved games from 30 years ago are getting a facelift to compete against Xbox and PlayStation, not to mention the hundreds of mobile apps that have frankly put Nintendo a bit on the back foot.

Nintendo has unveiled what many game reviewers are calling a game-changer. It’s called Switch, but let’s see if the Nintendo Switch is worth all the hype. To find out more about it, we called Wall Street Journal technology reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles. He’s with us now from San Francisco. Nathan, thanks so much for joining us.

NATHAN OLIVAREZ-GILES: Yeah. My pleasure.

MARTIN: So why is this Switch such a big deal?

OLIVAREZ-GILES: Well, the Switch is the first home console to really balance being a system that you can play on your television in high definition, but then something you can take on the road with you as well. The Switch also reintroduces motion-sensing controllers that were made popular by the Wii, Nintendo’s last big hit in a new way. And they’re smaller, they’re lighter, they’re untethered. And it’s a bit of a nostalgia play, but it also really looks towards the future with a console unlike anything we’ve seen before.

MARTIN: How much does it cost?

OLIVAREZ-GILES: Just the console itself costs $299, and what you get is the tablet with its 6.2-inch touch screen. You get the two joy-con motion controllers which allow you to play with a friend easily. But if you slide them onto either side of the tablet, it creates one solid on-the-go console. And then you get a dock that you put the tablet into when you want to play on a television set. So that’s a pretty fair price. And that’s what videogame systems are going for these days.

MARTIN: So you’ve played it. What do you think?

OLIVAREZ-GILES: Well, at this point, the hardware is the best that Nintendo has ever made. And I’ve had a total blast playing it. The standout game for me was “The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.” If you’re a “Zelda” fan, this is one of the best “Zelda” games ever made. But at this point, there’s just not enough to play on it. So the hardware has massive potential, but I think a lot of people should wait until the games get better.

MARTIN: They have to because what I’m reading in the business press – yours included – is that it’s already sold out almost everywhere. Why is that?

OLIVAREZ-GILES: Well, you know, the hype is really strong. And Nintendo has a lot of hearts and minds because of decades worth of games and relationships they’ve built with gamers. You know, people hear “Mario,” and they hear “Zelda” and there’s a almost romantic and fun idea of what’s going to be happening there. So the Wii U, which was the previous Nintendo console fell flat on its face. I think they sold about 13 million units worldwide where the Wii before that sold about 100 million units. So Nintendo needs a big hit, and this is one of those make-or-break moments for the company.

MARTIN: Before we let you go, do we expect competitors like Sony and Microsoft to – makers of the PlayStation the Xbox – to follow suit?

OLIVAREZ-GILES: Microsoft and Sony so far don’t have anything like this in the works that we know of or that they’ve spoken publicly about. What they’re doing is they’re beefing up their consoles with even more processing power, and then they’re making them compatible with virtual reality headsets. Nintendo hasn’t gone the VR route yet. They say they’re open to it in the future, but they’re kind of steering clear of it.

Nintendo’s always really been more about fun game play with other people around you, rather than teraflops worth of processing power inside of a VCR-like box. And that’s really the route that Microsoft and Sony are battling in right now.

MARTIN: That was Wall Street Journal tech reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles joining us from San Francisco. Nathan, thanks so much.

OLIVAREZ-GILES: My pleasure.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health March 5, 2017

Thomas Starzl, Trailblazer In Organ Transplantation, Dies At 90

In this 1989 photograph, Thomas Starzl oversees a liver transplant operation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Starzl won a National Medal of Science in 2004.

Gene J. Puskar/AP

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Gene J. Puskar/AP

Thomas Starzl, the doctor who pioneered liver transplant surgery, has died at the age of 90. In an announcement on its website, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said Starzl died peacefully at his home on Saturday.

“His work in neuroscience, metabolism, transplantation and immunology has brought life and hope to countless patients, and his teaching in these areas has spread that capacity for good to countless practitioners and researchers everywhere,” his family wrote in a statement issued Sunday by UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh.

“With determination and irresistible resolve, Thomas Starzl advanced medicine through his intuition and uncanny insight into both the technical and human aspects of even the most challenging problems.”

Chancellor Emeritus Nordenberg on the passing of Dr. Starzl: “He became a hero to countless patients.” pic.twitter.com/DJVuC02Gng

— Pitt (@PittTweet) March 5, 2017

By the time he died, Starzl widely enjoyed a towering reputation in the medical profession — but this was not always the case. The doctor, who eventually became known as the “father of transplantation,” drew his fair share of criticism when he began experimenting with transplants.

“Transplanting was hardly even thought of as a possibility then,” Starzl once said. “I was working blind.”

In 1963, Starzl led the team of surgeons that performed the world’s first liver transplant. The patient, a child who had been born with half a liver, did not survive that operation due to excessive blood loss.

Undeterred, Starzl attempted the operation again just two months later on another patient who suffered from liver cancer. This time, it appeared to be a success — until the man died three weeks afterward, this time from blood clotting.

Still, Starzl kept working, also researching drugs to block the human immune system from rejecting its newly implanted organ. And by the late 1970s, the survival rate for patients undergoing liver transplantation had risen to roughly 40 percent.

When in the early ’80s he left the University of Colorado for the University of Pittsburgh, where we would go on to spend more than three decades, Starzl and his surgical team had already transplanted more than 1,000 livers. Under his leadership, UPMC would go on to become one of the world’s foremost transplant centers.

During his time there, he became known as a prolific publisher. In fact, as UPMC notes, the Institute for Scientific Information identified Starzl in 1999 as “the most cited scientist in the field of clinical medicine.” The ISI estimated that for a time he was averaging the publication of one paper every 7.3 days, according to UPMC.

For his achievements, the school renamed its transplant institute after Starzl in 1996.

By that point, however, Starzl had retired from performing surgery. Following his own coronary bypass surgery in 1990, he decided it was time to give up the scalpel — much to his personal relief, as it turns out.

“I was not emotionally equipped to be a surgeon or to deal with its brutality,” Starzl acknowledged in his 1992 memoir, The Puzzle People.

Despite Starzl’s achievements at the operating table, his family says he should perhaps be best remembered as a teacher and a friend.

“Even more extraordinary [than his medical advances] was his ability to gift that capacity to those around him, allowing his students and colleagues to discover the right stuff within themselves,” the family said in its statement.

“Nobody who spent time with Thomas Starzl could remain unaffected.”

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Sports March 5, 2017

Out Of Bounds: The National Women's Hockey League

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks to Ashley Johnston, captain of the New York Riveters hockey team about sustaining passion for the sport in a league that barely pays any money.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRIBECA SONG, “GET LARGE”)

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The New York Riveters did not live up to their name last night. They lost to the Boston Pride 4-3.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Kessel beats her player down the side and she scores. What a shot by Amanda Kessel.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: That will do it. The Boston Pride come from behind and shock the New York Riveters.

KELLY: The Riveters and the Pride are two of the four teams that make up the NWHL. That’s the National Women’s Hockey League, which is now in its second season. On today’s edition of Out of Bounds, we’re going to talk with the captain of the New York Riveters. That’s 24-year-old Ashley Johnston. She’s at our member station WAMC in Albany, N.Y. Hey there.

ASHLEY JOHNSTON: Hey.

KELLY: Great to have you on. I am told you have played hockey since you were 8 years old. Is that right?

JOHNSTON: That is correct.

KELLY: Did you ever dream you would grow up and be able to play it professionally?

JOHNSTON: Definitely not. When I was younger, I always thought that I’d be the first female playing in the NHL. That was my dream, especially, you know, obviously playing with a bunch of guys. And then, once I got older, I realized that that wasn’t exactly going to be feasible. So then it became a dream of playing in the Olympics.

KELLY: What’s it like to play now, finally, in front of an audience that had to buy tickets?

JOHNSTON: I mean, it’s so different. Our fans are absolutely amazing. There’s nothing better than playing and then midway through a game hearing a let’s go, Riveters chant. It kind of sends chills down your back. We have some – Rivs superfans, are what they call themselves, and they’re some of the best people I’ve ever met and they are die-hard fans.

KELLY: And I should mention, you also have a day job to help pay the bills. You’re an industrial engineer. You work at a robotics company. Is that typical? Do most of the players on your team have other jobs?

JOHNSTON: Most of the girls have some sort of work, whether it be part time or full time. And then you kind of have the other half where they’re just solely playing hockey.

KELLY: And it’s pro hockey, meaning you should be able to earn a living from this, but we should note that the pay is, for lack of a better word, crummy. You make $260 a game, is that right?

JOHNSTON: That is correct.

KELLY: How does that compare to what the guys make?

JOHNSTON: One of the girls was telling me that some of the NHL players, that their signing bonus would cover one team’s entire salary.

KELLY: Wow.

JOHNSTON: It’s an entirely different world. There’s a lot of extra zeros on their paychecks.

KELLY: What’s that like, having grown up playing these guys, competing against them to a certain age and then you see them go on to these astronomical NHL salaries and you’re making $260 a game?

JOHNSTON: I mean, it’s definitely – it’s – in some sense, it’s a tough pill to swallow. But really, prior to the NWHL, there wasn’t even a league for you to compete in. So that was almost harder because you’d see your college friends graduating, going and signing pro contracts, and you’re like, oh, there’s literally nothing else for me. Like, this is the end of the road.

And I know for me, I felt like my last year of college, I was still getting better. So I was almost worse because I wasn’t at my peak yet. So even having the opportunity to play is now a great first step.

KELLY: I have to ask just the basic question of, why is this worth it? I mean, what is it about hockey that makes you get out there for this terrible pay, your – have a long commute to get there? Why get out there on the ice every day?

JOHNSTON: Obviously, over time, that kind of – that dream, that desire has changed. When I was younger, you know, obviously you have the love of the game. And then when I was in high school, it was – an opportunity to go to college was a huge drive and huge reason for my passion. And now I help out with a U12 team.

One of the girls came up to me and she just goes, I want to be just like you when I’m older. And right there is just so much – that adds fuel. That just adds drive because now she’s saying – she walks around with her little Riveters T-shirt, wants to be on the Riveters, and that’s what she wants to do. She wants to be a professional women’s hockey player.

KELLY: That is the captain of the New York Riveters, Ashley Johnston. Ashley, thanks so much for coming by. Good luck with the season.

JOHNSTON: Thank you and thank you very much for having me.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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