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• The Touch Factor
• When Finding a Dentist Is Like Pulling Teeth
• Monkey See, Monkey Say?
• Anyone Here Speak Urdu?
• Cell Phones Take Center Stage
WOW Goes Global
While video games stamped "Made in the USA" often struggle abroad, especially in Asia, World of Warcraft has become a global entertainment phenomenon. Also known as WOW, the game has nearly 7 million subscribers and is expected to generate more than $1 billion in revenues this year. World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine, Calif., has more than 3 million players in China and about 2 million in the U.S. The game is also hugely popular in South Korea and Europe. Most players pay around $14 a month for access. "What WOW has done better than other games is be able to appeal to both audiences, hard-core players, and more casual players," says Kim Daejoong, 29, of South Korea. "That's why you've seen people all over the world get into the game."
The Touch Factor
Consumers love to touch products in stores, especially clothing: They like to feel the fabric and try things on. The problem for retailers is that people don't like buying things that other people have touched, as a recent study demonstrates. Researchers sent 261 students into the University of Alberta bookstore in Edmonton with instructions to try on a particular university-logo T-shirt and rate its quality. In some cases, the shirt was in the dressing room; in other instances, it was on the return rack near the dressing room. A third group of students got a shirt from the store's regular racks. The closer the shirt was to the dressing room, the less the students liked it. The average rating, out of 7, of a fresh shirt from the store rack was 5.2; the average rating of a shirt from the dressing room was 2.47. The explanation, according to Andrea C. Morales, a marketing professor at Arizona State University: "It's the idea of this ambiguous other, full of germs, coming into contact with what I'm going to put on my body."
When Finding a Dentist Is Like Pulling Teeth
William Kelly, 43, of Rochdale, England, couldn't get professional treatment for his aching tooth. Finally, he says, "I snapped it out myself." Kelly's predicament is due in large part to deficiencies in Britain's state-financed dental service: There are too few dentists for too many people. Discouraged by what they say is the assembly-line nature of their job, dentists areleaving the National Health Service (NHS) and going into private practice. Every time Kelly tried to sign up with an NHS dentist—lining up with hundreds of others who were desperate and hurting—he arrived too late and missed the cutoff. "You could say that Britain has not seen lines like this since World War II," says Mark Pritchard, a member of Parliament. "Churchill once said that the British are great queuers, but I don't think he meant that in connection to dental care."
Monkey See, Monkey Say?
Researchers taping calls of the putty-nosed monkey in the forests of Nigeria may have come a small step closer to understanding the origin of human language. The researchers, who are from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, heard the monkeys string two alarm calls into a combined sound with a different meaning, as if forming a word. The monkeys have a "pyow" sound to call attention to leopards and a "hack" sound to warn of an eagle. Adult male monkeys in each group also make a "pyow-hack" call that prompts the group to leave an area. But Marc Hauser, an animal-communications expert at Harvard, advises caution before assuming the monkeys' combination of alarm calls is similar to the way in which humans form words. "Because there is no evidence that the calls are words or even word-like," Hauser says, "the connection to language is tenuous."
Anyone Here Speak Urdu?
Fluency in foreign languages can lead to well-paying jobs as translators or interpreters—professions that have grown rapidly in the post-9/11 world. (Translators convert written material; interpreters convert spoken language.) To get an idea of what languages are in demand, follow the news. These days, in addition to Chinese and Arabic, there's demand for speakers of Pashto and Dari (Afghanistan), Farsi (Iran), and Urdu (Pakistan). The Bureau of Labor Statistics says there were 31,000 translator/interpreter jobs in the U.S. in 2004—up 40 percent from 2000. The average full-time salary was $38,000; those working at federal agencies averaged over $70,000.
