In Hollywood, about the only things that “special effects” utterly needs in  “plausibility” is six letters. Hence, fans of an intellectually impoverished but vastly entertaining, continent-mashing movie of a season ago ought to get a special kick from the kicker in a Popular Science account out this week. It is by Rebecca Boyle on some news out of the underground Gran Sasso National Laboratory. It is beneath an Italian peak of the same name with neutrinos from the Sun, CERN, and supernovae its main quarries. Now, as a bonus, an international team with a large contingent at Princeton University says it has, via  the lab’s system of nested, giant nylon and stainless steel spheres, 1000 photomultipliers,  and 100 tons of fluid somewhat like benzene, detected the scintillations of a few geoneutrinos.

Okay, Boyle’s reporting – as seems to be the norm at Pop. Sci’s daily news monitoring operation – appears to be a rewrite of the Princeton Press release linked below in Grist. But her final line is witty and inspired with its reference to arks that may stump people with over-refined tastes in movies (she does provide a link toward clarity).

The news itself is a bit of a surprise to me, anyway. I don’t recall hearing the term geoneutrinos before. They’re from decay of such elements are uranium in the Earth and could, if detected in more numbers, tell science how much the Earth is heated by radioactivity, something on the composition of the planet’s deep interior, and fundamental, important things like that.

Second Time is No Charm Dept: Coverage, in keeping with the detectability of neutrinos, is sparse. Too bad. This may partly be due to the fact – discovered part way through this post hence this shift in tone  – these results were formally reported in the April Physics Review B. But even then, there was hardly any coverage. Princeton didn’t get much more mileage from its release than UMass did back in late March.

Other stories:

• Trenton Times – Matt Connolly: Scientists unearth way to detect geoneutrinos ; That’s amazing – putting “geoneutrinos” in the hed. At least it doesn’t say geoantineutrinos, which is more fussily accurate. Maybe readers, without a clue what it means, read on for that reason. Its a short piece.

March 2010 stories:

• Times (UK) Hannah Devlin, Laura Margottini: Geo-neutrino anti-matter found by scientists at Borexino detector ;
• ANI (via SyFy.c0m): Physicists detect geo-neutrinos from deep within Earth’s core ; Hmm. From the core? Or from all that silicate stuff around it?

Grist for the Mill:

Princeton University Press Release ; Princeton Borexino Group page ;  2006 paper on Geoneutrino detection plans ; arXiv explanation of the Borexino detector ;

March 25 U.Mass Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

A splurt of news is coming over the transom that, in the UK, a study of mobile telephone transmission towers – the cellular ends of cellphone systems – finds no significant correlation with cancer rates in children born to women living nearby when pregnant. There’s little reason to think otherwise, but people are worried so health doctors and other public health epidemiologists are running studies.  I wouldn’t much bother with this null result except for the link embedded in the Wall Street Journal on line by blogger Katherine Hopson. She does a fine job putting the UK study in perspective, and also provides a service with the link.

It goes to a clever story last month by the Journal’s numbers guy, Carl Bialik. He reviewed a study that, on the face of it, indicates that using a cell phone protects one from brain tumors. Of course, cell towers and cell phones provide different exposures, so the stories don’t have much to do with another except that both examine potential perils that on principle (lack of ionizing radiation) make them unlikely cancer causes.

Anyway. Bialik took advantage of the ambiguity of any study that tries to put hard numbers on obscure things that are nearly not there, and maybe not there at all. Cell phones, one has to think, don’t shield one from cancer. But if they also don’t cause it, error bars can make a given study shade into nonsense territory. Voila, says Bialik, here’s a study whose naively-viewed results make NO SENSE. This is a good way to make a point about the misdirection of small number statistics.

A few other stories on cell towers in UK:

• Guardian : No link between childhood cancer and mobile phone masts ;
• deck of the day prize to Register – Bill Ray: Mobile phone masts not such a menace / Unlikely to hurt babies unless they actually fall on ‘em.
• Washington Post (Checkup Blog) Jennifer LaRue Huget : Do cell phone towers cause cancer?

- Charlie Petit

Good for AP for staffing the Int’l Whaling Commission meeting in Morocco, and good on reporter Arthur Max for putting together a breaking news story on the dramatic non-result with a story that has muscle, news, historic perspective, and emotion.

It looks as though Max is having a tough time keeping personal feelings under cover. As in the lede, where he says the IWC failed to stem the quasi-legal whaling of Japan in particular, allowing its ships to keep harpooning away, “even raiding a marine sanctuary in Antarctic waters unchecked.” The verb “to raid” does not radiate neutrality toward such behavior.

Other stories filed from the meeting:

• Reuters – Tom Pfeiffer, Christian Lowe: Whaling moratorium talks break down ;
  
• BBC – Richard Black: Hopes fade of compromise over whaling;
• AFP - Whaling ban must stay, say 200 scientists ; One is a bit unsure how many delegates are scientists – except some of the kind of course that do scientific whaling wink wink.

Other (merely) sad whale news:

• AP: Stranded Danish whale dies ;

- Charlie Petit

Should society allow a certain degree of whaling? This is a question not only of scientific, but also political, cultural, and – perhaps – economical considerations – not to speak of emotions and political populism. Nevertheless, it is mostly discussed by science/environmental reporters, which is a good thing, if the journalists tend to stick to the facts. Hans Schuh (Die Zeit) wrote down his thoughts about the outcome of the negotiations at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) today. He describes the standoff situation at the commission, where pro- and contra-hunting nations paralyze any political advancements (Headline: “Deep in the religious war”). Which is, from a rational standpoint, not a good thing, because this way, some nations (Norway, Japan, Iceland) just ignore the prohibition of whale hunting and more whales loose their lives than a new agreement would have allowed. The proposal to allow a certain degree of hunting is not automatically a breach of the whaling ban. Schuh writes very carefully about how bad it is not only for the whales but for a democratic institution like the IWC, if opposing fractions unconciliatory insist on their position and do not even seek for a consensus. He asks the question, whether the “quarrelsome talking-shop” (the IWC) is still able to find a compromise, anyway, and whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to just close it. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung follows the same thinking: “Whaling debate in a dead-end“, also the article from Michael Miersch (Welt): “The Angels of the Oceans“.

Regarding the outcome of the IWC (NO resolution), some articles start with a not quite right headline, like “Commission stops whale hunters” (Spiegel online) - as if the commission had actively done something.

(Short parenthesis: Of course I know, that the authors are not always responsible for the headlines. But someone at the particular newspaper or journal or website IS. So keep the Tracker’s remarks as what they are: Never a personal critique but hopefully sometimes a starting point for thinking about or discussing quality standards – either between author and editor or within a whole editorial board.)

Others chose more apropriate headlines: “Whaling keeps prohibited” (Standard.de), or “Whaling ban persists” (Rheinische Post online), “Whale hunting still prohibited” (Süddeutsche). Also: Stern.de

Bummer, that only a few articles (Süddeutsche, e.g.) mentioned briefly the criticism of US-scientists, that the  science committee of the IWC and scientific data “lost influence”. Perhaps its more time later to dig deeper and try to find out, what data are not taken into account? To get back to facts and raise the possibility of a compromise in favor of the whales…

Sascha Karberg

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Craig Venter is in Valencia (a coastal city in Spain). From there he and colleagues will cross the Mediterranean aboard his 100-foot sloop Sorcerer II, searching sampled sea water for microbial genes that may be useful for biofuel production, bioremediation, or other industrial, medical and environmental purposes. The Spanish press covers his visit with moderate enthusiasm and with no mention of local researchers that are working on the same things.

Also, a few stories celebrate already the 10^th anniversary of the first draft of sequence of the human genome. We highlight an extensive special prepared by El Mundo. In some of these stories we perceive certain disappointment at the lack of medical applications after so long. One wonders if the big, frustrated expectations are the ones that researchers held, or the ones that many communicators claimed to be the important ones

Craig Venter estuvo esta semana en Valencia anunciando su nueva misión en aguas Mediterráneas en busca de genes microbianos que puedan tener aplicaciones biotecnológicas. La más citada: biocombustibles aprovechando procesos metabólicos de algas. Tanto entusiasmo expresa, que aseguró que “España puede vivir una nueva revolución industrial” si aprovecha su agua salada, sol y dióxido de carbono. Bastante homogeneidad en el tratamiento de la noticia, y desaparición de los recelos que suscitó su anuncio de la primera célula con ADN sintético. Ya todo vuelven a ser elogios y grandes esperanzas. En ninguna nota hemos encontrado el contrapunto de alguno de los muchísimos investigadores españoles que también están analizando los microorganismos del litoral mediterráneo. Hubiera sido deseable esta visión “externa”. Sobre todo, porque muchos científicos están trabajando hacia los mismos objetivos de Venter, también con metagenómica o desde la perspectiva de la biología sintética. Sin duda el proyecto de Venter con el Sorcerer II es de una escala descomunal, pero más allá de eso, nos quedamos reflexionando sobre las diferencias fundamentales del enfoque de Venter y lo que ya hacen el resto de investigadores en España. Este matiz fue muy bien abordado durante el anuncio de Venter hace unas semanas, pero el análisis crítico no parece haber tenido continuidad. Está bien incluir las alabanzas de Grisolía, pero no es suficiente. Algunas notas:

Levante (periódico regional valenciano): J. Sierra “La nueva revolución industrial”, es la primera de una serie de 3 notas sobre la visita de Venter. En ella destaca los puntos básicos de su plan general en diseño de genomas y biología sintética. En “El padre de la célula artificial busca en el Mediterráneo 80 millones de genes” profundiza más en el proyecto específico en el Mediterráneo. Da ejemplos concretos, y amplia muy bien la nota anterior. Vemos también que el término “artificial” para calificar la célula presentada por Venter ha cuajado, a pesar de las reacciones en contra que obtuvo. Encontramos también una pequeña nota de J. Sierra sobre el Sorcerer II, y su funcionamiento.

Público – Toni García de Dios: “Venter inicia en Valencia su pesca de ADN marino”. Buen resumen de los puntos principales de la noticia, incidiendo en que los resultados obtenidos por Venter serán públicos. Nos permitimos la duda de que esto ocurra, en caso de encontrar un gen clave en un alga que le permita diseñar un proceso industrial de generación de biocombustibles a partir de dióxido de carbono y luz solar.

El Mundo – Miguel G. Corral: “Craig Venter busca en el Mediterráneo la clave de los combustibles del futuro”. También una concisa y bien redactado nota, muy halagadora con Venter.

Sin duda oiremos hablar más de Venter esta semana, pues se acerca el 26 de Junio: décimo aniversario de la presentación del primer borrador del proyecto genoma humano. Si todavía estáis perfilando alguna nota, merece la pena que echéis un vistazo al muy completo especial que presentó el pasado domingo El Mundo: “Genoma; el mapa de la vida”. Valoraremos más adelante el documento junto con el resto de notas que rastreemos, pero revisadlo porque podemos encontrar buenos gráficos, vídeos, una cronología, y una interesantísima -y de muy recomendable lectura- sección donde 5 expertos responden a las mismas preguntas 5 claves. Un formato a tener en cuenta, e ideal para esta información. Entre otras cosas, sin mostrarse entusiasmados, todos los expertos reconocen que más o menos sí se han cumplido las expectativas. En ciertas notas estamos detectando una tendencia a decir que se ha conseguido poco; o “menos de lo esperado”. Esta es la línea de la muy buena introdución de Cristina de Martos “muchas letras, pero pocas frases”, que recoge una expresión biensonante pero ambigua de un científico diciendo que “hemos avanzado más de lo que sospechábamos pero menos de lo que esperábamos”. También se muestra crítica, en Clarín, la periodista argentina Valeria Román: “Diez años después de descifrado, el genoma humano aún no aportó beneficios”. El titular nos parece del todo injusto. Si bien es cierto lo que argumenta el artículo: que la información adquirida en los últimos años todavía no se ha implantado a gran escala en la práctica médica, no es cierto que no haya empezado a dar beneficios. Desde luego en mayor conocimiento, pero también en diagnósticos y tratamientos. Subyaciendo a estas visiones, uno se pregunta si las expectativas que parecen no haberse cumplido en estos 10 años son las que anunciaron los científicos, o las que en su momento exageramos los periodistas y comunicadores.

- Pere Estupinyà

New Scientist‘s Helen Knight has out a shortish column that inspires hopes in the breasts of those of us who crave the day somebody reveals in a big convincing way that a cheap, sure way to sequester CO2 affordably has been proven and that the carbon will stay down in its rocky tomb forever so go ahead burn coal till the end of time for all we care.

It appears a solid lead is being followed toward that end, featuring the addition of a bacterium with the great name Bacillus subtilis. It helps, it says here, turn the pressurized, injected CO2 into stone. That species name looks so perfectly subterranean. Curious, I looked it up. It’s not so exotic, actually, being used as a model organism in labs already, common in soil and useful to boosting its arability and, accdg to Wikipedia, not harmful to people but a reason that spoiled bread dough can get stringy.

One suspects that writer Knight is also among those ardently rooting for, and a bit jaded by, the hunt for CO2 sequestration that is not fiction. Her lede, italics added by me, includes the phrase “… the latest recipe  for a secure carbon dioxide storage site. “  Sigh.

- Charlie Petit

Freelance writer Wendee Holtcamp has a pretty good gig, blogging for Nature from an NSF expedition into the Bering Sea aboard a vessel named the R/V Thomas G. Thompson. It is sailing out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. This is where that scary Discovery Channel docu-series Deadliest Catch is based, showing how tough it can be to get a king crab. She had me when, to point out the remoteness and perilousness of this busy fishing harbor, she drolly remarked about what one ought expect “from a place with an airport named Emergency Field’ , nailed down by a further droll quote from another Aleution air field’s sign, “Declare firearms. Antlers prohibited.”

That’s part one linked above. In part II, she introduces a jellyfish with tentacles longer than a blue whale.

This looks like blogging-logging-from-wild-places-for-science of high style. I looked up the author to find out a bit more. Here’s her website. It’s unclear whether she’s up there on her own ticket, on expense account, or what (Maybe NSF etc. pay for shipboard time, which is pretty standard even for staff writers). Could be for book research? Nice start.

- Charlie Petit

Via Proceedings of the National Acad. of Sciences and a press conference in Addis Ababa this week comes word, declared by a Cleveland Museum of Natural History researcher plus colleagues and quickly snapped up by several news outlets, that in Ethiopia hasbeen found a longer-limbed and considerably older specimen of Australopithecus afarensis. It is thus kin to “Lucy,” the diminutive, walking, chimp-headed hominid that will always by the glamor girl of her clan, and which (or  who) catapulted paleoanthropologists Don Johanson and Tim White to public acclaim nearly thirty years ago.

Stories make much of the partial skeleton’s long tibia and of evidence that it could arch its back while striding along, hinting to a limberness of gait and implication the walking style of us people has deep roots. And judging from the coverage, one outlet at least has a deep squad for covering news such as this – with brio too despite dependence apparently mainly on rewriting press releases and accounts on other agencies.

Stories:

• Cleveland Plain Dealer – JohnMangels: Partial skeleton from Lucy’s species shows human ancestors walked like we do 3.6 million years ago ;
• Science News – Bruce Bower: Lucy fossil gets jolted upright by Big Man ; On the Desi Arnaz moment, and disagreement among experts whether this fossil changes things a little or a lot.
• Nat’l Geographic – Ker Than: “Lucy” Kin Pushes Back Evolution of Upright Walking? ;
• MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle : Lucy’s ‘great grandfather’ found ; Boyle calls up Johanson and gets an enthusiastic comment. One also notes that the Cosmic Log website has been handsomely revised. But his name should be more prominent.
• NatureNews – Rex Dalton: Africa’s next top hominid/Ancient human relative could walk upright ;
• Akron Beacon Journal – Carol Biliczky: Discovery in human evolution ; Good on the local outlet (Owen Lovejoy is at nearby Kent State U) for tackling this – even if the copy editor hadn’t the nerve to try anything but a most generic and flabby hed. The reporter sways the other way, declaring that the find is “smashing beliefs” about Lucy. For all that the account is serious, and pretty good.
• Thaindian News  I- Aishwarya Bhatt: Newly found hominid may be the grandfather of the fossil Lucy ; Enthusiastic, charming, but with some odd phrasings such as that (and differently from the hed) it says “It is believed to be the great grandfather of the fossil Lucy.” Employed as a metaphor of sorts, the word works, but in this construction it implies literal meaning. And where it says it implies “that the human legs evolved much earlier than first thought,” one is similarly unsure if this is simply an encounter with Indian English usage that rings oddly on the American ear or what. It seems to miss the point that it is the ensemble of pelvis, spine, and other things aside from leg bones alone that permit modern human walking.
• Thaindian News II – Madhuri Dey : Grandfather of Fossil Lucy Discovered ; This outlet sure covered it, but how do two different people filing from the same bureau (Wash DC) manage to write it up and get it on line, independently? This news service serves mysteries.
• Thaindian News III – Pen Men At Work : Grandfather Of Fossil Lucy Unearthed In Ethiopia ; Ack. More mystery from this outlet, and the byline I kid you not is Pen Men At Work. There be jokesters there? Here the usages veer toward the bizarre, starting with the lede “A global squad of honorable scientists..” and continues with declaration that the remains “divulged superior and straight walking” and that “This data has been uttered by” the lead author. This one has no dateline, so I cannot guess from where the honorable Pen Men At Work filed.

Grist for the Mill:

Cleveland Mus. Nat. History Press Release ; NSF Press Release ;  PNAS Abstract ;

- Charlie Petit

The New York Times has appointed Arthur S. Brisbane, a senior executive at Knight Ridder, as its next public editor.

Let’s hope that Brisbane, in a break with his predecessors, will give the medical and science coverage at the Times the scrutiny it deserves. The paper’s medical and science coverage is the most influential such coverage in the American media, and yet it was rarely critiqued, or praised, or even mentioned by previous public editors at the Times.

I was never entirely surprised by this. Editors at the AP and at Business Week, where I worked, were always far more eager to get involved in political and business coverage, areas where they felt like experts, than they were in science and medical coverage where they might have been–who am I to guess at their motives?–unwilling to reveal how little they knew.

I’m sure Brisbane–a man of considerable experience, even if he’s been an executive lately, rather than a newsman–is confident of his ability to address any journalism issues raised in the Times, including those that arise in medicine and science, as well as politics and polls.

We’ll see.

- Paul Raeburn

Last week, the Covering Health blog of the Association of Health Care Journalists reported that MedPage Today, an online news service for physicians, will henceforth alert readers when a public information staffer listens in on an interview.

Peggy Peck, vice president and executive editor of MedPage Today, said that reporters had been instructed to use phrases such as “in a telephone interview monitored by a public information officer.”

As Peck told Covering Health:

The Tracker does recall, without much detail, reading of chemosynthetic bacteria and complex deep water ecosystems feeding largely on methane and suflides from hydrocarbons seeping from the seafloor. There are some on the walls of the Monterey Canyon. But seldom if ever has the topic gotten such glorious play – disaster does focus attention – as William J. Broad gives it today to front the Science Times section.  On line, it’s even better, thanks to a gorgeous slide show depicting the bacterial mats, sea stars, corals, shrimp, tube worms, mussels, crabs, lobsters, and more that live off an ancient food chain rooted in oozings from the sorts of deposits that the oil industry taps.

(Other media have done the topic recently or touched on it. One sample: McClatchy Newspapers from Andres Viglucci.  Plus, for broader context, at Yale’s E360, David Biello earlier this month did a Q&A on the spill’s impacts with a brief but pointed recognition that some bilogical communities  depend for their existence on petroleum).

The piece is rich in detail. It also flirts a bit with the idea that as the gulf’s deep communities are adapted to oil, that the spill might stimulate them to even greater vigor. But it does not endorse it. Broad clearly wants to be sure not to provide ammo for loons who might declare oil is natural out there, hence no big deal. But I”m not sure he did it as gracefully as he could have. One quote stands out in that regard as, to my eyes, misused and abused. His primary source, a Texas A&M researcher, tells him “The gulf is such a great fishery because it’s fed organic matter from oil. It’s preadapted … the image of this spill being a complete disaster is not true.” The meaning of that sentence is so ambiguous, even given its truth – this is clearly not a complete disaster. It could be worse etc, yet is horrible already. Broad tosses in, in his own voice, that the man’s stance seems to be a minority view. One wonders though – who would argue that the spill is a complete disaster except as a hyperbolic way to say immensely bad?

Most surprising, or orthogonal to conventional wisdom, aspect here (and in line with the rarity of complete disasters), Broad emphasizes that the reviled Minerals Management Service has, in an excursion into wisdom, paid for most scientific study in recent years of these thousands of vulnerable oases of life in the gulf’s depths. The research support, he adds pointedly, comes not from MMS oil regulators but its environmental arm. That’s like BP itself – it may be mostly, but is not totally, tone deaf to energy sanity or prudence. It is on merit these days a corporate tar baby. It remains simultaneously true that it has been among the biggest corporate investors in research on renewable biofuels.

Enough on that. My weekly muse on this single paper’s startlingly huge bolus of science news is getting unwieldy.

Other notable headlines:

• Nicholas Wade :  Chimps, Too, Wage War and Annex Rival Territory ; Yes they do, and it’s a guy thing. Still. Fascinating narrative detail from Uganda – but not much new primatology, sociology, sociobiology, or chimps-as-warriors info. Nice creepy touch: mayhem-bent apes tend to ignore researchers who tag along. One such says it’s a good thing the beetle-browed fellows with the big canines haven’t figured out how much stronger they are than their distant, near-hairless cousins.
• Gina Kolata: New Tools for Helping Heart Patients ; On pacemakers and such and on how much better they are getting, now that they can go wirelessly on line and talk to doctors.
• Erik Vance – The Placebo Effect Finds an Unlikely Champion ; The hed in the link here is the one in the printed section. On line it is Seeking to Illuminate the Mysterious Placebo Effect. Vance interviews a doc who grew up in a Christian Science household. That is apparently why somebody first called him “unlikely” for his interest in the placebo effect and neuroscience. Dunno what happened, but the change is a good one. Seems to me that background makes his interest easily understandable.
• Jane E. Brody: When tanning turns into an addiction ; First day of summer, ergo this seasonal story. It is persuasive with all its cancer stats (enough to make endurable Ms. Brody’s close on a purely anecdotal tale of indoor tanning and melanoma). The theme however is addiction. Teenagers who sit in the sun for hours chatting and glowing and running around sportily without much sunscreen or much of anything else on are one thing. They’re still lookin’ good even if they’ll pay later. But why do middle-aged people who are starting to look like lizards keep at it? They do it for the endorphins, maybe. Like dope fiends.
• Claudia Dreyfus – Q&A with Elaine Fuchs / “It is no longer fashionable to say out lout that you don’t bleive that women should be scientists, but the attitudes remain’ ; The theme is timeless and true but this is one of Dreyfus’s rare misfires. The subhead in the print edition is the one repeated for the preceding link. On line it is the less tendentious “Discovering the Wonders of Skin Cells.” Dunno why the change, but will make a guess. Her subject overcame the mostly-male clubbiness of science and is a success. But some of her specifics don’t persuade – such as an ambiguous anecdote about Bruce Alberts, now former Nat’l Academies head, telling her years ago that he only took the best students into his lab and her inference that he meant not you, girl. Maybe that was his message. Maybe he told the young men that too. Just can’t tell.  And there’s little sign he is a misogynist now, even if he was once. So why leave this in the published piece? Ditto with a couple of other named examples of hurdles and discouragements she survived.

As usual, lots more. Whole Section;

- Charlie Petit

Every four years if happens. If it is time for the German World Cup soccer team to play during working hours, German productivity drops dramatically for at least 90 minutes. About 23 million Germans watched this year’s first German World Cup game against Australia – more than a quarter of the 80 million population! It’s no different with Germans’ Swiss neighbors – this year their team won against Spain, the European champion and one of the odds-on favorites for the prize.

So, no one, especially no one in the media business, can evade World Cup enthusiasm (nigglers call it hype). But how to serve the “topic number one” as science editor? The problem is that (watching) soccer is supposed to be fun. So, articles about the physics of the ball might sound too weisenheimer-ish or – even worse – boring. Science reporting sticks to facts (mostly … from time to time … hopefully sometimes), and people may prefer that the myths of soccer be left alone -  like the quote of the famous English (!) rusher Gary Lineker: “Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball, and one referee who makes a slew of mistakes – and in the end Germany always wins.” (Not quite always, I have to admit). So here is a little overview of how German language colleagues tried to contribute to worldwide soccer madness.

Die Zeit did some research to find the scientific proof for the most common soccer myths, which is fun to read – and helpful for gambling, too. The journal Zeit-Wissen did a not so serious interview with a German physicist, who found a formula, which proves (kind of), that Germany will win the WorldCup.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (full disclosure: I write for them, from time to time) chose to look back into the history of ball games, the Maya’s ball game, respectively (which is very different to soccer). It’s interesting to read, how important the game was for the social life of Maya, Olmec and other pre-columbian indian people – though this is not really new news.

The Frankfurter Rundschau provided hints for readers, especially parents, how to organize the TV consumption for kids – which is helpful and necessary, but, well, a little bit dry and uninspired, which is true, too, for the collection of WorldCup-websites for kids.

Due to the circumstances of the goal, which led to the historical success of the Swiss soccer team against Spain, the science section of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote about the difficulties of the referee to apply the offside rule (I won’t explain it here. US colleagues, who spent too much time following the wrong sports, might have a look here ;-). The article quotes a study, that 26 percent of all referee offside-decisions during the WorldCup 2002 were wrong. And according to a neuropsychologist from the University of Zurich, this is not the fault of the referee, but due to the “flash-lag-effect”, a psychological phenomenon, where the brain calculates the position of a moving object a little bit ahead of its real physical position.

I really liked an enjoyable small Tagesspiegel article, which arms soccer fans with important informatin – how could you possibly chat about a game, if you don’t know the right words. E.g.: Is “Elfenbeinküster” or “Ivos” or “Ivorer” the right word to describe the players from the Ivory Coast team (in German: “Elfenbeinküste”). Or what about some special soccer terms, like this one from Great Britain (!): “‘Butterfingers’ for english goalkeepers, who – for once – don’t catch very well” (I’m just quoting!). Starting point for this article was a press release of the Duden Verlag (a German spell checker institution), advertising a book about soccer language.

Die Welt wrote an interesting piece about researchers trying to explain the statistically significant effect of the “home field advantage”: “More testosterone during home field games” – kind of a territory defending behavior. Also, Norbert Lossau (head of the science section and former physicist) explains with a winking tone, that it is ok (from the perspective of physics and wastage of energy) to decorate cars with flags.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung writes about the “Objective Expert“, a software, which analyzes the performance of players. And another articles analyzes, “How superstition helps” soccer players’ psychology – worth reading not because of the soccer stuff, but because the author (Markus Schulte von Drach) discusses the positive and negative outcomes of superstitious believes.

The Financial Times Deutschland (no science section anymore) did not do much more, then picking up the party pooper news, that the noise of Vuvuzeelas might cause illness (actually, the headline said that they DO cause illness), and a (boring) quiz, where readers could check their knowledge about South Africa.

The Austrian Standard‘s science section was quite busy: An article about “soccer math” (quoting a math professor from Vienna’s Technical University), the “relativity of the ball” (see picture above), that soccer players have a reduced risk of injuries (here), a story about the Hepatitis C infections of the German WoldCup winning team of 1954 (here), and one about the typical injuries during the WorldCup games (here).

And last not least: The local Märkische Allgemeine had a piece remembering about the long term collaboration of the German Soccer Federation and the German Sports High School Cologne (DSHS). About 50 students helped to analyze the three teams, Germany has to face during the preliminary round. The data were fed into a special software, giving hints about the way these teams organize their style of play, who are the key players, who prefers short or long passes, etc. And these hints from science seem to make a difference: During the WorldCup 2006, the DSHS analysis of the Argentinian players and their preferred corners during penalties were summarized in a tiny notepad, which the German goalkeeper Michael Lehmann kept in his sock, read carefully before every single penalty, and which finally helped his team to win the quarter finals.

Sascha Karberg

(may the best team win