Will it work for the World Cup?

by Shine 2010 – 2010 World Cup good

Researchers Use Science to Identify Soccer Stars
[Via NSF News]

Until now, rating the world’s best soccer players was often based on a fan’s personal sense of the game. But researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., recently developed a computer program that, for the first time, measures player success based on objective assessments of performance instead of opinion.

Luis Amaral, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern, says that while basketball and baseball offer a wealth of statistical data to gauge the performance of individual players–such as runs batted in, strikeouts, steals and rebounds–this isn’t the case with soccer.

So he and a team of researchers used their computational skills to write software that pulled play-by-play statistical information from the 2008 Euro Cup website.

[More]

Now, the report does not really tell us something soccer fans do not already know – the team that passes the best, that gets everyone involved and who makes the most shots – is probably the best. But this helps quantify everything and actually provides information about specific players that might not se as obvious to even seasoned fans.

I hope they do something similar for the World Cup. Maybe we could get statshounds involved in MLS games now.

The tropics march in lockstep with the poles

by david.nikonvscanon

Carbon Dioxide Has Played Leading Role in Dictating Global Climate Patterns
[Via NSF News]

Increasingly, the Earth’s climate appears to be more connected than anyone would have imagined. El Niño, the weather pattern that originates in a patch of the equatorial Pacific, can spawn heat waves and droughts as far away as Africa.

Now, a research team led by Brown University has established that the climate in the tropics over at least the last 2.7 million years changed in lockstep with the cyclical spread and retreat of ice sheets thousands of miles away in the Northern Hemisphere. The findings appear to cement the link between the recent Ice Ages and temperature changes in tropical oceans. Based on that new link, the scientists conclude that carbon dioxide has played the lead role in dictating global climate patterns, beginning with the Ice Ages and continuing today.

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Nice bit of data detailing what tropical oceans looked like during multiple Ice Ages and the times in between. It appears that carbon dioxide feedbacks are important and they seem to become stronger as time passes by. Ice Ages have become colder and the inter-glacial periods have become warmer.

The tropics get hotter even as the polar regions heat up. Just some more data indicating that climate change is something we need to get serious about and that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is probably the single biggest step needed.

The insurance companies did not apparently know

by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

NYTimes: Finally, the BIG B.O.P. story. BP Knew. MMS Knew. They all knew, they were warned again and again.
[Via Knight Science Journalism Tracker]

Now I know about blind shear rams and shuttle valves in a hydraulic T-joints and how they are supposed to work. And I know that drill pipe is connected with joints – like the buckles on a soft leather belt – and if a blind shear ram tries to slice through and pinch off a raging oil well’s center pipe and hits one of the joints, it won’t work. And that shuttle valves can leak. And that if one has TWO blind shear rams, the last line of defense, it cuts drastically odds for failure. And that repeated studies had concluded that all deepwater wells should have two blind shear rams but Deepwater Horizon’s managers elected to use just one. I know the Minerals Mgt. Service had those studies, and yet, and yet ….. nobody was sufficiently grown up and brave enough with the company’s check books or the government’s theoretical power of oversight to be sure that the last-ditch way to stop a blowout would actually work.

Could have guessed all that in fuzzy detail. And the above barely represents the size of the gusher of their own that a NYTimes team, David Barstow, Laura Dodd, James Glanz, Stephanie Saul, and Ian Urbina unload today (with tagline credit to Michael Moss and Henry Fountain). Their account pummels the reader repeatedly with separate reports, instances, vignettes, historical incidents, and warnings in plain English from several independent groups of consultants and industry engineers all saying the same thing: blowout preventers or B.O.P.s are more like B.O.M.P.s, with the M for maybe.

[More]

It is wonderful that this is making it into the major media now. But a lot of this was actually discussed on The Oil Drum over the last few weeks. Many people in the business have watched BP take risks that other oil companies have not. Now it has to bear the consequences.

And this is probably going to have a bigger effect on drilling in the deep than anything the Administration is planning – insurance rates. The industry itself seems to be surprised with just how much this is going to cost insurance agencies. Deepwater rates have already increased 50%.

Companies that self-insure are going to have to take a hard look now at possible costs. A 10% increase in costs could render at least 7 discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico unproductive. SInce the moratorium is affecting about 34 wells now, it seems very likely that higher insurance costs could have long term effects. Some wells may now never be drilled because of the higher costs due simply to insurance in case of a spill.