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This week in European sciences -- week 03|2004 |
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Overview
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What's missing: The German Playboy University Ranking The German
weekly Die Zeit (January
15, 2004), covers once more the topic of a "university for the
best" in Germany. Somewhat jokingly, the editors ask the question
which university in Germany has the chance to make it to the top. Their
answer consists of ten pin-up universities with their pros and cons. The
rankings the editors used range from serious (CEST and German research
foundation rankings) to facetious (Playboy ranking of the most erotic
university). |
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Die
Zeit |
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Paul Davies,
an Australian philosopher, appreciates the Bush announcement to head again
for the Moon, and later Mars. He speculates in an opinion piece in the
New York Times (January
15, 2004) about how life may evolved on earth, and presumably on Mars:
"If life began from scratch on both Mars and Earth separately, then
evidence for a second genesis would await us, providing a heaven-sent
opportunity to compare two bio-systems and learn how life emerges from
non-life." On the other hand life might be seeded from Mars to Earth:
"An alternative possibility is that life started on Mars and spread
to Earth inside material blasted into space by the impact of comets crashing
into the Martian surface," writes Davies. And why not the other way
round: "Just possibly the journey was reversed, with life starting
on Earth and hopping to Mars." His main point is that Mars is - after
Earth - the second safest place in our solar system. And because a return
trip is to heavy in cost and logistic efforts he argues for a one-way
mission to Mars: "If provided with the right equipment, astronauts
would have a chance of living there for years." He concludes: "To
be sure, the living conditions would be uncomfortable, but the colonists
would have the opportunity to do ground-breaking scientific work and blaze
a trail that would ensure them a permanent place in the annals of discovery.
(...) Would it be right to ask people to accept such conditions for the
sake of science, or even humanity? The answer has to be yes." |
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New
York Times |
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Probably the World's Fastest Train It speeds
up to about 430 kilometers per hour in just two minutes and goes now into
action. Sean Dodson reports in The Guardian (January
15, 2004) about the world's first commercial high-speed maglev that
now connects the Shanghai international airport, Pudong, with downtown
Shanghai - a distance of 30 kilometers. Maglev is shorthand for magnetic
levitation - a tranportation concept that makes trains floating on an
electromagnetic cushion. "As the maglev has no wheels there is far
less erosion of track, radically cutting operating costs." When the
train now goes into service the German suppliers Thyssen and Siemens are
glad to have a first reference. In Germany it was politically not feasible
to bring the train to the market. Now the consortium hopes to supply their
technique also for the 1290km-distance from Beijing to Shanghai, but at
present it seems that the Chinese government is due to decide for the
classical wheel-bound trains. |
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The
Guardian |
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Drug Trials: Foregone Conclusions Richard Smith,
editor of the British Medical Journal, claims in an opinion piece in The
Guardian (January
14, 2004) that the public is being regularly deceived by the drug
trials funded by pharmaceutical companies, loaded to generate the results
they need. |
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The
Guardian |
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"Your Baby Sleeps Best..." - A Campaign Against Sudden Infant Death Medical staff,
parents' and midwives' interest groups in the German federal state of
Saxonia (Sachsen) campaign very successfully against the Sudden Infant
Death, SID. Reiner Burger reports in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (January
12, 2004) about every parent's nightmare: to take the baby to bed
and find it dead the next morning. In the year 2001 this happened 429
times for babies under one year of age. According to Burger SID is the
highest threat for a baby's life in its first year. It is well known how
to reduce the risk by 50 to 90 percent: Babies should sleep on their back,
inside a sleeping bag and there should be no smoker in the environment
of the kid. The campaign consists of letters and posters informing parents,
midwives and doctors. Thus, Saxonia now ranks behind the Netherlands with
the second lowest SID rate, while Germany lags far behind. As a result,
about 30,000 posters "Your baby sleeps best on its back, in a sleeping
bag, smoke-free" are now sent to doctors all over Germany. |
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Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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Michael Hopkin
reports in Nature science update (January
12, 2004) about findings of Swiss researcher Christoph Schär
predicting that Europe may face even more heatwaves comparable to the
hot summer of year 2003. According to simulation data by Schär, last
summer is a first clue that the variability of climate on a regional scale
such as for Europe will change to bring more extreme weather conditions. |
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Nature
science update |
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Unconvincing Attempt to Question Astrology 28 percent
of Swedish teenagers consider astrology to be a science. This is apparently
reason enough to devote nearly an entire page to a rather unconvincing
and vacuous attempt to demolish the credentials of this ancient and still
thriving belief system (though it is not mentioned that some of the teenagers
may have mixed up astronomy and astrology). Maria Gunther Axelsson bases
her article in Dagens Nyheter (January
11, 2004) mainly on the so-called "Astrology Defense Kit" supplied
by the American astronomer Andrew Fraknoi. This kit contains ten supposedly
"tough" questions to astrologers such as "How can heavenly bodies affect
humans and how is it possible that their distance doesn't play a role?"
Fraknoi claims that astrology does not qualify as a science because its
predictions have never been convincingly verified in experimental tests
(although usually testability and falsifiability (and not verifiability!)
are mentioned as criteria for science). |
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Dagens
Nyheter |
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How Reading and Illiteracy Affects Our Brain Humans have
certainly not been selected to be able to read. This ability only gained
widespread in the last few hundred years. Inger Atterstam reports in Svenska
Dagbladet how Swedish researchers from Stockholm's Karolinska Institutet
investigate how this evolutionary modern ability affects the brain (January
11, 2004). The researchers work with a group of elderly women from
Southern Portugal, who have never learned to read. In the fishing villages
the oldest daughter usually could never go to school because they had
to help in the household. These women are thus an optimal sample, because
their illiteracy is not based on mental deficits, but socially mediated.
The research shows that reading has widespread effects on the brain. In
illiterate persons the left hemisphere of the brain - responsible for
language - is less dominant. Illiterate women are less able to reason
abstractly. Thus complex information on, for example, health care might
be less accessable to them. Also the ability to identify three-dimensional
structures is less well developed. Most importantly, illiteracy results
in a lower performance of the short-term and working memory. |
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Svenska
Dagbladet |
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European
commissioner for research, Philippe Busquin, writes an editorial about
his vision of a European research area
(January
9, 2004).
The aim is to "offer a global framework to foster collaboration through
networking and joint initiatives, while enhancing competitiveness and
creating new jobs." To meet a deadline given by the governments of
the EU member states until 2010, roughly 3 percent of GDP shall be devoted
to research. But this implies also 700,000 more researchers. Where are
they supposed to come from? There is still a lack in prestige of scientists
in society, also many researchers migrate to the U.S. Hence, about 10
percent of the EU budget of the 6th framework programme (17 billion euros
in 2002-2006) is reserved for human resources, training and mobility schemes. |
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Science |
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English,
unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. Does
this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? ask The Economist
(January
8, 2004).
The magazine reports about the field-work of linguists and the many pitfall
they come across. In focus is the work of David Gil, a researcher at the
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany.
He studies Riau Indonesian, a language without nouns or verbs, and tries
to figure out "how much grammar itself shapes at least some thoughts".
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The
Economist |
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