Last year I wrote about the World Congress on Science and Football, a week-long symposium on issues related to science and football.  Here, football is used in the broadest sense of the word — soccer is the dominant topic, but there are papers on the other football codes (Australian, Gaelic, American, rugby).  The conference is held every four years and this time will be in Nagoya, Japan on 26-30 May.

The conference looks like it will be dominated by academic researchers, but there will be representatives of FIFA's technical staff present, as well as officials from Japan's FA.  There is a lot of (understandable) concern about the conference in light of the massive earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear emergency in northeast Japan, but the organizers said that they did not sustain much damage and radiation levels are normal.  I can't attend, but perhaps some of my readers have already planned on attending.