Time for another roundup of some of my favorite recent science articles!
In Delaware, they are sinking subway cars to make artificial reefs. As a proponent of marine life, and as someone who loves to eat fish, I think this is awesome. It definitely doesn't solve all the problems of declining fish stocks, but it does help. They sink subway cars (and old boats and some other stuff) in order to provide additional habitat. It gives place for grass and sponges to grow. They also introduce habitat heterogeneity, which is a fancy way of saying "places where little fish can hide." In a completely bare, open habitat (like the habitats created by trawling fishermen), large fish can easily seek their prey, which leads to a depletion of small fish stocks and ultimately a depletion of large fish stocks.
I'd only change one thing here: I'd make a significant part of this new reef a "no-fish" zone in order to encourage even more life. No fish zones (in conjunction with recreational fish zones and all fishing zones) have worked quite well in many areas to preserve marine life. The no-fish zone acts as a safety area to promote fish life. Then, fish spill out into other zones. By maintaining a no-fish zone, you maintain a source population that can continue to reproduce.
A piece on cognitive dissonance and some major flaws in previous research looks really awesome. The author utilizes "Let's Make a Deal" and the Monty Hall problem to explain statistics that sometimes get ignored in research (and, as a bonus, you can play a Monty Hall game online). I'm afraid I don't know enough about psychology of choice to give a really thorough background here, but I do find it wonderful that this scientist is pushing other scientists to be more precise. A big problem in science is false attribution. People want to get a certain outcome from an experiment, so it's all too easy to look at the data in a way that makes that outcome make sense. What we teach our students to do, and what is a more rigorous way to do science, would be to make predictions of all possible outcomes. In this way, you can work your way through potential statistical outcomes and figure out what each outcome would mean (that is, would outcome X support your hypothesis while outcome Y would be neutral and outcome Z would refute?). Only then do you run an experiment.
Hermaphrodite frogs have been found in suburban ponds, which is a subject near and dear to me. Frogs, that is. Suburbanization too. I actually applied to work with the professor that published this work, and I would have loved to work on this with him. I'm really interested in the difference in the biota as we move from rural to urban locations. According to Dr. Skelly, the highest rate of hermaphroditism was in suburban areas at 21%; urban areas reported in at a not-quite-so-bad 18%. Rural ponds had a 7% rate of hermaphroditism. Quite interesting, but we're not quite sure what this means. More research is definitely needed here to understand cause and not just correlation. Perhaps I should have applied to work with him again.
Another paper by someone I know! Turns out bats are really awesome, as they reduce the number of insects in coffee plantations and therefore reduce the need for insecticide. I worked briefly with Dr. Williams-Guillen in a field ecology class I took; we went out on a night hike to look for bats, but we sadly didn't find any. In any case, this is still awesome research. This underscores the need to both understand the role of different species in the ecosystem and work to protect these species. Just go read the article; I can't even explain all the awesome here.
I read the NYTimes science section almost daily. And, honestly, I have to repeat what I frequently exclaim to my students: man, I just love science. Pure and simple.