Chris Chandler

Is it a wolf? Is it a dog? No, it’s a Czechoslovakian Wolfdog.

dutch-tiger

Dogs have a special connection with humans, more so than any other animal. But until recently, little was known about how we formed this bond. Charles Darwin once speculated: “I do not believe… that all our dogs have descended from any one wild species.” Modern genetic tools now show that Darwin’s guess was wrong. All dogs seem to have descended from gray wolves. But if that is the case, when and where did the process of domestication begin?

There have been conflicting ideas about dogs' origins. Genetic studies have suggested the Middle East and East Asia. Now, if a new study published in Science by Olaf Thalmann at the University of Turku and colleagues is right, we have a different possible answer. Thalmann’s claim, based on a comprehensive genetic analysis of fossils and modern-day species, suggests that dogs were first domesticated in Europe at a time when humans were still hunter-gatherers.

The analysis is based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is passed down from mothers to their children with no input from fathers. Each cell has multiple copies of the mtDNA, making it the easiest bit of DNA to extract from ancient bones. Differences between individuals’ mtDNA allow the construction of a branching tree of maternal inheritance, leading back to the last common female-line ancestor. Thalmann used the mtDNA of many modern and ancient wolves and dogs to create just such a tree.

LibertyManiacs

For 10 years, a Minnesota man has been selling T-shirts, mugs, and other items with slogans like “Department of Homeland Stupidity” and “The NSA: the only part of the government that listens.”

In 2011, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency sent a cease-and-desist order against Zazzle, the original manufacturer of these items for the website LibertyManiacs.com. The government agencies argued that it is a crime to use, mutilate, or alter a government seal without permission. (The site has now switched over to CafePress.)

On Tuesday LibertyManiacs owner Dan McCall sued those agencies, arguing that he has a First Amendment right to parody the DHS, the NSA, and other government offices, and that he should be allowed to use the relevant seals.

Pacific Northwest National Lab

In the US, fully half of the water withdrawn from sources such as lakes and aquifers ends up being used for generating electricity. Most of that water is converted to steam, cooled, and returned to its original source. Even in those cases, however, losses during the cooling process reduce the total amount of water available.

The end result is that electricity generation competes with other potential uses for the water. In cases of severe drought, power generation may end up losing, reducing the amount of electricity we can generate. This situation is a problem given that climate change is expected to exacerbate droughts in a number of regions of the US.

To find out how much of a problem this can be, three MIT researchers have looked into the balance between water use and carbon emissions, using the Texas power grid as their test tube. Their model shows that taking carbon emissions into account is bad news for coal, but limiting water use essentially forces coal off the grid. While nuclear looks great for limiting carbon emissions, its heavy water requirements cut down on its role when both factors are considered.

Examples of geoengineering proposals.

Kathleen Smith, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

It has been well established that our emissions of greenhouse gases are changing the Earth’s climate and that in order to avoid future warming and ocean acidification, fossil fuel use will need to be limited. There is a sort of “Plan B,” however—the intentional manipulation of the climate, known as “geoengineering.” Some forms of geoengineering could be done relatively easily, while others seem more like “terraforming” schemes out of sci-fi novels.

As part of its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes a review of research into the two main categories of geoengineering: the artificial removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere and the artificial reduction of sunlight reaching the Earth. There’s nothing yet about the practical feasibility of any techniques—that data may appear in sections of the report that have not yet been released—but the paper nicely describes how various schemes actually work.

Taking off some blankets

The removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could take many forms, some of which have much more potential than others. The first is biological. The regrowth of forests that have been cleared does have an effect, but it can only remove about as much carbon as the forests released when we cut them down. Soil provides another place to stuff some atmospheric carbon, though. By adopting soil-carbon-enhancing farming techniques, restoring some low-quality agricultural land, and producing and mixing in biochar, soils could make a bigger difference than reforestation over the twenty-first century.