Supported by funding from the European Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council, a large international team of scientists compared genetic data with existing archaeological evidence and show that man’s best friend may have emerged independently from two separate (possibly now extinct) wolf populations that lived on opposite sides of the Eurasian continent. This means that dogs may have been domesticated not once, as widely believed, but twice.
A major international research project on dog domestication, led by the University of Oxford, has reconstructed the evolutionary history of dogs by first sequencing the genome (at Trinity College Dublin) of a 4,800-year old medium-sized dog from bone excavated at the Neolithic Passage Tomb of Newgrange, Ireland. The team (including French researchers based in Lyon and at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris) also obtained mitochondrial DNA from 59 ancient dogs living between 14,000 to 3,000 years ago and then compared them with the genetic signatures of more than 2,500 previously studied modern dogs.
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The northern reaches of North America are getting greener, according to a NASA study that provides the most detailed look yet at plant life across Alaska and Canada. In a changing climate, almost a third of the land cover - much of it Arctic tundra - is looking more like landscapes found in warmer ecosystems.
With 87,000 images taken from Landsat satellites, converted into data that reflects the amount of healthy vegetation on the ground, the researchers found that western Alaska, Quebec and other regions became greener between 1984 and 2012. The new Landsat study further supports previous work that has shown changing vegetation in Arctic and boreal North America.
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The National Academy of Sciences has some conclusions to share about genetically-engineered foods — 420 pages worth. And no matter which side of the fence you stand on when it comes to this divisive topic, you probably aren’t going to like what the nonprofit has to say.
The report, Genetically Engineered Organisms: Experiences and Prospects, was released last week online amid a flurry of news articles that attempted to breathlessly summarize the findings in a few short sentences. Some expressed disappointment in the authors’ inconclusive findings; many others attempted to pin a final yea-or-nay viewpoint on the Academy’s nine-chapter investigation.
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The influence of fossil fuel corporations was strongly questioned by developing countries in the post-Paris meeting of the climate change negotiations in Bonn last week. Climate Trackers Pavlos Georgiadis, Renee Karunungan and Anna Pérez Català highlight the key issues that were debated.
A number of developing countries, led by Ecuador, Guatemala and Bolivia are now calling for concrete measures to define how the public policy making process interacts with the private sector in climate change negotiations. What they want is special attention to be given to concerns over potential conflicts of interest between the industry and the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
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In the United States, the use of natural gas for electricity generation continues to grow. The driving forces behind this development? A boom in domestic natural gas production, historically low prices, and increased scrutiny over fossil fuels' carbon emissions.
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At up to 20 feet long and weighing a ton and a half, with the strongest bite in the animal kingdom, Nile crocodiles can pretty much devour anything they want to — including humans.
As you can guess from their name, these carnivorous crocs are native to sub-Saharan Africa, where they subsist on small hippos, zebras and other animals they catch and, in some cases, swallow whole.
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