Dogs may be man’s best friend, but new research on ancient canine remains shows that the relationship didn’t develop overnight. For long periods of time, humans lived in tension with their canine companions, often eating them and skinning them for pelts. Theirs was a relationship of necessity and convenience.

“At that time (the relationship) obviously fluctuated,” says Stefan Ziegler, a scientist with the World Wildlife Fund and the coauthor of a study published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. “Sometimes people ate their dogs and sometimes they just used them as guard dogs and maybe even pets.” Read more.

Plumes of hot magma from the volcanic hotspot that formed Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean rise from an unusually primitive source deep beneath the Earth’s surface, according to new work in Nature from Carnegie’s Bradley Peters, Richard Carlson, and Mary Horan along with James Day of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Réunion marks the present-day location of the hotspot that 66 million years ago erupted the Deccan Traps flood basalts, which cover most of India and may have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Read more.

Since ancient times, people have marveled at the moon, worshipped the moon, written songs about the moon — and wondered how it came to be.

In recent decades the scientific consensus has been that the moon formed billions of years ago from debris cast off when a Mars-sized object dealt Earth a glancing blow. But a radical new theory holds that some long-ago giant collision actually disintegrated Earth, causing it to balloon out into a vast doughnut-shaped cloud of vaporized rock, which the scientists who developed the theory dubbed a "synestia." They say the moon subsequently formed within this cosmic maelstrom. Read more.

In Argentina, like in many parts of the world, water is at risk of over-exploitation and contamination. To protect it, scientists are studying its most invisible details with the help of nuclear technology and the support of the IAEA.

“Most of the fresh, usable water in the world is in the ground, but most of the water that’s available to us is surface water,” said Douglas Kip Solomon, professor of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah, who is helping Argentinian experts map their water with the help of the IAEA. “It is extremely important that we understand the interactions between surface water and groundwater so we know how to properly manage these resources and protect them.” Read more.