Pistorius Shots Said to Come From High Angle

At the second day of a bail hearing for Olympian Oscar Pistorius, a South African investigator who arrived at the scene of the Feb. 14 fatal shooting said that Reeva Steenkamp was shot from a high angle, which prosecutors say contradicts the runner's account that he was not wearing his prosthetics when he shot his girlfriend to death.

Pistorius, a double-amputee who runs on carbon-fiber blades, appeared in court for the second day in a row after his arrest in the death of girlfriend Steenkamp at his gated home in Pretoria, South Africa.

Read Oscar Pistorius' Full Statement to the Court

PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing

Arresting officer Hilton Botha told the court today that the 26-year-old was standing in the master bathroom when he shot the supermodel, who was crouched in a defensive position behind a locked door in a smaller powder room. He also said that the bullets that were fired had been fired from high up, and the bullets seemed to be coming in a downward direction.

"[The angle] seems to me down. Fired down," Botha told the court.

Pistorius said Tuesday that he went to the bathroom and fired through the door before putting on his prosthetic legs.

Oscar Pistorius: Defense Presents New Evidence Watch Video

'Blade Runner' Appears in Court to Hear Murder Charges Watch Video

He said he mistakenly shot his girlfriend, thinking she was an intruder.

Prosecutors also said that they found two boxes of testosterone in the bedroom, although the defense disputes that, saying it's just herbal supplements.

The court also heard that a witness, someone about 2,000 feet away from Pistorius' home, heard nonstop fighting the morning of the shooting.

"We have a witness who says she heard non-stop shouting and fighting between 2 and 3 a.m.," said prosecutor Gerrie Nel, who added that another witness saw lights on at the time of the gunshots.

Pistorius says he spent a quiet night with Steenkamp before the shooting.

Nel said that Pistorius' actions and phone calls on the night indicate pre-planning, and that there was a "deliberate aiming of shots at the toilet from about 1.5 meters [about 5 feet]."

He says Steenkamp was shot on the right side of her body.

Officer Botha also said Pistorius should be considered a flight risk because investigators discovered that he has offshore bank accounts and a house in Italy.

"I think it would be hard to get him back," Botha told the court. "This is a very serious crime, shooting an unarmed woman behind closed door."

Prosecutors also say they may file more charges for unlicensed ammunition, after a special-caliber .38 round was found in a safe in Pistorius' home.

Botha told the court today that he arrived at Pistorius' home at 4:15 a.m. Valentine's Day to find Steenkamp already dead, dressed in a white shorts and a black vest, and covered in towels. The only thing that Pistorius said was, 'I thought it was a burglar,'" according to Botha.

The 26-year-old sprinter Tuesday denied that he willfully killed Steenkamp, telling the court that he shot the woman through his bathroom door because he believed she was an intruder.

Botha said today that he attended Steenkamp's postmortem, and that she had three entrance wounds: one on the head, one in the elbow and one in the hip.

Describing the scene to the court, Botha said that the shots fired into the bathroom were aimed at the toilet bowl.

The shooter "would have to walk into the bathroom and turn directly at the door to shoot at the toilet the way the bullets went," he said.

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Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Giant telescopes like the Extremely Large Telescope now being built in Chile could hunt for alien life by detecting oxygen on exoplanets – even though they were not designed with that in mind.

On Earth, plants and some bacteria are the only sources of large amounts of atmospheric oxygen. Finding oxygen on an exoplanet would therefore be a tantalising hint of life as we know it.

Current telescopes can look at the light that passes through exoplanet atmospheres and tease out their make-up, based on the substances that absorb particular wavelength bands. "We do this now for Jupiter-sized planets," says Ignas Snellen of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.

But current telescopes are not sensitive enough to see atmospheres on small, rocky worlds. What's more, observations made from the ground struggle to filter out Earth's own oxygen-rich atmosphere. Space missions intended to hunt for distant oxygen have been cancelled.

Flux buckets

Snellen and colleagues have now calculated that the European Extremely Large Telescope, due to be completed in the next decade on Cerro Armazones, a mountain in Chile, will be big enough to do the job. Boasting a 39-metre main mirror, this telescope is expected to see some of the most distant stars and galaxies in the universe. With its much higher resolution, oxygen from an exoplanet would appear similar to Earth's oxygen, but its wavelength band would be noticeably shifted due to the exoplanet's motion as it orbits its star.

Finding such oxygen would still be a long shot: an exoplanet has to pass in front of its star many times to gather enough data to say for sure whether oxygen is present. Depending on the planet's orbit and the size of its star, that could take between 4 and 400 years.

The team also suggests building an array of "flux buckets", cheap telescopes that collect as much light as possible. These cannot be used to produce detailed images like large observatories, but they would allow the analysis needed to find exoplanet oxygen.

"It's good to have a cheaper alternative to the big space-based missions," says Jack O'Malley-James at the University of St Andrews in Fife, UK. But he cautions that just detecting oxygen will not confirm the presence of life. Other planets with vastly different chemistry might have an alternative source, so space-based observations would still be needed to confirm the full range of chemicals in a planet's atmosphere and show whether it is truly Earth-like.

Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal, doi.org/kh6

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Medini wellness projects expected to boost Malaysia's medical tourism sector

JOHOR BAHRU: Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak unveiled two projects at Medini Iskandar Malaysia on Tuesday.

The gross development value of the projects are estimated to be about RM3 billion ringgit.

The Afiniti Medini urban wellness project has a total gross floor area of some 700,000 square feet and it will be completed in 2015.

It is developed by Pulau Indah Ventures - a 50:50 joint venture project between Khazanah Nasional and Temasek Holdings.

Among the key offerings are wellness, hospitality, retail and corporate training facilities.

For example, CIMB will base its Leadership Academy, while Parkway Pantai is building a health and wellness centre.

Meanwhile, Capitaland's Ascott group will be setting up a 310-unit serviced residences, as well as a strata-titled condominium development.

Ascott says there will be 147 units with sizes ranging between 500 and 1,100 square feet

Mr Tan Boon Khai, Regional General Manager of Singapore & Malaysia, Ascott, said: "We are currently monitoring the market trends, based on the surrounding launches. Currently the going rate at least for those on sale now, it ranges between 700 to 800 ringgit psf. Our development when we launched, certainly the price is going to be very competitive."

Ascott adds that it expects to hire Malaysians as they have the local knowledge.

Mr Tan said Ascott is likely to hire over 100 local staff to run its serviced apartments operations.

Meanwhile, the second resort wellness project Avira, jointly developed by PIV and Eastern & Oriental, is expected to be ready in 2018.

About 458 terrace houses will be launched for sale in the middle of this year.

The developers said the size of each unit is about 2,200 square feet at a price tag of 420 ringgit per square foot.

The wellness component of the two projects is expected to boost Malaysia's medical tourism sector.

Mr Syed Anwar Jamalullail, Chairman of Pulau Indah Ventures, said: "Definitely it will boost medical tourism. We are hoping to get it from ASEAN region. Parkway Pantai is part of IHH, which is the second largest operator of hospitals in the world in terms of beds. So we do expect a lot of inflows from IHH, referrals."

The two wellness projects will target corporate professionals and families looking for a break from their busy lifestyle.

Including the two projects unveiled on Tuesday, Medini Iskandar Malaysia has attracted a total investment of over RM412 million ringgit.

Iskandar Investment Berhad expects those investments to generate a total gross development value of nearly 11 billion ringgit.

- CNA/de

Read More..

Apple granted 36 patents, including for proximity detection

Apple was granted a patent for proximity detection.

(Credit:
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)

Apple was granted 36 patents today, including one for a proximity sensor for the iPhone and iPad and another for haptic feedback to create a sort of virtual keyboard.

The patents, approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, cover a wide range of technologies, as earlier reported by Patently Apple. The proximity sensor patent, first filed in 2005, covers technology related to detecting one or more touches and differentiating whether the touches are light or hard, among other capabilities.

Another patent relates to electronic media devices and future active packaging that allows power and data to be supplied to one or more electronic devices housed within the packaging. And Apple also was granted a patent for a mounted shock sensor that allows an Apple Store Genius or technician to figure out whether a damaged device was dropped. The other patents largely cover components and functions like automatic image cropping, reconstruction of lists in a document, and providing information to a caller based on a called mobile terminal's temporary directory number.

In the world of mobile, patents have become a key focus area and battleground. Apple, Samsung, and others have sued each other repeatedly, accusing each other of ripping off designs and other elements. Apple won a big battle against Samsung in August, with a jury finding Samsung infringed on Apple patents and ordering it to pay Apple $1 billion. Among the victories in that case, the jury found Samsung infringed on design patents for some products, and it upheld certain Apple utility and design patents.

Apple continues to build its patent arsenal. Today's awards follow several dozen the company has won in the past several months.

Read More..

Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking

Many dog owners will swear their pups are up to something when out of view of watchful eyes. Shoes go missing, couches have mysterious teeth marks, and food disappears. They seem to disregard the word "no."

Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought. (Related: "Animal Minds.")

The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room.

This suggests that man's best friend is capable of understanding a human's point of view, said study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portmouth.

"The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication," she said. "This is special in dogs." (Read "How to Build a Dog.")

Sneaky Canines

Kaminski and colleagues recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms.

The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor and repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark.

They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark. (Take our dog quiz.)

"We were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior," said Kaminski, whose study was published recently in the journal Animal Cognition.

Instead, she said, the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food.

"In a general sense, [Kaminski] and other researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind," said Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, who was not involved in the new study.

Something that all normal adult humans have, theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do," said Horowitz, also the author of Inside of a Dog.

Smarter Than We Think

While research has previously been focused on our closer relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—interest in dog cognition is increasing, thanks in part to owners wanting to know what their dogs are thinking. (Pictures: How smart are these animals?)

"The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago," Horowitz said.

Part of the reason for that, said Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab and author of The Genius of Dogs, is that "science thought dogs were unremarkable."

But "dogs have a genius—years ago we didn't know what that was," said Hare, who was not involved in the new research. (See pictures of the the evolution of dogs, from wolf to woof.)

Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children. Animal-cognition researchers are looking into dogs' ability to imitate, solve problems, or navigate social environments.

So just how much does your dog understand? It's much more than you—and science—probably thought.

Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions—and, study leader Kaminski said, are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives.

"There has been a physiological change in dogs because of domestication," Duke's Hare added. "Dogs want to bond with us in ways other species don't." (Related: "Dogs' Brains Reorganized by Breeding.")

While research reveals more and more insight into the minds of our furry best friends, Kaminski said, "We still don't know just how smart they are."

Read More..

Oscar Pistorius Describes 'Sense of Terror'

Olympian Oscar Pistorius today denied that he willfully killed his girlfriend, telling a South African court that he shot the woman through his bathroom door because he believed she was an intruder.

Pistorius, 26 and a double-amputee Olympian, was charged today with premeditated murder, or a Schedule 6 offense, which under South African law limits his chances for parole if convicted.

"I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder because I had no intention to kill my girlfriend," Pistorius said in a statement, read by his lawyer.

"I deny the accusation," he said. "Nothing can be further from the truth that I planned the murder of my girlfriend."

PHOTOS: Paralympic Champion Charged in Killing

Pistorius, who gained worldwide fame for running on carbon-fiber blades and competing against able-bodied runners at the Olympics, is accused of shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, at his gated home in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 14.

In a statement read by his lawyer, the runner said he and Steenkamp went to bed together before he was awoken by a noise he thought was an intruder coming from the bathroom.

Filled with a "sense of terror," he removed the 9-mm pistol he kept hidden under his bed and, without putting on his prosthetic legs, began shooting through the bathroom door, according to his statement.

Oscar Pistorius: Was Shooting Premeditated? Watch Video

Conflicting Theories Muddle Oscar Pistorius Murder Case Watch Video

Oscar Pistorius Allegedly Fought the Night of Shooting Watch Video

"I was scared and didn't switch on the light," he said. "I got my gun and moved towards the bathroom. I screamed at the intruder because I did not have my legs on. I felt vulnerable. I fired shots through the bathroom door and told Reeva to call police.

"I walked back to the bed and realized Reeva was not in bed. It's then it dawned on me it could be her in there," he said.

That's when he realized Steenkamp was not in bed, he said in the statement. Fearing she was inside the bathroom, he says, he broke down the door using a cricket bat and carried the woman outside, where he called for help, and she soon died.

Excerpts of Prosecutor's Case Against Pistorius

Pistorius appeared in court today for the first time since his Valentine's Day arrest, as prosecutors laid out their case, insisting that the runner could not have mistaken his girlfriend for an intruder.

"[Pistorius] shot and killed an innocent woman," Gerrie Nel, the senior state prosecutor, said in court, adding that there is "no possible explanation to support" the notion that Pistorius thought Steenkamp was an intruder.

Police responding to neighbors' calls about shouting and gunshots at Pistorius' home in the guarded and gated complex in the South African capital discovered Steenkamp's body. A 9-mm pistol was recovered at the home.

Prosecutors said Steenkamp had arrived at the house with the expectation of spending the night with Pistorius. They said that Steenkamp was shot while in the bathroom, which is about 21 feet from the main bedroom, and that the two rooms are linked by a passage. The door to the toilet was broken down from the outside, prosecutors said, implying that the bathroom door had been locked.

Prosecutors believe it's a case of premeditated murder because, they say, Pistorius had to stop, put on his prosthetic legs, grab a gun and then walk 21 feet to a bathroom.

The premeditated murder charge means that he would likely be sentenced to life in prison if convicted, and that he is likely to be denied bail, which is expected to be decided later today.

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One-Minute Physics: Are unknowns part of the universe?

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

What's part of the universe? You may think of it as incorporating everything that exists - both on Earth and in space - but could it also include the unknown?

In this One-Minute Physics episode, film-maker Henry Reich delves into the notion of the universe as described by physics, distinguishing between the whole universe and what's observable. He looks at the three components of the universe that we are sure of and whether mathematics could be included or not. Then there is the concept of parallel universes that could extend our understanding of space.

If you enjoyed this post, check out our previous animations, to find out, for example, if space is infinite
or why mass has a split personality.

Read More..

Football: Celta Vigo replace coach Herrera with Abel Resino

MADRID: Spanish Liga outfit Celta Vigo have fired head coach Paco Herrera and replaced him with Abel Resino, the relegation-threatened club announced on Monday.

"Celta Vigo have signed Abel Resino as first team coach. He will replace Paco Herrera on the bench." read a statement on the club website.

Herrera guided the team back into the top flight last season but has seen results slide during this campaign as the team sit 18th in La Liga and four points from safety with just five wins from 24 matches.

The team who have never won the Spanish title, lost their last outing 3-1 at Getafe on Saturday which was enough for club management to bring down the axe on Herrera's reign.

Resino who was a former goalkeeper with Atletico Madrid and helped the capital club to Spanish Cups in 1991 and 1992 before coaching the team for a brief spell in 2009 and leading them to qualification for the Champions League.

The 53-year-old has also had spells at Valladolid, Granada and Valladolid.

"The new coach will be presented tomorrow (Tuesday) after first team training," continued the statement.

-AFP/ac

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What are Quantum Dots, and how could they help your next TV?

At CES in January, Sony announced several LCD TVs with "Triluminos," a new backlighting method that they promise offered "rich, authentic color, and excellent red and green reproduction." Digging deeper, it turns out Triluminos includes an optical component produced by QD Vision, Inc. called "Color IQ" which uses quantum dots to help create light.

OK, so what are quantum dots?

Quantum dots are a "semiconductor nanocrystal technology." If you remember your high school (college?) physics, avail yourself of the Wiki page.

If you don't know your valence bands from your conduction bands, you can think of a quantum dot as this: tiny pieces of matter with unique properties, including the ability to emit light at very specific wavelengths. Sort of like microscopic pieces of glitter that glow green, red, or blue depending on their size.

Red, green, and blue spectra for red, green, and blue quantum dots.

(Credit:
QD Vision)

Specific wavelengths of light are good. We need specific wavelengths of light, the more specific the better. All televisions create an image by combining the three additive primary colors: red, green, and blue (RGB). Sharp adds yellow, a secondary color, but this isn't in any content and is created by the TV. Mixing RGB in varying amounts gives us all the colors possible in our current TV system.

All LCDs create these colors with filters. Plasma displays create them with phosphors that glow in the required color (similar to the way CRT tube TVs worked). OLED, depending on the company, is one or the other. LG's method creates a "white" OLED then adds color filters. Samsung's method has specific red, green, and blue OLED sub-pixels.

So where do quantum dots come in? Sony has a method.

Sony's X900 and W900 lines
Three of Sony's 2013 TVs will use quantum dots in their backlighting, in the guise of QD Vision's Color IQ tech (the 65X900, 55X900, and 55W900). A traditional LED LCD uses blue LEDs, coated with a yellow phosphor, to create "white" light. While reasonably efficient compared to other technologies (i.e. CCFL LCDs and plasmas), this still creates a lot of "wasted" energy. Orange, for example, doesn't make it past the color filters on the front of the TV (instead, red and green are combined to create orange).

Triluminos uses blue LEDs, but instead of coating them with a yellow phosphor, the blue light from the LEDs passes through the Color IQ optical element containing red and green quantum dots. So the blue LEDs have two functions: create blue light, but also energize red- and green-emitting quantum dots so they in turn can create red and green light. About two-thirds of the light created by the blue LEDs is used to excite the QDs. Cool, right?

This diagram is a top-down view of one side of two edge-lit LCDs (the front is "up" in this case, the back is "down"). The upper image shows a traditional "white" LED (blue, with yellow phosphor). The lower image is the method used in Sony's Triluminos: a blue LED that passes through red and green quantum dots. This RGB light bounces off the light guide, and out through the liquid crystal and other layers just like a regular LCD TV.

(Credit:
QD Vision)

If you're curious about how LCD backlighting works, check out Is LCD and LED LCD HDTV uniformity a problem? which has images and diagrams of how backlights work. Oh, and if the "Triluminos" name sounds familiar, Sony has used it before. This time, as shown, it's referring to an edge-lighting technology, not the RGB LED backlighting as in 2008.

Sony claims this allows for a wider color gamut compared to LCD TVs using "white" LEDs, as in more potential colors. Since all modern TVs are fully capable of reproducing every color in all current HDTV content, this is a bit of marketing hyperbole.

However, the benefits of this could go beyond cool, futuristic tech and WowNeeto-based marketing. When I've reviewed LED-lit projectors, I've found that the color possible from RGB LEDs looks more realistic than the same Rec. 709-calibrated colors created by color filters (DLP) or dichromatic mirrors (LCD/LCOS) as lit by UHP lamps. One TV engineer I asked about this phenomenon replied "LEDs are like painting with purer paint."

Our own David Katzmaier often remarks in his reviews on the bluish cast seen on some conventional LED-based TVs compared to, say, plasma sets. "It's usually most prevalent in dark areas, but I sometimes see a slight bluish 'coldness' in brighter material and skin tones too. In some cases I see it despite seemingly excellent color measurements from my instruments."

So it's possible that even with the same measured color points, quantum dot-enhanced displays could produce more realistic color. Will they? Will the color mixing required to create Rec. 709 from wildly oversaturated color points cause other issues? What effect will the color filters, which are still necessary on LCDs, have on this "purer" light? These are questions we can't answer until we see the X900 series, and any future TVs with quantum dots.

This whole column and not one "Quantum Leap" joke. Oh dammit.

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) image of sparse QDs (white) on a semiconductor background (black). Individual QDs, as well as close-packed small groups can be resolved.

(Credit:
MIT)

The current generation of quantum dot technology requires a primary light source like the blue LEDs in Sony's Triluminos. This won't always necessarily be the case. It will be possible to excite the quantum dots directly. This could be a full QD backlight, but it could be more. How about a direct-emissive display like OLED, but instead of Organic Light-Emitting Diodes, it's sub-pixels filled with red, green, or blue quantum dots. QD Vision calls this a "QLED," and it could have similar performance characteristics as OLED (like a truly infinite contrast ratio). Will it be easier to produce, offer better color, or have even lower power consumption? At this point, we have no idea. Given the production difficulties OLED has had, just the fact that there's something on the horizon that could offer potentially similar performance is exciting.

Bottom line

---

Got a question for Geoff? Send him an e-mail! If it's witty, amusing, and/or a good question, you may just see it in a post just like this one. No, he won't tell you which TV to buy. Yes, he'll probably truncate and/or clean up your e-mail. You can also send him a message on Twitter: @TechWriterGeoff.

Read More..

Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking

Many dog owners will swear their pups are up to something when out of view of watchful eyes. Shoes go missing, couches have mysterious teeth marks, and food disappears. They seem to disregard the word "no."

Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought. (Related: "Animal Minds.")

The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room.

This suggests that man's best friend is capable of understanding a human's point of view, said study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portmouth.

"The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication," she said. "This is special in dogs." (Read "How to Build a Dog.")

Sneaky Canines

Kaminski and colleagues recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms.

The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor and repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark.

They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark. (Take our dog quiz.)

"We were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior," said Kaminski, whose study was published recently in the journal Animal Cognition.

Instead, she said, the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food.

"In a general sense, [Kaminski] and other researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind," said Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, who was not involved in the new study.

Something that all normal adult humans have, theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do," said Horowitz, also the author of Inside of a Dog.

Smarter Than We Think

While research has previously been focused on our closer relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—interest in dog cognition is increasing, thanks in part to owners wanting to know what their dogs are thinking. (Pictures: How smart are these animals?)

"The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago," Horowitz said.

Part of the reason for that, said Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab and author of The Genius of Dogs, is that "science thought dogs were unremarkable."

But "dogs have a genius—years ago we didn't know what that was," said Hare, who was not involved in the new research. (See pictures of the the evolution of dogs, from wolf to woof.)

Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children. Animal-cognition researchers are looking into dogs' ability to imitate, solve problems, or navigate social environments.

So just how much does your dog understand? It's much more than you—and science—probably thought.

Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions—and, study leader Kaminski said, are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives.

"There has been a physiological change in dogs because of domestication," Duke's Hare added. "Dogs want to bond with us in ways other species don't." (Related: "Dogs' Brains Reorganized by Breeding.")

While research reveals more and more insight into the minds of our furry best friends, Kaminski said, "We still don't know just how smart they are."

Read More..