Snub to poor dog breeding

The initiative has clearly drawn inspiration from the even larger and more ambitious Desertec project (www.desertec.org), which aims to build a grid connecting energy-hungry European countries with new solar facilities in sun-drenched North-African deserts (Curr. Biol. 19, R626–R627). With an overall price tag of over $500 billion, Desertec has secured support from several major companies and an increasing number of the countries around the Mediterranean. Recently, Tunisia has signed up to the initiative, and the World Bank has announced $5.5 billion in funding for the construction of 11 concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) plants in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. Desertec does, however, depend on some improvements and upscaling to existing technologies. Therefore, it is aimed at a completion date around the middle of the century and is unlikely to contribute to the EU's 2020 targets. It is also sensitive to political disturbances along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean. In comparison, the North Sea project should be easier and quicker to complete, and could function as a feasibility study for Desertec. But whether it can come to fruition by 2020 remains to be seen. Michael Gross is a science writer based at Oxford. He can be contacted via his web page at www.michaelgross.co.uk Farm assured: New links between renewable energy sources in countries around the North Sea, like this wind farm off Norfolk, UK, should provide more reliable power supplies and help reduce emissions. Concern has been growing in Britain, as elsewhere about the severe inbreeding practised by some people in pursuit of key traits characteristic of particular dog breeds. The country's leading animal welfare charity and the main national broadcaster, the BBC, have shunned the UK's premier dog show and a new report, published last month, calls for tougher standards to curb the deformity and disease that is increasingly occurring in the pursuit of breed traits. " The time has surely come for society as a whole to take a firm grip on the welfare issues that evidently arise in dog breeding, " says biologist Patrick Bateson of Cambridge University, author of the report. The report itself was triggered by a BBC programme that investigated claims that the breeding process, focused on appearance rather than health, had resulted in high levels of deformity and genetic illnesses. The programme, broadcast in 2008, was a public relations disaster for the dog industry. The BBC stopped televising the …