Maggie: Hey Everyone!Coming up on Today S Show We Are Going to Meet Pinto and Find Out

Maggie: Hey everyone!Coming up on today’s show we are going to meet Pinto and find out just how smart dogs really are. I am Maggie Rulli and Channel One News starts right now!

Tom: Thanks Maggie, we will check in with you later on. Now it is time to see what’s making headlines. And first up, he is a U.S. soldier who disappeared from duty in Afghanistan, then wascaptured by the Taliban. And now, he is facing charges for deserting his post.
Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is being charged with one count of desertion, and one count of misbehavior before the enemy. Desertion is when a soldier abandons his military post.
The military says Bergdhal left his post in Afghanistan back in 2009. He was then captured by the Taliban and held by them for five years. He was finally released last May in a controversial swap. The U.S. traded Taliban prisoners in exchange for Bergdahl.
If convicted Bergdahl could face time in prison.

Ok, investigators are now focusing on the black box voice recorder that was recovered from the plane crash over the French Alps this week.French officials say the black box recovered from the Germanwings crash site is damaged, but most likely usable.
Mark Rosenker: The cockpit voice recorder of course is going to let us know the conversations between the two pilots, any noises, any type of alarms.

Tom: Investigators say the debris at the crash site is not characteristic of a flight that exploded in mid-air, instead it suggests the plane descended, hit the ground, and broke apart.
The terrain is rough and investigative crews have to be dropped in from helicopters.
Most of the people on board were European, from Germany and Spain, but three Americans were also on board, two from Virginia.

Alright coming up, we are taking a look at a troubling trend on college campuses and what students are doing to make a difference.

Headlines on the treatment of minorities in America this year have put race relations front and center. And the discussion has also spawned an internet movement by students on college campuses across the country. Arielle Hixson has more.

The disturbing racist videos at the University of Oklahoma may be shocking, but for many, not surprising. According to the Department of Education, the number of racial complaints reported on college campuses has increased from 555 in 2009 to 939 last year.

To fight intolerance on campuses, black co-eds across the country launched this internet campaign. It is called “I, Too, Am.”
New York University sophomore Devan Worth, helped organize their campus campaign.

Devan: A lot of my interactions were with white students who didn't understand my experience. I had to teach everyone how to treat me like a person, honestly.
Arielle: And it is not just here at NYU.Students at UC Berkeley, where only 3 percent of students are African-American, are asking their university to make changes.
This included a list of 10 demands. Like more black staff members and graduate students, support for black student athletes and two black psychologists to talk to students about dealing with discrimination.
Spencer Pitcher: I think the media has focused on this conversation because they don't want to actually address what black students and black people have to go through in this nation.
Arielle: University of Maryland professor Julie Park recently did a study on campus race relations, and she found eye-opening results.

Forty-eight percent of white students said they had at least one close friend of another race compared to 74 percent of blacks, 92 percent of Latinos and 84 percent of Asians.
Julie Park: We found those students who went to more diverse institutions tended to have higher levels of closeinterracial friendships. So it really speaks to the importance of universities doing their job to attract diverse student bodies in the first place.
Arielle: The campaign is starting a conversation about race relations nationwide, a small step toward a hope of many students across the country chanting for change.
Arielle Hixson, Channel One News.

Tom: Thanks Arielle.

Alright coming up, maybe your dog doesn't know E=mc2, or why the earth orbits around the sun. But your canine may be more clever than you think.

Until recently, scientists really didn't know much about animal intelligence. Sometimes studying them the wrong way, othertimes just ignoring animals completely.But that's all starting to change.

Over the next few weeks, Maggie Rulli isgoing to take a look at some of the new ways researchers are studying animals, working to prove that animals are smarter than what we ever thought.

Maggie: We live with them, snuggle them, call them by name. Dogs are a part of the family.
Moss: Every time I come home from school he's wagging his tail, barking.
Maggie: Sure he has got personality, but just how smart is man’s best friend? We sat down with the experts.

So what makes you so special?

Him, Locky Stewart, head of research at Dognition.

Locky Stewart: I think dogs are really special because they're in our homes. They live with us, we clean up after them, we feed them we take care of them. I mean, they’re really rocking it when it comes to how they're doing on the planet.
Maggie: And scientists have discovered their success all started more than 15,000 years ago.
Stewart: So that’s where you start to see the transition from wolves to dogs. Along the way they picked up the ability to communicate with us. They picked up the ability to really understand our emotions and how we interact with the world. So really, you saw the friendlier dogs start to really rise to the top and have the most offspring.
Maggie: Dogs had to learn how to connect with humans to survive, using us as tools to get what they needed.
For all the time we have spent together, and for all the time and money we spend on them today you would think we know a lot about them. But until recently, dog intelligence was pretty much ignored by scientists.
Stewart: Dogs are really important and we need to learn more about them.

Maggie: That’s where Dognition comes in. They take the laboratoryand put it right in your living room.
Stewart: What’s special about Dognition is that you can do this at home, and that you can learn things about your own dog.
Maggie: With around 80 million dogs in homes across the country, Dognition hopes that citizen science, asking regular people to act like scientists and send in their results,might just be the key to unlocking the brilliance behind those big brown eyes.
Stewart: Because we have so many people doing this at home we can see patterns in the data that you wouldn’t be able to see if you only had 30, 40 dogs doing this in a typical university research center.

We have tens of thousands of dogs, and imagine the kinds of things we're gonna find out along the way.
Maggie: Moss is putting his pup Pinto on the spot.
Well, should we figure out exactly what kind of genius Pinto is?

Maggie: Locky leads us through a series of games, experiments designed by experts.
Stewart: Just like every human is different, every dog has a unique type of intelligence.
So, what'sPinto’s personality?
First, Moss places a treat by his feet, stares at Pinto and asks him to stay.

Stewart: So he paused there for a second. You were watching. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

Maggie: They repeat the exercise, only this time, Moss covers his eyes. Can Pinto tell the difference?

Stewart: So a lot quicker that time. He basically went right away. So he knows when you’re looking.
It’s actually a really cool cognitive tool. It is really tricky to be able to tell when somebody is watching you and when they aren’t. A lot of animals can’t do that. Dogs are only the few that can. And it looks like Pinto is definitely one of the dogs that can do that.

Moss: Wow that’s cool
Maggie: New research is trying to explore this human- dog connection even further. Sure you love your dog, but does your dog actually love you back?

Using brain scans, scientists were able to prove that dogs react with emotions, like love and attachment, the same way a human does.
So, Moss can know for sure. Pinto's wagging tail really does mean something more.
So Moss, were you surprised by any of the results?

Moss: Yeah, I think I am. I learned a lot about my dog which is really cool. And I’m definitely surprised by how smart he is.
Maggie: By figuring out which dogs are best at what, researchers hope to improve how we teach each animal to work with us, like as service dogs for the disabled or in the military.
The study of canine smarts is only just beginning. But Locky hopes the more we learn about their intelligence, the more we learn about ourselves.
Locky: We can know how unique we are as humans. Are we really really alone in that we can think? Doesn’t look like it.

There are other animals that can think, and how they're thinking is a really important question to answer. I mean, we wanna know, are we alone on this planet? Are there other things going on in other animals minds? It’s a pretty cool question.
Maggie: Maggie Rulli, Channel One News.

Tom: So if you want to test the intelligence of your own dog, then Maggie explains exactly how to do it with links to the test on her blog. Plus, you get to see some pretty cool pictures of her dog, Boo!

Alright guys, that's going to do it for us today. But we will see you right back here tomorrow.

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