More than 3.1 million experiments in the U.K. were carried out on animals in 2006. Of these more than 420,000 were done to test the safety of chemicals. More than 100 million animals are used annually in experiments in the U.S., of which 15 million are used in toxicity tests. Replacement of animals in the U.S., was recently declared in Boston, will see researchers from the national institute of health and the environmental protection agency develop robotic machines to screen the chemicals. Implications

They said if successful the robots could test a greater number of chemicals more quickly. This could have implications for the EU’s Reach legislation, which requires retesting all synthetic chemicals used in member countries. Critics are worried that the new rules will increase the number of animals used. The screening machines will be inspired by those developed for medical research, which can quickly test thousands of different molecules in a few days to see if any have potential as useful drugs. Chemical genomics

“We now are seeing tools newly available to us for chemical genomics research deployed for greater refinement, speed and capacity in chemical toxicity screening,” said Francis Collins, director of the national human genome research institute and author of a paper published recently in Science. Describing the proposed techniques, Catherine Willett, science policy adviser at Peta, said: “This is a significant change in the perspective of U.S. agencies, which have historically relied heavily on animal testing out of habit and have been resistant to change.” -   http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.currentnewsaffairs.com Tags:blogs: animals chemicals computers Peta SCIENCE SCIENTISTS screen test US

Ironically, Firefox’s surge forward in the browser stakes comes in a week that also saw the passing into history of the iconic browser Netscape, which for millions of users provided their first feel of surfing the world wide web in the Internet’s dawn, the early 1990s. On Saturday AOL, which has owned Netscape since 1994, withdrew the browser’s life support system and recommended users to change over to Firefox or Flock, two browsers which like Netscape are also based on Mozilla. Netscape was not the Internet’s first browser — that honour goes to Mosaic — but it was crafted by American software engineer Marc Andreessen who created Mosaic when he was a student. The market share of Netscape dwindled after Microsoft entered the field with Internet Explorer. By 2006, Netscape was being used by just 1 per cent of surfers. As of today, it will still be operational. But AOL has stopped all active support, which will effectively kill it very soon… a sad day for those who recall, with fondness, its friendly look-and-feel. source: google news http://blogs.mindbodynsoul.com http://www.currentnewsaffairs.com Tags:blogs: firefox EDUCATION Internet microsoft netscape web browser