For more than half a century, humans have required all new drugs to be tested on animals. Today, ethical alternatives are emerging. But can they replace animal studies? The Down to Earth team takes a closer look.
Category Archives: News to use
Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works
Greece re-enters lockdown in an effort to save Christmas | New Europe
In a televised address to the nation, followed by an extended press conference, Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that the country would be entering a second full lockdown from November 7 until at least the end of the month in the hope that the move would help halt the growing nu
Source: Greece re-enters lockdown in an effort to save Christmas | New Europe
Ohio smashes coronavirus records with 5,000+ new cases, 231 hospitalizations
Ohio reported more than 5,000 daily cases of coronavirus for the first time, breaking the record set Thursday of 4,961 Source: Ohio smashes coronavirus records with 5,000+ new cases, 231 hospitalizations
In the Arctic, ‘everything is changing,’ massive animal tracking study finds | CBC News
Animals across the Arctic are changing where and when they breed, migrate and forage in response to climate change, says a new study unveiling the massive scale of the change. The changes mean humans in the Arctic may have to adapt and adjust everything from hunting seasons to conservation to land use, scientists say.
“There’s changes everywhere you look — everything is changing,” said Gil Bohrer, corresponding author of the new study published online Thursday in the journal Science.
It describes the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive, which compiles data about the movements of 86 species from golden eagles to caribou to bowhead whales across the Arctic over three decades, combining the work of more than 100 universities, government agencies and conservation groups in 17 countries around the world, including more than a dozen in Canada. That allows researchers to observe changes on a scale they had never been able to before.
Source: In the Arctic, ‘everything is changing,’ massive animal tracking study finds | CBC News
Source: In the Arctic, ‘everything is changing,’ massive animal tracking study finds | CBC News
In the Arctic, ‘everything is changing,’ massive animal tracking study finds | CBC News
Animals across the Arctic are changing where and when they breed, migrate and forage in response to climate change, says a new study unveiling the massive scale of the change. The changes mean humans in the Arctic may have to adapt and adjust everything from hunting seasons to conservation to land use, scientists say.
“There’s changes everywhere you look — everything is changing,” said Gil Bohrer, corresponding author of the new study published online Thursday in the journal Science.
It describes the new Arctic Animal Movement Archive, which compiles data about the movements of 86 species from golden eagles to caribou to bowhead whales across the Arctic over three decades, combining the work of more than 100 universities, government agencies and conservation groups in 17 countries around the world, including more than a dozen in Canada. That allows researchers to observe changes on a scale they had never been able to before.
Source: In the Arctic, ‘everything is changing,’ massive animal tracking study finds | CBC News
In the Arctic, everything is changing
Sophia Loren: ‘The body changes. The mind does not’ | Sophia Loren | The Guardian

Loren has always defined herself as a Neapolitan first and an Italian second. I ask what the difference is and she laughs at my ignorance and says it would take too long to explain. “Naples is so strong, so vital. It’s about music and dance. Books and books of history. Read all the books first and then we can talk.”
The evidence suggests that she made the right choice. Europe provided more fertile ground for her skills. In 1962, she won the best actress Oscar for her turn in the potent wartime drama La Ciociara (Two Women), shot in 1960 by the neorealist director Vittorio De Sica. Loren played Cesira: widowed shopkeeper, embattled mother, a symbol of Italian fortitude and resilience. It is the film that, six decades on, she still considers her favourite, the one that mapped out the ground and pointed the way forward.
She is decisive, imperious, a natural-born thoroughbred with her eye on the prize. While The Life Ahead is Loren’s first feature film in a decade, she bridles at the notion that it might be described as a comeback, or a curtain call. She says acting is her life, is all that she knows, and that therefore she sees no particular reason to quit. “Sophia for ever,” she says with a smile.
I ask if she has ever felt lost, or beset by self-doubt, and she considers the question for all of two seconds. “Yes, well, maybe sometimes. But then I say to myself: ‘Shut up. Be strong. Just keep going and try. Sometimes you make mistakes and sometimes you win.’ I made some mistakes,” she shrugs. “But still I won.”
- The Life Ahead is on Netflix from 13 November
Source: Sophia Loren: ‘The body changes. The mind does not’ | Sophia Loren | The Guardian
How young, Black voters lifted Biden’s bid for the White House | US elections 2020 | The Guardian
Bowen insisted young voters eventually backed Biden as “a down payment toward a bigger goal in the future”.
“A lot of people see Biden as the doorway, not the destination,” he said. “We’re not going to see it in one election cycle, or through one level of government, but there’s this understanding that we’re on a trajectory toward attaining the justice we want to see.”
Source: How young, Black voters lifted Biden’s bid for the White House | US elections 2020 | The Guardian
‘A backlash against a patriarchal culture’: How Polish protests go beyond abortion rights | Poland | The Guardian

“It certainly feels different,” said Adam Mrozowicki, a sociologist at the University of Wrocław. “We need to study it properly, but the heart of this does seem to be young people. Anecdotally, I’ve never seen this level of engagement among my students – in my faculty, maybe 70-80% of students have taken part in some kind of protest.”
The scale and nature of the protests was new, Mrozowicki said: “They are led by young women. This is decentralised, locally based, grassroots. And personally, in 20 years, I’ve never seen anything like these numbers. To have 65,000 people on the streets of Wrocław …”
Ben Stanley, a political scientist at the SWPS university in Warsaw, said the protests felt “qualitatively different”. Previous anti-PiS demonstrations over the rule of law mainly drew “Solidarność-era protesters, people in their 50s and 60s. It wasn’t an issue that resonated so much with young people.”
Donald Trump’s baseless vote fraud claim opens cracks in Republican ranks | US news | The Guardian
The Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger tweeted that the president’s lying “is getting insane” and pleaded with his party to “STOP Spreading debunked misinformation”.
Meanwhile, the Texas congressman Will Hurd tweeted: “Every American should have his or her vote counted.”
“A sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence is not only dangerous & wrong, it undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon,” he wrote.
GOP strategist Karl Rove, who on Wednesday morning said the mass fraud that Trump is alleging “isn’t going to happen” in America.
“Some hanky-panky always goes on, and there are already reports of poll watchers in Philadelphia not being allowed to do their jobs,” Rove said. “But stealing hundreds of thousands of votes would require a conspiracy on the scale of a James Bond movie. That isn’t going to happen. Let’s repeat that: that isn’t going to happen.”
Stuart Foster, a top state Republican official who trained ballot challengers in Michigan… “I’ll get myself into trouble here. I basically made the comment like, so if fraud was so prevalent, then did the Democrats forget to do it in 2016? They just forgot to do it?” he said. “I mean, Trump … barely won. And it’s not because he didn’t win. [Democrats] just didn’t show up. Did they just forget? Fraud was so prevalent, but they just forgot to do it?”
Source: Donald Trump’s baseless vote fraud claim opens cracks in Republican ranks | US news | The Guardian
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