Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

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To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

J-P. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T dot CO.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific American 60-second science. I'm Deboki Chakravardi. Chemists come up with new substances

every year to go in everything from makeup to medicines. But introducing these chemicals into

products also raises questions about their potential dangers. Can they irritate the skin, the eyes,

could they damage DNA?

To identify these possible risks, companies often test chemicals on animals. But these trials

are expensive and time-consuming, and the results aren't always reliable. Plus, many consumers

are uncomfortable with their favorite products being tested on animals

like mice, rabbits, and guinea pigs. But we may be able to avoid animal tests without

sacrificing the ability to forecast problems, because researchers have developed a computer

program that can predict the toxic effects of new chemicals better than animal testing can.

The method relies on a database that the scientists created that includes the results of more

than 800,000 animal tests documented in various toxicology registries, covering about 10,000

chemicals. Such databases make it possible for an expert to anticipate the dangers

of an untested chemical by comparing it to similar chemicals. This process is called read

across and it is the main alternative to animal testing. But read across is subjective. Different

people might choose different comparison chemicals based on what compounds they're familiar with. They could even come to opposing conclusions. So to remove that subjectivity, the researchers programmed a computer to do read-across on their database for them. Their method uses machine learning algorithms to compare the structures and toxic

effects of different chemicals. The result is a sort of map of chemical structures and properties

...