Research published in May 1998 by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) showed that reducing coastal and river pollution and ensuring a reliable water supply were among the top environmental priorities for the public.
All discharges to water in the UK require the consent of the appropriate regulatory authority. In England and Wales the Environment Agency’s principal method of controlling water pollution is through the regulation of all effluent discharges, including sewage, into groundwater, and inland and coastal waters. The Agency maintains public registers containing information about water quality, discharge consents, authorizations and monitoring. Applicants for consents to discharge have the right of appeal if they are dissatisfied with the Agency’s decision; most of these appeals are dealt with by the Planning Inspectorate, an executive agency of the DETR. In Scotland control is the responsibility of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), and most appeals are dealt with by the Scottish Office. In Northern Ireland the Environment and Heritage Service is responsible for controlling water pollution.
In 1997, there were 4,717 cases in England and Wales of discharges exceeding their consented limits, including a number of offences by water companies discharging insufficiently treated sewage. The majority of these breaches did not cause any significant environmental damage. However, the Environment Agency did bring 65 cases to court, of which 61 were successful, resulting in fines ranging from £ 440 to £ 12,000 and one prison sentence of two months. In Scotland, there were 2,734 pollution incidents in 1997; SEPA seeks prosecution in all significant cases.
In 1997 and 1998, the Government introduced statutory Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs) for 33 substances in water. The new regulations give legal force for the first time to standards for some of the most dangerous pollutants found in the aquatic environment.
In the UK, 96 percent of the population live in properties connected to a sewer, and sewage treatment works serve over 80 percent of the population. In England and Wales, the water industry is committed to an investment programme of some £ 11,000 million over ten years for improvements to water quality. Progressively higher treatment standards for industrial waste effluents and new measures to combat pollution from agriculture are expected to bring further improvements in water quality. In Scotland, responsibility for the provision of all water and sewerage services lies with three Water and Sewerage Authorities, covering the north, east and west of the country.
()are published for the correction of Admiralty Charts.
Charts should be corrected by using information published in the().
The UCP published by the (),contains detailed provisions dealing with the operation of documentary credit.
The UCP published by the(),contains detailed provisions dealing with the operation of documentary credit.
A: I heard you’ve had your book published. Congratulations!
B: ______
[A] The work builds on a study published last year by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan, which showed that mouse tail cells could be transformed into ES-like cells by inserting four genes (Science Now, 3 July 2006).Those genes are normally switched off after embryonic cells differentiate into the various cell types. In June this year, Yamanaka and another group reported that the cells were truly pluripotent, meaning that they had the potential to grow into any tissue in the body (Science Now, 6 June).
[B] In the new work, Yamanaka and his colleagues used a retrovirus to ferry into adult cells the same four genes they had previously used to reprogram mouse cells: OCT3/4, SOX2, KLF4, and c-MYC. They reprogrammed cells taken from the facial skin of a 36-year-old woman and from connective tissue from a 69-year-old man. Roughly one iPS cell line was produced for every 5,000 cells the researchers treated using the technique, an efficiency that enabled them to produce several cell lines from each experiment.
[C] Now the race to repeat the feat in human cells has ended in a tie: Two groups report today that they have reprogrammed human skin cells into so-called induced pluripotent cells (iPSs). In a paper published online in Cell, Yamanaka and his colleagues show that their mouse technique works with human cells as well. And in a paper published online in Science, James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues report success in reprogramming human cells, again by inserting just four genes, two of which are different from those Yamanaka uses.
[D] Once the kinks are worked out, “the whole field is going to completely change,” says stem cell researcher Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University in East Lansing. “People working on ethics will have to find something new to worry about.”
[E] Thomson’s team started from scratch, identifying its own list of 14 candidate reprogramming genes. Like Yamanaka’s group, the team used a systematic process of elimination to identify four factors: OCT3 and SOX2, as Yamanaka used, and two different genes, NANOG and LIN28. The group reprogrammed cells from fetal skin and from the foreskin of a newborn boy. The researchers were able to transform about one in 10,000 cells, less than Yamanaka’s technique achieved, Thomson says, but still enough to create several cell lines from a single experiment.
[F] Scientists have managed to reprogram human skin cells directly into cells that look and act like embryonic stem (ES) cells. The technique makes it possible to generate patient-specific stem cells to study or treat disease without using embryos or oocytes—and therefore could bypass the ethical debates that have plagued the field. “This is like an earthquake for both the science and politics of stem cell research,” says Jesse Reynolds, policy analyst for the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, California.
[G] Although promising, both techniques share a downside. The retroviruses used to insert the genes could cause tumors in tissues grown from the cells. The crucial next step, everyone agrees, is to find a way to reprogram cells by switching on the genes rather than inserting new copies. The field is moving quickly toward that goal, says stem cell researcher Douglas Melton of Harvard University. “It is not hard to imagine a time when you could add small molecules that would tickle the same networks as these genes” and produce reprogrammed cells without genetic alterations, he says.
(此文选自Science2007年刊)
Order:
It was Einstein _____ wrote and published his famous theory relativity.
The Local Notice to Mariners is usually published().
The new study published in Science indicates that______.