The UK and Brexit – Environmental opportunity or disaster?

The environmental implications of the UK leaving the EU have yet to be fully realized, but the picture is by no means all negative. Initially, as far as possible, all EU environmental legislation continues to apply in the interests of regulatory certainty but divergences are beginning to emerge. Brexit has led to the proposed establishment of a new independent environmental watchdog, and the Government has committed itself to ambitious environmental goals. The Common Agricultural Policy will be replaced by financial schemes that will pay farmers only for public benefits, mainly concerning the environment. At the same time, a consequence of Brexit is that that the UK will see increasing divergencies in environmental law and policy within its devolved administrations.Trudno jeszcze wyrokować jakie będą implikacje wyjścia Zjednoczonego Królestwa  z Unii Europejskiej, ale w żadnym razie obraz w całości nie jawi się jedynie negatywnie.  Początkowo, jak tylko to możliwe, prawodawstwo unijne w kwestiach środowiskowych w całości jest stosowane w interesie odpowiednich regulacji, chociaż zaczynają pojawiać się też rozbieżności. Brexit doprowadził do zaproponowania ustanowienia nowego niezależnego ciała stojącego na straży środowiska, a Rząd Jej Królewskiej Mości zobowiązał się do osiągnięcia ambitnych celów w tym obszarze. Wspólna Polityka Rolna zostanie zastąpiona finansowymi programami, które będą gratyfikowały rolników za ich działania dla dobra wspólnego, szczególnie w sferze spraw związanych ze środowiskiem. Równocześnie, konsekwencją Brexitu jest fakt, że Zjednoczone Królestwo zauważy w przyszłości pogłębiające się rozbieżności  w prawie i polityce środowiskowej zdecentralizowanych administracji

Environmental law in the United Kingdom post Brexit

UK environmental law has been heavily influenced by EU membership, and Brexit presents both opportunities and challenges to its long-term development. In the immediate future the substance of much of existing EU environmental law will continue to have legal effect in the UK after Brexit under the Government’s policy of ‘roll-over’. But it has become increasingly clear that other features of the EU environmental architecture will need to be replicated after Brexit—notably the role of general environmental principles, and the European Commission’s supervisory role in ensuring that environmental law is properly applied by government

An exploration of the ability of tepoxalin to ameliorate the degradation of articular cartilage in a canine in vitro model

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To study the ability of tepoxalin, a dual inhibitor of cyclooxygenase (COX) and lipoxygenase (LOX) and its active metabolite to reduce the catabolic response of cartilage to cytokine stimulation in an <it>in vitro </it>model of canine osteoarthritis (OA).</p> <p>Grossly normal cartilage was collected post-mortem from seven dogs that had no evidence of joint disease. Cartilage explants were cultured in media containing the recombinant canine interleukin-1<it>β </it>(IL-1<it>β</it>) at 100 ng/ml and recombinant human oncostatin-M (OSM) at 50 ng/ml. The effects of tepoxalin and its metabolite were studied at three concentrations (1 × 10^-5, 1 × 10^-6and 1 × 10^-7M). Total glycosaminoglycan (GAG) and collagen (hydroxyproline) release from cartilage explants were used as outcome measures of proteoglycan and collagen depletion respectively. PGE₂and LTB₄assays were performed to study the effects of the drug on COX and LOX activity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Treatment with IL-1<it>β </it>and OSM significantly upregulated both collagen (p = 0.004) and proteoglycan (p = 0.001) release from the explants. Tepoxalin at 10^-5M and 10^-6M caused a decrease in collagen release from the explants (p = 0.047 and p = 0.075). Drug treatment showed no effect on GAG release. PGE₂concentration in culture media at day 7 was significantly increased by IL-1<it>β </it>and OSM and treatment with both tepoxalin and its metabolite showed a trend towards dose-dependent reduction of PGE₂production. LTB₄concentrations were too low to be quantified. Cytotoxicity assays suggested that neither tepoxalin nor its metabolite had a toxic effect on the cartilage chondrocytes at the concentrations and used in this study.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study provides evidence that tepoxalin exerts inhibition of COX and can reduce <it>in vitro </it>collagen loss from canine cartilage explants at a concentration of 10^-5M. We can conclude that, in this model, tepoxalin can partially inhibit the development of cartilage degeneration when it is available locally to the tissue.</p

The development of the passé composé in lower-intermediate learners of French as a second language

In this study we tracked the development of the passe compose in second-language learners of French whose first language is English. Although the passe compose is a highly used tense among native speakers of French and it appears to present particular difficulty for first-language English speakers, its second-language development has been surprisingly under-researched. In order to trace developmental patterns of the passe compose we obtained a corpus of obligatory context use of this tense by 30 Year-12 (lower-intermediate) students at two time points six months apart and analysed the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our findings suggest that these students used remarkably few memorized formulas, that they passed through five distinct stages in their acquisition of the passe compose, that those early stages were characterized by transfer errors, and that the presence of the auxiliary, whether correct or incorrect, formed a crucial stage in the development of the tense. Theoretical explanations for the findings are presented together with some tentative pedagogical implications