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A deal is a deal—except, apparently, when Entergy is involved. The company, a major energy supplier in New England, provoked justified outrage in Vermont last week when it announced it wasreneging ona longstanding commitment to abide by the state" s strict nuclear regulations. Instead, the company has done precisely what it would not: challenge the constitutionality of Vermont"s rules in the federal court, as part of a desperate effort to keep its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant running. It"s a stunning move. The conflict has been surfacing since 2002, when the corporation bought Vermont"s only nuclear power plant, an aging reactor in Vernon. As a condition of receiving state approval for the sale, the company agreed to seek permission from state regulators to operate past 2012. In 2006, the state went a step further, requiring that any extension of the plant"s license be subject to Vermont legislature"s approval. Then, too, the company went along. Either Entergy never really intended to live by those commitments, or it simply didn"t foresee what would happen next. A string of accidents, including the partial collapse of a cooling tower in 2007 and the discovery of an underground pipe system leakage, raised serious questions about both Vermont Yankee"s safety and Entergy"s management—especially after the company made misleading statements about the pipe. Enraged by Entergy"s behavior, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 last year against allowing an extension. Now the company is suddenly claiming that the 2002 agreement is invalid because of the 2006 legislation, and that only the federal government has regulatory power over nuclear issues. The legal issues in the case are obscure: whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that states do have some regulatory authority over nuclear power, legal scholars say that Vermont case will offer a precedent-setting test of how far those powers extend. Certainly, there are valid concerns about the patchwork regulations that could result if every state sets its own rules. But had Entergy kept its word, that debate would be beside the point. The company seems to have concluded that its reputation in Vermont is already so damaged that it has noting left to lose by going to war with the state. But there should be consequences. Permission to run a nuclear plant is a public trust. Entergy runs 11 other reactors in the United States, including Pilgrim Nuclear station in Plymouth. Pledging to run Pilgrim safely, the company has applied for federal permission to keep it open for another 20 years. But as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the company"s application, it should keep in mind what promises from Entergy are worth. The phrase "reneging on" (Para. 1) is closest in meaning to
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The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings. "Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal," writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors (SBoRE). Manuscript will beflagged upfor additional scrutiny by the journal" s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts. Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: "The creation of the " statistics board" was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science" s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish." Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to "play primarily an advisory role." He agreed to join because he "found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science." John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is "a most welcome step forward" and "long overdue." "Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that, for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review," he says. But he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review. Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, "engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process". Vaux says that Science"s idea to pass some papers to statisticians "has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify "the papers that need scrutiny" in the first place." It can be learned from Paragraph 1 that
“洪武皇帝……希望牢牢将权力抓在自己手中，并试图独自处理国家大事，但是这样的工作负担被证明是无法承担的，他于是召集一些忠诚的中级官员组成了一个特别的行政部门……”上述“中级官员”的主要职能是______。
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One of the most pressing challenges that the United States—and indeed, the world—will face in the next few decades is how to alleviate the growing stress that human activities are placing on the environment. The consequences are just too great to ignore. Wildlife habitats are being degraded or disappearing altogether as new developments take up more land. Plant and animal species are becoming extinct at a greater rate now than at any time in Earth"s history. As many as 30 percent of the world"s fish stocks are overexploited.And the list goes on. Yet, there is reason to have hope for the future. Advances in computing power and molecular biology are among the tremendous increases in scientific capability that are helping researchers gain a better understanding of these problems. Recent developments in science and technology could provide the basis for some major, and timely actions that would improve our understanding of how human activities affect the environment. One priority for research is improving hydrological forecasting. It has been estimated that the world" s water use could triple in the next two decades. Already, widespread water shortages have occurred in parts of China, India, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. The need for water also is taking its toll on freshwater ecosystems in the United States. Only 2 percent of the nation" s streams are considered in good condition, and close to 40 percent of native fish species are rare to extinct. Using a variety of new remote sensing tools, scientists can learn more about how precipitation affects water levels, how surface water is generated and transported, and how changes in the landscape affect water supplies. To prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases in plants, animals, and humans, more study is needed on how pathogens, parasites, and disease-carrying species—as well as humans and other species they infect— are affected by changes in the environment. The overuse of antibiotics both in humans and in farm animals has contributed to the growth of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms. Researchers can take advantage of new technologies in genetics and computing to better monitor and predict the effects that environmental changes might have on disease outbreaks. Humans have made alterations to Earth" s surface—such as tropical deforestation, reduction of surface and ground water, and massive development—so dramatic that they approach the levels of transformation that occurred during glacial periods. Such alterations cause changes in local and regional climate, and will determine the future of agriculture. Recent advances in data collection and analysis should be used to document and better understand the causes and consequences of changes in land cover and use. Throughout the text, the author mainly emphasizes
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