Street deaths in Warsaw have dropped by over half previously decade
The streets of the Polish capital have been as soon as generally known as a few of the deadliest in Europe. Fatalities hit a peak of 314 deaths in 1991. By 2023, that quantity had fallen to 29.
To show issues round, town pinpointed 400 notably harmful crosswalks, improved lighting, and raised medians. It constructed roundabouts and new velocity bumps to decelerate autos. A 2021 regulation gave pedestrians precedence at crosswalks and raised fines for drivers who break site visitors legal guidelines.
Why We Wrote This
In our progress roundup, prioritizing well-being over comfort produces advantages for individuals and environments. It’s meant safer streets in Warsaw, Poland; a more healthy Sri Lankan capital; and even relations who really feel extra related to one another.
Whereas rushing and drunken driving stay points in Warsaw, town is dedicated to the Imaginative and prescient Zero framework, which seeks to get rid of all site visitors fatalities and extreme accidents. “Not a single dying, even in site visitors collisions, is suitable,” says Tomasz Tosza, deputy director of Warsaw’s Division of Street Administration. Nationally, highway deaths have fallen by 40% since 2014.
Supply: Bloomberg Citylab
The lasting results of shared household dinner
A research performed in 2021 discovered that 60% of 517 households surveyed ate dinner collectively extra usually in contrast with earlier than the pandemic.
Many used video calls to incorporate extended-family members in meals, which can foster household bonding, and “youngsters’s feeling a way of belonging to a bigger unit, which we all know is protecting for his or her well-being,” mentioned Anne Fishel, a co-author of the research.
Two-thirds reported laughing extra collectively, 59% mentioned they felt extra related to one another across the dinner desk, and 60% mentioned they expressed extra gratitude. These advantages have been seen throughout earnings degree, training, age, gender, and race. Common household dinners are linked to higher well being and success in class amongst children and youngsters, and decrease charges of disordered consuming, substance use, and melancholy.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Workers/File
Sources: Sciencedaily, Harvard Graduate Faculty of Training
A misplaced Maya metropolis was found beneath a jungle cover in Mexico
Whereas solely a 15-minute stroll from a busy roadway, the traditional metropolis was noticed not on foot however by sifting by aerial scans taken years earlier than to be used by ecologists learning timber.
New evaluation of Lidar scans revealed a dense community of hundreds of constructions, together with temple pyramids, a palace complicated, public plazas, reservoirs, and a court docket for taking part in ball sports activities. Lidar emits laser pulses from an plane, permitting for photographs that penetrate vegetation and reveal the contours beneath.
Valeriana, situated within the modern-day state of Campeche, was residence to an estimated 50,000 individuals, probably between A.D. 750 and 850. Researchers say native farmers most likely knew in regards to the ruins, which recommend a extra complicated and widespread Maya civilization than is usually described.
“Within the period of Lidar,” mentioned Luke Auld-Thomas, the Ph.D. pupil who found the scans, “there are extra [hidden cities] than we are able to ever hope to check.”Sources: BBC, The New York Instances
Companies and farmers are working collectively to wash up Kenya’s water provide
The Higher Tana River Basin supplies 95% of Nairobi’s consuming water and half the nation’s hydropower. However deforestation and farming have polluted the water with sediment and chemical compounds.
An revolutionary fund launched by The Nature Conservancy in 2015 connects downstream water firms and breweries with upstream small-scale farmers. The companies provide instruments for farmers to preserve and harvest water, from roof gutters to rainwater storage tanks. The farmers agree to make use of natural fertilizers and diversify their crops to cut back erosion.
The nationwide authorities is devoting extra assets to water administration, however particular person farmers play an vital position. With 300,000 collaborating, the fund is estimated so as to add 27 million liters (7.1 million gallons) of water by the top of the 12 months and save the federal government $850,000 yearly. Forty-three water funds function worldwide.Sources: Causes to be Cheerful, Mongabay
Colombo is restoring wetlands, serving to to stop floods
The capital of Sri Lanka is constructed on an enormous community of marshes and waterways. However as town has expanded for the reason that Nineteen Eighties, some 60% of those wetlands have been drained and stuffed in to make room for development. Remaining wetlands have been used as dumps.
Thilina Kaluthotage/Nurphoto/AP/File
Wetlands act as pure flood buffers, absorbing waters and regulating the atmosphere. Following damaging flooding in 2010, the federal government realized it wanted to do extra to guard what one administrator calls the “lungs and kidneys” of town.
It started constructing biking and jogging paths and leisure areas, pulling up invasive species, and introducing vegetation that may entice birds and animals again to the wetlands. Neighbors have additionally gotten collectively to type associations that accumulate trash usually and kind objects for recycling. As we speak, town is residence to 4 wetland parks that look nothing just like the wastelands there earlier than.Sources: BBC, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
