Photo: Farzad Mohsenvand/Unsplash (CC0)
In today’s edition: community-managed solar projects are keeping rural Kurdistani villages running, wooden skyscrapers are gaining traction as a sustainable alternative to concrete, and an interactive card game is helping to facilitate conversations about what masculinity means in Kenya.
In rural Kurdistan, community-managed solar power is helping villages stay resilient, all while creating plenty of new opportunities for farming, livelihoods, and local development.
Source: Al Jazeera
A Chinese start-up is using a giant helium-filled craft to capture stronger, steadier winds high above the ground and generate electricity. The electricity is sent to the ground through a tether, with the technology designed to provide flexible power in remote areas beyond the reach of conventional grids.
Source: SCMP
While the surgical team in London remained in full control, the AI system analysed live camera footage during the operation, helping identify key structures such as nerves and blood vessels that should be avoided near the 11mm (0.4in) tumour on the patient’s pituitary gland.
Source: The Guardian
The UK government is bringing forward plans to place dedicated rape and sexual offence investigators across every police force in England and Wales by 2027, aiming to improve investigations and increase prosecution rates while in turn better supporting victims.
Source: BBC News
Researchers have lauded two giant bluefin tunas being caught off the coast of Yorkshire for the first time in more than six decades as a “success story” for marine conservation. The tunas, which were caught a day apart off the coast of Whitby earlier this week, have mostly been absent along the north-east coast of Britain since the 1960s.
Source: The Guardian
A pair of sunken basketball courts in Queens are turning recreation spaces into flood-control infrastructure. Designed by Brooklyn-based landscape architecture firm Grain Collective, the courts can temporarily capture and retain stormwater during heavy rainfall, helping protect the surrounding neighbourhood from flash flooding.
Source: Good Good Good
Designed as low-cost emergency housing for families displaced by civil war in Myanmar’s Bago region, these modular bamboo homes can be built quickly and affordably. Developed by architecture firm Blue Temple and construction company Housing Now, the one-room shelters were designed to provide housing in disaster-prone areas.
Source: Good Good Good
Studies looking at the knock-on effects of global concrete production estimate that the associated damages it causes to health and the environment have a quantifiable financial value. But what if we turned from destructive concrete to timber?
Source: The Guardian
In rural Chad, solar-powered telemedicine kiosks are helping communities overcome long distances to medical facilities and limited access to doctors and specialists.
Source: Al Jazeera
In Kenya, the interactive card game Level Up is using play to spark honest conversations among men about masculinity, consent and emotional vulnerability.
Source: All Africa
