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Photo: Vivian Grisogono
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Campaign network calls on government to prioritise smaller cars and introduce higher charges for SUV owners
More than 1m cars too big to fit in parking spaces are being sold in the UK each year, and numbers are growing, research has found.
A trend for cars bigger than the average urban parking space means new vehicles are outgrowing towns and cities.
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Nests on Amsterdam canals provide archive of plastic waste and show how the material ‘is really here to stay’
One day in 1996, someone ate a McDonald’s McChicken burger in Amsterdam.
Perhaps it was a quick bite after work? A leisurely stroll down the canals? A family outing? These details are lost to time, but others are hard to erase completely.
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Authorities race to complete clean-up operation after devastation from gales and heaviest rainfall in 20 years
People on the Aegean islands, more used in April to the sight and scent of spring’s blossoms, have been left reeling from flash floods spurred by typhoon-strength gales, with authorities calling a state of emergency in some of Greece’s most popular destinations less than three weeks before Easter.
“It’s a total catastrophe and it happened in just two hours,” said Costas Bizas, the mayor of Paros, the island worst hit by weather not seen in decades. “We need all the help we can get.”
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The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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Indore in Madhya Pradesh was once dotted with fetid waste dumps but after a huge campaign is now virtually spotless
This is what happens usually in India: a politician wakes up and launches a cleanliness “drive” with fanfare. They ostentatiously start sweeping a street and speak solemnly about civic duty while the media take photos. The next day it’s over and things go back to how they were before.
But not in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. From 2017, when it won the prize for being the cleanest city in the country, it kept winning for eight straight years, until last year.
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Badenoch, Cairngorms: As we pause above the river, a sudden flash catches our eyes – a red squirrelis rippling along the branches below
It’s early morning and the sky is a billowing parachute of blue, bursting its seams with sunshine and the fluffiest white clouds. A cool wind blows up Loch Insh, roughening the water and bearing the scent of spring. From the island, a song thrush pours out all the trills, beeps and chirps of its bravura performance, oystercatchers pipe and a woodpecker hammers, the sound echoing around the hills.
In the forest, the birch trees carry no hint of leaves but are shaggy with moss and lichen, their twigs falling in soft fronds, wine-coloured and beaded. The trunks are irregular, pitched at wild angles, curving and bent, sometimes two or three growing from the same base. In contrast, the pale aspens grow up as straight as telephone poles, sharpening to a point at the top. All their branches rise in upturned spikes, bare but for the tiny ink strokes of twigs. At the centre of the woods is a stand of oaks, vast and spreading, last year’s dry leaves still spilling across the moss and the crushed bracken.
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With air pollution causing a fifth of deaths in Nepal, growing EV use could add nearly three years to Kathmandu residents’ lives
In a rundown hangar in the heart of Kathmandu, the remains of a dozen electric trolley buses stand abandoned and corroding. Caked in dust and bird-droppings and lined with rubbish, they are a reminder of a bold experiment, launched 50 years ago, to electrify the city’s public transport system. Down the side of one is written, “Keep me alive”.
Today, that plea is being heard. More than 70% of four-wheeled passenger vehicles – largely cars and minibuses – imported into Nepal last year were electric, one of the highest rates in the world. The figure reflects a remarkable growth in the use of electric vehicles (EVs), which saw the country import more than 13,000 between July 2023 and 2024, up from about 250 in 2020-21.
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Its inspiration was Sydney Opera House and its paper-thin louvre windows are reminiscent of a luxury ocean-liner. More importantly, the people of Arklow in Ireland can finally go swimming without fear of floaters
It is not often that the arts section of a newspaper finds itself concerned with the aesthetic merits of a sewage works. But then there are few facilities designed with the finesse of the new €139m (£117m) wastewater treatment plant in Arklow, which stands like a pair of minty green pagodas on the edge of the Irish Sea. Nor are there many architectural firms who have thought so deeply about the poetics of effluent as Clancy Moore.
“There’s a wonderful passage in Ulysses,” says practice co-founder, Andrew Clancy, summoning James Joyce as we tiptoe along a metal gantry above a gigantic vat of bubbling brown sludge. “The narrator turns on the tap to fill a kettle, sparking a lengthy rumination on where the water comes from, how it flows from reservoirs, through aqueducts and pipes, describing each step in minute detail, from the volume of the tanks to the dimensions and cost of the plumbing.”
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As LRIs put pressure on health services, a Spanish-led study examines what role exposure to air pollution may play
The Covid crisis highlighted gaps in our understanding of the role that air pollution plays in infections.
A flurry of studies carried out during and after the crisis allowed a UK government advisory group to conclude that long-term exposure to air pollution may contribute to worse coronavirus symptoms. The group offered examples that included a study of more than 3 million people in Denmark that showed air pollution added to the risk of death or hospital admission with severe Covid, especially in the least well off.
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Species-rich plot can produce cooling effect 4C greater than single-species plot
Woodland with lots of different kinds of trees can do a good job of buffering heatwaves and extreme cold. Now a new study demonstrates that increasing the mix of species can help to mitigate climate extremes.
Florian Schnabel, from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig, and colleagues measured forest temperatures over a six-year period at the world’s largest tree diversity experiment in Xingangshan, in subtropical China. Their results, published in Ecology Letters, show that species-rich plots provided the greatest cooling effect during summer, with cooling more than 4C greater in an experimental plot with 24 species compared with a single-species plot. Diverse plots also maintained more warmth under the tree canopy on cold nights and during winter.
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Kronična upala povećava morbiditet kod starijih osoba i značajno utječe na zdravo starenje. Nova studija je pokazala da ekstrakt nara, bogat polifenolima, može smanjiti upalu i može spriječiti kardiovaskularne bolesti.
Prema rezultatima nove studije, zaslađivač saharin može inhibirati rast Gram-negativnih i Gram-pozitivnih bakterija, kao i poremetiti ključne fenotipove povezane s kolonizacijom domaćina, kao što su pokretljivost i stvaranje biofilma.
Sindrom policističnih jajnika (PCOS) predstavlja značajan zdravstveni problem za žene reproduktivne dobi, a manifestira se kao složen endokrini poremećaj s različitim kliničkim prikazima. Obilježen hiperandrogenizmom, ovulatornom disfunkcijom i morfologijom policističnih jajnika, PCOS pogađa 5% do 20% žena i predstavlja vodeći uzrok anovulacijske neplodnosti.
Prijelaz od samo dva tjedna s tradicionalne afričke prehrane na zapadnjačku prehranu uzrokuje upalu, smanjuje imunološki odgovor na patogene i aktivira procese povezane s bolestima načina života.
Izgleda, da je zatajenje srca povezano sa značajnim smanjenjem kognitivnih sposobnosti u vrijeme dijagnoze, ukazuje nova studija. Globalna kognicija i izvršno funkcioniranje također su se brže smanjivali tijekom godina nakon dijagnoze zatajenja srca, jer su ljudi s tim stanjem mentalno starili za 10 godina u samo sedam godina od dijagnoze zatajenja srca.
Nedavno objavljena studija otkrila je da majčina izloženost ftalatima tijekom trudnoće može utjecati na metabolizam i razvoj mozga novorođenčeta. Ftalati su skupina naširoko korištenih plastifikatora koji se obično nalaze u raznim kozmetičkim proizvodima i proizvodima za osobnu njegu, poput šampona, sapuna i deterdženata, kao i plastičnih posuda za hranu i piće.
Rezultati istraživanja kojeg su proveli australski znanstvenici sa Sveučilišta u Queenslandu otkrili su da poboljšanje funkcije crijevnog mikrobioma može odgoditi pojavu dijabetesa tipa 1.
Pretilost je povezana s povećanim rizikom od razvoja raka dojke, te većom vjerojatnošću da se rak proširi na druge organe – metastazira. No uzroci ove povezanosti još uvijek nisu dobro shvaćeni. Sada je nova studija pružila nove uvide otkrivši da prehrana bogata mastima aktivira mehanizme koji olakšavaju metastaze.
Vid je jedno od najvažnijih ljudskih osjetila, no ipak je više od 300 milijuna ljudi u svijetu u opasnosti od gubitka vida zbog raznih bolesti mrežnice. Iako je nedavni napredak u liječenju bolesti mrežnice uspješno usporio napredovanje bolesti, do sada nije razvijena učinkovita terapija za vraćanje već izgubljenog vida. No znanstvenici s KAIST-a uspješno su razvili novi lijek za vraćanje vida.
Ljudi s niskim razinama lipoproteinskog kolesterola niske gustoće (LDL-C) u krvi imaju manji rizik od demencije, uključujući niži rizik od demencije povezane s Alzheimerovom bolešću, pokazuje nova studija.
