Starting this week, same-sex couples can get married in Estonia, making it the first former Soviet nation to legalize marriage equality. Legislation for marriage equality passed the Baltic state’s parliament with a vote of 55 to 34 last June.
A long-awaited suicide prevention barrier at the Golden Gate Bridge has been completed, marking the culmination of a tireless campaign by families who lost loved ones at the famous structure. Crews had been working to finish installing stainless steel nets on both sides of the bridge before a promised 2024 deadline.
For many years, research has focused on identifying novel therapies that stimulate beta-cell growth and function to restore insulin production in type 1 diabetics. Now, researchers at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne have brought us a step closer to making this a reality, regenerating damaged pancreatic cells so they can produce insulin and functionally respond to blood glucose levels. The novel therapeutic approach has the potential to become the first disease-modifying treatment for type 1 diabetes.
In December 2023, Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource announced that their first turbine was sending electricity from what will be a 12-turbine wind farm, South Fork Wind, 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York. Now, the joint owners of the Vineyard Wind project have announced the first electricity from one turbine at what will be a 62-turbine wind farm 15 miles off the coast of Massachusetts.
Following promising results from this recent trail, the combination of Moderna’s new mRNA-4157 and KEYTRUDA has been granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the FDA in the U.S., and accepted into the Priority Medicines scheme by the European Medicines Agency, for the treatment of high-risk melanoma.
The UK’s gas power plants last year generated 31% of the UK’s electricity, or 98 terawatt hours, according to a report by the industry journal Carbon Brief, while the UK’s last remaining coal plant produced enough electricity to meet just 1% of the UK’s power demand or 4TWh. Fossil fuels have been increasingly squeezed out of the electricity system by a surge in renewable energy generation combined with higher electricity imports from France and Norway and a long-term trend of falling demand.
With the opening of a new micro-community in northeast Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston estimated over 1,100 hundred people will have been housed before the end of 2023. “As of yesterday, this city succeeded, in under six months, in moving more than 1,000 people off of the streets and into housing,” he said.
For the first time, in 2022, Scottish renewables generated more power than the country used, new government figures show. The growth of wind power, coupled with a small drop in electricity consumption, meant that the volume of electricity produced by renewables in Scotland was equal to 113 percent of demand.
According to the East Asian nation’s Environment Ministry’s new biogas law, public and private industries that generate organic waste such as livestock manure and food waste will now be required to produce them in the form of biogas. Biogas is a gaseous renewable energy source produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, plant material and manure and can be used in vehicles that operate on natural gas.
Since the 2000s, Uruguay has installed about 50 windfarms across the country, decarbonized the grid, and bolstered its hydropower. Now, depending on the weather, anything between 90% and 95% of its power comes from renewables. In some years, that number has crept as high as 98%.
