“On Thursday [4/10/25], Austin City Council members approved a change to building codes that will soon allow apartments up to five stories tall to be built with only one staircase.
The change is set to begin on July 10, after a resolution to the city’s building technical codes was introduced in 2024. Councilmember José ‘Chito’ Vela said the units would include advanced sprinkler systems and protected stairwells.”
From KVUE.
“In a long-awaited step, the European Parliament yesterday passed a law that allows the expedited approval of many gene-edited crops without the rigorous review required for traditional transgenic varieties…
Scientists and seed companies hope the law will lead to faster adoption of crops with improved disease resistance, heat tolerance, and nutrition…
Under the rules, as finalized this week, approval will be faster for crops whose gene edit seems modest enough that it could have been made through conventional breeding—a simple base change in an existing gene, for example, rather than the addition a nonplant gene. Stricter oversight will remain for transgenic engineering or more substantial gene editing.”
From Science.
“The next apartment complex, shopping center or mixed-use development built in North Carolina may look a little different.
A new bill signed by Gov. Josh Stein eliminates mandatory parking minimums for most new developments, giving builders more flexibility in deciding how many parking spaces to provide.
For decades, local governments could require developers to build a minimum number of parking spaces based on the size and type of a project. Beginning Jan. 1, that decision will largely be left to developers and market demand.
When new apartment communities, shopping centers and mixed-use developments are built, developers — rather than local zoning regulations — will determine how much parking is needed.”
From Yahoo News.
The Daily Economy | Environment & Pollution
“For many, economic growth and environmental protection exist in direct tension. People with this belief generate policy proposals to permit growth while protecting the environment. For others, the tension is irremediable — they believe growth necessarily destroys. For these zealots, degrowth is the only way. For both groups, liberalizing the economy — allowing for more economic growth — carries at least a risk of environmental degradation.
In recent work with Justin Callais and Alicia Plemmons, published in Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, we show that there is no reason to worry. We used 49 cases of sustained economic liberalization since 1970 and measured their effects on outcomes such as death rates from air pollution, total greenhouse gas emissions, as well as emissions per capita and per dollar of economic output. In this context, liberalization refers to the adoption of policies that promote international trade, secure property rights, and lessen fiscal and regulatory burdens.
Comparing with similar countries that did not liberalize, we found that while GDP per capita increased 16 percent within ten years for liberalizers, environmental outcomes did not deteriorate. In fact, we found that death rates from air pollution declined modestly, while there were no effects of liberalization on total greenhouse emissions. Moreover, post-2000 liberalizers actually showed signs of lower emissions per dollar of economic activity and capita.
In other words, pro-growth policies are not in tension with environmental preservation.”
From The Daily Economy.
Breastcancer.org | Noncommunicable Disease
“On May 1, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vepdegestrant (brand name: Veppanu) to treat estrogen receptor-positive, HER2-negative advanced stage or metastatic breast cancer with an ESR1 mutation that grew after being treated with hormonal therapy.
The approval was based on results from the VERITAC-2 trial, which compared vepdegestrant to Faslodex (chemical name: fulvestrant). The results showed that vepdegestrant was more effective for people with metastatic estrogen receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer with an ESR1 mutation that grew while being treated with hormonal therapy and a CDK4/6 inhibitor. The people in the study who took vepdegestrant lived three months longer without the cancer growing than those who received Faslodex. And more of the cancers responded to vepdegestrant than Faslodex — 19% vs. 4%.
Vepdegestrant is a new type of oral selective estrogen receptor downregulator or degrader (SERD) called a PROTAC (proteolosys-targeting chimera). Like other SERDs, vepdegestrant works by blocking estrogen from attaching to cancer cells in the breast. It also destroys the estrogen receptors on the cancer cells and changes the shape of the receptors so they don’t work as well. Because it is a PROTAC, it breaks down the estrogen receptors in a different way than other SERDs.”
From Breastcancer.org.
