Weekly Progress Roundup

May 26, 2025

According to a new household survey, the share of Ugandans living under the national absolute poverty line—set to roughly one US dollar per day in 2016/2017 prices—fell to 16.1 percent in 2024, down from 20.3 percent in 2020 and over 50 percent in the early 1990s.
The number of schools in Kenya grew by nearly 39 percent in 2024, alongside a 5.2 percent increase in secondary school enrollment.
A new law in Colorado permits the construction of smaller apartment buildings with a single staircase—a design previously restricted by building codes—in any city with a population greater than 100,000. The change promises to reduce housing costs and increase the availability of multi-bedroom units.

Energy & Environment

A glass-clad conference center in Chicago once killed up to 1,000 birds a day during the peak of migration season. After adding a simple, unobtrusive pattern to the window panes, bird deaths fell 95 percent.
After decades of decline, Cape vulture populations have stabilized in Southern Africa.
Scientists have mapped the genome of the northern white rhinoceros, a critically endangered species with only two surviving females and no natural means of reproduction. The genomic blueprint will help researchers evaluate lab-grown stem cells as a potential source for creating new rhino reproductive cells.

Privately owned solar panels are taking over from the dysfunctional state utility in Niger, offering relief from frequent power shortages.
Over the last few weeks, there’s been a massive nuclear policy shift in Europe and North America:
- Belgium voted to abandon its nuclear phase-out plan.
- Germany signaled it will no longer oppose classifying nuclear power alongside renewables in EU law.
- Sweden plans to build an additional 5 GW of nuclear capacity by 2035.
- The Danish parliament repealed a 40-year-old ban on nuclear reactors.
- President Trump signed four executive orders intended to expedite nuclear reactor approval, boost domestic fuel supply, authorize reactor construction on federal land, and dramatically expand US nuclear energy production.
- The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant can run safely for at least 20 more years.
- Lawmakers in Massachusetts and Illinois are considering lifting their states’ nuclear moratoria.

Harvard researchers have discovered drugs that can kill malaria parasites inside mosquitoes—a potentially useful malaria control method in regions where mosquitoes have developed resistance to insecticides.
Papua New Guinea and Mauritania have eliminated trachoma as a public health problem, meaning trachoma prevalence is now below 0.2 percent in adults. Trachoma is an infectious eye disease that can cause blindness if left untreated.
New legislation in Montana allows any adult to access drugs that have completed Phase I clinical trials but lack FDA approval, broadening access to experimental treatments.
Surgeons at UCLA have completed the world’s first bladder transplant, offering a new treatment option for patients with severe bladder damage. The procedure, done alongside a kidney transplant, successfully restored urinary function in a patient who had been on dialysis for years.
Prime Medicine, a Cambridge-based biotechnology company, used a gene-editing method called prime editing to treat a teenager with a rare immune disorder—the first time the technique has ever been used in a human. One month after treatment, the patient showed improved immune function and no serious side effects, though it may take up to a year to determine whether the therapy was fully successful.

The Maryland-based startup InventWood will soon begin commercial production of "Superwood," an engineered timber material that has 50 percent greater tensile strength than steel and a strength-to-weight ratio ten times higher.
MIT and Harvard researchers have developed an AI tool that predicts where proteins are located inside human cells. The system could accelerate disease research and drug discovery by pinpointing protein locations without the need for time-consuming lab work.
Spaced repetition systems are powerful learning tools that help users retain information by scheduling content review at increasing intervals, countering the natural tendency to forget. A new machine learning algorithm called FSRS enhances this technique by tailoring the review schedule to each individual learner.

Daniel Waldenström reassesses the history of wealth inequality in the West.

Clay Routledge presents new polling data on how Americans feel about progress.

Chelsea Follett explains how societies might sustain innovation beyond a fleeting “golden age.”