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Explaining the world one sketch at a time
Pollution is highly localized: take the back streets
Sure, the big city is worse than the country for air quality. But air pollution is more complicated than city = bad, country = good. Air pollution, it turns out, is highly localized, so the back streets in a big city are significantly less polluted than busy streets in the same city. If there is a traffic jam, exposure to air pollutants varies depending on whether you’re walking on one side of the road or the other. Location matters enough that small children closer to the height of car exhausts will inhale more toxins than adults who stand taller. So, if you’re not about to move to the country, you could still help yourself and your family by taking the back streets. I first read about this in a BBC Science Focus article, but see, for example, Varaden, D., Leidland, E., Lim, S., & Barratt, B. (2021). "I am an air quality scientist"- Using citizen science to characterise school children's exposure to air pollution. Environmental research, 201, 111536. "We identified that, on average, children were exposed to higher levels of air pollution when travelling to and from school, particularly during the morning journey where air pollution levels were on average 52% higher than exposures at school. Children who walked to and from school through busy main roads were exposed to 33% higher levels of air pollution than those who travelled through back streets." I updated this from the original for my book Big Ideas Little Pictures…Sure, the big city is worse than the country for air quality. But air pollution is more complicated than city = bad, country = good. Air pollution, it turns out, is highly localized, so the back streets in a big city are significantly less polluted than busy streets in the same city. If there is a traffic jam, exposure to air pollutants varies depending on whether you’re walking on one side of the road or the other. Location matters enough that small children closer to the height of car exhausts will inhale more toxins than adults who stand taller. So, if you’re not about to move to the country, you could still help yourself and your family by taking the back streets. I first read about this in a BBC Science Focus article, but see, for example, Varaden, D., Leidland, E., Lim, S., & Barratt, B. (2021). "I am an air quality scientist"- Using citizen science to characterise school children's exposure to air pollution. Environmental research, 201, 111536. "We identified that, on average, children were exposed to higher levels of air pollution when travelling to and from school, particularly during the morning journey where air pollution levels were on average 52% higher than exposures at school. Children who walked to and from school through busy main roads were exposed to 33% higher levels of air pollution than those who travelled through back streets." I updated this from the original for my book Big Ideas Little PicturesWWW…
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Unlike most plants, grass grows from the base
..so it can be eaten (or cut), and keep growing back. A critical feature for surviving herds of grazing animals and lawnmowers. No wonder it’s so successful.…..so it can be eaten (or cut), and keep growing back. A critical feature for surviving herds of grazing animals and lawnmowers. No wonder it’s so successful.WWW…
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Don’t fix the blame, fix the problem
A little nugget of wisdom from a book I read long ago called Technotrends by Daniel Burrus.…A little nugget of wisdom from a book I read long ago called Technotrends by Daniel Burrus.WWW…
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Trim beans in one cut through the packet
Hat tip to @bentimms…Hat tip to @bentimmsWWW…
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Enrich your design process
My favourite, and I think most helpful, version of the design process. I was introduced to it in the Needfinding course at Stanford taught by Dev Patnaik and Michael Barry. Based on an original framework from Chuck Owen at IIT. The, somewhat simplistic, user’s manual is to start with real observations of who you’re designing for, take time to analyse what you see and pull out some insights, put forward some principles to guide your design and, returning back to the concrete, develop some solutions. Then iterate. In reality it is never quite as simple as you may imagine.…My favourite, and I think most helpful, version of the design process. I was introduced to it in the Needfinding course at Stanford taught by Dev Patnaik and Michael Barry. Based on an original framework from Chuck Owen at IIT. The, somewhat simplistic, user’s manual is to start with real observations of who you’re designing for, take time to analyse what you see and pull out some insights, put forward some principles to guide your design and, returning back to the concrete, develop some solutions. Then iterate. In reality it is never quite as simple as you may imagine.WWW…
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