Resilience, redundancy and low-carbon living: co-producing individual and community learning

There is an acknowledged need for buildings and communities to be more resilient in the face of unpredictable effects of climate change, economic crises and energy supplies. The notion and social practices involving redundancy (the ability to switch between numerous available choices beyond optimal design) are explored as an aspect of resilience theory. Practice and Social Learning theories are used as a lens through which to explore the available redundancy in housing and home environments to help prevent performance failure through unexpected circumstances or in response to varying user needs. Findings from an in depth UK housing case study show how redundancy is linked with the capacity to share resources and to learn both individually and collectively as a community. Such learning in relation to resilient low-carbon living is shown to be co-produced effectively through participatory action research. The benefits of introducing extra redundancy in housing design and community development to accommodate varied user’s understanding and preferences are discussed in relation to future proofing, value and scalar issues. Recommendations include better understanding of the design, time and monetary contribution needed to implement social or technical redundancy. These costs should be evaluated in context of savings made through greater resilience achieved

The Polarity Protein Scribble Regulates Myelination and Remyelination in the Central Nervous System

The development and regeneration of myelin by oligodendrocytes, the myelin-forming cells of the central nervous system (CNS), requires profound changes in cell shape that lead to myelin sheath initiation and formation. Here, we demonstrate a requirement for the basal polarity complex protein Scribble in CNS myelination and remyelination. Scribble is expressed throughout oligodendroglial development and is up-regulated in mature oligodendrocytes where it is localised to both developing and mature CNS myelin sheaths. Knockdown of Scribble expression in cultured oligodendroglia results in disrupted morphology and myelination initiation. When Scribble expression is conditionally eliminated in the myelinating glia of transgenic mice, myelin initiation in CNS is disrupted, both during development and following focal demyelination, and longitudinal extension of the myelin sheath is disrupted. At later stages of myelination, Scribble acts to negatively regulate myelin thickness whilst suppressing the extracellular signal-related kinase (ERK)/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAP) kinase pathway, and localises to non-compact myelin flanking the node of Ranvier where it is required for paranodal axo-glial adhesion. These findings demonstrate an essential role for the evolutionarily-conserved regulators of intracellular polarity in myelination and remyelination