Comparison between human fetal and adult skin

Healing of early-gestation fetal wounds results in scarless healing. Since the capacity for regeneration is probably inherent to the fetal skin itself, knowledge of the fetal skin composition may contribute to the understanding of fetal wound healing. The aim of this study was to analyze the expression profiles of different epidermal and dermal components in the human fetal and adult skin. In the human fetal skin (ranging from 13 to 22 weeks’ gestation) and adult skin biopsies, the expression patterns of several epidermal proteins (K10, K14, K16, K17, SKALP, involucrin), basement membrane proteins, Ki-67, blood vessels and extracellular matrix proteins (fibronectin, chondroitin sulfate, elastin) were determined using immunohistochemistry. The expression profiles of K17, involucrin, dermal Ki-67, fibronectin and chondroitin sulfate were higher in the fetal skin than in adult skin. In the fetal skin, elastin was not present in the dermis, but it was found in the adult skin. The expression patterns of basement membrane proteins, blood vessels, K10, K14, K16 and epidermal Ki-67 were similar in human fetal skin and adult skin. In this systematic overview, most of the differences between fetal and adult skin were found at the level of dermal extracellular matrix molecules expression. This study suggests that, especially, dermal components are important in fetal scarless healing

The misuses of sustainability: adult education, citizenship and the dead hand of neoliberalism

‘‘Sustainability’’ has a captivating but disingenuous simplicity: its meanings are complex, and have political and policy significance. Exploring the application of the term to adult education, this paper argues that a particular discourse of ‘‘sustainability’’ has become a common-sense, short-circuiting critical analysis and understanding of policy options. This ‘‘business discourse’’ of sustainability, strongly influenced by neoliberal ideas, encourages the presumption that educational programmes and movements which have died out were unsustainable, bound to fail, and even responsible – having failed to adapt – for their own demise. Potentially valuable experience is thus excluded from the educational policy canon. The author uses three cases from 20th-century adult education, namely (1) English liberal adult education; (2) ‘‘mass education’’, also known as community development, in the British colonies; and (3) UNESCO’s Fundamental Education, to challenge this presumption. He demonstrates for each case how a business discourse has implied their ‘‘unsustainability’’, but that the reality was more complex and involved external political intervention

“Democra-city”: bringing the city back into democratic theory for the 21st century?

Almost 50 years ago Robert Dahl maintained "we can […] reasonably hope 1 day to achieve great democratic cities. As the optimum unit for democracy in the 21st century, the city has a greater claim, I think, than any other alternative" (Am Polit Sci Rev 61: 953–970, 1967). This article intends to ascertain whether the words of one of the greatest scholars of democracy have had a concrete outcome along the pathways taken by democratic theory and whether, therefore, as was the case in classical theory, real superiority has therefore been restored to the city compared with the other territorial institutions of democracy. In this article we begin with two assumptions, each concerning the theoretical status of democratic theory. The first maintains that a realistic and an idealistic dimension coexist in variable dimensions in theoretical democratic models. According to the second assumption, it can be stated that democratic theory envisages the presence of a local territorial dimension, the importance of which is nevertheless variable in the different theoretical models. The thesis we intend to demonstrate here is that the variable nature of the importance of the local-urban territorial dimension depends on the type of balance created between the idealistic and realistic dimensions of the different models of democracy. Concluding, we aim to theoretically demonstrate why (and at which conditions) the city can become, more and better than any other institutional place, the ultimate arena within which the best results may be achieved for democracy in 21st century

Toward a polycentric low-carbon transition: the roles of community-based energy initiatives in enhancing the resilience of energy systems

An understanding of the resilience of energy systems is critical in order to tackle forthcoming challenges. This chapter proposes that the polycentric governance perspective, developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, may be highly relevant in formulating policies to enhance the resilience of future energy systems. Polycentric governance systems involve the coexistence of many self-organized centers of decision making at multiple levels that are formally independent of each other, but operate under an overarching set of rules. Given this polycentric approach, this chapter studies the roles of community-based energy initiatives and, in particular, of renewable energy cooperatives, in enhancing the institutional resilience of energy systems. In this perspective, the chapter identifies three major socio-institutional obstacles, which undermine this resilience capacity: the collective action problem arising from the diffusion of sustainable energy technologies and practices, the lack of public trust in established energy actors and the existence of strong vested interests in favor of the status quo. Then, it shows why the development of community-based energy initiatives and renewable energy cooperatives may offer effective responses to these obstacles, relying on many empirical illustrations. More specifically, it is argued that community-based energy initiatives present institutional features encouraging the activation of social norms and a high trust capital, therefore enabling them to offer effective solutions to avoid free riding and enhance trust in energy institutions and organizations. The creation of federated polycentric structures may also offer a partial response to the existence of vested interests in favor of the status quo. Finally, some recommendations for policymakers are derived from this analysis