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Glossary

Epigenetic regulation

Defined in topic 45

Chemical marks on DNA and its packing proteins that change how genes are read without changing the sequence. They answer the environment within a lifetime; passage to an unexposed descendant is unproven in humans.

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Where this comes from

In the reference topic that owns this term

Reference topic 45, Designing the Bridge, states the mismatch as a card: what the system evolved to expect, what it gets instead, and what happens in the gap.

Mismatch card

What it expects

A place whose ordinary defaults deliver load, daylight, darkness, heat, cold, microbes and company without anyone having to decide on them.

What it gets

Environments built around cars, screens, shelf life and margin, with the missing signals sold back as effort, subscription or supplement.

What happens in the gap

Plasticity keeps working, in the direction the environment points, and health becomes a permanent act of resistance against the street you live on.

The full card, and the topic behind it

What that chapter recommends

3 of the 4 graded recommendations in Reference topic 45, strongest evidence first. How the grades work.

  1. Push for pedestrian priority and low speeds near schools and homes

    ProbableEvidence grade: Probable. Good observational evidence with a plausible mechanism, or small or few trials.

    Pontevedra's escalating low-speed zones and Barcelona's superblocks are the working models.

    Read it in full

  2. Support unstructured outdoor break time in schools

    ProbableEvidence grade: Probable. Good observational evidence with a plausible mechanism, or small or few trials.

    Finland's 15 minutes per 45 and Taiwan's 120 minutes a day are the two documented patterns worth citing at a school board meeting.

    Read it in full

  3. Ask whether your health system has a social prescribing route, and use it if it does

    ProbableEvidence grade: Probable. Good observational evidence with a plausible mechanism, or small or few trials.

    Chapter 42 covers what link workers do and what the evidence does and does not show. A referral to a choir or a walking group sits alongside medical care, never in place of it; keep taking the treatment you are on.

    Read it in full

The argument behind this term, its studies and its notes are in Reference topic 45 of the reference library. The book gives the practical version. Get the book.