The cell and molecular basis of mechanical, cold, and inflammatory pain

Peripheral pain pathways are activated by a range of stimuli. We used diphtheria toxin to kill all mouse postmitotic sensory neurons expressing the sodium channel Nav1.8. Mice showed normal motor activity and low-threshold mechanical and acute noxious heat responses but did not respond to noxious mechanical pressure or cold. They also showed a loss of enhanced pain responses and spontaneous pain behavior upon treatment with inflammatory insults. In contrast, nerve injury led to heightened pain sensitivity to thermal and mechanical stimuli indistinguishable from that seen with normal littermates. Pain behavior correlates well with central input from sensory neurons measured electrophysiologically in vivo. These data demonstrate that Na(v)1.8-expressing neurons are essential for mechanical, cold, and inflammatory pain but not for neuropathic pain or heat sensing.     

Anesthesia of Artemia larvae: method for quantitative study

Potency of anesthetics is quantitatively measured with laboratory-hatched larvae of the brine shrimp Artemia salina. Statistical fluctuations are minimized in that 100,000 animals are used to determine a single median anesthetic dose value. The technique was developed to study molecular mechanisms of general anesthesia.     

Asynchronous bends in Pacific seamount trails: a case for extensional volcanism?

The Gilbert Ridge and Tokelau Seamounts are the only seamount trails in the Pacific Ocean with a sharp 60 degrees bend, similar to the Hawaii-Emperor bend (HEB). These two bends should be coeval with the 47-million-year-old HEB if they were formed by stationary hot spots, and assuming Pacific plate motion only. New 40Ar/39Ar ages indicate that the bends in the Gilbert Ridge and Tokelau seamount trail were formed much earlier than the HEB at 67 and 57 million years ago, respectively. Such asynchronous bends cannot be reconciled with the stationary hot spot paradigm, possibly suggesting hot spot motion or magmatism caused by short-term local lithospheric extension.     

Melt inclusions in veins: linking magmas and porphyry Cu deposits

At a porphyry copper-gold deposit in Bajo de la Alumbrera, Argentina, silicate-melt inclusions coexist with hypersaline liquid- and vapor-rich inclusions in the earliest magmatic-hydrothermal quartz veins. Copper concentrations of the hypersaline liquid and vapor inclusions reached maxima of 10.0 weight % (wt %) and 4.5 wt %, respectively. These unusually copper-rich inclusions are considered to be the most primitive ore fluid found thus far. Their preservation with coexisting melt allows for the direct quantification of important oreforming processes, including determination of bulk partition coefficients of metals from magma into ore-forming magmatic volatile phases.