Does a neuroimmune interaction contribute to the genesis of painful peripheral neuropathies?

Painful peripheral neuropathies are precipitated by nerve injury from disease or trauma. All such injuries will be accompanied by an inflammatory reaction, a neuritis, that will mobilize the immune system. The role of the inflammation itself is difficult to determine in the presence of structural damage to the nerve. A method has been devised to produce a focal neuritis in the rat sciatic nerve that involves no more than trivial structural damage to the nerve. This experimental focal neuritis produces neuropathic pain sensations (heat- and mechano-hyperalgesia, and cold- and mechano-allodynia) in the ipsilateral hind paw. The abnormal pain sensations begin in 1–2 days and last for 4–6 days, with a subsequent return to normal. These results suggest that there is a neuroimmune interaction that occurs at the outset of nerve injury (and perhaps episodically over time in slow developing conditions like diabetic neuropathy) that produces neuropathic pain. The short duration of the phenomena suggest that they may prime the system for more slowly developing mechanisms of abnormal pain (e.g., ectopic discharge in axotomized primary afferent neurons) that underlie the chronic phase of painful neuropathy.

The genesis of avian neural crest cells: a classic embryonic induction.

Neural crest cells arise from the ectoderm and are first recognizable as discrete cells in the chicken embryo when they emerge from the neural tube. Despite the classical view that neural crest precursors are a distinct population lying between epidermis and neuroepithelium, our results demonstrate that they are not a segregated population. Cell lineage analyses have demonstrated that individual precursor cells within the neural folds can give rise to epidermal, neural crest, and neural tube derivatives. Interactions between the neural plate and epidermis can generate neural crest cells, since juxtaposition of these tissues at early stages results in the formation of neural crest cells at the interface. Inductive interactions between the epidermis and neural plate can also result in "dorsalization" of the neural plate, as assayed by the expression of the Wnt transcripts characteristic of the dorsal neural tube. The competence of the neural plate changes with time, however, such that interaction of early neural plate with epidermis generates only neural crest cells, whereas interaction of slightly older neural plate with epidermis generates neural crest cells and Wnt-expressing cells. At cranial levels, neuroepithelial cells can regulate to generate neural crest cells when the endogenous neural folds are removed, probably via interaction of the remaining neural tube with the epidermis. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate that: (i) progenitor cells in the neural folds are multipotent, having the ability to form multiple ectodermal derivatives, including epidermal, neural crest, and neural tube cells; (ii) the neural crest is an induced population that arises by interactions between the neural plate and the epidermis; and (iii) the competence of the neural plate to respond to inductive interactions changes as a function of embryonic age.

A mechanism for inducing plant development: the genesis of a specific inhibitor.

Parasitic strategies are widely distributed in the plant kingdom and frequently involve coupling parasite organogenesis with cues from the host. In Striga asiatica, for example, the cues that initiate the development of the host attachment organ, the haustorium, originate in the host and trigger the transition from vegetative to parasitic mode in the root meristem. This system therefore offers a unique opportunity to study the signals and mechanisms that control plant cell morphogenesis. Here we establish that the biological activity of structural analogs of the natural inducer displays a marked dependence on redox potential and suggest the existence of a semiquinone intermediate. Building on chemistry that exploits the energetics of such an intermediate, cyclopropyl-p-benzoquinone (CPBQ) is shown to be a specific inhibitor of haustorial development. These data are consistent with a model where haustorial development is initiated by the completion of a redox circuit.

The genesis of EC environmental principles. Research Paper in Law 7/2003

[From the Introduction]. The EC Treaty in its present version contains a number of environmental principles. The following contribution will try to retrace the origins of these principles in the EC Treaty and how they were developed by the EC institutions and in particular by the Commission. This discussion concerns the principles of integration[1], prevention[2] and precaution[3], the principle that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source[4] and the polluter-pays principle[ 5].

Big business in Belarus - its genesis, conditions and prospects. OSW Commentary No. 113, 2013-09-09

Over the past ten to twenty years, Belarus has seen a steep rise in the number of local dollar millionaires. This has somewhat undermined the myth of an egalitarian model of society promoted through the Belarusian state propaganda. There is a small group of businessmen among the top earners who, in exchange for their political loyalty and their consent to share profits with those in power, have enjoyed a number of privileges that allow them to safely conduct business in an environment typically hostile to private enterprise. The favourable conditions under which they are operating have enabled them not only to accumulate substantial capital, but also to invest it abroad. However, since such businesses are seen as providing a financial safety net for the regime, in 2011 and 2012 some of their directors received an EU travel ban, while their companies were subjected to economic sanctions by Brussels. At the same time, fearing that Belarus’s big business could become powerful enough to influence the country’s political scene (as has been the case in Russia and Ukraine), Alexander Lukashenka has actively prevented such players from becoming too independent. Consequently, Belarus has so far not developed its own elite class of oligarchs who would be able to actively influence government policy. The current informal agreement between the government in Minsk and big business has proved stable and is unlikely to change in the near future. Nonetheless, a reordering of state power giving Belarus’s big business significant political influence would be possible should Mr Lukashenka lose power in the next presidential election.

R&D, Spillovers, Innovation Systems and the Genesis of Regional Growth in Europe. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 5/October 2006

Research on the impact of innovation on regional economic performance in Europe has fundamentally followed three approaches: a) the analysis of the link between investment in R&D, patents, and economic growth; b) the study of the existence and efficiency of regional innovation systems; and c) the examination of geographical diffusion of regional knowledge spillovers. These complementary approaches have, however, rarely been combined. Important operational and methodological barriers have thwarted any potential cross-fertilization. In this paper, we try to fill this gap in the literature by combining in one model R&D, spillovers, and innovation systems approaches. A multiple regression analysis is conducted for all regions of the EU-25, including measures of R&D investment, proxies for regional innovation systems, and knowledge and socio-economic spillovers. This approach allows us to discriminate between the influence of internal factors and external knowledge and institutional flows on regional economic growth. The empirical results highlight how the interaction between local and external research with local and external socioeconomic and institutional conditions determines the potential of every region in order to maximise its innovation capacity. They also indicate the importance of proximity for the transmission of economically productive knowledge, as spillovers show strong distance decay effects. In the EU-25 context, only the innovative efforts pursued within a 180 minute travel radius have a positive and significant impact on regional growth performance.

The genesis of Georges Sorel, an account of his formative period followed by a study of his influence

Photocopy.

The accident syndrome : the genesis of accidental injury, a clinical approach /

Includes index.

IVHS Institutional and Legal Issues Program. Review of the Travlink and Genesis operational tests. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C.

The genesis of Georges Sorel, an account of his formative period followed by a study of his influence.

Bibliography: p. 299-312.

An interpretative history of the Pacific Missile Test Center : the genesis: road to Point Mugu 1936-1946 /

Includes appendixes.