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An extremely well-preserved dinosaur (Cf. Edmontosaurus sp.) found in the Hell Creek Formation (Upper Cretaceous, North Dakota) retains soft-tissue replacement structures and associated organic compounds. Mineral cements precipitated in the skin apparently follow original cell boundaries, partially preserving epidermis microstructure. Infrared and electron microprobe images of ossified tendon clearly show preserved mineral zonation, with silica and trapped carbon dioxide forming thin linings on Haversian canals within apatite. Furthermore, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) of materials recovered from the skin and terminal ungual phalanx suggests the presence of compounds containing amide groups. Amino acid composition analyses of the mineralized skin envelope clearly differ from the surrounding matrix; however, intact proteins could not be obtained using protein mass spectrometry. The presence of endogenously derived organics from the skin was further demonstrated by pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py-GCMS), indicating survival and presence of macromolecules that were in part aliphatic (see the electronic supplementary material).

Subjective well-being refers to people's level of satisfaction with life as a whole and with multiple dimensions within it. Interventions that promote subjective well-being are important because there is evidence that physical health, mental health, substance use, and health care costs may be related to subjective well-being. Fun For Wellness (FFW) is a new online universal intervention designed to promote growth in multiple dimensions of subjective well-being. The purpose of this study was to provide an initial evaluation of the efficacy of FFW to increase subjective well-being in multiple dimensions in a universal sample. The study design was a prospective, double-blind, parallel group randomized controlled trial. Data were collected at baseline and 30 and 60 days-post baseline. A total of 479 adult employees at a major university in the southeast of the USA were enrolled. Recruitment, eligibility verification, and data collection were conducted online. Measures of interpersonal, community, occupational, physical, psychological, economic (i.e., I COPPE), and overall subjective well-being were constructed based on responses to the I COPPE Scale. A two-class linear regression model with complier average causal effect estimation was imposed for each dimension of subjective well-being. Participants who complied with the FFW intervention had significantly higher subjective well-being, as compared to potential compliers in the Usual Care group, in the following dimensions: interpersonal at 60 days, community at 30 and 60 days, psychological at 60 days, and economic at 30 and 60 days. Results from this study provide some initial evidence for both the efficacy of, and possible revisions to, the FFW intervention.

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There are four neutralization-reionization processes which can be studied. In the first two, gaseous cations are collisionally reduced and the resulting fast neutrals are either oxidized by collisional electron removal (

IntroductionChronic pain is frequently reported by patients with arthritis [58]. However, there is no correlation between pain and structural joint damage in osteoarthritis [5]. The basis of variability between pathophysiology and pain outcomes is unknown. One possibility is natural variability in pain regulation within the central nervous system (CNS).The ascending spinothalamic pathways that mediate nociception terminate in multiple thalamic nuclei and cortical brain regions [20]. Cortical sites modulate nociception partly by projecting to the basal ganglia including the striatum, which also receives afferent nociceptive inputs from the spinal cord via the globus pallidus [6]. Striatal nuclei, including the caudate, putamen and nucleus accumbens, are the most densely populated regions for opioid receptors in the brain [4,14,34], and are thought to be important for opioid-mediated endogenous analgesia [12,21]. The possibility of opioid mechanisms being involved in determining individual differences in pain states has been a key topic of recent research [28,41,60], but the functional consequences of chronic pain on OpR physiology are largely unknown.Correspondence to: Dr Christopher A Brown, CamPain group, Division of Anaesthesia, Box 93, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, CB2 0QQ, cb802@cam.ac.uk. The authors declare no competing financial interests. It has long been known that prolonged nociception results in the release of endogenous opioid peptides and subsequent agonism of OpRs in the CNS [19]. However, a relatively unexplored hypothesis is that chronic pain could potentially adjust OpR physiology to provide more efficient dampening of the pain response as part of a homeostatic control mechanism. There is evidence from animal studies that delta and kappa-OpRs, found in the brain and spinal cord [8,11], can be up-regulated in response to mu-OpR agonism [56], thereby increasing the anti-nociceptive potency of delta-OpR agonists [38,44]. Animal models of chronic inflammatory pain have shown an increase in cell membrane expression of delta-OpRs both postsynaptically [9] and presynaptically [22] in the dorsal spinal cord ipsilateral to the site of injury. Stimulus-evoked translocation of delta-OpRs to neuronal plasma membranes may have evolved as part of a homeostatic mechanism to maintain control of nociceptive transmission [7]. However, evidence for such a mechanism in humans is lacking. Europe PMC Funders GroupPositron Emission Tomography (PET) receptor binding studies enable assessment of the endogenous opioid system in humans via radiotracers that bind to opioid receptors (OpRs), such as carbon-11 labelled diprenorphine ([ 11 C]-DPN), an antagonist that binds equally well to mu, delta and kappa OpRs [31,33]. Here we measured OpR availability in patients with arthritis and healthy controls with [ 11 C]-DPN PET imaging, to identify relationships between OpR availability and the level of perceived acute and chronic pain. Our analysis revealed associations between the striatum and the perception of both acute a...