The area of skin supplied by the afferent fibers in one cutaneous nerve is called the cutaneous area (CA) for that nerve. The CA of peripheral branches of lumbar and sacral spinal nerves responsive to the stimulation of hair follicle mechanoreceptors were mapped in 27 dogs. The amount of overlap among the CA was similar to that found for other CA of the body. The CA of peripheral branches of the sciatic nerve were restricted to the lateral, cranial, and caudal aspects of the pelvic limb distal to the stifle. The CA of the saphenous nerve was located on the medial side of the limb, except for a small area located on the lateral side of the crus. The distal part of the CA of the saphenous nerve was completely overlapped in the hind paw by branches of the superficial peroneal nerve laterally and the medial plantar branch of the tibial nerve medially. The CA for the deep peroneal nerve was located on the dorsal surface of the webbing between digits 2 and 3 and the adjacent skin of these digits. The CA of the plantar branches of the tibial nerve were small in comparison with the diameter of the nerve, suggesting that these branches contained nerve fibers supplying other, deeper structures in the hindpaw and that damage to these nerves would interfere with cutaneous sensation in only a small region on the plantar surface of the hindpaw. Knowledge of the CA of the various branches of the sciatic nerve allows more accurate localization of injury to the sciatic nerve or its branches by using areas of anesthesia.

The influence of increasing the physical electrofusion parameters, direct current (DC) pulse strength, pulse duration, pulse number, alternating current (AC) voltage and alignment time, in electrolytes on the rates of fusion,degeneration and development of zona-free mouse 2-cell embryos were examined. Furthermore, the effects of physiological saline and mannitol as fusion media and various mouse strains were also evaluated. Dulbecco's phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) supplemented with 10% fetal calf serum was used as the main fusion solution. A significant increase in the rate of fusion (P0.05) was obtained by increasing pulse strength from 30 to 300 V/mm. The embryos fused at the pules strengths of 30 to 70 V/mm had significantly higher development rates to blastocysts compared with those fused at 100 to 300 V/mm (P0.05). There were no significant differences in the rates of fusion, degeneration and d development to blastocysts when the pulse duration was increased from 30 to 90 mu-sec. Although fusion rates were increased (P0.05) by increasing the pulse number up to 4, a significant decrease (P0.05) in development to blastocysts was observed when the pulse number was 5. Application of AC voltage prior to the DC pulse tended to increase the fusion rate (89.2-93.8%), compared with fusion with the DC pulse only (75.0%). Prolongation of alignment time from 5 to 15 sec had no effect on the fusion rate. Under the optimum conditions (2 pulses of DC of 7- V/mm, 70 mu-sec pulse duration and AC of 5 V/mm for 5 sec), no significant difference was obtained in the fusion and development rates in different mouse strains, nor were fusion and development rates significantly different among PBS, physiological saline and mannitol solutions (P0.05)