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I began to read this article with interest until I came to the statement "The physical laws of thermodynamics tell us that electrical impulses must produce heat as they travel along the nerve, but experiments find that no such heat is produced," says associate professor Thomas Heimburg...". At this point I sensed a disconnect between the quotation and the actual content of the paper. Its authors are well aware of the heat production associated with a nerve impulse, a phenomenon that has been known for decades. For example, they cite the the following article:
Abbott, B. C.; Hill, A. V.; Howarth, J. V. The Positive and Negative Heat Production Associated with a Nerve Impulse. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Volume 148, Issue 931, pp. 149-187, 1958.
So I am puzzled by the quotation given in the news release. The authors of the study have proposed a new mechanism for nerve impulse propagation in their attempt to overcome some of their perceived shortcomings in the Hodgkin-Huxley theory, which has a huge literature in its support. Certainly any theory is open to challenge, but Heimburg and his collaborators have a heavy burden of proof which (at least by my reading of their paper), they have not met, nor have others with various competing theories. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.