Testosterone has control over the gender-specific absence or presence of mammary gland nerves that sense the amount of milk available in breast milk ducts, according to a new paper which says that the hormones do the job by altering the availability of a nerve growth factor, called BDNF for short. 

 A nanostructured 'sandwich' of metal and plastic may be a way to nearly triple the efficiency of organic solar cells, those cheap and flexible plastic energy devices that could be the future of solar power.

The researchers were able to increase the efficiency 175 percent and the technology should increase the efficiency of conventional inorganic solar collectors, such as standard silicon solar panels, but that is another research issue. Any solar solution needs to to overcome two primary challenges that cause solar cells to lose energy; light reflecting from the cell, and the inability to fully capture light that enters the cell.

Blocking a specific protein, ABCC10, renders tumors more vulnerable to treatment in mice

ABCC10 is a type of ATP-binding cassette drug efflux pumps, known more simply as ABC proteins. These proteins sit on the membranes of cells, where they act just like pumps—removing cancer drugs from the cell, thereby making them less effective. The body contains close to 50 such proteins but only 3 appear capable of evading the effects of cancer drugs, including common types used to treat lung, ovarian, and breast cancers.

A team of astronomers have measured an excess of X-ray radiation in the first few minutes of collapsing massive stars, which may be the signature of the supernova shock wave first escaping from the star - new evidence that X-ray detectors in space could be the first to witness new supernovae that signal the death of massive stars.   

Presently, there are about 40 million Americans over the age of 65, with the fastest-growing segment of the population over 80 years old. Traditionally, aging has been viewed as a period of progressive decline in physical, cognitive and psychosocial functioning, and aging is viewed by many as the "number one public health problem" facing Americans today.

40 years after the last Apollo spacecraft launched, readings from the Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored by scientists with the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. 

The newly available data will make long-term analysis of the Apollo dust readings possible. Digital data from these two experiments had not been archived before, and it's believed that roughly the last year-and-a-half of the data have never been studied. The recovery of these data sets is part of the Lunar Data Project, an ongoing NSSDC effort, drawing on researchers at multiple institutions, to make the scientific data from Apollo available in modern formats.