If you want to go on a quest for solving the mysteries of deafness, discovering the genetic machinery in the inner ear that responds to sound waves and converts them into electrical impulses, the language of the brain, is your holy grail.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) say have identified just such a chalice; a critical component of this ear-to-brain conversion is the protein called TMHS. This protein is a component of the mechanotransduction channels in the ear, which convert the signals from mechanical sound waves into electrical impulses transmitted to the nervous system. 

Lying, like anything else, can be done pretty well with some practice.  Just like not everyone can be a world class pianist but everyone can sound decent with some time and effort, with a little work, one could learn to tell a lie that may be indistinguishable from the truth, say psychologists.

They say that lying is more malleable than previously thought, and with a certain amount of training and instruction, the art of deception can even be perfected.

Teflon is popular, used on everything from cooking pans to armor-piercing bullets, but it has a waste byproduct, fluoroform, which has to be stored by chemical companies because it has an estimated global warming potential 11,700 times higher than carbon dioxide. 

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.