The missing ingredient turned out to be sub-bass: The lowest frequencies audible to the humanear, used extensively by dance acts to give their rhythm tracks an added wallop.
His science was behind the popular Internet download a few years back of a new humanear grown onto the back of a mouse, a photo that turned the collective stomach of a public still queasy about biotechnology.
That's not the sirens' fault -- a mind-numbingly loud "whoop whoop" really doesn't have the bandwidth to reveal that kind of information to the humanear -- but now that SMS-capable phones are ubiquitous, it's time to smarten things up just a tad.
This first-step work crafted a human-shaped ear that grew with cartilage from a cow, easier to obtain than human cartilage, especially the uniquely flexible kind that makes up ears.