Porto Alegre, Brazil - Researchers at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), the university hospital (Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, HCPA) and the Children's Cancer Institute (Instituto do Câncer Infantil do Rio Grande do Sul, ICI-RS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, have shown that manipulating an epigenetic mechanism, which regulates gene expression, may promote cell death and favor maturation towards less malignant-prone phenotypes in pediatric brain cancer cell lines.

A possible new method for treating pancreatic cancer which enables the body's immune system to attack and kill cancer cells has been developed by researchers.

The method uses a drug which breaks down the protective barrier surrounding pancreatic cancer tumours, enabling cancer-attacking T cells to get through. The drug is used in combination with an antibody that blocks a second target, which improves the activity of these T cells.

This news release is available in German.

Even the so-called high-Tc superconductors still require very low temperatures of minus 200 degrees centigrade. While cooling down to these temperatures involves substantial effort, superconductors are already employed in many areas, e.g., for magnetic resonance tomography in medical applications. Despite extensive research, materials providing lossless conduction of electricity at room temperature are missing up to now.

The genomes of organisms from humans to corn are replete with "parasitic" strands of DNA that, when not suppressed, copy themselves and spread throughout the genome, potentially affecting health. Earlier this year Brown University researchers found that these "retrotransposable elements" were increasingly able to break free of the genome's control in cultures of human cells. Now in a new paper in the journal Aging, they show that RTEs are increasingly able to break free and copy themselves in the tissues of mice as the animals aged. In further experiments the biologists showed that this activity was readily apparent in cancerous tumors, but that it also could be reduced by restricting calories.

Americans don't like to talk about social class, we threw out the British because they believed an act of birth made them superior. In America, no class is better than any other - we are the only culture that thanks a waiter for interrupting our conversation at dinner in order to slosh water all over the table refilling a glass.

An international team of researchers led by scientists at Virginia Tech and the University of California, Berkeley has discovered that a process that turns on photosynthesis in plants likely developed on Earth in ancient microbes 2.5 billion years ago, long before oxygen became available.

The research offers new perspective on evolutionary biology, microbiology, and the production of natural gas, and may shed light on climate change, agriculture, and human health.