Omega fatty acids have long been recognized for their benefits: supporting cardiovascular health, reducing systemic inflammation, and promoting brain development and cognitive function. But scientists now warn of a long-unrecognized downside to these compounds when it comes to cancer and immunotherapy.

New preclinical experiments by medical investigators in the Vascular Biology and Therapeutic Program at Yale University School of Medicine show that omega fatty acids can blunt the cancer-killing capabilities of the immune system’s natural killer cells.

Their research is part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that well-known—and largely beneficial—fatty acids can circumvent the body’s defenses and promote cancer growth.

A unifying he...

A team of researchers led by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan discovered unexpectedly intricate magnetic structures above quiet-sun regions by observing the sun with the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise-III during its 2024 flight in Earth’s stratosphere. The work is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Threads within the magnetic canopy
Sun...

An international research team has discovered a previously unknown mechanism that plays a key role in the signaling pathways involved in programmed cell death. The team identified the protein HERC4 as an essential component of both TNF-induced necroptosis and apoptosis pathways—two processes that play a crucial role in maintaining cellular balance and triggering inflammatory responses.

The study, “HERC4-mediated ubiquitination licenses RIPK1 to initiate TNF-induced cell death,” was published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. The lead researchers were Dr...

There’s big news from the quantum world. A quantum computer has been used in space for the first time. The device was aboard a spacecraft in low Earth orbit and demonstrated technology that could eventually help solve a problem that has been bugging satellites for years.

The issue is that when orbiting satellites send their raw data back down to Earth, bottlenecks and bandwidth limits slow everything down. One way to overcome this would be to process the raw data in situ before sending it.

So a team of physicists led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna came up with a way that could eventually do just that...