A new, daily oral tablet that combines two current HIV treatment medications, bictegravir and lenacapavir (BIC/LEN), may be able to effectively replace more complicated HIV treatment regimens used by people living with HIV who are long-term survivors, according to the results of a new phase 3 clinical trial published in The Lancet. The trial, which included more than 550 people living with HIV across 15 countries, showed that the new single-pill treatment was highly effective in maintaining HIV suppression (HIV virus levels below 50 copies/mL). Nearly 96% of participants who switched to this simplified regimen maintained ...

A phase 3 clinical trial, led by Professor Chloe Orkin of Queen Mary University of London, has shown that a new, daily oral tablet that combines two current HIV treatment medications – bictegravir and lenacapavir (BIC/LEN) – may simplify treatment significantly for people with HIV who currently take very complex treatments.   The findings were presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections 2026 in Denver, ...

Firearm homicide death rates have long been disproportionately higher for Black Americans compared to White Americans, and a new analysis across 45 years suggests that, in recent years, this disparity has grown. Alex Knorre of the University of South Florida, U.S., and John MacDonald of the University of Pennsylvania, U.S., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on February 25, 2026. An abundance of prior research has firmly established that Black Americans face long-standing social and economic inequalities, including the Black-White racial disparity in firearm ...

Flagging claims about cancer treatment on social media as potentially false might help reduce spreading of misinformation, per online experiment with 1,051 US adults Article URL: https://plos.io/4cccZdV Article title: Intervening and reducing sharing of false cancer treatments on social media: Online experiment Author countries: U.S. Funding: This work was supported by a UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center Developmental Award which is supported in part by P30 CA016086 Cancer Center Core Support Grant. ...

Even in the womb, where all oxygen is provided by the parental placenta, fetuses can—and do—yawn. More yawns during observation were associated with a lower weight at birth—potentially indicating mild fetal stress in the womb, according to a study published February 25, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Damiano Menin, of the Università degli Studi di Ferrara in Italy, and colleagues. Yawning is a behavior found across vertebrates—and no one quite knows why. In humans, ...

Conservation agriculture, including no-dig, crop-rotation and mulching methods, reduces water runoff and soil loss and boosts crop yield by as much as 122%, in Ethiopian trial Article URL: https://plos.io/4tvwcNF Article title: Conservation agriculture enhances soil and water conservation and crop yield in the Ethiopian highlands Author countries: Ethiopia Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Climate change has caused some tropical plants to flower earlier or later than they used to, in some cases by a matter of weeks or even months, according to a study of 8,000 flowers across more than two centuries, published February 25, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Skylar Graves and Erin Manzitto-Tripp of the University of Colorado-Boulder, U.S. Among the documented impacts of recent climate change are the shifting flowering times of some plant species. Such changes to plant reproductive behaviors can have wide-ranging ecological consequences, particularly for pollinators and ...

New research shows that, off the U.S. West Coast, humpback whales face a higher risk of getting entangled in fishing equipment during years with lower availability of cool-water habitat, where the whales feed. Jarrod Santora of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Climate on February 25th. Many kinds of fishing gear, such as gillnets and traps, can entangle whales, injuring or even killing them. Before 2014, annual reported entanglements off the U.S. West Coast were below 10, but reports have risen, with 31 reported in ...

Suitable habitat for migrating monarch butterflies will shift southwards because of climate change, according to a study publishing February 25th in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Francisco Botello and Carolina Ureta at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and colleagues. One of the most dramatic and awe-inspiring phenomena in nature is the mass migration of the brightly colored monarch butterfly. Each year, millions of monarchs travel thousands of kilometers from their breeding grounds in Canada and the U.S. to overwintering sites in central Mexico. Conservationists have raised concerns over dramatic declines in the number of migrating monarchs, ...

When removing cancerous tissue in the brain, neurosurgeons often use “awake brain mapping” to minimize the risk of causing unintended disruptions to a patient’s quality of life while removing as much tumor as possible. This practice, which has been used for decades, involves waking a patient up mid-surgery to test their neurocognitive functions in real time by stimulating the brain surface and assessing for functional changes. A new study soon to be published in the journal Science Advances details ...

Almost 1-in-3 American adolescents has diabetes or prediabetes, with waist-to-height ratio the strongest independent predictor of prediabetes/diabetes, reveals survey of 1,998 adolescents (10-19 years) from 2021-2023 Article URL: https://plos.io/3MEkobs Article title: Prevalence and predictors of prediabetes/type 2 diabetes mellitus among adolescents in the United States: NHANES (2021–2023) Author countries: U.S., Ghana. Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Researchers have investigated the role of a certain enzyme in regulating energy in muscle and exercise performance for decades, but a new study by Virginia Tech scientists has identified more precisely than ever how this mechanism works. Scientists working at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC focused on a triggering event that leads to the activation AMPK, which is a master energy senso known as Adenosine Monophosphate-Activated Protein Kinase. It is a regulator of energy production in response to the tremendous energetic demands of exercise. The study, published Wednesday, Feb. 25, in Science Advances, confirmed role of AMPK phosphorylation ...

Many therapeutic molecules used in cancer treatments are highly toxic, often harming healthy tissues and causing significant side effects. This creates a critical need for strategies that localize their toxic activity to tumors. What if cancer drugs could stay dormant until they reach cancer cells? A new study by Syracuse University researchers demonstrates a promising chemistry-based strategy that could do just that. Xiaoran Hu, assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts & Sciences (A&S), and his team introduced a prototyping “lock-and-key” system that holds therapeutic drugs in an inactive, caged form until a separate chemical trigger ...

February 25, 2026--  Benzodiazepine treatment declined among U.S. adults between 2018 and 2022, with the steepest drop among adults ages 56 and older, according to a new study by researchers at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Despite the overall decrease, co-prescribing with other central nervous system (CNS) depressants — including opioids — remains common, particularly among adults in poor health or experiencing serious psychological distress. The ...

Dining on the moon or Mars might seem like a fantasy reserved for science fiction, but researchers are investigating how it could become a reality. Their efforts to recycle plant and human waste into a fertilizer material — turning the barren surfaces of the moon and Mars into fertile fields that might be suitable for extraterrestrial agriculture — are described in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. “In lunar and Martian outposts, organic wastes will be key to generating ...

When artificial intelligence systems began acing long‑standing academic assessments, researchers realized they had a problem: the tests were too easy. Popular evaluations, such as the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) exam, once considered formidable, are no longer challenging enough to meaningfully test advanced AI systems. To address this gap, a global consortium of nearly 1,000 researchers, including a Texas A&M University professor, created something different — an exam so broad, so challenging and so deeply rooted in expert human knowledge that current AI systems consistently fail it. “Humanity’s Last Exam” (HLE) introduces ...

Quantum technologies are anticipated to transform computing, communication and sensing by harnessing the unusual behavior of matter at the atomic scale. Translating quantum’s promise into practical devices will require physical systems that have desirable quantum properties and can be easily manufactured. Silicon, the material behind today’s computer chips, is highly attractive as a platform because it plays to the strengths of the trillion-dollar semiconductor industry that has already been built. Identifying quantum building blocks — qubits —in silicon is, therefore, an important frontier research ...

How many fossils does it take to accurately train an image-based AI algorithm? According to a new study co-authored by Bruce MacFadden, UF Distinguished Professor Emeritus and retired curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the answer is somewhere around 250. This number is much lower than the amount scientists previously thought was needed. This is a new spin on an old question that paleontologists have contended with for years. The amount of information that can be gleaned from a single fossil is limited to a few bare facts. If they’re ...

Bio-based polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) are considered one of the most promising sustainable alternatives to fossil-derived plastics. Poly[(D-lactate)-co-(R)-3-hydroxybutyrate] (LAHB) is an environmentally biodegradable microbial copolyester, and its lactate (LA) content significantly influences its properties. A new study shows how reinforcing the gene expression of the LA-polymerizing enzyme in a recombinant strain of Cupriavidus necator improves the LA fraction. The LA-enriched LAHB maintained a high molecular weight and displayed a balance of strength and elongation ...

MIT researchers have discovered that two common genetic mutations that cause Rett syndrome each set off a molecular chain of events that compromises the structural integrity of developing brain blood vessels, making them leaky. The study traces the problem to overexpression of a particular microRNA (miRNA-126-3p), and shows that tamping down the miRNA’s levels helps to rescue the vascular defect. Rett syndrome is a severe developmental disorder affecting both the brain and body. It is caused by various mutations in the widely expressed MECP2 ...

Scientists have identified how specific genetic changes function in cells to influence disease risk and other human health traits. By probing regions of DNA previously linked to disease, the work has created high resolution maps of DNA variant activity, helping pinpoint the exact changes that shape blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood sugar and other complex human traits. The study, published today in Nature and led by researchers from The Jackson Laboratory (JAX), the Broad Institute, and Yale University, takes on a long-standing challenge in human genetics. Scientists have known for years that ...

What does it take to make AI that can pass as human? Try massive clusters of supercomputers. To build human-like intelligence, computer scientists think big. However, for neuroscientists who want to understand how real brains work, today’s AI only goes so far, as it replaces one deeply complicated system (the brain) with another (AI). How then do we figure out the inner workings of the biological brain? To answer this question, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Assistant Professor Benjamin Cowley is thinking small. In collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University Professor Matthew Smith and Princeton ...

About The Study: Strategic placement of a trauma center in an area with high rates of violent injury and limited trauma care access was associated with significantly reduced mortality within the service area. These findings should inform trauma system planning to address geographic disparities in trauma care access, particularly in communities with high rates of penetrating trauma.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Michael R. Poulson, MD, MPH, email michael.poulson@uchicagomedicine.org. To ...

About The Study: Given increasing rates of coronary artery disease (CAD) worldwide, the findings of this study of marked variation in radiation dose to patients from diagnostic testing identify a critical need for training, standardized protocols, and updated equipment to reduce radiation worldwide. This especially affects patients in low- and middle-income countries and patients undergoing coronary computed tomography angiograph. There are therefore important opportunities to improve the quality of CAD diagnosis for patients across the globe. Corresponding ...

About The Article: Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heat waves and the exposure of pregnant individuals to extreme heat. This article summarizes current evidence about risks to maternal health from ambient heat (hot weather, high indoor temperatures, and occupational exposures) and how these risks can be managed. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Sari Kovats, PhD, email Sari.kovats@lshtm.ac.uk. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...