DENVER, Wednesday 25 February 2026) Contrary to existing evidence from observational studies, the meningococcal B vaccine (4CMenB) has no effect on preventing the acquisition of gonorrhoea, according to the results of the world’s largest randomised control trial (RCT) into possible efficacy, conducted by Griffith University’s Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics and the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney. The results were presented today by Professor Kate Seib from Griffith University at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, Colorado. Gonorrhoea is a considerable public health challenge, with particular concern around the rise in antibiotic-resistant ...

The American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) has been selected by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS), with support from The John A. Hartford Foundation, to receive a grant through the Expanding Age-Friendly Approaches to Specialty Ambulatory Care program. The AAO-HNSF is one of a select group of specialty societies awarded funding to develop, implement, and evaluate age-friendly care practices tailored for older adults in outpatient specialty settings. The 18-month ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Newsweek has named Mayo Clinic the No. 1 hospital in the world for the eighth straight year in its 2026 World’s Best Hospitals list.   "This recognition is a result of the extraordinary expertise, compassion and commitment of our staff, all working together to transform healthcare and find more cures for the benefit of people everywhere," says Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic. "Over the past year, we accelerated that transformation by responsibly integrating data, technology ...

A team of environmental chemists has developed a new catalyst made from discarded coffee grounds that can efficiently remove hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic industrial gas, from waste streams while producing useful elemental sulfur. The research demonstrates how agricultural waste can be transformed into high-value materials for pollution control and sustainable industry. Hydrogen sulfide is widely generated in petroleum refining, wastewater treatment, and metal processing. Even at very low concentrations it can harm human health and corrode industrial equipment, while higher levels can ...

A new study reveals how specially modified biochar can significantly improve the ability of willow trees to remove toxic cadmium from contaminated soils, offering a promising strategy for restoring polluted land in a sustainable way. Cadmium is a persistent heavy metal that threatens crop safety, ecosystems, and human health. One environmentally friendly solution is phytoremediation, a process in which plants absorb pollutants from soil. However, plant growth and metal uptake often decline in highly contaminated environments, ...

Scientists are refining a promising climate-smart material that could help clean polluted soils, protect water resources, and support more sustainable agriculture. A new review highlights how engineering biochar with magnetic and mineral modifications may significantly expand its environmental applications while overcoming key practical limitations. Biochar is a carbon-rich material produced by heating agricultural and organic waste in low-oxygen conditions. Because of its porous structure, chemical stability, and ability to bind ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn., Farmington, Conn. – February 25, 2026) Young infants hospitalized with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) often become much sicker compared to those infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In a study published today in Science Translational Medicine, scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) report that the two respiratory viruses trigger different immune responses. Those differences might explain why these two diseases have different clinical outcomes and require different treatment strategies.   During the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians observed that infants admitted with RSV infection ...

We already know that climate change brings extreme weather, but new research reveals it is also rewriting human demography. According to a massive new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), exposure to extreme heat during pregnancy significantly alters the human sex ratio at birth, resulting in fewer baby boys. By analyzing high-resolution temperature data alongside 5 million live births in 33 sub-Saharan African countries and India, an international team of researchers — including Portland State University demographer Joshua Wilde — discovered ...

Despite advances in the field of organ transplantation, long-term organ rejection that can become apparent a decade or more after a heart or lung transplant remains a common problem for patients. This chronic organ failure has long been attributed exclusively to the recipient’s immune system attacking the foreign organ over time. Now, a study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that chronic organ rejection may instead be triggered by the disruption of lymphatic vessels — an important drainage system throughout the body — ...

A ketogenic diet — one that is high in fat and extremely low in carbohydrates — has been known for decades to reduce seizures in some epilepsy patients. But how the highly restrictive diet achieves these effects has not previously been understood. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have now shown in mice that the diet causes physical changes in brain cells affecting how they send information to one another, dampening the strength of the signals between them. This quieter neural landscape might explain how the diet calms the overactive ...

Contact: Kate McAlpine, 734-647-7087, kmca@umich.edu  ANN ARBOR—A thousand times faster than conventional testing, an ion beam approach to qualifying materials for use in the cores of advanced nuclear reactors is advancing through stages of approval by the industry standards organization ASTM.  The methodology, developed with leadership by University of Michigan Engineering, will be presented at a special event hosted by the Electric Power Research Institute, March 10-11 in Charlotte, North ...

February 25, 2026 – SEATTLE, Wash. –  Over two decades, medical care improvements increased health spans in the U.S. by 1.3 years and medical spending by $234,000 per person over their lifetime – or about $182,000 per additional healthy year of life gained – when measured from birth. These are among the key findings in a new in-depth national study published today in Value in Health. Researchers examined how improvements in medical care changed health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) and lifetime health care spending by evaluating changes in 132 causes of disease across all ages between ...

The 2026 SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning conference highlighted AI, both as a challenge and a solution. A case in point was the opening plenary session, which featured presentations on high performance memory and diversified manufacturing. The challenge of AI played a large role in the first talk. The existence of ultra large AI models with trillions of parameters, up from billions a few years ago, is improving AI capabilities. Those enormous models, though, pose a problem because they demand higher performing chips. At one time, the limitation was processing power, but that’s no longer the case. “The ...

The Care Bears taught a generation of kids that sharing is caring, but few carried this principle into adulthood. Researchers at Michigan State University have found a new angle to promote cooperation — artificial intelligence (AI). The results of this study are published in npj Complexity. “Cooperation is everywhere in nature,” said Christoph Adami, professor at Michigan State University and senior author on the study. “But the mathematics of how cooperation can persist is not easy to understand.” The project revolves around the concept of the “tragedy of the commons” ...

Irvine, Calif., Feb. 25, 2026 — University of California, Irvine computer scientists have discovered a critical security vulnerability in autonomous target-tracking drones that could have far-reaching implications for public safety, border security and personal privacy. The UC Irvine team demonstrated how attackers could use an ordinary umbrella to manipulate drones, drawing the aircraft close enough to capture them or cause them to crash. The researchers developed a novel physical-world attack framework that they call FlyTrap. It exploits deficiencies in camera-based, ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2026 MINNEAPOLIS — A new study of smokers finds that currently smoking is associated with a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, but quitting smoking was associated with a lower risk of death. The study was published on February 25, 2026, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that smoking prevents Parkinson’s; it only shows an association. “The severe ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2026 Highlights: A new study of former American football players looked at how a history of repetitive head impacts may be associated with cognitive and behavioral symptoms later in life. Researchers found higher levels of inflammation were associated with worse brain structure, which in turn was associated with poorer memory. The study does not prove cause and effect. It only shows associations. MINNEAPOLIS — In former college and professional football players, a new study has found higher levels of inflammation ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4:00 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2026 Highlights: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare, progressive disease characterized by the degeneration of nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The study does not show cause and effect; it only shows an association. A new study of half a million people compared early birds who are more productive in the morning to night owls who are more productive later in the day. It found being an early bird was associated with a 20% lower risk of ALS when compared to being a night owl. The study also looked at physical activity and found being more physically active was associated with a 26% lower ...

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 ...