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Antiretroviral drugs stop HIV from replicating in the body.Credit: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

In the past 4 years, 12 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas have surpassed acceptable levels of drug resistance against efavirenz and nevirapine — two drugs that constitute the backbone of HIV treatment. In places where more than 10% of adults with the virus have developed resistance, it’s not considered safe to prescribe the same HIV medicines to the rest of the population, because resistance could increase. In response to the evidence, the World Health Organization has recommended that countries use dolutegravir, which is more effective and tolerable than other therapies, as the go-to HIV drug.

Nature | 3 min read

After tens of millions of years slowly slipping under the western margin of North America, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate is nearing the end of its existence. Scientists watching its last days have found a tiny tear deep below central Oregon where the plate is ripping apart, offering clues as to how a dying plate twists and deforms as it is swallowed up by a continent. Ultimately, the tear might be the cause of recent earthquakes off the American coast and a string of volcanoes that stretches across Oregon.

National Geographic | 12 min read

Reference: Geophysical Research Letters paper

A distant system with three medium-sized exoplanets offers “a perfect laboratory” for cracking the mystery of how such planets form. The trio consists of one ‘super-Earth’ and two ‘mini-Neptunes’ — all of sizes in between those of the rocky inner planets and the gas giants in our Solar System. The exoplanets are among the first of thousands expected to be spotted by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

Science | 6 min read

Reference: Nature Astronomy paper

Compare and contrast worlds in the TOI 270 system with these illustrations of each planet. Temperatures given for TOI 270 planets are equilibrium temperatures, calculated without taking into account the warming effects of any possible atmospheres.NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

FEATURES & OPINION

Joseph Stalin knew about the Trinity nuclear test before Harry Truman did — all thanks to atomic physicist Klaus Fuchs, who spilled top-secret details of British and US nuclear bombs to the Soviet Union for years. A new biography by physicist Frank Close tells Fuchs’s story with the aplomb of a spy novel, says reviewer Ann Finkbeiner.

Nature | 6 min read

China publishes more agricultural-science papers involving CRISPR than any other country — twice as many as the second-place United States. Why? “Because I’m here,” jokes plant scientist Gao Caixia, one of the leading researchers in China’s bid to use gene editing to transform its food supply. High yield, drought tolerance and resistance to pests and disease are all on the to-do list for scientists hoping to help feed the country’s 1.4 billion people.

Science | 13 min read

“This is the review process we have both learned the most from,” say psychologists Joyce He and Stéphane Côté, who authored one of two pioneering Registered Reports in Nature Human Behaviour. In this approach, peer review and the decision to publish precede data collection and analysis. The process felt more collaborative and less confrontational, say He and Côté, and knowing the study would be published — no matter what — made the decision to fund an expensive experiment easier. “I for one will find it difficult to go back to ‘traditional’ ways of publishing research,” said Côté on Twitter.

Nature Behavioural & Social Sciences Community blog | 4 min read

Reference: Nature Human Behaviour paper