update website to include ntstat pub and news

Author: warrenlr

_includes/current-year-pubs.html

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 <p class="2026"><a href=http://birollab.ca>Stay tuned</a> for exciting 2026 publications! Note: newly accepted papers may not have an active DOI yet. Please check back later.</p>
 
+<p class="2026">Kazemi P, Coombe L, Warren RL, Birol I. 2026. ntStat: k-mer characterization using occurrence statistics in raw sequencing data. PLoS Computational Biology. <a href=https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014158>https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014158</a></p>
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 <p class="2026">Zhang E, Ucar B, Salehi A, Warren RL, Birol I. 2026. AMPSeek: A Workflow for Predicting Antimicrobial Peptide Activity, Three-Dimensional Structure, and Toxicity. Current Protocols. <a href=https://doi.org/10.1002/cpz1.70325>https://doi.org/10.1002/cpz1.70325</a></p>
 
 <p class="2026">Chiu R, Rajan-Babu IS, Friedman JM, et al. 2026. A comprehensive tandem repeat catalog of the human genome. Nat Commun 17, 1106. <a href=https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-66153-5>https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-66153-5</a></p>

_posts/2026-04-01-ntstat.md

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+---
+layout: post  
+title: "ntStat manuscript published: k-mer characterization from raw sequencing data"  
+category: news  
+---
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+We are pleased to announce that our scientific manuscript, [ntStat: k-mer characterization using occurrence statistics in raw sequencing data](https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014158), is now published in *PLOS Computational Biology*.  
+
+**ntStat** is a fast and memory-efficient toolkit for extracting k-mer occurrence statistics directly from raw sequencing reads. Using succinct Bloom filters, ntStat tracks both k-mer counts and depth, and models k-mer count histograms via evolutionary computation to infer key genomic properties de novo, including genome size, heterozygosity, and sequencing characteristics.  
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+Across benchmarks, ntStat demonstrates strong performance and accuracy (>99.5% correct k-mer counts) while reducing memory usage and avoiding heavy disk requirements compared to existing tools. Its histogram analysis further enables accurate estimation of genomic parameters from both short- and long-read data.  
+
+[ntStat on GitHub](https://github.com/birollab/ntstat)