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Now anyone can visit NIH anytime, from anywhere, through a Virtual Tour newly launched by NIH’s Office of Communications and Public Liaison (OCPL). The idea came about during the pandemic, when NIH suspended in-person campus tours to protect the safety of staff and patients.

While in-person visits and tours have resumed, the mobile-friendly tour opens NIH to people from around the world—to patients who want to participate in clinical trials; investigators, trainees and other staff; educators and students; policymakers and anyone else interested in NIH’s work and mission.

Modern physics can explain everything from the spin of the tiniest particle to the behaviour of entire galaxy clusters. But it can’t explain life. There’s simply no formula to explain the difference between a living lump of matter and a dead one. Life seems to just mysteriously “emerge” from non-living parts, such as elementary particles.

Assembly theory is a bold new approach to explaining life on a fundamental scale, with its framework recently published in Nature. It assumes that complexity and information (such as DNA) are at the heart of it. The theory provides a a way to understand how these concepts emerge in chemical systems.

Emergence is a word physicists use to explain something that is bigger than the sum of its parts – such as how water can feel wet when individual water molecules don’t. Wetness is an emergent property.

Ultra-processed foods can have a negative effect on mental health, and this is especially true for younger people, who consume more of these foods than older people.


Over time, there has been increasing evidence that those whose diet includes large quantities of ultra-processed foods are more likely to develop physical health issues.

These issues can include obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even more rapid aging. This is supported by wide research, including a paper by the IRCCS Neuromed Mediterranean Neurological Institute in Italy, involving about 23,000 citizens from the Molise region.

The researchers found that individuals whose consumption of ultra-processed foods is as high as 14.6% of their overall food intake have a 26% increased mortality risk over those who eat fewer UPFs. It further goes on to say that the same group of people faces a 58% greater chance of dying from cardiovascular diseases.

An already-approved chemotherapy drug could reduce the risk of dying of cervical cancer when added to the current treatment standard, according to new research presented at a major medical conference.

The study, presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology, followed 500 people, most of whom had “locally advanced” cervical cancer that hadn’t yet spread to other body parts.

Half of the patients were treated with chemoradiation — the current gold standard for treatment, researchers said. The other half were given combination therapy that included a pre-dose (or induction dose) of chemotherapy before every session of chemoradiation.

FGFR inhibitors, in combination with standard treatments, have extended the lives of many with this disease. However, these drugs often stop working after six to eight months.

“These drugs work very well for a while, but resistance is inevitable,” says gastrointestinal medical oncologist Milind Javle, M.D.

Now, a new type of FGFR inhibitor may allow patients to live longer without their disease progressing.

Intelligent robots are reshaping our universe. In New Jersey’s Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, AI-assisted robots are bringing a new level of security to doctors and patients by scanning every inch of the premises for harmful bacteria and viruses and disinfecting them with precise doses of germicidal ultraviolet light.

In agriculture, robotic arms driven by drones scan varying types of fruits and vegetables and determine when they are perfectly ripe for picking.

The Airspace Intelligence System AI Flyways takes over the challenging and often stressful tasks of flight dispatchers who must make last-minute flight pattern changes due to sudden extreme weather, depleted fuel supplies, mechanical problems or other emergencies. It optimizes solutions, is safer, saves time and is cost-efficient.