Body-focused (FEMALE) teens more likely to experience anxiety and depression at 20

A cluster analysis of health behaviors and their relationship to weight stigma, neuroticism and psychological wellbeing

University of Warwick

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Teenage girls who maintain a ‘normal’ body weight through constant dieting and exercise may look ‘healthy’ but should be seen as a vulnerable group according to new research from the University of Warwick.

The study, led by Dr Dimitra Hartas, finds that 17-year-old women of normal weight who closely manage their bodies through strict regimes of diet and exercise – focused on “clean eating”, fitness, and constant self-monitoring rather than food deprivation – face heightened risks to their psychological health. Many reported experiences of weight stigma, high levels of anxiety-related traits, and thoughts of self-harm and suicide.

By the age of 20, these young women were more likely to experience symptoms associated with anxiety and depression, alongside psychological distress and poorer overall wellbeing.

The research challenges the widespread assumption that dieting and regular exercise are always markers of good health. Instead, it highlights how body management has become closely tied to identity, self-worth, and social acceptance – particularly for young women.

“In an image-saturated culture, young women are praised for being fit and slim,” said Dr Dimitra Hartas, Reader at the University of Warwick. “But beneath this veneer of health lies a troubling reality. For many, managing body weight is not about wellbeing – it is about meeting cultural expectations and earning a sense of worth.”

The study points to a broader societal shift in which personhood has become a project of constant self-optimisation, where the ‘ideal body’ is narrowly defined and weight is treated as a measure of personal worth.

In social media culture, body satisfaction has become a form of currency, with ‘slim’ increasingly seen as synonymous with ‘worthy’. As a result, young women often work hard to look like the best version of themselves, rather than to feel or be well.

“This pressure for the female body to shrink is a form of social control,” Dr Hartas said. “It restricts women’s physical and symbolic space, shaping how they see themselves and how society permits them to exist. The mental health cost of this pressure is significant and too often overlooked.”

The findings sit within a wider and worrying context. Recent studies show that one in three women aged 16–24 report experiencing mental ill health, with rates of self-harm among young women having quadrupled since 2000.

Dr Hartas argues that recognising young women of normal weight who engage in constant dieting and exercise as a vulnerable group is essential for improving mental health prevention, education, and support.

“Health messaging needs to move beyond weight and appearance,” she said. “We need to ask not just how young women look, but how they are actually doing – psychologically, emotionally, and socially.”

“These findings show that schools and colleges need to do much more to support young people’s health,” said Dr Michael C Watson from the Institute of Health Promotion and Education (IHPE). “We need to move beyond BMI and weight management towards promoting exercise, sleep and healthy eating, while also tackling body image and fat shaming. This is a complex challenge that won’t be solved by one-off or isolated interventions.”

ENDS

About the University of Warwick 

Founded in 1965, the University of Warwick is a world-leading institution known for its commitment to era-defining innovation across research and education. A connected ecosystem of staff, students and alumni, the University fosters transformative learning, interdisciplinary collaboration and bold industry partnerships across state-of-the-art facilities in the UK and global satellite hubs. Here, spirited thinkers push boundaries, experiment and challenge convention to create a better world.

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Journal

Current Psychology

DOI

10.1007/s12144-025-08652-8 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

A cluster analysis of health behaviours and their relationship to weight stigma, neuroticism and psychological wellbeing in adolescents and young adults: a population-based study

Article Publication Date

16-Jan-2026

 

A new method to unlock vast lithium stores

Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly way to extract this critical mineral

Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science

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Demand for lithium is skyrocketing as factories across the world churn out electric vehicles and the massive batteries that make wind turbines and solar panels reliable sources of energy. Unfortunately, current methods for producing lithium are slow and require high-quality feedstocks that are found in relatively few locations on the planet. Ironically, the environmental costs are also significant: refining the mineral behind clean energy requires large amounts of land and pollutes water supplies that local communities depend on.

In a new paper, researchers from Columbia Engineering describe a new method for extracting lithium that could dramatically shorten processing time, unlock reserves that existing methods can’t tap, and reduce environmental impact. Their technique uses a temperature-sensitive solvent to extract lithium directly from the brines found in deposits across the world. Unlike the current technologies, this approach can efficiently extract lithium even when the mineral is found in very low concentrations and contaminated with similar materials.

The results, detailed in a paper published today in Joule, show that the innovation, called switchable solvent selective extraction, S3E (pronounced S three E), can extract lithium with strong selectivity: up to 10 times higher than for sodium, and 12 times higher than for potassium. The process also excludes magnesium, a common contaminant in lithium brines, by triggering a chemical precipitation step that separates it out.

Improving on Solar Evaporation

Roughly 40% of lithium production begins with a salty brine that’s found in large reservoirs that form under deserts. Nearly all of that lithium is extracted using a technique called solar evaporation, where the brine is pumped into sprawling ponds that bake under the desert sun — for up to two years — until enough water evaporates. This is only feasible in dry, flat regions with vast amounts of land, such as Chile’s Atacama Desert or parts of Nevada. It also consumes large volumes of water in places that can scarcely afford it.

“There’s no way solar evaporation alone can match future demand,” said Ngai Yin Yip, La Von Duddleson Krumb Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University. “And there are promising lithium-rich brines, like those in California’s Salton Sea, where this method simply can’t be used at all.”

Unlike conventional lithium recovery methods, S3E doesn't rely on binding chemicals or extensive postprocessing. Instead, the process exploits the way lithium ions interact with water molecules in a solvent system that changes its behavior based on temperature. At room temperature, the solvent pulls lithium and water from the brine. When heated, it releases the lithium, along with water, into a purified stream and regenerates itself for reuse.

An Approach with Tremendous Potential

In lab tests using synthetic brines modeled on the Salton Sea, a geothermal region in Southern California estimated to hold enough lithium to supply more than 375 million EV batteries, the system recovered nearly 40% of the lithium over just four cycles with the same solvent batch. That suggests a viable path toward continuous operation.

“This is a new way to do direct lithium extraction,” said Yip. “It’s fast, selective, and easy to scale. And it can be powered by low-grade heat from waste sources or solar collectors.”

The team emphasized that this is a proof-of-concept study. The system hasn’t yet been optimized for yield or efficiency. But even in this early form, S3E appears promising enough to offer an alternative to evaporation ponds and hard-rock mining, the two approaches that dominate the lithium supply chain today and come with steep tradeoffs.

As the global clean energy transition picks up speed, technologies like S3E could play a crucial role in keeping it on track—by making it possible to extract lithium faster, more cleanly, and from more places than ever before.

“We talk about green energy all the time,” said Yip. “But we rarely talk about how dirty some of the supply chains are. If we want a truly sustainable transition, we need cleaner ways to get the materials it depends on. This is one step in that direction.”

Interested parties seeking collaboration, licensing, or application of the technology may express their interest here.

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Journal

Joule

Article Title

A New Method to Unlock Vast Lithium Stores

Article Publication Date

21-Jan-2026

 

Lithium study yields insights in the fight against HIV

Study in human cells finds low-cost drug keeps virus dormant through an unexpected pathway, pointing the way to new treatments

McGill University

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Lithium, a widely used treatment for bipolar disorder and other mood disorders, has shown early promise in suppressing HIV, McGill University researchers report.

A new study published in iScience found lithium can prevent infected cells from reactivating, and that it does so through an unexpected biological mechanism.

The findings point toward future treatments designed to mimic lithium’s beneficial effects while avoiding its broader impacts on the body.

“One major thrust in HIV cure research is asking whether existing drugs can be repurposed. Because lithium is inexpensive and already approved for other uses, it offers a faster starting point than developing a new drug from scratch,” said senior author Andrew Mouland, Professor in McGill’s Department of Medicine and Head of the HIV-1 RNA Trafficking Laboratory at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research.

The results do not mean people with HIV should take lithium, he said. The psychoactive drug can cause significant side effects and has not yet been tested in humans as an HIV treatment.

A step toward a ‘functional cure’

An estimated 40.8 million people around the world were living with HIV in 2024. Even with effective antiretroviral therapy, the virus can remain hidden in immune cells and rebound if daily treatment stops.

A “functional cure” aims to overcome this challenge. Rather than eliminating the virus entirely, the goal is to keep HIV dormant, so it cannot restart infection, potentially reducing the need for continuous daily medication.

“In our experiments, lithium directly suppressed HIV reactivation in lab-grown human cells, something that had not been clearly demonstrated before,” said first author Ana-Luiza Abdalla, who conducted the work as a PhD student at McGill and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Neurological Institute.

As well, the team gained new insights into the mechanism involved.

Earlier research suggested lithium might work by activating autophagy, the cell’s recycling system. Because many drugs studied in HIV cure research affect this pathway, scientists assumed autophagy was responsible for keeping the virus dormant.

This study challenges that assumption, made possible by a fluorescence-based test developed by University of Manitoba researcher Thomas Murooka that allows scientists to distinguish between dormant and active virus in cells.

“What surprised us was that the effect persisted even when we disrupted autophagy,” Abdalla said. “That suggests other pathways are involved, possibly ones HIV relies on to restart.”

About the study

“Lithium attenuates HIV-1 latency reversal in an autophagy-independent way” by Ana-Luiza Abdalla, Gabriel Guajardo-Contreras, Meijuan Niu, Thomas Murooka and Andrew J. Mouland was published in iScience. Funding was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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Journal

iScience

DOI

10.1016/j.isci.2025.114085 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Lithium attenuates HIV-1 latency reversal in an autophagy-independent way

 

Critical Atlantic Ocean currents kept going during last ice age

University College London

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image: 

David Thornalley, Jack Wharton, and Alice Carter Champion slicing up a sediment core into 1cm sections onboard the Research Vessel (RV) Neil Armstrong about 500 miles due east of New York City.

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Credit: Alice Carter-Champion, UCL

During the last ice age, the Atlantic Ocean’s powerful current system remained active and continued to transport warm, salty water from the tropics to the North Atlantic despite extensive ice cover across much of the Northern Hemisphere, finds new research led by UCL scientists.

The findings, published in Nature, show that despite the Earth being in an ice age, part of the ocean’s interior — known as North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) — was only about 1.8°C colder than today, far from the near-freezing conditions previously assumed. Additionally, the NADW occupied a similar depth range as today, extending from roughly 1 to 4 kilometres below the surface.

This challenges the prevailing view that at the peak of the last ice age — the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) — Atlantic circulation was weaker, and NADW was colder and confined to shallower depths. The researchers’ findings also more closely agree with climate model projections for these glacial conditions, supporting the models’ ability to accurately forecast future ocean circulation.

Lead author Dr Jack Wharton (UCL Geography) said: “We were amazed to find that the deep Atlantic stayed relatively warm and salty during one of Earth’s coldest periods. Taken together, our data tell us the ocean’s circulation system kept running even under extreme conditions, which is crucial for understanding how our climate engine works. The same climate models that correctly predicted this past behaviour also warn that these currents are vulnerable to weakening as the planet warms — and that could have dramatic consequences for future climate.”

Taking the ancient ocean’s temperature

To reconstruct deep Atlantic conditions during the Last Glacial Maximum, around 19,000 to 23,000 years ago, researchers analysed tiny fossil shells preserved in mud on the ocean floor. These microfossils, known as foraminifera, record the temperature and salinity of the seawater in which they lived. The team studied mud collected from sites off the coasts of the Bahamas, Bermuda, South Carolina and Iceland, from depths between 1.5 and 5 kilometres below the surface.

By analysing chemical signals locked inside these fossil shells, the team estimated deep-ocean temperature and salinity at the time the organisms were alive. These waters also carried a distinctive chemical fingerprint linking them to surface waters originating in the subtropics and Nordic Seas, indicating that large-scale heat transport through the ocean continued during this period.

Co-author Professor David Thornalley (UCL Geography) said: “The microfossils recovered from the ocean floor show that deep waters in the North Atlantic were far from freezing during the last ice age. By examining locations across the North Atlantic, we can show that warm, salty surface waters continued to sink and form North Atlantic Deep Water that reached similar depths to today.”

Ocean currents and climate forecasts

The warmer ice age ocean temperatures indicated by these microfossils reflect what climate models have previously predicted, strengthening their credibility. However, it also lends credence to another prediction of these models – that climate change will cause the currents to weaken in the future, significantly cooling Europe and North Africa and disrupting weather patterns.

The ocean currents running throughout the Atlantic Ocean – known collectively as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – play a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate. The AMOC acts like a conveyor belt, transporting heat northward from the tropics and helping to keep Europe temperate. As surface waters cool in the North Atlantic, they sink and return southwards through the deep ocean as North Atlantic Deep Water.

Climate models predict that as the North Atlantic surface ocean warms, these waters become less dense and less able to sink to form deep waters, reducing the strength of the AMOC. Without this transport mechanism, heat from the tropics won’t reach Europe and North Africa, dramatically cooling their climates. 

Co-author Professor Mark Maslin (UCL Geography) said: “This research helps us better understand the mechanisms that drive ocean circulation and improves our ability to predict future climate change. Many of our best climate models indicate that Atlantic circulation is likely to weaken under the type of warming we’re likely to face in the coming decades—it would have a tremendous, destabilising impact on the climate of Europe and North Africa.”

Estimates are that if the AMOC were to shut down, average annual temperatures in the UK could drop by as much as 7°C by the end of the century, with winters as much as 15°C colder, which could bring frozen sea ice to the shores of Scotland. Arable land across the UK and continental Europe would be significantly reduced, and it would disrupt the rainy season monsoons in Africa.

This research was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Leverhulme Trust, the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), with collaboration from Utrecht University, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

  

Half sediment core in pristine condition, pre-sampling and stored at WHOI.

Two sediment cores, just removed from storage at WHOI - https://www2.whoi.edu/site/seafloorsampleslab/ (link to storage facility)

Credit

Jack Wharton, UCL

Multi-coring device on the back of the R/V Neil Armstrong used to collect sediment samples from the ocean floor.

Back deck of the R/V Neil Armstrong

Ship technicians monitor the coring device being lowered into the water off the back of the R/V Neil Amrstrong.

Credit

Alice Carter-Champion, UCL

Scanning electron microscope image of the benthic foraminifer Uvigerina peregrina, one of the species used in this study. The specimen was recovered from sediments deposited around 21,000 years ago at a water depth of approximately 3 km off the coast of North Carolina.

Credit

Jack Wharton and Mark Stanley

Notes to Editors

Jack H. Wharton, Emilia Kozikowska, Lloyd D. Keigwin, Thomas M. Marchitto, Mark A. Maslin, Martin Ziegler & David J. R. Thornalley, ‘Relatively warm deep water formation persisted in the Last Glacial Maximum’ will be published in Nature on Wednesday 21 January 2026

The DOI for this paper will be: 10.1038/s41586-025-10012-2

The URL for this paper will be: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10012-2

About UCL (University College London)

UCL is a diverse global community of world-class academics, students, industry links, external partners, and alumni. Our powerful collective of individuals and institutions work together to explore new possibilities.

Since 1826, we have championed independent thought by attracting and nurturing the world's best minds. Our community of more than 50,000 students from 150 countries and over 16,000 staff pursues academic excellence, breaks boundaries and makes a positive impact on real world problems.

We are consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world and are one of only a handful of institutions rated as having the strongest academic reputation and the broadest research impact.

We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors. 

For 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.

We were the first in England to welcome women to university education and that courageous attitude and disruptive spirit is still alive today. We are UCL.

www.ucl.ac.uk | Read news at www.ucl.ac.uk/news/ | Follow UCL News on Bluesky and LinkedIn

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-10012-2 

Article Title

Relatively warm deep water formation persisted in the Last Glacial Maximum

Article Publication Date

21-Jan-2026