Thursday, August 28, 2025

Anorexia in adolescence may weaken labor market position in adulthood – special attention needed for young men

University of Oulu, Finland
Facebook
X LinkedIn WeChat Bluesky Message WhatsApp Email

Anorexia is a serious mental health disorder that typically begins during adolescence. A study, conducted by the Research Unit of Population Health and Oulu Business School at the University of Oulu, examined how anorexia in adolescence affects labour market position in adulthood compared with peers.
Many mental health disorders have previously been linked to a weaker position in the labour market, but research evidence relating to anorexia has been very limited and, in many respects, inadequate. The most recent studies on the subject date back decades, were based solely on survey data and focused only on women. Generalising these findings to the present day is difficult, as in recent decades there have been major changes in working life, the availability of psychiatric services, and the recognition of young people with anorexia within the service system.
The results of the newly published study showed that both men and women with anorexia had lower income levels and more days of unemployment in adulthood compared with their peers. The effects on labour market position were particularly pronounced in men.
“Although anorexia often has a favourable long-term prognosis in terms of general health, its impact on working life can be significant,” says the lead author of the research article, Postdoctoral Researcher Tuomas Majuri.
The study utilised data from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 and national registry data on income, unemployment days and sickness absence days at ages 25–33. Labour market position was examined using these registry data, and analyses were conducted separately for men and women.
“Men who suffered from anorexia in adolescence are particularly poorly recognised in our current service system, which weakens their labour market position later in life. The Wellbeing Services County of North Ostrobothnia has recently invested in the treatment of eating disorder patients, for example by opening a new eating disorder unit. More initiatives of this kind, along with closer cooperation between healthcare, employment services and employers, are needed to improve the labour market position of young people affected by anorexia,” Majuri explains.
The study was funded by the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, the Wage Earners’ Foundation, the OP Research Foundation, the Tauno Tönning Foundation and the North Ostrobothnia Regional Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Research publication: Majuri T, Wilén E, Huikari S, Korhonen M (2025) Long-term labour market outcomes of anorexia nervosa – the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 2025.

Journal

Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology

DOI

10.1007/s00127-025-02983-4

Article Title

Long-term labour market outcomes of anorexia nervosa – the Northern Finland birth cohort 1986

Article Publication Date

26-Aug-2025

Not all calories are equal: Ultra-processed foods harm men’s health

A groundbreaking human study has found that ultra-processed foods lead to increased weight, disrupt hormones and introduce harmful substances linked to declining sperm quality

University of Copenhagen
Facebook
X LinkedIn WeChat
WhatsApp Email

Over the past 50 years, rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes have soared, while sperm quality has plummeted. Driving these changes could be the increasing popularity of ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to a range of poor health outcomes. However, scientists still aren’t sure whether it’s the industrial nature of the ingredients themselves, the processing of the foods, or whether it’s because they lead people to eat more than they should.
An international team of scientists has now discovered that people gain more weight on an ultra-processed diet compared to a minimally processed diet, even when they eat the same number of calories. The study in humans also revealed a diet high in ultra-processed foods introduces higher levels of pollutants that are known to affect sperm quality. The findings were published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
“Our results prove that ultra-processed foods harm our reproductive and metabolic health, even if they’re not eaten in excess. This indicates that it is the processed nature of these foods that makes them harmful,” says Jessica Preston, lead author of the study, who carried out the research during her PhD at the University of Copenhagen's NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR).

Same calories, different outcomes

To get the best possible data, the scientists compared the health impact of unprocessed and ultra-processed diets on the same person. They recruited 43 men aged 20 to 35, who spent three weeks on each of the two diets, with three months ‘washout’ in between. Half started on the ultra-processed and half started on the unprocessed diet. Half of the men also received a high-calorie diet with an extra 500 daily calories, while half received the normal amount of calories for their size, age and physical activity levels. They were not told which diet they were on. Both the unprocessed and ultra-processed diets had the same amount of calories, protein, carbs and fats.
Men gained around 1 kg more of fat mass while on the ultra-processed diet compared to the unprocessed diet, regardless of whether they were on the normal or excess calorie diet. Several other markers of cardiovascular health were also affected.

Ultra-processed foods polluted with endocrine disruptors

The scientists also discovered a worrying increase in the level of the hormone-disrupting phthalate cxMINP, a substance used in plastics, in men on the ultra-processed diet. Men on this diet also saw decreases in their levels of testosterone and follicle-stimulating hormone, which are crucial for sperm production.
“We were shocked by how many body functions were disrupted by ultra-processed foods, even in healthy young men. The long-term implications are alarming and highlight the need to revise nutritional guidelines to better protect against chronic disease.” says the study’s senior author Professor Romain Barrès from the University of Copenhagen’s NNF Center for Basic Metabolic Research, and the Université Côte d’Azur.
Read the paper in Cell Metabolism: Effect of ultra-processed food consumption on male reproductive and metabolic health

Journal

Cell Metabolism

DOI

10.1016/j.cmet.2025.08.004

Article Publication Date

28-Aug-2025

COI Statement

SS Torekov declares receiving honoraria from Merck, Ferring and Novo Nordisk, being part of the consulting board for Novo Nordisk, and recipient of research funding from Novo Nordisk. All other co-authors declare no conflicts of interest.

New method could monitor corrosion and cracking in a nuclear reactor

By directly imaging material failure in 3D, this real-time technique could help scientists improve reactor safety and longevity

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT researchers have developed a technique that enables real-time, 3D monitoring of corrosion, cracking, and other material failure processes inside a nuclear reactor environment.

This could allow engineers and scientists to design safer nuclear reactors that also deliver higher performance for applications like electricity generation and naval vessel propulsion.

During their experiments, the researchers utilized extremely powerful X-rays to mimic the behavior of neutrons interacting with a material inside a nuclear reactor.

They found that adding a buffer layer of silicon dioxide between the material and its substrate, and keeping the material under the X-ray beam for a longer period of time, improves the stability of the sample. This allows for real-time monitoring of material failure processes.

By reconstructing 3D image data on the structure of a material as it fails, researchers could design more resilient materials that can better withstand the stress caused by irradiation inside a nuclear reactor.

“If we can improve materials for a nuclear reactor, it means we can extend the life of that reactor. It also means the materials will take longer to fail, so we can get more use out of a nuclear reactor than we do now. The technique we’ve demonstrated here allows to push the boundary in understanding how materials fail in real-time,” says Ericmoore Jossou, who has shared appointments in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), where he is the John Clark Hardwick Professor, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

Jossou, senior author of a study on this technique, is joined on the paper by lead author David Simonne, an NSE postdoc; Riley Hultquist, a graduate student in NSE; Jiangtao Zhao, of the European Synchrotron; and Andrea Resta, of Synchrotron SOLEIL. The research was published Tuesday by the journal Scripta Materiala.

“Only with this technique can we measure strain with a nanoscale resolution during corrosion processes. Our goal is to bring such novel ideas to the nuclear science community while using synchrotrons both as an X-ray probe and radiation source,” adds Simonne.

Real-time imaging

Studying real-time failure of materials used in advanced nuclear reactors has long been a goal of Jossou’s research group.

Usually, researchers can only learn about such material failures after the fact, by removing the material from its environment and imaging it with a high-resolution instrument.

“We are interested in watching the process as it happens. If we can do that, we can follow the material from beginning to end and see when and how it fails. That helps us understand a material much better,” he says.

They simulate the process by firing an extremely focused X-ray beam at a sample to mimic the environment inside a nuclear reactor. The researchers must use a special type of high-intensity X-ray, which is only found in a handful of experimental facilities worldwide.

For these experiments they studied nickel, a material incorporated into alloys that are commonly used in advanced nuclear reactors. But before they could start the X-ray equipment, they had to prepare a sample.

To do this, the researchers used a process called solid state dewetting, which involves putting a thin film of the material onto a substrate and heating it to an extremely high temperature in a furnace until it transforms into single crystals.

“We thought making the samples was going to be a walk in the park, but it wasn’t,” Jossou says.

As the nickel heated up, it interacted with the silicon substrate and formed a new chemical compound, essentially derailing the entire experiment. After much trial-and-error, the researchers found that adding a thin layer of silicon dioxide between the nickel and substrate prevented this reaction.

But when crystals formed on top of the buffer layer, they were highly strained. This means the individual atoms had moved slightly to new positions, causing distortions in the crystal structure.

Phase retrieval algorithms can typically recover the 3D size and shape of a crystal in real-time, but if there is too much strain in the material, the algorithms will fail.

However, the team was surprised to find that keeping the X-ray beam trained on the sample for a longer period of time caused the strain to slowly relax, due to the silicon buffer layer. After a few extra minutes of X-rays, the sample was stable enough that they could utilize phase retrieval algorithms to accurately recover the 3D shape and size of the crystal.

“No one had been able to do that before. Now that we can make this crystal, we can image electrochemical processes like corrosion in real time, watching the crystal fail in 3D under conditions that are very similar to inside a nuclear reactor. This has far-reaching impacts,” he says.

They experimented with a different substrate, such as niobium doped strontium titanate, and found that only a silicon dioxide buffered silicon wafer created this unique effect.

An unexpected result

As they fine-tuned the experiment, the researchers discovered something else.

They could also use the X-ray beam to precisely control the amount of strain in the material, which could have implications for the development of microelectronics.

In the microelectronics community, engineers often introduce strain to deform a material’s crystal structure in a way that boosts its electrical or optical properties.

“With our technique, engineers can use X-rays to tune the strain in microelectronics while they are manufacturing them. While this was not our goal with these experiments, it is like getting two results for the price of one,” he adds.

In the future, the researchers want to apply this technique to more complex materials like steel and other metal alloys used in nuclear reactors and aerospace applications. They also want to see how changing the thickness of the silicon dioxide buffer layer impacts their ability to control the strain in a crystal sample.

“This discovery is significant for two reasons. First, it provides fundamental insight into how nanoscale materials respond to radiation — a question of growing importance for energy technologies, microelectronics, and quantum materials. Second, it highlights the critical role of the substrate in strain relaxation, showing that the supporting surface can determine whether particles retain or release strain when exposed to focused X-ray beams,” says Edwin Fohtung, an associate professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who was not involved with this work.

This work was funded, in part, by the MIT Faculty Startup Fund and the U.S. Department of Energy. The sample preparation was carried out, in part, at the MIT.nano facilities.

###

Written by Adam Zewe, MIT News

Journal

Scripta Materialia

DOI

10.1016/j.scriptamat.2025.116940

Article Title

“X-ray irradiation induced strain relaxation of dewetted Ni particles on modified Si substrate”

BREAKING: Orlen to build Poland’s first nuclear power plant

SMR technology plants, such as this VVER concept marketed by Russia's Rosatom, could spread rapidly around the world in the push for green energy. / Rosatom

By bne IntelliNews August 28, 2025

Poland’s Orlen said on Thursday that the country’s first nuclear power plant is to be constructed in a joint venture with fellow Polish company Synthos.

The installation might also claim the title of Europe’s first small nuclear energy plant, though other countries could get there first in achieving that milestone.

The plant is to have at least two small modular reactors (SMRs), with a total capacity of 0.6 GW. The plan is to build it by 2035 in the city of Wloclawek, central Poland.

“We are building the energy of tomorrow,” said Ireneusz Fafara, CEO at Orlen, Poland’s state-run oil, gas and multi-energy group.

The plant is to use American BWRX-300 reactor technology, developed by US company GE Vernova.

Orlen bills the technology as the most advanced of its type in the world.

MERIT grant awarded to study cure for HIV

News Release 28-Aug-2025
Weill Cornell Medicine

Nearly 20 years ago, a man named Timothy Ray Brown who was living with HIV and cancer, underwent two courses of stem cell transplantation to treat his acute myeloid leukemia. By using donor cells that lacked a key molecule needed for HIV to enter and infect immune cells, the procedures not only led to remission of his cancer, but also cured him of HIV.

Now, a scientific team co-led by Dr. Lishomwa Ndhlovu at Weill Cornell Medicine and Dr. Jonah Sacha at Oregon Health & Science University have received an NIH MERIT Award to provide long-term grant support to study a handful of people who, like Brown, have managed to clear HIV after a stem cell transplant and those who did not. The goal of the investigation is to figure out why the approach worked—and how to transform it into a broadly applicable immunotherapy for eliminating HIV.

“We are laser focused on figuring out a cure for HIV,” said Dr. Ndhlovu, the Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Weill Cornell Medicine. Although bone marrow transplantation has proven in a small number of cases to eradicate the virus, the procedure is physically grueling, can be associated with significant complications and even death, and—from the standpoint of clearing HIV—not always a success. “We therefore want to direct our efforts at conducting mechanistic studies to identify and better understand the immune responses that, in these individuals, mediated a cure in some but not others,” he said.

The grant, awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will provide Dr. Ndhlovu and Dr. Sacha, a projected $8.2 million in funding over five years—with a potential for renewal to 10 years.

“The first step is to understand how each of these individuals were cured,” said Dr. Sacha, professor and chief of the Division of Pathobiology and Immunology at OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center.

At Weill Cornell, Dr. Ndhlovu and his colleagues will adopt multiple approaches to investigate the mechanism of HIV eradication. First, they will study samples from individuals for whom the stem-cell transplants were successful and from others that were not cured by the procedure.

“I hope that by looking at our cells, scientists can find the missing piece of the puzzle so they can recreate a cure without the need for a stem cell transplant,” said Marc Franke, who underwent the procedure to treat his leukemia in 2013.

“These participants have already contributed greatly to science,” noted Dr. Ndhlovu. To determine whether the transplant eliminated HIV, they had to stop taking their antiviral medication. All have now been HIV-free for years.

"I understand my responsibility to science—with my cure hopefully serving as a blueprint for immunotherapy—and the impact these HIV cure research efforts could have in years to come,” said participant Adam Castillejo, who was the second person with HIV to publicly disclose his cure after a stem cell transplant to treat his cancer. “As the torch bearer, passed on from Timothy Ray Brown, and now as a Global HIV Ambassador, I believe this collaboration is essential to put an end to the AIDS pandemic."

Identifying the immune mechanisms that can clear HIV during the stem cell transplantation, the researchers will study blood samples from these participants to determine the mechanisms that led to the elimination of HIV.

Once the researchers determine the responsible immune mechanisms for clearing HIV throughout the body, they will test whether an immune based infusion in preclinical models can replicate the process. The Weill Cornell team has developed a mouse model in which to examine how human immune cells attack HIV and the investigators at OHSU have established a non-human primate model in which they have been able to successfully recreate the virus-clearing transplants.

The researchers can then work on developing a type of immunotherapy that is primed to target HIV-infected cells in humans.

“We are excited for the opportunity to continue to work with these remarkable survivors who have endured so much and have been so integral to advancing science,” Dr. Ndhlovu said.

For their part, the participants express a similar desire to do what they can to help expand the ranks of those who have been cured of HIV.

“I felt it was important to participate because this journey is not just about me,” said Paul Edmonds, who had been living with HIV for more than 30 years before his cancer diagnosis in 2019. “This research represents hope for millions of people living with HIV worldwide. It shows that a cure is possible and that we must continue searching for answers. My hope is that these studies will lead to a treatment that will eradicate the virus once and for all.”

AKA SMALL BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

Not all subsidiaries are treated equally

Parent companies fine-tune ownership structures to match competitive needs

University of Texas at Austin

When a larger company acquires a smaller one, or creates a new subsidiary, it must decide how cozy it wants to be — both operationally and financially.

For example, Korean chaebols — family-owned conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai — often maintain tight management control over subsidiaries while limiting their financial stakes. They invite other entities to invest in a subsidiary and share its profits as well as its financial risk.

Metin Sengul, professor of management at Texas McCombs, wondered why some companies structure themselves this way, with a gap or “wedge” between their control rights and rights to the subsidiary’s earnings.

Parent companies intentionally design and tweak this balance “for many different reasons,” Sengul says. But in new research, he finds two internal factors that influence those decisions:

Relatedness: how closely the subsidiary’s operations relate to the other businesses the parent operates, such as all being in segments of the auto industry.
Multimarket contact: the degree to which the parent and subsidiary face the same competitors in multiple geographic or product markets.

With Tomasz Obloj of Indiana University, Sengul analyzed data from the French government on 133 French manufacturers. The duo studied 843 instances of those companies acquiring or creating subsidiaries between 1997 and 2004.

The average parent, they found, had a wedge of 21% between its control rights in a subsidiary and its financial rights, such as having 100% control but taking only 79% of the profits.

But the gap got smaller the more a subsidiary’s operations were related to those of its parent and other subsidiaries. An increase in relatedness shrank the wedge, meaning the parent increased its financial stake.

Synergies vs. Uncertainties

The effect was especially strong for new subsidiaries operating in industries where coordination and synergy with the parent’s other operations could drive cost savings and innovation.

For instance, in diversified conglomerates such as PSA Group (the former French carmaker behind Peugeot and Citroën), subsidiaries that share manufacturing technology or suppliers with the parent tend to be more tightly held, with high levels of both control rights and financial rights. The gap between the two is smaller.

“The closer the operational alignment, the more incentive there is for the parent to internalize the profits,” Sengul says.

As an example of an opposite kind of ownership structure, Sengul points to a partnership between GM, Chrysler, Daimler-Benz, and BMW in the 1990s to explore the creation of hybrid electric vehicles. None of them held majority control or financial rights, reflecting the venture’s high risks and uncertainties.

“Nobody knew if it would work,” Sengul says, noting it was long before Tesla. “You partner, because the financial risk is so much that you want to share with others. You don’t want to shoulder all the risk yourself.”

With multimarket contact, the relationships were more complicated. Parents tended to have higher financial rights in subsidiaries that compete with medium numbers of multimarket rivals. In those situations, the subsidiaries were most profitable — because they didn’t face intense competition — and parents reaped the rewards.

When a subsidiary had high overlap with multimarket rivals, however, a parent might want to avoid provoking retaliation from competitors. It would restrain its subsidiary, lowering both profits and financial rights.

Sengul says the findings challenge the assumption that ownership is only a financial decision. It suggests that large multiunit companies structure themselves not just to extract value, but to enable internal coordination and strategic alignment to create value.

“Ownership is not just about control,” says Sengul. “It’s about creating and capturing value in complex, competitive landscapes.”

“Ownership as a Bundle of Rights: Antecedents of the Wedge Between Control and Cash-Flow Rights Within Firms” is published in Strategy Science.

Journal

Strategy Science

DOI

10.1287/stsc.2022.0114

Article Title

Ownership as a Bundle of Rights: Antecedents of the Wedge Between Control and Cash-Flow Rights Within Firms

AKA PRICE GOUGING

Dynamic pricing can optimize profits but alienate customers

To avoid buyer backlash, companies need guardrails for using algorithms to set prices

University of Texas at Austin

If you’ve ever seen a steep increase in the fare for an Uber to the airport on a Friday, or you’ve checked an item’s cost on Amazon, only to see it has changed hours later, you might have experienced algorithmic pricing.

That’s the practice of using algorithms to automatically adjust the price of goods or services based on factors such as demand, competitor pricing, inventory levels, or data about the customer.

While such pricing practices can squeeze out extra profit, they can also carry a marketing risk if not carefully implemented, according to Gizem Yalcin Williams, assistant professor of marketing at Texas McCombs. In 2012, Uber was widely criticized for raising ride prices during Hurricane Sandy. More recently, customers have expressed outrage over concert ticket surge pricing.

In a new paper, co-written with an interdisciplinary group of 12 other researchers, Williams examines algorithmic pricing and the challenges companies can face when integrating it with their other objectives. The researchers offer some preliminary dos and don’ts for aligning pricing with marketing strategy, regulations, and avoiding customer backlash.

One potential factor in customer backlash, Williams says, is driven by feelings of unfairness.

“Let’s say that I just got myself something from Amazon, for my dorm, and then a couple of days later, I saw that the price changed,” she says. “I now feel like I overpaid for it, regardless of how good the product is.”

By the same token, seeing a price increase later might trigger elation, she says. “If I feel like I bought it at a lower price, I feel like I was smart.”

When Prices Get Personal

If pricing sometimes feels a bit more personal when algorithms are involved, Williams says, that’s because it is.

In addition to taking supply or production costs into account, companies increasingly use customer-level data to make pricing decisions, often with the help of artificial intelligence.

The exact data that go into the algorithm might not be always known, Williams says. “But what if the price I receive is different than others because of my own data, such as my shopping history, demographics, or location? Shoppers might react to the same price differently, depending on which data they think affected the price set by the company’s algorithm.”

Besides eroding customer loyalty, companies can face regulatory or legal attention when dynamic or surge pricing goes awry. Last year, the grocery chain Kroger was scrutinized by members of Congress over its plans to introduce algorithmic pricing at its stores.

As part of its research, Williams’ team surveyed pricing managers and conducted in-depth interviews with five strategic-pricing experts. They offered several pieces of advice.

Companies should be aware of how accepting their customers are — or are not — of dynamic pricing to avoid potential reputational damages.
Opening the “black box” and increasing transparency about how algorithms work can help managers and employees adopt and oversee them effectively.
Companies need guardrails to make sure they can effectively and carefully navigate the competitive and regulatory environment.

Williams sees the paper as raising timely and important questions for future research on consumer attitudes about algorithmic pricing. One takeaway, she notes, is clear: Many companies slap the AI label on their operations, to cut costs or boost efficiency, without comprehensive planning for its design, integration, and monitoring.

“Managers need to be deliberate about when, where, and whether to integrate AI into their operations,” she says. “And even when decisions are automated, it’s critical to have mechanisms that keep humans in the loop.”

Algorithmic Pricing: Implications for Marketing Strategy and Regulation” is published in International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Journal

International Journal of Research in Marketing

DOI

10.1016/j.ijresmar.2025.05.001

Article Title

Algorithmic pricing: Implications for marketing strategy and regulation

Revealed: Genetic shifts that helped tame horses and made them rideable

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

A study of ancient horse genomes reveals the genetic changes that contributed to making the animals tame, strong, and rideable by humans thousands of years ago. The domestication of horses, which occurred at least 4,500 years ago, had a transformative effect on the evolution of human society, altering mobility, farming, and warfare. Across much of the world, horses served as a primary mode of human transportation until the rise of the combustion engine in the late 19th century. However, despite considerable advances in the genomic sequencing of ancient horses, the full suite of biological traits that reshaped the species during domestication, including those that facilitated human equestrianism, remains unknown. Here, Xuexue Liu and colleagues present an extensive horse genome time series analysis of 266 trait-associated genetic markers and show how human selection shaped horse biology over time. According to Liu et al., early domestication favored behavioral traits. Traits like coat color expanded only modestly at first. From the Iron Age onward, breeding practices increasingly emphasized larger body size and tameness. Especially pivotal was the intensive selection at the GSDMC locus, which showed one of the strongest signals of positive selection during the rise of the modern domesticated horse lineage ~4,200 years ago. The GSDMC gene, tied to skeletal conformation in horses and spinal anatomy, motor coordination, and strength in other mammals, likely enabled horses to meet the demands of large-scale mobility and warfare, fundamentally reshaping human societies. “Although the precise circumstances and the cultural identity of the people responsible for this early, intensive breeding remain a mystery, they must have had the necessary ingenuity, technology, and foresight,” writes Laurent Frantz in a related Perspective. “What is certain is that these first riders kick-started a revolution that changed the world, demonstrating how the immense currents of history can turn on the smallest of biological changes.”

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adp4581

Article Title

Selection at the GSDMC locus in horses and its implications for human mobility

Article Publication Date

28-Aug-2025