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For women, menopausal transition is a time of significant hormonal changes, which may contribute to altered body composition and regional adipose tissue accumulation. Excess adiposity, and especially adipose tissue accumulation in the central body region, increases women's risk of cardiovascular and metabolic conditions and affects physical functioning. We investigated the associations between menopausal progression and total and regional body adiposity measured with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and computed tomography in two longitudinal cohort studies of women aged 47–55 (n = 230 and 148, mean follow-up times 1.3 ± 0.7 and 3.9 ± 0.2 years, mean baseline BMI 25.5 kg/m2). We also examined associations between menopausal progression and skeletal muscle fiber characteristics, as well as adipose tissue-derived adipokines. Relative increases of 2%–14% were observed in regional and total body adiposity measures, with a pronounced fat mass increase in the android area (4% and 14% during short- and long-term follow-ups). Muscle fiber oxidative and glycolytic capacities and intracellular adiposity were not affected by menopause, but were differentially correlated with total and regional body adiposity at different menopausal stages. Menopausal progression and regional adipose tissue masses were positively associated with serum adiponectin and leptin, and negatively associated with resistin levels. Higher diet quality and physical activity level were also inversely associated with several body adiposity measures. Therefore, healthy lifestyle habits before and during menopause might delay the onset of severe metabolic conditions in women. peerReviewed

In our article, we study how Finnish historians produced historical texts to be applied inside the Finnish army to give lessons, speeches, and informal talks to the rank-and-file soldiers during two periods: first during the Winter War of 1939–40 and then in the last stages of the Continuation War in 1944. Employing narratological methodology to this task, we examine the purposeful construction of a master narrative of the national past by telling the story of ‘Finland’ and the ‘Finnish people’ in their perpetual, existential fight against Russia. We approach the history texts as emergent scripts that were offered to the particular audience of soldiers so that they would internalize the historical framework of their current situation and experiences. The history texts underline the inevitable continuity and teleology of Finnish history. This is done by constructing a vast historical context into which the hardships of the present moment are embedded through repeating crucial past images and analogues, which reserved the role of sufferer and experiencer for the Finnish people. The historians’ wartime accounts offer a case where the master narrative is purposefully built and propagated under official auspices. publishedVersion

Vallan tutkijat ovat kiistelleet perinteisesti siitä, miten määritellä valta, jotta sen pätevä tutkiminen tulisi mahdolliseksi. Tässä artikkelissa kysytään, miten itse politiikan toimijat – tässä veteraanikansanedustajat haastatteluissaan – puhuvat ’vallasta’, eli millainen poliittisen toiminnan väline ’valta’ on. Kiinnostuksen kohteena on, ymmärtävätkö veteraaniedustajat vallan yksilölle kuuluvana määräysvaltana, yhteistyössä syntyvänä vaikutuksena vai kenties pelitilan luomisena. Keskeinen tulos on vallan monimerkityksellisyys, se on yhtä hyvin vastustamisen väline kuin oman toiminnan merkittävyyden arvioinnin väline. Artikkeli yhdistää käsitehistorian ja digitaalisen tiedonlouhinnan menetelmiä kooltaan laajan aineistokokoelman laadullisessa analyysissä., Researchers of power have traditionally debated on the definitions of power to enable further empirical studies. This article, instead, asks how political actors – namely veteran MPs in their interviews – themselves speak about “power”, and as which kind of instrument of political action “power” functions. Do veteran MPs perceive power as domination, as the power of command, as an aspect of joint action, or as possibility or creation of political space of action (Spielraum)? The key result is the ambiguity of power: it can be both a tool of resistance and a tool of charac- terizing one’s own action in the parliament. The article combines methods of conceptual history and digital data mining in the qualitative analysis of a considerably big corpus of data.