Good caregivers are often in short supply, but after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in early 2020, staff levels at nursing homes dropped by 10 percent. What was a simple personnel shortage has moved closer to being a nursing-care crisis. As it happens, about one-fifth of health care support workers in the U.S. are immigrants. And as a newly published study of the nation's metro areas shows, changes in immigration levels can affect how much nursing care the elderly receive. Overall, Gruber and his colleagues determined that when there is more immigration, registered nurses and other aides work more hours at nursing homes, without displacing already-employed caregivers, while patient outcomes improve. Essentially, a 10 percent increase in female immigrants in a given metro area leads to a 1.1 percent increase in hours that registered nurses spend with elderly patients, while hospitalizations for those patients drop, among other things. 'Even if immigration actually increases labor supply to the medical sector, it was an open question if that would improve outcomes, and it does,' adds Gruber, the Ford Professor of Economics and head of the MIT Department of Economics....

Patterns of molecular activity in the blood may hold clues not only to how fit someone is, but also to the biological processes that support physical performance. Researchers at MIT, GE HealthCare, and the U.S. Military Academy at West Point have developed a computational model that links thousands of these molecular signals to fitness levels, revealing pathways that could inform future studies to improve fitness training and speed injury or disease recovery. To develop their model, the researchers analyzed more than 50,000 biomarkers in 86 cadets at the U.S. Military Academy who were training for a military competition. Using these data, the researchers were able to identify molecular pathways that appear to contribute to higher levels of physical fitness. 'We had 50,000 measurements, and we wanted to get it down to about 100 where there's some likelihood that the markers that we're measuring are mechanistically linked to physical fitness. So, not just a statistical correlation, of which there will be many, but markers where there's a likelihood that there is a causal relationship,' says Ernest Fraenkel, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology in MIT's Department of Biological Engineering....

Teleflex, which manufactures breathing tubes, catheters, and vascular access products for hospital intensive care units, carries a market value of roughly $5.5bn based on its most recent closing price of $124.75. Its shares surged 13.4% in after-hours trading following news of the approach. The company has been undergoing a significant strategic overhaul, having sold three business units for $2.03bn in December, and has faced pressure from activist investor Irenic Capital Management, which criticised its board in March for its reluctance to engage with potential buyers. CVC, Amsterdam-listed and managing approximately $241bn in assets, brings global private markets scale to the consortium. GTCR, the Chicago-based buyout firm, adds deep sector expertise, with a well-established track record in healthcare services and medical technology. Together, the two firms represent a formidable partnership for a deal of this complexity. Subscribe to our Newsletter to increase your edge. Don't worry about the news anymore, through our newsletter you'll receive weekly access to what is happening. Join 120,000 other PE professionals today....

After 15 years at the helm, Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple and handing over the reins to the company's senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus. Cook, who joined Apple in 1998, succeeded Steve Jobs in 2011 and went on to transform Apple into a powerhouse worth $4 trillion. Apple was already an influential company when Cook took the reins, but under his leadership, the company's market capitalization increased tenfold. When Cook took over in August 2011, Apple was valued at just under $350 billion. The company passed $1 trillion in 2018, $2 trillion in 2020, $3 trillion in 2022, and $4 trillion in 2025. Now the tech giant currently sits at $4.01 trillion. The company reported $112 billion in net income for the fiscal year ending in September 2025, which was eight times what Apple saw in September 2010. The company was able to achieve that 699% increase despite many issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. Cook, who was formerly chief operations officer and credited as the brains behind Apple's global supply chain under Steve Jobs, expanded Apple's reach in China and added roughly 200 stores to the company's global network during his tenure as CEO....