First time mums in England who face care proceedings are 21 times more likely to die within 10 years of the birth than mums of the same age who don’t experience this, finds an analysis of family court proceedings, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. Nearly 3 out of 4 of these deaths were related to suicide, homicide, drugs/alcohol, and unintentional injuries, reflecting these women’s extreme health vulnerability, say the researchers. Better upstream support and family court reform are key to improving their health and curbing the need for care proceedings and potential loss of custody, argue the researchers.

Hourly movement breaks of just 5 minutes each seem to offer the best balance between feasibility and effectiveness for mitigating the health harms of prolonged sitting, suggests a large study carried out under real world conditions and published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. These brief interludes boost mood, lessen fatigue, and don’t undermine work performance, the findings indicate, prompting the researchers to suggest this approach offers potential for a public health strategy and inclusion in physical activity guidelines.

Han-Chow Koh, PhD, and Frank A.J.L. Scheer, PhD, of the Medical Chronobiology Program at the Division of Sleep and Circadian Medicine in the Mass General Brigham Department of Medicine, are the co-lead and senior author, respectively, of a paper published in Metabolism, “Constant-routine protocol reveals an endogenous circadian rhythm in diet-induced thermogenesis with a peak in the biological morning.”

New Rutgers research suggests much of the seemingly endless waiting for complex medical care can be engineered away by recreating operations inside a computer and testing countless possible improvements.

A study in the Annals of Operations Research explains how researchers from Rutgers Cancer Institute and Rutgers Business School built a working computer simulation of the institute’s blood cancer clinic and used it to identify and fix bottlenecks that kept patients waiting up to three hours between check-in and treatment. The result: Laboratory blood work turnaround was cut from roughly 90 minutes to less than 30 and helped the clinic nearly double the number of infusion patients it treats each day, from about 50 to about 80.