Medical resources are generally stretched during holidays (including weekends) due to factors like staffing and hospital policies. This may amplify holiday effects: disparities and variations of health outcomes between holidays and weekdays. Dr. Sassa and colleagues studied this holiday effect with a focus on birth, especially high-risk births as measured by babies born preterm and/or with a low birthweight.

The authors used birth certificate data from over 21 million individuals born from 1979-2018 (which included birthday, birthweight, and gestational age) to categorize individuals into five groups: low birthweight (<2,500g), preterm birth (<37 weeks), low birthweight and preterm birth, and full-term birth. For this analysis, the authors compared weekdays (Monday-Friday) with weekend days (Saturday and Sunday), national holidays, substitute holidays, Golden Week (four consecutive spring festival days in Japan April 29 — May 5), and the new year period (December 29 — January 3). Leap days and multiple births were excluded.

They found that all births were significantly less common on weekend or holiday periods versus weekends (p < 0.01). High-risk births became more frequent over the four decades studied, and the trend of non-weekend or holiday births was especially evident for high-risk births, which were found to take place particularly frequently on Thursday and Friday. Though this study doesn’t include data on medical interventions or pregnancies that didn’t end in a live birth, which could potentially impact the findings, its broad scale suggests medical staff may often control births so that they take place before a weekend or holiday, especially for high-risk births. The authors note that this may be prudent since there are often fewer staff or resources available on weekend/holiday days, but since some holiday births are inevitable, it’s critical for hospitals to plan to minimize risks to those mothers who do give birth on non-weekdays.

The authors add: “Delving into decades of birth data in Japan, our research illuminates a fascinating trend — deliveries on holidays, especially those deemed high-risk, show a distinct decline. This discovery prompts a call for innovative solutions and systemic strategies to safeguard maternal and neonatal well-being anytime, demonstrating the need for creative thinking in optimizing medical resources for everyone.”

Vittrup Man is the nickname of a Stone Age skeleton recovered from a peat bog in Northwest Denmark, dating to between 3300-3100 BC. The fragmented nature of the remains, including a smashed skull, indicate that he was killed in a ritualistic sacrifice, a common practice in this region at this time. After a DNA study found Vittrup Man’s genetic signature to be distinct from contemporary, local skeletons, Fischer and colleagues were inspired to combine additional evidence to reconstruct the life history of this Stone Age individual at an unprecedented resolution.

Strontium, carbon and oxygen isotopes from Vittrup Man’s tooth enamel indicate a childhood spent along the coast of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Corroborating this, genetic analysis found a close relationship between Vittrup Man and Mesolithic people from Norway and Sweden. Additional isotope and protein analysis of the teeth and bones indicate a shift in diet from coastal food (marine mammals and fish) in early life to farm food (including sheep or goat) in later life, a transition that happened in the later teen years.

These results suggest that Vittrup Man spent his early years in a northern foraging society before relocating to a farming society in Denmark. It isn’t clear why this individual moved, though the authors suggest he might have been a trader or captive who became integrated into local society. Mysteries remain about Vittrup Man, but this detailed understanding of his geographic and dietary life history provides new insights into interactions between Mesolithic and Neolithic societies in Europe.

The authors add: “To our knowledge, this is the first time that research has been able to map a north European inhabitant’s life history in such a high degree of detail and in such high distance of time.”

Of the 161 people buried at Seminario Vescovile, an archaeological site in Verona from 3rd to 1st century BCE, 16 were buried with some kind of animal remains. Some of the graves contained the remains of animals often eaten by people — including many pigs, a chicken and part of a cow — which may have represented food offerings to the dead. But four of the people buried on the site were buried alongside the remains of dogs and/or horses, which are not commonly eaten.

To look for patterns that might explain these animal burials, the researchers analyzed the demographics, diets, genetics and burial conditions of the interred humans and animals, but this did not lead to any notable correlations. In particular, the people interred with animals do not seem to be closely related to each other, which would have suggested that this was a practice of a certain family. The people buried with dogs or horses also varied — they include a baby buried with a complete dog skeleton, a young man buried with parts of a horse, a middle-aged man buried with a small dog and a middle-aged woman buried with an entire horse, multiple other horse parts and a dog skull.

The lack of patterns among these graves mean that multiple interpretations of these human-animal co-burials remain possible, the authors say. For example, animals like dogs and horses often had religious symbolism in ancient cultures — but at the same time, specific individuals may also have been buried with their animal companions. In addition, the authors note, these human-animal burial practices might have been determined by the interplay between different individual traits and societal customs.

The authors add: “This study, which is part of the CELTUDALPS research project (co-financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Province of South Tyrol, and coordinated by Marco Milella of the University of Bern and Albert Zink of the Institute for Mummy Studies, Eurac Research), explores burials of horses and dogs with humans, and may hint at unknown rituals and beliefs during the late centuries BCE in Italy.”