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Based upon the experience of an empirical pilot project, this article considers methodological challenges and opportunities involved in researching the faith of people not attached to church congregations, but participating in a church-based initiative. Is it possible to find out what 'faith' is for these people, without imposing overtly religious – or non-religious – understandings of 'faith'? Having situated our work within the research landscape concerning faith, belief and non-belief, we introduce our definition of 'faith', drawing upon (but also in places critiquing) Abby Day's work on investigating 'belief' and David Gortner's research on worldview and 'personal theology'. Supported by the project's process and findings, we argue that our approach offers a framework which takes seriously Day's concern to understand interviewees' 'belief' on its own terms whilst also offering a way of inviting them to evaluate the Christianity they encountered through contact with a local church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. Background. Previous reports have suggested that healthy, full-term newborn infants who are in more aroused behavioral states tend to respond more robustly to painful events. Others have shown that [...]

Against centuries of framing gender relations on the basis of so-called biblical 'hard passages', I offer an expansive three-fold way of reading the New Testament that is both feminist and Anabaptist. Using both hermeneutics of suspicion about power and Christocentric biblical interpretation, I seek to counter women's inequality, disadvantage, and subordination. I argue for: taking a broad look at the text when thinking about gender relations to uncover the story of gender in unlikely places that I argue should become the most likely places; paying attention to the diversity of early Christian location, experience, and expression in the context of the politics and society of the ancient world; and within this framework revisiting specific texts predominantly associated with a gender hierarchy to encounter exhortations of moral agency, behaviour, and activity. This approach maintains vigilance about gender power relations, while simultaneously providing a critique of gendered approaches to scripture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several commentaries on studies on pediatrics. Position for lumbar punctures; Predictor of children at risk for the development of nursing bottle caries; Advantages of disposable diapers over cloth diapers.

Abstract. To evaluate the efficacy of subcutaneous administration of lidocaine for reducing physiologic instability in acutely ill newborns during clinically required procedures, 81 neonates who required lumbar punctures within the first month of life were stratified by birth weight and respiratory support and randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group. The experimental group received an injection of 0.1 mL/kg of 1% lidocaine prior to the lumbar puncture. The control group received a nonanesthetized lumbar puncture without placebo. Changes in heart rate, respiratory rate, transcutaneous oxygen and carbon dioxide tensions, and heart rate variability from baseline, preparatory (positioning/handling), lumbar puncture, and recovery periods were measured. The administration of lidocaine did not minimize physiologic instability in response to the lumbar puncture nor was it associated with any detectable adverse effects other than prolonging the duration of the lumbar puncture. Although significant physiologic changes were observed in response to preparatory procedures, few additional changes beyond those occurred in response to lumbar punctures in either the experimental or control group. It is concluded that local anesthesia failed to influence manifestations of physiologic instability during neonatal lumbar punctures and that preparatory procedures were more destabilizing than either the administration of lidocaine or the lumbar puncture itself. The results suggest that the management of newborns requires emphasis on minimizing the destabilizing effects of required and frequent handling procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]