bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gabriel and the Angels
Authors: Jeffrey David Lyle
Published: October 2020

A full appreciation of the angel Gabriel’s character and role in the Christmas story depends on an appreciative understanding of the many ways in which he is both consistent with the extensive cast of angelic beings throughout the Old Testament and yet a synthesis and culmination of their roles in forwarding the grand narrative of the history of salvation. Particularly important are the narratives involving the births of Ishmael, Isaac, and Samson, unusual births to very aged or barren parents, and Gabriel’s appearances to Daniel in the second half of the book that bears his name. The unusual birth narratives contextualize Gabriel’s impatience with Zacharias’ doubt that he and Elizabeth can trust the angel’s announcement, the apocalyptic vision, and Gabriel’s interpretation of them in Daniel illustrate the attitude of heart underscoring the priestly prayer of Zacharias more positively, and the responses of Mary, exemplar of the faithfulness for which Daniel also prayed.
The Middle Ages
Authors: Ihnat Kati
Published: October 2020

The High Middle Ages witnessed Christmas emerge as a major Christian feast in western Europe, a time of merriment and miracles. Always intended to celebrate the Incarnation, Christmas became a time to honour the little baby in the manger and his loving mother, as part of a spiritual shift towards remembering the human Jesus. Although Kalends traditions continued on from Antiquity, which engaged the lay population in carnivalesque revelries that included mumming, games, and feasting, clerics developed new practices that infused ecclesiastical celebrations with the same sense of inversion and fun. Feasts of Fools, Boy Bishops, and extravagant liturgical dramas allowed reformers to channel festive energy in ways that showcased developments in the arts, especially in the large churches of north-western Europe, without losing the joyful character that came with honouring the paradox of God made man.
Poetry
Authors: Mason Emma
Published: October 2020

This chapter suggests that Christmas poetry offers readers a way to become intimate with a loving, elegiac, mysterious, and communal emotional experience particular to the season. With reference to poems by Maya Angelou, e. e. cummings, Toi Derricotte, T. S. Eliot, Martín Espada, Robert Frost, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Jennings, Peter Larkin, W. S. Merwin, Christina Rossetti, Evie Shockley, Sufjan Stevens, and W. B. Yeats, the chapter argues that only poetry can capture the magical, incantatory, and holy spirit of the Annunciation, Advent, Christmas trees, Christmas Eve, Epiphany, and Christmas Day. Poetry’s oblique and indirect expression is ideally suited to a series of feasts and fasts that culminate in an event that replaces our desire for empirical reason and reassurance with the joy, wonder, and love of uncertainty and faith.
Catholic Europe
Authors: Cretin Nadine
Published: October 2020

At Christmas, European Catholics celebrate the Nativity, Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem. For almost all Europeans, believers or not, Christmas is a family feast. It takes place over the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere that gave rise in ancient Rome to the Saturnalia marked by large, domestic banquets. This would lead to the feast of Christmas, which combines both secular and sacred customs: the Nativity scene, the Christmas tree, lights, gifts, and bounteous meals. Many Catholics, otherwise practising or not, attend Midnight Mass on the evening of 24 December. Likewise, the devout do not ignore the commercial aspects and Santa’s gifts. This chapter will discuss what happens in contemporary Catholic Europe from the start of Advent up to the feast of Christmas and through Christmastide to Epiphany, looking at how it is observed at church, at home, and in public places where a display of the Nativity scene is not always well received in France.
The United Kingdom
Authors: Johnes Martin
Published: October 2020

The United Kingdom played a key role in the development of many of the ideas central to the modern Christmas. However, British festive practices always varied by class, gender, region, and the four nations of the United Kingdom. Some of these variations lessened in the second half of the twentieth century due to the rise of affluence and the growth of a mass media. Indeed, Christmas in modern Britain came to be an integrative experience. It brought people closer to their family, friends, neighbours, community, compatriots and, occasionally, the poor and suffering. It crossed any notional boundaries between the private and public spheres and helped maintain a common way of life in a society divided by class, ethnicity, and taste. Christmas thus came to be viewed as part of a British way of life, even if variations remained in the precise ways people celebrated.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Authors: Orique David Thomas
Published: October 2020

This chapter presents the process of the Christian theological inculturation of Christmas in Latin America and the Caribbean: the celebration of the birth of Christ—of God Incarnate. To this end, selected Catholic Christmas celebrations are examined, including the liturgy of the Mass and extra-liturgical observances such as dance, that manifest the influence of three distinct cultural traditions: European—principally Spanish and Portuguese—as well as the diverse and complex Indigenous and African expressions. These observances are first contextualized with the earliest instances of the celebration of the Christmas Mass and season in the so-called New World. Discernible components in Christmas festivities are then presented to demonstrate the presence of cultural blending and the pervasiveness of cultural accommodations. This chapter highlights the diversity of the inculturated celebrations of Christmas and the feast’s liturgical manifestations, and contends that these differences are rooted in the fact that enslaved Africans came from different regions of their continent, and that the Indigenous reflected a wide range of pre-contact American hemispheric populations. Indeed, a tremendous religio-cultural-linguistic compression resulted as various groups encountered and appropriated Christianity and its celebrations in distinctive ways. This study concludes by considering the impact of globalization, pluralization, secularization, and commercialization in Latin America and the Caribbean on the celebration of Christmas—an observance of the eternal and unchanging divine message of the Incarnation that continues to capture the imagination of many in this part of the globe, as they participate in traditional expressions of the theological meaning of the birth of Jesus Christ.
Commercialism and Consumerism
Authors: Schmalzbauer John
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the role of commercialization and consumerism in creating the modern American Christmas. It begins with a theoretical discussion of the capitalist disenchantment narrative advanced by Max Weber and Charles Taylor, as well as the critiques of that storyline by scholars such as Leigh Schmidt. Arguing that the sacred and the commercial are intermingled in holiday celebrations, it traces the evolution of America’s Christmas from the 1600s to the present, beginning with pre-commercial folk celebrations (and non-celebrations), early forms of commercialization and consumerism, the emergence of mass-produced Christmas decorations, the modern department store, and the role of the mass media and popular culture. It concludes by discussing contemporary debates about holiday retailing and the ways that commercial Christmas celebrations sacralizes secular spaces.
The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Authors: Ferguson Christopher
Published: October 2020

During the twentieth century, Christmas became a truly global holiday. The spread of the holiday, however, produced conflicts regarding Christmas’s meaning and the way it was practised by different communities. As different peoples encountered a variety of Christmas traditions at local, national, and global levels, ambivalence emerged about the changes in customary observances such encounters potentially facilitated. The identification of Christmas traditions with specific national communities placed the holiday at the centre of the century’s nationalist politics, especially those of totalitarian regimes, as well as contributing to the experiences of the two world wars and the Cold War. Christmas’s increasing commercialization likewise raised concerns about whether it was becoming too secular. The disputed character of the holiday attests to the important role Christmas continued to play annually for a large swathe of the global populace as a holiday capable of producing a range of intense emotional responses.
The German Revolution of 1918/19
Authors: Dillon Christopher
Published: October 2020

The German Revolution of 1918/19 is often viewed as underwhelming and disappointing, as a missed opportunity for social and political transformation which hamstrung the Weimar Republican project. This chapter engages with the revolution in more synchronic terms, as a lived event and a conspicuously successful project of civic mobilization. The German Revolution of 1918/19 fulfilled popular aspirations for political participation which had surged during the First World War. It delivered an armistice, a republic, parliamentary democracy, and the first-ever socialist government of an advanced industrial economy. The chapter traces the origins and course of the revolution, focusing on the agency of crowds and activists who led localized insurgencies across Germany. It explores the role of the council (Räte) movement in localities and at Reich level. The chapter concludes by appraising the counter-revolution of 1919. A series of local uprisings by left-wing radicals gave the MSPD regime and its military accomplices a pretext to push back against social revolution and to demonstrate, through extreme violence, the recovered authority of the German state.
The Study of Anglo-Saxon Poetry in the Victorian Period
Authors: Toswell M. J.
Published: October 2020

The Victorians produced the first editions of Anglo-Saxon poetry in English, and began the serious study of these materials in England. John Josias Conybeare showed the way, locating and editing selected pieces of Old English poetry with a translation. John Mitchell Kemble, from the famous Irish acting family, chose a different career as an academic and antiquarian, though never with a permanent post. He produced the first edition of Beowulf, and a much better revision within a few years. Benjamin Thorpe prepared editions of four different poetic codices (missing only the Vercelli Book, of the important five manuscripts, because it was not discovered until the twentieth century): the Paris Psalter, the Junius Manuscript, the Exeter Book, and Beowulf. Finally, Frederick Furnivall established many learned societies and successfully established the Oxford English Dictionary.
Chaucer among the Victorians
Authors: Utz Richard
Published: October 2020

The nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a growing fascination with Geoffrey Chaucer and his texts. English Victorians as well as their contemporaries in other English-speaking countries imagined Chaucer as a predecessor to their own preferred aesthetics, ideologies, and mentalities. During the first half of the nineteenth century, antiquarians and gentlemen scholars discover the writer as part of the general enthusiasm about England’s medieval past. They lay the groundwork for the professional medievalists of the final third of the century, when Chaucer’s texts become the subject of manuscript studies, historical linguistics, and literary studies. This interest among the educated classes is accompanied by a strong interest among the general Victorian public. These readers encounter Chaucer via adaptations, translations, bowdlerized anthologies, children’s versions, and ‘Penny Dreadfuls’. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Chaucer is generally acknowledged as the father of English poetry and the source of immense nationalist pride.
Philology, Anglo-Saxonism, and National Identity
Authors: Abberley Will
Published: October 2020

This chapter argues that Victorian philology acted as a vehicle for contrasting visions of national heritage in England. Romantic ideas of language expressing national character seemed to render philology a way of discovering a people’s collective spirit through history. However, the nature of this national-linguistic heritage could be imagined very differently. Some scholars presented ancient Anglo-Saxon as the pure essence of Englishness. This view framed the influx of French and Latin elements following the Norman Conquest as a corruption that had weakened the language’s authenticity and power. Others, though, took pride in English’s composite nature, framing it as a mark of England’s cosmopolitan and imperialist destiny. These opposing perspectives are explored by contrasting statements by the historian E. A. Freeman and the lexicographer R. C. Trench.
The Gothic Revival Beyond Europe
Authors: Bremner G. A.
Published: October 2020

This chapter traces the movement outward and influence of the Gothic Revival movement beyond Europe during the mid to late nineteenth century. It considers the impact of this movement on both secular and religious buildings, focusing on how this particular style of architecture found its way into the wider British world, and into corresponding Anglophone cultures such as the United States of America, and what its transmission meant culturally and institutionally. Although much of the chapter’s content focuses on church buildings, other building types considered include museums, universities, and government legislatures. It is argued that the medievalizing tendencies brought by the broadcasting of the Gothic Revival movement were intended to capture and symbolize the essential image and values of European, Christian culture as it sought to inculcate such values though education, religion, and government.
Validating the English Church
Authors: Parry Graham
Published: October 2020

At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, leaders of the Church of England recognized the need to provide a history for the national church that would identify its origins in the early Christian era, and demonstrate its initial independence from Rome. Matthew Parker, Elizabeth’s first Archbishop of Canterbury, inaugurated an intense period of research into the Anglo-Saxon Church. Parker and his circle managed to retrieve the Anglo-Saxon language from oblivion, and laid sound foundations for the study of Saxon England and its institutions. This endeavour was further developed by a succession of antiquaries inspired by William Camden’s investigations into the different pasts of Britain. Richard Verstegan, Henry Spelman, James Ussher, and William Somner all made significant contributions to this research. Church history remained a powerful force for advancing Saxon and medieval studies throughout the seventeenth century.
Women Writers and the Medieval
Authors: Broome Saunders Clare
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the ways in which medievalism gave intellectual and politically astute women the imaginative means to discuss contemporary social issues and problems without facing the censure that more open social comment might induce. Using medieval linguistic translations, themes, motifs, and settings for diverse artistic, religious, and socio-political purposes, many women writers expressed subversive and challenging opinions: while others, like Charlotte Mary Yonge, offered tales of gentlemanly chivalry and iconic femininity that upheld conservative ideas about society and gender. Women writers’ paradoxical uses of medievalism were seen most clearly in the literature of the Crimean War, and embodied in the role of the reigning monarch, who was both passive chivalric icon and modern ruler. From Anglo-Saxon scholarship to courtly fifteenth-century images, invocations of the Middle Ages provided women with a rich source of allegory and comparison. Many writers perceived the Middle Ages as a time of greater social freedom than their own nineteenth-century experience: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Augusta Webster explored imaginatively the position of women in Victorian society through medieval settings. Many writers used medieval figures to illustrate contemporary issues: Joan of Arc became an emblem of social equality and an icon for the suffragists, and the legendary Guinevere was used to highlight the confines and injustices of contemporary marriage legislation. By focusing on the work of women writers, this chapter highlights their often overlooked contribution to the development of the medievalist discourse in the nineteenth century.
Anglo-Saxonism and the Victorian Novel
Authors: Parker Joanne
Published: October 2020

This chapter argues for the interest and importance of Anglo-Saxonist novels when analysing questions of identity in Victorian Britain. Focusing on the nineteenth century’s two longest works of literary Anglo-Saxonism—Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1848 historical novel Harold and Charles Kingsley’s 1866 Hereward the Wake—it reveals that, contrary to contemporary opinion, these works do not assert, but rather question and investigate, simplistic notions of national identity. Both books are often dismissed as simply poor imitations of the earlier work of Sir Walter Scott. The chapter traces their literary origins to well before Scott; argues that the texts differ importantly from Scott’s work, in ways that can tell us much about the mid-nineteenth century; and reveals how the books intersect in important ways with other manifestations of Victorian medievalism, and have also had an important legacy in the medievalism of the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.
The Early Mendicants
Authors: Andrews Frances
Published: October 2020

This chapter considers the early history of the women and men of the medieval Mendicant orders: the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinian Hermits, Servites, Sack, and Pied friars. It outlines recent revisionary approaches to continuity with previous religious orders and the multiplicity of forms ‘mendicancy’ might take. In doing so, it considers the essential features of what it meant to be a mendicant, male or female, paying particular attention to the changing significance of poverty and begging, the location of settlements, the slow emergence of a mendicant status, and the considerable role of the papacy. The value of non-normative textual and visual evidence is particularly emphasized, exposing the power of contingency and suggesting one of the creative ways in which research might begin to tackle the many questions that still deserve investigation.
Russian Orthodox Monasticism from 988 to 1917
Authors: Kenworthy Scott M.
Published: October 2020

Scholarship on Russian Orthodox monasticism is far less developed than that of Christian monasticism in Western Europe. The collapse of communism, however, has led to a revival of interest in its history. This chapter surveys the history of monasticism in Russia until the Revolution of 1917, together with the historiography of distinct periods in that history. One period that has received particular attention is the golden age of Russian monasticism in the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, from the revival initiated by St Sergius of Radonezh to the great monastic leaders, Nil Sorskii and Joseph Volotskii. Another current interest is the revival of monasticism in the nineteenth century, when forces of modernity such as greater social mobility, modern transport, and the rise of literacy fuelled stories of living spiritual elders and the miraculous workings of saints’ relics, bringing both pilgrims and recruits in great numbers to Russian monasteries.
Holy Men and Women of the Desert
Authors: Brakke David
Published: October 2020

Recent scholarship has undermined the traditional picture of desert monasticism as originating with Antony of Egypt and then spreading to Palestine and Syria, as consisting of the poor and uneducated, and as developing in complete separation from the world. This essay discusses key trends in the study of late ancient desert monks including: the decentring of Egypt and the turn away from single founders; philosophy as the source of and background for monastic practices and literary forms; scepticism about the myth of the desert; the engagement of monks with wider society; rethinking the concept of the holy man; and attention to women and gender. Publications of new sources (such as the works of Evagrius Ponticus and Shenoute), more theoretically aware readings of old sources, and studies of archaeological and papyrological remains have contributed to these developments.
The Archaeology of Monastic Households
Authors: Brooks Hedstrom Darlene L.
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the buildings and artefacts of late antique monastic sites in Egypt and Palestine. It uses household archaeology to examine the daily behaviours of those who lived in monastic settlements. Household archaeology combines methodologies from archaeology, anthropology, geography, and history. Its application enables us to read the archaeology of monasticism with greater sophistication, so that the artefacts and the places of ordinary life can be interpreted alongside other sources, such as liturgy, images, and texts. Archaeological remains offer an additional lens for reading monastic settlements as complex households or homesteads, and they permit us to write a more nuanced history of monastic life.
Monasticism in the United States
Authors: McGuinness Margaret M.
Published: October 2020

Monasticism in the United States has a long and complex history, beginning with the 1727 arrival of twelve members of the Company of St Ursula (Ursulines) in the French colony of New Orleans. Since that time, most women and men religious have staffed and administered schools and hospitals, while others have dedicated their lives to a ministry of prayer. The contributions of the Daughters of Charity, Benedictines, Christian Brothers, and Poor Clares—to name just a few—allowed the US Catholic Church to develop an extensive network of educational, healthcare, and social service institutions to serve the spiritual and physical needs of Catholics and non-Catholics. US monasticism in the twenty-first century is marked by declining numbers and an ageing membership. In 2009, concerned about the direction in which sisters and nuns appeared to be moving, the Vatican conducted an apostolic visitation among congregations of women religious.
Monastic Narrative Practices
Authors: Smith Katherine Allen
Published: October 2020

Stories comprised the very fabric of devotional life and institutional identity in medieval European monasteries. The monastic habitus encouraged the reading, glossing, composition, and performance of many different kinds of narratives, and the religious men and women who took these tasks to heart became, in a sense, living books. This chapter describes three fundamental ways in which narratives shaped the medieval monastic experience in the Latin West: first, by promoting particular models of holiness; second, by creating a textual basis for coherent, resilient communal identities; and third, by defining boundaries, albeit flexible and permeable ones, between religious communities and the outside world. Each of these narrative functions represents a rich vein of recent scholarship on medieval monasteries as devotional and textual communities.
The Literature of Early Western Monasticism
Authors: Stewart Columba
Published: October 2020

The Latin literature of early monasticism was created within much tighter personal networks than that of the East, but these networks spanned considerable geographical distances. The use of a single language for both the composition of ascetic literature and the translation of many important Greek writings further strengthened the unifying role of the literary corpus. Latin monasticism was particularly marked by theological controversy (Priscillianist, Origenist, Pelagian), and came to be dominated theologically by Augustine of Hippo. Augustine also played a key role in developing the genre of the monastic rule (regula), which would become normative in Western monastic practice, as evident in the regulae of Gaul and Italy that became the foundations for medieval monasticism.
The Literature of Early Eastern Monasticism
Authors: Bitton-Ashkelony Brouria
Published: October 2020

The chapter examines a variety of late antique monastic sources written in Greek, Syriac, and Coptic—hagiographies, canons, letters, and pedagogical treatises. It interrogates ways of reading these sources in order to reconstruct the historical development of monastic settlements in Palestine, Cappadocia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. It argues that the monastic texts do not clearly reflect the world that produced them, and it identifies a number of obstacles for historians that are embedded in the texts upon which we must rely. The discussion emphasizes the function of the perceptions, metaphors, symbols, images, and memories contained in the sources, thereby revealing late antique cultural and rhetorical trends and reflecting many aspects of Eastern monastic culture.
The Eastern Traditions Today
Authors: Koutloumousianos Chrysostom
Published: October 2020

Greek Orthodox monasticism comprises both legendary historical monasteries and thriving contemporary establishments all over the world. The chapter begins with an outline of its recent history, organization, and administrative structures. It then outlines its spiritual map, highlighting such features as: the sense of continuity that results from an unbroken chain of living and recorded experience going back to the ancient desert; the sense of unity in plurality, where individual charismata are integrated within the community; the contemplative spirit and its relationship to mission and doctrine; and the importance of spiritual parenthood. Today, many monasteries—and Mount Athos is a perennial example—are centres of spiritual replenishment and refreshment. They offer counsel, worship, and sacramental confession. Despite the signs of secularization, the main goal remains the same: transformation of self-love into love, which means, in theological terms, transfiguration of the human being in God’s unifying, uncreated grace.
The Military Orders
Authors: Burgtorf Jochen
Published: October 2020

The chapter discusses the two major international military orders of the high Middle Ages, the Templars and the Hospitallers. It outlines their origins in the twelfth-century Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as the factors that contributed to their emergence, such as pilgrimage, the eleventh-century Church reform, knighthood and chivalry, the Crusades, and the role of the papacy. It then considers the comparative historiography of Templars and Hospitallers, including the scholarly debate on the Templars’ suppression and the Hospitallers’ survival. The chapter goes on to address the question of the military orders’ identity by examining the extent of the Templars’ charity and hospitality, the question of the Hospitallers’ militarization, and the genesis of the concept of an ‘order state’. It concludes with suggestions for future research.
Monasticism in Early Modern Germany
Authors: Klueting Edeltraud
Published: October 2020

The chapter addresses the history of monasticism in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Whether the Reformation movement unleashed by Martin Luther represented a continuation of late medieval monastic reforms or, rather, an abrupt departure from them, is a contentious issue. In the Catholic parts of Germany, after the Council of Trent, monasteries became significant agents in the renewal of the Church, especially in the areas of education and social and charitable activity. On the other hand, the Enlightenment, with its narrow conception of utility, called into question the very basis of monastic life, and hence the right of monasteries to exist. The fallout of the French Revolution and the French occupation of the left bank of the Rhine led to a great wave of monastic dissolutions. It was only under the influence of German Romanticism that monasticism experienced another revival.
Introduction
Authors: Kaczynski Bernice M.
Published: October 2020

The chapter gives an introduction to the current state of scholarship on monasticism, and it sets out an agenda for the future. It begins with a consideration of monasticism’s long historical arc, its longue durée. Few movements in the history of Christianity have had such lasting importance. The chapter then looks ahead to the great variety of monastic practices described by contributors to the volume. It draws attention to patterns of continuity and change, to recurring themes, and to major debates in the field. The experience of Christian monasticism is multifaceted, for it has assumed different forms in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, and in contemporary ‘new monasticism’. What, then, is Christian monasticism, and what are its essential features? It is surprisingly difficult to come to a definition of the monastic way of life, and the chapter ends with an exploration of this issue.
The Cistercians
Authors: Lester Anne E.
Published: October 2020

Founded in 1098, the Cistercians grew to be one of the most important monastic orders of the Middle Ages, stretching from the shores of Scotland to the littoral of Palestine, from Greece to Poland. This chapter traces three major themes that have influenced the scholarship on the topic, namely the idea of the ‘order’, the role of women within it, and the notion of Cistercian decline or corruption. Administered from its first house, Cîteaux, in northern Burgundy, the Cistercian network included hundreds of houses for monks and nuns as well as granges and chapels administered by lay brothers and sisters known as conversi and conversae, all united within a complex filiation system. From the middle of the twelfth century the Cistercians pioneered one of the most influential administrative organizations of the premodern period and developed a distinctive spirituality and aesthetic that defined their ideal of community and monastic devotion.
Leibniz and Newton as Critics of Descartes
Authors: Janiak Andrew
Published: October 2020

Leibniz and Newton famously disagreed on many philosophical and mathematical topics. Indeed, their disagreements are legion in the eighteenth century and beyond. But underlying their disputes, there are some important and illuminating similarities in their reactions to Cartesian natural philosophy. The Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, along with certain interpretations of the vis viva dispute, have obscured these similarities, which are an important aspect of our understanding of Newton’s work.
Conservation Officer Perceptions of Academy Training: Resource Specific and General Policing Tasks
Authors: Rossler Michael T , Suttmoeller Michael J
Published: October 2020

This research is among the first to examine the degree to which law enforcement officers tasked with protection of natural resources feel prepared for specialized and general tasks by their academy training. Drawing upon a survey of over 900 conservation officers across 13 states, the current inquiry examines whether officers who attended a conservation-specific academy feel better prepared for their work than those who attended a conventional police academy. Findings suggest conservation officers feel well prepared for their general policing duties by their academy experience, but fewer than half of the officers surveyed felt that their academy experience prepared them to handle nuisance wildlife calls or consult with landowners on habitat needs. Officers who attended a conservation academy held greater perceptions that their academy prepared them for specialized duties. These findings help inform state conservation agencies about the topics which are well covered or need additional attention in their pre-employment training curricula, as well as recruitment strategies for varying academy types.
Introduction to the Special Issue of the SBM Mid-Career Leadership Institute: leadership and behavioral medicine in context
Authors: Fitzgibbon Marian L , Peterson Caryn , Rutten Lila J , Yaroch Amy
Published: October 2020

In 2016, we established the year-long Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) Mid-Career Leadership Institute. Individuals are often selected for leadership positions without intentional training in needed leadership skills, including strategic planning, building collaborative teams, goal setting, negotiation, and communication. The purpose of the Leadership Institute is to: (a) provide opportunities for mid-career professionals to build and sustain their leadership capacity; (b) create cohorts of connected fellows in behavioral medicine fields, disciplines, and institutions, who can support one another throughout their professional careers; and (c) enhance specific skills needed to navigate the challenges of mid-career. Over the first 4 years of the Institute, 139 fellows have participated, representing 35 states. Most of the fellows hold PhDs (93%) as a terminal degree. This special issue is dedicated to the leadership experiences of fellows, faculty, senior SBM mentors, peer mentors, and executive coaches.
Reflections on growing leadership capacity through formal training and mid-career peer connections
Authors: Hausmann Leslie R M , DeBerard M Scott
Published: October 2020

In this commentary, two alumni of the 2018 Society of Behavioral Medicine Mid-Career Leadership Institute reflect on their experiences in the year-long program. Each was at different stages of their career and went into the program for different reasons. One was seeking purpose and direction after being promoted to Associate Professor. The other had been awarded full professorship and was contemplating a career move into administration. Assigned to the same learning community within the institute, they stayed in touch through monthly peer-mentoring calls over the course of the year. These calls both reinforced what they learned during the leadership institute and provided a forum for brainstorming how to maximize their career opportunities and traverse their distinct career challenges. Both have since gone through significant career changes, thanks to the validation, inspiration, and support provided by the leadership institute. Both continue to reap the benefits from participating in the leadership institute as they navigate the new and exciting landscape of their changing careers.
Leadership, behavioral science, and interprofessional teamwork
Authors: Wada Randal K
Published: October 2020

The greatest challenge I face as a pediatric oncologist is breaking life-threatening news to patients and their parents. I frequently felt the need to improve my ability to deliver such information in a professional, yet compassionate way. I was fortunate to participate in the Leadership Institute, which provided me with the skills and perspectives that inspired me to seek out team-centered methodologies and medical decision-making theories. After learning techniques for priority setting, situational leadership, expressing empathy, and conveying bad news, guidance from the Leadership Institute prompted me to collaborate with nursing, social work, and chaplaincy colleagues to develop a team-based approach for helping families facing end-of-life decisions. Our success in the clinical arena led to my leadership project, which focused on academic collaborations to develop an educational exercise for pediatric residents, and students in nursing, social work, and chaplaincy, designed to introduce learners to these techniques and the experience of conducting end-of-life discussions as part of an interprofessional team. We published an initial description of this 4-hour simulation-based training session and now plan to submit our cumulative 3-year quantitative and qualitative results. This commentary describes my growing appreciation of the power of behavioral medicine, and how the lessons learned through the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Leadership Institute have not only facilitated the success of my project but also enriched multiple aspects of my professional life.
A decade of toxicological trends: what the papers say
Authors: Sikakana Phumzile , Roberts Ruth A
Published: October 2020

Here we look at popular trends and concepts in toxicology over the decade 2009–2019. The top 10 concepts included methodological approaches such as zebrafish and genomics as well as broader concepts such as personalized medicine and adverse outcome pathways. The total number and rank order for each of the top 10 were tracked year by year via PubMed with >9500 papers contributing to the analysis. The data revealed a slow upward trend in the number of papers across all the concepts from 260 in 2009 to >1700 in 2019. Zebrafish, genomics and personalized medicine remained in the top four slots since 2009 with zebrafish dominating the rankings over the entire decade. Genomics was a strong second until 2013 when it was displaced first by the microbiome in 2014 and secondly by personalized medicine in 2015. Other notable trends were the ascendancy of the microbiome and adverse outcome pathways and the descendancy of hormesis and the 3Rs (replacement, reduction and refinement of animals in testing). The observation that the top four slots have been static over the past 4 years suggests that new ideas are introduced and increase in popularity until they find their place in scientific culture. This may suggest that relatively new concepts such as artificial intelligence and microphysiological systems have yet to find their steady state in the rankings. Similarly, as a relatively new player in toxicology, the full impact of the human microbiome on drug efficacy and safety remains to be seen.
Evaluation of Early Pregnancy Concerns in an Early Pregnancy Unit Compared With an Emergency Department
Authors: VanArendonk Sarah H. , Rockhill Karilynn , Stickrath Elaine H. , Alston Meredith J.
Published: October 2020

OBJECTIVE:

To assess total time for evaluation of women with first-trimester pregnancy concerns in an early pregnancy unit compared with an emergency department (ED) within a single safety net hospital system.

METHODS:

We performed a retrospective cohort study at Denver Health Medical Center from May 1, 2017, to April 30, 2018. All patients who presented to the early pregnancy unit and a random sample of patients who presented to the ED were identified, stratified by month. Patients were eligible if they were aged 12–55 years, hemodynamically stable, in the first trimester with a positive pregnancy test, and without a prior ultrasonogram. Evaluation time was calculated as difference between registration or check-in and the discharge time. We extracted patient demographics, reproductive histories, presenting symptoms, diagnosis, and management plans at time of discharge from the electronic medical record. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses were performed. Lastly, a preliminary analysis of total charges was conducted.

RESULTS:

Of 250 patients originally identified, 165 met inclusion criteria (79 from the early pregnancy unit and 86 from the ED). There was no statistical difference in race, ethnicity, or insurance type between groups. Median evaluation time was significantly reduced in the early pregnancy unit compared with the ED (45 minutes [interquartile range 31–61] vs 236 minutes [interquartile range 173–307], respectively, P<.001). After adjusting for patient characteristics and clinical presentation, the average total evaluation time among patients in the early pregnancy unit (36 minutes) was 80% lower compared with patients in the ED (180 minutes). Median evaluation charges were significantly less for patients in the early pregnancy unit compared with those in the ED ($586.22 [interquartile range 384.83–757.34] vs $1,350.97 [interquartile range 975.77–3,553.62], respectively, P<.001).

CONCLUSION:

Time and charges for evaluation of women with first-trimester pregnancy concerns were significantly lower in an early pregnancy unit compared with an ED. Early pregnancy units should be considered as an alternative care model for patients in the first trimester of pregnancy in the United States.
Delayed Norfentanyl Clearance During Pregnancy
Authors: Wanar Amita , Saia Kelley , Field Thomas A.
Published: October 2020

BACKGROUND:

We report a case of delayed norfentanyl clearance in a 33-year-old pregnant woman. Norfentanyl is the major metabolite of fentanyl.

Case:

A multigravid woman with opioid use disorder presented at 7 weeks of gestation for treatment. Despite opioid abstinence, her urine was positive for norfentanyl on 10 distinct gas chromatography–mass spectrometry urine screens. The results demonstrated a steady decrease of norfentanyl over the course of 70 days after her last fentanyl usage, far exceeding expected rates of fentanyl clearance.

CONCLUSION:

This case highlights the importance of acknowledging pregnancy, genetic, or medication-induced changes to fentanyl pharmacokinetics when interpreting urine tests, especially given the potential sequelae of a false-positive urine test result.
Liver transplantation in Jehovah's Witnesses: a case series
Authors: Ariza Fredy , Arboleda-Palacios Daniel , Rosales Hooker-Herrera Sebastian , Manzi-Tarapués Eliana , Caicedo-Rusca Luis Armando
Published: October 2020

Introduction:

Orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) is a procedure characterized by high bleeding rates and a significant likelihood of exposure to blood products.

Objectives:

This case series shows the experience at a referral center for Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) with end-stage liver disease, undergoing OLT.

Materials and methods:

A search was conducted in our database of JW undergoing OLT between July 2007 and August 2012. The information about their pre-operative condition and progress up to 30 days post-transplantation.

Results:

Four subjects were identified (3F/1M) with an average age of 42 years (range 22-55). All of them received a multidisciplinary management which included pre-operative optimization of red cell mass, antifibrinolytic prophylaxis, and cell salvage (mean volume of 344mL [range 113-520]). The average intraoperative bleeding volume was of 625mL (range 300-1000). One of the patients presented with a primary graft dysfunction and died, while the rest had a normal postoperative course.

Conclusion:

It is possible to offer OLT to patients who refuse to receive allogeneic blood transfusions, through a comprehensive approach that includes perioperative hematologic optimization and the use of blood conservation measures, without a significant impact on the outcomes.
Patient safety climate in operating rooms at Colombian hospitals: differences by profession and type of contract
Authors: Arias-Botero José H. , Segura-Cardona Ángela M , Acosta Rodríguez Fernando , Saldarriaga Carlos A. , Gómez-Arias Rubén D.
Published: October 2020

Introduction:

The safety climate (SC) measurement in the hospitals, is essential for the development of a patient safety policy (PSP). Information about SC in the operating rooms is scarce.

Objective:

To measure the dimensions of SC in Colombian Operating Rooms according to characteristics of surgical staff.

Methods:

Cross-sectional study. The Hospital Survey on Patient Safety and an additional module for operating rooms were administered to healthcare workers in 6 high-complexity hospitals in the Metropolitan Area of Medellín (Colombia). The positive responses percentage for each dimension was measured. Differences by profession and type of contract were analyzed.

Results:

A total of442 participants were included. The workers in the operating rooms perceive a weak SC in terms of non-punitive response to error and workload (49.4% and 59.3% positive responses, respectively). Differences were found between physicians and nurses with lower scores in nursing for dimensions related to patient care. Anesthesiologists present low scores in events reporting. There are also differences by the type of work contract.

Conclusion:

Despite the PSP, the perception of a punitive culture to error, with a high workload. Recognizing differences between the groups within the surgical units helps to focus interventions strengthening the patient safety.
The Clinical Value of Artery Umbilical Cord Blood Gas in Predicting Neonate Condition: A Prospective Cohort Study
Authors: Xin Xing , Lu Weixin , Ye Chunhua , Du Hongyan , Wang Shaoshuai , Feng Ling
Published: October 2020

Objective:

To evaluate the predictive ability of neonate condition through the traditional parameters and artery umbilical cord blood gas (aUCBG).

Methods:

A prospective cohort study was conducted in obstetrics and gynecology department between October 2017 and August 2018 at Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, China, and 360 aUCBG samples were collected. The average age of pregnant women was (29.50 ± 4.42) years, range from 19 to 48 years old. The gestational age range from 28+4 weeks to 41+3 weeks at admission. Logistic regression and area under the curve (AUC) from Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to identify risk factors, such as, premature rupture of membranes (PROM), high blood pressure, premature delivery (PD), low 1-minute Apgar scores (Apgar 1), low 5-minute Apgar scores (Apgar 5), pH, base excess, bicarbonate, neonatal blood sugar (NBS), and so on, to predict neonatal condition and evaluate the predictive ability of traditional and aUCBG parameters.

Results:

In all cases, PROM, PD, Apgar 1, Apgar 5, pH, base excess, bicarbonate, total carbon dioxide, and neonatal blood sugar were risk factors and were associated with poor condition of neonate. Apgar 1 were an independent risk factor. Combined traditional and aUCBG parameters had higher AUC of 0.895 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.830–0.960, P < 0.001). In cesarean section subgroup, high blood pressure, PD, and Apgar 1 were risk factors and were associated with poor condition of neonate. Apgar 1 and low pH were the independent risk factors. Combined traditional and aUCBG parameters had highest AUC of 0.940 (95% CI: 0.886–0.993, P < 0.001). In vaginal delivery subgroup, maternal age above 35 years, PROM, PD, Apgar 1, Apgar 5, and male newborn were risk factors and were associated with poor condition of neonate. Maternal age above 35 years was an independent risk factor. Combined traditional and aUCBG parameters had highest AUC of 0.897 (95% CI: 0.828–0.965, P < 0.001). For pregnant women without comorbidities and complications of pregnancy, aUCBG may not be necessary.

Conclusion:

In high-risk pregnancies, especially lower Apgar scores, PD, and maternal age above 35-year old, aUCBG is recommended. Traditional parameters combined with aUCBG might increase the predicting ability of neonate condition.