Effectiveness of School-based Interventions versus Family-based Interventions in the Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity affects 155 million children worldwide. As prevalence increases, it is important to identify effective interventions in the treatment and prevention of childhood obesity. Obesity may result in short and long term effects linked to some of the leading causes of morbidity and early mortality. The purpose of this systematic review is to identify, review, and critically appraise evidence from studies examining the effect of family and school based interventions. This review answers the following PICO question: In children, how do family based interventions compare to school based interventions, in the prevention and treatment of obesity? Methods included literature searches in university databases and Google Scholar for relevant studies. Studies were critically appraised for their validity, reliability, and limitations. It was found that both school and family interventions are beneficial in decreasing body mass index (BMI), increasing physical activity, improving nutrition and dietary habits, decreasing blood pressure and cholesterol, and improving attitudes and psychosocial outcomes. A definitive conclusion cannot be drawn to determine if school or family based interventions result in a better outcome. Thus, further research is needed that compares school and family based interventions in the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity

The Early Royal Society and Visual Culture

Recent studies have fruitfully examined the intersection between early modern science and visual culture by elucidating the functions of images in shaping and disseminating scientific knowledge. Given its rich archival sources, it is possible to extend this line of research in the case of the Royal Society to an examination of attitudes towards images as artefacts –manufactured objects worth commissioning, collecting and studying. Drawing on existing scholarship and material from the Royal Society Archives, I discuss Fellows’ interests in prints, drawings, varnishes, colorants, images made out of unusual materials, and methods of identifying the painter from a painting. Knowledge of production processes of images was important to members of the Royal Society, not only as connoisseurs and collectors, but also as those interested in a Baconian mastery of material processes, including a “history of trades”. Their antiquarian interests led to discussion of painters’ styles, and they gradually developed a visual memorial to an institution through portraits and other visual records.AH/M001938/1 (AHRC

Going to market: Credit economies and marriageable women in eighteenth-century fiction

My dissertation argues that eighteenth-century fiction about marriageable women helped create the attitudes and behavior that supported financial credit. Credit, although not new, was an increasingly important part of the economy in the eighteenth century, and its use sparked controversy about the nature of value and representation. Analyzing novels from the early 1700s through the 1780s together with contemporary economic treatises and pamphlets, I show that both novels and economic texts take up the problem of representing immaterial value—whether economic value or the qualities of mind that made a woman virtuous. I claim that the realm of social exchange through which marriageable heroines circulate is analogous to the economic marketplace—in both spheres “value” is arrived at through public consensus and is therefore potentially unreliable. As the century progresses, I argue, novels about marriageable heroines demonstrate an increased confidence in the possibility of assessing virtue through circulating in the marriage market—a confidence also found in economic texts about the processes of economic exchange. I begin with a discussion of Lady Credit, an allegorical figure Daniel Defoe used to explain financial credit in his newspaper The Review; I draw attention to the similarities between credit and a woman\u27s virtue and argue that Lady Credit\u27s adventures anticipate the themes that dominate novels about marriageable women. Chapter One explores the relationship between depictions of a financial crash, the South Sea Bubble, and the marriage market in works by Defoe and Eliza Haywood. Chapter Two demonstrates that Samuel Richardson and writers on trade had similar concerns that signifiers (whether social signs or economic tokens) might misrepresent value. Richardson\u27s female paragon, I claim, functions like currency standards to anchor meaning. My third chapter compares courtship novels by Haywood and Frances Burney to Adam Smith\u27s Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations to demonstrate that they present analogous means of determining the value of people and commodities. My conclusion considers Burney\u27s Cecilia with writings on debt from the 1780s, arguing that both accept credit\u27s inevitability at the same time that they fear it may not always be backed by “substance.