An Analysis of the Weight Watchers and Atkins Diets: The Effects of Calorie Restriction and Nutrition Levels

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a calorie-restricted diet versus one with restricted food groups. To accomplish this, a survey with 19 participants, age ranging from 25 to 74 years, was taken for people who attempted Weight Watchers, a calorie-restricted diet, and Atkins, a low-carbohydrate diet. The success rates of each of these diets will be compared and analyzed in this study. Participants reported short-term and long-term weight loss results. For the data analysis, descriptive statistics and two independent t-tests were performed. For short-term weight loss on Atkins, M = 20.25, and on Weight Watchers, M = 44.33. With net weight loss, Atkins averaged 11.25 pounds and Weight Watchers group averaged 44.33 pounds. Although the independent t-tests did not show a significant difference, research suggests that calorie restriction is more effective for long-term maintenance

The Role of Time Preferences in the Intergenerational Transfer of Smoking

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Intergenerational transfer of time and risk preferences

Date of Acceptance: 03/06/15 Acknowledgements The Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates funds HERU. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only and not those of the funding body. HB received financial support from the Medical Research Council/Economic and Social Research Council/National Institute of Health Research under grant G0802291. This paper uses unit record data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Project was initiated and is funded by the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) and is managed by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (Melbourne Institute). The findings and views reported in this paper, however, are those of the author and should not be attributed to either FaHCSIA or the Melbourne Institute.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Emotional Evidence, Personal Testimony, and Public Debate: A Case Study of the Post-Abortion Movement

This dissertation investigates a new movement within the abortion debates in the United States known as the Post-Abortion Movement. Bypassing the stalemate between pro-life and pro-choice, activists in this movement focus on the potential psychological trauma of abortion, and in the last twenty years, they have argued for their views in different forums, grounding their case in the personal testimony of women who have undergone abortions. They have emphasized the validity of their narratives in defining their experience over the authority of medical professionals. This project assembles an archive of this movement, from its early advocacy literature to its professional discourse in journals, to its proliferating presence on websites. While offering a case study of how a movement gets started and has an impact on the public's perception of an issue, the Post-Abortion Movement and its tactics also raise important questions in rhetorical theory concerning the role of personal testimony in arguments. In five chapters, this dissertation gives the history of the Post-Abortion Movement and uses rhetorical theory to analyze its tactics. Its most effective tactic has been the creation of a new diagnostic category: "post-abortion syndrome." In a case study of advocacy, professional, and online genres, this project trace the rhetorical development of this concept and show how stakeholders use women's first-person accounts of their abortion experiences--women whom they identify as "post-abortive." This dissertation argues that Post-Abortion Movement supporters use personal testimonies as both a source of evidence for social science claims in policy arguments and a force for building a community of advocates. While contributing to the growing body of scholarship on narrative and the rhetoric of health and medicine, this dissertation shows how the Post-Abortion Movement's persistent casting of abortion as a potentially negative--rather than therapeutic or liberating--event has significantly influenced the current debate on women's responses to abortion

Scholarly Dissemination for Visiting Students

Student work has been a popular feature in the institutional repository at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The inclusion of their work in the repository provides the students with the opportunity to formally disseminate their research, some for the first time. One such collection are posters authored by visiting students who participate in the Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP). The program provides opportunities for undergraduate students to work with researchers across campus. The library has been involved in the SURP program for many years, primarily through instruction on literature searching, citation managers, and scholarly dissemination. When the program was remote in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they turned to the library to host the posters in the repository, which included voice over narrated video. Since that time, the program has continued to require students to submit their posters to the repository, providing the students with experience in scholarly dissemination. This lightning talk will include descriptions of the program and library involvement in SURP, the history of poster submissions, and usage statistics

Teachers Attitudes and Confidence in Technology Integration

The purpose of this study was to determine if training affects a teacher’s confidence in their ability to integrate technology in the classroom to enhance student learning. Technology training has been identified as a key component in a teacher’s attitude and confidence when it comes to the integration of technology into the curriculum. Data was gathered from an anonymous pencil/paper survey handed out to teachers in a Title I public elementary school in rural southern West Virginia to determine if training had any effect on their confidence to integrate technology. The information gained from this survey is intended to provide ideas that will help guide future technology training

Academic Achievement of Children and Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder with In-Depth Focus on Written Expression

The goal of this research was to identify areas of strength and need in the academic abilities of students with high functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD). Three studies were undertaken: 1) six meta-analyses investigated whether nonverbal IQ was in accordance with academic achievement scores in the areas of reading, writing, and math for students with HFASD; 2) the narrative writing skills of students with HFASD were examined in order to describe the ways their writing may differ from their typically developing (TD) peers; and 3) the persuasive writing of students with HFASD was examined to determine whether their texts resembled writer-based prose to a greater extent than their peers. Across all three studies, the role of language ability as a predictor of academic success was explored. Results of the first study showed that students with HFASD were generally performing academically as would be expected by their Performance IQ. In addition, across all subject areas, there was great variability in student performance, such that some students with HFASD had strong academic skills and others had weaker skills. The second study demonstrated that the written narratives of students were HFASD were highly similar to those of their TD peers. However, the students with ASD were weaker in their use of narrative elements and form (narrative text structure, character development, integrating the inner worlds of their characters with the events in the story). The third study revealed that the persuasive writing of students with HFASD differed across several key indicators: syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, overall persuasive quality. As well, the texts of the group with HFASD could be characterized as writer-based prose to a greater extent than the texts of their peers. Finally, the importance of language ability in predicting academic achievement was confirmed across all studies. The results of these studies highlighted the limitations of trying to characterize the academic skills of individuals with ASD using global scores of performance. The detailed descriptions of the written texts of students with ASD provided a critical foundation for developing educational interventions. These studies were the first of their kind