Search results

The purpose of this paper was to synthesis all primary evidence relevant to the anti-diabetic effect of dandelion. Dandelion leaf and root have been used extensively for its medicinal and health benefits since hundreds of years ago. This systematic review was conducted to gather scientific evidence that are available with regards to the anti-diabetic effect of dandelion leaf and root.

A systematic search was conducted using PubMed, BioMed, PLUSONE and Cochrane databases between June 6, 2013 and June 30, 2013. Manual search was also done on books and journals in the KNUST library and its electronic database for possible documented effects of dandelion leaf or root on diabetic patients. Key words “dandelion”, “Taraxacum”, “dandelion and diabetes”, “Taraxacum officinale”, “Taraxacum and diabetes”, “dandelion and hypoglycemia” and “dandelion and hyperglycemia” were used in the search.

The search yielded 713 papers, and after the removal of duplicates and papers not relevant to this review, 20 papers were accepted for the review. These included studies conducted in humans and animals (rats and mice). Among the 20 studies reviewed, only 1 study examined and reported a positive hypoglycemic effect of dandelion on diabetic rats.

The review only considered published papers and might have left out some unpublished research works.

The results of this review suggest paucity of data available on the use of dandelion in the treatment/management of diabetes. There is the need for well-designed clinical trials to ascertain the anti-diabetic effect of dandelion.

The consumption of dandelion by type 2 diabetic patients to treat or manage their blood glucose has not been clinically proven to be effective, as shown by the review.

The paper provides a clear picture of the evidence available in the use of dandelion as an anti-diabetic herb, and this provides some preliminary data for the conduct of a clinical research on it.

Health misinformation poses severe risks to people’s health decisions and outcomes. A great deal of research in this area has focused on debunking misinformation and found limited effects of correctives after misinformation exposure. The research on prebunking strategies has been inadequate. Most has focused on forewarning and enhancing literacy skills and knowledge to recognize misinformation. Part of the reason for the inadequacy could be due to the challenges in conceptualizing and measuring knowledge. This study intends to fill this gap and examines various types of knowledge, including subjective knowledge, cancer literacy, persuasion knowledge and media literacy. This study aims to understand how knowledge may moderate the effect of misinformation exposure on misbeliefs.

An online experiment with a basic experimental design (misinformation exposure: health misinformation vs factual health message) was conducted. The authors measured and tested the moderating role of different types of knowledge (subjective knowledge, cancer literacy, persuasion knowledge and media literacy) separately to improve the understanding of their role in combatting online health misinformation.

This study found that a higher level of cancer literacy and persuasion knowledge helped people identify misinformation and prevented them from being persuaded by it. A higher level of subjective knowledge, however, reduced the recognition of misinformation, thereby increasing the likelihood of being persuaded by it. Media literacy did not moderate the mediation path.

This study differentiates the role different types of knowledge may have played in moderating the influence of health misinformation. It contributes to a strategic development of interventions that better prepare people against the influence of health misinformation.

The concept of quality management blossomed first in Japan and later in US and UK industry. Since then, the theory of quality management has been growing rapidly. It has become a management philosophy and has taken shape in a series of international standards in the ISO 9000 series. This article aims to describe how total quality management (TQM) – a dandelion seed from overseas ‐ turned an ordinary library into something different.

This article is a general review of the progress made in Hainan University Library.

Hainan University Library implemented TQM in July 2004 and passed the authentication of ISO 9000: 2000 in 2005. Management innovation in Hainan University Library gradually became a real eye‐catcher. A national workshop on quality management and performance management in the library was held in April 2006. The library is now a member of IFLA (there are 25 members in China including Macao and Hong Kong); in 2005 the director of the library was elected as a standing committee member of IFLA Academic and Research Libraries Section; and international exchange and cooperation is becoming increasingly active.

The paper demonstrates how a silent, ordinary library has made a difference; it is moving away from being an isolated island and moving towards the international arena.

This paper aims to explore the development of the accountability ideals and practices of Quaker industrialists during the period 1840–1914.

The research employs a case study approach and draws on the extensive archives of Quaker industrialists in the Richardson family networks, British Parliamentary Papers and the Religious Society of Friends together with relevant contemporary and current literature.

Friends shed their position as Enemies of the State and obtained status and accountabilities undifferentiated from those of non-Quakers. The reciprocal influences of an increasingly complex business environment and radical changes in religious beliefs and practices combined to shift accountabilities from the Quaker Meeting House to newly established legal accountability mechanisms. Static Quaker organisation structures and accountability processes were ineffective in a rapidly changing world. Decision-making was susceptible to the domination of the large Richardson family networks in the Newcastle Meeting House. This research found no evidence of Quaker corporate social accountability through action in the Richardson family networks and it questions the validity of this concept. The motivations underlying Quakers’ personal philanthropy and social activism were multiple and complex, extending far beyond accountabilities driven by religious belief.

This research has originality and value as a study of continuity and change in Quaker accountability regimes during a period that encompassed fundamental changes in Quakerism and its orthopraxy, and their business, social and political environments.

The purpose of this paper (case study) is to capture a novel school culture that values instructional leadership (school leaders and teachers) and serves students in ways that create a culturally responsive and socially just schooling environment.

A qualitative methodology was best suited for the collection and analysis of data with the hope that the study will assist practitioners in seeing the connective threads that bind school leaders, teachers, students and parents in an organizational cultural shift that is student focused. Interviews and observations of professional learning communities, meetings and classrooms were the types of data collected and analyzed.

The principal and assistant principal were professionally and ethically challenged with an all too familiar problem – 30 percent of their Latinx and economically disadvantaged students scored below proficient in reading comprehension. To address this opportunity gap, consideration was given to data-informed decision-making; professional learning communities; and distributed leadership for social justice. Findings suggested that problems of practice are solved when educators engage in a continuous culture of learning through authentic dialogue focused on student data with an eye on equity.

Although research demonstrates that school improvement works best when principals distribute leadership to teachers, principals tend to maintain the share of the responsibility. Examples of instructional leadership beyond the school principal are rare. This case study provides an example of how principals can build leadership capacity in teachers and develop them to be instructional leaders.

The nonhuman world is under substantial threat from human activities and economies. Rewilding gardens and community action can build relationships of care with the nonhuman, restore habitat, connect people and land, and empower humans to work with and for the nonhuman. Stories about family relationships to land and through land, and creating a wild garden are used to explore place attachment, creating relationships of care through gardening, and purposeful rewilding of a garden; stories about participation in a community service organization examine how collective action can take rewilding ideas out into the larger community. By consciously creating care for the nonhuman and participating in rewilding, we can actively build ecological paths forward for ourselves and our nonhuman neighbors.

When a small schoolboy I became acquainted with the proverb Fames optimum condimentum. Nevertheless, millions of human beings, perhaps because they have little experience of famishment, persist in taking other condimenta with their food two or three times a day. Some of them, having satisfied their hunger, slake their thirst with products of a brewery—most of the commoner condiments not being even remotely associated with brewing. I have spent many years in efforts to secure that foods are called by their proper names. Egg powder, Devonshire hake, tonic cocktails, queer liquors containing isopropyl alcohol or even methyl alcohol, phoney blended whiskey—how would food lawyers have lived if these and other wrongly described goods had never come on the market ? Though a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, a dandelion called a rose does not. And those who administer the food laws have come across many examples of articles labelled on the principle of lucus a non lucendo. How these old tags stick in one's memory.

This issue of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL is the twelfth for which the present Editor is responsible. In December of last year he invited local government officers concerned in administering the food laws to send in reports of matters likely to be interesting or helpful to colleagues in other areas. The response has been excellent, and the Editor tenders his sincere thanks to those who have in this way given information which he has been able to pass on to readers of the Journal. It has not always been possible to find space for all that the Editor would have wished to publish. And in many instances no direct acknowledgment has been made through the post. It is hoped, however, that the medical officers of health, public analysts, inspectors of weights and measures and sanitary inspectors who have supplied so much useful copy will continue to do so, and will realise that their help is highly valued, even when they receive no individual letters of thanks. For everyone engaged in administering the food laws likes to be kept informed of what is happening in other areas. During the past twelve months the circulation of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL has risen substantially month by month—not least among manufacturers and wholesale distributors of food, who find it useful to be aware of dangers which they wish to avoid and of new developments which may result in future amendments of the law.

Kate Peden and Sandra Hall describe the making of a multimedia resource on the benefits of learning for people with mental health difficulties, in which service users themselves played a key role.

I felt myself the recipient of a great honour when asked to read a paper on this subject before your Society. One difficulty, however, at once confronted me, and that was that what your society might regard as an act of sophistication of food, I might believe to be only a perfectly legitimate manufacturing improvement. I had no wish to masquerade before you as a wolf in sheep's clothing, and therefore stated my position to your secretary. As a result of some correspondence, I think that he, as your representative, and I, both felt that granted such differences of opinion, they themselves constituted one of the strongest arguments in favour of the formation of a Court of Reference. There are, no doubt, many processes which are considered by their inventors and users as of advantage in the manufacture of food, whereas others regard them with the greatest distrust and aversion. In most cases I believe the members of both these classes to be high‐minded and honourable men. That being so, it is submitted that the best method of arriving at the real facts is the establishment of an impartial, broad‐minded, and capable Court of Reference, to which such matters should be submitted for examination and decision.