Historically, State Registered Dietitians have not received in‐depth training in behaviour change skills. Training in this area has been viewed as peripheral rather than fundamental. Whilst a permanent long‐term cure for obesity remains elusive, cognitive behavioural therapy is state of the art in the treatment of obesity. It reliably achieves 10% pretreatment body weight loss in the short‐term. Interesting new developments are occurring in this field which may affect long‐term outcome favourably. This paper examines what can be achieved with traditional dietary therapy in the treatment of obesity, what can be achieved with cognitive behavioural therapy and considers whether dietitians should receive further training in key behaviour change theory and skills. It is recommended that the integration of the fields of nutrition and behavioural psychology is placed centrally on the agenda of State Registered Dietitians.

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A 10-choice decision-making experiment was conducted in which the uncertainty, H, of S's response distributions was experimentally determined for each of 4 blocks of 80 trials. A measure of relative efficiency in terms of expected gain which assumes H constant, RT, was computed for each S for each block of trials. Analysis indicated that RT did not depend on H and that it increased slightly but significantly with blocks. The absolute values of RT were quite close to the maximum in the later blocks, suggesting that when the uncertainty of the responses is accounted for, Ss perform the task in nearly optimal fashion. Some implications of these results for "rational" theories of decision making are discussed.

The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society: Narratives from Cairo and Damascus under the Mamluks. By Carl F. Petry. Chicago Studies on the Middle East, vol. 9. Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2012. Pp. viii + 365. $70.

Mariage et séparation à Damas au moyen âge: Un corpus de 62 documents juridiques inédits entre 337/948 et 698/1299. Edited by Jean-Michel Mouton, Domi nique Sourdel, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine. Documents relatifs à l’histoire des Croisades, vol. 21. Paris: L’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres, 2013. Pp. 327, illus. €40 (paper).