Is My Exercise Partner Similar Enough? Partner Characteristics as a Moderator of the Köhler Effect in Exergames

Objective: Recent research has shown the Köhler motivation gain effect (working at a task with a more capable partner where one's performance is indispensable to the group) leads to greater effort in partnered exercise videogame play. The purpose of this article was to examine potential moderators of the Köhler effect by exploring dissimilarities in one's partner's appearance, namely, having an older partner (compared with a same-age partner) and having a heavier-weight partner (compared with a same-weight partner). Subjects and Methods: One hundred fifty-three male and female college students completed a series of plank exercises using the “EyeToy: Kinetic™” for the PlayStation® 2 (Sony, Tokyo, Japan). Participants first completed the exercises individually and, after a rest, completed the same exercises with a virtually present partner. Exercise persistence, subjective effort, self-efficacy beliefs, enjoyment, and intentions to exercise were recorded and analyzed. Results: A significant Köhler motivation gain was observed in all partner conditions (compared with individual controls) such that participants with a partner held the plank exercises longer (P<0.001) and reported higher subjective effort (P<0.01). These results were unmoderated by partner's age and weight, with one exception: Males tended to persist longer when paired with an obese partner (P=0.08). Conclusions: These results suggest that differences in age and weight do not attenuate the Köhler effect in exergames and may even strengthen it

The Nucleon Spectral Function at Finite Temperature and the Onset of Superfluidity in Nuclear Matter

Nucleon selfenergies and spectral functions are calculated at the saturation density of symmetric nuclear matter at finite temperatures. In particular, the behaviour of these quantities at temperatures above and close to the critical temperature for the superfluid phase transition in nuclear matter is discussed. It is shown how the singularity in the thermodynamic T-matrix at the critical temperature for superfluidity (Thouless criterion) reflects in the selfenergy and correspondingly in the spectral function. The real part of the on-shell selfenergy (optical potential) shows an anomalous behaviour for momenta near the Fermi momentum and temperatures close to the critical temperature related to the pairing singularity in the imaginary part. For comparison the selfenergy derived from the K-matrix of Brueckner theory is also calculated. It is found, that there is no pairing singularity in the imaginary part of the selfenergy in this case, which is due to the neglect of hole-hole scattering in the K-matrix. From the selfenergy the spectral function and the occupation numbers for finite temperatures are calculated.Comment: LaTex, 23 pages, 21 PostScript figures included (uuencoded), uses prc.sty, aps.sty, revtex.sty, psfig.sty (last included

Restoring betatron phase coherence in a beam-loaded laser-wakefield accelerator

Matched beam loading in laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA), characterizing the state of flattening of the acceleration electric field along the bunch, leads to the minimization of energy spread at high bunch charges. Here, we demonstrate by independently controlling injected charge and acceleration gradients, using the self-truncated ionization injection scheme, that minimal energy spread coincides with a reduction of the normalized beam divergence. With the simultaneous confirmation of a constant beam radius at the plasma exit, deduced from betatron radiation spectroscopy, we attribute this effect to the reduction of chromatic betatron decoherence. Thus, beam loaded LWFA enables highest longitudinal and transverse phase space densities

A quantitative analysis of grid-related systematic errors in oxidising capacity and ozone production rates in chemistry transport models

Limited resolution in chemistry transport models (CTMs) is necessarily associated with systematic errors in the calculated chemistry, due to the artificial mixing of species on the scale of the model grid (grid-averaging). Here, the errors in calculated hydroxyl radical (OH) concentrations and ozone production rates 3 are investigated quantitatively using both direct observations and model results. Photochemical steady-state models of radical chemistry are exploited in each case to examine the effect on both OH and 3 of averaging relatively long-lived precursor species, such as O3, NOx, CO, H2O, etc. over different spatial scales. Changes in modelled 3 are estimated, independently of other model errors, by calculating the systematic effect of spatial averaging on the ozone production efficiency 1, defined as the ratio of ozone molecules produced per NOx molecule destroyed. Firstly, an investigation of in-flight measurements suggests that, at least in the northern midlatitude upper-troposphere/lower stratosphere, averaging precursor species on the scale of a T42 grid (2.75° x 2.75°) leads to a 15-20% increase in OH concentrations and a 5-10% increase in 1. Secondly, results from CTM model experiments are compared at different horizontal resolutions. Low resolution experiments are found to have significantly higher [OH] and 3 compared with high resolution experiments. The extent to which these differences may be explained by the systematic error in the model chemistry associated with grid size is estimated by degrading the high resolution data onto a low resolution grid and then recalculating 1 and [OH]. The change in calculated 1 is found to be significant and can account for much of the difference in 3 between the high and low resolution experiments. The calculated change in [OH] is less than the difference in [OH] found between the experiments, although the shortfall is likely to be due to the indirect effect of the change in modelled NOx, which is not accounted for in the calculation. It is argued that systematic errors caused by limited resolution need to be considered when evaluating the relative impacts of different pollutant sources on tropospheric ozone

Study of the island morphology at the early stages of Fe/Mo(110) MBE growth

We present theoretical study of morphology of Fe islands grown at Mo(110) surface in sub-monolayer MBE mode. We utilize atomistic SOS model with bond counting, and interactions of Fe adatom up to third nearest neighbors. We performed KMC simulations for different values of adatom interactions and varying temperatures. We have found that, while for the low temperature islands are fat fractals, for the temperature 500K islands have faceted rhombic-like shape. For the higher temperature, islands acquire a rounded shape. In order to evaluated qualitatively morphological changes, we measured averaged aspect ration of islands. We calculated dependence of the average aspect ratio on the temperature, and on the strength of interactions of an adatom with neighbors.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings of 11-th Symposium on Surface Physics, Prague 200

Growth and magnetism of self-organized arrays of Fe(110) wires formed by deposition on kinetically grooved W(110)

Homoepitaxy of W(110) and Mo(110) is performed in a kinetically-limited regime to yield a nanotemplate in the form of a uniaxial array of hills and grooves aligned along the [001] direction. The topography and organization of the grooves were studied with RHEED and STM. The nanofacets, of type {210}, are tilted 18&deg; away from (110). The lateral period could be varied from 4 to 12nm by tuning the deposition temperature. Magnetic nanowires were formed in the grooves by deposition of Fe at 150&deg;C on such templates. Fe/W wires display an easy axis along [001] and a mean blocking temperature Tb=100KComment: Proceedings of ECOSS 2006 (Paris

Demonstration of a beam loaded nanocoulomb-class laser wakefield accelerator.

Laser-plasma wakefield accelerators have seen tremendous progress, now capable of producing quasi-monoenergetic electron beams in the GeV energy range with few-femtoseconds bunch duration. Scaling these accelerators to the nanocoulomb range would yield hundreds of kiloamperes peak current and stimulate the next generation of radiation sources covering high-field THz, high-brightness X-ray and γ-ray sources, compact free-electron lasers and laboratory-size beam-driven plasma accelerators. However, accelerators generating such currents operate in the beam loading regime where the accelerating field is strongly modified by the self-fields of the injected bunch, potentially deteriorating key beam parameters. Here we demonstrate that, if appropriately controlled, the beam loading effect can be employed to improve the accelerator's performance. Self-truncated ionization injection enables loading of unprecedented charges of ∼0.5 nC within a mono-energetic peak. As the energy balance is reached, we show that the accelerator operates at the theoretically predicted optimal loading condition and the final energy spread is minimized.Higher beam quality and stability are desired in laser-plasma accelerators for their applications in compact light sources. Here the authors demonstrate in laser plasma wakefield electron acceleration that the beam loading effect can be employed to improve beam quality by controlling the beam charge

The Complexity of Routing with Few Collisions

We study the computational complexity of routing multiple objects through a network in such a way that only few collisions occur: Given a graph $G$ with two distinct terminal vertices and two positive integers $p$ and $k$, the question is whether one can connect the terminals by at least $p$ routes (e.g. paths) such that at most $k$ edges are time-wise shared among them. We study three types of routes: traverse each vertex at most once (paths), each edge at most once (trails), or no such restrictions (walks). We prove that for paths and trails the problem is NP-complete on undirected and directed graphs even if $k$ is constant or the maximum vertex degree in the input graph is constant. For walks, however, it is solvable in polynomial time on undirected graphs for arbitrary $k$ and on directed graphs if $k$ is constant. We additionally study for all route types a variant of the problem where the maximum length of a route is restricted by some given upper bound. We prove that this length-restricted variant has the same complexity classification with respect to paths and trails, but for walks it becomes NP-complete on undirected graphs

Insights into the Electronic Structure of a U(IV) Amido and U(V) Imido Complex

Reaction of the N-heterocylic carbene ligand $^{i}$PrIm (L$^{1}$) and lithium bis(trimethylsilyl)amide (TMSA) as a base with UCl$_{4}$ resulted in U(IV) and U(V) complexes. Uranium\u27s +V oxidation state in (HL$^{1}$)$_{2}$[U(V)(TMSI)Cl$_{5}$] (TMSI=trimethylsilylimido) (2) was confirmed by HERFD-XANES measurements. Solid state characterization by SC-XRD and geometry optimisation of [U(IV)(L$^{1}$)$_{2}$(TMSA)Cl$_{3}$] (1) indicated a silylamido ligand mediated inverse trans influence (ITI). The ITI was examined regarding different metal oxidation states and was compared to transition metal analogues by theoretical calculations

Evidence for electronically-driven ferroelectricity in the family of strongly correlated dimerized BEDT-TTF molecular conductors

By applying measurements of the dielectric constants and relative length changes to the dimerized molecular conductor $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Hg(SCN)$_2$Cl, we provide evidence for order-disorder type electronic ferroelectricity which is driven by charge order within the (BEDT-TTF)$_2$ dimers and stabilized by a coupling to the anions. According to our density functional theory calculations, this material is characterized by a moderate strength of dimerization. This system thus bridges the gap between strongly dimerized materials, often approximated as dimer-Mott systems at 1/2 filling, and non- or weakly dimerized systems at 1/4 filling exhibiting charge order. Our results indicate that intra-dimer charge degrees of freedom are of particular importance in correlated $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$X salts and can create novel states, such as electronically-driven multiferroicity or charge-order-induced quasi-1D spin liquids.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures + Supplementary Information (8 pages, 8 figures