National level promotion of physical activity: results from England's ACTIVE for LIFE campaign.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of a national campaign on awareness of the campaign, change in knowledge of physical activity recommendations and self reported physical activity. DESIGN: three year prospective longitudinal survey using a multi-stage, cluster random probability design to select participants. SETTING: England. PARTICIPANTS: A nationally representative sample of 3189 adults aged 16-74 years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Awareness of the advertising element of the campaign, changes in knowledge of physical activity recommendations for health and self reported physical activity. RESULTS: 38% of participants were aware of the main advertising images, assessed six to eight months after the main television advertisement. The proportion of participants knowledgeable about moderate physical activity recommendations increased by 3.0% (95% CI: 1.4%, 4.5%) between waves 1 and 2 and 3.7% (95% CI: 2.1%, 5.3%) between waves 1 and 3. The change in proportion of active people between baseline and waves 1 and 2 was -0.02 (95% CI: -2.0 to +1.7) and between waves 1 and 3 was -9.8 (-7.9 to -11.7). CONCLUSION: The proportion of participants who were knowledgeable about the new recommendations, increased significantly after the campaign. There was however, no significant difference in knowledge by awareness of the main campaign advertisement. There is no evidence that ACTIVE for LIFE improved physical activity, either overall or in any subgroup

Photoresist patterned thick-film piezoelectric elements on silicon

A fundamental limitation of screen printing is the achievable alignment accuracy and resolution. This paper presents details of a thick-resist process that improves both of these factors. The technique involves exposing/developing a thick resist to form the desired pattern and then filling the features with thick film material using a doctor blading process. Registration accuracy comparable with standard photolithographic processes has been achieved resulting in minimum feature sizes of <50 ?m and a film thickness of 100 ?m. Piezoelectric elements have been successfully poled on a platinised silicon wafer with a measured d 33 value of 60 pCN?1

Tracing Galaxy Assembly: Tadpole Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

In the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) an abundance of galaxies is seen with a knot at one end plus an extended tail, resembling a tadpole. These "tadpole galaxies" appear dynamically unrelaxed--presumably in an early merging state--where tidal interactions likely created the distorted knot-plus-tail morphology. Here we systematically select tadpole galaxies from the HUDF and study their properties as a function of their photometric redshifts. In a companion HUDF variability study, Cohen et al. (2005) revealed a total of 45 variable objects believed to be Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Here we show that this faint AGN sample has no overlap with the tadpole galaxy sample, as predicted by theoretical work. The tadpole morphology--combined with the lack of overlap with the variable objects--supports the idea that these galaxies are in the process of an early-stage merger event, i.e., at a stage that likely precedes the "turn-on" of any AGN component and the onset of any point-source variability.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication by Astrophysical Journa

Laser frequency locking by direct measurement of detuning

We present a new method of laser frequency locking in which the feedback signal is directly proportional to the detuning from an atomic transition, even at detunings many times the natural linewidth of the transition. Our method is a form of sub-Doppler polarization spectroscopy, based on measuring two Stokes parameters ($I_2$ and $I_3$) of light transmitted through a vapor cell. This extends the linear capture range of the lock loop by up to an order of magnitude and provides equivalent or improved frequency discrimination as other commonly used locking techniques.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures Revte

Photoinduced charge and spin dynamics in strongly correlated electron systems

Motivated by photoinduced phase transition in manganese oxides, charge and spin dynamics induced by photoirradiation are examined. We calculate the transient optical absorption spectra of the extended double-exchange model by the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. A charge-ordered insulating (COI) state becomes metallic just after photoirradiation, and the system tends to recover the initial COI state. The recovery is accompanied with remarkable suppression of an antiferromagnetic correlation in the COI state. The DMRG results are consistent with recent pump-probe spectroscopy data.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Magnetic resonance within vortex cores in the B phase of superfluid 3^3He

We investigate a magnetic susceptibility of vortices in the B phase of multicomponent triplet superfluid $^3$He focusing on a contribution of bound fermionic states localized within vortex cores. Several order parameter configurations relevant to different types of quantized vortices in $^3$He B are considered. It is shown quite generally that an ac magnetic susceptibility has a sharp peak at the frequency corresponding to the energy of interlevel spacing in the spectrum of bound fermions. We suggest that measuring of a magnetic resonance within vortex cores can provide a direct probe of a discrete spectrum of bound vortex core excitations