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Polarized infrared reflectivity was measured between 5 and 300 K on a 17 nm thick, 1.1% compressively strained epitaxial (001) SrTiO(3) film and the orthorhombic (110) NdGaO(3) substrate upon which it was grown. A strong in-plane infrared anisotropy of the NdGaO(3) substrate was observed and polar modes with B(1u)-and a mixture of B(2u) + B(3u)-symmetry were seen. At low temperatures three new modes arose in the 90-130 cm( - 1) range, which we assigned to 4f Nd electronic transitions. The in-plane SrTiO(3) film phonons showed strong stiffening compared to the phonon frequencies of bulk unstrained SrTiO(3), particularly the soft mode, and the in-plane phonon peaks were found to split. No anomalies were detected as a function of temperature in either the infrared response or lattice parameters of the compressively strained SrTiO(3) film, providing an absence of evidence for the out-of-plane ferroelectric phase transition predicted by theory.

Health education programs developed in academic medical centers are not optimally disseminated to community clinical settings. Strategies are needed to translate the findings of research on health education programs into programs useful in a wide range of health care settings. Focus group techniques were used to provide data for revising a successful university-based asthma self-management program to make it more practical for use by community physicians. Physicians representing a variety of specialties attended the sessions and provided feedback on the utility of various components of the original program. The discussions revealed that many physicians felt they did not have the time or resources to conduct the original program and identified elements viewed as impractical. This physician input contributed significantly to the development of a revised program with a briefer, less costly intervention. The revised program was later evaluated by focus group participants. Eighty-eight percent of those who evaluated the revised program agreed they would be able and willing to use the program in their own practices. As a formative evaluation tool, the focus group technique made available useful information that would have been difficult to obtain through evaluation forms alone.

The medical profession is facing the challenges of the 1990s with a shift to outpatient care and preventive services. Medical schools will need to respond to these forces by reevaluating their curricula and setting new objectives. Nutrition is an essential element in the process of curriculum change. The nutrition educator will be expected to take a leading role in integrating nutrition into the medical school curriculum. This report presents steps and strategies to initiate the process.

One of the 1990 Health Objectives established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is for 60 per cent of adults 18-65 years of age to be participating regularly in vigorous physical exercise. Unfortunately, no valid and practical measurement system is available that will allow assessment of leisure time physical activity participation of large populations. Consequently, not only is it difficult to assess progress toward the 1990 goal, an accurate baseline from which to measure potential progress does not exist. This paper presents a time diary technique for measuring aggregate population physical activity participation and utilizes actual time diaries collected from adults by the Institute for Social Research in 1981 to arrive at a possible baseline. The results indicated that time diaries are a viable method for assessing aggregate physical activity behavior of large populations. American Adults were quite sedentary in 1981. Over a period of one week, 31% undertook no leisure time physical activity. Only 14 per cent expended more than 1600 kcals/week in leisure time physical activity, and 10 per cent met the DHHS physical activity requirements.

Eleven southeastern medical schools cooperated to evaluate nutrition knowledge and attitudes of medical students. This study complements previous reports of an examination of entering freshmen and seniors. Average knowledge scores for 165 students tested after basic sciences (preclinical) training in this study were 67 +/- 7% compared with 53 +/- 6% for freshmen and 69 +/- 8% for seniors. The upperclassmen's scores were higher than the freshmen's (p less than 0.001) and varied with the amount of required nutrition teaching. Only 13% of preclinical students perceived nutrition as important to their careers compared with 74% of entering and 59% of graduating students, suggesting that preclinical teaching reduces their sense of relevance of nutrition to medicine. These findings suggest that nutrition knowledge can be increased through preclinical coursework and that the knowledge level can be maintained through the clinical years. However, the positive attitude of freshmen toward nutrition is lost after preclinical training and is only partially regained after the clinical years.

A NNTIB prototype has been developed and implemented at the University of Alabama in Birmingham School of Medicine. The further development of the Bank as a shared national resource was considered at a workshop carried out in conjunction with the 1983 ASCN meeting. Through this forum it was confirmed that the concept of a NNTIB is both valid and viable, receiving the support of a variety of nutrition educators and the endorsement of the ASCN Committee on Nutrition Education. The general recommendations of the workshop participants were that a modification of the test-item bank prototype be used as the model for the development of a national bank. A key recommendation was the development of a committee to oversee the acceptance and review of test items included in the NNTIB. Recognizing that the major constraints in the development of a national bank are likely to be logistical, mechanical, and fiscal, it is our belief that each of the limitations could be overcome if the Bank were adopted by a parent society with a long-term commitment to its continued support and development. After such support has been identified and pilot trials have been carried out, the implications of the NNTIB for advances in the field of nutrition go well beyond improved quality of testing materials and extend into the critical area of the establishment of standards of nutrition education and certification of competency. The development of the NNTIB offers a challenge to nutrition educators, national nutrition organizations, and interested governmental agencies for their involvement and support.