Policy as a struggle for meaning: disentangling knowledge translation across international health contexts

Over the last decade, research in medical science has focused on knowledge translation and diffusion of best practices to enable improved health outcomes. However, there has been less attention given to the role of policy in influencing the translation of best practice across different national contexts. This paper argues that the underlying set of public discourses of healthcare policy significantly influences its development with implications for the dissemination of best practices. Our research uses Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the policy discourses surrounding the treatment of stroke across Canada and the U.K. It focuses in specific on how concepts of knowledge translation, user empowerment, and service innovation construct different accounts of the health service in the two countries. These findings provide an important yet overlooked starting point for understanding the role of policy development in knowledge transfer and the translation of science into health practice. © 2011 Operational Research Society. All rights reserved.

Wave propagation velocity under a vertically vibrated surface foundation

The ultimate objective of the research conducted by the authors is to explore the feasibility of determining reliable in situ values of soil modulus as a function of strain. In field experiments, an excitation is applied on the ground surface using large-scale shakers, and the response of the soil deposit is recorded through receivers embedded in the soil. The focus of this paper is on the simulation and observation of signals that would be recorded at the receiver locations under idealized conditions to provide guidelines on the interpretation of the field measurements. Discrete models are used to reproduce one-dimensional and three-dimensional geometries. When the first times of arrival are detected by receivers under the vertical impulse, they coincide with the arrival of the P wave; therefore related to the constrained modulus of the material. If one considers, on the other hand, phase differences between the motions at two receivers, the picture is far more complicated and one would obtain propagation velocities, function of frequency and measuring location, which do not correspond to either the constrained modulus or Young's modulus. It is necessary then to conduct more rigorous and complicated analyses in order to interpret the data. This paper discusses and illustrates these points. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.