For traffic noise predictions road vehicles can be modeled by point sources. When dealing with the evaluation of noise barrier’s efficiency or of far-field noise, the knowledge of the sources heights is of primary importance. Their determination can be obtained from two different methods. The first one deals with an inverse fitting procedure performed on experimental excess attenuation results between two receivers 7.50 m apart. Knowing the noise frequency spectrum at the reference microphone and the pavement and close ground impedances, it becomes possible to adjust the source height by minimizing the prediction/measurement difference. By this procedure, the equivalent noise source is found very close to the surface. Otherwise, sources heights can be obtained directly using microphone arrays. These measuring techniques are now commonly used to localize sound sources of railway vehicles. Their application to road vehicles appears to be more recent. For the present case dealing with the determination of the source height only, a simple vertical array can be implemented. Preliminary measurements made on a light vehicle confirm that the acoustic radiation due to the various sources (including engine noise) comes practically entirely from the car underbody, i.e., from a zone close to the ground.

ObjectivesTo lay the groundwork for the arrival of Recovery Mentors (RMs) in some of its multidisciplinary teams, a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) conference was organized in a large public agency in the province of Quebec, Canada. The aim was to come up collectively with recommendations to improve access to recovery-oriented care and services for this vulnerable population by recognizing the epistemic value of their lived experience.MethodsA series of workshops were organized among health professionals to reflect on their practice and to discuss the role of RMs for improving epistemic equity and recognition of the experiential knowledge. In preparation for these workshops participants completed the Recovery Self-Assessment (RSA). The RSA is a 32-item questionnaire designed to gauge the degree to which programs implement recovery-oriented practices, which should notably include RMs in multidisciplinary teams (five-point Likert scale: 1= strongly disagree ; 5 = strongly agree). The interactive workshops were hosted by RMs as trainers who first shared their lived experience and understanding of recovery.ResultsEighty-height of the 105 participants completed the RSA. The highest score on the RSA was for the item Staff believe in the ability of program participants to recover (mean = 4.2/5). The lowest score was for the item People in recovery are encouraged to attend agency advisory boards and management meetings (mean = 2.2/5). Based on the average inter-item correlation, a reliability test confirmed an excellent internal consistency for the French RSA scale, with a Cronbach's Alpha of .9. Means and standard deviation for each item of the RSA questionnaires were calculated. The results did not differ by participant characteristics. Results to the RSA and results from the workshops that were co-hosted by RMs were reported in the plenary session and further discussed. The workshops, the RSA and the whole CPD conference raised awareness among health professionals about stigmatizing attitudes and epistemic inequity in actual service provision.ConclusionRMs could be invited to actively participate and attend advisory boards and management meetings more frequently and on a more regular basis for ongoing quality improvement towards better access to recovery-oriented practices. This CPD conference has shown the acceptability and feasibility of including RMs as trainers for better recognition of the epistemic value of the experiential knowledge of recovery. They can help health professionals to recognize and better appreciate service users as knowers and potential contributors to knowledge.

Due to the large increase of populations in urban areas and the impact of sound phenomena on their life, the control of noise in cities is now of great importance. To predict acoustic fields for various urban situations, several theoretical approaches are currently under development. One of these is based on the diffusion theory [J. Picaut et al., Acust. Acta Acust. 83(4), 614–621 (1997)]. Whatever the model used, good predictions will be obtained only if the acoustic sources are accurately modeled. Those sources, classified following a qualitative approach, can be issued from traffic (cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, etc.) but can also have human components (children in a school-yard, people in a market place, on a pedestrian street,...). The aim of this research concerns the modeling of each kind of source. The main parameters retained are the height, the directivity pattern, the sound power frequency spectrum, and the time history. The modeling techniques are based on statistical analysis and inverse fitting procedures on experimental data carried out over a large sample inside each source category. Afterwards, source characteristics will be introduced in the diffusion model and results will be compared with experiments performed on scale models and real urban situations.