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Background: Despite a growing body of literature, utilization of nursing research remains relatively low even within academic health care institutions.Objective: The purpose of this study was to (1) investigate barriers for utilization of research in nursing practice in multiple nursing roles (staff nurses and nursing leadership) within an academic health care setting, and (2) identify strategies that may influence nurses' perceptions to utilizing research in nursing practice.Design: This study was a prospective, descriptive, cross-sectional study.Population, Sample, Setting: The subjects were 181 nurses employed at a tertiary care hospital in Southern Ontario, Canada.Methods: A self-administered questionnaire identifying demographics, and perceptions of barriers and facilitators to utilizing nursing research in practice was sent to 640 nurses. Results were entered into an SPSS database, and descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. Ethical considerations included approval from the Institutional Ethics Review Board.Findings: Twenty-eight percentage of the invited participants responded to the questionnaire. The subjects identified four particular barriers that affected their utilization of research in practice to a great extent: awareness of the research (33%), lack of time to read the research (39%), feeling that the nurse does not have the authority to change practice procedures (41%), and insufficient time on the job to implement new ideas (49%).Conclusions: Results from this study suggest that a strategic approach to enhancing utilization of nursing research in practice is essential. Organized activities enhance nurses' awareness of research in their field, and developing processes for nurses to participate in practice change is very important. In addition, providing time for nurses to read and implement research will have a positive impact on the utilization of nursing research in practice.

KeynoTe sPeaKer: Mary ellen Jeans lecTure undersTanding huMan Pain PercePTion and analgesia Through advanced neuroiMaging invited speaker: irene Tracey nuffield Professor anaesthetic science & director, oxford centre for fMri of Brain, nuffield department of clinical neurosciences, (head, nuffield division anaesthetics), oxford university, england, uK The ability to experience pain is old and shared across species. It confers an evolutionary advantage and provides a warning of harm or impending threat. As far back as Hippocrates, it was understood that the brain was key to a person experiencing pain. Fortunately, these days we now have many techniques available to explore the human central nervous system in vivo from a functional, structural and chemical perspective in both patients and healthy subjects. Relating specific neurophysiologic measures to perceptual or non-perceptual changes induced by peripheral or central sensitisation, behavioural, psychological or pharmacological mechanisms and identifying their site of action within the CNS has both value and has been a major goal for scientists, clinicians and the pharmaceutical industry. Identifying non-invasively where functional and structural plasticity, sensitisation and other amplification or attenuation processes occur along the pain neuraxis for an individual and relating these neural mechanisms to specific pain experiences, measures of pain relief, persistence of pain states, degree of injury and the subject's underlying genetics, has neuroscientific relevance and potential diagnostic value. Learning Objectives: 1. Better knowledge of the range of physiological measures available using advanced neuroimaging that give novel insights into central pain mechanisms 2. To understand the importance of the descending pain modulatory system in acute and chronic pain 3. To learn how current theories regarding how the brain generates perception can inform the pain field.

The work featured here is part of an ongoing PhD research (bydesign at the Royal College of Art, London) project on the activation and rehumanisation of the urban environment through the intuitive exploration of the female flâneur, and the analysis of the notion of the membrane in relation to the perceptual image of the city. The field of action is defined between the social and architectural space of the urban environment. Exploration of the architectural, urban and social space and, consequently, the design of new forms and materials through this unique angle opens up infinite possibilities for new conceptual and aesthetic values.The membrane carries all the structural, tactile and visual values of a fabric, yet it can be used as an architectural element. It withholds the actual and suggests the potential. The spaces created by the membrane carry the qualities of Henri Lefebvre's notion of 'gestural spaces' perceived in motion. Trans-textuality expresses this very notion. A ubiquitous urban presence, architectural membranes metamorphose the perceptual image of the city, creating horizontal depths, interrupting the linear composition of the streets, and expanding the city's vertical borders to the horizon. They separate the public from the private, yet extend the private to the social space of the urban grid, ensuring spatial and social continuity.As an additional external layer of the skin of the building, the fabric is invested with a metafunction. It withholds not only the volume, but its living component as well, giving it form and making it recognisable as a 'distinct urban body' . As a transitory object, and whether full or empty, the membrane can be highly kinetically and semantically activated. Habitual and urban rhythms blur as they seem to merge into sculptural mobility. Their forms remind us of representations of virtual architecture and the overlaying of virtual space with physical space.The conceptual experiment here re-examines the possibility for a fluidity of form, of rhythm, of movement, of transformation, of time and space, and of the insertion of new sensations into the urban tissue. Its aesthetics are characterised by the aesthetics of temporality, of expenditure of energy, of transtextuality, and this is opening up new meanings and possibilities for aesthetic values. Textile design, and architectural and urban design merge with social practice and art. As such they transcend the concept of aesthetic autonomy, allowing the replacement of popular materials and shapes with more experimental refinements of form. Experimenting on the fluidity of form, a piece of fabric was stretched in a cubic-laboratory environment. The perforated sides of the cube allow an invisible thread to run through it and pull the fabric from different points in multiple directions. An electrical installation with computer fans attached to the exposed plane of the cube blows air on to the fabric membrane, causing it to vibrate, giving the impression of a living entity. The fabric, through its motion, has the capability of...