Why do health economists promote technology adoption rather than the search for efficiency? A proposal for a change in our approach to economic evaluation in health care

Acknowledgments Financial Support: HERU and HSRU receive a core grant from the Chief Scientist’s Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates, and the Centre for Clinical epidemiology & Evaluation is funded by Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. The model used for the illustrative case study in this paper was developed as part of a NHS Technology Assessment Review, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Program (project number 09/146/01). The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Scottish Government, NHS, Vancouver Coastal Health, NIHR HTA Program or the Department of Health. The authors wish to thank Kathleen Boyd and members of the audience at the UK Health Economists Study Group, for comments received on an earlier version of this paper. We also wish to thank Cynthia Fraser (University of Aberdeen) for literature searches undertaken to inform the manuscript, and Mohsen Sadatsafavi (University of British Columbia) for comments on an earlier draft

"Our Father Isaac": Reading the Sahidic Testament of Isaac in an Egyptian Monastic Context

This dissertation argues that the textual community of fourth or fifth century monastic Egypt read Testament of Isaac as an ascetical regimen in order to transform themselves into children of Isaac. T. Isaac highlights three particular dimensions of Isaac's character from the remembered tradition of Isaac that would have resonated in the Egyptian monastic context of the textual community - Isaac as priestly authority, Isaac as sacrifice, and Isaac as blind ascetic - to create a model for the new self that the textual community aimed to achieve. Two important ascetic practices in T. Isaac that the textual community was to perform were copying and reading T. Isaac. These two practices functioned as technologies of the self that helped the members of the textual community to transform their present subjectivity into a new self modeled on Isaac in T. Isaac.

Is Maths everywhere? Our students respond

Mathematics expresses itself everywhere, in almost every facet of life - in nature all around us, and in the technologies in our hands. Mathematics is the language of science and engineering - describing our understanding of all that we observe. In fact, Galileo said that Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe. Aristotle defined mathematics as "the science of quantity", i.e., “the science of the things that can be counted”. Now you can think that counting has a vital role in our daily life; just imagine that there were no mathematics at all, how would it be possible for us to count days, months and years? Unfortunately, people usually ignore the connection between mathematics and the daily life. Most of university degrees require mathematics. Students who choose not to take seriously mathematics or to ignore it in high school, find several difficulties when they come up against them at the university. This study explores the perceptions of how mathematics influences our daily life among our students and how teachers can use this information in order to improve the academic performance. The used research instrument was a questionnaire that was designed to identify their understanding on learning mathematics.

Factors that determine the level of commitment of our teaching staff when the implementation of continuous evaluation system takes place

Comunicación presentada en CIDUI 2010, Congreso Internacional Docencia Universitaria e Innovación, Barcelona, 30 junio-2 julio 2010.

The Conservation of our Built Heritage, in Particular Statues in Aberdeen, Evaluated Through a Social and Historical Context and Their Impact, Through the Use of 3D Scanning

Cultural heritage sites all over the world are at risk due to aggressive urban expansion, development, wars and general obsolescence. Not all objects are recorded in detail although they may have social and historical significance. For example more emphasis is placed on the recording of castles and palaces than on crofters’ cottages or tenement blocks, although their history can be just as rich. This paper will investigate the historic fabric of Aberdeen through the use of digital scanning, supported by a range of media including old photographs and paintings. Dissemination of social heritage through visualisations will be explored and how this can aid the understanding of space within the city or specific area. Focus will be given to the major statues/monuments within the context of the city centre, exploring their importance in their environment. In addition studying why many have been re-located away from their original site, the reasons why, and how we have perhaps lost some of the social and historical importance of why that monument was first located there. It will be argued that Digital Media could be utilised for much more than re-creation and re-presentation of physical entities. Digital scanning, in association with visualisation tools, is used to capture the essence of both the cultural heritage and the society that created or used the sites in association with visualisation tools and in some way re-enacting the original importance placed upon the monument in its original location, through adoption of BIM Heritage.