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We are facing an era, where pressures on health costs are extremely high, and the reforms in health system are almost constant. But over time, one factor remains unchanged – Technology continues being the sustenance of health care. Manufacturers, clinicians, patients, diagnostic and therapeutic technicians, hospital managers, government leaders, among others, either in public or private sector, are increasingly demanding in the sustained seek for information that support its decisions. Those decisions are about different types of issues: if, or how the technology can be developed, whether a technology should or should not enter the market, whether to acquire and use certain technology, and so forth. Such demand is well implied in the growth and development of Health Technology Assessment (HTA). This specialised field is commonly understood according to the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment (INAHTA, 2003) as an multidisciplinary analysis and decisional field, which studies the implications of clinical, social, ethical and economic development, dissemination and use of health technologies, without neglecting its political analysis (Goodman, 2004). The political decisions made based on HTA reports should be based on scientific evidence, linking efforts between the technical, economic and political dimensions, resourcing to a participatory vision, so that we can translate the best possible decision (Novaes 2006). On the other hand, the success of these decisions depends critically on the skills of the researcher to convey wisdom and confidence in applying rules of argumentation (Grunwald, 2007). In this paper we analyse the technical and methodological aspects of HTA, seen as a tool for evaluating health procedures and techniques. And we analyse the needs for skills and qualifications development of the actors involved in this process.

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Summary: We consider various classes of monoids of transformations on a finite chain, in particular of transformations that preserve or reverse either the order or the orientation. Being finite monoids we are naturally interested in computing both their cardinals and their idempotent numbers. Fibonacci and Lucas numbers play an essential role in the last computations.

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A new approach is laid out to investigate two-photon atomic transitions. It is based on the application of the finite-basis solutions constructed from the Bernstein polynomial (B-polynomial) sets. We show that such an approach provides a very promising route for the relativistic second-order (and even higher-order) calculations since it allows for analytical evaluation of the involved matrices elements. In order to illustrate possible applications of the method and to verify its accuracy, detailed calculations are performed for the 2 s 1/2 ‚Üí 1 s 1/2 transition in neutral hydrogen and hydrogen-like ions, which are compared with the theoretical predictions based on the well-established B-spline basis-set approach.

A new approach is laid out to investigate two-photon atomic transitions. It is based on the application of the finite-basis solutions constructed from the Bernstein polynomial (B-polynomial) sets. We show that such an approach provides a very promising route for the relativistic second-order (and even higher-order) calculations since it allows for analytical evaluation of the involved matrices elements. In order to illustrate possible applications of the method and to verify its accuracy, detailed calculations are performed for the 2 s 1/2 ‚Üí 1 s 1/2 transition in neutral hydrogen and hydrogen-like ions, which are compared with the theoretical predictions based on the well-established B-spline basis-set approach.

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Indium doped, and undoped, zinc oxide films were deposited using aerosol assisted chemical vapour deposition (AACVD) at atmospheric pressure on glass substrates. Electrical measurements (I-V) showed a reduction in resistivity following the addition of indium, and XRD analysis revealed an associated switch to c-axis preferred crystal orientation. The ability of the films to oxidise organic material on their surface was analysed using stearic acid as the model contaminant under ultra-violet (UV, 365 nm) irradiation. The In-doped films displayed a greater rate of organic decomposition, which we attribute to the formation of a platelet surface structure having a larger surface area than the undoped films, on which the UV generated electrons and holes may react to form active photocatalytic species. In addition we suggest that the switch to c-axis crystal orientation may reduce the electron-hole pair recombination rate at the grain boundaries, due to an improvement in crystallinity and related reduction in carrier scattering losses, leading to an increase in photocatalytic organic decomposition rate. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.