During a year spent in Seattle as a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy, Rhiannon Tudor Edwards was “overwhelmed” by the choices offered among coffee, TV channels, and health care options, she recounts in her essay, “Blind Faith and Choice” (Health Affairs, Nov./Dec. 2005). But when Edwards, a senior research fellow in health economics at the University of Wales, developed a...

In this reflection about mathematics I shall confine myself to arithmetic, the study of the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . . Everyone has at least the feeling of familiarity with arithmetic, and the issues that concern the human search for truth in mathematics are already present in arithmetic. Here is an illustration of research in arithmetic. About 2500 years ago, the Pythagoreans defined a num...

Than it started – first surgery, then chemotherapy, then radiation, and all over again for several times. Although I was only 11, my mum and my dad explained to me what was going to happen, why my mum needed to remove her breast, why she was going to loose her hair, and why she might be sad from time to time. At first it was OK to deal with it because I was a kid and kids see everything with a ...

This contribution discusses Leibniz’s conception of faith and its relation to reason. It shows that, for Leibniz, faith embraces both cognitive and non-cognitive dimensions: although it must be grounded in reason, it is not merely reasonable belief. Moreover, for Leibniz, a truth of faith (like any truth) can never be contrary to reason but can be above the limits of comprehension of human reas...

OBJECTIVE This study compared the 123I thyroid uptake measurements obtained from a gamma camera fitted with a low-energy all-purpose (LEAP) collimator to those obtained from a thyroid uptake probe and gamma camera fitted with a pinhole (PH) collimator. METHODS Thirty-one patients (27 female and 4 male patients) were studied for comparison between a probe and a gamma camera fitted with LEAP co...

Background To build on current research involving faith-based interventions (FBIs) for addressing mental and physical health, this study a) reviewed the extent to which relevant publications integrate faith concepts with health and b) initiated analysis of the degree of FBI integration with intervention outcomes. Methods Derived from a systematic search of articles published between 2007 and ...

The storage and recovery of elastic strain energy in the musculoskeletal systems of locomoting animals has been extensively studied, yet the external environment represents a second potentially useful energy store that has often been neglected. Recent studies have highlighted the ability of orangutans to usefully recover energy from swaying trees to minimise the cost of gap crossing. Although m...

At a time when many countries might not achieve the health targets of the Millennium Development Goals and the post-2015 agenda for sustainable development is being negotiated, the contribution of faith-based health-care providers is potentially crucial. For better partnership to be achieved and for health systems to be strengthened by the alignment of faith-based health-providers with national...