The Konyaks - a once fearsome headhunting tribe in Nagaland on the border of Myanmar in northeast India - are well known for their iconic body and facial tattoos, originally earned for taking an enemy's head. This book - over four years in the making - is the personal journey of a Konyak woman who retraces the steps of her grandfather and great-grandfather by documenting her tribe's tattooing practices. She explores the Konyak's concept of beautification of the body using it as a canvas for art, with inscriptions marked on the skin as a form of rite of passage and cycle of life. With elegant and powerful portraits of elders, both men and women, this book preserves the unique but vanishing practices of the culture, together with tattoo patterns, their meanings, and the oral traditions attached to them in folktales, songs, poems and sayings. It includes descriptions and information on headhunting and tattooing practices; reasons behind them; techniques used; tattoo artists; different tattoo groups; types of tattoos; and personal stories.

With a rapid technological change and an increasing number of health technologies emerging in contrast to scarcity of the resources, the decision-makers in the health care sector face a dilemma. This has highlighted the importance of health technology assessment, which as a form of policy research provides input to decision-making in policy and practice. Written as a Ph.D. thesis, this book presents various important aspects of health technology assessment (HTA). A broad range of publications concerning theory and methodology in the area of HTA has been reviewed and empirical studies of HTA and diffusion have been conducted. The empirical studies covered in the book are an international comparison of health technology assessment including Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, as well as empirical studies of the diffusion of laparoscopic technologies in Denmark and the Netherlands.