Women's healthcare is facing a crisis. On the publication of this book, there are increasing efforts to restrict or limit funding for research and to limit public funding for healthcare services. These restrictions are most obviously recognizable by the executive order suggesting that federal grants should not use the word "women" in funding proposals. Meanwhile, the 2025 federal budget restricts and contracts Medicaid funding, 75% of which is used by women and children.

As a result, Elizabeth Palley, Howard Palley and Marian Lief Palley reexamine the politics of women's healthcare and what advocates have done to further enhance policies that promote women's health and wellbeing. They also consider where women's health care advocates have been successful, where they have been stymied and where advances have been reversed. Examining topics such as women's healthcare during pregnancy in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, as well as political and cultural obstacles women currently face regarding healthcare access and equity, the authors assess the current state of women's healthcare and highlight where women are most vulnerable.

This book critically examines the foundational assumptions of vaccine systems, challenging the dominant linear narrative of vaccine creation and production, regulation, and distribution. Rather than treating these components as isolated and sequential, the project adopts a holistic approach to unpack their dynamic interrelations. The volume is organized into three parts-Creation and Production, Regulation, and Distribution-each showcasing how broader social, political, cultural, and economic processes shape the inter-relationships between these components.

It offers a unique contribution by reframing the understanding of vaccine systems through an interdisciplinary lens that draws on law, public health, innovation studies, psychology and science and technology studies. It is distinct in combining theoretical analysis with empirical insights from diverse national and socio-cultural contexts to examine how these systems operate in practice. In doing so, it supports the call for more inclusive, transparent, and context-sensitive models of vaccine governance, which is particularly important in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and in preparation for future public health challenges.

This book is about psychiatric nursing in Bangladesh. Bangladesh, a densely populated South Asian nation with around 170 million people, has recently transitioned to a lower-middle-income country, yet it faces a significant dual burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases. There is an extreme shortage of nurses in Bangladesh where currently (as of February 2023) 77,838 registered nurses are available. As per a cautious projection, the demand for nurses will be 483,000 in 2030. The latest estimate revealed that there are 0.43 psychiatric nurses for every 100,000 patients. Currently, no textbook is available in Bangladesh specifically focused on psychiatric nursing, despite the country's urgent need for mental health education. This book would provide basic insights and culturally relevant skills to help bridge the health services in the country. Offering localized content, practical case studies, and context-specific interventions will equip the next generation of nurses to better serve the mental health needs of Bangladeshi communities. There is no similar book in the market on psychiatric nursing in Bangladesh. Hence this will be the first book of its kind according to the curriculum of BSc Nursing in Bangladesh.

This volume showcases the vibrant and diverse landscape of phenomenological thinking in India. Critically engaging with the works of phenomenological thinkers like Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas, Franz Brentano, Hannah Arendt, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and R. Sundara Rajan, the contributors of this volume offer exciting insights and interdisciplinary examinations that help expand our understanding of phenomenology within a global context. Among this volume's rich contributions are new accounts that delve into the hitherto 'lost' reception history of phenomenology in India, the as-yet inadequately acknowledged extent of Edmund Husserl's engagement with Buddhist philosophy, R. Sundara Rajan's decolonizing thinking on geophilia, a cross-cultural dialogical exploration between phenomenology and yoga philosophy, a phenomenology of tribal identity formation in Northeast India, a critical phenomenology of caste, a feminist and anti-caste phenomenology of labor, and aesthetic phenomenology in the context of curatorial technologies as well as theatrical experiences. The volume also offers a novel phenomenological methodology for environmental ethics research in addition to timely interventions to the problem of referentiality in Husserl and decision in Heidegger. The varied contributions of this volume would serve as thought-provoking resources for graduate students and researchers in related fields.

This open access book explores how innovative urban governance and digital technologies can be strategically managed to enhance citizens' quality of life. It examines the integration of smart infrastructures, data-driven decision-making, and participatory policies to promote social, environmental, and economic wellbeing. Through interdisciplinary perspectives and real-world case studies, it highlights how city managers can balance efficiency, sustainability, and inclusiveness. Emphasis is placed on human-centered approaches, ethical use of technology, and collaborative ecosystems involving public institutions, private actors, and communities. The book provides practical insights for policymakers, urban planners, and researchers seeking to build smarter and healthier cities.

This book argues that the field of Intercultural Communication Education and Research (ICER) has often been compromised by uncritical, market-driven approaches that create an illusion of progress. The author demonstrates how hollow buzzwords, superficial models and a focus on harmony often mask power imbalances and prevent meaningful change. To counter this, the book proposes a practice of intercultural acrobatics - the creation and strategic use of new, provisional terms. These concepts act as deliberate disruptions to challenge stagnant thinking, expose contradictions and reclaim interculturality as a site for critical, justice-oriented work. The book provides a practical toolkit for scholars, educators and students to move beyond comfortable consensus and engage more honestly with the complex realities of difference.

This book focuses on the people's supervisor system in China and its legislation. It is the very first book to focus on legislation related to the people's supervisor system in China. It compares the people's supervisor system with the people's jury system in China. By applying a constitutional approach and exploring the legislation of the people's supervisor system, this book presents the possibilities of establishing a people's supervisor system and rule of law in China. This book is intended for legal scholars or practitioners with an interest in Chinese judicial reform, including court and procuratorate reform, as well as the advancement of the rule of law in China.

The book approaches the grammar of English through a more meaning-focused approach. Inspired by the theories of cognitive semantics (CS), it examines English more holistically in usage contexts. Adopting a functional approach, the book (i) discusses language phenomena that are usually ignored in pedagogical grammar books (e.g., the order of adjectives in the determiner phrase); (ii) presents grammar as a set of meaningful choices in a particular usage context (e.g., intelligence vs multiple intelligences); (iii) establishes connections across word categories and structures (e.g., between prepositions and phrasal verbs); (iv) attempts to offer explanations for complex areas of English by drawing on tools of CS analysis (e.g., examining articles, quantifiers, no article use, demonstratives, and possessive pronouns as part of a larger reference system); and (v) creates meaningful contexts for practice through communicative tasks.
It adopts a pedagogical approach with more easily accessible explanations and also contains communicative practice activities that are extremely useful to students, teachers, and teacher educators in English as a Second Language/ Foreign Language (ESL/ EFL) contexts to understand usage patterns, develop language awareness, and ultimately become proficient users.

This book introduces the maritime activities of India, which date back to the Harappan period, highlighting that India is one of the world's oldest seafaring nations. It summarises archaeological findings, inscriptions, epigraphy, and various written sources that have significantly contributed to reconstructing the sea-oriented history of the Indian subcontinent. This history includes understanding contacts with the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea coast, and Southeast Asian countries from the early historical period onward. Geographers and travellers, including the anonymous author of the 'Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,' Ptolemy, Megasthenes, Hiuen Tsang, Al-Masudi, Marco Polo, and many others, have documented India's maritime connections with overseas countries across the centuries. In the last three decades, scholars from various universities and research organisations have conducted extensive exploration and excavations along India's west and east coasts, uncovering several ports and trade centres. Some of these can be matched with sites mentioned by ancient geographers and travellers, while others have been newly discovered through archaeological research.

Along with the second volume, this book presents the most recent research findings from over fifty experts in the maritime archaeology of India. It serves as a valuable reference for scholars studying the Indian Ocean trade and South Asia from a long-term perspective.

This book explores how Australian geopolitical economy is most usefully framed analytically in the current prevailing international conditions. In the book, frame one introduces historical materialism and the construction of the nation-state system, and the existential crisis in the Age of the Anthropocene. Another frame defines human species' civil war in their territorial segregation and constant warfare. The core of the civil war is embedded in a global hegemonic crisis, depicting a period when another global power emerges, confronting US reactionary geopolitics to maintain global hegemony. Additionally, the book frames China's rise to power in remaking the world order and capitalism's deepening contradictions in the struggle between China and the US. A final section frames Australian geopolitical economy's transmutation in the global crisis of the metabolic rift, and the country's challenge to contribute to Australians' wellbeing in a future peaceful regional and world order.

This book offers the first comprehensive study of Sarat Chandra Das (1849-1917), the Bengali explorer and scholar whose journeys to Tibet and scholarly contributions transformed the religious and intellectual landscape of colonial Bengal. Tracing Das's expeditions, his recovery of Sanskrit Buddhist texts, and the founding of the Buddhist Text Society of India, the book reveals how Tibet was reimagined as a sacred geography-central to the revival of Buddhism and the construction of new nationalist histories in early twentieth-century Bengal. By centering the theme of native agency and highlighting Das's collaborations with Tibetan and Sikkimese interlocutors, the book challenges dominant narratives of colonial knowledge-making. It shows how Buddhism, textual and visual discourses, and trans-Himalayan networks were mobilized in service of both historical recovery and regional self-fashioning of Bengal's past. Rich in historical detail and interpretive insight, the book significantly contributes to Buddhist studies, Tibetology, and South Asian intellectual history.

This book explores the synergy between artificial intelligence and medtech, offering a roadmap toward achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. These technologies are part of a wave of innovation transforming how we learn, work, communicate, and live, from self-driving cars to AI-designed drugs and quantum computing. Yet most advances remain concentrated in high-income countries, leaving many low-income nations struggling to keep up.

I examine the social, political, and economic factors limiting development, highlight successful strategies, and explore AI and biotechnologies. Through case studies, the book shows how these tools can improve healthcare access, promote sustainable agriculture, and tackle other global challenges while considering ethical implications. By focusing on solutions accessible to low-income countries, it offers insights for innovators in middle- and high-income nations launching ventures with limited resources.

Future trends rely on interdisciplinary approaches integrating economy, sociology, and technology, recognizing that climate change, new health challenges, demographic shifts, and technologies are reshaping societies worldwide. Developing and advanced economies are deeply interconnected, making this broader perspective essential.

This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of international development and public health, as well as those working in development, humanitarian initiatives, or innovation-focused startups and companies targeting low-resource environments.

The edited collection addresses the complexities, challenges-including antipathies-that continue to harm but also facilitate the progress of sexual and gender minority groups in education systems in the Caribbean.

Possibility and Progress: Navigating 21st Century Education Realities for Sexual and Gender Minorities in the Caribbean is a collection of perspectives that challenge the commonly held view in academic and activist circles in the Global North that the Caribbean are dangerous and "unsafe" regions for sexual and gender minorities. Compounding this narrative is the underrepresentation of Caribbean people who do not conform to normative heterosexual patterns of behaviour or gender expression in various social domains and the reinforcement of negative stereotypes about their experiences by the media and education systems. Despites the persistence of negative stereotypes and stigma levelled against sexual and gender minorities, there are noteworthy possibilities and progress to be highlighted. The collection will cover these through the lenses of a variety of scholarly perspectives.

This book explores the fundraising strategies of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), exploring how they've overcome persistent underfunding to provide educational opportunities for vulnerable communities over the past 170 years. Through in-depth analysis of HBCU fundraising infrastructures, unique partnerships, and innovative resource strategies, it sheds light on the complex networks that sustain these institutions. Combining data, critical analysis, historical and cultural insights, and personal narrative, the book provides a fresh perspective on HBCUs' resilience, from historical challenges to the modern impact of major philanthropic investments. Chapters also examine how HBCUs balance mission integrity with external pressures amid today's evolving philanthropic landscape.

This comprehensive Handbook will change the current mindset about sibling relationships-from a relationship of secondary importance to parent-child relationships-to one that reflects the many ways siblings contribute to individual development and family functioning throughout the life course and across diverse cultural contexts. As it presents the growing body of research on sibling relationships, it offers a new sibling-informed theoretical framework that challenges traditional notions of the sibling bond as one based on hostility, rivalry, and conflict. New directions are offered for research and practice that will address the real needs of families. This Handbook is relevant to all researchers and mental health practitioners.

Sustainable development is now considered one of the major narratives shaping society's future. At the same time, it is proving to be an area of conflict where expectations, morals, politics, and ideas of scientific evidence collide. This book shows why current discourses on sustainability are reaching their limits. But it also shows how a new, openly conceived approach to sustainable development can emerge. Based on Richard Rorty's neopragmatism and Ralf Dahrendorf's concept of life chances, Olaf Kuehne, Karsten Berr, and Irina Silina develop an innovative perspective: sustainable development is not understood as a teleologically defined goal but as a contingent, dialogical process that must be constantly reshaped, in which people generate life chances. The focus is on questions such as how people create meaning, how conflicts can become productive, and how individual freedom can be linked to collective responsibility. The book combines theoretical foundations, from vocabulary analyses to various forms of criticism of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a comprehensive redescription of sustainable development. Following the guiding principle of liberal ironist Richard Rorty, an approach is developed that understands freedom from humiliation, compassion, processes of understanding, and the expansion of the "we" as prerequisites for a resonant culture of sustainability.

The book is a committed and reflective plea for sustainability research that does not cover up conflicts but takes them seriously-and thinks of the future as a shared, open possibility, giving high priority to individual life chances.