How did an ancient spiritual practice become the preserve of the privileged? Nadia Gilani has been practising yoga as a participant and teacher for over twenty-five years. Yoga has saved her life and seen her through many highs and lows; it has been a faith, a discipline, and a friend, and she believes wholeheartedly in its radical potential. However, over her years in the wellness industry, Nadia has noticed not only yoga's rising popularity, but also how its modern incarnation no longer serves people of colour, working class people, or many other groups who originally pioneered its creation. Combining her own memories of how the practice has helped her with an account of its history and transformation in the modern west, Nadia creates a love letter to yoga and a passionate critique of the billion-dollar industry whose cost and inaccessibility has shut out many of those it should be helping. By turns poignant, funny, and shocking, The Yoga Manifesto excavates where the industry has gone wrong, and what can be done to save the practice from its own success.

Handbook of Polymers in Medicine combines core concepts and advanced research on polymers, providing a better understanding of this class of materials in medicine. The book covers all aspects of medical polymers from characteristics and biocompatibility, to the diverse array of applications in medicine. Chapters cover an introduction to polymers in medicine and the challenges associated with biocompatibility in human tissue, polyurethane and supramolecular polymers and their specific applications in medicine, from tissue regeneration to orthopedic surgery and cancer therapeutics. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach that will appeal to researchers in a range of disciplines, including biomedical engineering, materials science, chemistry, pharmacology and translational medicine. The book will also make a useful reference for clinicians and those in medical fields who are interested in materials for medical applications, as well as R&D groups involved in medical device design.

Natural Biopolymers in Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering systematically examines a broad range of natural polymers and their applications in drug delivery and tissue engineering. The book thoroughly collates the most relevant and up-to-date research on natural biopolymers, covering a variety of key natural polymer types such as chitin, chitosan, alginate, guar gum and collagen. It is divided into two sections, covering drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. Each section focuses on natural biopolymers in the form of scaffolds, membranes, films, gels and nanoparticles, thus helping the reader select not only the most appropriate polymer type, but also the most relevant structure. This comprehensive resource is ideal for materials scientists, biomedical engineers, tissue engineers, pharmaceutical scientists and anyone interested in developing novel materials for biomedical applications.

Advances in telemedicine technologies have offered clinicians greater levels of real-time guidance and technical assistance for diagnoses, monitoring, operations or interventions from colleagues based in remote locations. The topic includes the use of videoconferencing, mentorship during surgical procedures, or machine-to-machine communication to process data from one location by programmes running in another. This edited book presents a variety of technologies with applications in telemedicine, originating from the fields of biomedical sensors, wireless sensor networking, computer-aided diagnosis methods, signal and image processing and analysis, automation and control, virtual and augmented reality, multivariate analysis, and data acquisition devices. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), surgical robots, telemonitoring, and teleoperation systems are also explored, as well as the associated security and privacy concerns in this field. Topics covered include critical factors in the development, implementation and evaluation of telemedicine; surgical tele-mentoring; technologies in medical information processing; recent advances of signal/image processing techniques in healthcare; a real-time ECG processing platform for telemedicine applications; data mining in telemedicine; social work and tele-mental health services for rural and remote communities; applying telemedicine to social work practice and education; advanced telemedicine systems for remote healthcare monitoring; the impact of tone-mapping operators and viewing devices on visual quality of experience of colour and grey-scale HDR images; modelling the relationships between changes in EEG features and subjective quality of HDR images; IoMT and healthcare delivery in chronic diseases; and transform domain robust watermarking method using Riesz wavelet transform for medical data security and privacy.

Electromagnetic waves have long been used in medical settings for diagnostic purposes, such as for the detection of cancerous tissues, stroke events or cardiovascular risk, as the behaviour of the waves upon meeting their target gives pertinent information for diagnostic and imaging purposes. This edited book presents advances in the use of electromagnetic waves and antennas in healthcare settings, both as diagnostic tools (such as radar-based imaging, holographic microwave imaging, thermoacoustic imaging systems), and therapeutic interventions (such as microwave ablation therapies for cancer). Written by an international team of biomedical engineering researchers, it discusses all aspects related to the design and modelling of electromagnetic imaging techniques, electromagnetic devices, wireless implants, wearable systems and wireless sensor networks and in vitro and in vivo testing. Design issues for wearable antennas, wearable sensors, magnetic coils and coil array issues are explored and biomedical applications such as cancer detection, stoke event detection, GI diagnostics, and cardiovascular risk prediction are discussed. The book also explores scattering problems of electromagnetic waves between different tissues, and how these complex scattering problems can be resolved. This book will be of interest to researchers and engineers in the electromagnetic wave community, those in antenna research, biomedical engineering and related fields.

The Handbook of Natural Fibres, Second Edition, Volume One: Types, Properties and Factors Affecting Breeding and Cultivation covers every aspect of natural fibers, their breeding, cultivation, processing and applications. This volume features fundamental discussions of each fiber, covering different stages of breeding and cultivation. Natural fibrous resources, both lignocellulosic and protein ones, are renewable, biodegradable, and nontoxic, making them an important source of sustainable textile solutions. A broad range of natural fibers are covered in this book, including cotton, jute, kenaf, flax, hemp, sisal, ramie, curaua, pineapple, bamboo, coir, sheep wool, and more.