Child development comprises children's cognitive, linguistic, motor, social and emotional development, communication, and self-care skills. Understanding developmental periods means that possible problems or roadblocks can be planned for or prevented. Knowledge of child development is necessary for achieving educational goals and is integral to promoting children's healthy and timely development. Global Perspectives on Prenatal, Postnatal, and Early Childhood Development is an essential scholarly reference source that compiles critical findings on children's growth periods and characteristics as well as the principles that affect their development. Covering a wide range of topics such as at-risk children, early intervention, and support programs, this book is ideally designed for child development specialists, pediatricians, educators, program developers, administrators, psychologists, researchers, academicians, and students. Additionally, the book provides insight and support to health professionals working in various disciplines in the field of child development and health.

Technology continues to play a major role in all aspects of society, particularly healthcare. Advancements such as biomedical image processing, technology in rehabilitation, and biomedical robotics for healthcare have aided in significant strides in the biomedical engineering research field.Technological Advancements in Biomedicine for Healthcare Applications presents an overview of biomedical technologies and its relationship with healthcare applications. This reference source is essential for researchers and practitioners aiming to learn more about biomedical engineering and its related fields.

Different cultures and the specific culture manifested within them are intrinsically linked to addiction in a complex fashion which has a long history. For important thinkers, such as Nietzsche, addiction actually embodies human culture, rendering addiction and culture inseparable. This is clearly seen within the Western world's addiction to the consumption of material goods and the damage that results. Utopia has often become dystopia. Not only is an understanding of addiction key to understanding culture but to an understanding of the very act thinking itself and the way of being in the world. Addiction raises key philosophical questions, such as: do people really have a choice in their behavior, and what governs them; is it free will or predetermination? Is it biology or environment is it the external world or the internal that drives addiction, or a complex combination of both? In a contemporary context the media frenzy around celebrity addiction continually fuels public debate in this area, and this book deepens the understanding of addiction within this contentious context. This book addresses a key concern over how addiction became the norm, and it seeks to understand its dominance comprehensively. How did it come to pass that not being an addict was a transgressive act and way of being? While there has been a great deal of debate about addiction utilizing the discourse of individual and often competing disciplines such as biology and psychology, little attention has been paid to the cultural aspects of addiction. The innovative approach taken by this book is to offer insights into this complex area through a contemporary methodology that covers diverse interrelated areas. Drawing on different disciplines, offering deeper insights, from the analysis of music lyrics to empirical social science and anthropological work in AA groups in Mexico and the portrayal of the "addiction' to therapy in film and television, amongst other areas, this book addresses the need for a more comprehensive approach. Academic analysis is also given to the discourse on celebrity culture and addiction. A contemporary fusion of the humanities and the social sciences is the best way forward to tackle this subject and move the debate on. The focus of this study is an innovative interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to addiction, from the social sciences to the humanities, including cultural studies, film and media studies, and literary studies. Areas that have been overlooked, such as lost women's writings, are examined, in addition to comics, popular film and television, and the work of AA groups. This edited collection is the first study to provide such a comprehensive analysis of the cultures of addiction. Traversing cultures across the globe, including Asia, Central America, as well as Europe and America, this book opens up the debate in addiction studies and cultural studies. The important insights the book delivers helps to answer questions such as: In what way can Deleuze further the understanding of addiction through the analysis of rock lyrics? How does anthropology improve the understanding of AA groups? How can cultural studies deepen knowledge on the "addiction" to therapy? These are just some of the vast array of areas this book covers. Other areas include the condemnation of "addiction" to comic reading through an historical examination, violence in popular culture, and lost women's writing on addiction. No other book has such depth and contemporary breadth. Cultures of Addiction is an important book for those taking cultural studies courses across a range of interrelated disciplines, including English and literary studies, history, American studies, and film and media studies. This will be invaluable to library collections in these fields and beyond in the social sciences, and specifically in addiction studies and psychology.

Across time and place, pregnancy and childbirth rank among the most transformative physical and psychological events in women's lives. Women's childbearing experiences depend not only on their own biology and psyche but also on the nature and quality of care they receive. The nature of the prevailing obstetric care model in the early 21st-century United States has been described as "high-tech, low touch," highlighting its emphasis on using medical technology, as opposed to non-technological care and support, to control unproblematic physical processes on the argument that this approach improves maternal safety and comfort. However, it should be noted that reasonably reliable national data fail to show significant maternal or newborn health gains corresponding to recent, dramatic rises in hospital obstetric procedures such as labor induction, labor acceleration, and cesarean delivery. In this context where medical intervention, necessary or not, assumes an increasingly central role in the childbearing equation, questions of what mothers expect to happen in labor and delivery and how their subsequent birth experiences meet those expectations become paramount. Global numeric indicators cannot capture the quality of women's reactions to childbirth itself, particularly as maternal care shifts in response to consumer interests it presupposes, offering options for comfort, care, and even the possibility of foregoing the labor process altogether. This work reflects the critical need to document early 21st-century U.S. mothers' own words on what they expected to happen in childbirth and later, how labor and delivery went and how it met their expectations. Among this book's most important contributions is its inclusion of extensive interview material drawn from 75 diverse women who spoke freely on their childbirth expectations and subsequent experiences. By itself, the interview material lends an important, though at times unsettling, insider perspective on how labor and delivery can unfold. The narratives also provide a maternal view on how those charged with their care respond during this physically and emotionally demanding transition. In addition, the book provides a timely analysis of scientific data on contemporary maternal care procedures, making plain why so many refer to 21st-century mainstream obstetric care as "technocratic." The scientific data serve as an excellent backdrop for more extensive coverage of the maternal interviews, organized around the distinctions mothers made related to the childbirth pathway on which they anticipated traveling such as natural childbirth in a hospital, planned cesarean delivery, or planned vaginal birth after cesarean. The pathways are in turn discussed in terms of their relationship to an underlying technocratic, humanistic, or holistic maternal care philosophy. The book is targeted towards an academic readership, including scholars and medical professionals with interest in women's health, women's and maternal mental health, women's reproductive health, reproductive technology, medical humanities, medical anthropology, narrative studies, pregnancy, and childbirth.