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The gold standard to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection considers testing methods based on Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Still, the time necessary to confirm patient infection can be lengthy, and the process is expensive. In parallel, X-Ray and CT scans play an important role in the diagnosis and treatment processes. Hence, a trusted automated technique for identifying and quantifying the infected lung regions would be advantageous. Chest X-rays are two-dimensional images of the patient’s chest and provide lung morphological information and other characteristics, like ground-glass opacities (GGO), horizontal linear opacities, or consolidations, which are typical characteristics of pneumonia caused by COVID-19. This chapter presents an AI-based system using multiple Transfer Learning models for COVID-19 classification using Chest X-Rays. In our experimental design, all the classifiers demonstrated satisfactory accuracy, precision, recall, and specificity performance. On the one hand, the Mobilenet architecture outperformed the other CNNs, achieving excellent results for the evaluated metrics. On the other hand, Squeezenet presented a regular result in terms of recall. In medical diagnosis, false negatives can be particularly harmful because a false negative can lead to patients being incorrectly diagnosed as healthy. These results suggest that our Deep Learning classifiers can accurately classify X-ray exams as normal or indicative of COVID-19 with high confidence.

The use of computational tools for medical image processing are promising tools to effectively detect COVID-19 as an alternative to expensive and time-consuming RT-PCR tests. For this specific task, CXR (Chest X-Ray) and CCT (Chest CT Scans) are the most common examinations to support diagnosis through radiology analysis. With these images, it is possible to support diagnosis and determine the disease’s severity stage. Computerized COVID-19 quantification and evaluation require an efficient segmentation process. Essential tasks for automatic segmentation tools are precisely identifying the lungs, lobes, bronchopulmonary segments, and infected regions or lesions. Segmented areas can provide handcrafted or self-learned diagnostic criteria for various applications. This Chapter presents different techniques applied for Chest CT Scans segmentation, considering the state of the art of UNet networks to segment COVID-19 CT scans and a segmentation experiment for network evaluation. Along 200 epochs, a dice coefficient of 0.83 was obtained.

The global pandemic triggered by the Corona Virus Disease firstly detected in 2019 (COVID-19), entered the fourth year with many unknown aspects that need to be continuously studied by the medical and academic communities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), until January 2023, more than 650 million cases were officially accounted (with probably much more non tested cases) with 6,656,601 deaths officially linked to the COVID-19 as plausible root cause. In this Chapter, an overview of some relevant technical aspects related to the COVID-19 pandemic is presented, divided in three parts. First, the advances are highlighted, including the development of new technologies in different areas such as medical devices, vaccines, and computerized system for medical support. Second, the focus is on relevant challenges, including the discussion on how computerized diagnostic supporting systems based on Artificial Intelligence are in fact ready to effectively help on clinical processes, from the perspective of the model proposed by NASA, Technology Readiness Levels (TRL). Finally, two trends are presented with increased necessity of computerized systems to deal with the Long Covid and the interest on Precision Medicine digital tools. Analyzing these three aspects (advances, challenges, and trends) may provide a broader understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the development of Computerized Diagnostic Support Systems.

This chapter presents a systematic review of research on human resources management (HRM) and employee relations (ER) in Angola to identify the main challenges and opportunities presented. To achieve that goal, this chapter characterises research conducted in the country, investigates its main findings, and proposes some directions for the future. Based on a bibliographic search in the EBSCO Discovery database of empirical articles about HRM and ER in Angola, we collected a sample of 28 studies published between 2009 and 2022. Most studies have focused on the development and retention of human resources. Other topics included diversity management, workplace attitudes and behaviours, scale validations, leadership and decision-making, performance appraisal, quality assessment, corporate social responsibility, and expatriates. We identified three main challenges and opportunities in HRM and ER in Angola. First, the policies and the planning, implementing, and evaluating processes of human resources development and retention strategies should be improved. Second, effective leadership and participation should be promoted while navigating the tensions between autocratic and participative leadership styles. Finally, positive ER and employee well-being should be promoted. Understanding these challenges and opportunities may contribute to the development of human capital in Angola and, ultimately, the country’s socioeconomic development.

Continuous cardiac monitoring has been increasingly adopted to prevent heart diseases, especially the case of Chagas disease, a chronic condition that can degrade the heart condition, leading to sudden cardiac death. Unfortunately, a common challenge for these systems is the low-quality and high level of noise in ECG signal collection. Also, generic techniques to assess the ECG quality can discard useful information in these so-called chagasic ECG signals. To mitigate this issue, this work proposes a 1D CNN network to assess the quality of the ECG signal for chagasic patients and compare it to the state of art techniques. Segments of 10 s were extracted from 200 1-lead ECG Holter signals. Different feature extractions were considered such as morphological fiducial points, interval duration, and statistical features, aiming to classify 400 segments into four signal quality types: Acceptable ECG, Non-ECG, Wandering Baseline (WB), and AC Interference (ACI) segments. The proposed CNN architecture achieves a $$0.90 \pm 0.02$$accuracy in the multi-classification experiment and also $$0.94 \pm 0.01$$when considering only acceptable ECG against the other three classes. Also, we presented a complementary experiment showing that, after removing noisy segments, we improved morphological recognition (based on QRS wave) by 33% of the entire ECG data. The proposed noise detector may be applied as a useful tool for pre-processing chagasic ECG signals.

Mining the sentiment of the user on the internet via the context plays a significant role in uncovering the human emotion and in determining the exactness of the underlying emotion in the context. An increasingly enormous number of user-generated content (UGC) in social media and online travel platforms lead to development of data-driven sentiment analysis (SA), and most extant SA in the domain of tourism is conducted using document-based SA (DBSA). However, DBSA cannot be used to examine what specific aspects need to be improved or disclose the unknown dimensions that affect the overall sentiment like aspect-based SA (ABSA). ABSA requires accurate identification of the aspects and sentiment orientation in the UGC. In this book chapter, we illustrate the contribution of data mining based on deep learning in sentiment and emotion detection.

Born in Magule, Mozambique (Portuguese East Africa), João dos Santos Albasini was a mulatto, the leading intellectual in the main center, Lourenço Marques (today, Maputo), the editor of O Africano (The African) founded 1908, and O Brado Africano (The African Voice) founded in 1918, and a champion of worker and African rights. Often characterized as a republican and a moderate, Albasini had a basic education and an appetite for ideas. He was an avid reader of republican theory, syndicalism, and anarchism – all influential in Portugal – and was familiar with a range of radical ideas circulating in the city's thriving café culture.

When Columbus arrived in 1492, the first free black person--a sailor--set foot in the Americas. Over the next 400 years, as slavery spread and became entrenched in the Western Hemisphere, free blacks built communities throughout North and South America, playing a critical role in every region, colony, and country. From Canada to the Caribbean to Chile, they established vital economic and social institutions, championed the cause of abolition, and formed a bridge between the worlds of free whites and enslaved blacks. They worked as artisans, farmers, ministers, merchants, shipbuilders, and reporters. Many free blacks served in the military and fought in every major war, including the American Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American wars for independence. Others served in government, and some--like presidents Bernardino Rivadavia of Argentina and Vicente Guerrero of Mexico--became national leaders.Free people of color in the United States and the Americas hold a unique status in global history. Never before and never since has such a group existed in large numbers anywhere in the world. Long shrouded in obscurity and overshadowed by scholarship on slavery and race, the free black community has become a growing and vibrant field of study as historians uncover vast material on this group, revealing how they lived, how they shaped society, and how they transformed the history of every nation in the hemisphere.Encyclopedia of Free Blacks and People of Color in the Americas is the first reference book to cover this crucial subject. Arranged alphabetically, this new, two-volume encyclopedia includes articles on all major events, issues, and concepts relevant to the free black community in the United States from the colonial period to the Civil War and in the rest of the Western Hemisphere from the late 1400s to the late 1800s, when emancipation became universal. Nearly 400 articles cover every country, colony, state, city, and region in the Americas with a significant presence of free blacks, and biographies, thematic articles, and entries on related subjects shed light on this fascinating topic. Featuring primary sources, illustrations, maps, tables, charts, a chronology, cross-references, suggestions for further reading, and a bibliography, this unique, original, and groundbreaking encyclopedia provides a wealth of information not available anywhere else.Entries include:-Abolitionist movement in Brazil -Zabeau Bellanton -Captain Cudjoe -Coffee cultivation -Education and literacy -Forten family -Free black artisans -French Caribbean -Gender attitudes -Guerrero (slave ship) -Haitian Revolution -La Escalera Plot -Laws of free birth -Legal discrimination on the basis of race -Living "as free" -Toussaint Louverture -Maroons -Marriage between free and slave -Midwives and traditional healers -Negro Convention Movement -Rebecca Protten -Somerset v. Stewart.

Collecting more than 200 sources in the global history of feminism, this anthology supplies an insightful record of the resistance to patriarchy throughout human history and around the world.From writings by Enheduana in ancient Mesopotamia (2350 BCE) to the present-day manifesto of the Association of Women for Action and Research in Singapore, Feminist Writings from Ancient Times to the Modern World: A Global Sourcebook and History excerpts more than 200 feminist primary source documents from Africa to the Americas to Australia.Serving to depict "feminism" as much broader—and older—than simply the modern struggle for political rights and equality, this two-volume work provides a more comprehensive and varied record of women's resistance cross-culturally and throughout history. The author's goal is to showcase a wide range of writers, thinkers, and organizations in order to document how resistance to patriarchy has been at the center of social, political, and intellectual history since the infancy of human civilization. This work addresses feminist ideas expressed privately through poetry, letters, and autobiographies, as well as the public and political aspects of women's rights movements.More than 200 chronologically arranged entries on feminist writers, thinkers, and organizations across 4,000 years of human historyContributions from more than 100 international scholars, including historians, sociologists, literary, cultural theorists, religious scholars, writers, and activistsBrief bibliographies of further readings, websites, and other relevant resources with each entryLists of entries arranged by region as well as by broad topic, in addition to a comprehensive index