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Agglomerated cork is a known material by its contribution to the sustainment of the environment, not only because it is a wholly natural material, without chemical additives, but also because its industrial process of production results from the lowest quality residues of cork or industrial waste material, unsuitable for other applications. It is a reusable material, which means, the cork facade elements can be converted into a new agglomerated material, demonstrating a huge potential for adaptation to existing buildings following a reversible process. It is durable, lightweight, water resistant, low-cost material, some of the properties that may qualify it as suitable for application in large surfaces of vertical construction façades. The aim of this article is to analyze the mechanical, thermal and acoustic characteristics of cork composites against site-specific climatic conditions of subtropical climates and its suitability as an external coating system for residential buildings with the goal to reduce the energy consumption for cooling the inner environment. In high-density cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong the majority of the buildings starting from the 1960s until early 21st century (Brach & Song 2006), did not integrate thermal insulation systems into external walls, producing a high level of heat transfer through the external façade from the outside environment during spring and summer seasons. Due to the extremely fast urban growth of the modern Chinese city, little importance is given to the quality of the external walls in current residential building construction. For at least during six months each year the consumption of energy due to air conditioning in Guangdong province is extremely high. The study concluded that substantial energy could be saved by implementing an external coating upgrade to existing buildings. Additionally, this study details the result obtained through software for energy simulations (Design Builder, ENVI-met) demonstrating the potential of this project to produce homogeneous and comfortable inside temperatures, which cools the indoor ambient temperature in summer time.

Maria Celeste Natário, Renato Epifânio, Carlos Ascenso André, Gonçalo Cordeiro, Inocência Mata, Jorge Rangel, Maria Antónia Espadinha

The design thinking methodology is a problem-solving approach that involves empathising with end-users, (re)defining problems, brainstorming solutions creatively, and experimenting with prototypes and testing. It has been widely adopted in education to help students develop critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills in design. On the other hand, text-to-image artificial intelligence is a method used to generate images from natural language descriptors (usually referred to as prompts). Design thinking methodology can teach students to think creatively and critically about real-world problems when applied in the classroom. In the context of design teaching at the University of Saint Joseph, Macao, students use the design thinking methodology to develop innovative proposals for furniture design solutions. Combining design thinking methodologies with text-to-image artificial intelligence can further enhance the learning experience by allowing students to generate visual representations of their ideas during the ideation phase. The authors developed a systematic approach to generate images for ideation on furniture design based on prompting text-to-image (PTI). The analysis related students’ results who applied the design thinking methodology without using AI tools and the results generated using a standard text-to-image programme. By combining both methods, teachers can help students develop critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills, while also allowing them to generate visual representations in a different paradigm and, by so, being able to communicate their ideas with the most appropriate support for them.

In his most quoted study Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson argues that the invention of the printing press and the rise of print media contributed to a textual representation of the concept of the nation and nationalism. He states that ‘popular’ print culture was also crucial in its contribution to a global exchange that would have reinforced the idea of an ‘imagined community’.1 Anderson further explains that before the eighteenth century, the concept of nation was extensive, as Latin was the language of a broad, vast, imagined community called ‘Christendom’, but as there were changes in the religious communities, such a concept began to be replaced by French and English as vernacular languages of administrative centralization.2 Thus, print capitalism allied to the book market supported by the improvement of communications and the emergence of new and diverse forms of national languages, originated the creation of clusters of small creole ‘imagined political communities’ that were eager to promote new forms of national and cultural consciousness, aimed at widespread literacy through liens of kinship, ethnicity, fraternity, and power loyalties.3 This chapter posits that Anderson's arguments regarding creole nationalism in the new world, fit the particular case of the emergence of the printing, publishing and book-selling culture among a Euro-creole bourgeoisie from Macao with solid kinship, ethnic, commercial and social connections in Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai and other littoral spaces in the treaty ports in East Asia, and takes these developments as a necessary point of departure. I argue that they used the widespread nature of print media to empower themselves and other community members with the progressive eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideas on rational scientific knowledge. They embraced atheism and anti-clericalism as important elements of enlightenment, thus promoting scientific culture, constitutional monarchy or republican forms of government, social mobility for ethnic minorities, and religious and intellectual tolerance that to a certain extent challenged the Catholic Church and conservative circles.

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.

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

Chapter 7 Henrietta Hall Shuck Engendering Faith, Education, and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Macao Isabel Morais Introduction Henrietta Hall Shuck (1817–1844) is famous for being the first American female missionary in China. Despite her short period of residence in Macao in the early nineteenth century, her multiple experiences in the Portuguese colony are invaluable. Her pronouncements in her journal entries, correspondences and other writings make clear her perceptions of Christian interaction with the Chinese people. Her writings combine strong religious beliefs with an equally powerful commitment to promote gender equality through education . Excerpts from her journal openly address female child slavery, the mui tsai system (little girls sold as household servants and for prostitution), gender-based class hierarchies, and the exploitation of women and children. Henrietta helped establish the first Chinese girls’ school in Macao and promoted other important factors through her writing such as the “Camões’s Garden and Grotto” and her discussion of The Lusiad. Had Henrietta Hall not come to China, I might not be here today.1 The first four decades of the nineteenth century were critical years in the Pearl River Delta and Macao. Many examples show Chinese tightening political control over Macao and increased opposition to British incursions.2 In Portugal, several reforms aimed at reinforcing state control of the administrative, political, military, and economic colonial organizations were implemented and extended to Macao.3 In 1835, the governor of Macao ordered that Portuguese who were born in Macao or who had lived in Macao for a long time, be 106 Isabel Morais restricted to municipal affairs only and thereby reducing the political autonomy of the local elites.4 Meanwhile, other important legislation was also extended to Macao. A law passed in 1834 called for the dissolution of all religious orders and congregations, and the abolition of slavery in every Portuguese territory in 1836. These initiatives weakened the Catholic Church’s role in the education system since all schools for both Portuguese and Asian converts in Macao were church-affiliated under the Portuguese Padroado (Patronage) system in Asia.5 At the same time, the United States’ maritime expansion and foreign policy in Asia started to assume a more assertive role, promoting American social, political, and liberal ideas. In 1803, the governor of Macao prohibited the consul of the United States from spending the winter in Macao, forcing him to go to Canton.6 Driven by profits from trade, Americans were nonetheless encouraged to continue going to China, and despite restrictions in Macao, they used the city as a base for not only commerce but the promotion of religion as well. This was done despite the opposition of the British East India Company to missionary activity, the Chinese government’s prohibitions of publicly propagating religion and the local Catholic elite’s aversions to non-Catholics in the Portuguese colony.7 According to Reverend John Lewis Shuck, Henrietta’s husband, the Protestant missionaries in Macao were “strictly prohibited by the civil authority any public efforts for the diffusion of the gospel” being limited to personal conversations only.8 The persecution against Protestants in Portugal might have contributed to the intolerance among Roman Catholics in Macao. It is worth mentioning that between 1843 and 1846 around one thousand Jews fled from Portugal to the United States and West Indies (British island of Trinidad). In 1846 more than four hundred Jewish people fled from the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira to Jacksonville and Springfield, in the state of Illinois.9 On the other hand, the immigration of Catholics into the United States, resulted in the so-called “nativist” movement in the 1840s, and the rise of the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s.10 For many years Protestant missionaries in China were restricted to Guangzhou (Canton) and Macao. They concentrated on distributing literature among members of the foreign and Chinese merchant class, which gained a few converts. And they laid the foundations for more humanitarian efforts of advancing education in China among the lower classes and providing medical services to the needy. This situation would change after the Opium Wars led to Henrietta Hall Shuck 107 the imposition of treaties, and compelled the Chinese government to allow evangelization and freedom to convert Chinese to Christianity. In the 1830s, North American and British missionaries established bases in Macao to advance their evangelical operations. Amidst the restrictions and constraints of the diplomacy of the Canton system (ca. 1700–1842), which included a ban on foreign women entering China...

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.