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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.

The adoption of computer-aided diagnosis and treatment systems based on different types of artificial neural networks (ANNs) is already a reality in several hospital and ambulatory premises. This chapter aims to present a discussion focused on the challenges and trends of adopting these computerized systems, highlighting solutions based on different types and approaches of ANN, more specifically, feed-forward, recurrent, and deep convolutional architectures. One section is focused on the application of AI/ANN solutions to support cardiology in different applications, such as the classification of the heart structure and functional behavior based on echocardiography images; the automatic analysis of the heart electric activity based on ECG signals; and the diagnosis support of angiogram images during surgical interventions. Finally, a case study is presented based on the application of a deep learning convolutional network together with a recent technique called transfer learning to detect brain tumors using an MRI images data set. According to the findings, the model has a high degree of specificity (precision of 0.93 and recall of 0.94 for images with no brain tumor) and can be used as a screening tool for images that do not contain a brain tumor. The f1-score for images with brain tumor was 0.93. The results achieved are very promising and the proposed solution may be considered to be used as a computer-aided diagnosis tool based on deep learning convolutional neural networks. Future works will consider other techniques and compare them with the one presented here. With the comprehensive approach and overview of multiple applications, it is valid to conclude that computer-aided diagnosis and treatment systems are important tools to be considered today and will be an essential part of the trend of personalized medicine over the coming years.

At the beginning of 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) started a coordinated global effort to counterattack the potential exponential spread of the SARS-Cov2 virus, responsible for the coronavirus disease, officially named COVID-19. This comprehensive initiative included a research roadmap published in March 2020, including nine dimensions, from epidemiological research to diagnostic tools and vaccine development. With an unprecedented case, the areas of study related to the pandemic received funds and strong attention from different research communities (universities, government, industry, etc.), resulting in an exponential increase in the number of publications and results achieved in such a small window of time. Outstanding research cooperation projects were implemented during the outbreak, and innovative technologies were developed and improved significantly. Clinical and laboratory processes were improved, while managerial personnel were supported by a countless number of models and computational tools for the decision-making process. This chapter aims to introduce an overview of this favorable scenario and highlight a necessary discussion about ethical issues in research related to the COVID-19 and the challenge of low-quality research, focusing only on the publication of techniques and approaches with limited scientific evidence or even practical application. A legacy of lessons learned from this unique period of human history should influence and guide the scientific and industrial communities for the future.