Instituto Cervantes

The pink hibiscus mealybug, Maconellicoccus hirsutus (Green), is a highly polyphagous insect pest that infests several horticultural and agricultural crops and ornamental plant species worldwide. It is a species of southern Asian origin, recently reported in Greece (on Rhodes Island) and Cyprus. It is also a highly invasive pest with a wide distribution in environments with broad climate types. We modelled the potential distribution of M. hirsutus using CLIMEX under an historical climate scenario including a spatially-explicit irrigation scenario. Model parameters were inferred from M. hirsutus’s known native distribution, its exotic range, and ecophysiological laboratory observations from the literature. A future climate model was also applied to assess the sensitivity of M. hirsutus’ modelled distribution to climatic changes. Under current climatic conditions, areas that are climatically suitable for M. hirsutus’ establishment include Central and South America, southern parts of North America, Central and South Africa, large parts of Asia, and parts of Australia. The Mediterranean basin is also climatically suitable for pest establishment. Under the climate change scenario large parts of Asia, mostly in China, areas in southern North America, southern Europe, south Australia, and central Africa tend to become climatically suitable for M. hirsutus establishment. Identifying the potential impact of climate change on the potential distribution of M. hirsutus is essential for prudent biosecurity, as it provides an understanding of how the invasion risks it poses are likely to evolve in the future on a timescale that is relevant for planning and implementing biosecurity policies and phytosanitary measures.

The article considers the actual reflection of the transhumanistic concept in various fields of scientific knowledge. This concept has recently aroused genuine interest both because of its direction and because of its own contradictions. The discussion that has unfolded around this concept allows to evaluate all the pros and cons of the implementation of the transhumanist idea, which requires improving the physical condition of a person through the use of the most advanced technologies, among which biotechnology occupies an important place. Their use generates contextual social, economic and political problems. In this regard, it is necessary to investigate the process of emergence and development of transhumanistic risks, as well as the possibility of managing them on the basis of both traditional and original tools, taking into account the specifics of the transhumanistic approach. In the article, the authors present a study of the formation of transhumanistic risks associated with the creation and use of artificial intelligence, as well as the possibility of risk management in the transhumanistic space. The threat is increasing due to the growing globalization, interconnectedness and the speed of change in the world. These trends are generally useful, but present new challenges, including new types of transhumanistic risks associated with the use of artificial intelligence. It is more difficult to predict them than any other known risks. Conceptual options for assessing the situation developing in the transhumanistic space together represent a new vector transhumanistic risk management theory and practice development.

O presente artigo apresenta parte dos resultados obtidos numa pesquisa sobre atitudes de estudantes brasileiros de espanhol como língua estrangeira (ELE) em relação às variedades diatópicas da língua meta. Para tal, foi analisado um corpus formado pelas respostas de 148 informantes adultos, estudantes do Instituto Cervantes de Curitiba (ICC), Brasil, dos seis níveis de domínio do ELE segundo o Marco Comum Europeu de Referência (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 e C2), a um inquérito sobre variedades diatópicas do espanhol que incluia perguntas abertas sobre fatores de status e atrativo social e uma escala de diferencial semântico sobre o atrativo social da variedade falada nas capitais dos países hispanofalantes que compartilham fronteira com Brasil, mais Santiago de Chile e Madri. Os dados obtidos nessa escala apontaram para atitudes muito positivas face à variedade castelhana em praticamente todos os grupos de estudantes. Analisando os dados por níveis de domínio do ELE dos informantes, em todos eles a variedade castelhana obteve as valorações mais altas em atrativo social. No lado oposto, observaram-se atitudes negativas com relação ao espanhol da capital de país hispanofalante geograficamente mais próxima, Assunção. Provavelmente, fatores históricos e socioculturais subjacentes, que exigem maior observação por parte de pesquisadores, instituições e professores de ELE, incidem em tais avaliações.

El presente volumen recoge una selección de investigaciones y propuestas didácticas aplicadas a la enseñanza del español realizadas, en su mayor parte, desde universidades del Reino Unido. El libro incorpora una serie de trabajos escritos por miembros de ELEUK, la asociación británica de profesores de español, y está estructurado en cuatro bloques que reflexionan sobre los últimos avances académicos desde distintos niveles de concreción curricular y ámbitos de intervención pedagógica: diseño curricular, contenidos gramaticales, diversidad y propuestas didácticas. ELEUK continúa su línea de publicaciones con este segundo proyecto editorial escrito, evaluado y editado de manera colaborativa por un grupo de integrantes de la asociación.

This is the first generative-oriented volume ever published about Asturian and Asturian Galician, two Romance languages which, along with their intrinsic interest, are crucial to understand the parametric distance between Spanish and Galician/Portuguese. Its chapters offer new insights about old puzzles, like pronominal enclisis or apparent violations of bans on clitic combinatorics, but they also deal with less explored grounds, like aspect, negation or prosody. Chapters make special emphasis on how the concerned issues result from complex interactions between syntax proper and its interfaces with sound and meaning. The book focuses on particular aspects of Asturian and Asturian Galician, as well as on some effects of their contact with Spanish in their corresponding locations.

The aim of this research is to develop a conceptual approach to intercultural interaction, including the use of effective negotiation and socialization tools in the digital space based on the study of the main problems and trends in this area. The concept of digital intercultural interaction is based on dialogical relations between people in the digital space, where the presence of various social skills is required, taking into account the transformation of interaction between people and social groups on the Internet. In the process of intercultural interaction in the digital space, people are being rebuilt to another model with the help of new technological capabilities, where technology acts as a tool that enables the constant movement between direct and virtual interaction of persons of intercultural communication, which is supposed to be presented in the future as a model of intercultural interaction aimed at exponentially improving the digital environment for representatives of different cultures.

IntroductionMastopexy with an implant is undoubtedly one of the most challenging surgeries in cosmetic surgery since it involves two overlapping procedures. The aim of this study was to demonstrate that by using horizontal glandular flaps in the sulcus in mastopexy with implants, it is possible to reduce the number of postoperative complications. Methods Sixty-three female breast surgery patients with some degree of flaccidity who underwent surgery from July 2018 to January 2020 were selected. All surgeries were performed in one procedure with an initial resection of the excess skin associated with a horizontal flap of the upper pedicle that promoted the protection of the implants and decreased the surgical wound tension.ResultsForty-seven patients were included in the sample, for a total of 94 breasts. The motivation of the surgery was esthetic in all cases. Related to complications, we had 1 (1.06%) case of seroma, 1 (1.06%) case suffering from areola necrosis, 6 (6.3%) cases with scar revisions, 10 (10.6%) cases with complications in the transition from the “T” and no case of hematoma, infection or extrusion of the implants. The follow-up time was 12 months.Conclusion This technique allows the surgeon to perform a resection of excess skin and place the implants in one procedure, thereby decreasing the tension in the suture line, protecting the implants and forming a protective stabilizing brace in the mammary groove.Level of Evidence IVThis journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266.

The transition of the apparel industry to an ESG business model will have a cascading effect in the whole supply chain (upstream, midstream and downstream) and will generate greater value for all stakeholders. The ESG investments are registering exponential growth in equity and fixed income markets due to the following benefits: 1) lower risk and long-term stability, 2) the returns of portfolios and indices with ESG criteria are not inferior to traditional investment, 3) the positive externalities associated to ESG criteria and 4) the reputation and gain of market share by responding to the demands of a new generation of consumers willing to pay a surcharge for sustainable goods and services that consider ESG criteria. Currently there are expectations that once the Covid-19 crisis is over there will be a grand quantity of capital inflows toward ESG investments on emerging markets, a situation that will drive the transformation of companies; particularly those that have made progress in incorporating ESG factors like the utilities and financial sector.

In recent years, the adoption of a socioculturally based perspective on teacher development has led to significant advances in L2 teacher education (Esteve, 2018a; Lantolf and Esteve, 2019; Johnson, 2009; Johnson and Golombek, 2016; Negueruela, 2011). The authors’ practice-based research over the past ten years on the impact of socioculturally based formative interventions on teacher professional development has shown that conceptual mediation through SCOBAs enables (student) teachers to gain new ways of thinking and acting in the classroom (Esteve, 2018a; Esteve, Fernández and Bes, 2018; Lantolf and Esteve, 2019). Conceptual mediation consists of promoting a dialectic relationship between everyday concepts and scientific concepts, and more specifically between everyday concepts and core concepts. Core concepts are the scientific concepts informing the socioculturally based perspective of language teaching and learning that are to be appropriated by the (student) teachers throughout the formative interventions. After being introduced to core concepts, (student) teachers progressively appropriate them throughout a structured mediational process, a process that enables them to informedly design and carry out, from their own agency, purposeful, pedagogically valid classroom practices. The article specifically seeks to answer the following questions that are often posed by teacher educators willing to adopt a sociocultural perspective in their formative interventions: 1) how to select the scientific concepts for SCOBA-driven formative interventions; 2) how to design SCOBAs and 3) how to facilitate the appropriation of the selected concepts so that they become psychological tools. To this end, the article focuses on the criteria guiding the selection of core concepts, as well as on the tools that help (student) teachers to apprehend them and, by that means, to develop new ways of thinking and acting.

Linguistic complexity measures are used to describe second language (L2) performance and assess levels of proficiency and development. Although morphology is considered crucial in L2 acquisition, morphological complexity has been relatively neglected, hindering comprehensive views of grammatical complexity in L2. This article presents an application of a recently proposed metric of morphological diversity, the Morphological Complexity Index (MCI), in an L2 Spanish corpus of 113 essays classified into four proficiency levels by expert evaluators. The aim of the study is to investigate the relationships of MCI with subjectively rated proficiency and with other four quantitative measures of L2 complexity. Results indicate that morphological complexity, as measured by MCI, does not vary significantly across proficiency levels in this corpus. The MCI shows significant correlations with lexical but not with syntactic complexity measures. Findings are interpreted in the light of the characteristics of the corpus and the acquisition of the Spanish verbal system.

The article is devoted to the study of the organization of the work of enterprises in the intercultural space. The authors consider the cross-cultural approach as a cross-cutting process that leads to significant changes within organizations and society and which manifests itself through interaction that functions as a generating element of the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Culture becomes the driving force of the processes taking place in international companies, where people interact freely, focusing on achieving common goals of their development, understanding their own characteristics and differences, which inevitably leads to high productivity of the organization and increased motivation of its partners. The paper considers the management of the organization’s cross-cultural space in the context of three main elements: cross-culturality, competencies and interaction in the workplace. In the course of their activities, enterprises are faced with the peculiarities of the organization of work in an intercultural space, which, as a rule, consist in the mental differences of business representatives of different cultures. In the process of interaction, difficulties may arise due to the lack of a deep understanding of the ethnic characteristics of the partner, its history, culture, etc. In this regard, the authors recommend pay attention to the quality of the acquired cross-cultural competencies of the participants of the business dialogue. Organizations should invest in the cross-cultural knowledge of their employees to increase the efficiency and productivity of internationally organized businesses. Modern organizations tend to view business processes as knowledge processes. The creation of knowledge includes its further expansion, development, improvement and application in the organization. Modern business organizations are looking for ways to create additional knowledge values through identifying, applying, and using them in a unique way, and this is a process that is part science, part art, and part pure luck. Effective management of the knowledge that people from different cultures bring, as well as the spaces in which they will interact, сontribute to strengthening the corporate image of the organization and its positioning in the international market.

The article focuses on issues related to the pedagogical challenges of transhumanism. The authors consider possible ways to ensure that students will have a high level of economic literacy in combination with morality. This will allow students to develop an idea of ethical consequences which arise from management decisions made in the context of digitalization. When teaching subjects related to economic cycles, a lecturer faces various challenges formed by the modern transhumanist concept. One of the challenges is to work with the “digital generation” without its knowledge and orientation to moral and ethical principles, especially when students are from non-humanitarian universities. The ability to feel and be aware of fairness and to prefer justice to unjustness is a characteristic gifted to a human being to maintain his or her own internal interests. Transferring this attitude to the company will influence and form its ethical and moral principles in creating and promoting a product aimed at removing the obstacles associated with physical inability. Ethical postulates in teaching economic disciplines will ensure that students realize the concept of acceptable limits for generating income from technological innovations in various sectors of digital economics. In addition, the article presents the advantages and disadvantages of such concepts as variability and alternative education, its national character, continuous education, and intercultural communication.

This paper summarises the contributions to EuroCALL's CorpusCALL SIG Symposium for the year 2020. In line with this year's EuroCALL conference theme, 'CALL for widening participation', the Symposium centred around the theme of Data-driven learning for languages other than English. This paper gives a brief overview of developments and challenges when using Data-Driven Learning (DDL) to teach French, German, Italian, and Spanish. As research suggests, a DDL approach has been effectively utilised to teach these languages. However, there are differences in available DDL resources and corpora for the respective languages that are appropriate for language teaching. The main challenges for future developments are also discussed.

The main objective in this paper is to analyze the impact of cross-cultural communication on increasing business profitability. In order to do that, the research is based on three main concepts: cross-cultural skills, which are considered in our study one the most strategical tools for companies’ success, concerning both the profitability and the image of any company. Cross-cultural communication, as stated by the anthropologist Edward Hall in his book The Hidden Dimension. Hall is most associated with proxemics, the study of the human use of space within the context of culture. Bearing in mind Hall’s considerations, the paper emphasized the need and importance of cross-cultural education for employees, as long as the goal of the companies is to position themselves internationally. Intercultural communication. Hall’s ideas have also had a significant impact in communication theory, especially intercultural communication, where it inspired research on spatial perception that continues to this day. In the digital economy, there are different indicators for measuring the level of cross-cultural skills within a company: a financial indicator such as return on sales has an important role. Sales play a fundamental role in the activities of any company and they are causally related to the cross-cultural skills of employees and entrepreneurs concerning company’s management. Business management style as well as the type of cross-cultural communication existing in the company will determine the international position of any company. Communication and cross-cultural skills contribute to a positive image of the company, since these are skills pointing out at companies with multilingual staff, with personal and professional experience living and working in different countries, experts on using innovative technologies, characteristics which will strongly impact on final profitability results. The paper concludes focusing on the importance for all the international companies to invest in the concept of intercultural communication and cross-cultural skills as a way of behaving in business, since these skills will reward them with increasing ratios of business profitability in international markets.

Este estudio se centra en el fenómeno de la influencia interlingüística y su efecto en la eficacia comunicativa durante el proceso de adquisición de español como L3 en un contexto internacional y multilingüe. Se basa en el análisis de errores léxicos de las producciones orales de cuatro aprendices adultos de español como L3, con diferentes L1, pero con L2 comunes. Los resultados evidencian errores léxicos por influencia de las lenguas previamente adquiridas, pero no muestran diferencias entre tipos de error con relación a sus distintas LM/L1. Sí reflejan, en cambio, diferencias en función del distinto nivel de dominio de la lengua objeto (español). Asimismo, se observa que, a pesar de los errores detectados en sus interlenguas, ello no parece representar un serio problema desde el punto de vista de la eficacia comunicativa. De acuerdo con lo anterior, estos datos indicarían la importancia de la influencia interlingüística como factor de estrategia comunicativa.

Este artigo objetiva analisar o livro El juego de la viola de Guillermo Rosales (1946-1993), considerando-se algumas problemáticas identitárias (sociais) e diferentes reproduções traumáticas da infância (familiares) inseridas no contexto meta-ficcional da obra do escritor caribenho. Como estratégia metodológica, foram utilizados métodos descritivos e de caráter bibliográfico. O conceito de violência e trauma baseou-se no pensamento de Arendt (2003, 2005), Dorfman (1972), Assmann (2011) e Butler (2003, 2015), ao passo que a discussão sobre o espaço autobiográfico e a obra de Rosales teve como fundamento as obras de Martínez (2003, 2007, 2015), Simal (2012, 2017), Vila (2015) e Alfonso (2015) e, finalmente, o suicídio no contexto histórico-narrativo cubano, toma como base o pensamento de Cabrera Infante (2015). Assim, no romance, foi possível apreender determinadas marcas autobiográficas, relativas à trajetória autodestrutiva de Rosales, fragmentadas segundo os aspectos geográfico, psicológico e criativo. Também se destaca a presença de uma memória violenta, em que são recorrentes as alusões à tortura, ao suicídio e à morte associadas aos espaços individual, filial e social.

RESUMEN El Instituto Cervantes tiene como objetivo prioritario la iberoamericanización de su labor institucional, lingüística y cultural para la promoción del español, que lleva a cabo con los países hispánicos en un ejercicio de corresponsabilidad. Con este fin está impulsando grandes proyectos estratégicos de alto impacto social, institucional e internacional, iberoamericanos en su concepción y panhispánicos en cuanto integradores de la variedad lingüística de la comunidad hispanohablante, como el Servicio Internacional de Evaluación de la Lengua Española (SIELE) o la Asociación SICELE, que se unen a alianzas institucionales para difundir la lengua española y las culturas hispánicas, en diálogo con las lenguas cooficiales y originarias de los diferentes países. Todo ello en un contexto cambiante, marcado por los grandes retos que para el español y particularmente para su enseñanza y su certificación, suponen el panhispanismo, la sociedad digital, la globalización o la internacionalización. El desarrollo de redes iberoamericanas en distintas iniciativas lingüísticas e interculturales, así como el aprovechamiento de los recursos tecnológicos y las nuevas perspectivas del mundo global, redundan en el fortalecimiento de la unidad diversa del español.

En su libro Hestoria Universal de Paniceiros (2004), Xuan Bello, la voz más representativa de la actual literatura en lengua asturiana, subvierte las ideas de centralidad y periferia para transformar su aldea natal, Paniceiros, en el centro de un universo cuya geografía, rutas y relaciones de poder adquieren un nuevo valor simbólico. Para conseguirlo, sacraliza los lugares de su aldea de un modo sugerido por Mircea Eliade, elaborando un mapa completamente nuevo de un territorio que, siendo el Paniceiros real, es mucho más que eso: lo que Edward W. Soja llama un ‘Thirdspace’ [tercer espacio]. Bello no se limita a generar una lectura alternativa del espacio –y con él, de la memoria– de su comunidad; subvierte todo el espacio conocido para reconvertir París, Lisboa, Nueva York… en periferias de un nuevo centro simbólico, Paniceiros.