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This paper focuses on integrating multimodal communication into the English-as-a-foreign-language classroom to enhance the development of students' multimodal communicative competence, multiliteracies, and 21st-century skills. To do so, I compiled a corpus of authentic materials from Lady Whistledown's Society Papers in Julia Quinn's novel "The Viscount Who Loved Me" (2000), her appearances as narrator in the Netflix series "Bridgerton" (2022), and some tweets posted by @Bridgerton. This corpus was used to plan and design a game-based teaching proposal. Finally, the paper offers a critical analysis and suggests how this proposal can feasibly contribute to fostering students' multimodal communicative competence.

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Individuals who reside in a country without regular authorisation generally find it difficult to access public medical services beyond emergency treatment. Even in countries with universal healthcare, there is often a gap between rights on paper and their implementation. Civil society organisations (CSOs) fill this gap by providing medical services to vulnerable populations, including irregular migrants. What, if any, are the ethical dilemmas that arise for CSO staff when delivering such services in countries with universal healthcare? Under what conditions do these dilemmas arise? And what strategies do CSO staff use to mitigate them? We answer these questions using 40 semi-structured interviews with CSO staff working in two European countries with high levels of irregularity, universal healthcare provisions on paper, and significant differences in approaches and availability of public services for irregular migrants: Italy and Spain. We show that CSO staff providing medical services to irregular migrants in places with universal healthcare coverage face a fundamental dilemma between humanitarianism and equity. CSO staff respond to the humanitarian belief in the value of taking all possible steps to prevent or alleviate human suffering, thus promoting a decent quality of life that includes access to both emergency and non-emergency care. In doing so, however, they run the risk of substituting rather than complementing public provisions, thereby preventing governments from assuming responsibility for these services in the long term. Individuals who acknowledge the existence of this dilemma generally oppose the creation of parallel structures; that is, services specifically developed for irregular migrants outside the public system; while those who ignore it essentially subscribe to a tiered system, giving up on considerations of equity. We argue that CSOs involved in the provision of healthcare to irregular migrants do not simply provide services; they also play an inherently political role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the Leave No One Behind principle of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the context of the Agenda 2030 is currently prevalent; however, research on monitoring child poverty at the sub-national (local) level is still limited. This paper addresses this gap by examining indicators developed for monitoring the phenomenon at different territorial levels (global, European, and national) and assessing their territorial transposition locally, using the city of Cadiz, Spain, as a case study. Interviews with local stakeholders reveal that despite the availability and access to related indicators and data, relevant actors must enhance their efforts to utilize such indicators effectively. Based on desktop research and qualitative analysis, the paper delivers recommendations for improving local monitoring of child poverty in Europe and inducing policy changes. This knowledge can inform targeted interventions, policy formulation, and resource allocation to tackle child poverty and promote equitable and inclusive societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decades, Nigerian migrant women in the European sex market, described as victims of trafficking, have generated consistent concern and outrage. This article analyzes data from an ethnographic study of more than 800 Nigerian sex workers in southern Spain, describing the networks used by these women to carry out their migration projects and the relationships they establish with their agents. Thus, it contributes to refuting the hegemonic narrative about trafficking and its victims by contrasting it with data collected and systematized over almost a decade of participant observation and informal conversation. This paper argues that the stereotypical image of the Nigerian migrant women as victims of abuse and violence by transnational trafficking networks functions to justify strict migration-control policies and the denial of labor rights to sex workers. As an antidote to the dominance of narratives based on stereotypes and pseudoscientific claims, this paper underscores the urgent need for ethnographic research and its focus on emic (participant) perspectives. The goal is to develop tailored and effective policies and practices for the prevention of and intervention in migrant women's experience of exploitation, abuse, and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the challenges faced by scientists to effectively communicate regarding photoprotection and skin cancer as a result of the pervasive, harmful effects of disinforming messages. In order to do so, the Spanish population's understanding of photoprotection and skin cancer is examined. This paper is as an extension of the COMUNICANCER initiative, the ultimate goal of which is to establish protocols for producing and disseminating accurate content that raises the awareness of skin cancer-related dangers, as well as transferring knowledge on health prevention. Therefore, we have monitored the prevalence of misinformation and lack of information regarding sun photoprotection in Spain, aiming to reflect, ultimately, on the added difficulties faced by the scholarly community to disseminate accurate content in today's communication environment, which has become even more complex due to the distorting influence of disinformation. Employing a quantitative methodology, the research involved a comprehensive analysis of 2498 Spanish-language tweets related to skin cancer and photoprotection collected between August 2021 and August 2022. The study proves that scientists face a social media landscape, particularly on X/Twitter, where there is not only a lack of comprehensive information on the various dimensions of skin cancer, its prevention, and treatment, but which also serves as a breeding ground for the dissemination of inaccurate and misleading information regarding sun-related health risks and preventive measures. This leads to an urgent need to develop strategies aimed at fostering comprehensive and accurate information dissemination, especially regarding health information, due to the critical effect this can have on people and public health systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the diverse multiethnic setting of colonial New Spain, women faced challenges in separating themselves from marriages they considered unendurable. The Catholic Church, which exercised hegemony over definitions of marriage in the colony, controlled access to permanent, formal separation or "ecclesiastical divorce", while secular courts offered shorter-term separations generally aimed at reunifying couples. Outside of these options, flight, concealment, and bigamy, or "self-divorce," offered the only recourse for women seeking to leave an untenable relationship. While it is well known that few women sought (and even fewer were granted) ecclesiastical divorce, it is clear that many women sought separation through formal and informal means. Using ecclesiastical petitions for divorce, this paper investigates the experience of deposit (depósito) for New Spain's separated women. Deposit was likely a primary goal of women's divorce petitions. Moreover, the hegemony of marriage was less complete in reality than in ideology; the number of single women in the colony is now known to be vast, and their networks substantial. Building on Bird's and Megged's insights on separation and singleness, this paper argues that studying deposit reveals a custom that offered women of all classes a substantial degree of respite and agency in separation, particularly in the early colony, when institutional options were less formalized. Sometimes, depósito permitted lengthy separations that blurred into permanency, while at other times it served as a crucial safety valve. Nonetheless, the practice was a contested terrain on which husbands also sought to exercise power and control. Deposit, therefore, was a highly ambivalent form of "separation" in Latin America. This was undoubtedly true both in the early-colonial period and thereafter, but as colonial society matured and institutional deposit became more possible and common, men's power was enhanced. Studying the practice before the late seventeenth century therefore reveals some of the ways that early colonial societal flux authorized female agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of bank liquidity regulations, considering the global regulatory framework applicable to financial institutions, from the beginning of the banking and liquidity crisis in 2007–2008 to the present. The new liquidity requirements under Basel III regulations are defined. An analysis is made of the recent evolution of credit institutions in Spain from different banking prisms to determine how the new banking regulation and supervision, following the start of supervisory powers by the European Central Bank at the end of 2014, has affected them. The methodology applied has been firstly the literature review, followed by a compilation and analysis of the financial and statistical evidence available on the main Spanish financial institutions, from the European Central Bank and the Bank of Spain, as well as information published by other agencies and the financial institutions themselves. It concludes with a reflection and analysis of the outlook for the sector once the most recent impacts, derived from COVID-19, and the supply crisis with the rise in global inflation and the increase in interest rates have been overcome. It can be stated that credit institutions in Spain have significantly improved their liquidity position over the last 15 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adjustment of government redistributive policies in Scandinavian and Mediterranean countries following changes in income inequality over the period 1980–2021. Design/methodology/approach: The authors first modelled the time-varying dynamics between income inequality and redistribution and then used a non-linear framework to test for the existence of asymmetries and cointegration in their long-run relationship. The authors used two complementary measures of inequality – the share of total income accruing to top percentile income holders and the ratio of the share of total income accruing to top decile income holders divided by that accumulated by the bottom 50% – and computed redistribution as the difference between the two inequality indicators before and after taxes and transfers. Findings: The authors found that the sign of the relationship between income inequality and redistribution is mostly positive and time-varying. Overall, the authors also found evidence that the impact of increases in inequality on redistributive measures is higher than that of decreases. Finally, the authors obtained a significant long-run relationship between both variables in all countries except Denmark and Spain. These results hold for both Scandinavian and Mediterranean countries. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to account for the potential existence of non-linearities and to examine the asymmetries in the adjustment of redistributive policies to increases in income inequality using alternative income inequality metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Josep Rizo is a Professor of Biophysics, Biochemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he is Virginia Lazenby O'Hara Chair in Biochemistry. He is particularly interested in the study of the mechanisms of neurotransmitter release and intracellular membrane fusion using structural biology, a variety of biophysical techniques and reconstitution approaches. Jose has been a part of the FEBS Open Bio Editorial Board since 2021. In this interview, he shares his insights into developments in the field of neurotransmitter release, describes his move from Spain to the United States, and discusses how sometimes you need to use both logic and scientific hunches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]