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Although gender-role stereotypes in children's literature have been widely explored, the study of the role of mothers and their representation in picturebooks has not received much attention from the academic world, especially as far as Spain is concerned. This paper analyses a sample of seven picturebooks published in Spain over the last 7 years--all by awarded authors and widely reviewed in some of the most popular Spanish blogs on Children's and Youth Literature (CYL)--and focused on the maternal figure. It aims to provide a panoramic view of the representations of the role of the mother as a paradigm of the changes seen in Spanish society, studying the representation of her voice, emotions, and ties to other members of her family through a systemic functional-multimodal discourse analysis applied to picturebooks. The results reveal that, for the first time, the mother's voice and her right to explore her own feelings are included in her characterisation, and also, that her relationship with the rest of the family includes different aspects--children, society, work, partner, and self-care. In conclusion, the conception of motherhood as proposed to Spanish families through picturebooks seems to be finally changing, evolving from fixed stereotypes and allowing the expression of contradictory feelings related to maternity.

This study is part of the QuamMELOT Erasmus+ Project, whose objective is to improve the educational and social inclusion of immigrant minors in general and unaccompanied foreign minors (UFM), through an online course for secondary school teachers with this type of students. This paper aims to analyse the stereotypes and prejudices about immigrant students in secondary education in three European countries: Spain, Greece and Italy. For this purpose, a content analysis of the products generated during the course by teachers has been carried out with a cross-sectional and structured methodology, focused on a descriptive-interpretative analysis according to the qualitative paradigm. The results show an increase in xenophobic statements as perceived by teachers. They believe that this is due to the impact of the global phenomenon of migration on the media, which affects everyday conversations, and a climate of fear exacerbated by populist voices in the political sphere. Moreover, through the analysis of the exercises proposed in the real class through the online course, it is interesting to observe the diversity of the students' reactions to a literary exercise that proposes a controversy about the "colonial difference" that still persists today. There is likewise awareness among teachers of a lack of methodological strategies to break down the prejudices and stereotypes that exist in their classrooms. It also highlights the need to raise awareness in the classroom about this danger, which is at the root of the principles of acceptance and multiculturalism on which Europe is founded.

Taking as a context the reality of migration of Latinos to Europe and its repercussions in the educational field, a pedagogical practice carried out in the Master for Teachers in training at the University of Seville, Spain, is described and analyzed. Future teachers of Spanish Language and Literature work on the subject of prejudices toward Latinos through a critical pedagogy whose main materials are literature and the decolonial perspective. To this end, classroom practices are described and analyzed. The pedagogical design is characterized by the following objectives: (1) to recognize and identify our prejudices toward others, (2) to recognize the voice of others in their specificity, and (3) to transcend this specificity and recognize ourselves in the other. In the qualitative analysis of the didactic intervention, the 72 students involved recognize highly positive involvement in the objectives of the activities; moreover, the students' accounts show the recognition of a colonial hegemonic vision and the revision of prejudices toward the other. This framework takes students further by adopting a relationship of critical engagement with the way they approach Hispanic-American language and literature and its impact on the integration of their potential immigrant students in the classroom.

Preterm birth (<37 gestational weeks) is associated with long-term risks for health and neurodevelopment, but recently, studies have also started exploring how preterm birth affects early language development in the 1st year of life. Because the timing and quality of auditory and visual input is very different for preterm versus full-term infants, audiovisual speech perception in early development may be particularly sensitive to preterm birth. We tested extremely preterm to late preterm infants at 8 months postnatal age (28 to 36 weeks of gestation), as well as 2 full-term comparison groups with similar postnatal (8 months) and maturational (6 months) ages, on visual scanning of a video showing a French-English bilingual woman speaking in the infants' native language (French) and a nonnative language (English). Preterm infants showed similar scanning patterns for both languages, failing to differentiate between native and nonnative languages in their looking, unlike both groups of full-term infants, who looked more to the eyes than the mouth for the native language compared with the nonnative language. No clear relationship between scanning patterns and degree of prematurity was found. These findings are the first to show that audiovisual speech perception is affected in even later-born preterm infants, thus identifying a particularly sensitive deficit in early speech processing. Further research will need to investigate how preterms' special vulnerability in audiovisual speech processing may contribute to the other language difficulties found in these populations.

CD98hc functions as an amino acid (AA) transporter (together with another subunit) and integrin signaling enhancer. It is overexpressed in highly proliferative cells in both physiological and pathological conditions. CD98hc deletion induces strong impairment of cell proliferation in vivo and in vitro Here, we investigate CD98hc-associated AA transport in cell survival and proliferation. By using chimeric versions of CD98hc, the two functions of the protein can be uncoupled. Although recovering the CD98hc AA transport capacity restores the in vivo and in vitro proliferation of CD98hc-null cells, reconstitution of the integrin signaling function of CD98hc is unable to restore in vitro proliferation of those cells. CD98hc-associated transporters (i.e. xCT, LAT1, and y(+)LAT2 in wild-type cells) are crucial to control reactive oxygen species and intracellular AA levels, thus sustaining cell survival and proliferation. Moreover, in CD98hc-null cells the deficiency of CD98hc/xCT cannot be compensated, leading to cell death by ferroptosis. Supplementation of culture media with β-mercaptoethanol rescues CD98hc-deficient cell survival. Under such conditions null cells show oxidative stress and intracellular AA imbalance and, consequently, limited proliferation. CD98hc-null cells also present reduced intracellular levels of branched-chain and aromatic amino acids (BCAAs and ARO AAs, respectively) and induced expression of peptide transporter 1 (PEPT1). Interestingly, external supply of dipeptides containing BCAAs and ARO AAs rescues cell proliferation and compensates for impaired uptake of CD98hc/LAT1 and CD98hc/y(+)LAT2. Our data establish CD98hc as a master protective gene at the cross-road of redox control and AA availability, making it a relevant therapeutic target in cancer.