Understanding European cross-border cooperation: a framework for analysis

European integration has had a dual impact on border regions. On the one hand, borders were physically dismantled across most of the EU’s internal territory. On the other hand, they have become a fertile ground for territorial co-operation and institutional innovation. The degree of cross-border co-operation and organization achieved varies considerably from one region to another depending on a combination of various facilitating factors for effective cross-border co-operation, more specifically, economic, political leadership, cultural/identity and state formation, and geographical factors. This article offers a conceptual framework to understand the growth and diversity of cross-border regionalism within the EU context by focusing on the levels of and drives for co-operation

Translanguaging and the Transdisciplinary Framework for Language Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual World

The ideas and arguments associated with translanguaging have generated highly energized debates on a number of fundamental issues in linguistics, applied language studies and language education. Aspects of many long-held and apparently settled concepts such as ‘language/s’, ‘code switching’ and ‘Second Language Acquisition/Teaching’ have been fundamentally challenged. As has been acknowledged by scholars in the field, the discussions have at times led to polarized intellectual dispositions premised on particular disciplinary persuasions. In this Critical Review we offer a view from a language education perspective, with particular reference to additional/second/foreign language education in diverse socio-political contexts. We will first provide a historical context for the current debates on translanguaging by drawing attention to earlier efforts to make use of students’ own language to support additional language learning in an era of overwhelming monolingualism in language teaching. After that the discussion moves to the different approaches to translanguaging that have emerged and the pedagogic affordances and values attributed to them. In closing we raise a number conceptual and practice-related issues that would benefit from further deliberation and empirical research. Our view is that we are far from having exhausted the potentialities of translanguaging for educational development that may have impact beyond the classroom

Making it your own by adapting it to what’s important to you”: Plurilingual Critical Literacies to promote L2 Japanese users’ sense of ownership of Japanese

The dichotomy between native speaker (NS) and non-native speaker (NNS) remains ubiquitous across different language-learning contexts despite increasing mobility and multilingualism of society. L2 Japanese learners in particular may find themselves positioned as subordinate to NSs because of the myth of Japan being a homogeneous nation of one race and one language. To help L2 Japanese students counter such positioning and gain a sense of ownership, we implemented “plurilingual critical literacies” in a Japanese language course in the U.S. Critical literacy aims to cultivate students’ awareness that power relationships are at play in language use, and plurilingual pedagogy valorizes students’ multilingual resources. Eleven high-intermediate-level Japanese students mobilized their linguistic and cultural resources to read and discuss authentic texts by transcultural or “culturally mobile” writers (Dagnino 2015). These writers expressed resistance to the status quo and made meaning creatively, as mediators between two languages and cultures. Reading, analyzing, and discussing texts by transcultural writers motivated students to counter ideologies of NS superiority, and to own Japanese in the ways that best suited their transcultural identities

Impact of inactivity and exercise on the vasculature in humans

The effects of inactivity and exercise training on established and novel cardiovascular risk factors are relatively modest and do not account for the impact of inactivity and exercise on vascular risk. We examine evidence that inactivity and exercise have direct effects on both vasculature function and structure in humans. Physical deconditioning is associated with enhanced vasoconstrictor tone and has profound and rapid effects on arterial remodelling in both large and smaller arteries. Evidence for an effect of deconditioning on vasodilator function is less consistent. Studies of the impact of exercise training suggest that both functional and structural remodelling adaptations occur and that the magnitude and time-course of these changes depends upon training duration and intensity and the vessel beds involved. Inactivity and exercise have direct “vascular deconditioning and conditioning” effects which likely modify cardiovascular risk