Spanish Nursing Students' Practical Experience of Computer Applications in Nursing

This study aimed to determine the level of computer practical experience in a sample of Spanish nursing students. Each student was given a Spanish language questionnaire, modified from an original used previously with medical students at the Medical School of North Carolina University (USA) and also at the Education Unit of Hospital General Universitario del Mar (Spain). The 10-item self-report questionnaire probed for information about practical experience with computers. A total of 126 students made up the sample. The majority were female (80.2%; n=101). The results showed that just over half (57.1%, n=72) of the students had used a computer game (three or more times before), and that only one third (37.3%, n=47) had the experience of using a word processing package. Moreover, other applications and IT-based facilities (e.g. statistical packages, e-mail, databases, CD-ROM searches, programming languages and computer-assisted learning) had never been used by the majority of students. The student nurses' practical experience was less than that reported for medical students in previous studies.

Fénix: a flexible information exchange data model for natural language processing

In this paper we describe Fénix, a data model for exchanging information between Natural Language Processing applications. The format proposed is intended to be flexible enough to cover both current and future data structures employed in the field of Computational Linguistics. The Fénix architecture is divided into four separate layers: conceptual, logical, persistence and physical. This division provides a simple interface to abstract the users from low-level implementation details, such as programming languages and data storage employed, allowing them to focus in the concepts and processes to be modelled. The Fénix architecture is accompanied by a set of programming libraries to facilitate the access and manipulation of the structures created in this framework. We will also show how this architecture has been already successfully applied in different research projects.

All Is not English that Glitters: False Anglicisms in the Spanish Language of Sports

Over the past decades, many studies have dealt with Anglicisms in Spanish, not only in science and technology, but also in other areas such as business, fashion and even sports. However, in spite of the large number of works on Spanish Anglicisms in sports, these have often disregarded the distinction between Anglicisms and false Anglicisms. Given their importance as evidence of the particular relationships between languages, this article focuses on the use of false Anglicisms in the Spanish language of sports, which has not only adopted English words giving them new meanings and usage, but has also either imported items with an English appearance from other languages or created its own forms based on English patterns. Although these false Anglicisms, which have proven extremely popular in various European languages (not only Spanish), have frequently been used and disseminated, as some examples will prove, little attention has been paid to their differences with the English term or their non-English origin.

Las TIC al servicio del conocimiento avanzado multilingüe: la Biblioteca Digital Plurilingüe del Mediterráneo-IVITRA

Este estudio analiza la importancia de las TIC al servicio de las bibliotecas en general y, en concreto, el potencial de las bibliotecas digitales. En este trabajo se reflexiona sobre la importancia de las bibliotecas digitales no sólo como repositorios de contenidos, sino también como centros de creación de conocimiento. Se reflexiona sobre la importancia de la constitución de bibliotecas digitales especializadas en áreas culturales relacionadas y sobre el hecho de que sean multilingües, a fin de preservar los contenidos en sus lenguas originales, al tiempo que debe trabajarse con la traducción multilingüe (de y a muchas lenguas) como herramienta fundamental para la mejora de la difusión y conocimiento del patrimonio que se contiene en tales bibliotecas. En este sentido se explican las características de la Biblioteca Digital Plurilingüe del Mediterráneo-IVITRA.

Enseñando a programar: un camino directo para desarrollar el pensamiento computacional

Está ampliamente aceptado que es fundamental desarrollar la habilidad de resolver problemas. El pensamiento computacional se basa en resolver problemas haciendo uso de conceptos fundamentales de la informática. Nada mejor para desarrollar la habilidad de resolver problemas usando conceptos informáticos que una asignatura de introducción a la programación. Este trabajo presenta nuestras reflexiones acerca de cómo iniciar a un estudiante en el campo de la programación de computadores. El trabajo no detalla los contenidos a impartir, sino que se centra en aspectos metodológicos, con la inclusión de experiencias y ejemplos concretos, a la vez que generales, extensibles a cualquier enseñanza de programación. En general, aunque se van desarrollado lenguajes cada vez más cercanos al lenguaje humano, la programación de ordenadores utilizando lenguajes formales no es una materia intuitiva y de fácil comprensión por parte de los estudiantes. A la persona que ya sabe programar le parece una tarea sencilla, pero al neófito no. Es más, dominar el arte de la programación es complejo. Por esta razón es indispensable utilizar todas las técnicas y herramientas posibles que faciliten dicha labor.

De l’expressió de la percepció sensorial auditiva a l’expressió del discurs reportat. El verb sentir en català medieval (s. XIII–XVI)

This study analyzes the process of semantic change by which the Old Catalan verb sentir developed from a meaning based on general perception to one implying auditory perception. In particular, the article shows that by the end of the 13th century the verb sentir had only semanticized the perception of non-linguistic auditory stimuli and had not fused completely with the meaning of the verb oir, as was the case with the evolution of SĔNTĪRE in other Romance languages (such as Peninsular Spanish). Our study has been based on data analysis of an electronic linguistic corpus using the concepts of E. C. Traugott’s Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC) (2012) and the concept of evidentiality.

Social Changes Reflected in Specialized Languages: Lexical Re-/deconstruction in Lesbian Studies

One of the most important factors of recognition, belonging and identification in scientific communities is their specialized language: doctors, mathematicians and anthropologists feel they are part of a group with which they can interact because they share a common “language”. While ideology is present in all academic registers, it is in human sciences where its presence (or absence) leads to more visible linguistic phenomena. An interesting example is that of lesbian studies: as non-heterosexual members of society have become less stigmatized, lesbian studies have developed a language of their own. In our paper, we shall explore the mechanisms used in the creation of specific vocabulary in this academic area, paying special attention to the refashioning or deconstruction of meaning of established terms as a result of changes in social perception or the challenging of pre-determined meanings.