Global UNAM Weekly News NL27
LIGIA PÉREZ CRUZ CONCLUDES HER SERVICE AT THE AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
After years of promoting geosciences at UNAM and throughout developing nations, Ligia Pérez Cruz, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics, has completed her second term as International Secretary of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
As UNAM’s Coordinator of Oceanographic Platforms, Pérez Cruz remarked that the AGU unites 62,000 members from 120 countries, forming the world’s largest community of Earth and space scientists. These members work together to tackle global challenges and provide solutions to benefit humanity and the environment.
Celebrating 15 Years of UNAM’s Climate Change Research Program
On April 13, 2010, UNAM established the Climate Change Research Program (PINCC), an initiative designed to promote cutting-edge research on climate change through a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach, aimed at generating knowledge to inform decision-making.
As a university program, one of its core missions is to engage the government and society in climate science by convening, integrating, and coordinating UNAM’s efforts and resources related to this global phenomenon, explained Francisco Estrada Porrúa, Coordinator of the PINCC.
Pope Francis Brought the Church Closer to the Vulnerable
In his first public greeting as Pope Francis on Wednesday, March 13, 2013, from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Argentina, 1936) used the opening words of his speech to make a clear statement of principles and outline the direction his papacy would take in reaching out to the faithful.
According to Jorge Eugenio Traslosheros Hernández from the Institute of Historical Research (IIH), “Pope Francis’s style is unique—his personality, his way of being. He was the bishop who rode the subway in Buenos Aires, a man with a great sense of humor who never took himself too seriously.”
Spanish: The Second Most Spoken Native Language in the World
Today, approximately 600 million people worldwide speak Spanish, including native speakers, learners, and bilingual individuals. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world by native speakers, with 485 million, only behind Mandarin Chinese.
Leticia Colín Salazar, a researcher at the Juan M. Lope Blanch Center for Hispanic Linguistics at UNAM’s Institute of Philological Research (IIFl), explained this and clarified, “Although there are about 1.4 billion English speakers worldwide, only 26% of them are native speakers, whereas in Spanish, that percentage rises to 87%.”
Vargas Llosa Taught Us That Literature is the Arena of Total Freedom: Rosa Beltrán
“Those who doubt that literature, in addition to immersing us in the dream of beauty and happiness, warns us against all forms of oppression, should ask themselves why all regimes bent on controlling citizens’ behavior from cradle to grave fear it so much that they establish censorship systems to suppress it and closely monitor independent writers.”
These are the words spoken by writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who passed away on April 13, as he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to this prestigious award, he won the Cervantes Prize in 1994, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 1986, the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Prize in 1999, and the Rómulo Gallegos International Literature Prize in 1967.
