JUNE 2014 • ISSUE 9
ISSN 2306-0735
I D E A S
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U N I V E R S I TY
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EDITION
With you
wherever
www.um.edu.mt/think
THINK
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CONTENTS
ISSUE
10
In Games we Trust
J U N E
9 2014
SPECIAL
The Gaming Issue
SIREN, education, and a board
game history in this special focus
G
ames will soon become a $100 billion industry. Together with this boom, game research has grown and
pushed game development forward. This issue focuses on some research happening at the University of
Malta celebrating the launch of the Institute of Digital Games,
and how games are being used to engage students (pg. 10) and
resolve conflicts like bullying (pg. 19).
Another story (pg. 30) talks about how ecologist Prof. Patrick
J. Schembri made it in Malta back in the 80s when University
had less than nothing. By adapting his research from deep sea
to Malta’s coast in order to reduce costs he managed to uncover some amazing species. He has now gone back to the deep
sea working with a host of people to uncover coral reefs and
missing snails.
Maestro Carmelo Pace was one of Malta’s most prolific
composers. With over 500 works under his belt, Lydia Buttigieg
found plenty to write about: from a narrow escape from death
in WWII to his greatest operas (pg. 38). Apart from music Dr Rebecca Dalli Gonzi writes about how project management can
apply to every facet of our life (pg. 24).
An ever growing THINK has expanded its fun section
(pg. 48–53) to include board game reviews. It is covering books,
technology, film, a comic strip by Dr Ġorġ Mallia, a 100 word idea
to change Malta, and a Fact or Fiction section. Don’t forget to
send in your questions to think@um.edu.mt
THINK has also gone online on www.um.edu.mt/think
After a year of development we are very proud to launch these
stories for everyone to read wherever you go and on any device.
We hope you enjoy it and please do let us know what you think.
30
EDITOR
edward.duca@um.edu.mt
@DwardD
A life studying life
From catsharks to coral, over 30 years
studying Malta's coasts and sea
38
FEATURE
The Unheard Maestro
The life of one of Malta's greatest
composers, Maestro Carmelo Pace
44
Edward Duca
FEATURE
ALUMNI
Alumni Talk
Career advice from
Malta's high achievers
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS
Dr Ing. Alexia Pace
Kiomall
Prof. Sally McClean
Cassi Camilleri
Prof. Liberato Camilleri
Vanessa Camilleri
Prof. Matthew
Montebello
Prof. Alexiei Dingli
Leonard Busuttil
ISSUE
8
Ashley Davis
Prof. Rilla Khaled
Prof. Georgios N.
Yannakakis
Prof. Carmel Cassar
Dr George Cassar
Dr Rebecca Dalli Gonzi
Dr Joseph Spiteri
Prof. Patrick J. Schembri
Lydia Buttigieg
Costantino Oliva
Krista Bonello Rutter
Giappone
Prof. Gordon Calleja
Dr Ġorġ Mallia
Dr Kenneth Scerri
Mario Cachia
OPINION
Bridging the Gap
Dr Ing. Alexia Pace Kiomall about
University's open doors to industry
12
David Chircop
J U N E
9 2014
GAMING
The School of Games
Can games teach or are
they just a waste of time?
19
GAMING
Why so serious?
The SIREN project tackles
conflict in schoolchildren
FEATURED ARTIST
24
FEATURE
Plan to Live
How to project manage your life
Christine Rösch
I am a German illustrator based in Berlin.
I studied in Germany and at the Bezalel
University in Jerusalem. I have been working on
children’s books as well as for magazines and
newspapers such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung
and The International New York Times.
So I hope you enjoy the cover!
www.christineroesch.de
Are you a student, staff, or researcher at the University of Malta? Would you like
to contribute to THINK magazine? If interested, please get in touch to discuss
your article on think@um.edu.mt or call +356 2340 3451
56
CULTURE GENES
Meme
CONTENTS
COVER
STUDENTS
4
Students' thinking
The cover is the work of German
illustrator Christine Rösch who
contacted the Design Team
after reading the previous
magazine online. THINK gladly
commissioned her to design artwork
for this Gaming issue. Her design is
inspired by the phenomenon of using
games for education.
About robots, bacterial conservation,
3DTV, and durable aluminium
OPINION
9
Well-being for all
through E-health
Prof. Sally McClean on how
technology can help us all have
better healthcare
THINK
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U N I V E R S I TY
JUNE 2014 - ISSUE 9
EDITORIAL
GAMING
Rise of the Ancients
17
Edward Duca EDITOR
DESIGN
Jean Claude Vancell
A short history of board games
COPY-EDITING
THINK is a quarterly research magazine published by the Communications & Alumni Relations Office at the University of Malta
Daphne Pia Deguara
PRINTING
Print It Printing Services, Malta
ISSN 2306-0735
Copyright © University of Malta, 2014
CULTURE
Multicultural Valletta
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The right of the University of Malta to be identified as Publisher of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Act, 2001.
University of Malta, Msida, Malta
Tel: (356) 2340 2340
Fax: (356) 2340 2342
www.um.edu.mt
The melting pot of the
Mediterranean
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the
purpose of research and review, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for
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time of going to press. However the publisher has no responsibility for the
websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the
content is or will remain appropriate.
FUN
Which tablet?
51
From tech reviews to books,
we cover it all
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have
been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to include
any necessary credits in any subsequent issues.
FIND US ONLINE
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RESEARCH
54
Students for Research
A great new idea to help students
contribute towards research
www.twitter.com/thinkuom
www.youtube.com/user/ThinkUni
www.issuu.com/thinkuni
3
Student
students’
THINKing
From 3DTV to using bacteria for buildings preservation,
students are researching it all
Robot Maps, Robot Moves,
Robot Avoids
ROBOTICS is a cornerstone for
this century’s innovations. From robot
nurses to your own personal assistant,
most robots need to know: ‘where is it?’
‘Where should it go?’ And ‘how to get
there?’ Without answers to these questions a robot cannot do much.
Claire Farrugia (supervised by Dr
Marvin Bugeja) developed an algorithm that allows the robot to move
on its own and build a map of its environment while continuously estimating
its location within this map. A system
known as Active-SLAM (Simultaneous
Localization and Mapping), allows the
robot to explore an area on its own by
mapping its surroundings and figuring
out where it is. This system is more efficient than previous systems (regular
SLAM) where the robot is moved manually with a joystick.
Farrugia focused on answering how
a robot gets from point A to B, which
is more complicated than it sounds.
The robot needs to map its area, avoid
obstacles, and steer away from obstacles
placed in its path — like a human on a
stroll.Farrugia used a two-wheeled ro-
4
bot which could sense its surroundings
with an on-board laser (LIDAR) and
sonar. She combined the ultrasound and
laser data to make a more accurate map
and for the robot to pinpoint its own
position on it.
The robot then needs to decide where
it wants to go. Once it has decided, it
needs to plan its path around any obstacles to get there.
To make the robot move safely
around the lab on its own, Farrugia built
the D*Lite algorithm, which helps a robot move towards its destination in the
shortest distance, while dodging obstacles quickly to return to its original path.
Farrugia could follow the robot’s movement using a custom-built software
package that let her command the robot
to whichever destination she desired.
Algorithms like Farrugia’s, that allow robots to explore areas on their
own steam, are necessary for robots
that need to go to areas that are risky
or expensive for people to go. Robots
that can plan flights or map abandoned
underground mines and deep seas have
already been developed.
•
Claire Farrugia
A working graphical user interface on MATLAB.
User chooses start point and end point and the
shortest path is computed. Commands are then
sent to the robot so that it follows this path.
Main picture: The Mobile Robot used by Farrugia, the
PowerBot™
This research was performed as part of
the course in Bachelor of Engineering
(Hons) within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Malta. It was
presented at the IET Present Around
the World (PATW) Competition 2014
organised annually by the Malta Group
of Professional Engineering Institutions
(MGPEI).
THINK Student
Local limestone covered by a calcite layer left naturally by bacteria.
Arrows show hollow calcite cylinders previously occupied by bacteria.
Healing Stone...
by infection
RODERICK MICALLEF has
a long family history within the construction industry. He coupled this
passion with a fascination with science
when reading for an undergraduate degree in Biology and Chemistry (University of Malta). To satisfy both loves, he
studied the chemical makeup and physical characteristics of Malta’s Globigerina Limestone.
Micallef (supervised by Dr Daniel
Vella and Prof. Alfred Vella) evaluated how fire or heat chemically change
limestone. Stone heated between
150˚C and 450˚C developed a red colour. Yellow coloured iron (III) minerals
such as goethite (FeOOH) had been
dehydrated to red coloured hematite
(Fe2O3). If the stone was heated above
450˚C it calcified leading to a white
colour. This colour change can help a
forensic fire investigator quickly figure
out the temperature a stone was exposed to in a fire — an essential clue on
the fire’s nature.
While conducting this research, Micallef came across an Italian study that
had concluded that different strains of
heterotrophic bacteria can consolidate
concrete and stone. Locally, Dr Gabrielle Zammit had shown that this process
was happening on ancient limestone surfaces (Zammit et al., 2011). These bacteria have the potential to act as bio-consolidants and Micallef wanted to study
if they could be used to reinforce the
natural properties of local limestone and
protect against weathering.
Such a study is crucial in a day and
age where the impact of man on our
natural environment is becoming central to scientific research. The routine
application of conventional chemical
consolidants to stone poses an envi-
Roderick Micallef
ronmental threat through the release
of both soluble salt by-products and
peeled shallow hard crusts caused by
incomplete binding of stone particles.
Natural bio-consolidation could prove
to be an efficient solution for local application and is especially important
since Globigerina Limestone is our
only natural resource.
•
This research is part of an Master of
Science in Cross-Disciplinary Science at
the Faculty of Science of the University
of Malta, supervised by microbiologist
Dr Gabrielle Zammit, and chemists
Dr Daniel Vella and Prof. Emmanuel
Sinagra. The research project is
funded by the Master it! Scholarship
scheme, which is part-funded by the
EU’s European Social Fund under
Operational Programme II — Cohesion
Policy 2007–2013.
THINK in collaboration with The Zone | Check out guest writer video interviews on The Zone at timesofmalta.com
5
Student
<180�
Ar
bit
rar
yv
iew
are
a
N original camera views
Maverick Hili
Making 3D multi-view TV a reality
RESEARCH IN 3DTV has
been active for the past decades. Its
popularity is growing rapidly driven
by market forces and new technologies that are bringing down costs enabling a more widespread distribution.
Normal 3D video uses only one camera
to generate two video streams for each
eye. Multi-view video allows the viewer to choose which angle they want to
watch (pictured).
Multi-view video needs to process
huge amounts of data since it needs to
transmit many different camera angles
of the same scene. If the 3D videos are
being streamed in real time, the processing power needs grow even further.
To reduce computer processing the
multi-view plus depth concept was in-
6
troduced. Using this idea not all the alternative videos are used. Instead a few
are selected and the angles in between
are filled using sophisticated computer
algorithms. The challenge with this approach is to generate high quality videos at different angles whilst keeping
the amount of data transmitted as low
as possible.
To attempt to overcome these problems, Maverick Hili (supervised by Dr
Ing. Reuben Farrugia) analysed the
current state-of-the-art video coding
standard called H.264. The idea is to
compress the amount of data which is
transmitted without losing video quality. To achieve a better compression,
the depth information in a video was
represented with a few parameters. The
receiver then has to use these parameters to reconstruct the original depth
information. Hili managed to improve
compression using this technique, an
important step to be able to stream live
3D video into our homes.
•
This research was performed as part of
Masters in Telecommunications within
the Faculty of ICT at the University of
Malta. It was partially funded by the
Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship (Malta). This Scholarship is
part-financed by the European Union
— European Social Fund (ESF) under
Operational Programme II — Cohesion
Policy 2007–2013, “Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality
Of Life”.
THINK Student
Wear Resistant Aluminium
Dr Clayton D’Amato
The aluminium alloy viewed at high magnification under a Scanning Electron Microscopy. Images of a surface laser alloyed using Ni-Ti-C: (Left) Optical
micrograph of an alloyed layer's cross-section (right)
ALUMINIUM ALLOYS have
a low density and are easy to make.
These qualities make them popular
in the transport industry which can
range from cars to planes. A low density
makes them perfect to reduce weight in
large metal structures. Unfortunately
due to poor wear resistance, aluminium
alloys can deteriorate quickly which severely limits their applications.
Dr Clayton D’Amato (supervised
by Dr John C. Betts and Dr Joseph
Buhagiar) modified the surface of an
aluminium alloy (called A356) to overcome such limitations by improving
wear resistance. D’Amato used a high
power industrial CO2 laser to rapidly
melt specific regions of the alloy’s surface. He simultaneously introduced
additional alloying elements in the
melt pool, which mix with the base
metal to form new compounds that
reinforce the soft aluminium surface.
In this way, he formed a strong composite modified surface. Additional experimentation allowed D’Amato to reduce
the loss of material due to wear by about
20 times. He optimised the conditions
needed to laser process the surface of
the aluminium in a uniform and repeatable manner. Adding nickel increased
surface hardness 7-fold due to formation of aluminium-nickel compounds.
Additional strength was achieved by
adding hard ceramics to this aluminium-nickel structure. D’Amato created
fine titanium carbide (TiC) particles
in a matrix structure (pictured) by alloying a mixture of nickel, titanium and
carbon (Ni-Ti-C). Aluminium treated
in this way was much stronger.
The exact hardness was related to the
mix of alloying elements in the modified surfaces. Hardness improved wear
resistance, with large improvements in
both surfaces alloyed with nickel and
Ni-Ti-C. They lost 20 times less material than normal aluminium preventing
severe damage.
Using a high powered laser allows
improved wear resistance just where
needed. This saves costs and increas-
es versatility. The above technique
could be used to manufacture aircraft
pump parts, fittings and control parts,
and in automotive water-cooled cylinder blocks.
•
This research was performed as part
of a Ph.D. in Engineering within the
Faculty of Engineering at the University of Malta. It was partially funded
by the Strategic Educational Pathways
Scholarship (Malta). This Scholarship
is part-financed by the European Union
— European Social Fund (ESF) under
Operational Programme II — Cohesion
Policy 2007–2013, “Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality
Of Life”. The laser processing equipment
used in this project was financed by the
4th Italian protocol whilst the characterisation equipment was financed by
the European Regional Fund (ERDF)
through the project “Developing an Interdisciplinary Material Testing and
Rapid Prototyping R&D Facility (Ref.
no. 012)”.
7
Opinion
Bridging
the Gap
Dr Ing. Alexia Pace Kiomall
M
y career has taken me
from industry to research, with a 3-year
stint as a business consultant, and EU and
local fund evaluator for R&D projects.
Now I am back at university managing
the consultancy, laboratory services,
and training business within the Malta University Consulting Ltd (MUC).
The University of Malta (UoM) encourages its staff to engage in activities
like these through the MUC. Through
this article I hope to encourage UoM
staff and outside entities to meet us to
talk about their opportunities.
The MUC is one of the subsidiary
companies of the UoM that we are revamping. Our new office is located on
Campus in the same building as the
Knowledge Transfer Office and the
Business Incubator TakeOff. Our doors
are always open for both academic and
technical staff, as well as industry and
public entities.
Having carried out research at the
UoM and visited foreign research organisations, I have witnessed the UoM
develop into a hub of knowledge, resources, and excellence competitive
with research institutes abroad. Staff
members have expertise in a wide range
of areas and can offer technical, educational, business, and scientific advice.
Expertise ranges from environment and
energy, to sciences, education, engineer-
8
ing, ICT, finance, health sciences, and
other areas. The quality of the work is
highly professional and competes very
well with international levels.
The MUC’s role is to facilitate staff
by taking care of the administrative,
financial, legal and marketing issues
related to networking with industry,
allowing them to do what they are best
at: deliver the expertise efficiently. Staff
and entities are given support to find
opportunities and set up teams of experts when projects are multidisciplinary. Projects are managed from their
inception to closure — from the preparation of proposals and submission
I have witnessed
the UoM develop
into a hub of
knowledge,
resources, and
excellence
competitive
with research
institutes abroad
of quotes to chasing deliverables and
deadlines. The MUC helps with contract negotiation and legal document
preparation for the necessary agreements. It provides insurance coverage
and manages the issuing of invoices,
and securing and processing payments.
Over the past nine months, with my
new role at the MUC, we have been
working with a number of local public
entities and SMEs (Small to Medium
Enterprises) on a number of projects.
We have worked on small one-off services that require biological, physical,
mechanical, and electrical laboratory
tests and larger longer-term projects
such as chemical tests with the pharmaceutical industry. Contract research and
consultancy projects are generally bigger projects involving teams of experts.
We have been involved in projects in
the telecommunications, ICT, education, renewable energy, and electronics
industries. We also organise Continuous Professional Development (CPD)
courses such as digital gaming, Horizon
2020 EU funding, and e-marketing.
We can do much more than we are doing. Our vision is to keep growing slowly
but steadily involving other members
of staff and other entities. Do contact
us — our doors are always open.
•
Dr Ing. Alexia Pace Kiomall can be contacted on alexia.pacekiomall@muhc.
com.mt or 2340 8903
THINK Opinion
Well-being for all
through E-health
Prof. Sally McClean
E
-health uses electronic processes and communications
to enhance healthcare. The
aim is to improve patient care,
reduce costs, and empower patients to work towards maintaining their
own well-being.
To work e-health needs a lot of data
about patients. This health data is also
crucial to discovering new drugs and
improving patient care. Using specialised devices and telemedicine, a wide
range of conditions can be monitored
at home. Smartphones can process the
information and transmit it to healthcare professionals and/or patients.
Using e-health, conditions can be
monitored continuously providing real-time monitoring of the condition
and its treatment.
For the full potential of e-health to
be realised electronic health records
need to be linked to other information,
like images and text. This combined
knowledge then needs to be distributed
through a cloud service, so that a patient
or doctor can see it immediately. Genetic
profile and socio-economic factors can
also be included to provide improved
diagnoses and health predictions. In addition, approaches such as data mining
offer exciting research opportunities.
Data mining can help identify more effective treatments, improve drug safety,
reduce risk, and better public health
systems. E-health can improve how diseases develop and disabilities are spread
throughout different populations.
Assistive technology can be provided
through an intelligent healthcare device.
These devices include a dispenser that
might text you to remind you to take
your pills — especially useful for patients with memory problems. If the patient does not take their medication after multiple reminders, the system could
automatically alert a family member or
carer. This could prove a lifesaver for
patients with depression or dementia.
Through relatively simple technology,
patients can take care of themselves at
home, reducing the burden on hospitals.
At the University of Ulster we have
been researching e-health solutions for
decades. It ranges from cloud computer systems for ‘big’ healthcare data to
home-sensor based reminder systems
for Alzheimer’s patients. We have also
worked with designers to embed sensors
into clothing designed to help older people become more active outdoors. Our
focus has been to developed new algorithms (computer programmes that do a
specific task) to analyse data collected by
a system of devices. What we learn from
these algorithms can be used to adapt the
environment to take better care of the patient. Such feedback is essential to make
the technology seamlessly integrate with
a patient’s needs and preferences. Feedback could either be through an audio
prompt or transmit an alert to a carer
indicating that assistance is required. The
research opportunities are endless.
In Malta, the University of Malta is well
placed to leverage research opportunities
for local solutions. Key components are
already in place in several faculties, where
the focus on Communications and Intelligent Computer Systems is particularly
relevant to Malta, with a number of ongoing e-health research projects.
E-health provides business opportunities for the private sector. It can take
academic research and use it to develop
new technologies, deploy it, or manage
it. For example in Northern Ireland
there has been a huge interest in developing these business opportunities
by creating awareness among investors.
This investment can bring improved
health and well-being, while supporting
economic development. Such developments could be relevant to Malta which
is similar to Northern Ireland in having
a geographically peripheral location
within Europe, an integrated healthcare system, and a technically skilled
workforce. Due to its objective of establishing a regional hub for a knowledge-based and ICT-enabled economy,
SmartCity Malta could be well placed
to bring together the research expertise
of the University of Malta and businesses. Together they could advance Malta’s
healthcare for everyone.
•
Prof. Sally McClean is a Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Ulster
(Belfast, Northern Ireland), and participated in the 2013, Workshop in Information and Communication Technology
(WICT) organised by the Faculty of ICT
at the University of Malta.
9
THINK Gaming
Illustration by Christine Rösch
O
n 5th May 1951 the Nim game
playable on the NIMROD
computer was unveiled. Nim
is a mathematical strategy game inspired by games
from ancient China. Since then the computer gaming industry is predicted to top
over $100 billion by 2017 according to
Digi-Capital’s Global Games Industry Review, mostly due to mobile gaming. This
value is well over 10 times the entire Maltese economy.
In Malta, worldwide online gambling
companies have a strong foothold, but
Malta is going far beyond iGambling. Recently, the Institute of Digital Games has
been launched, great indie games produced locally are starting to surface (see
Issue 7 pg. 30 of THINK for an excellent
example), and the Government launched
a Malta Digital Games Fund. The Islands
seem to be a great cauldron for a burgeoning gaming market that can reach
the whole world — as always, dependant
on the right support from academia, industry, and Government.
To celebrate, THINK magazine is running three features on gaming research.
Freelance writer Cassi Camilleri met with
the gamED team at the Faculties of ICT and
Education (University of Malta). This team
is using games as an educational tool.
Games can go far beyond entertainment.
Student David Chircop wrote a short and
sweet history of board games; games are
not just digital even today — think about
Monopoly or Dungeons and Dragons. David’s history goes much deeper into the
subject discussing the American and European style of board games. Ashley Davis,
from the Institute of Digital Games at the
University of Malta, wrote about Village
Voices. Village Voices is a serious game
that tries to teach children how to resolve
conflicts such as bullying through fun and
discussions. The game is the product of the
SIREN project, an EU-funded consortium
from six different countries that won a Serious Game Award in 2013.
The Institute of Digital Games is a great
success story for the University. It managed to attract some of the best game researchers from all over the world and external funds that amount to over a million
Euro. It has also brought together many
different faculties and departments from
the University since game research is an
amazing interdisciplinary subject including the social sciences, humanities, ICT,
biology, and engineering. Game research
has many different approaches and can
include building games that use devices
that detect human emotions, the reason
why we cheat, or making learning fun.
Apart from pushing gaming research
forward, the Institute is bringing together
game companies, Government and academia. Till now its graduates have always
found employment quickly, while game
nights and competitions regularly bring
people together. A career in games can
range from academic research, to journalism, to game developer, to 2D illustration
or artwork. THINK’s focus just gives a
flavour of the rich gaming world that goes
far beyond World of Warcraft.
•
11
THE
SCHOOL
OF GAMES
I
Cassi Camilleri
12
n The Histories, Herodotus tells the
story of King Atys of Lydia in Asia
Minor, whose realm was ravaged by
a devastating drought 3000 years
ago; one which left his people suffering under a great famine. The Lydians blindly accepted the situation and
ploughed on, hoping that the terrible
drought would pass but it did not. Desperate for a solution to remedy their
misfortune, the Lydians came up with
an unconventional plan — to engage in
games. For one whole day, the people of
Lydia devoted themselves whole-heartedly to games, so they forgot about being hungry. The next day they ate, and
on the following, they returned to their
games. In this way 18 years of famine
passed and in the meantime, the people
of Lydia invented dice, ball, and many
other popular games.
While the truth behind this story
is questionable, at its core is an essential truth about games. Games provide
an escape from reality, but that escape is a purposeful one. The Lydians
used games to escape the famine that
gripped their land. In that same way,
people now use games to achieve the
engagement they long for; an engagement which the world, for whatever
reason, fails to provide. As Jane McGonigal says in her book Reality is Broken,
‘we are starving and our games are feeding us’.
Just a few years ago, the phrase ‘to
know something’ often referred to
retaining and reciting information.
Knowledge was synonymous with recollection of content, be it history, science, literature, or any other subject.
Today, that meaning has changed dras-
THINK Gaming
In ancient times games played an integral role in
society. Whilst in today’s hyperlinked world, games
have evolved into complex, sophisticated mechanisms
that enthral millions. Now, however, games are
dismissed as trivial, and of no real value. But is this
really the case? Cassi Camilleri meets the research
team gamED from the University of Malta to find out
tically to problem solving: the ability to
locate information, analyse it, and apply
it successfully to find solutions.
This shift has brought with it obvious changes to society, especially when
it comes to training and education.
The focus in any course should now lie
with teaching higher order skills such as
critical thinking, problem solving, and
innovation. According to the research
group gamED — games naturally support this kind of learning.
Made up of Prof. Matthew Montebello, Prof. Alexiei Dingli, and Prof.
Liberato Camilleri, together with Vanessa Camilleri and Leonard Busuttil,
gamED is a group from the Faculties of
Education and ICT at the University of
Malta who came together back in 2007
thanks to a mutual passion for video
games. This shared fascination with the
medium and its capabilities inspired
them to look into its vast potential. Together they now share a vision that sees
games being used for much more than
just entertainment. They also educate
and empower people in Maltese society.
Their main goal is to harness the
positive aspects of games, to direct the
attention games enjoy from users towards a more productive outcome. By
using games in education and training,
learning can be greatly facilitated and
enhanced. Games can help students
achieve much more than the traditional
pen and paper educational system could
ever provide.
One of their most recent studies, due
to be published in the coming months,
is the first report on video game usage
in Malta. Funded by the Malta Communications Authority, it investigates
the trends and patterns in digital game
play on the island through a representative population sample. This report has
strengthened the team’s resolve with
its promising results that indicate that
their ultimate goal is not pie in the sky.
According to the study, 74% of Maltese people aged between 3 and 55
play digital or video games. Of these
53% play every single day and 20% will
play for more than an hour. There is
no doubt about it — the consumption
of video games in Malta is widespread.
This statement also extends to children,
whose engagement with games is almost across the board with 98% of the
country’s parents saying that they allow
their children to play games.
The conclusion easily drawn from
these findings is that Malta holds the
perfect conditions to effectively »
13
implement games as part of its training and educational systems. Serious
games are the answer. Serious games are
designed to teach a particular skill or
behaviour, or to raise awareness about
a subject, motivating users by providing
challenge, curiosity, control, and fantasy.
Their inherently scaffolded structure
— a trait present in all games — delivers learning/teaching at the time it is
needed as well as continuous feedback
during play, allowing users to develop
‘mastery’ of a skill. These games create a
compelling need to know, ask, examine,
assimilate and master certain skills and
content areas. Some experts argue that
games are, first and foremost, learning
systems and that this accounts for the
sense of engagement and entertainment
players experience. In his book Fun Inc.
Chatfield agrees, stating that games
without learning or skill acquisition fail
as the ‘result will soon be boredom’.
As Vanessa Camilleri explains, the
effectiveness of serious games has already been proven. She points to the
medical field as a major success story
where serious games have been developed to impart specific competencies
to future doctors. But these games have
also been used by the UN World Food
Programme to educate people about
the causes, effects, and solutions to
famine in developing nations. Even Renault has used them to raise awareness
on eco-driving. The application of this
technology is endless.
Sadly, the journey towards meaningful engaged learning in Malta has not
been straightforward. The challenges
will be a steep mountain to climb in the
years ahead.
14
The moment
students started
seeing the tasks
as fun, they also
stopped seeing
them as part of the
learning process,
“It was not serious
enough to be
learning”
gamED have run various experiments,
attempting to implement games within
training and educational structures. The
results, for the most part were considerable, but one thing became clear — it
will take time for people to subscribe to
this concept.
Although not under gamED umbrella, the first attempt saw Camilleri working with 100 pre-service teachers as part
of her doctorate on virtual worlds and
serious games. The practical application
of the study involved the use of serious
games in an immersive virtual world to
teach about educational technologies.
The students’ course took place exclusively online. Presentations were made
in the virtual world, papers were submitted through the portal, meetings
also took place there and, as time wore
on, the world became populated by the
students’ own work.
Camilleri reports that there was an initial resistance to the idea. The universi-
Leonard Busuttil
Prof. Alexiei Dingli
Prof. matthew Montebello
Vanessa Camilleri
Prof. Liberato Camilleri
Gaming
ty students felt uncomfortable with this
new method of working. They found it
shocking and confusing since they had
no previous experience of learning inside a virtual world. However, despite
the hurdles, the study went on and at
the end gave an amazing response. Participants were interacting and producing vast amount of work at a fast pace,
engaging with the virtual world and the
content within. But as the experiment
progressed the interaction started to
taper and perceptions began to change.
The moment students started seeing the
tasks as fun, they also stopped seeing
them as equal parts of the learning process. ‘They were no longer deemed serious enough to constitute real learning’,
Camilleri said. Looking back on this
experience, Prof. Montebello points out
that the lack of ‘chalk and talk’ made
the students nervous. Being online and
in the virtual world meant that ‘it was
not real’.
This happened again on another
occasion when gamED introduced a
game called Quest Atlantis from the
University of Indiana at a private, independent school to children between
9 and 15. Used worldwide to teach
concepts as diverse as physics, biology, and creative writing, this was a
prime example of what serious games
should be. Provided with their own
accounts children were asked to play.
Once again, the response was overwhelmingly positive with the children
completing their tasks successfully and
diligently. However, during the subsequent interviews, the idea of replacing books with the game was not well
received. Students plainly told the »
THINK Gaming
98%
74%
53%
20%
of parents said that they allow
their children to play games
of Maltese people aged between 3 and 55
play digital or video games
of the population play every single day
play more than an hour every day
15
Gaming
An immersive virtual world was used to teach 100 pre-service
teachers about educational technologies
group the move would not be possible. ‘This is fun but we do this at
home — this is not learning.’
This experience confirmed the very
perception gamED keeps trying to alter — ‘for some, a game is a game. The
older generation grew up with the idea
that video games were solely for leisure
and that has now been taken on by the
younger generation’, said Prof. Dingli.
Vanessa Camilleri confirms that in Malta, our perception of learning is very
linear requiring lessons, books, homework, and eventually an exam. But this
could be argued to be ‘a very superficial way of looking at things’ and also
highlights something of a paradox very
common in Maltese society. People call
for change but when concrete steps are
taken to that effect there is an immediate push-back from all sides. Camilleri
agrees, ‘Maltese society is not yet ready
for such a massive change’.
For most educators, implementing serious games is a daunting task. Change
tends to put many out of their comfort
zone. GamED has observed that in
many institutions, the set curriculum
is followed literally to the letter rather
than interpreted and expanded to make
it more engaging and flexible.
But the situation is far from hopeless.
GamED’s latest attempt to bring serious
games to the public has gone a step further than previous efforts. Part of the
ICT students’ coursework has been to
devise serious games to raise awareness
on the importance of blood donation.
Working with the Mater Dei Hospital’s
blood transfusion unit, gamED will
provide the best games produced for
the unit as part of a national campaign.
Clearly, as the impact of games continues to be studied and analysed,
change will inevitably follow.
16
Camilleri sees a bright future ahead
for serious games, ‘In future, I see more
efforts being made. I also see parents
changing their perceptions, becoming
more open to the idea of games used as
a tool to educate. This happens especially as the gamers of today grow up and
become parents themselves.’
Prof. Dingli points to the budding
games industry in Malta and the government’s plans to launch a gaming incubator. He hopes it will attract to the
industry young minds who could bring
new ideas on the effective application of
games in society.
Prof. Montebello urges government
entities such as Malta’s Employment
and Training Centre (ETC) to get on
board. By pushing serious games as part
of employability training, they will
more likely be accepted by the public as
part of the educational system.
To drive the movement ahead,
gamED is now preparing for the conference VS-Games 2014. To kick off
in September, the conference targets
This is about creating
cultural shift — a
global one. Industry,
political policy,
education and the
members of society,
as varied as they
are... they all have
to work together to
make it happen
cross-disciplinary communities with
emphasis on virtual worlds and games
for serious applications. Getting the
relevant players together to discuss the
way forward at this stage is crucial.
Raising awareness of the untapped
potential the medium holds should
bring in some much needed investment. Finance is needed for serious
games (a price tag that is presently
out of reach for Malta) and to build
the right courses. Professionals need
to learn to use them effectively in various fields.
Camilleri states that ‘for serious
games to become part of Maltese education and training, an all-round effort
is needed. This is not about a group of
game fans trying to convince a country that their views are correct. This
is about creating a brighter, more engaging future for future generations.
A cultural shift is in order — a global
one. Industry, political policy, education, and the members of society must
rally and work together to make it
happen. History has proven time and
time again that such a task will not be
easy. But it has also proven that it can
be done.’
•
FURTHER READING
• McGonigal, J., (2011). Reality is broken: Why Games Make us Better and
How They Can Change the World.
London: Penguin Group.
• Eljamalic, S., Fahlib, A., Mouaheba, H., & Moussetadb, M., (2012).
The Serious Game: What Educational
Benefits? In Procedia — Social and
Behavioral Sciences, Volume 46,
(pp. 5502–5508). WCES.
• Chatfield, T., (2010). Fun Inc.: Why
games are the 21st century’s most
serious business. UK: Virgin Books.
THINK Gaming
Rise of the
Ancients
David Chircop
David Chircop writes a really brief history of modern board gaming
O
ver the last two decades a
relatively new sort of board
gaming has emerged which
you might not have heard
about. ‘Hobby’ or ‘modern’ board gaming is sweeping across
the world.
In 1995 The Settlers of Catan by
Klaus Teuber changed everything. This
is the game that made many Americans realise that there is more to board
games than Cluedo and Scrabble. It was
family friendly, easy to get into, had a
lovely trading mechanic and modular
board which changed every time you
played it.
Isn’t 1995 late? The ‘Spiel des Jahres’
award (basically the Oscars of Board
Games) was founded in 1978. In Germany this genre of board games had
been popular long before Settlers of
Catan broke the monopoly of Monopoly in the US. Board games go back much
further. In 2200 bc, in China, Go had
already been invented.
German-style games, or eurogames,
are generally regarded as one half of
the two over-arching mega-genres in
modern board gaming. These sort of
games generally feature less luck, a more
direct strategy, and less direct player interaction. Winning conditions involve
collecting victory points and the design
favours symbols over text.
The other half is the American-style,
sometimes referred to as ‘Ameritrash’.
These are generally the opposite style.
War, fighting, killing, rolling piles and
piles of dice (therefore luck), and player
elimination. »
Two different
cultures produce
a product, which
is meant to fill
the same void,
but because
of the cultural
circumstances
of the time, they
develop very
differently
17
Gaming
Common themes and styles in American-style games include dungeon
crawling (Descent, Claustrophobia), the
American Civil War (Battle Cry), and
World War II (Memoir 44).
German-style games, on the other
hand, tend to have more ‘European’
cultural influences. For example, colonisation of the Americas or medieval
farming are common themes (Archipelago, Puerto Rico), as are diplomacy
and intrigue at the time of the Inquisition or gaining the King’s favour (Il Vecchio, Caylus).
American-style games sound similar to miniature wargaming and tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), and
are definitely inspired by these earlier
games. However, board games are different. A board game generally comes
in a box which contains everything you
need to play with a number of players
and most of the time is meant to be
18
played in one sitting. RPGs and wargaming do not follow these rules.
Interestingly, American and German-style games developed in more
or less the same period of time in two
completely different cultures. This is
comparable to the development of the
Japanese RPG and the Western RPG in
video games.
And today?
Board games are experiencing a golden
age. If you had come into the hobby a
mere five years ago, the picture was simple.
But the worldwide Indie revolution and
crowd-funding has also hit board games.
Until a few years ago a few recognisable, high profile game publishers dominated the market. Euro and American
style games were easily separated. Now,
board games are becoming less and less
of a niche hobby. New designers are
creating games that combine many different influences from past games. The
lines are being blurred. More experimental games and publishers are starting to pop up thanks to crowd-funding, and virtually anyone can publish
a game.
In Malta, one of the first locally developed modern boardgames will be
published internationally next year —
watch this magazine — and others are
in development. Exciting times.
•
David Chircop (and Yannick Massa)
topped the Board Game Geek Hotness
List for a week and won Best Board Game
award at Malta’s first Global Game Jam
held on January 24–26, 2014 at the
Institute of Digital Games, UoM. See
http://maltagamejam.com for next
year’s Game Jam or take a course at the
Institute http://game.edu.mt to learn
how to make your own game.
Illustration by Jean Claude Vancell
THINK Gaming
How do you help school children handle fights, bullying, and other conflict properly? You
build a game, of course, and you let children take on different roles in a village. But how does
that lead to resolving conflicts? Ashley Davis met researchers Prof. Rilla Khaled and
Prof. Georgios N. Yannakakis to find out more
D
o you chuckle at the
thought of a serious game?
The phrase is an oxymoron.
How can a game be serious?
Games are meant to be fun,
frivolous, a way to pass the time. Or else
you sometimes hear that games are anything but frivolous. That video game violence in particular is a threat to social
order. The idea that games can be used
to advance human understanding about
the world, and that they can help us to
teach, train, or motivate people in some
way, is something that still needs to enter our mentality.
Designing games to explore research
questions and to solve real world prob-
lems is actually a very important aspect
of games research, an area of applied
research that now has a strong presence
at the University of Malta with the establishment of the Institute of Digital
Games. Researchers from the Institute
work on European-funded projects to
create games that tackle serious problems affecting children and adults alike.
Prof. Rilla Khaled and Prof. Georgios
N. Yannakakis are two researchers now
based at the Institute of Digital Games
who work on serious game projects.
Khaled’s work focuses on serious game
design, while Yannakakis is a specialist
in artificial intelligence and computational creativity. Computational »
Ashley Davis
19
Gaming
creativity tries to build upon the latest technological innovations in human–computer interaction that enable
computers to act intelligently to some
aspects of human beings. These two areas, game design and game technology,
represent a large part of the teaching
and research strengths of the Institute.
One game that Khaled and Yannakakis recently helped develop is Village
Voices which has been voted the best
learning game in Europe at the 2013
Serious Game Awards. It was developed as part of the SIREN project, an
FP7-funded interdisciplinary consortium made up of researchers from Malta,
Greece, Denmark, Portugal, the UK
and the US, along with Serious Games
Interactive, a Danish Games Studio.
Let’s take a look at what makes a serious game and think about what made
the project a success and what didn’t
work so well.
The serious side of Village Voices
aims to help school children learn conflict resolution skills. Players take on
the role of one of four interdependent
villages that are situated in a farm setting and given various quests to complete. Sitting side-by-side at separate
computers, they may collaborate, share
resources and help each other, or they
may spread rumours and steal from
20
Screenshot taken from
Village Voices
Village Voices
has been voted
the best learning
game in Europe
at the 2013
Serious Game
Awards
each other. Much like any playground
setting, children can play nicely, or they
can be bullies.
The purpose of the SIREN project
was to apply the latest advancements
in game technology to the creation
of serious games. The brief focused
on innovations in procedural content
generation, an area of artificial intelligence that automatically builds game
elements like game levels or quest structures that would otherwise need to be
designed manually. Another part of
this innovative technology is detecting
the emotions of players. Physiological
responses can be measure through various tech like Electroencephalographic
(EEG) sensors that can be used to detect a person’s emotional state directly
by reading their brain’s electrical signals.
Virtual agents were another technology
that interested the research team. These
agents are believable non-player characters that interact with the player with
perceived intelligence.
The idea was to then create a game that
would adapt to player behaviour, using
emotion recognition tools to create an
individual experience for each player. The
decision to focus the game on teaching
children about conflict resolution came
later. Rather than to create a game about
bullying behaviour, which is what a lot of
people think of when they picture conflict between children, the research team
wanted to explore the kinds of everyday
conflicts that take place in school-yards.
Friendship disputes, differences in opinion, and arguments over the possession
of classroom items might seem trivial to
adults, but they are important problems
for children for whom school is their
entire world. The SIREN consortium
envisioned a game where players could
experience and resolve conflicts in a dynamic setting.
THINK Gaming
Some people who make serious
games say that the serious application of
the game should take precedence over
fun. They say that serious games should
offer players a safe environment to try
out new behaviours. Khaled disagreed
with this approach to game design. ‘Serious game experiences need to feel real
and not trivial. Otherwise why would
we then use them to raise a mirror
to reality?’
Village Voices allows actions that
teachers might find surprising. Players
can be destructive in that world. They
can steal from each other. The game
gives aggressive players a noose with
which to hang themselves. Knowing
that the person whose labours you just
destroyed, or who stole the items you
were collecting, is sitting right there
next to you intensifies the game’s emotional experience. Exchanges can become heated between players. It is these
kinds of heated exchanges that often
makes games fun.
Games are usually poor at provoking
emotional responses. Village Voices does
exactly that. Khaled told me about one
session in a British classroom (the game
was tested across Europe). A female student had such an upsetting experience
that she cried. After reflecting on the
incident with her teacher, the researcher, and the other players, the girl later
returned to play again. Khaled thought
this was a breakthrough learning moment for the student.
So Village Voices is a good learning
tool, and it is also fun to play. But how
successful was the team in applying
game technologies like procedural content generation and emotion detection
to its design? Khaled said that the experience of designing a game primarily
for the purpose of testing technological
innovations was the hardest part of the
project. You might think that the role
of a game designer is to work out the
best solution to a problem given the
technologies at hand. However, when
the application of technology is the
problem, the relationship between design and technology is more complex.
Khaled said that the need to include
particular game technologies in the
design of Village Voices created a situation much like a rock band that needs
to accommodate a peripheral member,
such as a violin player. ‘While the violin player is not core to the project, the
whole project needs to be compromised
in some way in order to show off the violin player’s skills. It is not clear that the
violinist is going to help the band make
a new hit song, but it is clear he has to
be there. So the band tries to find the
violin player’s most positive qualities
because he has got to be there.’
In Village Voices, the violin player’s
best qualities are adaptive technologies
that make the player experience more
personalised. Because support for emotion detection plug-ins was never actually included in the final prototype, the
game instead asks players directly how
they feel about events in the game and
introduces variations to the player experience according to their responses.
So far we have seen that Village Voices
was successful according to the popular opinion of game-design peers at the
European Serious Games — it won an
award. We have also seen anecdotally
that it is a provocative, if not fun game,
based on the British student’s emotional response. But what does the SIREN
team think about the game?
According to Khaled, it can be difficult to implement learning games in
classroom settings, and even more difficult to properly evaluate them. Project
funding usually runs dry after around
three years, and games take most of
that time to develop. Gaining access to
schools is also difficult. The game is a
good fit for classes like social studies »
Photo by The SIREN Project
21
Gaming
You cannot sit
a child down
in front of a
computer and
hope that they
will magically
learn something
that are often held only once or twice a
week. Together with the problem of semester breaks and short evaluation periods, as well as the tendency for teachers
to have access to only a few computers
often equipped with obsolete hardware,
researchers would rarely see students engage with Village Voices over a long period of time. All these things place limitations on the design, testing, and evaluation of games for research purposes.
Rigorous evaluation is important as,
ultimately, learning games are not black
box tools. You cannot sit a child down in
front of a computer and hope that they
will magically learn something. That vital learning moment comes when players discuss their in-game experiences.
As Khaled explained, ‘Playing the game
is just half the experience. The other
half is the subsequent discussion of the
game experience.’
Given that discussion is so essential
to the evaluation process, and that it is
so difficult to get a sample of those discussions in a research setting, I asked
Khaled if it was possible to turn the discussion into a game as well, to include
it as part of the package. Khaled mentioned the meta-game, the part of the
game where a player is both playing and
watching themselves play the game. It is
in the meta-game that players achieve
the highest level of reflection. It works
well as a kind of after-game discussion,
a debriefing for players as they leave behind the conflicts of the game world and
return to the everyday life of the schoolyard; but Khaled added that of course it
could be turned into a game. Achieving
this level of reflection in the game package itself is just another challenge for the
designers of serious games.
•
The Institute of Digital Games at the
University of Malta offers word-class
postgraduate education and research in
game studies, design, and technology. The
inter-disciplinary team includes researchers from literature and media studies, design, computer science and human-computer interaction. Visit game.edu.mt
or contact Ashley Davis (ashley.davis@
um.edu.mt) for information about the
Institute’s Master of Science (taught or by
research) and Ph.D. programmes.
FURTHER READING
• Cheong, Y-G., Khaled, R., Yannakakis, G., Campos, J., Paiva, A.,
Martinho, C., Ingram, G. A Computational Approach Towards Conflict
Resolution for Serious Games (full
paper). In Proceedings of the 6th
International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games, 2011.
• Khaled, R. and Ingram, G. Tales from
the Front Lines of a Large-Scale Serious Game Project (full paper). In the
Proceedings of CHI ’12, 2012.
• Vasalou, A. and Khaled, R. Designing from the Sidelines: Design in a
Technology-Centered Serious Game
Project. In the Proceedings of the
CHI Workshop Let’s talk about Failures: Why was the Game for Children not a Success? CHI ’13, 2013.
22
THINK Culture
Multicultural
Valletta
V
alletta will be the European
Capital of Culture in 2018
and has served as the centre of multiculturalism in
Malta since its beginning.
Built soon after the victory of the Hospitaller Order of St John over the Ottoman Empire in 1565, it meant to serve
as their Fortress Convent. The knights
came from all over Europe and helped
attract people from all lifestyles. Valletta had a cosmopolitan atmosphere that
impressed itself on the character of the
city helping to enrich the country especially in creativity. The Order of St
John managed to establish a ruling system which seeped down the social scale
and gave character to the Harbour area.
The cultural magnetism of the City was
underlined by its political centrality.
Illustration by Valletta 2018, Ikona
Functioning as an administrative capital, Valletta determined the fashions
and values of the Grand Master’s court.
Similar to early modern European capitals, Valletta was a powerhouse of cultural change.
British rule in the 19th century introduced new cultural elements with
an Anglo-Saxon tone. The Royal Navy
and the numerous other ships that anchored in Valletta’s adjacent harbours
poured in many foreigners who came
for short or long stays and mingled with
the locals. This made Valletta a melting
pot of nations, cultures, tastes, values
and mentalities. Yet novelties did not
manage to destroy or replace what had
already been entrenched in the life and
fabric of the city. All it did was enrich it
further. The city put on a new dress but
Prof. Carmel Cassar
Dr George Cassar
did not renounce its soul, and the residents adapted to the new trends without forgetting their roots.
Valletta continued to grow in its multicultural mentality, a natural process
for a central Mediterranean city. It is
an administrative and cultural centre.
Over five centuries, people from different cultural environments have thrived
and lived harmoniously together.
•
This article is an edited version of the paper delivered at the VIIth Interdisciplinary
Conference of the University Network of
the European Capitals of Culture (UNeECC) in Marseille in October 2013 by
Prof. Carmel Cassar (Rector's delegate)
and Dr George Cassar, members of the
Valletta 2018 Foundation Research Coordinating Committee.
23
Feature
PLAN
TO
LIVE
24
THINK Feature
Dr Rebecca Dalli Gonzi
Dr Joseph Spiteri
Can planning really sustain us? Should we plan to survive or
is project planning simply there to overcome obstacles when
we are faced with them? Dr Rebecca Dalli Gonzi writes
about a group of project management M.Sc. students who she
asked to prepare a project plan. During their project students
suddenly faced an unexpected turn of events. They were asked
to counteract the problem and face the challenges that they
encountered. This is their story
P
lanning is constant action; it
never stops. If you are moving to a new house or country, you probably know what
this means. Planning is pervasive, but can it get out of hand? What
does planning a gap year mean? Do you
plan every single minor detail or do you
let loose to enjoy some spontaneity? If,
for example, a couple is turning a shell
apartment into a home it would involve
a lot of tasks, planning leave in advance,
and chasing the architect. They just
might give up when a book shelf cannot
get through the door. If we can plan to
live, how would it help us get out of a
rut when things really go wrong?
Managing your life is not that different to managing a project. When
you manage a project you need a flexible plan that can meet the unplanned
changing demands that life hurls at you.
We live in a time when the efficiency
of a service or project is based upon
its ability to meet change or increasing
demands. Would a project plan ensure
that your plans run smoothly even
when your life path starts changing its
course?
Project managers cannot always foresee every eventuality when planning
and managing a project. Once a project
is underway many unexpected events
can affect project target dates and resources. Planning at its simplest would
mean better management and more
knowledge, while at its most complex,
it could mean more peace of mind. Trying to plan a complex project without
a plan is like trying to cross the Pacific
Ocean without a navigation system.
Positioning your project within vulnerable situations during the initial
planning stages means your team can
generate ideas develop creative solutions, and have a solid idea about the
resources they have, time schedules
they need to stick to, and budgets. This
is exactly what helped Rita Sant manage change during an unexpected turn
of events as soon as her project was
launched.
Plan for Health
Sant designed a healthcare concept for
homebound patients called ‘SMART
At HOME’. It offered a combination »
25
Feature
of home health and community based
services. She carried out in-depth research to come up with the right strategy, marketing analysis, project milestones, and deployment plan. Things
seemed perfect on paper. Yet she ran
into a game changer. Shortly after the
project was launched, a competing company called HomesforYou was set up. It
threatened to put her project on hold.
HomesforYou offered similar concepts
that which her project sponsors had
in mind. However, Rita and her team
had engineered some alternate options
before the actual launch to keep the
company ahead of the competition.
Putting the project in a vulnerable position through an in-depth SWOT anal-
26
ysis (analysis of the strengths, weakness,
opportunities, and threats of a project)
helped show the project sponsors where
their focus should be. Her focus was
primarily on selecting target markets
and helping attract new customers. Sant
was able to direct her team towards the
right networks. She identified gaps in
the south of Malta, and worked directly
with doctors and insurance providers to
bring in new customers.
Sometimes, we are so taken up by
our projects that we fail to see the obvious, to question the challenges whilst
assuming we have already envisaged the
end result. Project planning helps identify areas of weakness through tools like
PESTEL analysis (analysis of political,
economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors that impact
business), SWOT analysis, performance
testing to verify strategies (plan workability), design of project think tanks,
project recovery planning, contingency
planning, and risk analysis (amongst
other research areas). There is a lot of
research behind project management.
Plan for Energy
Areas in the project that could have
been overlooked suddenly become crucial. Sometimes being realistic is crucial
to success. Another student, Joseph Borda, immediately received a notice that
should his project exceed the proposed
THINK Feature
A solar panel
array on
the Malta
International
Airport car park
would mean the
generation of just
enough energy to
supply the airport
budgets the project sponsors would incur heavy fines. Borda was clear with
his ideas from the start. Developing the
power engineering workforce for the future is what he had in mind. His design
of a solar panel array on the Malta International Airport car park would mean
the generation of just enough energy to
supply the airport. Proper time scheduling ensured that the project would
be delivered within the specified timeframes. This could only work together with a proper team organisational
structure and pre-designed hierarchical
task network, which is the approach to
automated planning where dependency
among actions is given in the form of
a network. A well-researched proposal
helped Borda envisage proper scheduling to ensure the project was delivered
within the specified time objectives,
together with the team organisation
structure and task hierarchies required
to complete the task in time. Could a
project schedule really have helped Borda stick to his time-frames? A project’s
life or death hinges on its delivery date.
Incurring fines meant that the project
was narrowed down to a critical selection of what areas of the project had to
be done in time.
The schedule alone would not have
been a guarantee to a successful outcome. The initial stages of project research helped him and his team realise
that the costings report for mounting
and installation of the array was heavily over-priced. The project schedule
helped mitigate the over-budget fines
through the planning of phased installations and so areas that were going to
be over-budget were shifted into a secondary phase. Typical project management requires attention to time, cost
and quality. Once restrictions appear
in one area, other areas begin to shift to
accommodate new demands.
Having project management principles in place means there is a greater chance of fulfilling your objectives
within the overall strategy and facilitating diagnosis of different situations as
they occur. Just like captains need chart
plotters or radars for distance and bearing to be able to manoeuvre ships in the
worst conditions, so project managers
use Gantt charts (a type of bar chart
used to illustrate a project’s schedule)
to help manoeuvre projects through
time. Detailed planning helps translate
business objectives into deliverables,
provide a list of resource requirements,
and a realistic assessment of project
time-scales. Control measures can also
be used to ensure there are no delays
in target dates or to help identify team
members who are not being productive.
Plan for Success
Measures of project progress can also be
used to indicate when things are not »
27
Feature
moving as planned. Marc Spiteri decided to incorporate this approach into his
project plan to meet a specific target:
managing the Malta national rugby union team to qualify for the Rugby World
Cup. Spiteri chose sports engineering as
his field of study.
Spiteri’s primary objectives were
to promote sports locally and to increase Malta’s appeal as a destination
for sports tourism. The management
plan was designed to operate on a
three-point plan: first, having funding mechanisms in place for potential
stakeholders and sponsors to bring in
further investments; second, training
and game planning aimed to work with
the national team chosen to aid the organisational requirements for training
camps and competitive games; third,
a marketing strategy to tap into the local resources.
However, Spiteri was faced with a
difficult challenge. Sponsorship for
his project plan was threatened to be
Photo by Matthew Scerri
28
reduced if specific targets were not
reached. Spiteri had knowledge and
insight at the planning stage to moderate the negative effects of this cut.
During planning he was able to set
key performance indicators in areas
of finance, training, competition and
markets as part of the project design.
The performance indicators allowed
him to set targets to reach his ambitious goal. Rather than add a measure
of control as an after-thought, he was
able to integrate this as a whole concept. This meant that significant changes or shortcomings would be assessed
against a measurement system, allowing a prompt response to take place
with the significant action.
Plan for Death
Project control helps to ‘diagnose’ issues, plan for tackling weaker areas and
adjust quickly to changes. It is normal
for the team to assume that everything
will work out well in the end but unpredictable behaviours, unfortunately, do
happen. A lack of ownership can cause
as many problems as unscheduled timing of events or project delays. A project
plan gives the team the ability to envisage areas in which people conduct their
activities and carry out their responsibilities. The more prepared the team is (in
terms of knowledge and know-how of
project plan), the quicker the recovery
period. Planning is also useful as a tool
when it is used to focus and highlight
project needs to those involved. This is
of particular importance when a project
manager has to suggest different solutions to his or her client. Johann Farrugia was particularly good at providing a
number of solutions for his concept of
a digital cemetery when he had a major
on-site problem with humidity.
Cemeteries are sacred, emotional
spaces but also witnesses of human history. Information in cemeteries is handwritten meaning that some of the oldest
THINK Feature
records are today hardly legible. This is
why cemeteries need an IT system to
meet today’s needs. Farrugia identified
the needs of all the different groups of
people who make use of or work at a
cemetery and figured out a system that
allowed the public to request information easily. Through the website, staff
and undertakers could access all the information they needed about gravesite
location and burial details.
Farrugia faced problems with the
testing system. Extreme humidity was
interfering with the IT infrastructure
limiting system usage. However, he
integrated alternatives as part of his
project planning phase thus being able
to suggest solutions to his stakeholders
and project investors. He was able to
locate a secondary location system for
supporting the project, thus eliminating completely the location of IT structures on-site. He also factored costings
for any added insulation works required
to counteract the problem and sought
alternative zones that suffered from less
humidity within the cemetery.
In this case, since the unexpected
problem arose at an early stage, the
project manager could be flexible in
his planning, allow for change, and
bring in alternate ideas to deal with
these issues. Having considered the
options beforehand meant that he
could reduce the impact of a sudden
major change.
In some cases, external events can
trigger unexpected time delays. At
times it can appear impossible to finish
a project punctually, especially when
there are delays in materials or suppliers. Sometimes a schedule should be
consistent with your experience from
previous projects. Your main focus
should be on getting your critical requirements completed while avoiding
distractions. The project management
plan is critically dependent on the people who run it, design it, create it, and
implement it. Moreover, increases in
dependences increase time-frames.
Plan for Sustainability
Time-frames can quickly overrun when
introducing sustainable measures into
a residential development. Another
student, Joslyn Magro, was keen to integrate into her project grey water reservoirs used to hold second class water for
domestic use including lavatory use and
landscaping photovoltaic panels, double glazing, and landscaping works. Sustainability has been an evolving theme
to encourage environmental responsibility and promote intelligent decisionmaking with respect to energy use. Bad
weather delayed the required materials
that were being imported and this set
the project back by a month.
Information in
cemeteries is
handwritten
meaning that some
of the oldest records
are today hardly
legible. This is why
cemeteries need an
IT system to meet
today’s needs
By using a Gantt chart, Magro saw the
negative effects of this delay. It would
impact other installations and works.
To reduce the burden, she scheduled
architectural detailing and structural
elements to run in parallel. This would
reduce the dependency on strict delivery dates.
In her project plan she had also considered sourcing from different suppliers so she was able to negotiate costs affected by the delays. Once the materials
were delivered on site, she could also
introduce secondary teams of labourers
to make up for the one-month back log.
Costings saved during the delay, were
used on a double-managed team unit.
In her case, this may have proved to be
the winning strategy as managing the
on-site team as best as possible would
help to counteract any further setbacks.
Taking advantage of constraints is the
best way in project planning when possible. Projects revolve around expectations so it is better to envisage opportunity rather than to try control an event.
Turning a shell apartment into a home
might sound like a simple project in
comparison to the ones discussed earlier
but the problems would, theoretically,
be very similar. Delays, supplier changes
and exceeded budgets would surely impact your strategy along the way. Having
strict milestones might be useful. It is
not always necessary to consider worstcase scenarios but do consider carefully
how much risk is actually acceptable.
Most importantly, do not try to solve
the problem, solve the cause.
•
This article covers some work of the first
cohort of students enrolled in the M.Sc.
in Project Management launched by the
Department of Construction and Property Management, Faculty for the Built
Environment, University of Malta. The
diversity of projects reflects the range of
situations in which project management
skills are being applied.
29
A life
studying
life
Prof. Patrick J. Schembri lives for biology. His long career has brought him in touch
with an endless list of creatures that includes fish, beautiful white coral, sharks, limpets,
crabs, and ancient snails. The Editor met up with Schembri to find out more about the life
around Malta
I
was nervous. I still remembered fumbling for excuses for handing in my
assignment a few days late. Prof. Patrick J. Schembri’s stern gaze does not
take excuses. This time I entered his
office to learn about the wealth of research under this man’s belt. With over
150 refereed papers to his name I knew
I would not leave disappointed.
In 1982 Schembri returned to Malta after a doctorate at the University
of Glasgow and a post-doctorate in
New Zealand.
‘In Scotland, I was working on animals that came from a depth of 40m
and in New Zealand with animals
that came from the whole span of the
continental shelf and upper continental slope at depths down to about
900m. For that you need a research
30
vessel, crew, collecting equipment, and
so on. I came to Malta and there was
nothing’, said Schembri. This did not
stop him, like the animals he studies, he
just adapted.
‘Nobody has looked at the ecology of
shores in Malta before, so I decided to
do that.’ And as simple as that, Schembri
went from studying deep water animals
to the near shore. The techniques and
equipment needed are completely different — a diverse research background
that must have helped him in his long
career. After many years, Schembri returned to studying life in deep waters,
invasive species, and many other things,
but more on that later.
Back in the 80s the Internet simply
did not exist locally so Schembri’s biggest problem was not equipment but
sourcing academic journals. Every scientist needs to constantly read journals to
keep up to date with the latest findings.
It is essential for research inspiration, to
see knowledge gaps that can be studied,
to learn new techniques and knowledge, and to avoid repeating others’
research. Schembri, ever determined,
went to great lengths to get the information he needed in order to research
and publish.
‘Thanks to my mentors I was brought
up with a culture of publishing.’ The renown of every scientist depends on the
importance of the journals they publish
in and how much they publish. Neither
was a problem for Schembri. ‘I produced my first paper before I did my A
levels. In the early 1970s, I improvised
some apparatus to do experiments on »
THINK Feature
Prof. Patrick J. Schembri. Photo by Edward Duca
31
Feature
Managing Fish
Zonation of biota (lifeforms) on a
vertical rock face (Il-Ponta talWardija, Gozo). Photo by PJ Schembri
something that you would [normally]
need sophisticated equipment for, so
rather than using a nitrogen chamber,
I used a plastic bag to which I attached
kitchen gloves, and it worked.’ After
some encouragement from his tutor
the paper was written as a note that was
published in School Science Review. He
also published around six papers from
his Master's degree. No small feat, I have
not achieved this even after a Master's
degree and a Doctorate.
A Master of all Trades
The breath of his studies is stunning.
With his students, Schembri has studied animals which have invaded Maltese
waters. These include the nimble spray
crab (Percnon gibbesi) and the non-indigenous Red Sea mussel (Brachidontes pharaonis), which, unlike all native
mussels is forming mussel beds with
thousands of individuals. He has studied the seabed’s ecosystems that happen
to be vital to maintain fish stocks. He
has even delved into Malta’s ecological past analysing samples from cores
drilled in Malta’s coastal sediments
studying sub-fossil molluscs to piece
together the Island’s early history. These
were only possible through collaboration with many scientists and a vast
army of students.
32
I produced my
first paper before
I did my A levels
His collaborations have been essential. Schembri was contacted by Italian
researcher Dr Marco Taviani to survey
Malta’s deep seas. Taviani has access
to the multi-million research vessel
Urania. The 61.3m ship has on-board
laboratories for geological, chemical,
radiological, geophysical, and biological research. To make it in Malta, ‘if you
don’t have enough resources you have
to improvise and collaborate, especially
with overseas researchers who do have
the resources. And it worked’.
Schembri has gone further than just
making it work. He has flourished. His
strategy involves participating in EU
funded projects (to bring in the money)
while keeping very ambitious long-term
projects running in the background on a
shoestring. The only problem is that for
‘all the EU projects, the agenda is set internationally. While [for local projects]
the funds are minimal, I get a few hundreds a year. But I am free to study what
is interesting and important for Malta.’
BENESPEFISH is one of his locally funded projects. ‘I want to find out
what kind of habitats we (Malta) have
and how fish interact with them.’ By
studying what fish eat and where that
food grows, by seeing the nursery
grounds and spawning areas of the fish,
by researching how the impact of fishing techniques affects the sea floor that
ends up damaging the ecosystem. For
example, in collaboration with the Government’s Fisheries Agency, students
under Schembri’s supervision studied
the effect of a type of fishing technique
called otter trawling. They discovered
that it can adversely change the benthic
(seabed) ecosystem and that the trawling should be done in corridors, with
spaces between them to allow the recuperation of the seabed, and therefore
the dependent fish stocks. This will help
fish stocks recuperate and fishermen to
retain their livelihood.
The above is called the ecosystem approach to fisheries management. Back
in the early 2000s ‘Matthew Camilleri
from the Fisheries and Aquacultures
Department got involved in a FAO
(Food and Agriculture Organisation)
project called MEDSUDMED,’ that
was pushing for this approach. ‘So he
asked if I could help out with the ecological aspect. […] Ecologists entered
the picture because in this approach
fish started being looked at as part of
the ecosystem. For some strange reason,
previously fish were one thing and the
rest of the sea was something else’ — a
clear reason for fisheries scientists and
marine biologists to work together to
be able to give the right scientific advice
to the Government.
The BENESPEFISH project hinges
on a healthy relationship with the Government. The Government Fisheries
Agency commissions the MEDITS
trawl survey to monitor the health of
fish stocks, which are mandatory for
all EU member states that border the
THINK Feature
Mediterranean. These surveys need
to ‘follow a strict protocol’, perfect for
science. However, the survey ‘is limited to about 40 species. They still get
everything else such as benthic organisms [that live on the sea bed] that they
used to just throw overboard. So I said
to them, okay why don’t you keep it,
give it to me, I work on it, then I give
you the results. […] If I had to hire a
fishing trawler and go out myself for 14
days it would cost me around €190,000,
crews and everything. Instead, by collaborating, we get this data at a low cost.
All I need to pay for is for insurance, fixatives, sample containers, and a research
assistant to collect the samples. So that’s
what the University funds, it funds the
research assistant and materials. […] So
you [the Government] get information
which you would not normally get because you are not a research institution.’
Clever and it worked.
These discards are valuable to find
out about the ecology of the fish in our
seas. ‘They were going to get rid of a
few hundred sharks (the small-spotted
catshark, Scyliorhinus canicula) […], so
I got them and one of my students analysed their stomach contents which told
us a great deal about what the fish feed
on and also where they feed. […] They
feed on fish but also on the benthos, the
bottom material.’ From 532 stomachs
sampled, over half were eating teleosts
(a group of bony fishes) and nearly one
fifth were eating crustaceans, with even
some cannibalism. Male and female
catsharks had different diets. To keep
catshark populations healthy these food
sources need to be maintained. The seabed is vital.
These MEDITS surveys have led to
some surprising discoveries. During
a survey one of Schembri’s students
picked up a piece of white coral which
she brought back to be identified in
the lab. It turned out to be the deep
water coral Lophelia pertusa that builds
reefs. Schembri still had this piece and
showed it to me. As I picked up this
brilliant white coral he told me, ‘this is
just a piece of a much larger structure.
You can see the remains of some the individual animals [it is a colonial species
made of many individuals], the cuplike structures with grooves.’ It is such
a different species — out of this world.
Schembri and his group reported finding this coral around Malta that attracted Marco Taviani (Institute of Marine
Sciences, National Research Council of
Italy), who was a colleague of Schembri,
to organise a research cruise. Using the
Italian research vessel the Urania they
explored Maltese deep waters. This
was the first of three such cruises that
Schembri’s research group were invited
to participate in. During one of these
cruises they found other species of corals including the endangered red coral
(Corallium rubrum), exploited since
antiquity to make jewellery. They saw
it at depths never seen before, around
600–800m, which is two to three times
deeper than previously. When studied,
this deep water population was found
to be genetically isolated from others,
probably because the different populations were not breeding amongst
each other.
For some
strange reason,
beforehand fish
were one thing
and the rest
of the sea was
something else
Malta’s Coast
When Schembri first came back to
Malta he started working on its shores.
But our coasts are not just beaches and
cliffs. ‘Inland the coastal area extends
as far as sea spray carries, since this
renders the soil saline and therefore
only adapted plants can thrive. […]
Offshore, the coastal area extends to
depths of 150–200m as material from
the land, like sediment, still finds its way
to the seabed even at those depths.’ »
The small-spotted catshark, Scyliorhinus canicula, as an egg (left), juvenile (middle), adult (right). Photos by Hans Hillewaert
33
Feature
34
A colony of the cold water coral Lophelia pertusa. Large populations of this and associated coral species were
discovered growing on a submarine escarpment south of Malta at depths of 450–600m. These form deep
water coral frameworks supporting a large variety of marine animals. Photo by Jean Claude Vancell
THINK Feature
That is a huge area for a researcher to
cover, but Schembri wants to record all
its habitats, obviously with a lot of help.
Enter the project Faunistics and Ecology of the Maltese Islands (FEMI), ‘the
aim is to have an inventory of what
we’ve got. […] I want to understand
what habitats we have and which species
live there.’ To cope with such a massive
project, Schembri splits it up into bitesize research questions that his students
can tackle over a few months (or longer
if it is a Master's or a Doctorate project). ‘The results of each small project
contribute to the whole. […] By now I
would say that over the years the number of people who have contributed to
the project must be at least a hundred,
although it is usually around six at any
one time.’ Many of these student projects lead to research publications coming out from the University of Malta’s
Department of Biology.
One of the most important things
for the FEMI project is to figure out
the state of our current environment.
By knowing how things are we can tell
how they are altered by future change.
Back in 1998 Schembri, Dr Mark Dimech and Dr Joseph A. Borg studied
how fish farms in St Paul’s Bay were affecting the ecosystem underneath. The
nutrients and waste were reducing the
biodiversity immediately under the cages to around a range of 30m. In between
50–170m, the fish farm unexpectedly
increased the number and diversity of
invertebrates. Without knowing the
species normally growing in sea grass
meadows this would be impossible.
By studying Malta’s coast and offshore waters for so long, Schembri can
say which areas and habitats around
Malta have the greatest diversity in species and which are at risk. These tend
to overlap; on land the sand dunes and
saline marshlands need to be preserved,
while at sea it is the seagrass beds, maerl
and other rhodolith bottoms, and any
form of natural reef that need conserva-
The red sea-squirt, Herdmania Momus, an immigrant from the East Mediterranean very recently
discovered in Malta. Photo by Julian Evans
The Marsaxlokk fishing village. Photo by bass_nroll, flickr, bassnroll@500px
tion. Such long term studies are essential to know how humans are impacting
the environment and to better manage
Malta’s living resources.
A Warming Mediterranean
The world is changing. The actions of
human beings are warming the planet
much faster than just natural processes.
‘The Mediterranean Sea is warming up.
The sea is also receiving less rainfall and
less terrestrial runoff, which is making
the sea more saline [salty]. All of these
phenomena are leading to many changes
occurring at the same time. The first thing
that you are getting is that native species,
which were limited to the warmer parts
of the Mediterranean, can extend their
range to the colder parts, so southern
species are moving northwards. It means
that the cold-loving species cannot move
further north, because we are completely
surrounded by land. So populations of
cold water species are becoming rarer
and less distributed and if things go on
like that some might become extinct because they cannot escape. In the Atlantic
they just move further north, but not
here, they cannot do that.’
Loss of species is not the only thing a
warming sea causes. ‘The second thing
observed is that species from the East
Mediterranean, which is the warmest
and most saline part of the Mediterranean [and includes many species
that invaded from the Red Sea via the
Suez Canal], are moving westwards. »
35
Feature
Species which are warm water Atlantic
species enter the Mediterranean and
are now moving eastwards.’ This means
that these species are all passing by Malta as they disperse, making the island an
ideal monitoring station to observe a
changing Mediterranean.
A warming sea is one main reason
why new alien and sometimes invasive
species are being found in Malta all of
the time. These species are making great
leaps. Dr Julian Evans, Dr Joseph Borg,
and Schembri have recently (2013)
found for the first time the Red Sea
sea squirt Herdmania momus in Malta. This record is 1,300km further west
than ever before. This sea squirt came
through the Suez canal, established itself in the Levantine Sea off Lebanon,
and was last observed around Greece
and Turkey. It is not the only foreigner
that has established itself in our waters.
Schembri and one of his collaborators Dr Marija Sciberras saw the nimble
spray crab (Percnon gibbesi) all along
Maltese shores. This crab is an Atlantic
species that entered the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar in
the late 1990s. When they found it in
Malta they did not just collect it — they
studied it. They found that this shallow
water species grows ‘up to a depth of
3m, in other parts of the Mediterranean they have found it down to depths
of 10m. It needs a habitat of cobbles
or stones, it does not live on bare rock.
[In Malta this means] that you find it
more towards the north rather than the
south, because the coast slopes down to
the north and you’ve got many more
opportunities for this sort of habitat
while the south is mainly cliffs.’ The
local shore crab (Pachygrapsus marmoratus) also beats this invader. They saw
that the local crabs are much more aggressive than the invader. The nimble
spray crab has mostly occupied a niche
different from that of local shore crabs.
When we hear the word invader we
do not imagine a mostly plant-eating
36
crab sneaking into a new niche while
the local omnivorous crab remains
reigning supreme; but an invasive species ‘simply means that it spreads very
quickly. [To understand] what the effect on the ecosystem is requires many
years of study. We have many invaders.
Another one, which is even more invasive, is a seaweed — an algae (Caulerpa
racemosa) — this is now found everywhere. What does it do? What effect
does it have on the local ecosystem? I
don’t know, nobody does.’ This is why
we need to invest more into scientific
research over many years. You cannot figure out how a species is acting
overnight.
A warming sea is
one main reason
why new alien
and sometimes
invasive species
are being found
in Malta all of the
time
Schembri has been studying Malta’s
ecology for decades. This long-term
knowledge is vital to see slow trends
like a warming Mediterranean, climate
change, or habitat loss. When I asked
him about the changes affecting Malta
and Gozo, he replied in a sombre voice
‘I’ve seen a lot of change. In terms of
change of habitat, apart from places
which have been developed, not much
has changed on the open coast. What
has changed are the characteristics of
the community. For example, previously you used to find large limpets, now
you’ll find small limpets. That sort of
thing. You haven’t lost a limpet or had a
complete change in the ecosystem, but
there have been changes nonetheless.’
In some places, especially sheltered
areas, things have changed drastically.
For his Master's degree, Schembri collected specimen from Marsaxlokk Bay.
This was many years before the development of the Freeport and Delimara
power station. When he had a look at
it after these developments the species
he studied had vanished. ‘The bay has
changed and when they started dredging it was even worse because a lot of the
sea grasses disappeared. That bay was
full of sea grasses before.’ Schembri does
not think they will return anytime soon.
Loss of sea grasses are even eroding the
shore. ‘The sea grass was acting as a buffer to the waves, although it could also
Nimble Spray Crab,
Percnon gibbesi
Photo by divemecressi,
flickr
THINK Feature
be because people have been building
breakwaters and things which would
change the current patterns which
would also cause erosion. These things
are complicated and without studying
them it is difficult to know and nobody
has looked’ — another reason for more
researchers and funds being needed.
Marsaxlokk is not the only place.
Especially since the 1990s the Maltese coast has been heavily built up,
with developments sprouting in many
picturesque areas like Armier. Dealing
with this development has become a
political issue, rather than seeing the
consequences from a scientific lens.
Schembri’s view on this change is a
bit peculiar to me. When I referred to
the changes in Marsaxlokk Bay as ecological devastation he replied saying,
‘I don’t talk about ecological devastation, because what life does is that
if the environment changes certain
things disappear and other things take
their place. Saying it is devastation is a
human emotion. Scientifically it’s not
what happens.’ Schembri was speaking impersonally from an ecological
perspective. I find it hard to see the
complete loss of a species or beautiful
area because of human progress in this
way. If humans are doing the destruction, humans can stop it or reduce the
problem.
Ecologists for Tomorrow
Ecologists like Schembri are vital to
know the changes taking place around
our islands. Without monitoring our
land and seas we cannot know how to
preserve them so everyone can enjoy
them. Nature should be for everyone to
enjoy and experience.
Malta’s situation has definitely improved. ‘We have a huge marine protected area going all the way from Qala
in Gozo to Portomaso in St Julians to
protect all the seagrass meadows there.
How are we managing it? We’re not.
Marsaxlokk Bay is surrounded by development such as the Delimara Powerstation and Malta Freeport
It’s a line on a map, but it is a first step’
since if anyone wants to develop the
area the development’s impact on the
ecology needs to be rigorously studied.
Unfortunately, no one knows if the sea
grasses are doing well or not. The problem is that the area is huge. ‘You don’t
try to keep track of every single square
metre of sea grass but at least you keep
track of some of them. You establish a
monitoring programme, the Government is obliged to do it having declared
a marine protected area in terms of the
Habitats Directive, and some monitoring is being done but there is no
management plan.’ The problem is that
Malta is an island with limited resources and 10 people abroad would perform
one person’s job here. Government
needs to give the environment and science more importance.
Schembri’s flexible approach to research is powerful. He makes it work
despite the odds, but I do wonder how
much more we would know about Malta’s natural wealth if there were many
more researchers studying the Maltese
environment and if they had better support. There are other researchers apart
from Schembri, but they are few. For
such a serious man, serious investment
in research would surely make him, and
future generations, smile.
•
FURTHER READING
• Sciberras, M. & Schembri, P.J.
(2008) Biology and interspecific interactions of the alien crab Percnon
gibbesi (H. Milne-Edwards, 1853) in
the Maltese Islands. Marine Biology
Research 4: 321-332.
• Costantini, F., Taviani, M., Remia, A.,
Pintus, E., Schembri, P.J. & Abbiati,
M. (2010) Deep-water Corallium
rubrum (L., 1758) from the Mediterranean Sea: preliminary genetic
characterisation. Marine Ecology 31:
261-269.
• Gravino, F., Dimech, M. & Schembri, P.J. (2010) Feeding habits of the
small-spotted catshark Scyliorhinus
canicula (l., 1758) in the Central Mediterranean. Rapport du Congrès de la
Commission Internationale pour l’Exploration Scientifique de la Mer Méditerranée 39: 538.
• Evans, J., Borg, J.A. & Schembri
P.J. (2013) First record of Herdmania momus (Ascidiacea: Pyuridae)
from the central Mediterranean
Sea. Marine Biodiversity Records 6:
e134; 4pp. [Online. DOI: 10.1017/
S1755267213001127]
37
THE UNHEARD MAESTRO
Lydia Buttigieg
38
THINK Feature
Maestro Carmelo Pace wrote over 500 compositions, survived WWII, taught Malta’s best
contemporary musicians, and never left the island. Lydia Buttigieg (Ph.D. student
at Durham University) writes about this elusive personality who shaped Malta’s musical
landscape. Illustrations by Sonya Hallett
F
or a small Mediterranean island, Malta possesses many
eminent composers. One
of the most prominent was
Maestro Carmelo Pace who
left a legacy of musical compositions.
I studied his musical language and career. I also ask myself if he had some
degree of autism. Can this idea be
proved through his musical works or is
it due to other reasons that his writing
method remained mostly unchanged
throughout his musical career? Despite
his unchanging style he is considered
to be a modern music composer when
compared to his Maltese predecessors.
Strangely, his writing does not seem
to be have been influenced by the new
experimental techniques emerging
throughout Europe at the time.
A Maestro’s Life
Born at 4.15 a.m., 17 August 1906 in
Valletta, Chevalier Maestro Carmelo Lorenzo Paolo Pace was the eldest
of seven children. Living in the same
household was his mother’s brother,
Vincenzo Ciappara, a prominent composer, arranger, bandmaster, and a gifted viola player who highly influenced
his nephew. Due to lack of documentation and resources we know relatively
little about Pace’s musical education as a
teenager and a young adult.
The British Military bands stationed
in Malta were his earliest experience of
classical music. During frequent visits
to his father’s workplace at the Commerce movie theatre in Valletta, Pace
was captivated by the live music played
by the resident quartet during silent
films. Thanks to his uncle’s tutelage,
Pace made good progress in his lessons,
and at the age of 15 joined the orchestra
of the Italian Opera Company at the
Royal Opera House. Pace continued
his studies for a further nine years under three foreign musicians who were
resident on the island, but about whom
He narrowly
escaped death:
a bomb directly
hit his office
nothing is known. Pace had lessons for
the violin with Antonio Genova, violin
and viola with Professor Carlo Fiamingo, and harmony, counterpoint, and
composition with Dr Thomas Maine.
According to his friend, the late Georgette Caffari, Pace never enhanced his
musical studies abroad but continued
to develop them independently. In
1921 Pace joined the conductor Carlo
Diacono’s cappella di musica and by the
age of 22 became section leader of the
violas at the Italian Opera Company.
By playing several different orchestral
instruments Pace gained invaluable
experience for his career. Despite this
Ann Agnes Mousu, who interviewed
Pace, said ‘Pace was displeased with irregular hours which left him with very
little time for teaching music, a career
which he had very much at heart: he did
not wish to forfeit his love for composing either and therefore, he decided to
quit’ — apparently in 1938.
With the onset of WWII, Pace was
conscripted with the rest of Malta to the
British Forces. After being found medically unfit for duty, he was appointed
shelter supervisor in Valletta guarding
about 600 homeless refugees. Pace later worked as a civilian clerk with the
Royal Air Force; he deciphered allied
aeroplane movement codes, which was
a highly secretive exercise. Pace was permanently stationed in Valletta where attacks were constant. Over 3,000 air raids
were registered over Malta. During one
air raid Pace refused to leave his office
to continue working. When he finally
left he narrowly escaped death: a bomb
directly hit his office soon after he left.
Due to his work and the onset of war,
Pace stopped composing from 1940 to
1944. Despite this break he still conducted a small orchestra for the refugees. Pace also managed to teach music after office hours at the Command
School of Education in South Street, »
39
Feature
Valletta. Pace, his wife and his family
were forced to move house, from Merchant Street to Old Mint Street, after it
was bombed.
As the War drifted to northern
Europe, in 1944 Pace resumed composition with one of his works being
the Innu ta’ L-Istudenti Universitarji
(Hymn for University Students). The
score is a short piece written in simple
traditional harmony. Albert M. Cassola
was the lyricist and it was soon chosen
as the University’s official hymn after it won first prize in a national
competition organised by the students themselves (the University
Student’s Representative Council, today known as KSU).
From Folk Music To
Virgin Sacrifices
Pace was a musical powerhouse, having
penned around 550 works. They range
from solo and chamber instrumental
music to fully-fledged symphonies,
operas, and concertos. Many have not
been performed. Pace was the first national composer to collect Maltese folk
rhythms. With the intent to preserve
the island’s national identity, Pace composed Maltesina (1931), the first composition based on folk rhythms. Other
folk music followed. However, Pace
was well known for his choral work
L-Imnarja (1960), an unaccompanied
SATB choir (Soprano, Alto, Tenor,
and Bass) written in the Maltese language, which was another attempt to
retain the true identity of Malta’s musical heritage.
Pace also wrote four operas. They are
considered to be the first fully-fledged
Maltese stage works. Local critics
praised them for their mastery of har-
40
the opera’s
plot revives
the time
when
beautiful girls
used to be
sacrificed to
the gods
monic language and musicianship.
Pace’s operas (which consist of a
combination of mythological and
historical events in Malta) are mostly
directed towards a nationalistic style
reflecting the country’s strong attachment with Europe. Hence Pace’s operas
shed light on Malta’s historical background, composed for soloists, choir,
and orchestra. The operas were all original works and not based on an existing
literary work. Pace’s first opera Caterina Desguanez was written in 1965. The
plot of the opera is based on a historical event which took place during the
Great Siege of Malta in 1565, a battle
between the Turks and the Maltese.
Two years later Pace wrote his second
opera I Martiri (1967), a dramatisation
of the rising of the Maltese against the
French, who under Napoleon in 1798
took possession of the Islands without
any serious opposition. However, when
the Maltese began to feel oppressed
they revolted against the French garrison. The French had to take refuge
within the ramparts of Valletta where
they remained besieged for almost two
years, till they surrendered. During the
siege a priest, Dun Mikiel Xerri, and
others started organising a revolt within Valletta to attack the French, but
unfortunately they were discovered and
killed by a firing squad.
The
third
opera — Angelica
(1973) — is based on a fictitious story,
though it is inspired by real events. In
its history Malta was often invaded, its
treasures robbed, and its people carried
away as slaves. A slave in the Cumbo
family, who converted to Christianity and was set free falls desperately in
love with his master’s daughter. She,
however, is to be wedded into the rich
Manduca family. Haggi Muley reaches
THINK Feature
an agreement with the Pashà of Tripoli
kidnapping the girl during her wedding
ceremony and taking her to the Pashà.
Notwithstanding the riches of his Harem, Angelica craves for her Maltese lover. Although she is finally liberated, her
suffering leads to an early death.
His last opera — Ipogeana (1976)
— is based on another fictitious story set in 1600 B.C. The libretto is set
within the temple of Melkart and the
surrounding countryside. Within its
historical context the opera’s plot revives the time when beautiful girls used
to be sacrificed to the gods. A tragedy
emerges when the High Priest Brabani
falls in love with one of the priestesses,
Maħbuba. Brabani, who was considered
by everyone to be a holy man, reveals
his true nature at the end. Maħbuba
kills Brabani pleasing the god Melkart
who showers his people with rain and a
good harvest.
Pace’s first composition takes his story back to 1926. The work, called Two
Pieces, was written for a piano trio and
transcribed in the same year for chamber work, followed by the violin and
piano. The work was first performed in
15 October 1932 at the Juventus Domus
in Sliema by an ensemble that included the Royal Opera House orchestra’s
principal cellist Paul Carabott. Until
Pace Maltese composers mostly wrote
for ecclesiastical or liturgical functions,
an approach Pace wanted to abandon.
He ventured towards a more modernist style. Although Pace’s innovative
approach was considered avant-garde
in Malta for its harmonic language, the
developments happening throughout
the rest of Europe were not reflected in
Pace’s work. Pace seems detached from
other composers.
Pace’s advanced harmonic organisation changed Maltese chamber music
from conventional harmonies to more
experimental styles. Pace’s advanced
musical works constitute contrasting
links in their musical contours and tempo, and are unified by means of shared
thematic material and harmonic connections of various kinds, such as the
use of similar types of chordal structures (a harmonic set of three or more
notes that is meant to be heard simultaneously). Typically of Pace, these »
41
Feature
connections can
be extremely subtle and elusive; the
music gives the impression of continuous
improvisation, since the
musical material undergoes
continuous transformation and
development. Pace’s first attempts
at composing such avant-garde music
was through his set of eleven string
quartets. They were presented in a
reclusive manner, reflecting his true
character and emotional conflicts that
continued to accumulate throughout
his life.
In the early twentieth century, Pace
turned his attention to string quartets.
His predecessors never fully understood them. Pace’s quartets were scored
from 1930 to 1938, with his last two
written in 1970 and 1972. Unfortunately only one string quartet was ever
performed — the String Quartet No. 2
(1931) premiered on 5 February 1965
in Waltham UK. Pace’s string quartets
are structured on the classical three- or
four-movement plan. He bestows excellent compositional techniques and
has meticulous precision detailing each
instrumental technique, phrasing, and
dynamics. Many well-known musicians and composers considered Pace
42
an exceptional technical composer. His
compositional prowess sheds light on
his turbulent emotional conflicts, while
his obscure and dissonant harmonies
reflect his reclusiveness, silence, and
insecurity. Remarkably, his handling of
instruments, sonorities, textures, and
melodic contours remained consistent
throughout his career, even when he
composed two quartets after not having
composed one for 32 years. His symphonies, concertos, and solo works also
have a dissonant, obscure, harmonic
language which remained stagnant in
their musical approach, similar to that
employed in his string quartets. Such
works include Symphonie Dramatique
(1931), Symphony No. 2 (1966), Piano
Concerto No. 2 (1944), Clarinet Concerto (1970), Piano Sonata No. 2 (1973)
and Visioni for solo violin (1973).
Pace’s modernist works reflect a continuous trail of improvisatory ideas that
In my opinion,
he could be
considered as
having some
degree and
form of autism
THINK Feature
are constantly being transformed into
new rhythmic patterns, and constitute
different tempos and textures. In these
scores motivic segments (short musical motives extracted from main thematic material) occasionally appear
and occur randomly throughout the
movements. Most interestingly, Pace’s
musical works appear unchanging
(falling into three different stylistic
genres) and keep the same compositional approach as that employed at
the beginning of his musical career.
The Maestro’s Legacy
In my opinion, by examining Pace’s
musical work, he could be considered
as having some degree and form of autism. This is due to his restrictiveness
and repetitive patterns presented in his
musical works, coupled to an unchanging musical style and reclusive behaviour. Prof. Michael Fitzgerald at Trinity
College (Dublin) suggests that Autism
Spectrum Disorder is connected to creativity. People with autism can be highly focused and intelligent but do not fit
into the school system, lack social skills,
and are uncomfortable with eye contact. They can also be quite paranoid
and oppositional, yet highly moral and
ethical. Such persons could follow the
same topic for 20 to 30 years without
being distracted by other people’s opinion, and can produce in one lifetime
the work of three or four people.
Although Pace has left a legacy of
musical compositions, the circumstances of Maltese musical life hindered his creative development. His
career illustrates the difficulties faced
by modern composers working outside the major European cultural centres. Malta’s native musical traditions
were lacking, meaning that audiences
did not appreciate instrumental and
new music. Audiences’ unchanging
tastes prevented local composers from
experimenting and developing a more
modern style. Malta also lacked mu-
sic professionals capable of performing complex modern works, a reason
why his more stylistically interesting
compositions were never performed
in his lifetime. Pace must be one of the
few composers who hardly ever heard
what he wrote. It is extremely difficult
for a composer to develop his artistic
aptitudes if he does not have a chance
to hear his own music performed at a
good live performance. The nail in the
coffin was Malta’s lack of musical infrastructure. He ended up working largely in isolation and in a critical vacuum.
This could be another reason that
explains his unchanging style, rather
than having a form of Autism. We will
probably never know for certain and
till today, his musical output remains
virtually unknown and unperformed.
Pace was one of the leading composers of his era. By the 1950s Pace was a
well-established composer, musician
and educator. His life was dedicated
to composing and educating students
in harmony, counterpoint and history
of music. He did little else. His teaching reputation quickly spread and student numbers rapidly increased. His
students ended up becoming leading
musical theorists, composers, and conductors, their names much more familiar than Pace himself. Amongst his
students were Prof. Charles Camilleri
(one of Malta’s most famous composers who was also inspired by folk
music and legends), Dr Albert Pace,
Prof. Mro Dion Buhagiar, Prof. Mro
Michael Laus, Mro Sigmund Mifsud,
Mro Raymond Fenech, Moira Barbieri Azzopardi, and the late Maria
Ghirlando. Many of his students have
reached top positions in Malta’s musical sphere and superseded their teacher in fame and success.
After dedicating his entire life to
music and teaching, Pace suddenly fell ill with pneumonia and died
on the 20 May 1993. He left hundreds
of unperformed works that are still to
be heard.
•
The Educator: A Journal of
Education Matters is an annual peer-reviewed education
journal issued by the MUT
Publications Ltd. and edited by
Dr George Cassar (University
of Malta). For a more detailed
article see their first issue
published in December 2013.
The journal is currently open
to contributions that promote
debate on educational issues
and research in education.
Interested authors should
contact the editor on
editor@mut.org.mt
For more information see
www.mut.org.mt
43
Alumni
ALUMNI talk
About game research, WikiLeaks, speech technology, and preventing heart attacks
Literature, Philosophy,
and Games
DANIEL VELLA shares his passion for game research
I FIRST DEVELOPED an interest in cultural studies through
studying film and literature during
my B.Comms. (Hons)(Melit.). In
2008, my eyes were opened by an introductory course to Game Studies
run by the Department of English. In
2009, I enrolled in the Department’s
Masters programme in Modern and
Contemporary Literature and Criticism. The Masters programme gave
me the opportunity to continue studying literature while focusing my thesis on the analysis of imagery in digital games.
I graduated in November 2010. I
knew I wanted to continue to a Ph.D.
in Game Studies. Over the following
year, while striving to put together a
Ph.D. research application, I taught
44
English at the Malta University Language School and wrote scripts for a
children’s television show on PBS. I
also took part in my first Game Studies
Conference in Athens, which gave me
my first glimpse of the international
game studies community.
I submitted my Ph.D. application
to the IT University of Copenhagen, a
world leader in game studies research.
It was successful, and in February
2012 aided by a Malta Arts Scholarship award, I moved to Copenhagen
to begin three years of study.
My research is about subjectivity in
games. I use philosophy and literary
theory to look at questions like: ‘who
is the “I” that the player is playing in
a game?’ ‘Can games be used as a way
for the player to explore different
identities and characters?’ Besides my
research, I also teach a course entitled
‘Foundations of Play and Games’ to
Masters students.
Continuing my studies abroad has
brought me into contact with many
leading figures in my field. It opened
me to new perspectives and ideas from
fellow researchers. I have had the opportunity to present my work at several international conferences, from
Finland to the USA, and I have just
returned from a three-month research
stay at the School of Creative Media in
Hong Kong.
While I was abroad I kept in touch
with the University of Malta, helping to organise and contribute to the
Games and Literary Theory conference held here last year.
•
THINK Alumni
Exploring the world
of big data
DR ANDREW ZAMMIT MANGION writes about his
career: from CERN to winning awards for research based
on data released by WikiLeaks
IN THE SUMMER of 2007 the
University of Malta (UoM) gave me
the opportunity to visit the world’s
largest scientific experiment at CERN
in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN houses a particle accelerator looking into
what makes up all matter in the universe. There I saw for the first time the
vast amount of data being used to find
answers to big questions in science.
Over one petabyte of data is processed
daily at CERN. A stack of DVDs storing this amount of data would reach
the top of Dingli Cliffs, Malta’s highest point at 253 metres. My experience
at CERN was to leave its mark on my
future career.
I had just finished my undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering
(UoM) and intended to pursue a career in this field. Following CERN I
completed a placement with the German Aerospace Centre through the
student organisation IAESTE, and
worked with Computime Ltd as a network engineer. Soon after I applied
for and was awarded a Ph.D. scholarship at the University of Sheffield. My
research focused initially on signal
processing and control, subjects I had
specialised in during my undergraduate degree, but I soon found that these
techniques could be used in the upand-coming ‘big data’ arena.
A year into my Ph.D. I made the
conscious choice to move out of my
‘comfort zone’ and dedicate my time
to applying engineering tools to study
complex systems. The hard work only
paid off in 2012, when I applied algorithms developed in my Ph.D. to the
controversial WikiLeaks data set. Using data recorded by the US military
I showed that one could identify the
likelihood of conflict in a region a
year in advance. The predictions were
based on records of events which occurred between 2003 and 2009 in
Afghanistan, such as patrol incidents
or strategic operations. The work was
published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
of the USA and awarded a prize in
Applied Statistics and Engineering by
that institution, and won an award for
best doctoral dissertation by the Institute of Engineering and Technology
in the UK. It was featured in newspapers and technology websites around
the world such as Wired and The New
York Times. Based on these findings I
wrote a short book.
Today, seven years after CERN,
a Ph.D. and two post-doctoral positions, I use data to
study complex phenomena on a daily
basis. Recently
I shifted my focus to an area known
as environmental informatics. For the
past two years I have studied satellite
data from NASA and the European
Space Agency to analyse sea-level rise
due to ice melting in Antarctica. This
summer I will take up a research position in Australia to carry out similar
work for other environmental problems, such as greenhouse gas build-up
in the atmosphere.
Looking back I see the gamble
of venturing into the unknown and
steering away from my comfort zone
as a determining factor to a successful career path. I intend to continue
venturing out of this zone as much
as possible. I believe this is necessary
for successfully tackling emerging
and exciting research questions in the
new world of big data.
•
45
Alumni
Interpreting Chatter
ANDREA DeMARCO writes about the best decision of
his life
IN 2008, I ventured into the area
of speech technology during the final
year of my B.Sc. I.T. (Hons)(Melit.). I
did not know what I was getting into.
Through my four-year course, I studied
Artificial Intelligence. However, I ventured into speech technology (as well as
human language technology) because
there seemed to be a renewed interest,
and an increased reliance of speech
and language technology on statistical
modelling techniques. The particular
area I studied was speaker identification,
which is when you identify a person
from a voice sample.
A little over a year later I enrolled
for a Master of Science by research in
Computer Science at the University of
Malta in the same topic. The reasons
were two-fold. Firstly, I liked the idea
Preventing Sudden Death
PROF. CONNIE BEZZINA writes about her work tracking down genetic risk factors
that lead to sudden cardiac death
MY PASSION for human genetics started during my Bachelor of
Pharmacy at the University of Malta. In 1992 for my undergraduate
research project I conducted studies
to identify the genetic defect causing
blood coagulation disease in a Maltese
family. This project was too ambitious
for an undergraduate level and I did
not manage to resolve the case by the
time I graduated.
46
Thanks to my mentor, Professor
Alex Felice (University of Malta), I
could continue my research on this
family during my Ph.D. studies. During my Ph.D., which I obtained from
the UoM in 1998, we managed to
uncover the genetic defect located in
a gene encoding a blood coagulation
factor. We also found out how the mutated coagulation factor works. For
this research I went for a short spell
to Hammersmith Hospital in London
in the laboratory of Professor Edward
Tuddenham, a pioneer in blood coagulation. The taste of research abroad
made me crave for more and in 1997 I
moved to Amsterdam.
In Amsterdam I started working as
a post-doctoral scientist at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam. There I joined the
group of Professor Arthur Wilde who
THINK Alumni
of research but was unsure about the
long-term commitment required for a
Ph.D. Secondly, my undergraduate research project spawned many ideas that
I had no time to implement. However,
this M.Sc. gave me time to do so. I was
inspired by cognitive scientists on how
language and phonetics could be processed in humans. I then loosely applied
these ideas to algorithmic equivalents
for speaker identification.
In this project I discovered salient
fractions of phrases which are important for algorithms to identify speakers. I cut down the amount of data required for proper identification making
it more efficient. A few months before
completing my M.Sc. I started contact-
ing a number of research labs in the
UK. By that time I had realised that I
loved solving research problems. That
was when I felt ready for a longer-term
commitment to research, and started
a Ph.D. at the University of East Anglia, in the field of native accent and
speaker identification.
During my Ph.D. I developed a stateof-the-art classifier for accent identification from speech. The classifier does
not require any speech transcription,
which is how accent identification usually works. I collaborated with researchers from the University of Birmingham
to adapt baseline speech recognition to
work better for regional accents. I am
now exploring the combination of ac-
was establishing a research theme centred on the identification of genetic
risk factors for cardiac rhythm disorders, which are linked with a high
risk of sudden death. My work since
moving to Amsterdam has focused
entirely on this topic.
In 2005 I was awarded an Established Investigator Fellowship by the
Netherlands Heart Foundation. This
provided a major impetus in building
my own research group, which is key
for a young researcher in order to succeed. In 2012 I was appointed Professor of Molecular Cardiogenetics
at the University of Amsterdam. My
current team is made up of 15 young
talented post-doctoral fellows, Ph.D.
students, and research analysts. Our
research aims at discovering genetic
risk factors for sudden cardiac death
that enable genetic testing for the
pre-symptomatic identification (that
is, diagnosis before the occurrence
of potentially lethal heart problems)
and treatment of individuals that are
at risk for sudden death.
Last summer I was awarded the
Outstanding Achievement Award
from the European Society of Cardiology Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science. It recognises basic science
researchers with outstanding accomplishments in the early stage of their
careers. I am very glad in the way my
mentorship at the UoM prepared me
for my career in scientific research that
led to my current achievements.
cent identification with speaker identification systems.
I am currently in the final year of my
Ph.D. studies at the University of East
Anglia, and employed as a senior researcher in algorithms that can identify
emotions. We are developing a mobile
app that tracks and keeps a diary of your
mood using your voice. This project is
funded by a Technology Strategy Board
grant. Taking the leap from artificial intelligence into speech technology might
have been the best decision of my life.
•
Andrea DeMarco was awarded a STEPS
scholarship for his Masters studies, and
a UEA Vice-Chancellor’s scholarship for
his Ph.D. studies.
•
47
?
??
FUN
??
FACT or
FICTION?
GAME REVIEW
by Costantino Oliva
TxK
TxK MARKS the return of seminal designer Jeff Minter whose career
spans over 30 years. The recurring
themes in Minter’s works are frenetic
action and psychedelic experiences. All
these abound in TxK — a new arcade
shooter for PS Vita.
The game starts off with the player
in a wireframe setting being attacked
by what looks like an army of angry ribbons. Soon you will discover
that you are actually an oddly shaped
spider(ish) creature that is crawl-
Developer: Llamasoft
Platform: PS Vita
Game Rating: «««««
ing at extremely high velocity. Once
your attacking abilities have been mastered, the environment will constantly reshape around you. Before you
know it, you will find yourself upside down fighting enemies from every
direction.
It is an exercise in minimalism; so
much is achieved with few details. It is
up to the player to make sense of the
bizarre juxtapositions of graphics and
sounds. Thanks to its unique style, TxK
shines.
•
How do you cook
the perfect steak?
Fillet is the best cut. Trust me. It’s
worth the money.
Use molecular gastronomy to take
advantage of decades of researching
how meat changes with heat. Science indicates that the best cooking
temperature is around 55˚C, and
definitely not above 60˚C. At a high
temperature, myofibrillar (hold 80%
of water) and collagen (hold beef together) proteins shrink. Shrinking
leads to water loss. In the water lies
the flavour.
To cook the fillet use a technique
called sous vide. It involves vacuum
wrapping the beef and keeping it
at 55˚C in a water bath for 24–72
hours. This breaks down the proteins without over heating. The beef
becomes tender but retains flavour
and juiciness.
Take the beef out. It will look unpalatable. Quickly fry it on high heat
on both sides to brown it. The high
heat triggers the reduction of proteins or the Maillard reaction. Enjoy
with a glass of your favourite red.
Send your questions to think@um.edu.mt
and we’ll find out if it’s the truth or just a fib!
48
FILM REVIEW
THINK FUN
by Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone
You’re
Next
A HOME-INVASION movie with the possible tag-line ‘they got
more than they bargained for’. No, it’s
not Home Alone — though you may be
forgiven for thinking that.
From part of the team that gave
us V/H/S, You’re Next bears Adam
Wingard’s trademark playful-violent
stamp (think Home Alone’s cartoonish violence, with lethal contraptions
thrown in). Wingard makes an appearance in both V/H/S and as himself in his segment for The ABCs of
Death (‘Q’); though he doesn’t appear
in You’re Next, the latter film incorporates a characteristically self-conscious knowing wink, featuring writer
Simon Barrett and fellow film-makers
Ti West and Joe Swanberg in supporting roles — Ti West’s Tariq introducing himself as a ‘documentary
film-maker’, with high ‘intellectual’
(and short-lived) aspirations.
Adam Wingard self-consciously
plays with conventions, without quite
overturning expectations. The ‘final
girl’ slasher convention is here taken a
little further, Sharni Vinson’s Erin is not
a scream queen fleeing danger, with a
dash of luck on her side, she is resourceful and an equal match for the ‘invaders’.
The villains’ usual resistance to death is
here transferred to a less likely character, in a ‘why won’t you hurry up and
Film: You’re Next (2013)
«««««
Director: Adam Wingard
Certification: R
Gore rating: SSSSS
die already?’ moment that is brilliantly
played up for comic effect.
Little nods to other home-invasion
movies frame particular moments:
such as an animal-masked figure — simultaneously disconcertingly jarring
and ridiculous — sitting on a couch
beside a propped-up dead body in an
upper-middle class setting, for a quiet
Funny Games pause in the action, with
an added cartoonish element.
The generally fast-paced action is
spaced out with moments of tension,
and an effective balance is struck between the danger trying to penetrate
into the space of the family/parents’
home, and the danger already ‘within’.
The ‘home’ itself is a newly-acquired
house, territory as unfamiliar to the
family and guests as it is to the uninvited
invaders — not quite lived in, not quite
a ‘home’ yet, just as the family-relations
are themselves characterised by awkwardness. While lessening the terror
that stems from the violation of a warm
and safely welcoming homely space,
this accentuates the unsettling absence
of refuge for the characters, with vulnerable interior–exterior boundaries.
With two striking exceptions, death
scenes were disappointingly standard.
The premise and set-up of the movie
could easily have led to more inventive
devices. You’re Next is slasher, home invasion, and murder mystery, all rolled
into one; yet, it remains firmly and respectfully within genre conventions.
Nothing wrong with this — I’m not
about to make any apologies for a genre
I have so much affection for. Yet, there
is a lingering sense of an opportunity
missed — Wingard’s self-awareness and
sense of the ridiculous gives a glimpse
for greater potential here restrained.
•
49
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98
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FUN
52
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100
WORD
ideas to
change
MALTA
FundMalta
by PROF. GORDON CALLEJA
Picture a Maltese crowdfunding
website dedicated specifically to
locally based creatives. It would
be supported and promoted by
government entities to the Maltese
public, based locally and abroad.
For this to work the public sector
plays a crucial role in promoting
the site and educating the public on
how crowdfunding works.
[Don’t] THINK!
50
The site creates a platform for
followers of local creatives to contribute towards performances
and products made by artists they
love. Unlike sites like Kickstarter, products that can be digitally
distributed or ordered will remain
on the site doubling as a digital
distribution platform for locally
made works.
•
by Dr Ġorġ Mallia
THINK FUN
TECH REVIEW
by Dr Kenneth Scerri
Microsoft Surface Pro 2
Google Nexus 7
Which
tablet?
A FEW WEEKS AGO a good
friend of mine made the mistake to ask,
‘Which tablet should I buy?’ After two
hours and a long rant, I think he regretted asking that question.
The reason? Until a few years ago buying a tablet was easy, few products really
competed with the iPad. Now, however,
the choice is much more difficult.
The tablet market is very varied with
products ranging in price from a few
hundred euro to €1000. So are the more
expensive tablets always better?
The answer has to be a resounding ‘no’.
And the choice is not limited to budget.
You would also need to consider size,
both physical and memory-wise, OS
(Operating System), and manufacturer.
The right choice mostly depends on
the intended use. As an e-book reader
alternative, a light and portable 7 to 8
inch tablet seems ideal. Here Google’s
Nexus 7 proves an excellent budget
choice, with the iPad Mini a more expensive but stylish alternative.
Lenovo Yoga
Size does matter. If you intend to
use your tablet to browse the internet
or watch movies a 10 inch tablet is
your best choice. Here the iPad Air
still provides a powerful tablet with
an excellent display in a lightweight
package. Equally strong and stylish are
the offering from other manufacturers
such as the leather cladded Samsung
Galaxy Note and the waterproof Sony
Xperia Z2.
If you wish to replace your laptop
with a tablet, now you can. Windows
based tablets as the Microsoft Surface
Pro 2 add a clever keyboard and a full
Windows 8.1 experience to provide
a real alternative to a laptop. Hybrids
such as the Asus Transformer, a netbook with a detachable screen, and the
Lenovo Yoga show that functionality
does not need to be sacrificed when
opting for a tablet.
I could go on, and on and on…
Gadget rating:
•••••
iPad Air
•
Sony Xperia Z2
51
FUN
BOOK REVIEW
by The Editor
The Universe Within
Neil Turok
Quill rating:
WOULD YOU LIKE to learn
about how the cosmos works? Why
it relates to our society? In short, how
quantum physics can change your life?
Then read The Universe Within by Neil
Turok.
The laws of mathematics and physics
rule our Universe. Neil Turok does not
shy away from showing a few equations
then devoting pages to what they mean,
so you might need to come equipped
with some basic mathematical skills.
The Universe Within is yet another
astrophysics/quantum physics book
talking about our amazing and wonderful Universe. It uses the typical formula
of talking about the usual heavyweights
like Einstein and Newton amongst others. However, Turok surprises by talking
about oft glossed over scientists namely
from the Scottish Enlightenment. At
the turn of the 18th century, Scotland
proved the unlikely source of leading
intellectuals such as Adam Smith (who
invented capitalism), David Hume (revolutionised philosophical thought),
and James Watt (invented the steam
engine). Turok also focuses on the
achievements of Michael Faraday and
James Clerk Maxwell (responsible for
finding out the relation between electricity and magnetism, which drives
devices from electrical generators to
wireless chargers).
52
Turok loves science. This drive leads
to some great moments in the book. He
has one of the most beautiful descriptions of the Big Bang, space-time, and
Einstein’s E=mc2 — you might finally
understand them all. He has a nice style
if uneven. At times, he falters by being
He sees the
Universe as
having existed
before the Big
Bang and that it
will exist past the
following Big Bang
too academic and using overly complicated analogies.
The scientific idea behind the whole
book is his explanation to take the Universe into the quantum domain. He sees
the Universe as having existed before
the Big Bang and that it will exist past
the following Big Bang. ‘There was no
beginning of time nor will there be an
end: the Universe is eternal.’
Through this book Neil comes across
as an enlightened man. One of his pre-
dictions sees the next Einstein arise
from Africa. This continent is full of untapped potential and has enough problems to fill all the issues of THINK a
few times over. To solve them you need
scientists and skilled people. With this
in mind he helped set up the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences — a
true visionary, who had to flee South
Africa due to his parents’ role in trying
to bring down British apartheid.
Turok also knows his philosophy.
In the beginning, he links Einstein’s
thoughts to Hume. Towards the end of
the book more philosophical questions
arise. This is one of my favourite parts
of the book, till he strangely asks: might
we be the means for the Universe to gain
a consciousness for itself ? He also sees
quantum physics as a role model for society, and manages to sneak in how quantum computers will evolve with humans
making some form of hybrid species.
The author has a good heart. His
ideas about the skills today’s children
need, how scientists are human, and the
meaning of life are beautiful. He also
hits the nail on the head when writing,
‘politicians tend to think no further
than the next election, scientists no
further than the next grant’. This book
is worth a read, and if you don’t understand it you’ll definitely look clever having it on your coffee table.
•
THINK FUN
BOARD GAME REVIEW
by David Chircop
Onirim
SOLO BOARD GAMES are a
funny business. First of all, nobody can
catch you cheating. The temptation of
closing an eye to a few little mistakes or
‘forgetting’ a rule are alluring. Second,
you have nobody to rub the wrong way
when you make a good move. Third,
there’s nobody to beat. Board games initially strike us as a multi-player group
affair, but solo games do exist. We have
all played solitaire.
Onirim is a one-player card game.
Although two people can play co-operatively I like it best solo. In Onirim
you play as a ‘Dreamwalker’: a person
stuck in a dream trying to find his way
out before he is consumed by his own
nightmares. To escape you must assem-
ble a total of eight doors before the deck
runs out. If it does you’re in trouble and
stuck forever (till the next game).
By playing cards you move from
room to room inside a labyrinth. When
you manage to play three rooms of the
same colour consecutively, a door of
that colour ‘appears’, as in, you search
for one inside the deck.
‘Hah, sounds easy!’ you might say.
‘Hah, you’re wrong’. There are nightmare cards, and nightmare cards are…
horrible. You can only play one card
per turn, and you might have a cunning
plan set up cheerfully in your hand, but
then a ‘nightmare’ happens, and you
need to discard all your cards, and start
over. Thankfully, the ‘nightmares’ can
Designer: Shadi Torbey
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Game Rating: «««««
be dodged. Prophecies allow you to see
the future, while keys negate a ‘nightmare’s’ effects.
I like Onirim. It is different, has gorgeous art, and is wonderfully balanced.
The only downside is that it is out of
print. But worry not, Dreamwalker!
Onirim will be reprinted this year and
you can get your dreamy paws on it...
soon enough.
•
53
Research
The 10 students who launched the UoM Caution Money Scheme. Photo by Sean Mallia
Students
for Research
54
THINK Research
Mario Cachia
E
ducation is a word we are constantly bombarded with. After
sitting for hundreds of exams,
having read thousands of notes,
spent endless nights fighting with coffee machines and sticky notes, you
probably know the hardships of our
education system. However, education
is much more than books and lectures.
Education is a way of life. It changes
us and can bring out our potential. Our
University is the place we all come to
learn, work, and ultimately spend most
our time. Be it students, staff members,
academics, or researchers, it is of utmost
importance for us all to be in line with
why we are all here, to nurture education and develop our society’s future.
The University has been growing rapidly in the past decade. Construction is
ongoing, labs are being renovated, and
the number of postgraduate courses
and doctorates has grown exponentially. Naturally, research has spiked up too,
and the UoM is also spearheading a few
world-class projects.
Why am I putting so much importance on research? The answer is simple. Without research Malta can never
make a leap forward to improve our
quality of life. The main aim of research
is always that of identifying and exploring new knowledge that will ultimately
make our world a better place.
Locally, researchers are not just donning white lab coats. Maltese researchers are diving deep into Mediterranean
waters to explore native aquatic species,
some are crawling face down in garigue
environments to investigate local flora
and fauna, while others are breaking
new grounds to find the Maltese genetic
components responsible for cancer and
other deadly diseases.
Students perform research for their
dissertations (see the student section
of THINK). This is when a student
will first experience hands-on research.
A university supported to conduct top
research is necessary to give students
more real-world research opportunities.
Encouraging a research mentality within the early stages of the University experience is essential to foster a lifetime
commitment towards our alma mater.
Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle
in research is funding. This problem is
worldwide. But whilst other countries
have already made substantial efforts to
fight this problem, locally we have just
started to get the ball rolling to instill
the much needed awareness and culture
around research funding.
Investing in research is essential and
we are seeing an initial good response
from society. People are slowly starting
to realise that through research we are
not only creating a hope for future generations, but we are also aiding the education of our children and helping our
country’s socio-economic well-being. In
the past year we have managed to raise
important funds for cancer and kidney
research, and other important causes.
The University Research Trust’s latest initiative, in collaboration with the
KSU, is a project whereby students can
directly donate funds towards research
within their faculties. Dubbed as the
UoM Caution Money Scheme, this initiative lets final year students from
the Faculties of Engineering, ICT and
Sciences donate their laboratory caution money towards research projects
and equipment in their faculties. Ten
students, who decided to set an example
for their peers to follow, launched this
scheme during an annual KSU event,
showing that everyone can contribute
towards research at University.
We are now encouraging all final year
students from these faculties to follow
suit and also contribute towards research. Malcolm Zammit, one of the
students who already donated the money appealed to his peers saying, ‘This
small deposit we had left in our first
year is negligible when compared to the
amount that the University has invested
in all of us. Today, I feel it my natural
duty to give something small back to
this place which has given me so much.’
The initiative has also encouraged
other student organisations to donate.
ELSA has just given the Research Trust
some funds for University research.
These initiatives are all helping towards
fostering more awareness and funding
so that together we can continue leaving a tangible impact on our campus
and society.
•
Mario Cachia is the Campaign Officer
of the RIDT, which is the University’s
Research Trust aimed towards fostering
awareness and fundraising for high-calibre local research. More information on
how to participate in the UoM Caution
Money Scheme will be published shortly. Please visit our website www.ridt.eu
to donate online, and our Facebook page
www.facebook.com/RIDTMalta for
the latest events and initiatives.
55
culture genes
MEME
56
M
MEME
THINK
Photography
heatre
T
al
ks
alks
MusicArt
Film
EVENINGS
on campus
July • August
www.um.edu.mt/events/eveningsoncampus
 kkumalta@gmail.com
 7984 3480
/eveningsoncampus