T H E
U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A L T A A L U M N I N E W S L E T T E R
Self-esteem affects learning, performance, self-worth and quality of life, particularly in persons with dyslexia, or rather how students with dyslexia are understood, supported or not supported at school and in general.
Riley and Rustique-Forrester (2002) note that students with dyslexia find school a profoundly sad and depressing experience: “isolated children and shouting teachers.
A recurring image is of school as a prison from which children continually try to escape…small voices crying for help, caught in a cycle of circumstances they felt largely unable to influence” (p.33). For example Hans
Christian Anderson remembers: ‘The life I led during these days still comes back to me in bad dreams. Once again I sit in a fever on a school bench. I cannot answer; I dare not, the angry eyes stare at me, laughter and gibes echo around me. Those were hard and bitter times.’
This, however, can be changed with a more respectful inclusive curriculum and pedagogy, and the use of drama (Eaden, 2004) and performance ethnography
(Brewer, 2000; Speedy, 2008). Ethnography allows for understanding the meaning given to experiences.
The stories presented are “evocative, dramatic, engaging,… concrete [with]... layered details….[and] heart-breaking” (Ellis,2009, p. 360) and engage the
[audiences] aesthetically, emotionally, politically and also ethically (Tillman, 2009). For the past five years, the University of Malta’s Department of Counselling has been promoting this concept through a performance autoethnography carried out by professional actor and autoethnographer Matthew Scurfield (Scurfield,
2008, 2009) - who is also dyslexic, artist Clare Agius and
Director Lena Scurfield. Matthew first put up his own performance autoethnography, entitled ‘I Could Be
Anyone’, in February 2009 in order to launch his first book (Scurfield, 2008) and has since performed to over
1600 Maltese and, following an invitation to collaborate with UK Dyslexia Achieve Ability, this November
2013 he performed at a number of prestigious British universities: University of London, London School of Economics, Bristol University, Oxford University,
Cambridge University and London’s Working Men’s
College for Men and Women. CONT >

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The UK performances, as had previously happened with Maltese audiences, were received warmly by audiences which included academics, professionals, and adults and youngsters with dyslexia, and created a lot of discussion. They were adapted to diverse fora, and held in both theatres and lecture rooms. Professor
John F. Stein, a fellow at Magdalen College, University of
Oxford, a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and chair of the Dyslexia Research Trust noted: “I found your
‘show’ utterly inspiring, particularly your idea of loss of innocence. I had never thought of it that way round. It’s made me think hard.” Professor Danny Dorling, Halford
Mackinder Professorship in Geography at University of
Oxford commented: “I’m very glad I saw I COULD BE
ANYONE. The monologue (sorry if that is not the right word!) at the very beginning was incredible. Brought back a lot of memories.” Playwright and television producer Rosemary Wilton said that she found the performance to be “A truly moving and fascinating experience that rang so true. I’m sure the audience was inspired as I was. Thank goodness I saw it.”; whilst a lecturer from the University of Bristol noted that “I have just attended the most moving drama performance, entitled ‘I could be anyone’, on the autobiographical experiences of a learner with dyslexia and its damaging effects on self-esteem. This gave me more insight into the effects of this learning difference in the short hour of live performance than any amount of reading and had a considerable impact and resonance with all those present.”
Audience’s comments locally and abroad highlight our responsibility towards ensuring that our children and youngsters have positive experiences at school as this has long lasting effects with regard to selfconcept, self-esteem and quality of life. The pain, anguish, hurt, bewilderment, shame, and frustration experienced can easily be transformed into an enriching experience of growth if educators and society appreciate and respect these children’s profile of abilities and challenges.
Why do eggs solidify when you cook them? The answer is in the proteins. Most proteins in cells (including egg cells and our own body cells) are soluble enzymes which carry out the chemical reactions that define life itself. They re quire a very narrow range of physical conditions in order to maintain the complicated three-dimensional structure they need, and our own body temperature of 37˚C is just right for our own enzymes. If you heat them however, the proteins unfold, or denature, and become inactive.
Research conducted recently by Ms Diane Farrugia in the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Protein
Science in the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, under the supervision of Professor Gary J. Hunter, involved the deliberate denaturation of a very important protein, superoxide dismutase.
Superoxide dismutase protects us against the toxic effects of oxygen and is a tumour suppressor protein. Denaturation techniques were utilised in order to replace a core component – an atom of iron, with another metal to find out more about the enzyme. Ms Farrugia developed a way to renature the protein again, rather like unboiling an egg. Studies were carried out at the University of Malta, the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular
Biology, University of Leeds, UK and at the Diamond Light
Source Ltd., UK, a powerful synchrotron which provides electromagnetic radiation at various wavelengths for a number of experimental research scientists simultaneously. This is part of a project to obtain further knowledge about how this important enzyme functions, which is essential to give insight on how these superoxide dismutases interact in the living organism. These findings are important for protein engineering and drug design in pharmaceuticals.
Ms Farrugia has been awarded the degree of Masters of Science in Biochemistry
(Department of Medicine and Surgery) from the University of Malta, 2013 and was partially funded by the Strategic
Educational Pathways Scholarship (STEPS,
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”.

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Maltese scientists have shown how the common fruit fly
Drosophila, which is genetically and biologically similar to humans, could now be used to develop new therapies for the most common genetic killer of childhood – spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).
SMA causes death of the nerve cells (motor neurons) responsible for controlling body movement, slowly leading to muscle weakness and eventually causing death. The majority of the cases are due to an inherited flaw in the gene encoding for the Survival Motor Neuron
(SMN) protein.
SMN is known to be intimate with a set of diverse proteins collectively termed as Gemins. The SMN-Gemins alliance is crucial for guarding against abnormalities in messenger RNA, the genetic mail carrier of instructions for building proteins.
Researchers from the University of Malta Medical
School have been using the fruit fly as a model organism to study the biology of the SMN-Gemins family in brain and muscle. The latest results published in the online, open-access journal PLOS ONE have demonstrated that the disruption of the Gemin associates of SMN in either brain or muscle depresses the flight performance of flies, rendering them flightless.
Like any body movement in humans, active flight in flies is dependent on muscle capable of generating sufficient forces to offset gravity, and a controlling system provided by the brain to keep flies from tumbling to the ground. The expansive motor behaviour of flies have made them superb model organisms of neurodegenerative disease worldwide.
For the first time in Malta, the team has made use of DNA-technology to generate flies that contain genetically-modified versions of the Gemin proteins.
In this regard, the normal or mutant version of the proteins were fused to a glowing tag derived from jellyfish – green fluorescent protein (GFP) – to follow their movement within cells. GFP, which is an amazing cellular GPS, enabled researchers to track the otherwise invisible Gemin proteins to the cell nucleus or the vault containing the instruction manual for life - DNA.
Dr Ruben Cauchi, lead author from the University’s
School of Medicine said: “We were crazy enough to use biotechnology tools to engineer, from scratch, normal and mutant proteins, and to generate geneticallymodified organisms that can express these proteins in every single cell of their body. What motivates us? We are essentially curious, hungry for discovery, and have one mission – that of understanding one of the most catastrophic of diseases and its eventual eradication.”
“Our next step is to investigate whether the Gemin proteins, which remain undamaged in SMA, can functionally replace SMN. The fruit fly, which for more than a century has been a workhorse of genetics in the laboratory, is the only animal in which we can rapidly, economically, and effectively test this therapeutic strategy”.
The study entitled ‘The Gemin Associates of Survival
Motor Neuron are Required for Motor Function in
Drosophila’ by Rebecca Borg and Ruben Cauchi was partly funded by Malta Council for Science & Technology
(MCST) through the National Research & Innovation
Programme 2012 (R&I-2012-066), and was published in
PLOS ONE .

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Imagine controlling a music player just by looking at your laptop. Engineers from the Department of Systems and Control Engineering and the Centre for Biomedical
Cybernetics at the University of Malta led by Professor
Kenneth Camilleri are doing just that. They have created a brain-controlled music player after having studied the best way to obtain the desired brain response, work which was presented at the 6th International IEEE/EMBS
Neural Engineering Conference in San Diego, California by team member Dr Owen Falzon.
The researchers developed the system to improve the life of individuals with severely limited motor abilities. Just looking at flickering boxes on a screen controls the music player, no actions are needed. This brain-computer interface (BCI) technology could be the basis of emerging user interfaces for smartphones and tablets, as recently seen in worldwide media attention given to Samsung’s development of similar systems.
The system works by reading the brain activity of a user. The brain works by sending electrical signals; these are picked up by electrodes placed at specific positions on the scalp through a process known as electroencephalography (EEG). These EEG recordings are then used to convert patterns of electrical brain activity into computer commands. The commands control the music player without the need of any physical movement; the user just needs to look at the right box. The program figures out where the user is looking through his or her brain patterns, allowing the music player to be controlled.
The system developed by Rosanne Zerafa (supervised by Dr Tracey Camilleri) reads a unique brain pattern called steady state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs).
This pattern occurs when a person looks at a light which is flickering at a certain frequency resulting in their brain synchronising at the same rate. The electrodes can pick up this pattern. By having boxes flashing at different frequencies, corresponding to a play button, up/down button or increase/decrease in volume, the system can tell if a user wants to start a new song, move on to the next one or pump up the volume. The user just needs to focus their attention on a flashing box.
On 30 April there will be a get-together on campus of the B.Ed. course of 1989. This occasion has been organised in conjunction with the Communications and Alumni Relations Office at the University. We would like to inform all UoM Alumni that this Office has begun to provide this service to any group of
Alumni wishing to organise a similar get-together on campus. We can offer the venue, help you contact your peers, put you in contact with our campus caterer and also help you create a dedicated Facebook group page.
Whether you are celebrating your 5th or your
50th anniversary, we would be happy to hear from you!
This newletter is published by the Communications and Alumni
Relations Office within the University of Malta.
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