A historical complex at St. Agatha - Rabat

Within St. Agatha's Historical Complex, one can discover various important sites: the catacombs containing different types of tombs, agape tables and frescoes; the crypt with its important medieval frescoes; the alabaster statue depicting the martyrdom of the saint; crosses of Dedication; the historical Church of 1504 and enlarged in 1670 and wherein is kept the historical marble statue which was placed on the walls of the city of Mdina on July 20th 1551, during one of frequent attacks by the Arab corsairs on the island. Nearby stands a small Museum with various collections of fossils, prehistoric remains, minerals, pottery and many other things of interest and beauty.peer-reviewe

Extracting Formal Models from Normative Texts

We are concerned with the analysis of normative texts - documents based on the deontic notions of obligation, permission, and prohibition. Our goal is to make queries about these notions and verify that a text satisfies certain properties concerning causality of actions and timing constraints. This requires taking the original text and building a representation (model) of it in a formal language, in our case the C-O Diagram formalism. We present an experimental, semi-automatic aid that helps to bridge the gap between a normative text in natural language and its C-O Diagram representation. Our approach consists of using dependency structures obtained from the state-of-the-art Stanford Parser, and applying our own rules and heuristics in order to extract the relevant components. The result is a tabular data structure where each sentence is split into suitable fields, which can then be converted into a C-O Diagram. The process is not fully automatic however, and some post-editing is generally required of the user. We apply our tool and perform experiments on documents from different domains, and report an initial evaluation of the accuracy and feasibility of our approach.Comment: Extended version of conference paper at the 21st International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB 2016). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1607.0148

The Impact of the Suspension of Opening and Closing Call

A hotly debated issue in the market microstructure literature is the effectiveness of call auctions as against continuous trading systems. In this paper we investigate this issue by studying the impact of the suspension of opening and closing call auctions by the National Stock Exchange of India in 1999. We compare the volatility, efficiency and liquidity (VEL) of securities in the market before and after suspension, and estimate the value of the auctions to traders by carrying out an event study. Contrary to expectation, we find that VEL factors improved following the suspension, and the CARs were significant but were not uniformly positive or negative. As a partial explanation for these results, we find that less liquid stocks traded less in the auctions than did other securities, especially at the opening, and they experienced the most gains following the suspension. This suggests that less liquid stocks did not gain the expected benefits from the auctions, and therefore that it cannot be assumed that a call auction system will improve share trading in a less liquid emerging market. Future research in this area will need to pay attention to the composition of the shares being traded and to the nature of the trading process in different shares in the market.Call Auctions, stock markets, National Stock Exchange of India

An Analysis of the Impacts of Non-Synchronous Trading On

The serial correlation effects which non-synchronous trading can induce in financial data have been documented by various researchers. In this paper we investigate non-synchronous trading effects in terms of the predictability that may be induced in the values of stock indices. This analysis is applied to emerging-market data, on the grounds that such markets might be less liquid and thus prone to a higher degree of non- synchronous trading. We use both a daily data set and a higher frequency one, since the latter is a prerequisite for capturing intra-day variations in trading activity. When considering one-minute interval data, we obtain clear evidence of predictability between indices with different degrees of non-synchronous trading. We then propose a simple test to infer whether such predictability is mainly attributable to non- synchronous trading or an actual delayed adjustment on part of traders. The results obtained from an intra-day analysis suggest that the former cause seems a better explanation for the observed predictability. Future research in this area is needed to shed light on the degree of data predictability which may be exclusively attributed to non-synchronous trading, and how empirical results may be influenced by the chosen data frequency.Non-Synchronous Trading, Stock Markets, National Stock Exchange of India, High-Frequency Data.

A question of compulsion

The nineteenth century marked a shift in education in Malta. The church schools started to expand their responsibilities as state schools started to increase. Debates arose as to whether education should be made compulsory or not, particularly during the second half of the century. This article looks at the reforms and changes which were made with the introduction of compulsory education in Malta.peer-reviewe

Living deep-water Lophelia and Madrepora corals in Maltese waters (Strait of Sicily, Mediterranean Sea)

The occurrence of living deep-water corals, Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata, from stations 21-42 km off the southern and south-western coast of Malta is reported. Fragments of living colonies of both species, as well as some large pieces of Lophelia frameworks were recovered from depths of 390-617 m together with the solitary coral Desmophyllum dianthus (= cristagalli). The accompanying biota included the barnacle Pachylasma giganteum, the gastropod Coralliophila richardi, the bivalves Asperarca nodulosa and Spondylus gussonii, and the polychaete Eunice norvegicus, all of which are frequently associated with deep-water corals. The occurrence of the Lophelia-Madrepora- Desmophyllum triad, the large pieces of coral frameworks consisting predominantly of live, healthy polyps, and the associated biota, suggest that coral patches may be present in at least some of the investigated localities, rather than just fragmented remains or isolated colonies.peer-reviewe

The re-emergence of the B1 cell compartment : is this a pre-lymphoma stage?

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) are in some cases stereotyped for immunoglobulin variants in different populations, suggesting emergence of B cell subsets following presentation of the same antigen. CLL cells may originate from CD5+ naïve cells and from CD5 memory cells. Gene expression studies characterized a common cell of origin of the two clinical categories of CLL; the unmutated aggressive type and the mutated indolent type. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of CD5 positive B cells in the elderly and their potential stimulation with exosomes derived from tumor cells. The findings from this study is aimed to create a model to identify instigating carcinomatous factors that may stimulate B1 cells to transform into a CLL-like model. In this study we show that CD19\textsuperscript+ cells (B cells) in cord blood have a high expression of CD5. CD19/CD5 staining of blood samples from senior citizens showed the presence of B cells which also express the CD5 marker, though at a lower expression when compared to CLL cells (CD19+/CD5 dim B cells). Measurement of clonality using λ/Κ flow cytometry staining show a monoclonal origin of the human CD19+/CD5 dim B cells. Monoclonal B cell Lymphocytosis in the elderly is a potential cell compartment that represents the origin of B cell proliferative disorders. The origin of the B cell proliferative disease requires antigen stimulation. A preliminary experiment showed that sorted lymphocytes can be stimulated by exosomes isolated from 2 cancer cells lines, A549 (lung epithelial) and PC3 (prostate cell line). In comparison with phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) and phorbolmyristate acetate (PMA), known lymphocyte stimulators, the exosomes stimulated the proliferation of monocytic-like cells. Further characterization is required to know the origin of these cells. The result shows that one can speculate that exosomes present cancer-derived antigens and stimulate cell proliferation. Further studies are required to evaluate the potential transformation capacity of cancer-derived exosomes. In addition, various cytokines were measured in the sera of senior citizens to investigate a differential release of cytokines in the presence or absence of the CD19+/CD5 dim B cells. Cytokines examined were not significantly different between the 2 groups and further evaluation of cytokine levels is required.peer-reviewe

Effect of fireworks on ambient air quality in Malta

The authors gratefully acknowledge a research grant awarded in support of this work by the Maltese Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Environment Commission.Religious festivals (festas) in the densely populated Maltese archipelago (Central Mediterranean) are ubiquitous during summer when 86 of them are celebrated between June and October, each involving the burning of fireworks both in ground and aerial displays over a period of 3 days or longer per festival. We assessed the effect of fireworks on the air quality by comparing PM10 and its content of Al, Ba, Cu, Sr and Sb which materials are used in pyrotechnic compositions. PM10 was collected mainly from two sites, one in Malta (an urban background site) and the other in Gozo (a rural site) during July-August 2005 when 59 feasts were celebrated and September-October 2005 when only 11 feasts occurred. For both Malta and Gozo, PM10 and metal concentration levels measured as weekly means were significantly higher during July-August compared to September-October and there exist strong correlations between PM10 and total metal content. Additionally, for Malta dust, Al, Ba, Cu and Sr correlated strongly with each other and also with total concentration of all five metals. The same parameters measured in April 2006 in Malta were at levels similar to those found in the previous October. Ba and Sb in dust from the urban background site in Malta during July-August were at comparable or higher concentration than recently reported values in PM10 from a heavily-trafficked London road and this suggests that these metals are locally not dominated by sources from roadside materials such as break liner wear but more likely by particulate waste from fireworks. Our findings point to the fact that festa firework displays contribute significantly and for a prolonged period every year to airborne dust in Malta where PM10 is an intractable air quality concern. The presence in this dust of elevated levels of Ba and especially Sb, a possible carcinogen, is of concern to health.peer-reviewe

Fine dust emissions from softstone quarrying in Malta

The Lower Globigerina Limestone (softstone) provides stone blocks for the construction industry in Malta: primitive techniques are used to extract and convert limestone into such blocks. An analysis is presented of the work methods and practices employed by the industry, along with estimates of fine respirable dust (PM10) emission from such techniques, to show that the rate of PM10 emission is 0.38 kg of limestone dust per building stone produced; taking into account mitigation of dust release during the wet months, it is estimated that the 67 active open pit quarries which lie in close proximity (0.2 to 2 km) to urban centres generate, annually, about 1200 t of PM10 dust. Considering that dust emission occurs mainly during the dry summer months, the average PM10 emission rate from quarries during this period is 11 500 mg m-2 day-1 which is well above international guideline values (100 – 350 mg m-2 day-1). The main emission sources accounting for 97% of fine dust are the cutting tools (76%) used to extract the mineral from the quarry bed and the dressing tools (21%) that convert the blocks into ‘fair-faced’ stones suitable for use in construction. The reason why emission factors are so large is due to the fact that all dust generated is allowed to escape unchecked to atmosphere. It is concluded that in view of the magnitude of the emissions and the vicinity of sources to residential areas, the quarrying industry may be a significant factor contributing to the lowering of air quality on the islands with possible impacts on the health of the general population and, in a more serious manner, that of the quarrying community. Artificial water wetting of the quarry bed prior to extraction may provide an effective and relatively cheap mitigation measure during the dry weather when the problem of dust emission is at its worst.peer-reviewe