An Experiential Comparative Tool for Board Games

In the field of game studies, contemporary board games have until now remained relatively unexplored. The recent years have allowed us to witness the emergence of the occasional academic texts focusing on board games – such as Eurogames (Woods, 2012), Characteristics of Games (Elias et al. 2013), and most recently Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games (Booth, 2015). The mentioned authors all explore board games from diverse viewpoints but none of these authors present a viable and practical analytical tool to allow us to examine and differentiate one board game from another. In this vein, this paper seeks to present an analytical comparative tool intended specifically for board games. The tool builds upon previous works (Aarseth et al. 2003; Elias et al. 2012; and Woods 2012) to show how four categories – rules, luck, interaction and theme – can interact on different levels to generate diverse gameplay experiences. Such a tool allows to score games objectively and separately in each of the categories to create a combined gameplay experience profile for each board game. Following this, the paper proceeds to present numerous practical examples of contemporary board games and how it can be used from a design perspective and an analytical perspective alike

Device-Centric Monitoring for Mobile Device Management

The ubiquity of computing devices has led to an increased need to ensure not only that the applications deployed on them are correct with respect to their specifications, but also that the devices are used in an appropriate manner, especially in situations where the device is provided by a party other than the actual user. Much work which has been done on runtime verification for mobile devices and operating systems is mostly application-centric, resulting in global, device-centric properties (e.g. the user may not send more than 100 messages per day across all applications) being difficult or impossible to verify. In this paper we present a device-centric approach to runtime verify the device behaviour against a device policy with the different applications acting as independent components contributing to the overall behaviour of the device. We also present an implementation for Android devices, and evaluate it on a number of device-centric policies, reporting the empirical results obtained.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2016, arXiv:1603.0837

La Sicilianita Mediterranea nei Vecchi e i Giovani di Luigi Pirandello

La sicilianità della narrativa di Luigi Pirandello ebbe uno strettissimo rapporto con la civiltà del Mediterraneo, dalla quale colse temi, contesti, e personaggi. Prendendo però atto della costanza e della compiutezza con cui Pirandello ritorna ad affrontare la sua sicilianità nella sua narrativa, oserei intravedere in essa un progetto tematico-culturale di ampio respiro. Questo saggio infatti cercherà di rilevare come nel romanzo I Vecchi e i Giovani la rappresentazione della sicilianità di Pirandello spesso si universalizza, elevandosi così ad una metafora – se non ‘del mondo’ come la intendeva Sciascia in una celebre intervista – almeno dei paesi che si bagnano nel bacino del Mediterraneo. La sicilianità pirandelliana è una forma di condizione storico-culturale mediterranea che viene elevata dallo stesso autore ad un’insularità cosmica universale, ed essendo universale, diventa una sorta di condizione siciliana assimilabile ad altri contesti mediterranei ben più ampi.peer-reviewe

Living on fishing, caught in the market : the Maltese fishing communities,1860s-1920

The absence of the fishing folk, of their daily livelihood, communal ways of life and culture, characterizes modern Maltese historiography. This conspicuous neglect must be treated as a serious omission indeed, particularly when one considers the fact that we are dealing with the history of a small archipelago. Certainly, the lack of early official quantitative and qualitative sources on Maltese fishing culture, apart that is from the rudimentary annotations in censuses or colonial reports published from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, has definitely not assisted the generation of research interest in this field of inquiry. More disturbingly still, conventional authors have interpreted this scarcity of official records on the fishing people as proof of their irrelevance to Maltese history. This is indeed an essentially linear view of history, narrowly positivist in nature, which alas still structures the bulk of Maltese historical productions. In contrast, to the critical historiographer, it is immediately apparent that the causes of such a surprising neglect are of a methodological, historiographical as much as of a historical nature. Adopting this critical historical approach, the present study treats the exclusion of these coastal labouring people and their daily work activities from modern Maltese historiography as replicating the laissez-faire attitude and practice of the colonial state during most of the nineteenth century, which discarded domestic fishing culture. It was only on some occasions that the administration gave a fleeting look to this sector, airing the idea that this indigenous economic activity was insignificant, and thus inconsequential to Malta’s ‘modern’ colonial economy, if anything because of a supposed low productivity of the surrounding seas. This long-standing stance, expressed in various official comments, was employed as a legitimizing device for the actual abandonment of this economic sector, and of the fishing population, by the governing establishment, whose principal task was to secure Malta’s role as a strategic imperial outpost in the Mediterranean. In the context of the resulting economic system, imperial spending and native capital flows were directed into the naval-military infrastructure and the trade facilities located in the Grand Harbour area, while most indigenous productive activities were starved of capital. The impact left on the fishing sector by this economic system, managed by the colonial state and articulated with the dominant market relations, during the period under review, forms the central concern of this study. Against this structural economic backdrop, this work will focus on the nodal problems actually faced by the fishers in their daily exertions. Extensive space is here allocated to an investigation of the inequitable market relations occurring in the wholesale fish-market (Pixkerija). The ways in which this market institution hindered the transformation of domestic fishing from a traditional and low productivity activity into a viable commercialized sector, and how it kept the fishers’ standards of living at subsistence level, are discussed in some detail. Certainly, investigating in some depth the structure and operations of this institution, and particularly the dominant role of the middlemen, will trigger a further inquiry on how these coastal fishing people managed to survive as households and as communities in coastal villages in the long term, considering their total exclusion from any state assistance or legal protection from market exploitation. Moreover, to add to their proverbial burdens, the state, during the period under review, was gradually making itself present in the lives of the fishing people but only through the imposition of restrictions on traditional fishing and by curbing, or strictly prohibiting, access to large stretches of the sea and coastal areas, particularly in the Grand Harbour, officially in order to protect spawning fish from depletion.peer-reviewe

Developments in the management of acute coronary syndromes

Cardiovascular mortality remains one of the leading causes of death across the globe, accounting to a total of 27.15% of deaths in the Maltese Islands for the year 2014. Plaque fissuring and/or plaque erosion constitute the foundations of the pathogenesis of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) ranging from a spectrum of unstable angina, ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and non-STEMI. made in the understanding of ACS. Both the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the American College of Cardiology/ American Heart Association published new guidelines on the management of ACS in patients without persistent ST-segment elevation. This article aims to highlight some of the major developments and recommendations that have been put forward.peer-reviewe