A village for an island : Malta in Frans Sammut's novel Samuraj

In Frans Sammut's novel Samuraj, the village in which most of the action takes place, is a metaphor of post-Independence Malta that is trying, and more often than not failing, to come to terms with what has been called the "severity of independence". The isolated, backward Village is plagued by the bipolar nature of its social make-up and strangled by its overpowering Church. Its 'moral' community takes the protagonist's refusal to toe the line as an affront to its authority, and its aggressive reaction forces him to turn to the painful, but fond memory of his battered mother for comfort, echoing independent Malta's inability to wean itself away from its colonised past.peer-reviewe

The idealized nation-mother of the romantics and the status quo

One of the key metaphors in the construction of the Maltese national imaginary through literature was that of the nation-mother who served as a conservative reference point to the male writers and the national family. She is essentially a construct of the patriarchal society that shaped most pre-Independence Maltese prose and poetry. The traditional family of that literature is a closed unit with well-defined roles assigned to the members of the in-groups, whether or not they like it. and with a clear theocentric centre. Like the static mother who is subservient to the strict father and is expected to execute his decisions, Malta is plitically subservient to the colonial master and morally subservient to the patriarchal Catholic Church.peer-reviewe

Bilateral intralobar pulmonary sequestration : a case report

Bronchopulmonary sequestration is a congenital lung malformation consisting of a non-functioning lung segment. Arterial supply to such a segment is found to be systemic rather than pulmonary, and by definition there is no communication with the tracheobronchial tree. It accounts for about 6% of all congenital pulmonary malformations. Bilateral bronchopulmonary sequestration is yet more uncommon. These malformations can be classified as either intralobar sequestration (the commoner type), or extralobar sequestration (in 14- 25%).peer-reviewe

Straxxnani minn hawn

Din in-novella bl-isem `Straxxnani minn hawn’ ta’ Adrian Grima dehret fil-ġurnal Il-Malti : Rivista tal-Akkademja tal-Malti ħarġa letterarja, 93.peer-reviewe

“Fashioning” the Maltese family

Literature does not provide a mirror of society and does not pretend to do so either. But it does allow writers to explore the individuals and the community they choose to write about and their work often provides insights one would associate with qualitative research. Literature is essentially a “fashioning of language,” a “kind of aesthetic ‘forming’ [...] or ‘shaping’. The genre of fiction in particular is “characterised by a more overtly referential modality in purporting to relate to ‘real life,’” and this is because it “seems to form or shape the raw material of lived experience into the ‘world of the book.’” Art fashions “a perceptible reality for us in its textual ‘shaping’ of the inchoate into comprehensible designs or patterns.”peer-reviewe

Lhud Fariżej u Nsara tajbin fir-rumanz Malti tas-snin tletin

L-awtur jistħarreġ il-karattri Lhud Fariżej u Nsara tajbin fir-rumanz Malti tas-snin tletin.peer-reviewe

Juan Mamo u s-sigrieti ta' wlied in-nanna Venut

L-awtur jistħarreġ il-karatterizzazzjoni fir-rumanz “Ulied in-Nanna Venut fl-Amerka” ta’ Juan Mamo.peer-reviewe

"Minn kull xorta ta' qżież" : Dun Karm u l-konfini tal-identità fil-mument tal-metafora

L-awtur jistħarreġ lil Dun Karm u l-konfini tal-identità fil-mument tal-metafora. Dan l-istudju ġie ppreżentat fil-Konferenza Karmen Mikallef Buħaġar 2011 fl-okkażjoni tal-ħamsin sena mill-mewt ta’ Dun Karm nhar il-Ġimgħa, 9 ta’ Diċembru 2011.peer-reviewe

A novel holistic design optimisation algorithm for the ironless inductive position sensor

The Ironless Inductive Position Sensor (I2PS) is a state-of-the-art high precision linear position sensor, which is designed to be radiation hard and immune to magnetic fields. This sensor is built for the Large Hadron Collider collimation system at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is continuously monitored to assess the precision, accuracy and drifts during the machine’s operation. The ironless inductive position sensor was previously designed and optimised manually on a programmed electromagnetic model and simulated using a finite element model simulator. This sensor has the potential to be used extensively in industry, especially in areas with high radiation and high electro-magnetic interference. To industrialise it, an automated design procedure is required that offers the possibility to a user with minimal knowledge to design and optimise the sensor. This paper identifies the optimisation parameters and constants required in the manual design. It hence presents an automated design procedure which uses a multi-objective optimisation algorithm to automatically produce ironless inductive position sensors tailor-made to the user’s specifications.peer-reviewe

Simplifying Contract-Violating Traces

Contract conformance is hard to determine statically, prior to the deployment of large pieces of software. A scalable alternative is to monitor for contract violations post-deployment: once a violation is detected, the trace characterising the offending execution is analysed to pinpoint the source of the offence. A major drawback with this technique is that, often, contract violations take time to surface, resulting in long traces that are hard to analyse. This paper proposes a methodology together with an accompanying tool for simplifying traces and assisting contract-violation debugging.Comment: In Proceedings FLACOS 2012, arXiv:1209.169