The administration of Gozo : 1335

Following the loss of the royal registers in Sicily, the materials available for the internal history of Malta from 1282 and 1355 are rare and so documentation on Gozo's administration is even scarcer. This article looks at the text of 1335, which was known through the brief excerpt published by Rosario Gregorio and, through Gregorio, to Alfred Mifsud. It brings to light a detailed report of the administration in Gozo in the year 1335.peer-reviewe

Malta : language, literacy and identity in a Mediterranean island society

Available documentation for the early modern period indicates that the Malta harbor towns achieved literacy earlier than the countryside. The Maltese townsmen lived on a trading route, and it was necessary for them to learn the lingua franca, as the language of trade in the Mediterranean. The educated elite were able to acquire fluent speaking knowledge, as well as the ability to write, Tuscan (a dialect then in the process of becoming standard Italian), while continuing to employ their local Maltese ‘dialect’ on numerous occasions. By and large, the erosion of the position of Maltese as the subordinate language was an inevitable by-product of this development. The Maltese language was able to attain the function of a literary language in the nineteenth century but it had no standard orthography until 1931 and was only adopted as Malta’s official language in 1964.peer-reviewe

Introduction

This document contains the Table of Contents and a list of illustrations.The excavations of 1977 went a considerable way towards the fulfilment of this programme by increasing the body of historical infprmation concerning Ħal Millieri. A full understanding of the new material naturally requires a reading of the volume already published. Indeed, the fact that the documentary evidence and the standing remains had already been studied in detail made the site an especially attractive one for an excavation. These operations have also introduced purely medieval archaeology to Malta for the first time, and have inaugurated the. systematic investigation of the medieval pottery, a process which should prove valuable in the future.peer-reviewe

Contributions of fluorescence techniques to understanding G protein-coupled receptor dimerisation

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest class of eukaryotic cell-surface receptors and, over the last decade, it has become clear that they are capable of dimerisation. Whilst many biochemical and biophysical approaches have been used to study dimerisation, fluorescence techniques, including Förster resonance energy transfer and single molecule fluorescence, have been key players. Here we review recent contributions of fluorescence techniques to investigate GPCR dimers, including dimerisation in cell membranes and native tissues, the effect of ligand binding on dimerisation and the kinetics of dimer formation and dissociation. The challenges of studying multicomponent membrane protein systems have led to the development and refinement of many fluorescence assays, allowing the functional consequences of receptor dimerisation to be investigated and individual protein molecules to be imaged in the membranes of living cells. It is likely that the fluorescence techniques described here will be of use for investigating many other multicomponent membrane protein systems

A Gαi–GIV Molecular Complex Binds Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor and Determines Whether Cells Migrate or Proliferate

Migrating cells do not proliferate and vice versa, but the mechanism involved remains unknown. Ghosh et al. reveal how this cellular decision is made by showing that a Gαi–GIV molecular complex interacts with EGF receptor and programs growth factor signaling, triggering migration when assembled and favoring mitosis when assembly is prevented