What is Malta’s most abundant resource? The sea and sun. Till now very few uses have been found for such resources due to the lack of applications in conventional industries. However, what would happen if we became unconventional?
Think Algae farms. Malta and Gozo could be using the warm waters around them to produce a cheap, healthy food. With copious sunlight prevalent throughout the year, local sushi bars could serve sushi wrapped in local nori. Malta could export to large profitable markets overseas. The farms could provide a large influx of work and increase cash flow to the Maltese Islands.
This book was published in 2010 but unfortunately remains one of the few examples of positivity towards Islam coming from the West. British Jim Al-Khalili was born in Iran and he wrote about science during the early days of Islam, also giving a beautiful picture of life before the Islamic revolution of 1979 that forced his family to flee. Al-Khalili is a an accomplished theoretical physicist and broadcast presenter for BBC Horizon, The Big Bang, Tomorrow’s World and Science and Islam (the parallel TV series to this book).
If you love history, you will love this book as Al-Khalili goes into great depth—three whole chapters—to explain the circumstances that led to the golden age of science within Islam. The standard history of science texts usually paints the Islamic Empire (the scientific golden age was mostly from the 8th till 13th century) as being the great saviour of Greek texts having translated the works of Pythagoras, Aristotle, and other Greek scientists that then instigated the Renaissance in Europe when they were translated into Latin and other languages. Al-Khalili shows that these scholars were not mere translators but innovative in Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine, Chemistry, and other fields. Scholars came from all major faiths.
Al-Khalili takes till Chapter Four to start detailing these scientific achievements. I would have preferred if these came sooner. He reveals facts such as that the zero was not invented by the Arabs but by the Indians, the Arabs simply used it to powerful effect. The Arabs pushed mathematics by leaps and bounds and Al-Khalili uses multiple chapters to outline them all. They invented decimal fractions, part-invented the decimal system, and invented proofs of mathematical equations through induction, using pages of equations to break down the initial equation and prove it absolutely, which is still the gold standard for modern mathematicians.
“He reveals facts such as that the zero was not invented by the Arabs but by the Indians, the Arabs simply used it to powerful effect”
He talks about the polymath al-Razi (854 AD–925 AD). Al-Razi lays claim to classifying substances according to their properties based on experimentation. He used experimentation to select the most hygienic site for Baghdad’s hospital, improved medical ethics and even accepted mentally ill patients (when concurrently the Christian world saw them as devil-possessed), distinguished between curable and incurable disease, clinical trials, and many other advances. His medical textbook al-Kitab al-Hawi fills 23 modern volumes, the largest in the Arab world.
Al-Khalili talks about plenty of other advances and scholars that are sure to surprise readers. The book can be slightly challenging for people to get through. Al-Khalili writes beautifully, clearly, but somewhat academically. If you’re interested in learning about a neglected part of the history of science, this book is for you.
I spoke to Al-Khalili back in 2010 about the TV series related to this book. His final words were that I had to bring his series to Malta. Words relevant then as they are now: a shining light on the possible positivity within Islam interpreted in the right way.
The Microgame is a buzzword that has exploded over the last year in the board game community. Microgames are video game mini-games but analog and a lot more awesome. Love Letter is the microgame that popularised the format—Kanai’s 16-card wonder.
Love Letter was not the first microgame, it wasn’t even Kanai’s first microgame. R, another game of his was a popular title which you could buy by emailing the designer. He would then mail you an envelope with the cards in it, which was the board game itself. Love Letter is a spiritual successor to ‘R’, and the first of his works to have an international distribution.
In Love Letter you are trying to deliver the proverbial letter to the princess. You do this by gaining the favour of her closest friends. The deck is made up of these people, all having a number. The person who holds the card with the highest number at the end of the round, or the last person standing, wins.
In the game you always keep one card in your hand, and at each turn you draw a card and choose one of the two to discard. Each card though, has a specific ability, which activates as soon as you discard it. For example, if you play a Guard, you have the opportunity to try to guess another player’s card. If you do, that player is out. The Countess for example, cannot be caught with the Prince or the King (you must discard her if she does). This would mean fornication. The Priest can see another player’s card, since this constitutes confession, and the Baron can kick out anyone of a lesser number than him due to politics.
The game takes a little bit of getting used to. It is quite different from other mainstream games but I have not had so much fun with cards since I first found money in birthday cards.
With almost infinite replayability, a price point of around €9, extreme portability, and tight, nail biting moments, Love Letter is a definite buy. There is very little chance of going wrong. Five Stars.
Video streaming uses a lot of bandwidth. Internet service providers can either limit bandwidth or provide more. To bypass this problem newer encoders aim to compact video into smaller packages, to keep the same video quality but a smaller size.
The problem is the variety of video devices available that range from mobiles, tablets, and high definition TVs. This diversity results in various different video transmissions being needed. To avoid encoding the same sequence several times and reduce the traffic over a network, video coding called H.264/Scalable Video Coding (SVC) was introduced. This type of video coding allows a single stream to encode for time, space, and quality. This technology saves bandwidth. SVC is expected to become the standard for Internet streaming. The only thing holding it back is the need for a complex encoder.
Kurt Abela
Kurt Abela (supervised by Dr Ing. Reuben Farrugia) proposed the use of a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) based encoder to speed up the encoder. The Block Motion Estimation (BME) module within SVC takes up the bulk of the total encoding time in standard H.264/AVC. Abela designed certain modules to be optimised for NVIDIA GPUs. Through an asynchronous programming model, the video encoder could be run simultaneously on the CPU (Computer Processing Unit) and GPU. By using this novel encoder, encoding was sped up at most 436x times, when compared to a reference model, with no loss in quality. The encoder was sped up even more with further improvements to allow real-time HD video encoding.
This system is much cheaper and easier to use than leading alternatives. GPUs are very cheap and already found in most computers. Further developments on GPUs could soon see them replace more expensive encoders in datacentres.
This research was performed as part of a Masters of Science in Information and Communication Technology at the Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, University of Malta. The research is partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme (Malta). The scholarship is part-financed by the European Union—European Social Fund, under Operational Programme II—Cohesion Policy 2007–2013, ‘Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality of Life’.
The olive tree (Olea europaea L.) is one of the oldest species of domesticated trees and the second most important oil fruit crop cultivated worldwide. 97% of the global olive cultivation is concentrated in the Mediterranean Basin. The olive thrives in Maltese soils. Economically, olives are not important for local agriculture, but its cultivation is becoming popular since the Maltese agribusiness has a lot of room for growth to make high quality oil and secondary products.
In the Mediterranean region there are two subspecies of Olive tree. These are the wild olive (O. europaea L. subsp. Oleaster) and the cultivated olive (O. europaea L. subsp. Sativa). Each subspecies has several cultivars selected for taste, size, disease resistance or other desirable qualities. There are 1,300 cultivars worldwide and Malta is no exception. The Maltija cultivar is probably the most popular Maltese cultivar and can give a high productivity. The Bidnija cultivar, which is believed to be the oldest Maltese olive cultivar (it is thought to date back to Roman times), produces oil of excellent quality rich in polyphenols (these have many health benefits), exhibits high tolerance to environmental stress such as salinity and drought, and demonstrates resistance to pathogens and pests such as the olive fruit fly. The Bajda variety produces a characteristic white drupe. Besides the native cultivars, there are a number of Maltese wild olives.
Renowned foreign varieties associated with high productivity tend to have a higher productivity than local cultivars. For this reason, local farmers find foreign varieties more convenient, leaving Malta at risk of forever losing its unique olives.
Till now revival efforts focus on artificial propagation and re-plantation. These trees are identified by their appearance. This is an inaccurate method since olive growth is influenced by environmental conditions.
To develop a better way to identify local cultivars, Oriana Mazzitelli (supervised by Dr Marion Zammit Mangion) has focused on adopting a genetic approach. She also wanted to examine the genetic diversity of Maltese olive varieties. Mazzitelli compared the genetic patterns of local varieties to those generated by two commercial Italian (Carolea) and Tunisian varieties (Chemlali). The genetic analysis produced unique DNA profiles that can provide a more accurate means of identification than just looking at the plant.
The genetic variability between varieties was high. The Bidnija and Maltija stood out for their genetic uniqueness. The differences between local varieties suggest that, despite being allegedly native, the origins of the two are not directly linked. A number of DNA marker regions detected in the foreign cultivars and in the Maltese wild olive were undetected in the Maltese cultivars, suggesting that not all DNA markers are present and amplifiable in foreign varieties have been conserved in the Maltese cultivars. Mazzitelli’s work is an important first step to show that local varieties can be identified cheaply through DNA analysis. Without genetic identification, maintaining and cultivating local varieties would be near impossible—a case of genes for good olive oil.
This research is part of a Master of Science in Biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta. The research was funded by STEPS (Strategic Educational Pathways) scholarship which is part-financed by the EU’s European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II—Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, ‘Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality of Life’.
Professor Mostafa Hassani Idrissi will be one of the keynote speakers at the First Annual International Conference on Cultural Relations in Europe and in the Mediterranean, organised by the Valletta 2018 Foundation with the support of the University of Malta, which will be held at the Valletta Campus on 4th and 5th of September.
Fillet is the best cut. Trust me. It’s worth the money.
Use molecular gastronomy to take advantage of decades of researching how meat changes with heat. Science indicates that the best cooking temperature is around 55˚C, and definitely not above 60˚C. At a high temperature, myofibrillar (hold 80% of water) and collagen (hold beef together) proteins shrink. Shrinking leads to water loss. In the water lies the flavour.
To cook the fillet use a technique called sous vide. It involves vacuum wrapping the beef and keeping it at 55˚C in a water bath for 24–72 hours. This breaks down the proteins without over heating. The beef becomes tender but retains flavour and juiciness.
Take the beef out. It will look unpalatable. Quickly fry it on high heat on both sides to brown it. The high heat triggers the reduction of proteins or the Maillard reaction. Enjoy with a glass of your favourite red.
Can planning really sustain us? Should we plan to survive or is project planning simply there to overcome obstacles when we are faced with them? Dr Rebecca Dalli Gonzi writes about a group of project management M.Sc. students who she asked to prepare a project plan. During their project students suddenly faced an unexpected turn of events. They were asked to counteract the problem and face the challenges that they encountered. This is their story
Planning is constant action; it never stops. If you are moving to a new house or country, you probably know what this means. Planning is pervasive, but can it get out of hand? What does planning a gap year mean? Do you plan every single minor detail or do you let loose to enjoy some spontaneity? If, for example, a couple is turning a shell apartment into a home it would involve a lot of tasks, planning leave in advance, and chasing the architect. They just might give up when a book shelf cannot get through the door. If we can plan to live, how would it help us get out of a rut when things really go wrong?
Managing your life is not that different to managing a project. When you manage a project you need a flexible plan that can meet the unplanned changing demands that life hurls at you. We live in a time when the efficiency of a service or project is based upon its ability to meet change or increasing demands. Would a project plan ensure that your plans run smoothly even when your life path starts changing its course?
Solar Carport
Project managers cannot always foresee every eventuality when planning and managing a project. Once a project is underway many unexpected events can affect project target dates and resources. Planning at its simplest would mean better management and more knowledge, while at its most complex, it could mean more peace of mind. Trying to plan a complex project without a plan is like trying to cross the Pacific Ocean without a navigation system.
Positioning your project within vulnerable situations during the initial planning stages means your team can generate ideas develop creative solutions, and have a solid idea about the resources they have, time schedules they need to stick to, and budgets. This is exactly what helped Rita Sant manage change during an unexpected turn of events as soon as her project was launched.
Plan for Health
Sant designed a healthcare concept for homebound patients called ‘SMART At HOME’. It offered a combination of home health and community based services. She carried out in-depth research to come up with the right strategy, marketing analysis, project milestones, and deployment plan. Things seemed perfect on paper. Yet she ran into a game changer. Shortly after the project was launched, a competing company called HomesforYou was set up. It threatened to put her project on hold. HomesforYou offered similar concepts that which her project sponsors had in mind. However, Rita and her team had engineered some alternate options before the actual launch to keep the company ahead of the competition. Putting the project in a vulnerable position through an in-depth SWOT analysis (analysis of the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of a project) helped show the project sponsors where their focus should be. Her focus was primarily on selecting target markets and helping attract new customers. Sant was able to direct her team towards the right networks. She identified gaps in the south of Malta, and worked directly with doctors and insurance providers to bring in new customers.
Solar Carport
Sometimes, we are so taken up by our projects that we fail to see the obvious, to question the challenges whilst assuming we have already envisaged the end result. Project planning helps identify areas of weakness through tools like PESTEL analysis (analysis of political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors that impact business), SWOT analysis, performance testing to verify strategies (plan workability), design of project think tanks, project recovery planning, contingency planning, and risk analysis (amongst other research areas). There is a lot of research behind project management.
Plan for Energy
Areas in the project that could have been overlooked suddenly become crucial. Sometimes being realistic is crucial to success. Another student, Joseph Borda, immediately received a notice that should his project exceed the proposed budgets the project sponsors would incur heavy fines. Borda was clear with his ideas from the start. Developing the power engineering workforce for the future is what he had in mind. His design of a solar panel array on the Malta International Airport car park would mean the generation of just enough energy to supply the airport. Proper time scheduling ensured that the project would be delivered within the specified time-frames. This could only work together with a proper team organisational structure and pre-designed hierarchical task network, which isthe approach to automated planning where dependency among actions is given in the form of a network. A well-researched proposal helped Borda envisage proper scheduling to ensure the project was delivered within the specified time objectives, together with the team organisation structure and task hierarchies required to complete the task in time. Could a project schedule really have helped Borda stick to his time-frames? A project’s life or death hinges on its delivery date. Incurring fines meant that the project was narrowed down to a critical selection of what areas of the project had to be done in time.
“A solar panel array on the Malta International Airport car park would mean the generation of just enough energy to supply the airport”
The schedule alone would not have been a guarantee to a successful outcome. The initial stages of project research helped him and his team realise that the costings report for mounting and installation of the array was heavily over-priced. The project schedule helped mitigate the over-budget fines through the planning of phased installations and so areas that were going to be over-budget were shifted into a secondary phase. Typical project management requires attention to time, cost and quality. Once restrictions appear in one area, other areas begin to shift to accommodate new demands.
Having project management principles in place means there is a greater chance of fulfilling your objectives within the overall strategy and facilitating diagnosis of different situations as they occur. Just like captains need chart plotters or radars for distance and bearing to be able to manoeuvre ships in the worst conditions, so project managers use Gantt charts (a type of bar chart used to illustrate a project’s schedule) to help manoeuvre projects through time. Detailed planning helps translate business objectives into deliverables, provide a list of resource requirements, and a realistic assessment of project time-scales. Control measures can also be used to ensure there are no delays in target dates or to help identify team members who are not being productive.
Plan for Success
Measures of project progress can also be used to indicate when things are not moving as planned. Marc Spiteri decided to incorporate this approach into his project plan to meet a specific target: managing the Malta national rugby union team to qualify for the Rugby World Cup. Spiteri chose sports engineering as his field of study.
Spiteri’s primary objectives were to promote sports locally and to increase Malta’s appeal as a destination for sports tourism. The management plan was designed to operate on a three-point plan: first, having funding mechanisms in place for potential stakeholders and sponsors to bring in further investments; second, training and game planning aimed to work with the national team chosen to aid the organisational requirements for training camps and competitive games; third, a marketing strategy to tap into the local resources.
Photo by Matthew Scerri
However, Spiteri was faced with a difficult challenge. Sponsorship for his project plan was threatened to be reduced if specific targets were not reached. Spiteri had knowledge and insight at the planning stage to moderate the negative effects of this cut. During planning he was able to set key performance indicators in areas of finance, training, competition and markets as part of the project design. The performance indicators allowed him to set targets to reach his ambitious goal. Rather than add a measure of control as an after-thought, he was able to integrate this as a whole concept. This meant that significant changes or shortcomings would be assessed against a measurement system, allowing a prompt response to take place with the significant action.
Plan for Death
Project control helps to ‘diagnose’ issues, plan for tackling weaker areas and adjust quickly to changes. It is normal for the team to assume that everything will work out well in the end but unpredictable behaviours, unfortunately, do happen. A lack of ownership can cause as many problems as unscheduled timing of events or project delays. A project plan gives the team the ability to envisage areas in which people conduct their activities and carry out their responsibilities. The more prepared the team is (in terms of knowledge and know-how of project plan), the quicker the recovery period. Planning is also useful as a tool when it is used to focus and highlight project needs to those involved. This is of particular importance when a project manager has to suggest different solutions to his or her client. Johann Farrugia was particularly good at providing a number of solutions for his concept of a digital cemetery when he had a major on-site problem with humidity.
“Information in cemeteries is handwritten meaning that some of the oldest records are today hardly legible. This is why cemeteries need an IT system to meet today’s needs”
Cemeteries are sacred, emotional spaces but also witnesses of human history. Information in cemeteries is handwritten meaning that some of the oldest records are today hardly legible. This is why cemeteries need an IT system to meet today’s needs. Farrugia identified the needs of all the different groups of people who make use of or work at a cemetery and figured out a system that allowed the public to request information easily. Through the website, staff and undertakers could access all the information they needed about gravesite location and burial details.
Farrugia faced problems with the testing system. Extreme humidity was interfering with the IT infrastructure limiting system usage. However, he integrated alternatives as part of his project planning phase thus being able to suggest solutions to his stakeholders and project investors. He was able to locate a secondary location system for supporting the project, thus eliminating completely the location of IT structures on-site. He also factored costings for any added insulation works required to counteract the problem and sought alternative zones that suffered from less humidity within the cemetery.
In this case, since the unexpected problem arose at an early stage, the project manager could be flexible in his planning, allow for change, and bring in alternate ideas to deal with these issues. Having considered the options beforehand meant that he could reduce the impact of a sudden major change.
In some cases, external events can trigger unexpected time delays. At times it can appear impossible to finish a project punctually, especially when there are delays in materials or suppliers. Sometimes a schedule should be consistent with your experience from previous projects. Your main focus should be on getting your critical requirements completed while avoiding distractions. The project management plan is critically dependent on the people who run it, design it, create it, and implement it. Moreover, increases in dependences increase time-frames.
Plan for Sustainability
Time-frames can quickly overrun when introducing sustainable measures into a residential development. Another student, Joslyn Magro, was keen to integrate into her project grey water reservoirs used to hold second class water for domestic use including lavatory use and landscaping photovoltaic panels, double glazing, and landscaping works. Sustainability has been an evolving theme to encourage environmental responsibility and promote intelligent decision- making with respect to energy use. Bad weather delayed the required materials that were being imported and this set the project back by a month.
By using a Gantt chart, Magro saw the negative effects of this delay. It would impact other installations and works. To reduce the burden, she scheduled architectural detailing and structural elements to run in parallel. This would reduce the dependency on strict delivery dates.
Information in cemeteries is handwritten meaning that some of the oldest records are today hardly legible. This is why cemeteries need an IT system to meet today’s needs
In her project plan she had also considered sourcing from different suppliers so she was able to negotiate costs affected by the delays. Once the materials were delivered on site, she could also introduce secondary teams of labourers to make up for the one-month back log. Costings saved during the delay, were used on a double-managed team unit. In her case, this may have proved to be the winning strategy as managing the on-site team as best as possible would help to counteract any further setbacks.
Taking advantage of constraints is the best way in project planning when possible. Projects revolve around expectations so it is better to envisage opportunity rather than to try control an event. Turning a shell apartment into a home might sound like a simple project in comparison to the ones discussed earlier but the problems would, theoretically, be very similar. Delays, supplier changes and exceeded budgets would surely impact your strategy along the way. Having strict milestones might be useful. It is not always necessary to consider worst-case scenarios but do consider carefully how much risk is actually acceptable. Most importantly, do not try to solve the problem, solve the cause.
This article covers some work of the first cohort of students enrolled in the M.Sc. in Project Management launched by the Department of Construction and Property Management, Faculty for the Built Environment, University of Malta. The diversity of projects reflects the range of situations in which project management skills are being applied.
