Insects are vital. Insects also cover the planet, with local research showing that there might be over 6,000 species — a wonderful world awaits. Find out about the incredible world of insects in Malta!
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Valletta’s Digital Layer
Dérive Valletta is an initiative by digital art student Matthew Mamo (supervised by Dr Vince Briffa) aimed at increasing the visibility of our capital city’s museums and cultural institutions using augmented reality.
Augmented reality has a host of possibilities to allow people to interact with art and through this art the city itself. Inspired by the work of Israeli artist Yaacov Agam, the digital visuals featured in Dérive Valletta require the user to move around the objects being scanned in order to view the content.
Possessing its own cohesive brand and identity, this initiative is ultimately intended to contribute towards the creation of a digital cultural infrastructure within Valletta prior to 2018. Being a digital layer laid over the real world there will be no negative impact on this UNESCO World Heritage Site’s unique built environment.
The brand’s aesthetics were kept minimalistic to create an identity that can be incorporated into Valletta in an unobtrusive manner while endowing the initiative with a contemporary image. Minimalism is reflected in the restrained colour scheme and use of clean sans-serif typefaces.
The research was undertaken as part fulfilment of an MFA in Digital Arts and partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship (Malta). This Scholarship is part-financed by the European Union — European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II — Cohesion Policy 2007–2013, “Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality Of Life”.
Choices, Choices, Choices…
Taking the right decision can be a very challenging and daunting process. Designing a mobile phone, a makeup case, or even a pipe needs engineering teams to continuously make important choices quickly. Lawrence Farrugia (supervised by Prof. Jonathan C. Borg) developed a framework that helps engineers evaluate concepts and take these decisions practically. In a typical design process, the design team generates a number of different concepts that fulfil what is needed from the product. These design concepts are then evaluated against conflicting evaluation criteria. Criteria are chosen from the life cycle of the product and can include cost, quality, ease of use, and recyclability (pictured). Evaluation determines the concept chosen for further development.
Although there are design tools that are intended to support engineering design teams in decision making, the reality check is that these tools are rarely used. Such tools are typically too impractical to employ in the real world. Due to the ever increasing complexity of products and the importance of early decision making, this research recognised the need to provide engineering design teams with a practical yet reliable support system.
Farrugia’s research was carried out at the Concurrent Engineering Research Unit (CERU) within the Faculty of Engineering. The framework he developed aids design teams to analyse and rank multiple design concepts against several conflicting evaluation criteria. The proposed framework was then implemented into a prototype computer aided design (CAD) tool named ACADEMI (pictured).
The tool developed by Farrugia allows for design concepts to be mathematically appraised and ranked automatically. The user inputs the various evaluation criteria and the best design is shown in a very short time. This ranking helps the design team rapidly figure out which design concepts should be developed. After the framework and tool were developed the research work was evaluated in the field by engineers from industry and academia. Most industry personnel said that they would be willing to adopt the computer tool in their daily professional work. ï
More information about the research work may be accessed through: www.academi.co.nr
This research was performed as part of an M.Sc. (Research) in Mechanical Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering. This research was partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship (Malta). This Scholarship is part-financed by the European Union — European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II — Cohesion Policy 2007–2013, ‘Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality Of Life’.
Keeping heart attacks on hold
Heart attacks and strokes kill millions every year. Most are caused by blockages to blood vessels. Vessels can be pried open by heart stents, tubular devices that are inserted and inflated to prevent vessels from collapsing or blocking. Stents incur many problems ranging from flaring at the edges to fracturing to unexpected shrinking. All lead to complications, further surgery, and even death.
Luke Mizzi (supervised by Prof. Joseph N. Grima, Dr Daphne Attard, and Dr Ruben Gatt) has studied existing stent designs to identify their weaknesses and is currently studying novel designs that overcome these problems. He used computer simulations to replicate the stresses current stents experience in the human body. These stents performed well in response to inflation and bending. However, shortening still occurs and they do not expand uniformly leading to flaring at the edges.
Mizzi found which current designs fared well but no design had all the features needed by heart stents. Crowns with a zigzagging structure allow for high expandability while S-shaped connections between crowns allow for high flexibility.
Mizzi who forms part of the Metamaterials Unit is designing new stent geometries that build on these features incorporating them all and improving stent performance. The next step for these researchers are designs that support part of the throat or oesophagus to continue saving lives.
This research was performed as part of Doctoral Studies at the Faculty of Science at the University of Malta. It is funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology through its R&I programme. This project is in collaboration between the University of Malta, HM RD Ltd, part of the HalMann Vella Group of Companies, and Tek-Moulds Precision Engineering Limited.
Power of the Wind
My passion for renewable energies was sparked off during my undergraduate studies in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Malta. Thanks to ERASMUS, I studied at the University of Strathclyde which had a Renewable Energy course that, at the time, was not offered in Malta.
I spent the last year of my bachelor studies designing and testing part of a wind tunnel to simulate atmospheric wind conditions. This test setup allowed for more realistic wind turbine experiments than previous efforts.
Although I wanted to further my career in wind energy, I opted first to broaden my knowledge in the field of renewables by enrolling for the Masters in Sustainable Energy Technology at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in August 2010.
Over the first year, I worked on several projects. They included designing a smart grid which was presented at the European Joint Research Centre (JRC). I also helped develop an innovative thermal energy plant that exploits temperature differences between the ocean surface and deep-water (>1km deep) in tropical waters to generate electricity.
Over the second year, I again carried out research in wind energy. At the famed Wind Energy Research Institute of Delft University called DUWIND, I looked into the effect wind turbines can have on each other. When wind turbine blades cut through the wind they can change its direction. This can reduce the efficiency of nearby wind turbines making them produce less energy. My results showed that a turbine’s effect on nearby systems diminishes when the wind distortion it causes is limited either by the wind’s inherent instability or other by properties like its proximity to the ground. By exploiting these wind qualities, a wind farm’s efficiency can be improved by up to 15%.
After my Masters I worked for a year at Eindhoven as a flow and thermal analyst at Segula Technologies Consultancy. I developed new components for a company’s cutting edge lithography machines and for fuel cell system development for BOSAL engineering. Now I have managed to secure a Ph.D. scholarship in wind turbine blade aerodynamics, continuing the work I started in my Masters at DUWIND. This time I am looking into the influence of small flow control devices on the performance of large (10 MW) wind turbines.
Baldacchino was awarded a STEPS scholarship for his Masters studies, which is part-financed by the EU’s European Social Fund under Operational Programme II — Cohesion Policy 2007–2013.
The future is bright, The future is research
Today’s world is unforgiving; we cannot slack. Be it students in academic pursuits, or executives in professional ones, the need to create new things and innovate is essential to keep up with ever-changing times. The RIDT believes that University and its students are the cradle of all needed change. Our aim is to continue promoting and stimulating research within our Campus community. We believe that our students carry this important message best.
For this reason, the RIDT has embarked on campaigns and initiatives to gather more interest and feedback from University students and alumni. The RIDT participated in the annual KSU Freshers’ Week. Here we met and greeted thousands of students just starting out their degrees. At the same time, we launched our Facebook page to regularly update and engage with students. We succeeded in attracting nearly 1,000 followers in less than two months from launch. We felt that this was not enough, and in order to further engage our online audience, we enticed them to become closer to University research. With this in mind, we launched a fresh online competition, the UoM Research Challenge, where participants had to answer questions about research happening at University. The competition was sponsored by GO, who donated an iPad Mini for the fastest person to complete the challenge. We have plenty of fresh, innovative concepts lined up for the New Year.
Throughout December, the RIDT is collaborating with KSU and l-Istrina to promote research within the University and the local community. We want to reach out to raise awareness that research is a tool that can make everyone’s lives better. Many people throughout the world suffer from various socio-economic problems, ranging from deadly diseases and famine to poverty and unemployment. Through research, we can truly make a difference to all of these people, and we want to start here, from home. By fostering a sense of awareness and belonging within our students and alumni, we can look forward to a bright future. In this future, we would be proud of a University making a difference in Malta and the rest of the world.
RIDT is the University’s Research Trust aimed towards fostering awareness and fundraising for high-calibre local research. For more information, visit
www.ridt.eu or find RIDT on Facebook www.facebook.com/RIDTMalta
Christopher Curmi, winner of the UoM Research Challenge, awarded an iPad Mini by the RIDT CEO Wilfred Kenely. Photo by Edward Duca
Author: Mario Cachia, RIDT Campaign Officer
Is Time Travel possible?
Theory says yes; practicality says no. Thanks to Einstein time travel is possible. The easiest way is travelling very close to the speed of light. Achieve 99.5% close to light speed means that in 5 years you travel 50 years. Goodbye friends and family you left behind. The harder way is creating a wormhole, a device that can bend space and time, looping it on itself to go into the future or past. The energy required would rival the energy of the stars. Sorry Sci-Fi fans.
It’s all in the family
Whatever you inherit comes from your biological family. Unfortunately, this includes disease. Talking about inherited conditions can make people anxious, making them unwilling to discuss the issue with their relatives. After speaking to a number of people my impression is that it seems taboo to discuss these things. People seem to feel that they will be stigmatised or treated differently because of a genetic condition.
A fear of social stigma hinders beneficial research. Research needs the collaboration of patients, since by investigating their condition researchers can in the long run develop a treatment or therapy. Not only that, but avoiding certain discussions means that relatives who might be at risk of developing the same problem would not be aware of it. If a condition is detected too late there might be very little that can be done.
It is very useful to discuss these matters with your family and speak to your doctor together. By building a medical family tree you can easily see who might inherit what. This way, your relatives will learn more about their health and then seek treatment. For example, a cousin might learn that she has an increased risk of breast cancer and would therefore attend screening sessions to catch the cancer before it spreads. Not knowing that something is there does not make it go away but discussing medical matters with your family could save a relative’s life.
“It is very useful to discuss these matters with your family and speak to your doctor together”
Scientific studies need family medical information. Scientific studies using family trees have already shown how useful this information is in identifying families with a high risk for inheritable cancers, like colon and breast cancer. Other research showed that families can benefit from preventative treatments against cardiovascular diseases like diabetes.
Local research has recently used this technique to find new genes, knowledge that can be developed for new treatments. The researchers were studying the genetic background of the protein which carries oxygen in our blood, haemoglobin. This protein switches from foetal haemoglobin to adult haemoglobin 3–6 months after birth. People with thalassemia have a problem with the adult version. Therefore, by studying local families that naturally cope well with the disease, they discovered the KLF1 gene that compensates for the malfunctioning adult protein by raising foetal haemoglobin levels. This was only possible with the help of family trees.
Speaking to a doctor to prepare a medical family tree (pictured) is done in the strictest confidentiality. You may also create your family medical history on https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/fhh-web/home.action to discuss with your family and doctor. I believe that it is in our best interest, apart from being potentially beneficial to the rest of humankind, to help in the creation of our own family medical trees.
If you have any queries when your physician or consultant asks you to prepare a family tree feel free to discuss them rather than avoiding family trees.
Incubator Helps Start-ups take off
The old saying goes: it takes a village to raise a child. In other words, to get it right a community effort is needed, shared by family and friends who pass on their experience and knowledge to the youngster.
The same saying applies to building technology companies. Budding technology entrepreneurs in Malta need plenty of nurturing and guidance to get their innovations off the ground and into the marketplace. A supportive and well-connected entrepreneurial community is what is needed to transform Malta’s innovations into start-up ventures that will expand the economy.
The good news for Malta is that the basic components of a technology start-up community already exist. The University of Malta is a hothouse of world-class scientific, engineering, and creative research that holds the potential to spin out exciting commercial ventures. A new generation of bright, technically-skilled graduates is starting to pursue entrepreneurship as a career path. Malta lacks a professional venture capital investment industry, but does have high net worth entrepreneurs and private ‘angel’ investors. Many of these have valuable experience gained abroad and are hungry to find and fund high-potential technology companies. The government is exploring ways of encouraging early-stage investment by way of tax incentives and seed fund development. Ideas, entrepreneurial energy, and money — the key ingredients for raising technology start-ups — are all here on the island.
“Tucked away in their laboratories, garages, and workshops, Malta’s innovators are not networking”
So, what is holding us back? I recently spoke to Steve Blank, a highly successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. I asked him what he thought was missing. His reply: ‘much of the Valley’s alchemy lies in connectivity’.
Innovators, entrepreneurs, investors – Malta has got them all. Unfortunately, they are not finding each other. Tucked away in their laboratories, garages, and workshops, Malta’s innovators are not networking. They need skilled and experienced business people to push their technologies past the idea stage. Wealthy angel investors are here in Malta, but they frequently operate ‘under the radar’ and can be hard to access. In the absence of connections, both investors and innovators miss out on potentially rewarding opportunities. Promising young ventures, which might takeoff with a little support and funding, consequently get left to struggle on their own.
The University of Malta Business Incubator will start operations this year and create a platform for new start-ups. Opening its doors to researchers, students, and aspiring technology entrepreneurs, the incubator will provide them with space to plan, launch, and grow businesses. There, a network of seasoned entrepreneurs, business mentors, and angel investors will join them. These ‘parents and village elders’ will be mobilised to concentrate efforts to guide start-ups to create a company, raise capital, and reach the marketplace. We aim to make the incubator a lively hub to create businesses.
Building a company, like raising a child, is a lot of hard work. Bringing the community together under one roof, where it can do the job right, will ease the labour of start-up development, and improve the odds of scoring triumphs.
Ben McClure is Manager at the University of Malta Business Incubator
Diabetes: from genes to blood
Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a disease that affects over 250 million people worldwide. Many in Malta suffer from the disease because of our high carbohydrate diet and lack of physical activity. Type 2 diabetes arises when levels of the sugar glucose remain very high in the blood. Testing normally involves frequent finger pricks to determine blood sugar levels, or otherwise a patient can take a sugary drink followed by regular urine/blood testing over 2 or more hours.
Alexandra Fiott (supervised by Prof. A. Felice) studied whether the absolute HbA1c levels (the haemoglobin fraction with sugar attached multiplied by the haemoglobin concentration) would provide a better method to describe the link between one’s genetics and diabetic condition. She attempted to reduce the frequency of the testing needed while using a relatively non-invasive test — the withdrawing of one tube of blood, while investigating the genetics of diabetes.
Haemoglobin (Hb) transports oxygen throughout the blood through red blood cells. The HbA1c forms when glucose binds to haemoglobin. This can be used as an indirect measure of average blood sugar concentrations. Measuring HbA1c levels is rapid, but unfortunately the results are influenced by factors that affect red blood cells. With around 5% of Maltese having red blood cell disorders, an alternative measurement would help reduce inaccurate results and unnecessary worry for patients. The absolute HbA1c was used for this study.
The genetics and blood profile of five different patient groups were determined using genetic and biochemical methods: adults with a normal blood profile, anaemics, beta-thalassaemics, pregnant women, and type 2 diabetics (on limited treatment). Statistical analysis did not reveal an improved link, but the absolute HbA1c did help distinguish between the different patient groups.
To improve the reliability of these results, a separate set of experiments was carried out to see whether a known Maltese variation in haemoglobin, with a prevalence of around 1.8% in the Maltese population, has an effect on the amount of sugar that binds to the haemoglobin. This variant was found not to influence the blood glucose levels and therefore the HbA1c.
Taken together these results showed that the absolute HbA1c does not improve the link between the genetics and blood profile of the patients. However, it could distinguish between different groups of patients.
This research was performed as part of an M.Sc. (Melit.) in Biomedical Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Malta.