Forthcoming events

• Michael Zammit Cutajar, vice-chair of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is one of speakers at a short course on between June 23 and July 4. Other keynote speakers include Prof. Kurt Deketelaere, Prof. Mary Durfee, Prof. Lino Briguglio and Jacob Werksman.

The course is being organised by the Foundation for International Studies (FIS) with the support of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and the Diplo Foundation.

The two-week programme of lectures, fieldwork and workshops aims to train and provide advice on the current legal framework and related policy issues on climate change that will be affected by mitigation and adaptation measures. It will also examine case studies, providing a unique opportunity for the comparative study of climate change, law and policy in the EU and other countries.

For more information contact the FIS on 2123 0793 or e-mail: programmes@fis.com.mt.

• Raphael Galea, a Maltese-Canadian particle physicist working at Columbia University, New York, will give a public talk entitled 'The Elusive Neutrino' on Wednesday at the Physics and Mathematics building, room 401 at 6.30 p.m.

Neutrinos are tiny particles that travel close to the speed of light, lack an electric charge, are able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed and are thus extremely difficult to detect.

In his talk, Dr Galea will go through the history of experiments to study neutrinos and will outline a novel neutrino detector being developed to measure the lowest energy solar neutrinos.

The Physics department has invited Dr Galea to Malta in view of the forthcoming discussion with CERN concerning the possibility of Malta's membership of this prestigious international research centre for particle physics.

For further information call 2340 2524, e-mail: pierre-sandre.farrugia@um.edu.mt or view the website www.phys.um.edu.mt.

• The fifth James Madison University summer school is being held between Wednesday and June 4, hosted by the Institute of Health Care and co-ordinated by the institute's director Sandra Buttigieg.

Twenty students coming from various healthcare disciplines at James Madison University, Virginia, USA, accompanied by their tutors, are attending the summer school which will mainly focus on juvenile diabetes, lung cancer, nutrition, obesity, environmental health and coronary artery disease.

Local experts in these subjects will deliver lectures to the students who will also visit various hospitals and prepare projects on key areas.

• On May 28 at the SAS Radisson, St Julian's, a dissemination seminar will present the work done and the research results of the Daphne II project 'Secondary Education Schools and Education in Values'.

The Faculty of Education's Suzanne Gatt, in collaboration with Jacqueline Azzopardi and Sandra Scicluna from the Institute of Forensics have worked on this project and carried out research in local schools.

The project's main aim is to contribute to gender violence prevention in secondary schools, given that it is one of the stages in which many young people begin their first relationships and begin to shape certain values in relation to models of attraction.

The dissemination seminar will focus mainly on the research results in Malta as well as the overall conclusions of the results of this transnational study. Its aim is to sensitise educators and other key players on the issue of gender violence and the problems encountered by secondary level students.

The project is co-ordinated by the University of Zaragoza and funded by the European Commission under the Daphne II programme 'Secondary Education Schools and Education in Values: Proposals for Gender Violence Prevention'.

Attendance is free of charge. To register for the seminar, e-mail Sonia Vella Zarb on svell04@um.edu.mt