Malta’s Prehistoric Temples and the People Who Built Them

The Maltese megalithic temples were built over 5,000 years ago. To find out how the people that built the temples saw the world, Dr Tore Lomsdalen conducted his PhD project on the worldview and cosmology of the prehistoric Maltese temple builders. He found that the temples were intentionally positioned to be intervisible and oriented towards certain stars that were significant for these ancient people.

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Making Electrical Drives More Efficient

The climate crisis urges us to use every means of reducing CO2 emissions. To reduce the energy consumption of electrical drive applications, researchers from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Malta are working on a hybrid inverter drive. This device will be able to adjust the power input to an electric motor, thus avoiding power losses. With 8 billion electric motors in the EU alone, even small energy savings can scale up to big contributions towards a sustainable future.

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How Less Is More in Prosthetic Hands

Current hand prosthetics are expensive, heavy, and hard to control. Researchers from the University of Malta (UM), in collaboration with Orthopaedic Centre Malta, are addressing these problems by simplifying the design of prosthetic hands. The project MAProHand, led by Prof. Ing. Michael Saliba, creates a novel hand prosthetic that concentrates on the key functions of the hand.

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How Smart Insoles Can Save Feet of People Living with Diabetes

In Malta, around 10% of the local population is affected by diabetes. This is especially alarming considering that diabetes can affect the blood and nervous system and eventually even lead to foot amputations. Researchers from the University of Malta (UM) and Mater Dei Hospital are trying to address this problem in their project Sit_Diab: Smart Insole Technology for the Diabetic Foot. They developed a novel method of detecting foot complications early enough to take action in time to help save limbs.

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The Climate Crises and the EU’s Agricultural Policies

The climate crisis is picking up speed, and it still doesn’t look like humanity is adjusting its habits fast enough to meet its self-set target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. The European Union (EU) strived to tackle this problem by implementing the Green Deal, which led to the most ambitious multi-year plan ever in the agricultural sector. But is it enough?

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