There is more to making a building energy efficient than simply installing PV Panels. To create a truly zero-energy building, a holistic approach involving engineers, architects, and builders needs to be taken. THINK sits with Prof. Ing. Charles Yousif and his team to see what such an approach looks like.
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Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a rare neurodegenerative disease that ‘locks’ patients in their own bodies, clear-headed but unable to move or speak. A research group at the University of Malta is looking for therapeutic targets to treat the disease while supporting ALS patients and their families through their condition.
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Malta depends on subterranean groundwater for agriculture, industry, and a large population. A University of Malta initiative, Project SIGMA, is monitoring groundwater sources not by digging for them, but by listening.
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When we study history, we might think of larger-than-life figures such as William the Conqueror and Napoleon or of crucial dates such as the French Revolution of 1789 or the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But it is also possible to look at history through the lens of microhistory and socio-economic processes, focusing on the daily lives of the people or communities that lived through the time. For the team behind the project Playing Maltese History, this lens was the starting point for their video game, Valletta: Streets of History.
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Climate change is a growing problem. The longer we go without making sacrifices, the greater the price that must ultimately be paid. The problem is made worse, however, because when it comes to phasing out fossil fuels, some people must automatically pay a higher price than others. So who would the winners and losers be if we suddenly drove forward to significantly lower emissions by 2030, as the European Union intends?
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We all agree that traffic can be exhausting. But it can also simply be exhaust. Vehicle exhaust emissions originate from their tailpipes and have been strongly regulated to tackle emissions of air pollutants. However, Maltese researchers recently found that this type of emission is not the major contributor to particulate emissions from vehicles. THINK takes a closer look under the hood.
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To defeat your enemy, you must understand your enemy. We can’t confirm if Sun Tzu would agree with this, but the MPitNET group at the University of Malta (UM) certainly does. THINK dives into their efforts in understanding – and hopefully defeating – pituitary tumours.
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What kinds of happiness are there, and what kinds of happiness should we prioritise? Jonathan Firbank explores Masahiro Morioka’s ‘happiness drug’ thought experiment in the face of an increasingly medicated world.
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Have you ever wondered what the cities of the future could look like? Do you imagine a dystopian, Orwellian hellscape of mass surveillance, or a hyper-efficient, super-city? An international research project is laying the foundation for Smart Cities (the latter kind!).
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The importance of digital literacy has been undisputed for some time now, but the recent pandemic brought this into centre stage on a global level. As more of us shifted to the digital world, inequalities and gaps in our overall knowledge and preparedness were made starkly evident. An Erasmus project is trying to tackle these issues head on and attempting to learn from our recent past…
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