MaltaHip Project: When Ideas Become Reality

The earliest recorded attempts at hip replacement date back to 1891. At the time, ivory was proposed to replace the femoral heads of patients whose hip joints had been destroyed by tuberculosis. Since then, everything changed. THINK speaks to the MaltaHip Team to learn about their innovative hip replacement technology.

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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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EURATOM – Europe’s Fusion Future

In the first weeks of November, the world came together for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, an event researchers across the globe are calling ‘the world’s best last chance to get runaway climate change under control’. During this two-week conference, one of the aims was to put forward proposals to ‘secure global net zero by mid-century and keep 1.5 degrees within reach’, which will involve phasing out coal use around the world and putting more resources into sustainable energy methods. One such method that is being touted as a groundbreaking solution is nuclear fusion. THINK magazine sat down with Prof. Ing. Pierluigi Mollicone and Prof. Ing. Martin Muscat, associate professors at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Malta, to learn more about what nuclear fusion is all about.

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Moving energetically ahead

UM's solar panels

Can the university lead the way in shedding a dependence on fossil fuels? Renewable sources cover just over 7% of Malta’s energy needs, which must nearly double by 2030 to implement the draft National Energy and Climate Plan. Daiva Repeckaite traces how photovoltaic modules were rolled out on the campus’s roofs — and finds that to be sustainable, the community should love their ACs a little less.

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