But it will still take at least a year to develop if everything goes to plan
Applying actuarial techniques to the coronavirus. Part 1: Markov chains
It's an attracting theory, but the facts are not that clear
March is always the month that brings up many discussions about the differences in men and women and whether these are reason enough to encourage different treatment. The short answer is always no, but what does science say? Certain skills are thought...
The Spot the Jellyfish team has been receiving numerous reports of jellyfish species from locals and visitors alike. Especially noticeable have been the reports on the mauve stinger (scientific name: Pelagia noctiluca). Blooms for this species are...
Large blooms of the by-the-wind sailor (Velella velella) at Golden Bay and Ġnejna. They have a ‘sail’ made up of chitin through which the wind propels them along the surface of the sea.
Everyday we hear reports of new deaths from the coronavirus (COVID-19). Check any reputable news source and the top headline will be how many people are dying or being infected. This has contributed to worldwide worry, perhaps panic, with flights...
Dubai, Hong Kong and Brasilia have been labelled as some of the most futuristic cities of the world. With towering skyscrapers, underwater hotels or sci-fi movie aesthetics, each one stands out. However, are these the values we want from the places we...
Bosphorus is a data sculpture inspired by high frequency radar data collections of the Marmara Sea provided by Turkish State Meteorological Service at 30 minute intervals. The data collection of the 30-day-long sea surface activity was transformed into...
Brain Awareness Week events shed light on research into mysteries of the mind
Myth 1: Quantum theory came first Theory did not actually lead up to the concept of quantum physics. In fact, history shows the exact opposite where lab experiments showed really weird and unexpected results such as black-body radiation, the...
“Winner! Seven.” A crowd gathers around the craps table cheering for the player who is preparing for the next crapshot. The player kisses the dice and people who are believed to jinx the game are sent away. Remarkably, this attempt of favourably...
When cooled below -180°C, certain ceramics (YBCO, short for Yttrium-barium-copper-oxide) become superconductors which are detected with the Meißner-Ochsenfeld effect. The YBCO-disc (black, bottom) is cooled from below with liquid nitrogen to -196°C and...
Country taking steps to address gap
Sitting by a model of the Earth shaped like a pancake, Brazilian restaurant-owner Ricardo lets out an exaggerated laugh: "'Hahaha!' That's how people react when you tell them the Earth is flat," he says. Ricardo, who declines to give his full name for...
Two Maltese teenagers have a chance to win a trip to NASA at the Kennedy Space Station in Florida. UK charity The Space Design Competition and Galactic Challenge will host the European Space Design Competition at the American University of Malta in...
We have been fascinated with numerical patterns since we first gazed up at the stars. Our drive to find order in apparent randomness is probably why we have been to the moon, created complicated electronics and smashed atoms. Even our interest in...
Mathematicians are guilty. We are guilty of making people think what we do is virtually magic. We use strange symbols, Greek letters and impenetrable language that make it impossible to understand what we are talking about unless you have joined our...
An etching by Albrecht Dürer in 1514. It can be interpreted as an allegory of our own imperfection in search of an unattainable perfection. The woman embodies melancholy, which was a humour associated with creativity and insanity. Reason was considered...
The Alps’ majestic summits hide a mortal danger: Avalanches. These torrents of snow sweep away everything in their path with enormous speed and power causing loss of life and damage to property. Scientists across Europe are studying avalanches in order...
Although images taken from spacecraft show the spherical nature of our planet, Earth is in fact not perfectly spherical – instead, the Earth’s shape is described as an ‘oblate spheroid’. Earth is around 43km wider when measured at the equator than when...
Our understanding of the universe has seen an unparalleled upturn in the last century. In the 1920s, the nature of a special type of cosmic object, referred to at the time as spiral nebulae, was still a cause for widespread debate in the astronomical...
Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, is actually two interacting galaxies, Messier 51a and Messier 51b, at a distance of 23 million light years from Earth. Imaged from Birkirkara by Josef Borg.
Today, we celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a day celebrated annually on February 11 following a resolution put forward by Malta and adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2015. This year’s theme focuses...
As scientists, we often get in the creation vs evolution debate and, even though evolution is accepted as a scientific fact, we still hear regularly that we descend directly from great apes. Great apes are a group of primates that includes...
Half of car trips in European cities cover less than 5km and Malta is no exception. In such scenarios, the privately owned car is a rather unsustainable and over-engineered solution and to mitigate the strain on the environment and infrastructure,...
A hungry alligator eating a pink flamingo.
Deep water bodies appear dark navy blue as water molecules absorb most of the red, orange, yellow, and green wavelengths. The reflected sunlight contains mostly blue and violet waves. On the other hand, chlorophyll, the food of tiny phytoplankton...
John Hopkins University is using AI and Data Mining to map the spread of the Coronavirus. Information is aggregated from different sources and visualised onto a map providing near real-time information about reported cases and deaths. AI is also being...
Many people know the earth to be roughly spherical. But how long have we known this and how did the flat-Earth conspiracy come about? As early as the sixth century BC, Pythagoras was the first known person to have suggested that the earth was spherical.
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