University of Malta

This paper develops a conceptual and methodological framework for the analysis and measurement of economic resilience. The working definition of economic resilience adopted in this paper is the "nurtured" ability of an economy to recover from or adjust to the effects of adverse shocks to which it may be inherently exposed. This concept is used to provide an explanation as to why a number of inherently vulnerable countries have attained relatively high levels of GDP per capita. The paper also presents a tentative approach aimed at developing an index of economic resilience covering four aspects namely macroeconomic stability, microeconomic market efficiency, governance and social development.

This research study was carried out to identify the need for marketing in academic libraries with a main focus on Understanding the need for a marketing department at University of Malta Library and developing the Outreach Department’s marketing strategy. It also includes a comparison between the University of Glasgow Library’s and the University of Malta Library’s marketing strategies to further identify any differences and similarities in this regard. The research followed a qualitative method of investigation and used a questionnaire as a tool to gauge the level of awareness of library staff from both libraries on marketing efforts. The results revealed several interesting points about the importance of marketing and communication in university libraries. In fact a common theme for this research was the imperativeness of communication between the library’s patrons and its’ staff. This study also proposes a somewhat basic definition of what an outreach office in an academic library setting should consist of and what skills should outreach librarians possess. These are primarily communication, marketing and customer care skills that complement one another. This implies that even the librarians who are not directly involved in marketing should have at least some level of knowledge about communication and customer care as to better serve patrons and promote the library’s image as a whole.

This article will shed light on what should be considered as the legal obligations imposed on the employer in respect of persons with disability in terms of Maltese employment law.  The author shall be delving into the salient provisions of the law,  its applicability within the industry, along with an understanding of its interpretation given by jurists.

The aims of this study were to identify the factors that are most likely to Jead to patient satisfaction and to compare patient satisfaction between public and private sectors of primary health care in Malta. Four clinics in the public sector and four clinics in the private sector were chosen in representative areas of the island. A 32-item questionnaire was distributed in each clinic and a doctor from each clinic was interviewed to discuss perceptions of patient satisfaction in each clinic. The overall response rate was 99% in the public sector and 89% in the private sector. The factors most likely to lead to patient satisfaction were factors related to clinical care and communication skills. The difference in patient satisfaction between public and private sectors of primary health care was mainly due to the large differences in the doctors' communication skills between the two sectors. Doctors working in the private sector are highly satisfied because of good doctor-patient r...

The study of disarticulated bone, both in Malta and overseas, is a field of
archaeological research which is still in its infancy but major developments have been
made over the past few years in this field. The excavation of the Xagħra Circle was a
major development for Maltese archaeology and produced a great amount of material
and data which is of great importance to the understanding of prehistoric mortuary
practices. This study focuses on one burial pit located beside the threshold which
gives access to the main hypogeum. This pit contained a single articulation buried
beneath a significant amount of disarticulated, fragmented and commingled human
bone as well as an amount of animal bone and a few fragmented artefacts. This reinvestigation of the pit aims at extracting more data from this material to aid a better
understanding of the mortuary practices of this prehistoric society.
A selection of human bone fragments from the entire assemblage excavated from the pit was utilised in this study. These fragments were studied and documented with the aim of gathering more data and inferring whether any of these fragments joined together to form part of a single bone. Any joins discovered would potentially inform us about the formation of the stratigraphy within the pit. No joins could be identified, possibly due to the deteriorated condition of the bone fragments but, nevertheless, inferences about the pit could still be made through the consideration of the whole human bone assemblage, artefacts, stratigraphy, and other data from the pit. A comparative study of many of these data with various studies, on local contexts as well as foreign ones, revealed further information about the possible mortuary practices of the prehistoric society responsible for the creation and usage of the Xagħra Circle hypogeum.

The digital revolution is unstoppable and is permeating every aspect of life. Thus, it was only a question of time before it would enter the financial realm of securities. This has created the concept of security tokens and STOs – an upshot of the rise to popularity of ICOs. Inheriting the ground-breaking qualities of DLT-based technologies, security tokens present novel regulatory challenges when compared to traditional securities. It is possible to assimilate security tokens to various EU laws, but existing regulatory gaps will debilitate the powers of the blockchain. The overhaul of the securities market is that security tokens can, inter alia, be more cost-effective and less time-consuming. These benefits mean that security tokens cannot be, for all intents and purposes, identical to their traditional counterparts. With ongoing developments, the technology to reap these benefits is already out there. Maintaining traditional regulatory frameworks is right and fitting but technological advancements call for the review of such checks and balances – not as a form of deregulation but as a means of incorporating change. The financial regulatory authority that denounces new forms of innovation as a threat to the system is a thing of the past, yet it may have certain reservations for the sake of public safety. Rather than established financial regulators trying to reinvent themselves to new technologies, it is easier for a specialised entity to take onboard the supervision of a new sector of the market that is inherently different from traditional ones. On these lines, the vision of a Digital Lab, as suggested by France’s AMF, would be to have a supranational entity to cater for STOs and other innovative technologies and collaborate with existing financial supervisory authorities.

Meditation practices using breathing, vocalisation or visualisation have been used throughout history to promote psychological well-being. This observation has prompted various researchers to study the wide array of its beneficial effect. One such area relates specifically to meditation and its effects on stress and anxiety. This research explored the effects of the combined practice of visualisation, vocalisation and breathing rooted in meditation, on levels of stress and anxiety. A sample size of 8 participants and a pre-test post-test repeated measures design was used. The Cohen 14-item perceived stress scale (PSS) and Zung self-rating anxiety scale (ZAS) were used to measure stress and anxiety levels. After a 6-month period, data analysis revealed a reduction in anxiety levels but not stress, with a relationship between the two. Due to the small sample size and the influence of confounding variables that were not controlled for in the current work, this result needs to be approached with caution and further studies are required to support the findings.