Message from the Director Institute of Health Care

Fifteen years have passed since the Institute of Health Care was founded within the University of Malta. In line with advances in health care professional education worldwide, and indeed with advances in medical knowledge, technology, health service delivery and care, the University of Malta forged ahead and raised the professional education of nurses, midwives and professions allied to medicine onto an academic platform. The Institute was set up to develop diploma, degree and post-graduate courses in Communication Therapy, Dental Technology, Environmental Health Science, Medical Laboratory Science, Midwifery, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, 2002, Physiotherapy, Podiatry, and Radiography. Furthermore, the Institute earned a sound academic standing in the interdisciplinary Master and Post Qualification Diploma in Health Services Management that has attracted medical and pharmacy graduates in addition to our own health care graduates. It is with great satisfaction to report that fifteen years down the road, the Institute of Health Care has steadily grown in esteem and recognition both within our University as well as Swith our counterparts internationally.peer-reviewe

Recent trends in monetary policy implementation: a view from the desk

Paper for a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York entitled Financial Innovation and Monetary TransmissionOpen market operations ; Federal funds market (United States) ; Federal funds rate ; Monetary policy

Quantifying scaling in the velocity field of the anisotropic turbulent solar wind

Solar wind turbulence is dominated by Alfvénic fluctuations with power spectral exponents that somewhat surprisingly evolve toward the Kolmogorov value of −5/3, that of hydrodynamic turbulence. We analyze in situ satellite observations at 1AU and show that the turbulence decomposes linearly into two coexistent components perpendicular and parallel to the local average magnetic field and determine their distinct intermittency independent scaling exponents. The first of these is consistent with recent predictions for anisotropic MHD turbulence and the second is closer to Kolmogorov-like scaling

An Expert System for Managing an Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment Plant

A diagnostic expert system for an activated sludge wastewater treatment plant has been designed to link with a relational database management system for obtaining operational parameter values that are used by the program to diagnose operational problems that may occur in the process. The problems that are dealt with by the system are bulking sludge, floating sludge, defloculation, ashing, solids washout, foaming problems, high soluble effluent BOD and problems in the aeration system. The link between the expert system and the database is accomplished via programming that is initiated by the expert system program. The operator of the system is not required to perform any action in order for the appropriate retrievals of operational parameter values to occur. The system is designed such that parameter values are retrieved from the database if such a database exists and contains appropriate values and, if no such database exists or if the appropriate values are not present, the operator is queried for the parameter values. Since many wastewater treatment plants maintain database management systems for operational parameter values, such an expert system has advantages over stand alone systems. However, an override of the database query is possible, making the system useful for experimental queries and for training

Overconfidence Can Improve an Agent's Relative and Absolute Performance in Contests

This paper suggests a potential rationale for the recent empirical finding that overconfident agents tend to self-select into more competitive environments (e.g. Dohmen and Falk, forthcoming). In particular, it shows that moderate overconfidence in a contest can improve the agent's performance relative to an unbiased opponent and can even lead to an advantage for the overconfident agent in absolute terms

Solar cycle dependence of scaling in solar wind fluctuations

In this review we collate recent results for the statistical scaling properties of fluctuations in the solar wind with a view to synthesizing two descriptions: that of evolving MHD turbulence and that of a scaling signature of coronal origin that passively propagates with the solar wind. The scenario that emerges is that of coexistent signatures which map onto the well known "two component" picture of solar wind magnetic fluctuations. This highlights the need to consider quantities which track Alfvénic fluctuations, and energy and momentum flux densities to obtain a complete description of solar wind fluctuations