Bernadine Satariano
University of Malta Junior College, Malta
This paper emphasises that the coastal environment is important for the health and wellbeing of inhabitants living in deprived neighbourhoods in the small island state of Malta. Using qualitative research, it explores how the respondents experience their interaction with the coast and the sea in diverse ways and how this impacts on their health and wellbeing. Making use of qualitative in-depth interviews it analyses the symbolic connections that the respondents have with the sea, the potential that the natural, coastal environment has in enhancing physical activity and mental wellbeing, feelings of embodiment, social interaction and the aspect of temporality. Yet, some nostalgic memories also referred to the aspect of loss and the importance of protection of the natural coastline. This paper acknowledges the deep emotions and strong loving connections that Maltese inhabitants have with the coastal environment and how valuable these spaces are for their health and wellbeing. The fluid, dynamic landforms at sea are greatly important for the health and wellbeing of these individuals and are highly valued therapeutic landscapes within a densely built up environmental island context.
Carmel Azzopardi
What are the dominant misconceptions in mechanics when 16-year old participants enter a course in Advanced or intermediate level physics? What are the most dominant misconceptions that remain after a 1-year instruction on mechanics?A study was performed on a group of participants entering the course in October 2015. A multiple-choice test with 30 questions was given to this group of participants in October 2015 and later in May 2016. This test was, called the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was published by David Hestenes, Malcolm Wells and Gregg Swackhamer in 1992 but was then revised by Ibrahim Halloun, Richard Hake and Eugene Mosca in 1995. The questions are all about mechanics problems that probe into Newtonian concepts and are divided into six dimensions 鈥� Kinematics; First law; Second law; Third law; Superposition principle and Kinds of force.This study requires that the same participant will do the pretest in October and the posttest in May. For this reason, there were 233 intermediate level participants and 162 advanced level participants making a total of 395 valid scripts to analyse. In general participants attempted all questions in both tests.Participants got more correct replies in the posttest. The mean percent in pretest was 26.61 while 32.33 in posttest. This result is low for Newtonian thinking threshold of 60% in both tests. Since participants performed better in posttest, then a gain was calculated to be 0.08 which falls in the low-gain category according to Hake (1998) but is close to what Bani-Salameh (2017) found in Saudi Arabia where the gain was 0.10.The 30 questions where grouped into six dimensions of misconceptions as described by Bani-Salameh (2017), namely Kinematics; Impetus; Active force; Action/reaction pairs; Concatenation of influences; Other influence on motion. For each category, the number of participants selecting these options were added together and were divided by the number of wrong replies in that category to give a percentage. If this percentage is greater than 50 then it is considered a dominant incorrect answer.In this study the highly dominant incorrect answers (greater than 90%) in the posttest, were 鈥� Kinematics (Ego-centred reference frame); Impetus (by hit, dissipation, circular); Active force (Motion implies active force) and Resistance (Mass makes things stop). In comparison between pretest and posttest dominant misconceptions, the study shows no improvement has been made after 1-year course in mechanics.
Bernadine Satariano
University of Malta, Junior College, Msida, Malta
This study contributes to the geography of health by emphasising intergenerational differences in health determinants in a Mediterranean context. Using a grounded theory approach, it aims to explore the intergenerational processes between parents and children and their impact on determinants of health and wellbeing by focusing on the neighbourhood processes, including human, social and cultural capital in their neighbourhood. Through structured in-depth interviews with parents and children coming from two deprived neighbourhoods in Malta, it was shown that what may be considered valuable and beneficial for the adults' wellbeing may be detrimental for their children. In other cases, the neighbourhood processes that are being experienced negatively by adults seem to be beneficial for the health and wellbeing of young people. Thus the neighbourhood does not influence the inhabitants of different age groups in a homogenous and consistent manner. Indeed, the experiences of adults and children, even though they belong to the same family and neighbourhood, may differ from each other. It also emerged that it is not only the parents who can influence determinants of a young person's wellbeing; children and adolescents are able to negotiate and contradict their parents' wishes and decisions in order to enjoy conditions that they find beneficial. This study therefore demonstrates how the processes related to the social determinants of health are not static but highly dynamic, even across generations.
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Bernadine Satariano and Ritienne Gauci
This study describes the natural geomorphological cycle which characterised the birth, evolution and eventual collapse of an iconic sea arch: the Azure Window in Dwejra, Gozo. In describing the sudden loss event of this landform鈥攚hich happened on 8th March 2017鈥攖his study also investigates the reactions of the media and the Maltese community within a week following the event. This chapter demonstrates how sudden changes in the coastal environment may impact on the well-being of people. Few studies to date have analysed how the loss of a landform may impact on the health and well-being of individuals, especially if such a landform loss occurs as a sudden unexpected event. The aftermath of the Azure Window collapse provided strong evidence about how a public landform may evoke both collective emotions and personal memories. This qualitative study also draws on the reactions expressed by the local and international media, which propagated and reinforced the experience of loss, particularly through social media. The therapeutic qualities linked to the Azure Window evoked a range of emotions which testify the attachment felt towards the landform. However, it also fuelled the frequent debate about whether to accept and respect the inevitable cycles of landform change or, alternatively, to resort to hard invasive measures to arrest or slow down such inexorable natural changes. The event reawakened a collective desire to be in contact with natural landscapes and brought forth calls for more preservation and protection of these dynamic landforms.
Alexander Farrugia, John Baptist Gauci, Irene Sciriha
The n-vertex graph G(= 螕 (G)) with a non-singular real symmetric adjacency matrix G, having a zero diagonal and singular (n鈭�1)脳(n鈭�1) principal submatrices is termed a NSSD, a Non-Singular graph with a Singular Deck. NSSDs arose in the study of the polynomial reconstruction problem and were later found to characterise non-singular molecular graphs that are distinct omni-conductors and ipso omni-insulators. Since both matrices G and G鈭�1 represent NSSDs 螕 (G) and 螕 (G鈭�1), the value of the nullity of a one-, two and three-vertex deleted subgraph of G is shown to be determined by the corresponding subgraph in 螕 (G鈭�1). Constructions of infinite subfamilies of non-NSSDs are presented. NSSDs with all two-vertex deleted subgraphs having a common value of the nullity are referred to as G-nutful graphs. We show that their minimum vertex degree is at least 4.
Bernadine Satariano
This paper emphasises the important role that place has in determining how religious social processes operate and impact on health and wellbeing. It draws upon evidence through qualitative in-depth interviews with families (both parents and children) living in two deprived neighbourhoods in Malta, a 鈥榯raditional鈥� and a 鈥榤odern鈥� one. It emerged that religious faith and practices can generate normative and resource-based social capital which can positively impact on health and wellbeing. However, some individuals found this social capital constraining and this had detrimental effects on their wellbeing. The context, composition, history and norms of the place emerge as highly important. This study emphasises that religious social processes operate in a highly complex manner, and 鈥榓dherents鈥� and 鈥榙isaffiliates鈥� are likely to enjoy positive or negative health and wellbeing according to where they live and according to important persons living in the neighbourhood such as the parish priest. This study contributes to the research gap between religion, social capital and health and the complex, social processes that operate at the local level of place.
Alexander Farrugia
Graph theory is the area of mathematics that studies networks, or graphs. It arose from the need to analyse many diverse network-like structures like road networks, molecules, the Internet, social networks and electrical networks. In spectral graph theory, which is a branch of graph theory, matrices are constructed from such graphs and analysed from the point of view of their so-called eigenvalues and eigenvectors. The first practical need for studying graph eigenvalues was in quantum chemistry in the thirties, forties and fifties, specifically to describe the H眉ckel molecular orbital theory for unsaturated conjugated hydrocarbons. This study led to the field which nowadays is called chemical graph theory. A few years later, during the late fifties and sixties, graph eigenvalues also proved to be important in physics, particularly in the solution of the membrane vibration problem via the discrete approximation of the membrane as a graph. This paper delves into the journey of how the practical needs of quantum chemistry and vibrating membranes compelled the creation of the more abstract spectral graph theory. Important, yet basic, mathematical results stemming from spectral graph theory shall be mentioned in this paper. Later, areas of study that make full use of these mathematical results, thus benefitting greatly from spectral graph theory, shall be described. These fields of study include the P versus NP problem in the field of computational complexity, Internet search, network centrality measures and control theory.
Bernadine Satariano
Research on social capital, health and place has increasingly expanded, however relatively little research has explored how social capital can impact on health both in a positive and negative manner, within a place. There is a general understanding that features of social cohesion, bonding, reciprocity ties, and trust operating within a place all help to increase positive health and wellbeing. Yet, very few studies analyse that the theory of social capital in practice has its risks and can be damaging for the health and wellbeing of individuals. This study, through qualitative in-depth
interviews, explores how social capital is truly beneficial for the health and wellbeing of certain social groups, and argues that it may not always be the case that a deprived neighbourhood suffers from low social cohesion. However, this study brings out more to the attention that these same features of social capital can exert negative effects through features of social exclusion, reporting, jealousy and antisocial behaviour.
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Bernadine Satariano
Children's health and wellbeing are influenced by multiple factors in different environments including the family, the neighbourhood and the wider social context. This study, through in-depth interviews with children belonging to different familial compositions, explores how within three deprived Mediterranean Maltese neighbourhood communities, children's wellbeing is affected in diverse ways. It explores how the marital status of the parents is perceived in the neighbourhood's cultural and social context and how the child experiences repercussions of the familial status, which indirectly determines the child's wellbeing. It emphasises how the history of the place shapes the norms which are socially accepted in the locality, thus highlighting that health and wellbeing is contingent to place. Moreover, the socio-economical changes that occur across time in a place may alter the norms and affect people's wellbeing in different ways. It also shows how children are affected by the prevalent gendered norms and processes transmitted in the neighbourhood and how they are contingent upon the neighbourhood in which one lives. This emphasises that local place has an important role on the health and wellbeing of children, even in relation to their familial marital status.
Bernadine Satariano a,鈦�, Sarah E. Curtis b,c
a University of Malta, Junior College, Malta
b Durham University, United Kingdom
c University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
This study contributes to international research on geographies of health and wellbeing in Mediterranean cultures. The paper draws upon evidence from qualitative research in three localities in Malta, a country where previous research on this topic is quite limited. Through in-depth interviews with people from some of the most disadvantaged and socially marginalised groups in Maltese society, this research illustrates how psychosocial health and wellbeing of the inhabitants within this Mediterranean region are strongly influenced by wider social determinants, particularly the powerful dynamics of social norms involving roles of extended family, traditional attitudes towards marriage as an institution, family honour, gender roles and religious beliefs and practices. This research explores how these social determinants of health within a Maltese context are complex and contingent on personal and local socio-geographical conditions, so that while for some individuals they are beneficial for health and wellbeing, for others the effects are detrimental. The discussion considers how to interpret the 鈥楳editerranean model鈥� of social determinants of health in light of the experiences of this group of inhabitants.
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A number of studies emphasise that the place of residence determines the health and wellbeing of its inhabitants. Although it is well known that similar to wealth, health varies across countries, few realise that the health and wellbeing of individuals also vary across local neighbourhoods. This qualitative study explores how the health and wellbeing of families living in deprived neighbourhood conditions in Malta are being affected due to the neighbourhood conditions.
Participant parents and children narrate feelings of stigma experienced because of where they live and due to the physical conditions of their neighbourhood environment. Apart from the impact on the inhabitants鈥� self-esteem, the dilapidated neighbourhood environment reduces the possibility of enjoying social interaction with resourceful persons. This creates feelings of inequality and social exclusion which constrain these inhabitants from involving themselves in educational and cultural activities and thus inhibiting their wellbeing and the future success of their children. Moreover living in deprived neighbourhoods also puts the respondents at risk of ill-health and obesity due to the lack of adequately maintained open spaces for physical activity.
Nadia Portelli
Ultra endurance sport has shown a significant increase in popularity during the last couple of decades. This paper focuses on theories which explain the phenomenal efforts ultra endurance athletes face when running extreme distances and hours. These ultra athletes have to surpass physical pain and mental distress for long hours or even days before crossing the finishing line and are at risk of injuries and extreme fatigue. And yet, none of them succumb to their injuries or exhaustion under normal conditions. Various theories argue that the body is a high functioning machine which depends on physical measures to determine its efficiency while others put the brain as central to endurance practice and argue that the brain is the ultimate regulator which is there to protect the body. The athlete can never be harmed as the brain is taking measures so that body systems are never in distress. The beating heart is protected and catastrophe cannot occur. This paper illustrates various diverse theories which posit different arguments regarding extreme running and how it is actually achievable, without the athlete perishing due to the effort.