Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Friday

European Union suppliers to blame for horse meat scandal, Simon Coveney believes

  

Ireland’s agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has pointed the finger of blame for the horse meat scandal at suppliers outside of Ireland.

But Mr Coveney said he is not in a position yet to “name names”, adding: “I think we have our suspicions but we need proof.”

“We will get to the bottom of that,” Mr Coveney told RTE’s ‘Morning Ireland’. “As soon as I get full information and proof, I will be totally transparent.”

He said his understanding is horse DNA was found only in “filler material for burgers”, and said he is “absolutely sure” Irish horses are not being used in food.

“If there is evidence to back that up, please give it to me,” he said, adding that the scandal is a huge issue in Ireland and the UK, but not mainland Europe, where eating horse meat is normal.

“It is not the norm in Ireland or the UK and it shouldn’t be because consumers do not want that. I think we have been damaged, but mainly in Ireland and the UK. This is a step backward.”

Irish Scientist’s team in 2^nd biggest killer in Ireland bowel cancer breakthrough

     

Irish scientists have developed a new method of predicting which bowel cancer patients will respond effectively to chemotherapy.

Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer, is the second most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in Ireland. More than 2,200 people are diagnosed with the disease here every year. It is also the second biggest cancer killer here.

According to the scientists from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and Beaumont Hospital, in the future, this method could help to identify those patients who will not respond to chemotherapy. This will save the patients from having to undergo this often grueling treatment for nothing and will also show who may need additional treatments.

The new method works by measuring the amount of drug needed to kill a cancer cell, but without harming healthy tissue.

“Our study has enabled us to predict which patients are likely to be resistant to chemotherapy by examining how certain proteins in their cancer cells interact.

  “We hope that the clinical decision-making tool that we have designed will enable doctors to develop personalised therapies for patients to ensure the best outcomes and potentially avoiding unnecessary chemotherapy and the negative side-effects that go with it,” said lead scientist, Prof Jochen Prehn, of the RCSI.

He added that this new method also has the potential to be used in clinical trials to develop new drugs to treat this type of cancer in people who are chemotherapy-resistant.

“The model we developed in this study could also eventually be applied in other cancers,” Prof Prehn said.

Details of these findings are published in the international medical journal, Cancer Research.

Man held in Donegal after most recent threatening break-in

   

A woman (69) was threatened during a robbery at her home in Kilmacrennan, Co Donegal last night.

Gardaí in Letterkenny have arrested a 24-year-old man in connection with a burglary at Kilmacrennan, Co Donegal in the early hours of this morning.

Just before 4am, a man entered the home of a 69-year-old woman, who was alone in the house at the time.

The intruder forced his way into her bedroom, threatened her and demanded cash, but fled the scene empty-handed. No injuries were sustained in the incident.

A short time later, gardaí arrested a man in connection with the break-in. He is being held at Letterkenny Garda station under Section Four of the Criminal Justice Act 1984.

Dunne’s Stores staff win their first pay rise in six years

  

Dunnes Stores staff have won a €600-a-year pay rise — the first increase in six years. The 14,000 workers at the supermarket chain were told that the 3pc rise will kick in from next month.

The company did not turn up for a Labour Court hearing after staff lodged the pay claim yesterday.

However, their union, Mandate, said that the company had told staff they will get the wage hike from the second week of February.

Union

Mandate filed the pay claim on behalf of its 4,000 members at the chain nine months ago.

Although the union was representing less than one third of the staff, it said that the wage increase will apply across the board. It is worth more than €600 to full-time staff, who earn around €23,000 to €24,000 a year.

The union referred the pay claim to the Labour Court after the company failed to attend talks.

Assistant general secretary of Mandate, Gerry Light, said staff had not had a pay increase since December 2007.

“Many retail workers have foregone pay increases over the last few years — some indeed have taken cuts — and have given considerable flexibility to their employers,” Mr Light said.

“Indeed, even in companies where pay rates haven’t been cut, many workers’ incomes have declined because of significant reductions to their working hours and they have also been badly affected by rising prices, tax rises and the cuts to public services and welfare payments like child benefit.”

However, he said most retail companies remained highly profitable.

He said it is estimated that Dunnes Stores is generating sales in the region of €3.8bn a year and significant profits.

Hikes: Dunnes Stores did not comment on the development.

More than 3,000 Marks & Spencer and 13,000 Tesco workers got wage hikes worth up to €700-a-year last year.

Debenhams recently agreed to a 2pc pay increase from September 1 after its 1,400 staff accepted plans to extend a pay freeze, which has been in place for two years.

GMIT students design sports adventure programme for disabled people

 

Pictured at Lough Lannagh, Castlebar, are participants on the sports adventure programme

Involving kayaking and orienteering, designed by Outdoor Education degree students in GMIT Castlebar in collaboration with Mayo Sports Partnership.

Students from the BA (Hons) in Outdoor Education programme at GMIT Castlebar Campus have designed and facilitated a programme of adventure sports on Lough Lannagh for people with disabilities, as part of a national project called Xcessible – Inclusive Outdoors Initiative.   The GMIT students designed a programme that was both accessible but challenging, enabling the participants to share the excitement and connection to the natural  world experienced in adventure sports.
It involves two key elements of land and water with the participants experiencing open boat canoeing and adapted team orienteering.

The students were evaluated on their work as part of their “Experiential Learning module”, which is a component of their honours degree programme.

The initiative was co-ordinated locally by Ray McNamara of Mayo Sports Partnership, Mayo County Council, Nigel Jennings, Sports Officer, GMIT Castlebar, and Stephen Hannon Lecturer in Outdoor Education at GMIT.

It was formally launched on campus last month (December) by the Mayor of Castlebar Brendan Heneghan and Denis Toomey, Manager of the successful Irish Paracyling team.
Stephen Hannon, Lecturer on the Outdoor Education degree programme at GMIT, Castlebar, says: “Despite the challenging weather conditions, the participants expressed delight with their activities.”

“In addition to being evaluated on their work, two of the fourth year students, Mark O Connor and Tommy Gaffney, were filmed and interviewed by staff from CARA National Adapted Physical Activity Centre who are running the initiative in co-operation with local Sports Partnerships around the country.”

Ray McNamara, Mayo Sports Partnership, says: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with GMIT in providing activities for people with a disability. This programme continues on from collaborations on initiatives such as the ‘Sport for All’ conference in 2011 and community adventure sports days which have been tremendously successful”.

NASA sends Mona Lisa to the moon with lasers

    

In a show of planetary-scale laser communication, Leonardo’s digitized lady gets beamed nearly 240,000 miles to a lunar satellite.

NASA scientists, having apparently nothing better to do, have shot an image of the Mona Lisa to the moon by piggybacking it on laser pulses. Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was successfully received by an instrument aboard the agency’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) some 240,000 miles away.

“This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances,” MIT’s David Smith, head of the spacecraft’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA), said in a release.

“In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use. In the more distant future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide.”

As the NASA vid below explains, lasers are used to track the LRO’s position. Staff used the Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging Station at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to send the image.

It wasn’t your average JPEG file. La Joconde, as she’s also known, was chopped into a 152×200 pixel array, with each pixel assigned a gray-scale value and beamed up one at a time; the image transmission speed was about 300 bits per second.

LOLA, all the while following its primary mission of mapping the lunar terrain, put Mona back together based on the arrival times of the pixel data.

The 500-year-old image was beamed back to Earth via the LRO’s radio telemetry system. Meanwhile, errors caused by turbulence in the atmosphere were cleaned up with Reed-Solomon error correction, a technique used in CDs and DVDs.

The success of the demonstration could pave the way for lasers to be used for satellite communication, according to NASA, particularly with its Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission, which is set to launch this year.

Leonardo is said to have cherished his celebrated portrait and traveled with it to France. No doubt he would love the fact that Mona’s cryptic smile has graced the heavens.