Donie's Irisg daily news BLOG

Rehab Ireland received €82.2 million in Irish state payments in 2013

 

CEO Angela Kerins

Angela Kerins: pressure on her to disclose all her remuneration details as chief executive of Rehab is growing

The Rehab Group received €82.2 million in State payments last year, new figures given to the Public Accounts Committee show. The disclosure comes amid controversy over Rehab’s failure to reveal the pay of its chief, Angela Kerins.

Ms Kerins and Rehab have defended that stance by saying 60% of Rehab’s income comes from the commercial arena, but the Rehab board has been called to a special meeting on Monday week to discuss releasing the figure.

Disclosure is increasingly likely, given Government pressure for all elements of her remuneration package to be revealed. With the scale of State payments to the organisation now apparent, the committee will next week discuss how to proceed with its examination of Rehab’s finances.

The committee received correspondence on Thursday showing payments made to Rehab by the former State training body Fás and its newly established successor, Solas. The figures show that Rehab received more than €135 million from Fás/Solas in the past five years.

The information casts further light on the amount of public money flowing into Rehab. This comes at a time when Rehab’s defence against disclosing Ms Kerins’ pay rests on the argument that its commercial income exceeds its income from all other sources.

Private correspondence

Solas told the committee in private correspondence on Thursday that Rehab received €27.03 million in fees for training and other services in 2013.

This is on top of the previously disclosed €50 million it received last year from the Health Service Executive. The organisation is also known to have received €2.61 million from the Department of Social Protection and another €2.58 million under the Charitable Lotteries Fund from the Department of Justice.

The decision to phase out the Charitable Lotteries Fund is at the root of tension between Rehab and Minister for Justice Alan Shatter. He has raised concerns over the low profit margins in Rehab Lotteries and questioned the “costly” legal action the group has taken against the State .

Rehab’s payment under the lotteries fund in 2012 was €3.92 million, and from Fás in 2012 was €27.92 million.

Some people in Catholic church could be homophobic,

SAYS ARCHBISHOP DIARMUID MARTIN

  

SOME PEOPLE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN IRELAND MAY BE HOMOPHOBIC, ACCORDING TO ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN DR DIARMUID MARTIN

Speaking on RTE radio this afternoon, Dr Martin said that it is also possible that Catholic Church teachings could be used  “in a homophobic way”, which the Church should be careful not to do during debates on same sex marriage in the run up to the referendum.

“Debates on issues like this have to be carried out in a mature way so that people can freely express their views” while at the same time being respectful and not causing offence,” he said.

“Anyone who grew up in Ireland would have told jokes that were pointed at the gay community, at Travellers. It is part of the culture we grew up in, but we have to grow out of it.”

He reiterated Church beliefs that marriage is a union between a man and a woman only, but that same sex couples can form a union through other methods.

Since the first public civil partnership was celebrated in April 2011, more than 2,600 people become civil partners, up ntil the end of 2013.

3 Sligo families the victims of abysmal building practices

SAYS HIGH COURT JUDGE

  

Three families were “victims of abysmal building practices” and of massive systemic breaches of building regulations, a High Court judge said yesterday. Mr Justice Gerard Hogan made the comments when he awarded the families a total of €1.09m over defects in their homes. 

He is to send his judgment to Environment Minister Phil Hogan and to the chairman of the Oireachtas Environment Committee so the Government “may give such consideration to the policy issues raised by the judgment as they may consider appropriate”. 

What had happened to the families was “simply unconscionable” and he expressed the hope their appalling plight “may yet prove to be a clarion call for action in relation to the proper enforcement of building standards”. 

The case concerned houses in the Ocean Links estate, Strandhill, Co Sligo, built in the early 2000′s by Mulvey Developments. 

Among the purchasers were Michael and Margo Mitchell; Ciaran Adams and wife Niamh Deasy; and Mary Brett, who initially only used the house during holidays before living permanently in it from 2009. 

They sued the Mulvey firm and Thomas Mulvey over multiple defects. Both did not defend the case and judgement had been entered against them previously. 

They also sued supervising engineer during building, Stephen Garvey of Adept Consulting Engineers, along with Design Development Ltd, since gone into liquidation. Judgment was also entered previously against those two defendants in default of them putting in a defence. 

They further sued National House Building Guarantee Company Ltd which operates the Homebond repair scheme and that case is pending. Six similar claims by other householders are also pending. 

Mr Justice Hogan was yesterday dealing with assessment of damages only in relation to the first three cases. He awarded €424,090 to the Mitchells, €250,175 to Ms Brett, and €424,805 to Mr Adams and Ms Deasy.

Thousands of Irish children with disabilities “deprived of vital early help”

  

Large sections of the country have no early intervention teams to help children with serious disabilities — risking potential havoc for their development.

Official figures show that while the HSE is attempting to shore up gaps in the disability sector, thousands of children are being left without vital early help for years — guaranteeing their conditions only get worse.

According to a parliamentary question response to Fianna Fáil’s disability, mental health, and special needs spokesman, Colm Keaveney, Dublin and Cork City have no early intervention teams for those in need of speech and language, occupational, and physiotherapy help.

The same service gap is apparent in Carlow, Kilkenny, Kildare, and Wicklow — with just 58 early intervention teams tasked with supporting 6,399 children across the country.

The data shows 1,940 children wait over a year to be assessed for speech and language difficulties which will deteriorate without intervention. A further 2,090 children are waiting the same length of time for occupational therapy help.

“The whole idea of early intervention teams is to provide assessment and support to children with special needs as soon as their needs become apparent,” said Mr Keaveney.

“Research shows that by identifying a disability at a young age and mapping out an appropriate care plan, a child has a much better chance of quality of life and a much better chance of managing their disability. But this service is completely crippled by a lack of resources.

“This comes down to the simple question: ‘How seriously does the State takes its duty to care towards children with special needs?’

“These figures must act as a wake-up call for the Irish Government. 

“If the Minister for Health, James Reilly, and Junior Minister, Kathleen Lynch, truly believe in the need to provide the most basic level of support for children with disabilities, they will intervene now and ensure this crucial service is properly resourced.”

The stance was supported by Special Needs Parents Association spokeswoman Lorraine Dempsey, who said the problem is a “scandal” to rival that of the ongoing charity top-ups controversy.

While she accepted the HSE is attempting to tighten gaps in the service through a new Progressing Disability Services system which will allow families to apply for help regardless of what area they are in, Ms Dempsey said if nothing changes the issue is only going to get worse.

“Without long-term investment, you’re going to have problems developing for the rest of these children’s lives,” she said.

2014 of the Best Diets in order of ranking

  

Every year, US News assembles a judging panel of top nutrition experts to adjudicate on the best popular diets.

The diets are ranked on how easy they are to follow, their ability to produce short-term and long-term weight loss, their nutritional completeness, their safety and their potential for preventing and managing diabetes and heart disease.

In his assessment of the 2014 Best Diets ranking process, Prof David Katz, director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Centre, pointed out that many diets are more likely to be marked by their similarities than differences.

For example low glycaemic index and Mediterranean dietary patterns such as high fruit and vegetable consumption are characteristics of virtually all healthy diets. However, he welcomed the fact that the ranking list provides some clarity, helping dieters to make a more informed decision about which diet to run with, in what has become a bewilderingly, over-crowded playing field.

Of the 32 diets assessed this year, top of the list was the DASH Diet, a plan initially developed to reduce blood pressure in the mid-1990s, but which has since been discovered to enhance weight management and improve skeletal health.

The original dash diet focused primarily on the increased intake of fruit and vegetables (at least four servings per day of each) and low-fat dairy products such as semi-skimmed milk and low-fat yoghurt (three to four servings per day). These dietary patterns are associated with increased intakes of potassium, calcium and magnesium, and it’s been suggested that these are the nutrients which actually do the business for us in terms of enhanced health outcome.

However, the tendency of these “healthy” foods to simultaneously push other “unhealthy” foods out of the diet is another important advantage which can’t be ignored. More recent incarnations of the DASH Diet have incorporated salt restriction, reduced red meat intake, portion control and limited alcohol intake, all of which have enhanced its health-promoting properties.

Among the other plans featuring in the top 10 are the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) Diet and the Mayo Clinic Diet. The TLC Diet is a heart-healthy plan which recommends a reduction in saturated fat from processed meats and fat-rich dairy foods like cheese and cream. It also advises people to cut down their salt and their overall fat intakes, and to take at least 30 minutes of exercise each day.

The Mayo Clinic Diet comprises a “Lose It!” phase for the first two weeks during which significant weight loss of 3-5 kg is targeted, followed by a “Live It!” phase, where sustainable healthy diet and exercise patterns are implemented. These include eating extra fruit, vegetables and whole-grains, as well as moderate portions of lean protein sources like beans and pulses, fish and low fat dairy foods.

Among the commercial plans making the top 10 were: Weight Watchers (no. 3), Jenny Craig (no. 8) and the Ornish Diet (no. 9).

In selecting your own diet plan, remember that the diet industry’s tendency to label diets often neglects the significant overlap that exists between them. Also, try not to be over-prescriptive — the best and most practical diet plan for you and your family may incorporate winning features common to several of these well known plans.

For example, it’s hard to argue against the inclusion of plenty of fruit, vegetables, low-fat dairy, wholegrain cereals and oily fish as positive dietary changes. And limiting the sources of sugar, fat, salt and alcohol are probably no-brainers, too.

IN THE FRIDGE

A delicious salad, 
Cucumber and rocket salad:

Dice a large fresh cucumber and 200g of feta cheese into 1 cm cubes. Add 50g of roast pine nuts, 50g of chopped sundried tomatoes and two to three handfuls of fresh rocket leaves. Add 30mls of balsamic vinegar and 30mls of good quality olive oil and toss thoroughly before serving cold… delicious.

VITAMIM WATCH
Vitamin D

An Irish paper from researchers at UCC published in the British Journal of Nutrition has highlighted the issue of vitamin D insufficiency in the Irish population.

This study showed that 76% of Irish adults tested had blood levels of vitamin D which were lower than the threshold for optimal bone health.

Also, more than half of those identified to have low blood concentrations of vitamin D had levels which placed them at high risk for osteoporosis.

While there’s emerging evidence implicating low vitamin D status in cancer, heart disease, and other serious health conditions, it’s noteworthy that falls and osteoporotic fractures alone have been estimated to cost the Irish economy €551m a year.

Vitamin D food sources include: salmon, eggs, avocado, and mushrooms.

A Tomato treat 

The tomato originated in the South American Andes, and was first used as a foodstuff in Mexico. Packed full of vitamins A and C, and with folate, iron and potassium, tomatoes are also rich in lycopene, an antioxidant that becomes even more available for use by the body when it’s derived from pulped, pureed or fried tomatoes.

Curiosity shows us how Martians would see the Earth?

AND IT’S STUNNING

  

It’s a stunning image of Earth and it’s an intimate portrait of our home planet.

In late January, according to NASA, its Curiosity rover snapped the first ever picture of Earth from Mars. In the photo Earth resembles an evening star with the moon, a smaller point of light, shining nearby.

Curiosity utilized its “Mastcam” or its left eye camera to snap the photo. This intensely significant event occurred on the rover’s 529th day of its mission on Mars, and just about 80 min after sunset on the red planet. At the moment the camera shutter blinked, Earth and Mars were approximately 99 million miles away from each other.

The publicly released image has been slightly edited, though only to eliminate the effects of cosmic rays. The image can be seen on Curiosity’s official Twitter feed, along with the text, “Look back in wonder. My first picture of Earth from the surface of Mars.”

This picture will no doubt go down in history as one of the most famous pictures taken from the explorations of space. Another of the famous shots from space includes the one captured by Voyager 1 Spacecraft, where Earth appears as a “pale blue dot.”

Since arriving on Mars’ surface in 2012, Curiosity has been continually providing scientists with large amounts of data and as well as supplying the public with exciting new discoveries. Curiosity has already made a huge impact and established its place as one of the most successful rovers ever to roam the surface of Mars.    

Donie's Irish daily news BLOG Sunday

We should deal with our rogue priests here, not in Rome says Diarmuid Martin

 

Censured Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery (right pic.) who has been threatened with excommunication by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said the spate of censures of five Irish priests by the Vatican should have been dealt with by the Irish church instead of Rome.

He was speaking on RTE Radio about the publication of an in-depth interview with Pope Francis by the Italian Jesuit journal ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’, in which the Pontiff criticised the excessive number of denunciations sent to Rome about priests and theologians complaining of their lack of orthodoxy.

In the interview, the Pope said these conflicts over orthodoxy should be handled by local bishops’ conferences rather than the Curia.

Responding, Dr Martin said he hoped that the problems and the tensions within the Irish church would be eased “so that we get away from a climate of bickering into one in which we all work together.”

He said he also strongly believed that these matters should alwaysbegin with the local church and where possible be resolved within the local church.

Noting that Irish society had been through some difficult years, Dr Martin said he agreed with the Pope that the church shouldn’t be so over-concerned by just abortion, gay marriage and contraceptives.

Meanwhile, censured Redemptorist priest Fr Tony Flannery who has been threatened with excommunication by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith – over his stand on women priests and contraception – told the Irish Independent that what the Pope said, “seems to amount to a fairly substantial critique of the way in which the Curia and, in particular, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith have been operating.”

In his interview, the Pope said that in some cases, when Vatican Congregations are not functioning well, “they run the risk of becoming institutions of censorship”.

The Pope’s call for local bishops’ conferences to handle such matters could potentially be “good news” for Fr Flannery and the other censured Irish priests.

“It changes the rules of the game in the sense that it appears that the Curia has largely been taken out of the business of dealing with disciplinary matters and it has been handed back to the local church to deal with it,” he said.

For Fr Flannery, that means that the matter should be dealt with by his Redemptorist congregation.

The priest – whose recently launched book ‘A Question of Conscience’ has sold out and a second reprint is due in just over a weeks’ time – said there was “no question” that the Pope was criticising the “thought police” who spent their time reporting people to Rome.

Irish people ‘do not need another reason to drink’

  

Doctors have launched a scathing attack on an annual event that promotes Guinness, claiming alcohol-related illnesses in Ireland have reached “epidemic” proportions.

As Arthur’s Day approaches, the Royal College of Physicians Ireland (RCPI) has organised a public talk aimed at highlighting the dark side of alcohol.

Liver disease specialist Dr Stephen Stewart, who will speak at the event tomorrow, said he has treated patients as young as their 30s with end-stage liver disease who were unaware they had a drinking problem.

“We have a progressively worsening relationship with alcohol in Ireland, which manifests itself in the increasing numbers of young people dying from alcohol-related illnesses,” Dr Stewart said.

The doctor, who serves as director of the Liver Disease Centre in the Mater Hospital, said deaths relating to cirrhosis of the liver have doubled between 1994 and 2008, and that hospital admissions for alcoholic liver disease almost doubled between 1995 and 2007.

“Alcohol is more affordable than ever. Alcohol is more acceptable than ever. Alcohol is more available than ever,” he said.

“We need measures to address this epidemic. Where does Arthur’s Day fit into all of this?”

Chair of the RCPI’s policy group on alcohol Professor Frank Murray will open the public meeting.

He said with alcohol consumption and binge drinking at such high rates, the nation does not need “another reason to drink”.

Child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Bobby Smyth, who will also address the event, warned young people who drink feel more depressed and more anxious while women who open bottles of wine to “de-stress” after a hard work day do more harm than good.

“This strategy for coping with the slings and arrows of life is counterproductive and is not a good model to set for children,” he said.

Arthur’s Day is an annual event organised by Diageo to celebrate the anniversary of the Guinness brewing company.

More than 500 music events featuring over 1,000 different acts will be held across the country on Thursday.

The RCPI meeting – called Join the National Conversation on Alcohol: Who’s calling the shots – will take place at 6pm on Monday at the college’s headquarters on Kildare Street, Dublin.

Survey reveals potential for Ireland to raise adventure tourism numbers

    

FAILTE IRELAND HAS SAID THERE IS GREATER POTENTIAL TO GROW ACTIVITY TOURISM NUMBERS ACROSS THE WEST OF IRELAND AND THE ATLANTIC COAST LINE, ACCORDING TO RESEARCH PUBLISHED BY THEM TODAY.

They surveyed more than 15,000 holidaymakers from the four key overseas markets of Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands as well as tourists from within Ireland.

The survey shows that Ireland is extremely well positioned in the adventure and activity segment of tourism.

The Green Isle continues to be a huge draw for international visitors who love action-packed holidays more than the city trip or beach break.

Our European neighbours enjoy Ireland’s music and sights but the survey shows that they prefer to participate in adventure activities along our coasts or mountain walking.

Cycling, walking and horseriding are still proving the most popular activities.

Next year, Ireland will host the 2014 “Year of Adventure” with the Adventure Travel World Summit getting underway in Killarney.

The mental strain of making do with less in your diet

  

Diet’s don’t just reduce weight, they can reduce mental capacity. In other words, dieting can make you dumber.

Understanding why this is the case can illuminate a range of experiences, including something as far removed from voluntary calorie restriction as the ordeal of outright poverty.

Imagine that you are attending a late-afternoon meeting. Someone brings in a plate of cookies and places them on the other side of the conference table. Ten minutes later you realize you’ve processed only half of what has been said.

Why? Only half of your mind was in the meeting. The other half was with the cookies: “Should I have one? I worked out yesterday. I deserve it. No, I should be good.”

That cookie threatened to strain your waistline. It succeeded in straining your mind.

This can happen even with no cookie in sight. Dieters conjure their own cookies: psychologists find that dieters have spontaneous self-generated cravings at a much higher rate than nondieters. And these cravings are not the dieters’ only distraction. Diets force trade-offs: If you eat the cookie, should you skip the appetizer at dinner? But that restaurant looked so good!

Many diets also require constant calculations to determine calorie counts. All this clogs up the brain. Psychologists measure the impact of this clogging on various tasks: logical and spatial reasoning, self-control, problem solving, and absorption and retention of newinformation. Together these tasks measure “bandwidth,” the resource that underlies all higher-order mental activity. Inevitably, dieters do worse than nondieters on all these tasks; they have less bandwidth.

One particularly clever study went further. It tested how dieters and nondieters reacted to eating a chocolate bar. Even though the bar provided calories, eating it widened the bandwidth gap between dieters and nondieters. Nondieters ate and moved on, but dieters started wondering how to make up for the calories they had just ingested or, even more fundamentally, pondered, “Why did I eat the bar?”

In other words, diets do not just strain bandwidth because they leave us hungry. They have psychological, not just physiological, effects.

The basic insight extends well beyond the experience of calorie counting. Something similar happens whenever we make do with less, as when we feel that we have too little time, or too little money. Just as the cookie tugs at the dieter, a looming deadline preoccupies a busy person, and the prospect of a painful rent payment shatters the peace of the poor. Just as dieters constantly track food, the hyper-busy track each minute and the poor track each dollar.

As Prof. Eldar Shafir at Princeton University and I argue in our new book, “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much” (Times Books), a similar psychology of scarcity operates across these examples but with varying degrees of force. If a cookie can tax our mental resources, imagine how much more psychological impact other forms of scarcity can have.

Take the case of poverty. In a paper published last month in Science, with Profs. Anandi Mani at the University of Warwick and Jiaying Zhao at the University of British Columbia, Professor Shafir and I waded into politically charged territory. Some people argue that the poor make terrible choices and do so because they are inherently less capable. But our analysis of scarcity suggests a different perspective: perhaps the poor are just as capable as everyone else. Perhaps the problem is not poor people but the mental strain that poverty imposes on anyone who must endure it.

One of our studies focused on Indian sugar cane farmers, who typically feel themselves to be both poor and rich, depending on the season. They are paid once a year at harvest time. When the crop is sold, they are flush with cash. But the money runs out quickly, and by the time the next harvest arrives they are stretched thin: they are, for example, 20 times as likely to pawn an item before harvest as after it. Rather than compare poor and rich farmers, we compare each farmer to himself: when he is rich against when he is poor. This kind of comparison is important because it addresses valid concerns that differences in psychological tests merely reflect differences in culture or test familiarity.

We measured farmers’ mental function — on what psychologists call fluid intelligence and executive control — one month before and one month after harvest. And the effects were large: preharvest I.Q., for example, was lower by about nine to 10 points, which in a common descriptive classification is the distance between “average” and “superior” intelligence. To put that in perspective, a full night without sleep has a similar effect on I.Q.

Bandwidth scarcity has far-reaching consequences, whether we are talking about poor farmers or affluent dieters. We all use bandwidth to make decisions at work, to resist the urge to yell at our children when they annoy us, or even to focus on a conversation during dinner or in a meeting. The diversity of these behaviors — combined with the size of the measurable effects — suggests a very different way to interpret the choices and behaviors of the poor. Just picture how distracting that cookie was, and multiply that experience by a factor of 10.

For dieters, bandwidth scarcity has one particularly important consequence, illustrated inone study that gave people a choice between fruit salad and cake. Before choosing, half of the subjects had their bandwidth taxed: they were asked to remember a seven-digit number. The other half had a mentally less-demanding task: they were asked to remember a two-digit number. Those with less available bandwidth ate more cake: they were 50 percent more likely to choose cake than the others. There is a paradox here: diets create mental conditions that make it hard to diet.

This may sound defeatist. But there are positive lessons for how to manage the different kinds of scarcity.

THE United States government, laudably, offers financial aid for low-income students to attend college. Qualifying for it, though, requires completing a densely packed 10-page booklet, mentally taxing for anyone. A one-page version would not only be simpler but it would also recognize that the poor are short on bandwidth as well as cash.

The same tactic — economizing on bandwidth — can be used in dieting. Take the Atkins diet, which effectively bans many foods, including bread and a lot of desserts. A ban is less complex than the trade-offs and calorie accounting required by many other diets. While all diets require self-control, Atkins requires less thinking. This might explain its popularity, and even its effectiveness: a recent study shows that people persist longer with diets that require less thought.

The same study had another interesting finding: it was the perceived complexity of a diet — not its actual complexity — that determined persistence.

So keep this in mind the next time you’re picking a diet to shed a few pounds. Try one that won’t also shed a few I.Q. points.

New Hope for H.I.V. after experimental Vaccine success 

  

“Kafkaesque” is not a word normally used to describe immune responses, but it’s how Dr. Louis J. Picker described what his experimental vaccine did to his rhesus monkeys: “It’s like their T-cells were turned into the East German secret police, hunting down infected cells until there were none left.”

Recent work by Dr. Picker, a vaccine expert at Oregon Health & Science University, has shaken up the long, frustrating search for an AIDS vaccine. His latest study, published in Nature last week, has scientists scratching their heads, wondering if it might open up a new avenue for research.

Dr. Picker tested his vaccine in 16 monkeys who were then infected with simian immunodeficiency virus, a close relative of H.I.V., which normally would have sent them spiraling rapidly down to a miserable death. The experimental vaccine protected only nine of them, but it also did something never seen before: these monkeys slowly “cleared” the virus and now appear to be cured. “Three years later, you can’t tell them from other monkeys,” Dr. Picker said.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the effect was “unique.”

And Dr. Barton F. Haynes, the director of the Human Vaccine Institute at Duke University’s medical school, said it was “potentially extremely important to understand how this happened.”

Scientists often test ideas for potential AIDS vaccines by creating similar ones against S.I.V. Never before has one eliminated an existing infection. In that sense, the effect of Dr. Picker’s vaccine was less like that of a measles or flu shot and more like that of the AIDS cures used in two famous cases, known as the Berlin patient and the Mississippi baby.

The Berlin patient, Timothy Ray Brown, was infected with H.I.V. and cured only by obliterating his immune system to defeat his leukemia, and then injecting bone marrow from a donor with a rare H.I.V.-blocking mutation. The unidentified baby was born to an infected mother in Mississippi and apparently infected with H.I.V., but then cured with early and large doses of antiretroviral drugs.

Both now appear to have no H.I.V. lurking deep in their bodies, but it is impossible to be sure because not every bit of their tissue can be tested.

Because he works with monkeys, Dr. Picker was able to do something that would be unthinkable with human patients — necropsy them, grind up every organ and take 240 samples from each to be sure that they harbored no hidden virus.

Making vaccines by simply weaAids

kening the virus that causes AIDS has failed because the virus mutates a hundred times faster than even the fast-mutating flu virus. In Dr. Picker’s vaccine, S.I.V. genes are fused to those of another virus, the cytomegalovirus. (The name means “big cell,” and it is in the herpes family but different from its relatives that cause lip and genital sores, chickenpox and shingles.)

H.I.V. fusion has been tried with adenoviruses and others, but cytomegalovirus seems to work better. It’s not entirely clear why, but one theory is that cytomegalovirus has a very long history of infecting primates — so much so that 100 percent of monkeys and about 80 percent of humans get it in their lifetimes.

Therefore, we primates have adapted to it. Although the virus can be lethal to fetuses and to those with immune systems suppressed by AIDS or transplant drugs, in most victims it causes no symptoms.

The body responds to cytomegalovirus more slowly and calmly than it does, for example, to a flu.

As in any infection, the thymus gland generates new white blood cells called T cells — in this case, CD8 hunter-killer cells — primed to target the specific virus. But in the case of Dr. Picker’s vaccine, those cells stay in an unusual “half-alert” state. A full-blown immune response eventually exhausts itself, and can even be dangerous. For example, the rare humans who catch H5N1 bird flu often die of the immune response itself; they drown in the flood of CD8s and other would-be saviors pouring into the lung tissue, spoiling for a fight.

That “half-alert” state is the “Kafkaesque” element: unactivated CD8s wander around aimlessly, while fully activated ones behave like storm troopers. But the half-activated CD8s persist in tissues, eliminating their targets quietly without triggering inflammation or even a mild fever.

When S.I.V. genes are fused to the cytomegalovirus spine, the CD8s kill S.I.V.-infected cells too.

Since it protected only some monkeys, the new technique might be best used in combination approaches. For example, Dr. Fauci said, it could be given with a vaccine that generates antibodies against H.I.V. “and maybe eliminate the cells that sneak past the antibody shield.”

Alternatively, the vaccine might be given to infected patients who are on antiretroviral drugs to see if it can “mop up” lingering reservoirs of virus.

It should take up to three years to get a human version ready for trials, Dr. Picker estimated.

“Now the outstanding question is, ‘Why only half?’ ” said Dr. Mike McCune, an AIDS researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, referring to the monkeys who were protected in Dr. Picker’s trial.

Too often, AIDS advances that work in lots of monkeys don’t work in many humans.

“Not all monkeys are the same,” Dr. McCune said. “They’re not as inbred as mice, but they’re sometimes from the same families, they get the same diets… Who knows what will happen if this goes into humans?”

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Sunday

Enda Kenny promises a ‘fair’ system to deal with Irish mortgage distress

   

Enda Kenny said personal insolvency guidelines would not apply in all circumstances

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the Government aim to bring in a system that is fair and equitable for people who are in mortgage and debt distress.Responding to criticisms of draft personal insolvency guidelines, Enda Kenny told reporters in Dublin the guidelines were only indicative and would not apply in all circumstances.He added that it was down to the parties involved and the insolvency practitioners to decide on arrangements in individual cases.

Mr Kenny said it was the “gross incompetence” of the previous administration and their “deliberate efforts” to inflate the property market for their “developer friends” that led to a situation where 100,000 people were in trouble with their mortgages.

He also said that there were no problems arising within the Government following the Meath East by-election and it had not affected his solid relationship with Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore.Mr Kenny said there was a programme for Government that had been signed off on by both Fine Gael and Labour at a recent review.He said it was difficult for everyone to implement but this was necessary for the interests of the people and the country.

Church must be ‘restructured’, says Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin

 

Christians must be ‘pro-life’ in fullest sense, Diarmuid Martin tells Easter vigil gathering

 “Newness and life will not come out of a church which still wants to look on itself as an institution of power,” Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said in his Easter vigil homily in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral Dublin.

The church “has to be restructured and destructured to allow it to witness to the sense of meaning and purpose that Jesus brings to the lives of believers,” the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has said.

“Newness and life will not come out of a church which still wants to look on itself as an institution of power, even a renewed institution, or from a church which is simply a focal point of organised doing good or social reform,” he said. It had to “witness more concretely to the message of Jesus,” he said.

“We have to live in such a way that the energy of life and vitality which spring from Jesus’s resurrection can really touch our hearts and change our church,” he said.

In his Easter vigil homily at Dublin’s Pro Cathedral, he said, “For us believers, the resurrection is not something that we explore with the eye of the historian or the archaeologist or the investigative journalist who gathers evidence or documents to discover possibly what an event of the past might have looked like. We look at the resurrection from the point of view of faith, a point of view which is no less real,” he said.

‘Passion for life’
It represented “the highest and most mysterious event in the whole of human history”. It bestowed “a passion for life, for truth and for the good,” he said.

“If Christians have a passion for life then they should be in the forefront in the fight for life, at every moment of its existence . . . The church and the Christian community must be ‘pro-life’ in the fullest sense of that term. We have to defend the right to life and we must at the same time always accompany that defence with a commitment to ensure that all can live their lives with a level of dignity worthy of the Lord of life in whose image they have been created,” he said.

‘Reasons for hope’
“Christians should be driving forces for a society in which young people receive . . . reasons for hope,” he said. “We have great young people but our years of prosperity have not left them a legacy of hope,” he said.

The church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin Michael Jackson said the Easter message was “of real significance to us as we find ourselves facing more and more unavoidably into an understanding of Christianity which has become far too settled in on itself”.

It has become “over-anxious about its orthodoxy (correct teaching) as opposed to its orthopraxy (correct doing) in the face of those who genuinely seek to be their best for God and to do their best for their neighbour within their strengths and their limitations. Christianity has become rather too good at ‘getting at’ people,” he said.

“An unfussy rubbing along with others and the genuine capacity to compromise – these are the characteristics which Augustine singles out as essential not only to survival but to flourishing on the Ark of Noah in a truly Catholic spirit,” he said.

Former US Vice President Al Gore to attend Dublin summit on 

“Hunger-Nutrition-Climate Justice”

  

“Hunger- Nutrition- Climate Justice” at Dublin Presidents Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson and Joyce Banda will also attend April’s “Hunger-Nutrition-Climate Justice” conference

Former vice president Al Gore, along with Presidents Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson and Joyce Banda and others, to international conference titled “Hunger- Nutrition- Climate Justice” at Dublin Cast

Former vice president Al Gore will visit Dublin next month to attend a summit in Dublin on the links between climate change, hunger and poor nutrition.

Presidents Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson and Joyce Banda will also attend the international conference titled “Hunger- Nutrition- Climate Justice” at Dublin Castle on April 15 and 16. The conference is part of Ireland’s presidency of the European Union.

The conference overview on the Irish Aid’s website states, “The objective will be to facilitate a respectful dialogue and learn from practical experience and robust evidence to inform a new approach to addressing hunger, nutrition and climate justice, in the context of the new Post-2015 international development agenda.”

Conference organisers have said that more than 100 people representing farmers’ organizations and vulnerable communities from Africa, Asia and the Arctic will discuss the impact unpredictable weather patterns are having on their lives and what solutions they are working on. People facing rising food prices, failed crops and under-nutrition will speak at the conference.

Representatives from business and advocacy groups, research institutions and academia will also contribute to the conference.

According to the conference overview, the goal of the conference “will not simply be to adopt an outcome document. We hope to inspire new ways of thinking about global development challenges and to invigorate and broaden the debate, at all levels, listening to and learning from the experiences of local people and rooting future thematic policy approaches in their lives and theirs efforts to cope.”

Under-nutrition in mothers and children is the underlying cause of 2.5 million deaths each year. Almost one third of children under the age of five in developing countries suffer from stunted growth and never reach their full potential.

An estimated 870 million people worldwide face hunger. Climate change could increase the number of hunger by 10 to 20% by 2050 and an additional 24 million malnourished children. Predictions suggest that half of those children will be in sub-Saharan Africa.

The conference is hosted by the Irish Government and the Mary Robinson Foundation- Climate Justice. It is organized in partnership with the World Food Programme and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.

Participation in the conference is by invitation only, but the event will be live streamed. In addition, several background papers will be available online and the conference will use social media before

IMO accuse pharmacists of compromising Irish peoples health by substituting drugs for profits

 

THE UNION SAYS PATIENT HEALTH IS BEING COMPROMISED

The Irish Medical Organisation has accused pharmacists of substituting drugs to increase profits.

The union, which represents doctors in Ireland, says patient health is being compromised as a result.

The IMO claims patients are regularly reporting incidents where their prescriptions were being changed without their knowledge or consent.

It has accused pharmacists of swapping medicines prescribed by doctors for cheaper ones.

And it says this is not only a breach of legislation but is also causing great distress and putting patient health at risk.

The union says it has expressed its concerns with the Department for Health but has yet to receive a reply.

Generic medicines are perfectly good alternatives in most cases but the IMO says they’re not always identical.

And it argues that this could create problems with other medication that the patient is taking.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland says it has received a very small number of complaints in relation to this issue

Greenland reaps the benefits of global warming

   

Climate change is allowing agriculture to boom

Inside the Arctic Circle, a chef is growing the kind of vegetables and herbs – potatoes, thyme, tomatoes, green peppers – more fitted for a suburban garden in a temperate zone than a land of northern lights, glaciers and musk oxen. Some Inuit hunters are finding reindeer fatter than ever thanks to more grazing on this frozen tundra, and, for some, there is no longer a need to trek hours to find wild herbs.

This is climate change in Greenland, where locals say longer and warmer summers mean the country can grow the kind of crops unheard of years ago. “Things are just growing quicker,” said Kim Ernst, the Danish chef of Roklubben restaurant, nestled by a frozen lake near a former Cold War-era US military base. “Every year we try new things,” added Mr Ernst, who even managed to grow a handful of strawberries that he served to some surprised Scandinavian royals. “I came here in 1999 and no one would have dreamed of doing this. But now the summer days seem warmer, and longer.”

It was -20C in March but the sun was out and the air was still, with an almost spring-like feel. Mr Ernst showed me his greenhouse and an outdoor winter garden which in a few months may sprout again. Hundreds of miles south, some farmers now produce hay, and sheep farms have grown in size. Some supermarkets in the capital, Nuuk, sell locally grown vegetables in the summer.

Major commercial crop production is still in its infancy. But it is a sign of the changes here that Greenland’s government set up a commission this year to study how a changing climate may help farmers increase agricultural production and replace expensive imported foods. Change is already under way. Potatoes grown commercially in southern Greenland reached over 100 tons in 2012, double the yield of 2008. Vegetable production in the region may double this year compared with 2012, according to government data.

Some politicians hope global warming will allow this country, fully a quarter the size of the United States, to reduce its dependence on its former colonial master, Denmark, for much of its food as political parties push for full independence.

Greenland, which is self-governing aside from defence and security, depends on an annual grant from Denmark of around $600m (£395m), or half the island’s annual budget. But the thawing of its ice sheets has seen a boost in mining and oil exploration as well as an interest in agriculture. “I expect a lot of development in sheep farming and agriculture due to global warming,” said the outgoing Prime Minister, Kuupik Kleist, whose government set up the commission. “It may become an important supplement to our economy.”

Locals love recounting how Erik the Red first arrived in the southern fjords here in the 10th century and labelled this ice-covered island “Greenland” to entice others to settle, an early instance of hype to lure unwary customers. There is evidence that the climate was warmer then, allowing Viking settlements to grow crops for five centuries before mysteriously dying out.

  The scale of this new agriculture is tiny. There are just a few dozen sheep farms in southern Greenland, where most of the impact of climate change can be seen. Cows may number fewer than a hundred. But with 57,000 mostly Inuit human inhabitants, the numbers to feed are also small. “You need to put this into perspective. We used to be high-Arctic and now we are more sub-Arctic,” said Kenneth Hoegh, an agronomist and former senior government adviser. “But we are still Arctic.”

The symbolism is enormous, however, highlighting a changing global climate that has seen temperatures in the Arctic increase by about twice the global average –about 0.8C – since pre-industrial times. “There are now huge areas in southern Greenland where you can grow things,” said Josephine Nymand, a scientist at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Nuuk. “Potatoes have most benefited. Also cabbage has been very successful.”

Sten Erik Langstrup Pedersen, who runs an organic farm on a fjord near Nuuk, first grew potatoes in 1976. Now he can plant crops two weeks earlier in May and harvest three weeks later in October compared with more than a decade ago. He grows 23 kinds of vegetables, compared with 15 a decade ago, including beans, peas, herbs and strawberries. He says he has sold some strawberries to top restaurants in Copenhagen. But Mr Pedersen is sceptical about how much it will catch on. “Greenlanders are impatient,” he said. “They see a seal and they immediately just want to hunt it. They can never wait for vegetables to grow.”

There is still potential. Mr Hoegh estimates Greenland could provide half of its food needs from home-grown produce, which would be cheaper than Danish imports. But global change is not all about benefits. While summers are warmer, there is less rain. Some experts say that Greenland could soon need irrigation works – ironic for a country of ice and lakes.

“We have had dry summers for the last few years.” said Aqqalooraq Frederiksen, a senior agricultural consultant in south Greenland, who said a late spring last year hurt potato crops.

On the Arctic Circle, a flash flood last summer from suspected glacier melt water – which some locals here blamed on warm weather – swept away the only bridge connecting Mr Ernst’s restaurant to the airport. It came right in the middle of the tourist season, and the restaurant lost thousands of dollars.

It was an ominous reminder that global warming will bring its problems. Still, for Mr Pedersen and his fjord in Nuuk, the future looks good. “The hotter, the better,” Mr Pedersen said. “For me.”

Island life

Greenland, • World’s largest island (not counting Australia), part of North America, but politically and culturally linked with Europe.

• In the early 18th century, Denmark claimed sovereignty over Greenland, and still has control over foreign affairs and defence matters.

DEMOGRAPHICS: • POPULATION: 56,370; THE LEAST DENSELY POPULATED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

• Language: Greenlandic.

• Official religion: Evangelical Lutheran.

• Unemployment: 4.9 per cent in 2011.

Economy: • The economy relies on fishing and fish exports. Tourism plays a big role in generating capital too, and Greenland receives an annual grant from Denmark of $600m.

• It could be the world’s next mining frontier, as global warming makes it easier to recover precious metals from glacial surroundings.

• The largest employers in Greenland are public bodies, including the central government in Denmark. Most positions are in the capital, Nuuk.

Politics: • Greenlanders elect two representatives to the Folketing – Denmark’s parliament.

• Greenland has its own parliament, with 31 members. The new PM, after winning 42.8 per cent of the popular vote in this month’s election, is Aleqa Hammond of the Siumut (Forward) Party. It wants Greenlandic independence.

• Queen Margrethe of Denmark, is head of state. A high commissioner is appointed to represent the island.