Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

At last Martin and Kenny agree to hold government formation talks?

BUT IS THERE A DROP OF WATER BETWEEN THEM?

   

Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin have finally agreed to hold crunch government formation talks.

Discussions will take place after next Wednesday’s Dáil Taoiseach nomination vote.

Micheál Martin spoke to his rival in a 20-minute phone call today – the first time either has reached out to the other since the February 26 general election 33 days ago.

Speaking to reporters at Leinster House this afternoon, Mr Martin confirmed he contacted the Fine Gael leader this morning amid Irish Examiner reports the April 6 vote may not take place because it is destined to end in a stalemate.

Mr Martin said Mr Kenny insisted the vote will still take place, at which point he is believed to have sought a meeting with the Fianna Fáil leader tomorrow.

However, Mr Martin said he told Mr Kenny if the vote takes place any meeting must be delayed until after Wednesday – a position both potential Taoiseach have now agreed.

“Just before lunchtime I rang the Taoiseach. In the first instance I told him I read reports there may be moves to defer the vote on Wednesday, the vote for Taoiseach,” Mr Martin said this afternoon.

“I made it clear I wouldn’t be supporting that, that I wanted it to go ahead next Wednesday and fall whatever way it falls.

“He confirmed that the vote would go ahead, and also that we are engaged in that negotiation process with the Independents and that we would be having (talks) sessions on Monday on Tuesday.

“We both agreed we would engage in the aftermath of that, and following conclusions on Wednesday,” he said.

Mr Martin said despite the development his party “wouldn’t be going into a grand coalition with Fine Gael”, and said he told Mr Kenny he was frustrated by acting Jobs Minister Richard Bruton’s comments yesterday that Fine Gael would not support a Fianna Fáil-led minority government, describing it as “intemperate language”.

Mr Martin also said he did not know if next Wednesday will end in stalemate or if another election will occur, but said if this happens “the responsibility is on the entire Dáil”.

Asked if Independents should now “pee or get off the pot” by explaining how they will vote because Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have now committed to talking to each other, the Fianna Fáil leader joked:

“That might be the fastest way of losing a vote”.

It is understood Fianna Fáil wants to hold off on any talks with Fine Gael until after the April 6 vote because depending on the outcome two different conversations may take place.

Micheál Martin said he believed we were not going to have a new Government in place any time soon.

“I know people are anxious to know when a Government is going to be formed, but I think we’re some few weeks away from that yet,” he said.

Jake Brennan inquest jury recommends lower speed limits

JURY PROPOSES 30KM/H IN HOUSING ESTATES AFTER HEARING OF SON’S DEATH IN MOTHER’S ARMS

  

JAKE BRENNAN: SAID “MAMMY I DON’T WANT TO DIE; I DON’T WANT TO DIE” AS HIS MOTHER ROSEANN CRADLED HIM IN HER ARMS. 

The jury at an inquest into the death of a six-year-old boy who was struck by a car outside his home has recommended the introduction of a mandatory 30km/h speed limit in housing estates.

The inquest into the death of Kilkenny boy Jake Brennan in June 2014 heard how he lay dying in his mother’s arms after he was hit by a car.

The boy’s parents, Christopher and Roseann Brennan, subsequently launched a high-profile Jake’s Legacy campaign for lower speed limits in housing estates.

The jury at the inquest in Carlow also called for improved signage in housing estates after it heard emergency services had trouble finding the cul-de-sac where the Brennans lived. It took the ambulance crew four minutes to drive across Kilkenny city to the estate, but a further three minutes to find Lintown Grove. A garda described the area as “a maze”.

The boy died from crush injuries to his chest and abdomen as a result of being struck by a car, the jury decided in accordance with medical evidence.

Deputy state pathologist Dr Michael Curtis said the injuries were “consistent with being run over and dragged by the front bodywork of a vehicle”.

Coroner Dr Brendan Doyle is to write to the Department of Transport about the jury’s recommendation for lower speed limits in housing estates and improved signage.

Ms Brennan, the boy’s mother, said she and her three children had been in McDonagh Junction shopping centre in Kilkenny on the evening of June 12th, 2014, before returning home to her husband Christopher who was getting dinner ready. The children had ice-cream and played in the shopping centre’s play area. Jake had said it was the “best day of my life” she told the inquest.

At home he put on a little show for them and sang a song. The children had their dinner on a little table and chairs on the front lawn. Her brother-in-law Pat O’Hara arrived to return her husband’s lawnmower and they chatted for a few minutes.

Just as Mr O’Hara was about to leave, Jake asked her if he could go across the road to the green. She was going to say no, but said he could go for a few minutes.

She saw a car and heard a bang, “and I knew.” She screamed “no!” and “Jake!” and saw him going up into the air and coming down again. “I knew by how far he went up that he was destroyed.”

She ran over to him and he was saying “mammy, mammy, I’m sorry”. And as she held him she told him it was not his fault. He said, “mammy I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die”.

His breathing became slower. The ambulance arrived but “I knew he was gone and never coming back”. The paramedics worked on him for some time at the scene, before bringing him to hospital in the ambulance with his parents accompanying them. He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.

‘Jake’s Law’?

M/s Brennan told her solicitor Michael Lanigan that she had since campaigned for speed limits in housing estates, currently at 50km/h, to be reduced to 20km/h and wanted this to be “Jake’s Law” and her son’s legacy.

Her husband Christopher said he made the 999 call after Jake was struck and said to the driver of the car involved that “you were speeding”. She denied it, he added.

The driver of the car that hit Jake, Katarzyna Biala (39) was not well enough to attend the inquest but a statement she gave to gardaí¬ was read out. She said she was not speeding and never saw Jake from the side, but just when her car hit him. “He just flew up in the air a bit. It happened so fast. I don’t know where he came from.”

She was “in shock” afterwards. She also told Gardaí she thought she was driving at about 20-30km/h.

The inquest heard that, after a Garda investigation and a file being sent to the DPP’s office, a decision was made by the DPP not to bring any prosecution.

Forensic collision investigator Garda Maurice Mahon said that, based on the point of impact outlined by Ms Brennan and the distance Ms Biala would have travelled from her own house nearby, the car was travelling at between 44km/h and 46km/h at the time.

A neighbour, Michael O’Keeffe, who saw the collision from his front room, told the inquest he felt the car was “going too fast”.

Mr O’Hara said he remembered the car “going fairly fast” and his passengerCarl Gleeson said he thought the car was “going a bit fast for an estate”. Mr O’Hara also said the car travelled up to another 70 yards before stopping and he saw Jake “staggering” towards his mother before collapsing to the ground.

Mr Gleeson said he saw Jake coming from “under the car” after the collision.

The coroner said Jake’s death had left “a huge space in the lives of a lot of people”, particularly his parents and family. But his legacy would serve as “a beacon to his memory”.

Speaking after the inquest, Ms Brennan said she had had a dream about Jake the previous night. “He was such a cuddly, funny, really loveable little lad.”

She said it was “very upsetting” to go back over details of his last moments. The family’s lives were “ruined”, she said. “Family days out start with visiting Jake’s grave. That’s not right. We had two little boys and a little girl. Before she [Jake’s sister] goes to bed at night, she kisses his picture and they say good morning to him. That’s not fair.”

The couple welcomed the jury’s recommendation for 30km/h speed limits in housing estates. “We feel our baby didn’t die in vain,” said Ms Brennan.

Response needed?

A spokesman for the Department of Transport said the speed limit in housing estates currently stands at 50km/h, but local authorities have the option of lowering it to 30km/h.

The Road Traffic Bill 2016, which passed through the Seanad but did not come before the last Dáil before it was dissolved, would have given local authorities the option to lower the limit to 20km/h. The spokesman said local authorities were “best placed” to make such determinations.

There was cross-party support for the proposal to allow lower speed limits.

As much as 22% of Irish hospitals re-inspected over poor hygiene

    

MORE THAN ONE-IN-FIVE HOSPITALS REQUIRED A RE-INSPECTION DUE TO POOR HYGIENE LAST YEAR, A HIQA REPORT SHOWS.

The overview of 39 unannounced inspections at 32 hospitals shows that there has been improvement in hand hygiene practices but poor levels of overall environmental cleanliness.

There was a significant increase in the need for re-inspections in 2015, with 22% of hospitals inspected requiring follow-up, compared to one-in-10 the previous year.

The inspections were carried out between January and December 2015, with the aim of assessing compliance against the National Standards for the Prevention and Control of Healthcare Associated Infections.

A total of 64 clinical areas were inspected, such as operating theatres, endoscopy suites, haematology, day infusion services, intensive care units and renal dialysis units.

Seven hospitals required re-inspections. They were: South Infirmary Victoria Hospital, Cork; Letterkenny General Hospital; Kerry General Hospital; The Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar; The National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street; Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda; and Portiuncula Hospital, Ballinasloe.

Of those, one hospital — Letterkenny General Hospital — showed no improvement in the standard of environmental hygiene.

The report said more than half of hospitals (59%) needed to greatly improve the preparation, labelling and storage of intravenous medication in the clinical area. Observations that fell below best practice and were deemed unsafe included pre-prepared syringes of anaesthetic and other medicines not prepared in aseptic compounding facilities that were: unlabelled or insufficiently labelled; inappropriately stored; or left unattended and unsecured.

Re-occurring issues identified related to infrastructural deficiencies, outdated units with inadequate infrastructure and overcrowding with limited space between beds.

HIQA’s Head of Healthcare, Susan Cliffe, said a greater culture of compliance with hand hygiene had begun to emerge in most hospitals. “This observation is supported by the reported findings from the HSE national audits that have shown steady improvement over time,” she said.

The 2015 inspection programme involved the assessment of infection prevention ‘care bundles’ for the first time. These are a set of routinely applied evidenced-based actions that, when applied consistently, have been proven to reduce the incidence of infection and protect patients.

HIQA said that while some hospitals had made significant progress in embedding the use of care bundles into everyday practice, implementation was not as advanced as other hospitals. Letterkenny General Hospital was identified as one of the sites that had made progress.

“While effective implementation was identified in some hospitals, care bundles need to be implemented in all acute hospitals where they are not already in place. Good practice includes the reliable application of care bundle steps, accompanied by audit and feedback to staff on compliance with care bundle measures, and device-related infection surveillance,” Cliffe said.

Electric Ireland issues a phishing scam warning to it’s customers?

Watch out for the “@electricireland.ie” emails????

   

ELECTRIC IRELAND IS WARNING ITS CUSTOMERS TO EXERCISE CAUTION WHEN DEALING WITH SUPPOSED EMAILS FROM THE ENERGY COMPANY.

Cyber criminals are now targeting people with high-tech ESB phishing emails?

Scammers are using addresses such as “youraccountonline@electricireland.ie” to trick customers into giving them their details.

The emails refer to “electric bills”, offer refunds and come complete with links to websites closely mimicking the ESB page.

Electric Ireland’s on-line billing system has not been compromised and customers’ personal data has not been obtained any other way.

An Electric Ireland spokesman said today: “This is an ongoing thing over the last number of months.

“It is incredible how sophisticated that latest mail is. These are not just rudimentary scams anymore.

“These emails have nothing to do with Electric Ireland. The instructions on these emails vary, often seeking a response, they may provide a link or attachment and request personal data.

“Please ensure you do not enter any of your details. If you have entered your Electric Ireland online username and password, we urge you to reset your password immediately”.

Irish scientist recreates fossil in full colour for the first time

UCC’S DR MARIA MCNAMARA MAKES BREAKTHROUGH USING THE SKIN OF A FOSSILISED SNAKE

   

DR MARIA MCNAMARA (ABOVE), OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK, WITH BERTIE THE BOA CONSTRICTOR.

An Irish scientist has been able to reconstruct a fossil in full living colour for the first time.

Dr Maria McNamara, of University College Cork (UCC), has found a way to show the full colouration of the skin of a fossilised snake by studying the position of individual fossilised pigment cells in the skin surface.

Previous attempts to show the original skin tones of a fossil have only proved successful for brown, black or dark red.

The work by the palaeobiologist also shows skin surfaces that were iridescent in the living snake.

The fossil came from a sulphur mine near Libris in northeastern Spain.

“I saw the fossil 14 years ago and realised it included fossilised skin. I asked for and was given a sample and I tucked it away,” Dr McNamara said.

The 10 million-year-old fossil looked like a piece of stone, but Dr McNamara was able to reproduce the original colours once she started to study it in detail.

“I realised I had fabulous tissue preservation. I got more samples and realised that I could see many types of pigment cells preserved,” she said.

“Different pigment cells make different colours. We were able to identify thepigment colour by its size, shape and where it occurs in the skin.”

Fossil formation process?

The thing that makes this possible relates to how the fossil was formed.

The buried soft tissues were turned into fossilised stone by a mineral, calcium phosphate.

This forms tiny crystals to replace the original tissue, but the crystals are so small they preserve everything, even structures inside a cell, Dr McNamara said.

“The crystals take on the form of the original tissue in 3d.”

She realised that she could identify the different pigment cell shapes to reproduce the original colours.

In this case, there were tans and greens similar to those seen in a modern boa constrictor, she said.

“The type of patterning was very like camouflage, so this snake was trying to keep itself hidden.

“What is really significant about this study is it is the first instance of colour reconstruction from mineralised fossils.”

Her findings are published on Thursday evening in Current Biology.

Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Research Council and EU Marie Curieprogrammes funded the research.     

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Tuesday

Honours maths will be mandatory for primary Irish teachers training

  

Quinn’s comments about ‘highly feminised profession’ prompt widespread disapproval. 

Comments by the Minister for Education about the ‘highly feminised’ primary teaching profession caused disapproval among delegates at the INTO’s annual conference.

Honours leaving certificate maths will become a minimum requirement for entry into teacher training, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn said today.

In a comment which caused widespread disapproval among the 750 delegates at the annual conference of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, Mr Quinn referred to his “highly feminised audience and profession”.

“I also want to see Higher Level Mathematics in the Leaving Certificate becoming part of the minimum entry requirements for Initial Teacher Education and I’ll tell you why – to a highly feminised audience and profession – our research shows that young women who do the Junior Certificate and take Higher Level Mathematics comfortably in the Junior Certificate exam, drop Higher Level Mathematics when they do their Leaving Certificate because it is not a requirement. This is evidence-based research, and that’s why we want to see it happen.”

However general secretary of INTO Sheila Nunan provoked roars and cheers by opening her response to Mr Quinn’s speech with the words: “Sisters – hell hath no fury”.

While Ms Nunan said she was “quite agnostic about honours maths”, the “sisterhood” knew well the “simple sums of the primary school are: 30 into 1 teacher doesn’t go very easily”.

As delegates got to their feet in approval she continued “46 per cent cuts in assistant principal posts do not make for a good running of schools and 20, 40 and 86 pupils in a 2,3,4 teacher-school … are not easily divided, so whatever way you multiply it, add it, subtract it, do the Pythagoras theorem, I have one message, Minister, the sum we’re looking for is an increase in the money that goes into education”.

Ms Nunan added: “It wasn’t the honours maths that made the Irish women the way they are today, let me tell you. It was the boys who did the honours maths led the country to ruination”.

Mr Quinn made his remarks as part of his speech which addressed the “need to continue to ensure that most entrants to initial teacher education come from the top 15% of all leaving certificate students.

He later told reporters he had been paying tribute to women members of the audience who had been able to spot the lack of a requirement for higher maths and amend their study schedule accordingly.

He said his remarks were “a compliment” to the young women who make up 85% of the primary teaching profession.

“They realise that they don’t need Higher Level maths for entry into the Initial Teacher Education and that requires more work than Ordinary Level so they drop it. I think that we need, in fact, to have our primary school teachers at the same level in mathematics that we require of them in the Irish language,” he said.

Electric Ireland warns residents over disconnecting Sligo housing estate 

 

AN OUTSTANDING BILL AND WHO SHOULD PAY IT AT THE CENTRE OF DISPUTE

There has been concern among residents of a Sligo housing estate after Electric Ireland warned the electricity supply to public lighting would be disconnected today.

There was concern among the residents of a housing estate in Sligo after a warning from Electric Ireland that the electricity supply to public lighting would be disconnected today.

An outstanding bill and who should pay it is at the centre of the dispute. Following the collapse of the developer, the estate became part of the liquidation process administered by KPMG.

The residents of over 200 houses were forced to take an active part in the running of the estate and had to settle the last electricity bill over 18 months ago. However the residents’ association committee says it does not have the financial resources to pay the €5,051 demanded by Electric Ireland.

Sligo Borough Council has yet to instigate a “taking in charge” process and says it is still awaiting an application from the liquidators, KPMG.

The council is to be abolished next month and Sligo County Council will now assume the administration of an application when received.

Cllr Matt Lyons (FG) said it was unacceptable that the residents were faced with the threat of having their streetlights turned off and he would be pursuing the matter with Electric Ireland and the council.

Obesity crisis as 25% of Ireland’s tots are now overweight

 

Seven out of ten Irish children are eating sweet or savoury treats at least once a day, according to a leading obesity expert,

At present, a quarter of Irish children at the age of three are already classed as overweight or obese while obesity rates among women have doubled and quadrupled among men in the past 20 years.

Director of food safety board Safefood Cliodhna Foley-Nolan said one of the biggest culprits contributing to childhood obesity is the treats which make up one fifth of the calorie intake of an average Irish child every day.

She said: “Over 70pc of children have snacks and stuff from the top shelf at least once a day. The contribution of sweet and savoury snacks is contributing to a fifth of calories intake of children a day. We’re not just talking about one little Marietta.

“We put diesel or premium petrol in a car but what we are giving our children, their bodies weren’t meant to run on that.

“It’s the preponderance of nutritionally poor but calorie rich food. There is very little nourishment in them.

She said many Irish parents are also piling too much food on their children’s plates.

She said: “We’ve shown that children of five years of age need roughly half the amount of food that an adult needs but the evidence is they are getting bigger and bigger portions.

DIFFICULTY: “It is almost seen as a sign of intelligence or progress if they want more.

“Children in particular have difficulty in regulating their appetites. If they are presented with more, and particularly more of highly palatable food like chips or like chicken nuggets, they will eat more than they need.”

She said the fruit and vegetable consumption for many Irish children is still well below recommended guidelines despite all health campaigns.

“There are more pre-made meals, and snacks, treats and sugary drinks are a big issue,” she said.

“Only about one in four children actually get the amount of fruit and vegetables they require.”

Studies have shown that almost half the children under three in the lower social classes in Ireland are watching more than two hours of TV a day.

Foley-Nolan said weight gain in the first three years needs to be monitored by parents.

She said: “It is a time when children put on weight and it is more difficult having put it on to lose it.

“Things like early weaning, the introduction of solid food, and breast feeding are other factors which impact on weight gain and the amount of time that under three years olds watch TV.

“Those early years are critically important. Weight at three years of age does predict overweight and obesity in later childhood and into adulthood.”

Deer’s head seized as poachers hit by Operation Bambi 

 

This is the deer’s head that Gardai seized as part of an investigation into poaching code-named Operation Bambi.

The discovery was made by Tallaght Gardai when five officers entered a house last Friday week after they obtained a warrant under the Wildlife Act.

It is understood that the head belonged to a deer that was poached using two lurchers and a spotlight in the Dublin Mountains.

Sources have revealed that gardai were alerted to the situation after an image of the deer’s head was placed on Facebook.

PROSECUTIONS: Operation Bambi, being conducted by gardai and the National Parks and Wildlife Service, is co-ordinated by Insp Martin Walker who is based at Carlow garda station.

It is understood that the Facebook image of the deer’s head was sent to Insp Walker who passed on the information to colleagues in Tallaght who then conducted a search of the house.

Commenting on the seizure, Damien Hogan, the secretary of the Wild Deer Association of Ireland, said: “The Wild Deer Association of Ireland welcomes this development and would like to thank all involved.

“There has been a significant increase in the number of successful prosecutions and detections in recent months, and we would encourage our members and supporters to continue to report suspected incidents of deer poaching.”

The Herald revealed last December that a gang that gardai targeted was responsible for poaching up to 200 deer after boasts about their exploits were posted on Facebook.

The deer hunters had been operating without licences in counties Wicklow, Carlow and Kilkenny and were under investigation by gardai since the start of the season last September.

Senior sources said that one suspect used Facebook to boast that he had killed 15 deer in one night, and that gardai would not catch him.

The poachers operated with the help of a high-powered lamp and an electronic device imitating the call of a stag during the rut, or mating season, in October.

This attracted stags to come out of their cover in heavily forested areas and become easy targets for the poachers.

Co Wicklow is reckoned to have the highest concentration of Sika deer in Europe after it was introduced from its native Japan by Lord Powerscourt in 1859, at his estate near Glencree.

Sika and red deer are closely related, and as a result of interbreeding all of the deer now in Wicklow are hybrids.

EXPORTED: It is estimated that about 12,000 of the 32,000 deer shot under licence last year were killed in Wicklow, while hundreds more fell victim to poachers.

It is understood that venison from poached Irish deer is being exported.

Intelligence available to the Operation Bambi team indicates that some of those involved are supplying poached deer directly to British dealers who collect carcasses at prearranged locations using refrigerated lorries.

And now it turns out that Monkeys are pretty good at doing Maths as well

  

A recently concluded experiment shows that rhesus monkeys are capable of doing simple addition using numbers 1 through 25. But more interesting than that is the observation that they also make the same mistakes as us.

To test whether monkeys can represent and manipulate numbers in their head, neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone of Harvard Medical School and her colleagues set up a rather interesting experiment.

Prior to this, however, the monkeys learned to associate the Arabic numbers 0 through 9 and 15 select letters with the values zero through 25. This was done by having the monkeys choose larger numbers as a means to acquire greater quantities of a food reward.

But for the new experiment, the monkeys had to work a bit harder for it. They had to perform addition in order to correctly choose the larger reward. Specifically, they were given a choice between performing a sum calculation and a single symbol rather than just two single symbols. Eventually, they learned how add the two symbols and compare the sum to a third, single symbol.

To rule out the possibility that they were simply memorizing combinations of symbols, the researchers taught the monkeys an entirely new set of symbols. They were still successful, calculating previously unseen sets of combinations.

The monkeys weren’t perfect, however. And in fact, they committed an error often exhibited by humans. Aviva Rutkin from New Scientist explains:

The monkeys made more mistakes on problems involving numbers that were close in value – a fact which might ultimately prove more interesting than their success at small numbers.

Neuroscientists already know that the human brain is better at distinguishing between two low numbers than two high ones. For example, you could easily tell the difference between two and four birds sitting in a tree, but you’d be less likely to spot the difference between a flock of 22 and a flock of 24.

What we don’t know is why. Some think it is because the brain encodes numbers logarithmically, so that we perceive the distance between two small numbers as greater than that between two large ones. Others argue that the brain encodes numbers linearly, as on a number line, but that our concept of a number becomes less distinct as the value increases.

As Rutkin points out, the monkeys were biased towards a linear scale. More insight is likely to emerge if and when monkeys are asked to perform tasks involving multiplication.

Study shows dangerous asteroid impacts hit Earth every six months

 

A study using data from monitoring stations designed to enforce a nuclear test ban treaty shows that the Earth is enduring far more dangerous asteroid impacts than previously thought.

Between 2000 and 2013, the Earth was hit by 26 asteroids that exploded with a force of between one and 600 kilotons – an average of one every six months. Even more concerning is that in all cases the asteroids themselves weren’t detected in space and only came to light when they detonated in Earth’s atmosphere.

The study was carried out by the B612 Foundation, a group set up by three former astronauts who are worried about the threat of asteroids to life on Earth. The foundation’s CEO (and former shuttle pilot) Dr. Ed Lu presented the report’s findings at a press conference in Seattle’s Museum of Flight on Tuesday.

“While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories,” said Lu.

“Because we don’t know where or when the next major impact will occur, the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid has been blind luck,” he concluded.

The study notes that four of this century’s collisions have been larger than the atomic bombs that took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 2013, over a thousand people were injured when an asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, and 20 kiloton impacts were recorded over Indonesia, the Southern Ocean, and the Mediterranean.

All of these are dwarfed by the 1908 Tunguska impact, when the earth wandered into the path of a comet or large asteroid that exploded with a force of around 10 megatons – an explosion that leveled the surrounding forests and blasted down trees for 2,150 square kilometers (830 sq miles.)

NASA’s Spaceguard project, named after the fictional asteroid-watching body described by Arthur C. Clarke, has done a good job at finding larger clumps of space junk that could seriously threaten human life on Earth, but it is missing a lot of the smaller debris that could just wipe out a city or cause a tsunami.

To spot this material, the B612 Foundation wants to build and launch a privately funded orbital asteroid detector, dubbed the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission. The designs have already been completed and the team estimates it could find 200,000 smaller asteroids a year after its planned 2018 launch.

The study shows that most of the kiloton-range explosions recorded this century resulted in very little debris striking the planet’s surface. Asteroids are ablated by the earth’s thick atmosphere and heat up to the point of explosion – most of the time – but sooner or later, probability suggests, one will hit and cause major damage. ®

Bootnote: The curious name of the B612 Foundation stems from the popular French book The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

In the fable, the author meets a small man after crash-landing his plane in the desert, who explained he lived on an asteroid named B612. The foundation used this name because, it says, the moral of the prince’s tale was that what is essential in life is often invisible to the human eye.