Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Enda Kenny says a deal on Greece crisis still possible at weekend talks

If deal signed-off by finance ministers bailout could be extended, says Taoiseach

  

British prime minister David Cameron, speaks to Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Angela Merkel during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels and right photo Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

Greece will get an extension of its current bailout for another six months if agreement can be reached with the euro zone finance ministers tomorrow, according to Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

Speaking to journalists at the end of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, he said time was running very short but a solution could still be found if there was proper engagement.

He said the EU Commission, the European Central Bankand the International Monetary Fund had undertaken to consider the latest set of proposals.

Mr Kenny said if there was agreement and it was signed off on by the euro zone finance ministers it meant there could be an extension of the current programme for six months.

“It shows the willingness of the institutions and everybody else to accommodate the proposals that have come in from Greece,” he said

Hr Kenny said at the meeting of EU leaders he had told them of the Irish experience and how “our focus was on ending instability and creating growth and providing opportunities for jobs” as a way out of the crisis.

“It was not a case of me telling him (Alexis Tsipras) what happened in our case and saying you have to do the same but saying what we did and how we were able to exit the bailout.”

The Taoiseach said he had pointed to the damage the current instability was causing and how that was impacting on the ordinary people of Greece.

“So I do hope that measures can emerge to deal with that and I spoke to the prime minister about that,” he added.

Mr Kenny also spoke about the briefing British prime minister David Cameron gave to the summit about his plans for an in/out referendum on EU membership.

“He gave a very brief outline of his proposals for reform before that referendum takes place. He did say that this was the start of a process and the ship was launched. He did talk to individual countries and individual governments and he hopes to have a more complete report by December. He recognises that agreement will take a great deal of work.”

The Taoiseach said Mr Cameron’s contribution had been short and to the point.

Mr Kenny said Ireland would have a problem around any proposals that involved changes in EU treaties.

“I think there would be serious difficulty about this for a number of other countries and not just Ireland.”

He added the solution might just well be what happened in the case of Ireland when it had problems with EU treaties. A legally binding attachment to the next treaty that might come along that might come along.

“He is very conscious of that himself,” said the Taoisaech.

He added that if the question was to open the treaties for further treaty change on an issue like this, there would be 95 per cent opposition.

Mr Kenny added, however, that aside from treaty changes Ireland would be constructive and supportive.

“We will obviously wait and see what comes of the technical work. We will have a better idea of what is involved when the issue comes on the council agenda for the December meeting,” said Mr Kenny.

On the issue of migration which was supposed to be the main focus of the summit Mr Kenny said the entire meeting had been impacted on by the Greek situation.

“So the discussion that took place on migration which might have been difficult in its own right.”

He added it had been agreed to rebalance the EU approach to migration and agreement between member states on a voluntary relocation plan.

It was agreed to help 60,000 people, 40,000 through relocation and 20,000 in resettlement.

Mr Kenny pointed out Ireland had an opt-out along with the UK and Denmark but would consider what we could do to help.

“At our meeting we also resolved to do more to address the factors that drive people to risk their lives to arrive inEurope. People are coming in from west Africa, from the horn of Africa and also through Libya, ” he said.

Mr Kenny also said he had expressed condolences and sympathies to president François Hollande and the French people about the appalling events that had taken place today.

Connemara Mining company identifies possible gold source in Co. Donegal

  

Irish exploration company Connemara Mining has identified a target area for more detailed investigations after finding material with gold values in Donegal.

In a statement published today the firm said that it has finished the first phase of prospecting on its newly acquired Inishowen block in Donegal.

The company said that quartz vein material with gold values in excess of 15 grams per tonne have been traced to a possible nearby source area.

Follow up work will now include a soil sampling programme to further refine the target and will be followed by an initial trenching programme and a later drilling programme, if justified.

Chairman John Teeling said: “This is an exciting time for Connemara, and Irish minerals exploration. The Ulster gold play was unlocked with previous discoveries in Tyrone and Monaghan.

“We believe that this geology extends from Donegal into central Scotland. It is early days but initial results seem to confirm our working model.”

Irish water bill amendments will bring some ‘clarity’, 

Says Minister Coffey

 

The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment Paudie Coffey above left.

But Paudie Coffey fails to confirm whether tenants face eviction if they do not pay their water bill

Irish Water provisions, which ensure a house cannot be sold until charges are paid, have been introduced to bring “clarity and certainty for landlords and tenants”, according to a Minister of State Paudie Coffey.

The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment described claims that tenants who don’t pay their Irish Water bills could face eviction as “scaremongering” on the part of the opposition.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Coffey said the amendments to the bill had been introduced to create a method of enforcement “to ensure that those who are not compliant and are refusing to pay, that they do pay”.

Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly has introduced 33 pages of amendments to the Environment Miscellaneous Provisions Bill.

It contains a number of changes, including the setting up of a database for the water conservation grant and provisions to ensure a house can’t be sold until the charges are paid. The Bill also obliges local authority tenants to pay their water charges.

Mr Coffey failed to confirm whether tenants would be evicted if they did not pay their bill, saying payment was “a matter for the landlord and tenant as is the case in any contract situation for tenancy”.

Asked if the landlord would have to pay if the tenant failed to do so, he said the owner of the property would be responsible for discharging any unpaid bills before selling the home.

“We want to see people compliant with the law and we don’t want to see people ending up in trouble and that’s why we’re making measures that we feel are fair and bring certainty to the whole area.”

Mr. Coffey said users who applied for the Water Conservation Grant worth €100 before June 30th could expect to receive the money “before the end of this year”.

He also said an independent test due to be carried out by Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, was imminent and would take place in the “next few weeks or possibly months at the latest”.

Mr Coffey said he was unaware of how many people had actually paid their water bill so far, adding that it was a matter for Irish Water to respond to.

“I understand there’s a board meeting due to happen next week… and I would encourage them to publish the payment figures then.

People before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said earlier this week the amendments to the bill were “desperate, devious and discriminatory”and were aimed at undermining the national movement against water charges.

German Shepard dog given award for saving a diabetic owner’s life

Looby Loo came to the rescue!

  

They say dogs are a man’s best friend and one devoted German Shepherd proved to be even more so than that to her sick owner.

Rescue dog Looby Loo saved the life of Toby Snow when he fell desperately ill and is now being awarded a PDSA Commendation, which recognises outstanding acts of devotion by pets.

When the 57-year-old was slipping into a diabetic coma in his bedroom, Looby Loo barked and whined until she woke his partner, Mary Friend.

The dog’s persistence in waking Mary who went on to dial 999 at their home in Westham, near Eastbourne, East Sussex in England prevented Toby from facing further danger.

Without his nine-year-old pet’s help in raising the alarm, Toby said he dreaded to think what would have happened to him.

Mary, 55, said: “I knew straight away that Toby was slipping into a hypoglycaemic coma as he was barely conscious and unable to move.

“I tried to increase Toby’s sugar levels with fizzy drinks and glucose tablets but I knew that it was vital to call 999 for urgent assistance.”

Paramedics then arrived to put Toby on a glucose drip and waited for his sugar levels to rise. And as he came round he remembered Looby Loo licking him.

Toby said: “I will be forever grateful to our wonderful dog for what she did that night. She was a true friend and her actions definitely helped me out of a very sticky spot.”

Richard Hooker, director of veterinary services at the PDSA, said: “Looby Loo is a very special pet and her total devotion to Toby is plain to see.”

BlackBerry are planning to launch a bacteria-free smartphone

  

Canadian smartphone maker Blackberry announced a cut in the prices of its latest handsets for existing enterprise customers.

BlackBerry may design a bacteria-free smartphone as it bids to become the secure mobile choice for the health-care industry, CEO John Chen said.

“Health-care workers have to be worried about one less thing to wipe down” with a bacteria-free handset, Chen told reporters at a hospital north of Toronto where BlackBerry unveiled a clinical alerts pilot project. Chen said BlackBerry is not developing the clean phone yet.

The Canadian mobile manufacturer is partnering with Thought Wire and Cisco Systems Inc to provide nurses and doctors in a Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital unit with a portable messaging and alert system. BlackBerry will be providing the software and devices. It wouldn’t disclose how much it’s spending on the project.

Transfer of infections and bacteria between patients in hospitals is a “huge issue,” said Dr. Aviv Gladman, chief medical information officer at Mackenzie Health. Medical equipment in patient rooms, including mobile phones, can carry bacteria through the hospital, he said.

Gladman said medical professionals are supposed to wipe their phone with alcohol before entering and exiting a patient’s room. A study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology found that about 20% to 30% of germs transfer between a phone and a fingertip.

Hospitals don’t know how effective alcohol wipes are at removing bacteria from phones and medical professionals don’t always wipe, he said. Gladman said hospital-acquired infections are one of the top reasons patients die in hospital.

BlackBerry, based in Waterloo, Ontario, has switched its focus to high-security software as it has struggled to compete with Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd as a device manufacturer.

Here’s what rats can dream about?

   

We’ve probably all had dreams about food and it's apparent that rats do too.

Researchers from University College London (UCL) studied sleeping rats and found when they were shown food in an unreachable location they displayed activity in their nervous system that indicated they were fantasising about successful foraging missions.

The scientist cannot be 100% sure the rats were dreaming but the evidence points that way and if true, the discovery further narrows the gap between humans and other animals by showing that rodents possess an ability to imagine future events.

The findings also shed light on why people who have suffered damage to the hippocampus, the brain’s memory centre, find it hard to contemplate the future.

Lead scientist Dr Hugo Spiers said: “During exploration, mammals rapidly form a map of the environment in their hippocampus.

“During sleep or rest, the hippocampus replays journeys through this map which may help strengthen the memory.

“It has been speculated that such replay might form the content of dreams.

“Whether or not rats experience this brain activity as dreams is still unclear, as we would need to ask them to be sure.

“Our new results show that during rest, the hippocampus also constructs fragments of a future yet to happen.

“Because the rat and human hippocampus are similar, this may explain why patients with damage to their hippocampus struggle to imagine future events.”

In the experiment, four rats were allowed to run along a T-junction track and see food being placed in an inaccessible arm.

Another arm of the track contained no food. 

The animals were then placed in a sleep chamber for an hour.

Electrode implants in the rats’ brains showed that as they slept, mapping nerve cells representing the route to the food were active.   

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Hunger is the world’s ‘greatest ethical challenge’

Says Irish President M.D. Higgins

  

The President of Ireland discusses the ‘moral outrage’ of global hunger at Expo 2015 in Milan.

President Michael D Higgins said Ireland has “innate understanding” of world hunger given its Famine history.

It is not often that you will hear a legendary singer such as Seán O’Sé light up a dull, overcast Milan morning with a live rendition of The Foggy Dew, but it happened on Tuesday when Ireland came to visit the Expo 2015 exhibition in Milan.

Accompanied by the Brú Ború band of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí fame, O’Sé was one of a number of Irish artists who welcomed President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina when they came to visit Expo on Tuesday on Irish National Day, time to coincide with Bloomsday.

In an age when hardly anyone knows what Expo is actually about, this Milan version may have hit on an irresistibly winning note. Entitled “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”, it has set out to investigate, illustrate and analyse just about every aspect of arguably the most urgent problem facing the world today.

The point was not lost on the President who said: “Global hunger in the 21st century represents the grossest of human rights violations, and the greatest ethical challenge facing the global community.

“According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, while the world at the present time produces enough food to potentially feed its entire population, more than 1 billion people are undernourished, over 2 billion suffer from nutritional deficiencies, and almost 6 million children die every year from malnutrition or related diseases.”

‘A powerful infrastructure’

The President also said that the fact that more than 140 countries are participating in this Expo means that the exhibition provides a “powerful infrastructure” which brings together the key issues of food provision, upscaling nutrition and sustainability.

Calling world hunger not only a “great ethical challenge” but also a “great moral outrage”, he added:

“Ireland knows about this, Ireland has an innate understanding of this [world hunger] . . . given that 1 million Irish people died of starvation and over 1 million emigrated during, ‘An Gort Mór’, the Great Hunger in the 1840s and [thus] food security is given the highest priority by our development aid programme . . .”

The President was formally received at Expo by Ivan Scalfarotto, Italian junior minister for constitutional reform. Mr Scalfarotto, Italy’s first openly gay government minister, took the opportunity to congratulate Ireland on its progressive “recent legislation”, in an obvious reference to the success of the same-sex marriage referendum last month in Ireland.

During his six-hour stay, the President also took time to visit the Irish pavilion, created around Bord Bia’s “Origin Green” programme which aims at promoting Ireland as “a world-leading producer of independently verified, sustainably produced food and drink while protecting a landscape rich in natural resources”.

And Bloomsday? Do not worry, it was not forgotten with actor Garvan McGrath at one point offering a spirited rendering of some excerpts from Ulysses, excerpts which he also offered in even more spirited Italian much to the bemusement of some of his audience.

‘Our condolences go to the Irish people’ involved in the Berkeley disaster

 

Kittredge Street apartment materials taken away for more analysis.

Two women embrace while watching sheriff’s deputies on duty at the scene in Berkeley where six Irish students were killed. They said hthey knew the victims.

It was around midnight in California’s best-known college town when Berkeley police got the first call from Kittredge Street tenants and neighbours.

According to their police log, it was just a noise complaint about a student party at the 2110 Berkeley Library Gardens Apartments – not the first or last from the eight-year-old complex, where short-term renters pay up to $3,000 per month for one-bedroom apartments.

“But cops didn’t arrive till 12.40am, just after the balcony collapsed,” said local witness Bob Brown, who lives opposite the apartment. “The police were late this time.”

The six victims have been named as Niccolai Schuster (21), Eoghan Culligan (21), Eimear Walsh (21), Olivia Burke (21), Ashley Donohoe (22) and Lorcan Miller (21). They and others seriously injured, fell on to pavement concrete, not the asphalt of Kittredge Road.

lrish Consul in San Francisco Philip Grantwent to Berkeley early in the day, talking to the building’s owners and establishing names of victims. His staff was already undergoing the usual summertime melee of lost passports and minor infractions. Now they’re facing the colossal bureaucratic and emotional toll.

Local people were dumbfounded at how so many managed to exit narrow French windows onto the cantilevered balcony. It doesn’t seem possible, they repeated.

From the ground, it looked small, and was immediately above another balcony. The pieces of the fourth floor balcony are now gone, leaving a ragged looking slash of wood and tarpaper being inspected by police detectives earlier yesterday morning.

“Statewide, we’re going to be examining balconies more closely from now on,” said a tenant from the opposite complex waiting outside the yellow police tape.

A second neighbour, David Daniels, said they’d “never known anything like this to happen in Berkeley”.

“Our condolences go out to the Irish people,” said Daniels, a 50-year-old Berkeleyian. Like his neighbour Bob Brown, he had watched at 5am as the ambulances and paramedics were moving the last of the injured and dead to local hospitals.

It’s just horrible, he went on, adding that it would make the city look twice at balconies ever after, and should prompt many inquiries into structural issues of number 2110 Kittredge.

Materials have been taken away for more analysis, and serious doubts have been cast on the integrity of building materials.

Daniels recounted how when he first moved to Kittredge Street a few years ago, a severe windstorm combined with a leak inside the roofing to result in an upper story window frame becoming loose and a casement dangling over the side.

He alerted the fire station and it was treated promptly. But the timbers under the stucco cladding are required by code to be kiln-dried and treated. It remains to be seen if they were. The City of Berkeley, the local authority here, said it had been taking “all necessary steps to safely secure the area” and investigate the incident.

It sent building inspectors to examine the scene early in the morning and have taken precautions.

“The balcony for the affected unit, as well as the three other similar balconies in the building, have each been red-tagged, prohibiting access to those areas,” it said.

“The City has ordered the property owner to immediately remove the failed balcony and to perform a structural assessment of the remaining balconies within 48 hours.”

Greystar, the property management company for the Library Gardens Apartments, said its heart went out to the families and friends of the deceased and those injured in the “tragic accident”.

“The safety of our residents is our highest priority and we will be working with an independent structural engineer and local authorities to determine the cause of the accident. We will share more details as we have them,” it said.

Throughout the day a host of friends and J-1ers came to the sidewalk of 2020 Kittredge to leave wreaths, messages and bouquets for the deceased and injured.

A block with the words City of Berkeley etched in it was draped in the bright blue flag of Dublin.

The Euro falls amid a Greek standoff,

 

The euro fell on Tuesday as it appeared more likely that debt-stricken Greece would default or have to leave the single currency, while the U.S. dollar rose at the start of a two-day meeting by the Federal Reserve.

Stocks mostly rose on the day, with shares in both Europe and the United States rebounding after a two-day decline, though investors continued to closely monitor the situation with Greece. Wall Street stocks were also supported by potential deal activity in the healthcare space.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras lashed out at Greece’s creditors on Tuesday, accusing them of trying to “humiliate” Greeks, and he defied a drum beat of warnings that Europe is preparing for his country to leave the euro. The address was seen as a sign that Tsipras was unlikely to accept austerity cuts needed to unlock frozen aid and avoid a debt default within two weeks.

“The market is still anxious about Greece and would like the situation to be dealt with one way or another. The week-after-week uncertainty isn’t good for the market,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The euro EUR= fell 0.35% to $1.1243 while the U.S. dollar index .DXY, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.2 percent. The yen JPY= was flat against the dollar.

The all-country MSCI International ACWI Price Index .MIWD00000PUS rose 0.3 percent, while the pan-European FTS Eurofirst 300 .FTEU3 ended 0.6% higher, rebounding after a decline of 2.4 percent over the previous two sessions. Shares in Hong Kong .HSI fell 1.1%.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI rose 113.31 points, or 0.64%, to 17,904.48, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 11.86 points, or 0.57%, to 2,096.29 and the Nasdaq Composite.IXIC added 25.58 points, or 0.51%, to 5,055.55. The S&P 500 is coming off a two-day decline of 1.2%.

Wall Street was also lifted after the Wall Street Journal reported that UnitedHealth (UNH.N) was considering buying Cigna (CI.N) and Aetna (AET.N). UnitedHealth, a Dow component, rose 2.2% to $121.55.

U.S. investors were also looking for clues regarding the timing of a rate hike after a two-day Federal Reserve meeting.

The central bank is unlikely to raise rates in this meeting but traders will watch for any hints from Fed Chair Janet Yellen at a news conference after the meeting on Wednesday.

The Fed has said it remains data-dependent and will raise rates only when it sees an improvement in the economy. Second-quarter data pointed to a recovery after a halt in growth earlier in the year.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note US10YT=RR rose 12/32 in price, pushing the yield down to 2.3111%.

In the commodity market, U.S. crude futures CLc1 rose 0.8% to $60.01 per barrel, lifted as a tropical storm moved ashore in the oil-producing state of Texas. [O/R] Brent crude for August delivery LCOc1 was down 0.5% at $63.65 per barrel.

Gold prices XAU= fell 0.4% while silver XAU= lost 0.5%. Copper CMCU3 lost 1.1% in its second straight daily decline of more than 1%.

The future of Irish post offices has very little to do with posting a letter?

   

Around 48% of post offices in Ireland account for just 12% of total business.

Irish Post Offices are being told to move into a number areas but it has nothing to do with posting a letter?

Entrepreneur Bobby Kerr has led a group which has authored a report for the Department of Communications which says that post offices can thrive if they move into financial services, social enterprise, public service delivery and white labelling.

The report found that a disproportionate amount of business is conducted in relatively few of the country’s 1,140 post offices. Two thirds of all transactions are conducted in just 300 post offices, while another 48% of post offices account for just 12% of total business.

The report says that An Post should fill the hole left in rural Ireland by the withdrawal of banks and should deliver services like motor tax, the electoral register, HSE payments, local authority payments and CAO and exam fees.

It also suggests post offices are better used for social enterprise and that they cross-sell goods from other suppliers.

Kerr says that An Post’s reach across the country means it is well-placed to deliver customer services.

I believe that An Post is best placed to provide a customer-led solution for a host of financial and government-related services right across the country.

There has been a slowdown in post office closures in the last five years, with a net closure rate of 24 between 2011 and 2014.

Gold that could be worth €150 million to Irish economy discovered by miners in Ireland

 

The valuable mineral was discovered this morning in soil three-feet deep near the border

Miners have unearthed gold believed to be worth more than €150 million in the border region.

The valuable mineral was discovered this morning in soil three-feet deep near Rockcorry, Co Monaghan.

Any gold found in the region is owned by the State and extracted under licence.

Irish gold exploration company Conroy Gold and Natural Resources confirmed that 700 metres by 300 metres gold-in-soil patch was tapped by explorers.

The company is proposing to develop a gold mine in Monaghan, around 14km away from the latest discovery and has been carrying out a number of searches in the area.

Professor Richard Conroy told the Irish Mirror: “When we hopefully get to develop it, which will be years down the line, it will be worth several million but there is an awful lot of work to be done.

“You have to do all the technical work first to see how much is actually down there.”

The discovery, which the company said revealed four gold-in-soil samples above 20ppb gold and a further five above 10ppb gold, is situated within the 50 km gold trend that Conroy outlined.

Professor Conroy explained: “This discovery confirms the gold potential of the company’s licenses in the area lying between the company’s existing gold targets to the Northwest at Clay Lake, Clontibret, where a mine is being developed, and Glenish, as well as those to the South at Slieve Glah.”

The gold lies along a major geological structure, known as the Orlock Bridge Fault.

The company has been working on the regions for years drilling, trenching and sampling.

Just last week, a gold nugget worth a staggering £10,000 (€14,000) was found in Scotland.

The precious metal – thought to be the largest found in Scotland in seven decades – was discovered by a Canadian gold panning enthusiast in a river near Wanlockhead, in Dumfries and Galloway.

It is believed the 20-carat nugget, which weighs around 18 grams, will spark a gold rush in the area.

While in April this year the Connemara Mining Company bought prospecting licences on the Inishowen peninsula

Building and moulding a child that can cope with life is a mighty task

   

There’s so much advice around parenting these days that it feels like you need a Phd. Ailin Quinlan cut to the chase and got tips from one of the country’s foremost experts in children and mental health.

Every parent yearns for an emotionally healthy child. Clinical psychologist Paul Gilligan has written a book for parents on how to raise one.

But what is an emotionally healthy child? “An emotionally healthy child is a child who’s generally content and confident, has a positive belief in themselves and can handle adversity in an appropriate manner,” says Gilligan, who is CEO of At Patrick’s Mental Health Services and chair of the Children’s Rights Alliance.

“They experience positive emotions in an appropriate way, at the appropriate time, and behave in a positive manner,” says the former CEO of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Children aged under 13 reflect their emotions in behaviour — for example, a depressed child may not do their homework, may not want to get up in the morning or may be the subject of complaints from the class teacher.

Gilligan says that parents have a built-in ability: “We are born with a deep capacity to love our children and to do the best we can for them,” he says. The goal is for the parent to connect with both of these qualities.

It is normal for parents to make mistakes, he says. Three things factors decide a child’s emotional and mental health — the child’s personality, his/her experiences, and the support he/she receives from parents and other important people in their lives. If these factors are not healthy, they can cause problems.

“Emotionally healthy children are able to navigate the difficulties of life — even if they develop an issue about something, if they are emotionally healthy they are better able to cope with it,” Gilligan says.

His tips on raising an emotionally healthy child:

1. Connect with your deep love for your child

“We are in an era where parents are reluctant to talk about loving their child. Consciously acknowledge that love, and remind yourself that your actions spring from that,” he says.

2. Believe in yourself as a parent

Don’t be overly confident, but believe in your ability to parent your child. Recognise that this may involve asking for help or advice. Don’t beat yourself up about what you’re not doing. “Research tells us that parents spend more time with their children nowadays than they did in the 1960s, but are more prone to questioning themselves around their ability to parent and provide for their child,” Gilligan says.

3. Teach your child self-confidence

Encourage self-respect and self-care, and their development of realistic expectations of themselves.

“Help them map out their day,” he says. Encourage your child to understand that while they must do their homework, they should also relax afterwards, with a game of football, for example.

Develop realistic expectations by encouraging self-awareness and insight, and support them in doing their best in their hobbies and activities.

“Help them reflect on their achievements,” he says.

4. Teach your child how to deal with difficulties

Protect them from unnecessary difficulties by identifying problems, such as bullying — but recognise that they will have to deal with the death of a beloved relative, for example, or a poor performance in an examination.

5. Teach your child to be happy

First, recognise that your child cannot be happy all the time, but when there is the opportunity, encourage them to be happy.

“Let them be themselves, and allow them to realise their own individuality,” he says.

Remember, says Gilligan, life is full of things to be sad or happy about — but that also it often depends on how we interpret them. A child can be happy or disappointed with a B-plus grade in a test, depending on how they look at it, for example.

6. Ensure the child’s environment is healthy and safe

Take a balanced approach, he says, because these days there is a major focus on “risks” and parents can become overly concerned.

“Be reasonable about assessing risk. Don’t swaddle a child in cotton wool and don’t expose a child to serious hazards. It’s all about balance,” he says. “We can overplay the risks to children.”

7. Listen to, and communicate with, your child

It’s important to listen to what they are saying, and to communicate as clearly as possible. Integrate communication into family life, he says, by, for example, sitting down to an evening meal together.

8. Look after yourself as a person

Reinforce yourself. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge what you do for your child, so that they see that you do your best. Try to maintain a balance between work, family and social life.

Raising Emotionally Healthy Children, by Paul Gilligan, published by Veritas, €14.95, will be launched by RTÉ broadcaster, Áine Lawlor, today at St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services, James St, Dublin 8.

‘Life outside of Earth is probably going to be really hard to find’

Say Scientists

   

In previewing missions in the search for life and discussing its challenges, the scientists confess they ‘can’t even agree on a definition of what life detection is’

This guy is smiling, but the search for life is not easy, says Nasa.

NASA scientists previewed several missions in the search for life off Earth on Tuesday, including a plan to scoop up minerals from an asteroid and one to drill into the surface of Mars.

The missions described by researchers included satellites, spacecraft, landers and work concentrated on Mars, Jupiter moons, an asteroid and on Earth itself.

“Sciences are being unified by the search for life in the universe,” said Dr John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at Nasa, before conceding that “life outside of earth is probably going to be really hard to find”.

“We can’t even agree on a definition of what life detection is.”

Grunsfeld said missions to Mars in the next few years will have greater capabilities than the Curiosity rover, which continues to explore Mars and in April discovered water on below the surface of the red planet. The European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission, for instance, aims to specifically search for signs of life.

The lander will have a “deeper drill than any lander”, Grunsfeld said, able to reach down into the Martian crust “a couple of meters” where the deadly radiation that bombards the planet would not be as able to affect life.

“The surface of Mars is bathed in ultraviolet light, bathed in radiation,” Grunsfeld said. “Mars’s magnetic field is essentially gone, so the surface of Mars is essentially sterilized.”

Places where the frozen water exists, as in the planet’s polar glaciers and below the surface, might be able to harbor life, but “these are challenging places to get to”, he said.

Last year the Curiosity rover detected “spikes” of methane, stoking speculation of life on the planet, but Grunsfeld noted that those signals could be abiotic as well as from a biotic organism.

“On future missions we’re going to look more toward what kind of instruments could detect life,” he said. “A DNA sequencer for instance might fail miserably even if it were surrounded by extant Martian life.”

The ExoMars mission is planned for 2018 and receive assistance from Nasa.

Grunsfeld also described a mission named Osiris Rex, which aims to send a satellite to an asteroid called Bennu in order to study its composition. The satellite will “do a quick touch-and-go and grab samples, up to 2kg (5lb)”, he said, which researchers will then be able to study.

In part, the Osiris Rex team will try to determine whether the organic materials that started life on Earth were “seeded” on the planet by collisions with carbonaceous asteroids like Bennu.

Dr Britney Schmidt, the principal investigator for the Nasa-funded Sub-Ice Marine and Planetary Analog Ecosystems (Simple) mission, spoke about the possibilities for life on Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“There’s a whole host of ice-rich worlds which potentially harbor subsurface oceans,” Schmidt said. “These are important places to think about in the search for life even within our own solar system.”

In February, Nasa won approval from the White House to proceed with a mission to fly by Europa, which is covered in a sheet of ice that has intrigued scientists for the likelihood that it coats a subsurface ocean.

The mission will feature an ice-penetrating radar that has been used to explore similar surfaces on Earth, Schmidt said, and try to determine whether the moon harbors “enough energy to power biology in these very distant and seemingly so alien worlds”.

Dr Alexis Templeton showcased some of her research on alien environments here on earth, where scientists have discovered life in what were until recently considered utterly inhospitable regions.

In particular, Templeton studies how rocks may have helped create life in these extreme environments. “Rocks have within them, depending on their chemistry, the ability to release electrons,” she said, which “can fuel certain systems, essentially a lot like fuel cells do”.

Citing the discovery of life in the high-pH waters of remote deserts and the ways that water can release chemicals and energy when it interacts with certain rocks, Templeton said that the research could help colleagues determine what exactly they should look for on celestial bodies. On a moon of Saturn, for instance, plumes of particles ejected from the south pole could “represent potential for liquid water that’s stored underneath the ice shell”, she said.

Dr Vikki Meadows, a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory, said that she was studying hunting for oceans on planets by looking for the “glint effect”.

Meadows described the phenomenon as “something that should be very familiar to you if you’ve ever sat on a beach after sunrise or sunset” – the reflected light of the sun off the surface of the water at a particular angle.

With the help of a blurry photo of a crescent Earth, from a satellite that later crashed into the moon, researchers were able to calculate the glint effect for other planets – a prediction that could help detect oceans on solar systems outside our own.