Donies news Ireland daily BLOG Tuesday

President Higgins & Sabina start their state visit to Britain today Tuesday

  

Irish President Michael D Higgins started his official state visit to Britain today.

His extended four day trip, three years after the Queen visited Ireland, will include an address to the Houses of Parliament and a focus on the contribution Irish emigrants have made to UK life.

“We are at a very interesting point in history, when we have, following Her Majesty’s visit to Ireland, such good relations between our people,” he said.

“My hope for the visit at the end of it all is that people will in ever more numbers come to share in experiencing the history, the present circumstances and culture, and do so in ever greater numbers.”

 The theme of the state visit will be on the two countries’ shared histories.

And the significance has been further deepened with the presence of Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister and ex-IRA commander Martin McGuinness who will attend a banquet hosted by the Queen – a move unthinkable only a decade ago.

Mr Higgins, who is accompanied by his wife Sabina, addressed the Northern Ireland peace process before he left amid wider discussions about how to deal with the past.

He said it would be wrong to wipe the slate clean over historic conflict which affected relations between Britain and Ireland and that progress should not be about forgetting the past.

“The peace process is that, it is a process that comes after the formal agreement at one level. Ultimately it is an exercise in consciousness at the level of community,” Mr Higgins said.

“The challenge is to hand to a future generation all of the prospects of the future. You are not inviting them to an amnesia about any deep dispute.

“There are a lot of very difficult memories and it would be to my mind wrong to suggest to anyone that you should as it were, wipe the slate clean.

“I think Her Majesty in coming to Ireland and addressing for example issues of relations between our two people was doing it the right way.”

The highly successful state visit to Ireland by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in May 2011 paved the way for the return by Mr Higgins and makes the attendance of Mr McGuinness at the royals’ home, Windsor Castle, the latest in a series of recent milestones in Anglo-Irish relations.

In remarkable scenes, the Queen paid her respects to republican dead at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance, visited Croke Park – site of the 1920 Bloody Sunday massacre – and made a widely-praised speech on Anglo-Irish history at Dublin Castle.

Since then, a number of meetings between Mr Higgins – a former Labour government minister, a poet and academic – and members of the Royal Family have taken place.

Although the Irish head of state has travelled to events in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland last year, these were not official visits.

Mr Higgins will spend four days on the extended visit as a guest of the monarch, a sign he says is symbolic of the importance both countries place on the normalisation of relations more than 90 years after independence.

Despite the feel good factor around the trip in general there is discomfort in some staunch conservative circles about Mr McGuinness’ presence.

Efforts to cement reconciliation between republicans and the state took a massive leap forward when the senior Sinn Fein figure shook hands with the Queen during a trip to Belfast two years ago.

He was given the green light to join the latest celebrations after a meeting of the leadership of his party at the weekend even though they snubbed the ground-breaking royal visit to Ireland in 2011.

 Highlights of the visit which begins with a ceremonial arrival at Windsor Castle will include the President’s address at Westminster – another first for an Irish head of state.

Mr Higgins will also get to view the colours of disbanded Irish regiments in the British army while in Windsor.

In an interview with Irish state broadcaster RTE, he praised the royal for setting the scene for the return visit and a new era of Anglo-Irish relations in her speech at Dublin Castle.

“The words chosen and the symbolic way they were delivered by the Queen herself were extraordinarily important,” he said.

“The decision for example not to ignore the past but to address it, to go on and say as well, not only would things have been done differently but maybe not all, that was adding generosity to a kind of an ethic of memory.”

Mr Higgins said it was an invitation to people to be firm about events in the past but not be crippled by them in the present.

Elsewhere, the President will visit the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and he will attend another major dinner at the Guildhall in the City given by the Lord Mayor.

He will also meet Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street during the visit and pay tribute to the work of Irish health professionals, meet business leaders and London Mayor Boris Johnson.

The President will be joined on the trip by Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore.

Scientists uncover why booze makes women touchy-feely and men unfaithful by

Observing drunken VOLES

 

• Researchers at an Oregon university used the famously faithful prairie vole to test how alcohol affects relationships
• The study found that drunk male voles tended to stray more often while the females wanted more cuddle time
• Alcohol was found to cause anxiety in females, which explains their desire to seek the comfort of their mates
• Meanwhile, males were less anxious and more inclined to stray

A study published Monday helps unravel some of love’s mysteries by picking apart the exploits of drunken rodents.

Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland used drunken prairie voles to uncover what makes men more likely to be unfaithful and women more interested in snuggling when alcohol enters the equation.

They found that booze on the brain loosened up the male voles, making them more inclined to mess around. While the vodka-fueled female voles became more anxious and desirous of a furry shoulder to lean on.

Drunk rodents: Researchers plied prairie voles with alcohol to determine how the famously faithful critters might change their mating behavior

As an added bonus, researchers found that the frequency at which or amount voles imbibe is affected by how much their friends and lovers drink–just like human peer pressure.

In the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Acadamey of Sciences, researchers offered up a water/ethanol concoction to the famously faithful fur balls.

Prairie voles are often used in animal studies focused on human bonding and monogamy because they mate for life. Unlike some animals, they also happen to like a stiff drink now and then.

For 24 hours, male/female pairs of previously unmated voles were placed together with the booze and their drunken canoodling was observed.

Then the researchers stopped the party and separated the voles, giving them new opposite-sex playmates.

What happened then depended on whether a vole was male or female.

The Oregon Health and Science University study found that males were more likely to stray when drunk and females were more likely to want to cuddle with their mate. Subsequent tests revealed that the answer to why this was true in the voles, and why humans exhibit similar behavior, has to do with how alcohol affects the neurochemical underpinnings of anxiety

The drunken male voles tended to prefer their new, more novel female party partners to the previous females.

The females, on the other hand, preferred their old mates to the new lads and sought out more ‘huddling’ time with their old flames.

Interestingly, the opposite was seen in the control group that was given no alcohol.

With the teetotalers, males nearly always preferred their original mates while only two-thirds of the sober females preferred the same.

The researchers found that neuropeptides linked to anxiety were affected by the alcohol, but in opposite ways between the males and females.

Males exhibited an increase in density of their amygdalar, which is associated with lowered anxiety, while the females did not.

The scientists believe the lowered anxiety in males makes them more likely to run after new females, and away from the old and that the opposite was true for females.

‘It’s the first time we’ve shown that alcohol drinking can directly affect social bonding and that these effects are paralleled by changes in neuropeptides,’ said lead researcher Andrey Ryabinin.

‘This means that we can use prairie voles to model not just our alcohol-related behavior but [also] the underlying molecular influences on that behavior,’ he says. ‘More studies are required, but separating biological effects from purely cultural ones could lead to better treatments for both problem drinking and the resulting interpersonal conflicts.

Ireland’s biggest dental group Smiles Dental now sold to Oasis Healthcare

 

Price paid for chain, founded by Emmet O’Neil and orthodontist Hugh Bradley, thought to be €36m. 

Smiles Dental, Ireland’s biggest privately-owned dental care provider, has been sold to Oasis Healthcare for an undisclosed sum.

The price is thought to be region of £30 million (€36 million) for the company which was founded in Dublin in 2005 by Emmet O’Neil and orthodontist Hugh Bradley.

Smiles provides dental care from 77 practices in Ireland,England, Wales and Scotland. The Irish group, which has 17 clinics in Ireland, has a turnover of £70 million (€84 million).

Oasis Healthcare is Britain’s largest provider of dental care and post the acquisition of Smiles it will have a turnover of £210 million and three million private and public sector patients. There will be 280 dental practices in its group post the transaction.

Oasis is owned by private equity firm Bridgepoint, which owns among other businesses Pret A Manager, the ready -to-eat salad and sandwich maker which has 300 outlets in the UK, US, France and Hong Kong.

The UK dental care firm is led by Justin Ash and chaired byStuart Rose, the former Marks & Spencer executive chairman.

Emmet O’Neil Smiles Dental chief executive said: “We were looking for a partner to help Smiles reach the next level and had examined a number of options. When I met Sir Stuart and Justin Ash I realised that there was a shared approach and a matched ambition at Oasis.”

“I am delighted to be joining their team and look forward to working hard not only to integrate our business, but to grow in future and to continue delivering a modern and innovative approach to dentistry,” he added.

“The team at Smiles both in the UK and Ireland have a huge amount to be proud of, and I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their loyalty, support and dedication.”

Mr O’Neil said combining the two businesses would offer additional clinical services to patients and lead to other synergies. Oasis will brand Smile’s UK practices as Oasis Dental Care but retain the Smiles brand in Ireland.

Justin Ash, chief executive of Oasis, said: “This is a transformational deal for Oasis and demonstrates our ability to drive growth and consolidation, building the only national brand in the fragmented dental market.”

“We believe this is outstanding news for the three million patients of the combined group and all patients seeking high quality, easy accessible dental care. We are also pleased to be extending our partnership with the NHSacross the domiciles in the UK and to be providing care under the HSE in the Republic of Ireland.”

Mr Ash said Oasis was “well funded to continue our growth, and actively seeking further complementary acquisitions, as well as new openings to at least double the size of Oasis.”

Advanced speed camera’s measures how fast our universe is expanding

 

MOST ACCURATE MEASURE SHOWS EXPANSION CLOCKED AT 68 KM PER SECOND. 

The largest known galaxy cluster in the distant universe, catalogued as ACT-CL J0102-4915, nicknamed ‘El Gordo’ (Spanish for “the fat one”).

Scientists have used an advanced speed camera to clock how fast the universe was expanding when it was a quarter of its current age. Back then, it was inflating at a rate of 68km per second and today things are moving even faster.

Spacetime is expanding in all directions, rushing away at a blinding pace, something confirmed in the 1930s by US astronomer Edwin Hubble. So important was the finding that the famous space telescope currently in Earth’s orbit was named in his honour.

Hubble’s Law describes how the farther apart two objects are in space, the faster they are accelerating away from one another. This sounds confusing but may help to explain why so many feel we are moving as quick as we can but getting nowhere fast.

Astronomers have been studying expansion speed since Hubble, and being able to measure it is central to our understanding of the universe. That is why this new, more accurate rate is important. The research team from the US, Switzerland and France presented their findings yesterday afternoon at the April meeting of the American Physical Society in Savannah, Georgia.

CRUNCHED GALAXIES

In a seriously hard slog, the researchers studied the light coming from 140,000 distant quasars – crunched galaxies that are exceptionally bright and look like individual stars. “We have measured the expansion rate in the young universe with an unprecedented precision of 2 per cent,” said Prof Timothee Delubac of the Centre de Saclay in France.

“If we look back to the universe when galaxies were three times closer together than they are today, we would see that a pair of galaxies separated by a million light years would be drifting apart at a speed of 68km per second as the universe expands,” said Prof Andreu Font-Ribera of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US.

Those quasars are moving even faster today, given expansion speeds up the greater the distance between them. But what is pushing them along?

Astronomers have dubbed it “dark energy”. They have no idea what it is but have calculated it makes up more than 68 per cent of the universe. All the stuff we can see like quasars and stars only accounts for 4.9 per cent of the pie.

USI Student Summit 2014 to encourage Ireland’s next entrepreneurs

  

USI Student Summit 2014 to encourage next entrepreneurs Students at last March’s announcement of the summit. 

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) Student Summit 2014 will kick off at 4.30pm in Dublin today and will host more than 35 start-ups from across Ireland. State advisory bodies will also be on hand to advise the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

The aim of the USI Student Summit 2014, according to its organisers, is to create a sense of community among young student entrepreneurs in Ireland, where they can come and learn about starting their trade, listen to people who have been successful in their field, and obtain advice on making their ideas come to life.

There will be a host of familiar tech names speaking at the event, many of which have formed their own successful start-ups, including Niall Harbison of Simply Zesty, Richie Whelan of Popdeem, Malachy Browne of Storyful, and Caroline Downey, MD, of the Olympia and Ambassador venues.

According to USI president Joe O’Connor, “This event is the first of its kind and provides an incredible opportunity for Irish student entrepreneurs to hear from inspirational speakers, learn from Ireland’s most innovative start-up companies, and network with entrepreneurs. We hope that this is a USI event that continues long into the future.”

The event takes place at the Print Works Conference Centre, Dublin Castle.

Homo sapiens and Neanderthals got together much more recently. 

A DNA link shows

   

New evidence suggests Homo sapiens and Neanderthals got together much more recently.

Europeans may be closer to their Neanderthal cousins than was previously thought, new research suggests.

Breeding with now-extinct Neanderthals is known to have left its traces in the DNA of modern Europeans.

But this mingling of the two human sub-species was thought to have taken place long ago in Africa, before our ancestors spread across the globe.

The new evidence suggests Homo sapiens and Neanderthals got together much more recently.

Scientists have shown that the genetic similarity between Neanderthals and non-African modern human populations must have arisen after interbreeding inEurope and Asia.

The research involved dividing up the genetic code of each sub-species to calculate the statistical likelihood of distant or recent interbreeding.

Dr Konrad Lohse, one of the scientists from the University of Edinburgh, said: “Although there has been mounting evidence for genetic exchange between modern humans and Neanderthals in Eurasia from a number of recent genetic studies, it has been difficult to rule out ancestral structure in Africa. We hope our study settles this issue.”

Before they died out around 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals co-existed with early modern humans in Europe and Asia for thousands of years.

Both groups first evolved in Africa before spreading out from the continent at different times, and are believed to have had a common ancestor.

Neanderthals are thought to have left Africa more than 200,000 years before early modern humans.    

Donie's news Ireland Blog Sunday

Martin McGuinness spoke about the Queen’s loss during troubles

Martin McGuinness, the former IRA commander, told the Queen he recognised that she too had lost a loved one during the Troubles.

 

The deputy first minister of Northern Ireland revealed that he addressed the 1979 murder of Earl Mountbatten, the Queen’s cousin, when they met in Belfast on Wednesday.

Appearing on a talk show on Irish television, Mr McGuinness said the Queen she was gracious when he mentioned the killing.

He said he would not go into detail about the private eight-minute conversation, which followed a historic handshake between the pair.

But added: “I said to the Queen and the Duke they too had lost a loved one.”

Earl Mountbatten – who was the Duke of Edinburgh’s uncle – was killed on board a boat off Mullaghmore by an IRA gang using a radio controlled bomb.

One of the earl’s twin grandsons, Nicholas, 14, and Paul Maxwell, 15, a local teenager employed to help on the boat, also died in the explosion

The conversation between the Queen and the Sinn Fein MP, who refuses to take up his seat in the Commons because it would necessitate swearing an oath of allegiance to the monarch, took place at the Lyric Theatre during a jubilee tour.

Mr McGuinness has already admitted that he was “conscious” of how uncomfortable the Queen must have felt during their meeting.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Friday, Mr McGuinness said he added that it was a “very positive engagement”.

John Humphrys, the presenter, had asked him: “Were you conscious of the fact that she would have been thinking this is a man whose colleagues murdered my cousin?”

He said: “I was very conscious of that.

“I also understood or recognised that this would be a difficult meeting for Queen Elizabeth but I think both of us entered the project with good grace.”

Mr McGuinness also insisted that the Northern Irish peace process remained a route map to the “perfectly reasonable and legitimate” reunification of Ireland.

He said that it was not an “extreme” view to think that a “historical wrong” should be righted and the country could return to the Republic.

“I approach all this as an Irish Republican, as somebody who wants tp convince people in Britain and indeed their elective representatives that they should become involved as persuaders to bring about the eventual reunification of Ireland,” he said.

“I don’t think it is daft to appeal to the people of Britain to recognise that an historical wrong should be righted.

“We have a route map to do that. The British government have recognised the fact that the if the people vote to end their links with Britain then they are duty bound to legislate to do that.

“That is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate political objective and aspiration for Sinn Fein to work towards and also perfectly legitimate to appeal to people to support that.

“There is absolutely nothing extreme about that. I think it is highly offensive to us that people would try to portray that as some sort of extreme view.”

He said that the historic handshake was “highly symbolic”

“I think I was very conscious of the highly symbolic nature of what was about to happen. We don’t rush into these things. it was very carefully considered.

“I thought that this was a real opportunity to extend the hand of friendship, peace and reconciliation to those hundreds of thousands of unionists in the north who have a great affinity for the Queen, Queen Elizabeth.

“This was an opportunity to continue to propel the peace process forward to the next essential stage which is one of national reconciliation upon the island of Ireland.”

Thomas McMahon, 31, was convicted of the murder of Lord Mountbatten and two of his relatives in a bomb blast on his boat.

He had been detained in the area by police on suspicion of driving a stolen car two hours before the bomb went off.

McMahon was set free in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement.

Minister for jobs Richard Bruton & Irish companies on trade mission to France

   

Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton is travelling with representatives of 36 companies to France today on a trade mission.

Richard Bruton said the mission was aimed at opening new doors for increase export business

Irish exports to France have been experiencing strong growth and are now worth €10bn per year.

During the three day visit, Mr Bruton will attend a series of meetings in the Brittany and Paris regions with representatives of leading French and Irish companies.

They will also attend events to promote Irish exporters in key sectors, including agri-technologies, cleantech, engineering and construction.

Mr Bruton said two way trade between Ireland and France was at record levels and there was an opportunity for substantial growth over the next three years.

He said this mission was aimed at building on the existing links, as well as opening new doors for increased export business.

Woman found dead in house after Donegal fire

    

A 40-year-old woman has died in a house fire in Co Donegal

The woman who lived alone was found dead in the hallway of her home at Dunmore Lane, Falcarragh, Co Donegal, gardai said.

The incident was reported at around 9.30pm on Saturday night.

Gardai said there was evidence that a fire had occurred in the living room of the home but it had burnt out some time before the woman was found.

The house has been preserved for a forensic technical examination and a post-mortem examination will take place on Monday.

The woman’s death is being treated as a tragic accident, gardai said.

Motorcyclist dies after collision with car in Galway

       

A man in his 20s has died after the motorbike he was driving was involved in a crash with a car on the Gort to Scarrif road. 

The motorbike and a car crashed shortly after 10am this morning at Inchaboy South. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

Two people travelling in the car were taken to hospital with minor injuries.

The road is closed in order for Garda forensic collision investigators to examine the area. Diversions are in place.

Irish Government pays €1.3bn for Irish Life as takeover deal is finally clinched

   

The Government has formally taken over Irish Life, after the acquisition from Permanent TSB was finally completed yesterday.

The State is paying €1.3bn for the investment group, and the completion comes a day after the High Court dismissed a challenge to the sale by a group of Irish Life and Permanent Group’s shareholders, who claimed the price under-valued the company.

The deal finalises the recapitalisation of PTSB, which has received some €4bn from the State since March last year. Permanent TSB and Irish Life customers are unaffected by the sale, with their policies all remaining unchanged.

After the sale was completed, Irish Life’s chief executive Kevin Murphy and finance director David McCarthy resigned from the Permanent TSB group board. Mr Murphy plans to retire from Irish Life at the end of the year.

PTSB bank chief executive Jeremy Masding will head the PTSB group. Alan Cook will chair both companies until they are totally separated.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan welcomed the completion.

“I am pleased that, having successfully defended a legal challenge (on the case), the acquisition of Irish Life can now be concluded. This transaction represents the completion of the recapitalisation of Irish Life & Permanent allowing the bank to focus now on the successful implementation of its proposed strategy,” the minister said.

“Irish Life is a valuable asset and we will allow it to operate as a commercial entity with the clear objective of maximising the proceeds for the State on an eventual sale when market conditions allow.”

Donie's Saturday news Ireland Blog

Martin McGuinness is to meet with the Queen next week

‘He gets the green light from Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle’

  

The Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has acknowledged that the planned meeting between the Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Queen Elizabeth II will cause difficulties for republicans.

At a press conference announcing the decision of the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle to effectively give McGuinness the green light to meet the English monarch next Wednesday at a luncheon in Belfast, Adams said that the decision was part of a process of “reconciliation”.

He acknowledged that the decision will “cause difficulty for Republicans and nationalists who have suffered at the hands of British forces in Ireland over many decades” but added that “this is a significant initiative involving major political and symbolic challenges for Irish republicans”.

“As the record of the peace process demonstrates Irish republicans have frequently been prepared to take bold and historic initiatives and risks for peace to break stalemates and find agreements,” he told the media.

The meeting at the Co-Operation Ireland event in the Northern Ireland capital next week will, according to Press Association’s Deric Henderson, be strictly private with no cameras allowed.

It marks the first time that a senior leader of the republican movement and a former member of the IRA has met with a reigning monarch and will by a symbolic first in the peace process set up by the Good Friday Agreement 14 years ago.

Adams said that the decision today reflected his party’s commitment to the peace process and to unite Ireland saying that it was Sinn Féin’s “genuine desire to embrace our unionist neighbours”.

“It reflects the equality and parity of esteem arrangements which are now in place,” he said adding that it was clear that there were “legacy issues” that had to be dealt with by the party.

He added: “I accept that this decision will cause genuine and understandable difficulties for some people, not least some of the victims of the British crown forces in Ireland.”

Irish Government and Politicians castigate the Ulster Bank over customers cash crisis

    

The Ulster Bank has been castigated by both the Taoiseach and the Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton over its failure to deal with a technology crash which has affected 100,000 Irish customers.

Some 53,000 social welfare payments have been affected by the Ulster Bank’s systems failure, with thousands of customers unable to receive payments over the weekend.

In an attempt to meet customer demands Ulster Bank will open 70 branches today until 3pm, and a further 20 will open tomorrow until 1pm.

Both Enda Kenny and Ms Burton said the debacle would only worsen the already dim view that Irish people have of banks.

Speaking in Scotland after a meeting of the British-Irish Council, Mr Kenny said Ulster Bank’s failure to deal with the three-day IT failure, which has seen customers unable to get cheques lodged to their accounts, “only exacerbates the cynicism” Irish people have for financial institutions.

Ms Burton said she estimated some 30,000 social welfare recipients have been affected by the glitch. Many have been left without money for the weekend. She described herself as being “extremely disappointed” by the delay.

“Given all of the grief that banks have caused to people in Ireland, I really think that the bank needs to address this particular situation with absolute urgency.

“They have to look at the situation of people over the weekend, particularly older people who spend all their social welfare income.

“For some of the people at the top of the banks €100 might not seem a lot, but it is to a pensioner,” she said.

One of those affected, a man named John from Mullingar, said his disability payment “is all I have”. The man, who would not give his surname, said he only found out about the computer glitch from a news report yesterday morning.

“I have been with the bank for years and they have my contact details, but they haven’t even sent out a text.

“I am only one person – how many others are out there like me?”

The breakdown has meant that customers who go into branches cannot access their accounts because the bank officials cannot access them either.

However, some customers have been advanced payments based on their social welfare entitlements or their salaries.

Sean Kearns from Sligo was almost left without a way to get to work and back when he discovered he could not withdraw money from a cash machine.

“It told me I had insufficient funds as my wages were unable to come through.

“It costs me €100 to get to work for a tank of petrol as I work near Dublin, so it would be impossible for me to go home and get to work Monday.”

Some 38,000 HSE employees who are paid through Ulster Bank can get an advance of up to €500.

The bank has blamed its parent, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS Group), for the difficulties.

RBS said it had fixed the technology problem, but it would be Monday before the backlog of transactions was sufficiently dealt with.

In a statement Ulster Bank apologised “unreservedly” to customers.

“We appreciate that this is having a significant impact on many of our customers and customers of other banks,” it said in a statement.

“Customers who have incurred fees or charges as a result of this issue will be fully refunded in due course.”

New SME loan funding scheme by Irish Government hopes to create 7,700 new jobs

   

The Irish Banks and small businesses alike have welcomed the Government’s announcement of a new funding scheme for micro-enterprises.

Minister for Enterprise Richard Bruton yesterday unveiled details of the Microenterprise Loan Fund Scheme, which will make over €90 million in extra lending available to 5,500 businesses over the next decade. The Minister predicted the scheme, which is due to become operational this autumn, will create 7,700 jobs.

In the initial stage of the scheme, €40 million will be made available for lending to businesses with no more than 10 employees. This phase will span five years, but provision has also been made for an additional €50 million to be provided over a further five-year period.

The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation said start-ups, existing microenterprises and sole traders will be eligible to apply for loans. In order to qualify, applicant firms must have already had a request for credit declined by banks.

“The scheme will provide loans for commercially viable proposals that do not meet the conventional risk criteria applied by the banks for various reasons, including the absence of collateral,” it said.

The average loan is expected to be €16,000, but sums of up to €25,000 will be available.

The scheme will be operated by Microfinance Ireland, a subsidiary of Social Finance Foundation.

Patricia Callan of the Small Firms Association said the scheme has real potential to deliver credit to viable businesses that do not fit the “risk-averse criteria” set out by the mainstream banking sector.

The Irish Banking Federation and business lobby group Chambers Ireland also welcomed the announcement.

‘Graphically innovative leaving cert paper’

 Shows a modern appeal to Irish students

  

It was a “graphically innovative” and “modern” end to the Leaving Cert for students of technology yesterday afternoon.

The subject, which was the last to be examined in this year’s Leaving Cert exams, has attracted almost a thousand students since it was first examined two years ago.

Technology is a wide-ranging subject incorporating elements of design, computing, electronics and mechanics. Four times as many boys as girls are currently studying it for the Leaving Cert.

“Students were pleased with both technology papers yesterday,” said Kieran Christie, ASTI member and teacher at St Attracta’s Community School in Sligo.

“The section A paper was of a particularly high standard, with innovative graphics throughout.”

Graphics included a picture of the famous tubular steel and red leather Bibendum chair by Irish furniture designer and architect Eileen Gray, which was inspired by the Michelin Man.

“The higher paper had a very modern feel. Concepts such as upcycling were topical but also well explained for those students who might not be familiar with the term,” said Mr Christie.

Teachers also praised references to current events in the paper, including constructive design in the context of the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake.

There was also a question referencing the 2012 London Olympics. The materials technology section focused on design for disability.

Students were also asked to look at the advantages of a wind energy system for Ireland.

“Technology is still a minority subject but it is very rewarding, and yesterday’s paper reflected its modernity and relevance to Ireland today,” said Mr Christie.

Tickets to the Moon are now available for new passenger service for just $100 million

Excalibur Almaz brings out their refurbished Russian spacecraft

  

One of Excalibur Almaz’s space stations above at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s European Space Tourism Conference.

Excalibur Almaz has announced that it is selling tickets to lunar orbit. The price is $100 million. Your golden ticket will entitle you to a complete astronaut experience.

You’ll begin with astronaut training, not just a course on how to make it to the escape capsule in the event of an emergency, but also how to pilot the spacecraft back to Earth in the event that something goes wrong with its onboard navigation. The price includes a ticket to a suborbital flight to space aboard the XCOR Lynx suborbital spaceplane, so you’ll have already been to space and experienced weightlessness before you board the Excalibur reusable capsule.

On the big day you’ll ride the Soyuz rocket with your two fellow passengers up from Baikonur to one of the company’s two 90-cubic-meter space stations. Once you’re aboard the station with your two fellow passengers, an electric thruster will slowly spiral the three of you up to an elliptical orbit around the Moon. After several days you’ll spiral back the way you came, re-enter Earth orbit, board a small reusable capsule and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, leaving the station behnd you. Home again, home again.

Excalibur Almaz has based its business around a fleet of Soviet spacecraft purchased by its somewhat-legendary founder, Art Dula of Houston, Texas, who has been involved with several other successful space companies. The age of the thirty-year-old spacecraft means very little; most current Russian spacecraft date from the Soviet-era and they are considered to be among the safest and most reliable spacecraft ever built.

Space launches are very public, and Mr. Dula’s fleet was built during a time when any public failure meant dire consequences not only for the cosmonaut but also for anyone connected with the failure (people who make mistakes still die, but from “stress“). Because of their stout engineering, old Soviet launchers and spacecraft have consistently excellent safety records.

Several years ago Dula procured two Almaz space stations, designed for Soviet military reconnaissance, and four very stout reusable return capsules along with their escape systems. The space stations are closely related to the Zvezda and Zarya modules on the Russian side of the International Space Station, and although the reusable return vehicles have never been flown manned, they have been extensively tested. For the last seven years the new company has been quietly working on the equally-expensive tasks of filling out paperwork and engineering.

A myriad of licenses were necessary to bring the equipment out of Russia and on to the Isle of Man, an aerospace hotbed where Excalibur Almaz is based. Eventually the collection of stations and reusable return vehicles arrived at their new home, and EA began their refurbishment with modern off-the-shelf parts from the various space industry catalogs.

The spacecraft received new solar arrays, environmental controls, flight controls and communications equipment. The kitchen, crew quarters, exercise rooms, storage racks, laboratory and telescope are all being brought up to date. On the outside, the craft are receiving electric and hypergolic thrusters. The Excalibur Almaz paint scheme is a glossy white, devoid of Soviet insignia.

The Soviet spacecraft by themselves were not enough to build a complete system. Excalibur Almaz has also contracted with the manufacturers in Russia and the Ukraine for more of the stock pieces. They asked aerospace giant EADS Astrium in Europe to do preliminary designs for an intermediate propulsion stage with new passenger and cargo modules based on the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

They struck a Space Act Agreement with NASA in order to learn how to meet U.S. space agency standards for carrying crew to the space station. For marketing studies, EA went to Futron Corporation, a company which specializes in aerospace markets and knows the space tourism industry well.

Futron told them that launch prices were currently too high for profitable operations in Low Earth Orbit. “I stress that we were quite surprised to find that we can’t operate at a profit in Low Earth Orbit right now,” said Mr. Dula at the ISDC 2012 conference last month. “That takes government subsidy. There aren’t enough customers in LEO. There are more customers that are interested in going beyond LEO for a purely commercial system.”

“Beyond LEO” meant the Moon, and as it happens mathematics has made getting to the Moon a little easier than it was during the Apollo era. For low-energy lunar transfer orbits EA went to Dr. Ed Belbruno, a mathematician who specializes in celestial mechanics, and to Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena. Orbits were found that would allow the station to use electric propulsion to slowly make its way into lunar orbits. EA contracted with U.S.-based United Launch Alliance (ULA) for phasing studies, the adjustment of a spacecraft’s time-position along its orbit. Plans eventually came together for three different lunar missions. One of them is a lunar cycler orbit based on work done by former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, an old friend of Mr. Dula’s.

The first mission begins in low Earth orbit and involves an elliptical lunar flyby, good for tourists who want to see the Moon up close through a window instead of a telescope. The second requires the station to travel up to a circular lunar orbit on a slow low-energy trajectory, where it waits for a crew on a high-energy spacecraft such as an Orion space capsule riding on a ULA Centaur upper stage. The crew vehicle docks with the station and can stay for a month or two. It then does a high-energy return and re-enters the atmosphere.

The third mission is the lunar cycler orbit, wherein the space station flies to the Moon on a low-energy trajectory and gets a gravity boost out of the plane of the ecliptic, up and over the Earth instead of around it. The Moon rotates around and catches the spacecraft two weeks later on the other side, catching the spacecraft and returning it to where a new crew or supply ship can dock with it. The two-week cycles could last quite a long time before the station would need to be refueled.

For now, the only man-rated vehicle capable of launching the small “taxi” vehicles, with their launch escape systems and reusable return capsules, are Soyuz rockets. The Chinese Long March is also the right size and man-rated, but U.S. technology export rules forbid it. In the near future other vehicles could be or will be man-rated, so there will be more choices. The stations themselves will probably go up aboard Russian Proton rockets, for which they were designed, but they could also go up on many other launchers. Excalibur Almaz also has a six-person vehicle, essentially a scaled up version of their 3-person capsule, approaching its Critical Design Review.

A reusable reentry vehicle was displayed at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Third European Space Tourism Conference in London, where Mr. Dula made another presentation yesterday. It has now been shipped back to the company headquarters on the Isle of Man, where it will wait for the first three customers.