Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

A Polish/Irish festival celebrates our special 10 year relationship

A week long eVENT HONOUR'S THE 150,000 MEMBERS OF THE POLISH COMMUNITY IN IRELAND

 

Hannah Barwinska, Natalia Gil and Veronika Blaszczak (all age 11 from Polish School SEN) participate in the Brighter Futures pageant during the St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin last Tuesday the 17th March 2015.

June 18th, 2012, and Market Square in Poznan, Poland, (above right) is thronged. It’s the last chapter in what has been a whirlwind summer romance between the Poles and the Irish. Irish football fans have endured a nightmare of a week in terms of results at Euro 2012, but none of them will forget the friendship that blossomed between them and their Polish hosts.

After eight days of heavy defeats, the Irish are nursing sore heads and bruised egos. A band of Poles have organised a gathering to “say goodbye to Ireland in our way”.

As the gathering begins, there are ripples in the crowd when the Poles begin to sing, not their native songs, but rousing renditions of The Fields of Athenry and other verses the Irish have been singing all week. They have learned the music and the words. The depth of the gesture is lost on nobody.

Flyers are distributed in the square. “We remember your great sportsmanship during your football game with Spain in Gdansk,” they say. “We remember your inspiring song The Fields of Athenry that brings into memory some of your history no one should ever forget. We too have a very hard past. We are also romantic and emotional people. This is something our nations have in common.”

The love affair between the Polish and the Irish may have been consummated here but this is not where it all began.Tens of thousands of Poles have migrated to Ireland since the State opened its borders to an enlarged EU in 2004.

Along the way there have been “misunderstandings” that have become folk tales. At one stage a Polish man seemed to be establishing himself as Ireland’s most reckless serial road traffic offender. By June 2007, Prawo Jazdy had more than 50 separate entries under his name in the Garda Pulse computer system, but with different addresses and not a single conviction. In the end the clue to his identity lay within the pages of a Polish-English dictionary. “Prawo jazdy” means driving licence. Garda officers were mistaking it for the driver’s name.

Every part of the country has a Polish presence that has added to community life. Few Irish towns have been left without a Polski sklep that sells pickles, Polish beer or smoked fish.

Of course, the pollution of the Irish gene pool has been perhaps the greatest development.

The contamination of the scraggly, pasty-skinned ginger archetype of the Irish has long been a matter of great urgency – and who better than the stunning Poles to do just that.

There are now Jakubs married to Aoifes and Seáns to Magdalenas.

It’s just a wonder there hasn’t been a Polish-Irish festival before now. The first one begins today, a week-long event aiming to celebrate the 150,000 members of the Polish community living in Ireland.

Ireland makes an early IMF repayment 

“leaving only 20% more to clear debt”

  

Ireland has made the last of its early loan repayments to the International Monetary Fund, leaving the country with just under a fifth of the original €22.5bn bailout left to pay.

  Friday’s payment was supposed to be due between July 2015 and January 2021 but with an average interest rate of 4.99%, Ireland’s bailout funds were far more expensive than the country’s borrowing rate on international markets, encouraging the government to pay the debts down as soon as possible, writes Elaine Moore in London.

Government borrowing costs across Europe have plummeted following the European Central Bank’s decision to begin a large scale programme of bond buying to boost the region’s economic recovery.

Last year Ireland’s benchmark borrowing rate dropped below the UK’s for the first time in six years highlighting the speed with which the country’s economy has turned around since the Eurozone debt crisis.

Oncotype DX test means no chemotherapy for some breast cancer patients

The gene test is only available here since 2011.

    

A study on a new test for breast cancer shows that it reduces the need for chemotherapy in some patients.

The test, Oncotype DX, involves a sample of the tumour being taken and sent to the US for gene testing. It has only been available in Ireland for four years.

Suitable patients?

Patients who are suitable for the test and whose cancer is node negative and hormone positive can have their tumour gene-tested.

The test looks at the activity of 21 genes in this particular breast cancer, and is able to see how the cancer is going to behave into the future and whether it would benefit from chemotherapy or not.

Genomic Health presented 11 studies today in Vienna, Austria, on the test in Ireland.

A study

They include a real-life observational study in Ireland, which demonstrates significant reductions in chemotherapy and cost savings when the test is used in early-stage breast cancer.

Dr Janice Walsh, Consultant Medical Oncologist at St Vincent’s University Hospital in Dublin, led the research project for the All Ireland Co-Operative Oncology Research Group (ICORG) in collaboration with the National Cancer Control Programme (NCCP).

Dr Walsh told TheJournal.ie that the test has been standard practice in the United States since 2005, but was only introduced in Ireland, following a long campaign, in 2011.

Ireland was the first European market to publicly reimburse the test.

The study at Irish hospitals showed that out of the 583 patients who were included in the analysis, 59% underwent a change in their treatment decision.

339 of the patients would have been recommended chemotherapy had they not undergone the test – the test showed that they could be changed to hormone therapy alone, as chemotherapy would have given them minimal or no benefit.

Dr Walsh said this is “hugely significant” as it means the patients can avoid the side effects from chemotherapy.

It is estimated that there are about 600 eligible patients a year.

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in Irish women.

Kieran Kenny of Genomic Health said that the test has demonstrated value for patients and the health care system.

Experimental Oncotype DX test

 by Biogen offers hope to scientists

That they may be closer to a breakthrough

The shares in Biogen jump 7% in New York trading

    

The Biogen’s market value share has risen by $45 billion to nearly $110 billion in a little over a year

An experimental Alzheimer’s drug being developed by a US biotech group has offered hope that scientists may be closer to a breakthrough for the devastating disease, after early trials showed the treatment slowed the rate of cognitive decline.

Biogen’s Aducanumab is one of several drugs under development by big pharmaceutical groups that aim to reduce so-called “amyloid plaque”, a sticky build-up in the brain that many believe is responsible for Alzheimer’s disease.

A year-long study of 166 patients with a mild form of the disease showed that Biogen’s drug significantly reduced the build-up of plaque and delayed the onset of cognitive decline, according to data published yesterday at a medical conference in Nice, France.

Shares in Biogen, which have risen about 28% this year in anticipation of the data, jumped by 7% in New York trading, while other companies with similar drugs also gained, including Eli Lilly, up 2.4%, and Sanofi, which added 1.6%.

Biogen’s market value has risen by $45 billion to nearly $110 billion in a little over a year.

However, analysts and doctors voiced concerns over the drug’s safety, with a quarter of patients on the highest dose discontinuing treatment due to adverse effects, including swelling on the brain. Drug companies have trialled similar drugs for years with disappointing results, but the industry has pressed ahead because the commercial opportunity is huge: there are more than 25 million Alzheimer’s sufferers globally and five million in the US, the majority of whom do not respond to existing treatments.

Biogen and its partner Neurimmune developed the drug by cloning the memory cells of people in their 90s who had “super cognitive function” despite their age, as well as people who had Alzheimer’s that was progressing at an unusually slow rate.

Speed limit’s likely to be cut to many of rural Ireland road networks

  

Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe yesterday predicted “many” rural roads are likely to see their maximum speed limit cut from 100km/h to 80km/h under new guidelines.

The guidelines also call on local authorities to “give serious consideration” to reducing speed limits from 50km/h to 30km/h within housing estates, where houses are fronting the roads, and near play areas.

Mr Donohoe said he continued to believe “very strongly” that local authorities must retain the power to determine speeds in housing estates — despite calls for a mandatory 20km/h speed limit by Roseann Brennan, whose six-year-old son, Jake, died after being knocked down by a car near his home in Lintown Grove, Kilkenny, last June.

The minister said the lowest speed local authorities can introduce under the law was 30km/h, but new legislation he was bringing through the Oireachtas would allow councils to have a 20km/h speed limit.

Mr Donohoe was speaking at the launch of Guidelines for Setting and Managing Speed Limits.

Under the document:

National roads less than 7 metres in width and more than 3km in length should have a maximum limit of 80km/h — while those over should be 100km/h zones.

A new road sign — a white circle with black diagonal stripes — will replace the 80km/h sign on narrow country roads, but the maximum speed will remain unchanged.

Urban speed zones will be determined by their function (arterial, link or local road) and their context (commercial or housing areas).

Mr Donohoe said a website, http://www.speedlimits.ie, would go live in the coming weeks, with a map giving limits on all roads.

Asked whether he expected a significant reclassification of areas from 50km/h to 30km/h, Mr Kelly said he thought there would be “more change” regarding rural roads, where limits would be determined by new criteria — regarding their width and length.

“You are likely to see a reclassification from 100km/h to 80km/h on many of these,” he said.

He also revealed new signage on country roads that legally have 80km/h speed limits, but where drivers need to exercise caution.

“This new generic sign is in use internationally,” said the minister.

“This sign means that drivers must use their judgement when using the road in question but must not exceed 80km/h.”

The signs are expected to be erected in April.

Moyagh Murdoch, RSA chief executive, said 80km/h country roads with “grass growing up the middle and clearly incapable of taking two cars had brought the system into disrepute”.

She said they would be running online, mobile and print media advertising campaigns backing the changes.

Mr Donohoe said Roseann Brennan had made “a very important contribution” in raising the profile of speed in residential areas. However, he said 20km/h was “just over 12 miles an hour” and the “level of motion has to be credible”. He thought 30km/h was “credible” and this was shown by international best practice.

Why is that mushroom glowing in the dark?

  

Many species of mushrooms glow in the dark. This bioluminescence is being studied by scientists to determine its function.

If you think you see a glowing mushroom, you might not be having a psychedelic hallucination. Some mushrooms indeed are bioluminescent, including one that sprouts among decaying leaves at the base of young palm trees in Brazilian coconut forests.

Scientists have long wondered what possible reason there could be for a fungus to glow. They now have an answer.

Researchers say that experiments in Brazil involving the big, yellow mushroom called “flor de coco,” meaning coconut flower, showed its night time bioluminescence attracted insects and other creatures that could later spread its spores around the forest.

1. gardneri mushrooms growing on the base of a young babassu palm in Gilbues, Brazil. Photo: REUTERS/Michele P. Verderane

“Our research provides an answer to the question, ‘Why do fungi make light?’ that was first asked, at least first asked in print, by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago,” says biochemist Cassius Stevani of Brazil’s Instituto de Química-Universidade de São Paulo.

“The answer appears to be that fungi make light so they are noticed by insects who can help the fungus colonize new habitats.”

Geneticist and molecular biologist Jay Dunlap of Dartmouth College’s Geisel School of Medicine says bioluminescence had independently evolved many times in such diverse life forms as bacteria, fungi, insects and fish.

“Most of these make light in their own way, that is, with biochemistry that is unique to each organism,” Dunlap says.

Of the 100,000 known fungus species, 71 are bioluminescent. The species in the study, published in the journal Current Biology, is one of the biggest and brightest of them.

The researchers found a circadian clock regulates its bioluminescence, glowing only at night.

They created two sets of plastic mushroom replicas, one with LED lights replicating bioluminescence and a second set with no light. Suspecting the glow might be used to entice insects, they put glue on both sets of phoney mushrooms in forest locations where real ones grow, then tracked the beasties that got stuck.

The glowing replicas lured an array of ants, cockroaches, flies, beetles, spiders, harvestmen, slugs, snails and centipedes.

Such creatures, after crawling on a real bioluminescent mushroom, disperse fungal spores around the forest.

Dunlap speculated that many of Earth’s bioluminescent mushrooms likely developed their glow for that purpose.

“Because it has evolved so many times in so many different organisms, each with their own biology, studying bioluminescence gives one a window on living things in all their wonderful diversity, and it sends you off to questions that you did not know existed,  

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Taoiseach Kenny wins concessions on EU plans for emissions

 

TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY’S TOUGH STANCE HAS PAID OFF.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny appears to have secured concessions on carbon emissions reduction targets for Ireland.

At an EU summit Mr Kenny demanded that Ireland be given special treatment because of the country’s large number of cows, which produce methane, a damaging greenhouse gas.

A deal on the table would benefit Ireland as it will go beyond just an emissions-reduction target based on the size of the economy and population.

The new proposal will allow for “agriculture and land use” to be a factor, along with the need to balance the EU’s food production with climate change demands.

Although the details are not yet sorted out, the European Commission will examine the best way of “encouraging the sustainable intensification of food production, while optimising the sector’s contribution to greenhouse gas mitigation and sequestration”.

Government sources said the insertion of the language on agriculture into the deal was hugely significant for Ireland.

The details are expected to be thrashed out after the 2015 United Nations Climate Change conference in Paris.

The Taoiseach had been under pressure from farmers to secure concessions on what they warned could otherwise be a “catastrophic” carbon emissions deal at the summit.

Mr Kenny had taken a tough stance in talks on a deal for carbon-emissions reductions up to 2020 and demanded concessions for Ireland.

He had said he believed the Government should be given special concessions for Ireland’s beef sector and pointed out the dairy sector would also expand when milk quotas were dropped next year.

The EU agreed in 2008 that carbon emissions would be cut by one fifth by the end of the decade, but Mr Kenny was highly critical of this deal. The Taoiseach indicated he would not support the draft deal.

“In Ireland’s case we have a legacy that is truly catastrophic and [the deal] should never have been accepted in the way that it was based on per capita income at a time when our country was in a very different position financially from now. And it means that if the language that is now on the table were to be translated it would mean that whatever government was in office from 2020 would be in a very difficult position,” he said.

The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) said Ireland needed a “fairer climate package” from Europe.

IFA president Eddie Downey said the country had a high carbon-efficient model of food production.

“At this time of increasing global demand for protein-based foods such as beef, it is important that past mistakes in climate talks are not repeated.

“Carbon-efficient countries, such as Ireland, must be encouraged to meet this demand, instead of being displaced by regions that are less carbon efficient,” he said.

Speed limit imposed on wind-farm to stop scaring sheep

 

VEHICLES ON TYRONE WINDFARM MUST KEEP TO 3 MPH, HIGH COURT RULES 

Legal proceedings centre on the competing rights of sheep farmers to graze flocks. Defendants in the case include the descendants of tenants going back as far as 1925.

A High Court judge has imposed a 3mph speed limit on vehicles operating on a mountain windfarm project in a bid to stop sheep being scared.

Mr Justice Deeny also ruled that a renewable energy firm should only drill bore holes at Ballymongan Hill in Co Tyrone when flocks had been taken off for winter.

With potential profits from the project predicted in the region of £15 million, he said those behind the scheme should provide alternative pasturage and bear the costs of moving the animals.

SSE Renewables Developments UK Ltd aims to erect up to nine wind turbines on the 508-acre mountain close to the Donegal border. Planning permission has been granted.

The company has agreed to lease land from the estate of Fitzhenry Augustus Smith, who owned Ballymongan Hill up to his death in 1930.

Legal proceedings centre on the competing rights of sheep farmers to graze their flocks. Defendants in the case include the descendants of tenants going back as far as 1925.

One has a flock of 600 sheep while another keeps 40 animals on the mountain. With the main action yet to reach trial, SSE sought orders restraining the defendant farmers from stopping its workers accessing Ballymongan Hill or interfering with the turbine construction.

Mr Justice Deeny said the work would indisputably interfere with the defendants’ rights. Up to 25 per cent of the area would be affected in the long-term, the court heard.

Dealing with the issue of potential damages, the judge cited predictions by the plaintiffs that £15 million profit would be lost if it could not get on the site now to complete the windfarm by May 2017. A government subsidy scheme is due to be replaced on that date.

Stressing its large-scale project would bring benefits to the neighbourhood, the plaintiffs are promising to create jobs and make an annual local contribution of £161,000.

They have agreed to pay modest income streams to 18 other families with rights on the mountain if and when the windfarm is in operation. But the judge also acknowledged the loss to farmers if any sheep fell down bore holes or fled after being frightened by machinery. Granting the injunction, he said it would cover any pedestrian access to the mountain by company workers.

However, he added: “If they want to take on to the mountain, as they do, the Argo all-terrain vehicle for carrying out seismic tests it is not to be driven at a speed in excess of 3mph . . . a walking pace that should be less likely to scatter or scare sheep.”

Expressing concern at the “urgent desire” to sink bore holes, he said it should only occur when the sheep were off the mountain – normally in the middle of winter.

With farmers having been prepared to leave 250 animals on the hills due to the lack of other land, the judge suggested the plaintiffs provide alternative accommodation. “If the profits of this development really are of the extent claimed by the plaintiffs this would not be unduly onerous,” he said.

Music therapy a practical way to cut depression

  

Music therapy is a practical intervention which involves children writing songs or composing music to express their feelings. 

Music therapy can significantly reduce depression in children, it has been claimed.

The social skills and self esteem of young people suffering emotional, behavioural and developmental problems was dramatically improved when their medical treatment was enhanced by music therapy, according to new research.

It is hoped the study, by Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), will help pave the way for the treatment becoming more mainstream.

Ciara Reilly, chief executive of the Music Therapy Trust which provides the service in Northern Ireland said: “The findings are dramatic and underscore the need for music therapy to be made available as a mainstream treatment option.

“For a long time we have relied on anecdotal evidence and small-scale research findings about how well music therapy works. Now we have robust clinical evidence to show its beneficial effects.”

It is estimated that about 20% of Northern Ireland’s youth population present with a mental health problem before their 18th birthday.

Music therapy is a practical intervention which involves children writing songs or composing music to express their feelings. Guitars and keyboards were the often the most popular choice of instruments for participants.

Karen Diamond, also from the Music Therapy Trust said: “It is a non-verbal intervention. The children do not have to say anything. Instead the therapist may ask the child to play a tune to describe their week or how they feel. And, f or a seven or eight-year-old with a mental health problem words can be difficult at the best of times.”

The study was the largest of its kind anywhere in the UK.

Researchers monitored 251 young people aged between eight and 16 between March 2011 and May of this year.

Participants were divided into two groups with 128 being given the usual care options, while 123 were assigned additional music therapy.

All of the young people were being treated for emotional, developmental or behavioural problems.

The study, which was funded by the Big Lottery fund, found that those who received music therapy had improved communicative and interactive skills, compared to those who only received usual care options.

Early findings suggest that the benefits sustained as a result of music therapy are long term.

Dr Valerie Holmes from the Centre for Public Health, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences and co-researcher, added: “This is the largest study ever to be carried out looking at music therapy’s ability to help this very vulnerable group.

“What we found was that while music therapy improves communication and interaction skills for all children there is significant evidence that it benefits those aged 13 and older.

“At the minute, music therapy is not a mainstream clinical option. This study gives us evidence and we hope that the results will help ensure that music therapy may become a mainstream option for children and young people with mental health difficulties.”

Professor Sam Porter of the School of Nursing and Midwifery at QUB, who led the study, said the results were “hugely significant” in terms of determining treatments.

The research findings will be presented at a conference in Riddel Hall at Queen’s University Belfast today.

Men like it fast and cheap when shopping for their groceries

  

Men are less likely to open their wallets when shopping for food, preferring to rack up the bargains instead, according to research into consumer habits.

While men appear to be more price-conscious, women are more concerned with healthy purchases.

They also admit to spending longer in-store than men, though not by much. Women take an average of 41 minutes to complete the shop, only five minutes longer than men.

Fewer than half of adults make a shopping list and stick to it. On average, journey time to the supermarket takes around 13 minutes. Most of the main grocery shopping takes place between 2pm and 3pm, while most top-up shopping is done at 6pm.

The survey employed the latest in eye-tracking technology, which essentially measures what someone looks at and how long they look at it for.

Shoppers in Cork and Dublin were shown footage of a typical trip to the supermarket taken from a customer’s point of view.

The eye-tracking component then tracked second-by-second eyeball movement and iris focus to see what caught people’s attention the most.

The participants were also asked to fill out questionnaires after watching the video.

The majority of people go grocery shopping less than twice a week, while those who like to buy fresh produce go up to three times a week.

Those over the age of 30 are more likely to buy leading brands, apparently, and are more likely to use loyalty cards or vouchers than younger shoppers.

Those behind the research, Kinetic, Mindshare, and GroupM, wanted to gain insight into consumer shopping patterns, specifically in relation to out-of-home advertising — that which is seen “on the go” in public places.

Gráinne Dilleen, communications director in Kinetic, said the project provided a valuable insight into how consumers interact with this advertising. Hilary Tracey from Mindshare said they can now improve the relationship between products and consumers.

Oldest high-altitude human settlement discovered in Andes

  

Archaeologists excavate a rockshelter in the Peruvian Andes that was used more than 12,000 years ago by human settlers.

The oldest-known evidence of humans living at extremely high altitudes has been unearthed in the Peruvian Andes, archaeologists say.

The sites a rock shelter with traces of Ice Age campfires and rock art, and an open-air workshop with stone tools and fragments are located nearly 14,700 feet above sea level and were occupied roughly 12,000 years ago.

The discovery, which is detailed Oct. 23 in the journal Science, suggests ancient people in South America were living at extremely high altitudes just 2,000 years after humans first reached the continent.

The findings also raise questions about how these early settlers physically adapted to sky-high living.

“Either they genetically adapted really, really fast within 2,000 years to be able to settle this area, or genetic adaptation isn’t necessary at all,” said lead study author Kurt Rademaker, who was a University of Maine visiting assistant professor in anthropology when he conducted the study. [See Images of the High-Altitude Ancient Settlement]

In follow-up work, the team plans to look for more evidence of occupation, such as human remains.

COASTAL CLUE

The recent discovery of these high-altitude artifacts was made possible by work that started in the 1990s. At that time, Rademaker and his colleagues were studying a 13,000-year-old Paleoindian fishing settlement on the coast of Peru called Quebrada Jaguay. There, they found tools made of obsidian, a volcanic rock. There were no rivers or other geologic forces to carry the volcanic rock to the coast, and the closest volcanoes were in the Andes Mountains, roughly 100 miles away, said Rademaker, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tbingen in Germany.

“This obsidian told us that early on, Paleoindians must have gone to the highlands,” Rademaker told Live Science.

Rademaker and his colleagues analyzed the obsidian and determined that it likely came from around the Pucuncho Basin, an arid, cold plateau ringed by 21,000-foot-tall volcanoes, Rademaker said.

THE HIGH LIFE

After years of searching around the plateau, the researchers found a rock shelter with two alcoves, ceilings blackened with soot and walls decorated with rock art. The site also showed evidence of burnt detritus from ancient people’s campsites. The rock shelter was used for thousands of years, starting around 12,400 years ago, and may have been a temporary base camp where herders sheltered from the rain, Rademaker said.

The coastal obsidian point likely came from a nearby outcropping, near what would’ve been an ancient open-air workshop at the time, the researchers said. The workshop contained hundreds of ancient tools, from spear points to scrapers to bifaces, or hand axes, some of which dated to 12,800 years old. The researchers also found large mammal bones from vicua, the wild ancestors to alpacas, similar animals called guanacos, and taruca deer.

It’s still not clear whether the people living along the coast and in the highlands were the same individuals, or whether they maintained trading networks across large distances, Rademaker said. [In Photos: Human Skeleton Sheds Light on First Americans]

EARLY SETTLERS

The findings suggest people were living at high altitudes earlier than previously thought.

“People were really settled in and using this environment at the end of the ice age around 12,400 years ago,” said Michael Waters, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, who was not involved in the study. “They were going back and forth between the coast and this high-altitude site.”

People in modern culture, perhaps because of stories of pioneers going west and getting trapped in the mountains (and eating each other), tend to see the highlands as poor living environments, said Bonnie Pitblado, an archaeologist at the University of Oklahoma, who was not involved in the study.

“There was this cultural stereotype that mountains are just impediments, that they get in the way,” Pitblado told Live Science. But for prehistoric cultures, “mountains are these places with just the most amazing array of resources.”

For instance, the highlands may have had hot springs and ice caves, glacial melt streams and other water sources, and the rock needed for stone tools, such as quartz, chert and obsidian, Pitblado said.

The findings also call into question just what is needed for people to live in high altitudes. At those locations, the air is much cooler and thinner, meaning it holds less oxygen than lower elevations. So, past studies have found that people living at high elevations have genetic adaptations that help them efficiently use oxygen from the thin mountain air, as well as mutations that can shield them from heart disease and strokes caused by chronic mountain sickness.

But the current research suggests that either people evolved these adaptations in just a few thousand years, or that these mutations weren’t necessary for the first inhabitants.