In addition to The Sunday Times, have written a number of features for The Irish Times and The Sunday Business Post on the topics of science, health, technology and the environment.
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[SCIENCE] THE IRISH TIMES – Climate change: ‘It’s really hard to remain hopeful’
The health impacts are already at crisis levels in the most vulnerable countries
♦ Maria Delaney ♦ 17 October 2019 ♦ Science Page ♦ 1,217 words
Violent storms, droughts and wildfires regularly hit our news screens but the effect that climate change is having on our health, and how that will impact in differing ways around the world, has not got much airtime.
Prof Pat Goodman of Technological University Dublin is part of a team of scientists based across 28 countries who recently looked at the effect increasing temperatures will have on deaths related to either heatwaves or cold snaps. They found that increased levels of global carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, led to increased mortality in most countries due to heat-related deaths.
Ireland was among just four countries to buck this trend. “Projections for Ireland are that if temperatures go up, less people will die in winter and more people will die in summer but the net effect is that we have less people dying,” according to Goodman. This is because Ireland has a high winter mortality at present…
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[TECH] THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST – Time to get smart on energy use
Can smart energy systems save costs as well as the environment? Maria Delaney looks at Irish products that are changing the way businesses consume energy
♦ Maria Delaney ♦ 07 July 2019 ♦ Connected Magazine ♦ 1,025 words
Violent storms, droughts and wildfires regularly hit our news screens but the effect that climate change is having on our health, and how that will impact in differing ways around the world, has not got much airtime.
Prof Pat Goodman of Technological University Dublin is part of a team of scientists based across 28 countries who recently looked at the effect increasing temperatures will have on deaths related to either heatwaves or cold snaps. They found that increased levels of global carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, led to increased mortality in most countries due to heat-related deaths.
Ireland was among just four countries to buck this trend. “Projections for Ireland are that if temperatures go up, less people will die in winter and more people will die in summer but the net effect is that we have less people dying,” according to Goodman. This is because Ireland has a high winter mortality at present….
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[SCIENCE] THE IRISH TIMES – Digesting sea lettuce: why our bioenergy isn’t blooming
In Northern Ireland, incentives are driving development in renewable replacements for fossil fuel, but the South is playing catch-up, and could well pay a big price in the form of EU fines
♦ Maria Delaney ♦ 09 October 2014 ♦ Science Page ♦ 1,104 words
Many bioenergy researchers around Ireland have had to become policy experts as they attempt to navigate the complex world of regulation and legislation in order to bring their ideas from experiments to commercial models.
“The technological development is deeply interlinked with the policy, regulatory and commercial frameworks,” says Bart Bonsall, the technology leader at the Technology Centre for Biorefining and Bioenergy. “It is virtually inseparable.”
The centre was set up to develop new technologies for this sector. Bonsall says they had to adapt, and now they work on research and “all of the enabling frameworks that facilitate the deployment of the technology and the development of the market”. This includes implementing this in industries such as dairy, water, farming and breweries…
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[HEALTH] THE IRISH TIMES – Bed occupancy far above safe levels
In a survey of 18 public hospitals, only three had occupancy rates lower than the OECD’s recommended limits
♦ Maria Delaney ♦ 23 September 2014 ♦ Health + Family ♦ Page 3 ♦ 1,089 words
New figures reveal that Ireland’s main public hospitals are still running at a bed occupancy rate far above what is considered safe. An investigation of 18 large acute public hospitals discovered that a majority were operating above the recommended 85 per cent of bed occupancy last year, with an average occupancy of 94 per cent.
“This is the best litmus test of the volume of work facing the health system at the moment,” says Liam Doran, deputy general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO). He says patient care is comprised, staff are overworked and procedures are often delayed when a hospital runs at such a high level of bed occupancy.
Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) highlighted a number of countries, including Ireland, that were above the recommended 85 per cent limit of safe occupancy…
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[SCIENCE] THE IRISH TIMES – The global march of antibiotic-resistant bugs
While media attention in Ireland has primarily focused on MRSA, there are many other forms of multidrug-resistant bacteria on the rise here and around the world
♦ Maria Delaney ♦ 14 August 2014 ♦ Science ♦ Page 12 ♦ 1,008 words
Antibiotic resistance is not news to anyone in Ireland: we have lived with alarming levels of MRSA in our hospitals for many years.
The World Health Organisation recently published its first global report on antimicrobial resistance. In the report, Dr Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general for health security, discussed how resistance has “reached alarming levels in many parts of the world”. Many of the available treatment options for common infections are now becoming ineffective.
While media attention in Ireland has primarily focused on MRSA, there are many other forms of multidrug-resistant bacteria in this country…
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[HEALTH] THE IRISH TIMES – Special delivery: Microbes fresh from Ireland
As there are not enough reference labs in Ireland, samples have to be sent to up to 11 locations in the UK
♦ Maria Delaney ♦ 01 July 2014 ♦ Health + Family ♦ Page 6 ♦ 1,237 words
What happens to the samples you give in hospital? Patients are routinely asked to give samples of urine, sputum and blood. After a few hours, or sometimes a few weeks, you get the results. In the meantime, the bugs often go on a journey to different corners of Ireland or the UK. The samples are first tested by hospital laboratories but if a particular infection or disease is suspected, they are sent to reference labs that use more sophisticated equipment. These complete additional analysis including genetic testing.
Though a number of reference labs have been established here, Irish hospitals still post samples to 11 locations in the UK. The most recent version of the Public Health Laboratory’s Clinical Microbiology User Manual lists 115 reference lab tests. Just over 40 per cent of these tests can be completed here, and the rest are done in the UK…
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[ENVIRONMENT] THE IRISH TIMES – A total boar or a pig’s pedigree?
The wild boar has its champions, but the consensus is that it is an invasive, not native, species
♦ Maria Delaney ♦ 04 May 2013 ♦ Weekend ♦ Page 6 ♦ 986 words
‘Go against the boar, but it shall be as if you hunted the sea or the wind. Your spears shall break, and your hounds fly and whimper at your heels.”
The boar has always been a troublemaker. It is entangled in Irish folklore, in which it kills the mythical warrior Diarmuid. Wild boar disappeared from our forests hundreds of years before Yeats recounted this tale. Now, with numerous sightings around the country, is the boar of ancient prose living among us again?
The National Biodiversity Data Centre has recorded 27 appearances since 2009. The sightings have come from around the country, from Waterford to Roscommon. Although the total number is unknown…
Maria Delaney 