News Ireland daily BLOG by Donie

Wednesday 29th October 2014

Irish retail sales this September 5.9% higher year-on-year

  

Excluding the sale of motors, there was a 3.1% increase in the annual figure

The volume of retail sales rose by 5.9% in September, when compared to the same month last year, according to the CSO.

The volume of retail sales rose by 5.9% in September, when compared to the same month last year, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office(CSO).

However, on a monthly basis, the volume of retail sales increased just 0.1% between August and September of this year.

If motor trades are excluded, there was a decrease of 0.6% in the volume of retail sales in September 2014 when compared with August 2014 and there was an increase of 3.1% in the annual figure.

Goodbody Stockbrokers said retail spending failed to benefit from renewed optimism in September, a month when consumer confidence hit an almost eight year high.

“Given the improvement in sentiment, the muted nature of sales in September is somewhat of a surprise. However, concerns about water charges or possible changes in the Budget may have played a role,” Goodbody chief economist Dermot O’Leary said.

The sectors with the largest month on month volume increases included hardware, paints and glass (+4.9%) and fuel (+3.3%).

The sectors with the largest monthly decreases were furniture & lighting (-3.7%), books, newspapers and stationery (-2.5%) and bars (-2.3%).

Ex-PD minister Liz O’Donnell to chair Road Safety Authority

 

Nomination comes as deaths on Ireland’s roads show increase

Liz O Donnell, former deputy leader of the Progressive Democrats, is to be nominated as chair of the Road Safety Authority, replacing Gay Byrne.

Former Progressive Democrat minister Liz O’Donnell has been nominated as the new head of the Road Safety Authority.

In a statement issued after a Cabinet meeting today, Minister for Transport Paschal Donohoe he had appointed Ms O’Donnell as Chairperson Designate of the RSA for a period of five years.

M/s O’Donnell will become the chairman designate pending an appearance before the Oireachtas Committee in Transport to confirm the appointment.

She is filling the position relinquished by Gay Byrne, who stepped down at the beginning of September after eight years in the role.

Byrne completed one full five-year term as chairman and was asked to remain in his position by the then minister for transport, Leo Varadkar, and did so for three years until he reached his eightieth birthday.

He was asked to remain in the position for a further two years but declined.

Mr Donohoe said the appointment was being made “in advance of the introduction of new procedures for State Board appointments, in view of the urgent need to fill the vacant post which is crucial to our efforts to combat road deaths.”

Ms O’Donnell’s appointment comes as the number of children killed on Ireland’s roads more than doubled this year. Mr Donohoe recently said the surge was “incredibly worrying” after years of decreases in child road deaths.

She is seen as being a very strong media performer and also, crucially, has no links to either coalition party and therefore the appointment is unlikely to prompt allegations of cronyism.

During his tenure, Mr Byrne repeatedly criticised the impact of the reduction in Garda resources for the Traffic Corps.

Since the RSA was set up in 2006, road fatalities dropped from 368 to a record low of 162 in 2012. However, fatalities rose to 190 last year and are on course to increase again this year.

Ms O’Donnell provides consultancy, lecturing and advisory services for corporate, educational and various other organisations in the field of government relations and public affairs and is an opinion columnist in the Irish Independent newspaper.

She was born in Dublin, studied at Trinity College Law School, and after graduation embarked on a career as a lawyer. She was first elected to Dublin City Council in 1991 for the Rathmines Ward.

She had earlier been vice chair of the Women’s Political Association and worked on the presidential campaign of Mary Robinson.

She was first elected to the Dáil in 1992 and served as a Progressive Democrats TD for Dublin South from 1992 to 2007.

Her career in the Dáil began as PD spokeswoman on health and social welfare, from 1992-93.

Following the June 1997 general election, she was involved in negotiating the programme for the coalition government between Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, along with her then party colleague, Robert Molloy.

In July 1997, she was appointed Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs with responsibility for Overseas Development Assistance and Human Rights.

In this capacity, she had a role in Anglo-Irish relations. She was a member of the government’s negotiating team in the multi-party talks at Stormont, which culminated in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

In 2007, she was promoted to Cabinet as Minister of State to the Government on the retirement of Robert Molloy.

She also served as chief whip and deputy leader of the PDs.

M/s O’Donnell retired from politics following the PD meltdown at the 2007 general election.

Vocal tones with deep voices ‘scare others more’

  

The vocal patterns of President Francois Hollande of France were among those studied by scientists

If you want to scare others into submission, speak with a deep, dynamic voice that varies widely in pitch.

On the other hand, vocal tones that are higher on average with a narrower pitch range are likely to mark you out as sincere and trustworthy.

While leaders throughout history have instinctively known how to manipulate people with their voices, scientists are now learning the secrets of the dark art.

A twist of fate allowed researchers to study the vocal keys to charisma in one man, the right wing Italian politician Umberto Bossi.

In 2004 Mr Bossi, former leader of the Northern League Party, suffered a severe stroke that permanently altered his speech.

Whereas before he had been perceived as dominant and authoritarian, suddenly the Italian firebrand came over as strangely benevolent.

The reason was that after the stroke his voice became “flat”, varying little in pitch.

Dr Rosario Signorello, from the University of California at Los Angeles, said: “I collected speeches of him before and after the stroke, and I discovered that before the accident, he was perceived as an authoritarian leader, because his voice was characterised by low average of fundamental frequency, normal modulation of the pitch contour, a wide pitch range, a lot of perturbation in voice and a lot of creakiness and harshness.

“The stroke caused him to have a very flat pitch contour, so even if he had the harshness, even if he had the creakiness, his pitch contour was very flat.

“I submitted his voice to the listeners and he was perceived as a benevolent and competent leader, which is very different from the authoritarian perception. In that case, the pitch contour played a very important role.”

Dr Signorello’s team conducted further research using a technique called “delexicalisation” which strips out words from a speech while retaining the speaker’s acoustic properties.

The scientists found that one of the most important charismatic influences was fundamental frequency, or “F0” – the lowest average rate of vocal cord vibration.

Another was the range of frequency variation in a voice.

Comparisons were made between the way the voices of Italian, French and Portuguese politicians – namely Luigi de Magaistris, Francois Hollande and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – were perceived by listeners.

Dr Signorello concluded that someone who speaks with a low average F0 and wide pitch range is seen as dominant and threatening. Conversely, a higher F0 and narrow pitch range conveys the idea of “sincere and reassuring” leadership.

However, the way different people responded to leaders’ voices was also affected by cultural factors.

“The Italians seem to need a low-pitched voice, and the French a high-pitched one, because of cultural reasons,” said Dr Signorello, who presented his findings at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Indianapolis.

“The Italians seem to want a more dominant leader, and the French a more competent leader.”

He now plans to extend the research to monkeys and apes.

“What we want to do is understand how the use of the F0 helps the non-human primate individuals to emerge and be recognized by the group and understand how these individuals use their voice behaviour to create different patterns and convey leadership,” he said. ” The hypothesis is that the biological function of charismatic voice is also cross-species.”

Laura Whitmore wants her Sisters to Misstache for Movember

 

Television presenter Laura Whitmore launches Aussie’s Misstache for Movember, a campaign for women to support and raise awareness of the men’s health charity, in central London.

TV presenter Laura Whitmore is encouraging women around the country to “tache up” and join the Misstache Movement to support Movember.

Whitmore wants Irish ladies to pose for the cameras while sporting a makeshift moustache by wrapping a lock of hair under their nose.

Girls can join in with Movember too – Laura Whitmore shows off her ‘Misstache’:00 / 00:33

“Show your support by uploading your picture on social media using the hashtags #Misstache for #Movember,” she said.

“Together with the Mo Bros we can make Movember bigger than ever.”

The campaign is being run in conjunction with Aussie hair products.

Movember, which sees men grow a variety of moustaches over the course of 30 days, was first established in Australia in 2003 to promote men’s health.

Since then, more than four million Mo Bros and Mo Sistas have supported the annual campaign which has raised in excess of €409m since it was first established.

Whether it’s a handlebar, pencil or Fu Manchu, organisers are asking men to ditch the razor for Movember.

Baby birds struggle to survive with noise pollution

  

It turns out that nestlings, baby birds, could be suffering from noisy environments. Because nestlings depend on their parents for both food and protection, vocal communication is key-something that could be drowned out if the surroundings are too loud.

It turns out that nestlings, baby birds, could be suffering from noisy environments. Because nestlings depend on their parents for both food and protection, vocal communication is key-something that could be drowned out if the surroundings are too loud.

In order to see how ambient noise might impact nestlings and their survival, the researchers presented nestling tree swallows with audio recordings of a parent warning of a predator or announcing a food deliver. Then, the scientists compared the responses that the baby birds had to the sounds when played with recorded background noise or in a quiet environment.

Faced with competition from hungry siblings, nestlings instinctively react quickly to any sign that a parent might have food, vigorously begging to attract attention. Yet this same begging puts them at risk of misidentifying predators as parents.

In the end, the researchers found that the background noise reduced the nestlings’ responsiveness to both feeding calls and alarm calls. They often failed to beg after hearing a feeding call and also failed to fall silent when hearing a warning call. Not only that, but they received little assistance from parents, who did not appear to change their calls in noisier situations.

“This idea had been neglected, perhaps because parents and nestlings are so close to each other when they communicate that you think error wouldn’t be an issue,” said Andy Horn, one of the researchers, in a news release. “We usually associate declines in animal populations with our physical destruction of habitat, but the noise we make is another threat that we can’t ignore.”

The findings reveal the background noise could be impacting bird populations. This, in turn, highlights the need to reduce noise pollution in certain areas, especially when it comes to conservation efforts.