Unmanned submarine to be deployed to search for missing plane

Perth: Multi-nation search teams hunting for the missing Malaysian plane said they will stop listening for pings coming from the floor of the Indian Ocean and now deploy an unmanned submarine to track down the jet’s black box.

The decision was taken after no underwater pulses were detected in almost a week. The last of the four other signals was detected on Tuesday night.

“We haven’t had a single detection in six days. It’s time to go underwater,” Australian chief search coordinator Air Chief Marshall (retd.) Angus Houston said, as the search for the missing jet entered into 38th day.

The Bluefin-21, a probe equipped with side-scan sonar, will be deployed by this afternoon. Side-scan sonar is an acoustic technology that creates pictures from the reflections of sound rather than light, the CNN reported.

Each deployment will last 24 hours. It will take two hours for the Bluefin-21 to get down to the bottom of the ocean, it will scour the ocean bed for 16 hours, and take another two hours to resurface. It will take another four hours to download and analyze the data collected, he said.

Houston warned that the submersible search would be a long process that could yield no results. “It may not,” he said. “This will be a slow and painstaking process.”

Finding black the black box is crucial to know what happened on March 8 before the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals, mysteriously vanished after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

The batteries powering the black box are certified to be working for 30 days, but can still provide weak signals for some more days. Stored in a plane’s tail, they are designed to begin sending off distinct, high-pitched signals as soon as they come in contact with water.

Meanwhile, the Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield detected an oil slick last evening, but it is unclear where the oil came from. Two litres have been collected for examination, Houston said.

“I stress the source of the oil has yet to be determined but the oil slick is approximately 5,500 meters downwind... from the vicinity of the detections of the TPL on Ocean Shield,” Houston said, referring to the pings detected by the towed pinger locater.

According to Joint Agency Coordination Centre statement, “the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area totalling approximately 47,644 square kilometres.”

The mystery of the missing plane continued to baffle aviation and security authorities who have so far not succeeded in tracking the aircraft despite deploying hi-tech radar and other gadgets.

Unmanned submarine to be deployed to search for missing plane

Perth: Multi-nation search teams hunting for the missing Malaysian plane said they will stop listening for pings coming from the floor of the Indian Ocean and now deploy an unmanned submarine to track down the jet’s black box.

The decision was taken after no underwater pulses were detected in almost a week. The last of the four other signals was detected on Tuesday night.

“We haven’t had a single detection in six days. It’s time to go underwater,” Australian chief search coordinator Air Chief Marshall (retd.) Angus Houston said, as the search for the missing jet entered into 38th day.

The Bluefin-21, a probe equipped with side-scan sonar, will be deployed by this afternoon. Side-scan sonar is an acoustic technology that creates pictures from the reflections of sound rather than light, the CNN reported.

Each deployment will last 24 hours. It will take two hours for the Bluefin-21 to get down to the bottom of the ocean, it will scour the ocean bed for 16 hours, and take another two hours to resurface. It will take another four hours to download and analyze the data collected, he said.

Houston warned that the submersible search would be a long process that could yield no results. “It may not,” he said. “This will be a slow and painstaking process.”

Finding black the black box is crucial to know what happened on March 8 before the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals, mysteriously vanished after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

The batteries powering the black box are certified to be working for 30 days, but can still provide weak signals for some more days. Stored in a plane’s tail, they are designed to begin sending off distinct, high-pitched signals as soon as they come in contact with water.

Meanwhile, the Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield detected an oil slick last evening, but it is unclear where the oil came from. Two litres have been collected for examination, Houston said.

“I stress the source of the oil has yet to be determined but the oil slick is approximately 5,500 meters downwind... from the vicinity of the detections of the TPL on Ocean Shield,” Houston said, referring to the pings detected by the towed pinger locater.

According to Joint Agency Coordination Centre statement, “the Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area totalling approximately 47,644 square kilometres.”

The mystery of the missing plane continued to baffle aviation and security authorities who have so far not succeeded in tracking the aircraft despite deploying hi-tech radar and other gadgets.

Unlocked: How heredity, environment affect gene expression

Washington:Everyone has the same set of genes and it is difficult to determine which genes are heritable or controlled by your DNA versus those that may be affected by the environment. Now, no more.
In a path-breaking research, researchers have taken the first steps toward creating a roadmap that may help scientists narrow down the genetic cause of numerous diseases.

The work also sheds new light on how heredity and environment can affect gene expression.

'Teasing out the difference between heredity and environment is key to narrowing the field when you are looking for a genetic relationship to a particular disease,' explained Fred Wright, a professor of statistics and biological sciences at North Carolina State University.

Pinpointing the genetic causes of common diseases is not easy as multiple genes may be involved with a disease.

Moreover, disease-causing variants in DNA often do not act directly, but by activating nearby genes.

Wright along with Patrick Sullivan from UNC-Chapel Hill analysed blood sample data from 2,752 adult twins (both identical and fraternal) and an additional 1,895 participants from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety.

For all 20,000 individual genes, they determined whether those genes were heritable - controlled by the DNA 'dimmer switch' - or largely affected by environment.

A 'dimmer switch' means thst some people may have a particular gene turned all the way up, while others have it only turned halfway on, completely off, or somewhere in between.

Identical twins have identical DNA so if a gene is heritable, its expression will be more similar in identical twins than in fraternal twins.

'This process allowed us to create a database of heritable genes which we could then compare with genes that have been implicated in disease risk,' Wright said.

'We saw that heritable genes are more likely to be associated with disease - something that can help other researchers determine which genes to focus on in future studies, Sullivan added.

The study, which appeared in the journal Nature Genetics, is by far the largest twin study of gene expression ever published, enabling researchers to make a roadmap of genes versus environment.

IANS

Unlocked: How heredity, environment affect gene expression

Washington:Everyone has the same set of genes and it is difficult to determine which genes are heritable or controlled by your DNA versus those that may be affected by the environment. Now, no more.
In a path-breaking research, researchers have taken the first steps toward creating a roadmap that may help scientists narrow down the genetic cause of numerous diseases.

The work also sheds new light on how heredity and environment can affect gene expression.

'Teasing out the difference between heredity and environment is key to narrowing the field when you are looking for a genetic relationship to a particular disease,' explained Fred Wright, a professor of statistics and biological sciences at North Carolina State University.

Pinpointing the genetic causes of common diseases is not easy as multiple genes may be involved with a disease.

Moreover, disease-causing variants in DNA often do not act directly, but by activating nearby genes.

Wright along with Patrick Sullivan from UNC-Chapel Hill analysed blood sample data from 2,752 adult twins (both identical and fraternal) and an additional 1,895 participants from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety.

For all 20,000 individual genes, they determined whether those genes were heritable - controlled by the DNA 'dimmer switch' - or largely affected by environment.

A 'dimmer switch' means thst some people may have a particular gene turned all the way up, while others have it only turned halfway on, completely off, or somewhere in between.

Identical twins have identical DNA so if a gene is heritable, its expression will be more similar in identical twins than in fraternal twins.

'This process allowed us to create a database of heritable genes which we could then compare with genes that have been implicated in disease risk,' Wright said.

'We saw that heritable genes are more likely to be associated with disease - something that can help other researchers determine which genes to focus on in future studies, Sullivan added.

The study, which appeared in the journal Nature Genetics, is by far the largest twin study of gene expression ever published, enabling researchers to make a roadmap of genes versus environment.

IANS

Oil slick detected in flight MH370 search area

PERTH, Australia: An Australian ship leading the hunt for missing Malaysian jet flight MH370 will deploy a mini-sub 'as soon as possible', the head of the search said on Monday.

'Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 as soon as possible,' said Angus Houston, who fronts the Joint Agency Coordination Centre.

Houston said that in the hunt for the plane's black box transmissions the last signal was logged six days ago.

'We haven't had a single detection in six days so I guess it's time to go underwater,' he said at a press conference in Perth.

An oil slick had also been spotted in the search area, Houston said, with around two litres of fuel collected for testing.

'I stress the source of the oil is yet to be determined but the oil slick is approximately 5,500 metres downwind ... from the vicinity of the detections picked up by the towed pinger locator on Ocean Shield,' he said.

It would be a number of days before the oil could be conclusively tested ashore, but Houston said he did not think it was from a search vessel.

He emphasised that it was 38 days since the Boeing 777 vanished on March 8 and the black box batteries had a shelf life of only 30 days.

The US-made Bluefin-21, a 4.93-metre (16.2 feet) long sonar device will now scour the seabed.

The sonar device, which weighs 750 kilograms, can operate at a depth of up to 4,500 metres — roughly the depth of the ocean floor where the pings were detected. AFP

Oil slick detected in flight MH370 search area

PERTH, Australia: An Australian ship leading the hunt for missing Malaysian jet flight MH370 will deploy a mini-sub 'as soon as possible', the head of the search said on Monday.

'Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locator later today and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 as soon as possible,' said Angus Houston, who fronts the Joint Agency Coordination Centre.

Houston said that in the hunt for the plane's black box transmissions the last signal was logged six days ago.

'We haven't had a single detection in six days so I guess it's time to go underwater,' he said at a press conference in Perth.

An oil slick had also been spotted in the search area, Houston said, with around two litres of fuel collected for testing.

'I stress the source of the oil is yet to be determined but the oil slick is approximately 5,500 metres downwind ... from the vicinity of the detections picked up by the towed pinger locator on Ocean Shield,' he said.

It would be a number of days before the oil could be conclusively tested ashore, but Houston said he did not think it was from a search vessel.

He emphasised that it was 38 days since the Boeing 777 vanished on March 8 and the black box batteries had a shelf life of only 30 days.

The US-made Bluefin-21, a 4.93-metre (16.2 feet) long sonar device will now scour the seabed.

The sonar device, which weighs 750 kilograms, can operate at a depth of up to 4,500 metres — roughly the depth of the ocean floor where the pings were detected. AFP

Missing Malaysian plane: Flight MH370 search goes underwater

PERTH: Search crews will for the first time send a robotic submarine deep into the Indian Ocean on Monday to try to determine whether underwater signals detected by sound-locating equipment are from the missing Malaysian jet's black boxes, the leader of the search effort said.

The crew on board the Australian navy's Ocean Shield will launch the unmanned underwater vehicle on Monday evening, said Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search off Australia's west coast. The Bluefin 21 autonomous sub can create a three-dimensional sonar map of the area to chart any debris on the seafloor.

The move comes after crews picked up a series of underwater sounds over the past two weeks that were consistent with an aircraft's black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings. The devices have beacons that emit 'pings' so they can be more easily found, but the beacons' batteries last only about a month, and it has been more than a month since the plane vanished.

'We haven't had a single detection in six days, so I guess it's time to go under water,' Houston said.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised hopes last week when he said authorities were 'very confident' the four underwater signals that have been detected are coming from the black boxes on Flight 370, which disappeared March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

But Houston warned that while the signals are a promising lead, the public needs to be realistic about the challenges facing search crews, who are contending with an extremely remote, deep patch of ocean - an area he dubbed 'new to man.'

'I would caution you against raising hopes that the deployment of the autonomous underwater vehicle will result in the detection of the aircraft wreckage. It may not,' Houston said. 'However, this is the best lead we have, and it must be pursued vigorously. Again, I emphasize that this will be a slow and painstaking process.'

The Ocean Shield has been dragging a US Navy device called a towed pinger locator through the water to listen for any sounds from the black boxes' beacons. Over the past 10 days, the equipment has picked up four separate signals.

The Bluefin sub takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator, and the two devices can't be used at the same time. Crews were hoping to detect additional signals before sending down the sub, so they could triangulate the source and zero in on where exactly the black boxes may be.

But it has been 38 days since the plane disappeared, and search crews haven't picked up any new sounds since Tuesday, suggesting that the devices' batteries may now be dead. That is why officials will now begin using the Bluefin, Houston said.

The submarine will take 24 hours to complete each mission: two hours to dive to the bottom, 16 hours to search the seafloor, two hours to return to the surface, and four hours to download the data, Houston said. In its first deployment, it will search a 40-square-kilometer (15-square-mile) section of seafloor.

The black boxes could contain the key to unraveling the mystery of what happened to Flight 370 after it disappeared with 239 people on board. Investigators believe the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on a flight path calculated from its contacts with a satellite and analysis of its speed and fuel capacity. But they still don't know why.

Meanwhile, officials were investigating an oil slick not far from the area where the underwater sounds were detected, Houston said. Crews have collected a sample of the oil and are sending it back to Australia for analysis, a process that will take several days.

The oil does not appear to be from any of the ships in the area, but Houston cautioned against jumping to conclusions about its source.

A visual search for debris on the ocean surface was continuing on Monday over 47,600 square kilometers (18,400 square miles) of water about 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the west coast city of Perth. A total of 12 planes and 15 ships would join the two searches.

But Houston said that the visual search operation would be ending in the next two to three days. Officials haven't found a single piece of debris linked to the plane, and Houston said the chances that any would be have 'greatly diminished.'

'We've got no visual objects,' he said. 'The only thing we have left at this stage is the four transmissions and an oil slick in the same vicinity, so we will investigate those to their conclusion.'

Complicating matters further is the depth of the ocean in the search area. The seafloor is about 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) below the surface, which is the deepest the Bluefin can dive. Officials are looking for other vehicles that could help to retrieve any wreckage, should the Bluefin find any.

Searchers are also contending with a thick layer of silt on the bottom that is tens of meters deep in places, which could hide debris that has sunk.

US Navy Capt. Mark Matthews said the silt may not have hidden everything, however.

'Our experience shows that there will be some debris on top of the silt and you should be able to see indications of a debris field,' Matthews said. 'But every search is different.'

A British vessel, the HMS Echo, has equipment on board that can help to map the seafloor, which is more flat than mountainous, Houston said. AP

Missing Malaysian plane: Flight MH370 search goes underwater

PERTH: Search crews will for the first time send a robotic submarine deep into the Indian Ocean on Monday to try to determine whether underwater signals detected by sound-locating equipment are from the missing Malaysian jet's black boxes, the leader of the search effort said.

The crew on board the Australian navy's Ocean Shield will launch the unmanned underwater vehicle on Monday evening, said Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search off Australia's west coast. The Bluefin 21 autonomous sub can create a three-dimensional sonar map of the area to chart any debris on the seafloor.

The move comes after crews picked up a series of underwater sounds over the past two weeks that were consistent with an aircraft's black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings. The devices have beacons that emit 'pings' so they can be more easily found, but the beacons' batteries last only about a month, and it has been more than a month since the plane vanished.

'We haven't had a single detection in six days, so I guess it's time to go under water,' Houston said.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised hopes last week when he said authorities were 'very confident' the four underwater signals that have been detected are coming from the black boxes on Flight 370, which disappeared March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

But Houston warned that while the signals are a promising lead, the public needs to be realistic about the challenges facing search crews, who are contending with an extremely remote, deep patch of ocean - an area he dubbed 'new to man.'

'I would caution you against raising hopes that the deployment of the autonomous underwater vehicle will result in the detection of the aircraft wreckage. It may not,' Houston said. 'However, this is the best lead we have, and it must be pursued vigorously. Again, I emphasize that this will be a slow and painstaking process.'

The Ocean Shield has been dragging a US Navy device called a towed pinger locator through the water to listen for any sounds from the black boxes' beacons. Over the past 10 days, the equipment has picked up four separate signals.

The Bluefin sub takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator, and the two devices can't be used at the same time. Crews were hoping to detect additional signals before sending down the sub, so they could triangulate the source and zero in on where exactly the black boxes may be.

But it has been 38 days since the plane disappeared, and search crews haven't picked up any new sounds since Tuesday, suggesting that the devices' batteries may now be dead. That is why officials will now begin using the Bluefin, Houston said.

The submarine will take 24 hours to complete each mission: two hours to dive to the bottom, 16 hours to search the seafloor, two hours to return to the surface, and four hours to download the data, Houston said. In its first deployment, it will search a 40-square-kilometer (15-square-mile) section of seafloor.

The black boxes could contain the key to unraveling the mystery of what happened to Flight 370 after it disappeared with 239 people on board. Investigators believe the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on a flight path calculated from its contacts with a satellite and analysis of its speed and fuel capacity. But they still don't know why.

Meanwhile, officials were investigating an oil slick not far from the area where the underwater sounds were detected, Houston said. Crews have collected a sample of the oil and are sending it back to Australia for analysis, a process that will take several days.

The oil does not appear to be from any of the ships in the area, but Houston cautioned against jumping to conclusions about its source.

A visual search for debris on the ocean surface was continuing on Monday over 47,600 square kilometers (18,400 square miles) of water about 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of the west coast city of Perth. A total of 12 planes and 15 ships would join the two searches.

But Houston said that the visual search operation would be ending in the next two to three days. Officials haven't found a single piece of debris linked to the plane, and Houston said the chances that any would be have 'greatly diminished.'

'We've got no visual objects,' he said. 'The only thing we have left at this stage is the four transmissions and an oil slick in the same vicinity, so we will investigate those to their conclusion.'

Complicating matters further is the depth of the ocean in the search area. The seafloor is about 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) below the surface, which is the deepest the Bluefin can dive. Officials are looking for other vehicles that could help to retrieve any wreckage, should the Bluefin find any.

Searchers are also contending with a thick layer of silt on the bottom that is tens of meters deep in places, which could hide debris that has sunk.

US Navy Capt. Mark Matthews said the silt may not have hidden everything, however.

'Our experience shows that there will be some debris on top of the silt and you should be able to see indications of a debris field,' Matthews said. 'But every search is different.'

A British vessel, the HMS Echo, has equipment on board that can help to map the seafloor, which is more flat than mountainous, Houston said. AP

Missing plane's black box batteries may have died

PERTH: Following four strong underwater signals in the past week, all has gone quiet in the hunt for the missing Malaysian airline, meaning the batteries on the all-important black boxes may have finally died.

Despite having no new pings to go on, crews are continuing their search on Sunday for debris and any sounds that could still be emanating. They’re desperately trying to pinpoint where the Boeing 777 could be amid an enormous patch of Deep Ocean.

No new electronic pings have been heard since April 8, and the batteries powering the locator beacons on the jet’s black box recorders may already be dead. They only last about a month, and that window has passed. Once officials are confident no more sounds will be heard, a robotic submersible will be sent down.

Missing plane's black box batteries may have died

PERTH: Following four strong underwater signals in the past week, all has gone quiet in the hunt for the missing Malaysian airline, meaning the batteries on the all-important black boxes may have finally died.

Despite having no new pings to go on, crews are continuing their search on Sunday for debris and any sounds that could still be emanating. They’re desperately trying to pinpoint where the Boeing 777 could be amid an enormous patch of Deep Ocean.

No new electronic pings have been heard since April 8, and the batteries powering the locator beacons on the jet’s black box recorders may already be dead. They only last about a month, and that window has passed. Once officials are confident no more sounds will be heard, a robotic submersible will be sent down.