The search for Flight MH370 is
yet to target a "hotspot" most likely to be the crash site in the
Indian Ocean as priority was given to investigate "pings" that has led
to a dead end, a UK satellite firm claimed today. The UK satellite
company Inmarsat told the BBC that the search for the missing Malaysia
Airlines jet was yet to go to the area its scientists think is the
plane's most likely crash site. Inmarsat's communications with the
aircraft are seen as the best clues to the whereabouts of Flight MH370.
The hunt for the lost jet is currently taking a short break while ships
map the Indian Ocean floor. When the search resumes, the Inmarsat
"hotspot" will be a key focus along with a number of areas being fed
into the investigation by other groups. Inmarsat's scientists could
tell from the timings and frequencies of the connection signals that the
plane had to have come down in the southern Indian Ocean. An
Australian naval vessel was sent to investigate the region west of
Perth, and followed up leads as they emerged. The Ocean Shield ship
never got to the Inmarsat hotspot because it picked up sonar detections
some distance away that it thought were coming from the jet's submerged
flight recorders. The priority was given to investigate these "pings",
and two months were spent searching 850 sq km of sea bed. Ultimately, it
turned out to be a dead end. "It was by no means an unrealistic
location but it was further to the north east than our area of highest
probability," Chris Ashton at Inmarsat was quoted as saying. The
Beijing-bound Boeing 777-200 - carrying 239 people, including five
Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals - mysteriously
vanished on March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. It was the
brief, hourly electronic connections between the jet and one of
Inmarsat's spacecraft that are currently driving the search. Inmarsat's
experts used their data to plot a series of arcs across the Indian
Ocean where its systems made contact with the jet. By modeling a flight
with a constant speed and a constant heading consistent with the plane
being flown by autopilot - the team found one flight path that lined up
with all its data. "We can identify a path that matches exactly with
all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and
lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a
sort of a hotspot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely
area is," Ashton said.
Difficulty or inability to write a coherent text message, even in people who have no problem speaking, may become a "vital" tool in diagnosing a type of crippling stroke, according to a new research. Scientists at Henry Ford Hospital focused on a 40-year-old man visiting the metro Detroit area on business who showed signs of "dystextia," a recently coined term for incoherent text messaging that can sometimes be confused with autocorrect garble. But in his case, the man saw nothing wrong with the garble. The patient had no problem with a routine bedside test of his language abilities - including fluency of speech, reading, writing, comprehension and other factors. However, when asked to type a simple text message, he not only produced garble, but he was unable to see it as such. Despite showing only slight facial asymmetry and no other symptoms, doctors determined the man had suffered an acute ischemic stroke, in which a clot or other blockage cuts off blood supply t...
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