WASHINGTON, Apr 18: A study into how the Pacific Ocean leaks into the Indian Ocean has revealed details which researchers say could improve climate predictions.
This so-called Tasman leakage in the south of Australia is the second-largest link between the Pacific and Indian oceans after the Indonesian through-flow to the country’s north, according to an international team led by University of New South Wales.
Water travels through the world’s oceans along great loops driven by massive and often deep currents in a process known as the global thermohaline circulation, said the study’s lead author, Dr Erik Van Sebille.
Acting over millennial time scales, the global thermohaline circulation can exert significant influence on global climate variability. Because the Tasman leakage acts as a bottleneck in the Pacific-to-Indian flow, changes in this pathway can have significant impact on the global thermohaline circulation, say the researchers.
Additionally, the Tasman leakage could also have a direct effect on both the regional Australian climate and the availability of nutrients in the waters of Great Australian Bight, which in turn could affect marine ecosystems in these areas, the ‘Geophysical Research Letters’ journal reported.
Better understanding of this bottleneck in the global ocean has the potential to improve the accuracy of climate predictions, say the researchers.
The team used a high-resolution ocean circulation model to determine how much of the water flowing in the East Australia Current eventually ends up in the Indian Ocean.
According to the model, most of the water that runs southward along the coasts of Queensland and New South Wales veers east before reaching Bass Strait and stays within the Pacific Ocean.
The remaining fraction comprising the Tasman leakage continues flowing south, rounds Tasmania and then flows west through the Great Australian Bight until it reaches Cape Leeuwin and enters the Indian Ocean. (PTI)

WASHINGTON, Apr 18: Researchers claim to have discovered why people can feel like they have jetlag after surgery—it’s due to the general anaesthetic which alters the activity of genes that control the biological clock.
An international team, led by the University of Auckland, says its findings, published in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ journal, may have implications for post- operative recovery.
“Our work shows that general anaesthesia effectively shifts you to a different time zone, producing chemically induced jetlag. It provides a scientific explanation for why people wake up from surgery feeling as though very little time has passed,” said lead researcher Dr Guy Warman.
The study showed for the first time that general anaesthetic alters the activity of key genes that control the biological clock, shifting them to a different time zone.
In fact, the effect persists for at least three days, even in the presence of strong light cues telling the brain the correct time of day, say the researchers.
“It’s been known for some time that after anaesthesia people’s biological clocks are disrupted, and this can compromise their sleep pattern and mood as well as wound healing and immune function.
“By understanding why this happens we can work out how to treat it and potentially improve post-operative recovery,” Dr Warman said.
The work was done using honey bees. “It might sound unusual, but in fact bees are an ideal species to study time perception. Honey bees have an amazingly accurate sense of time, which allows them to forage and find flowers in the right place at the right time of day.
“By looking at their behaviour we can get a clear idea of what time of day they think it is, and quantify the effects of anaesthesia. An added advantage is that their biological clocks work in a very similar way to mammals,” he said. (PTI)

ISLAMABAD, Apr 18: India and Afghanistan failed to agree on transit fee for gas passing through Afghan territory under the USD 7.6-billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan- India (TAPI) pipeline project, officials said today.
Consequently, Islamabad and New Delhi too could not agree on the transit fee for the segment of the pipeline passing through Pakistan, which has linked its fee structure to any India-Afghanistan agreement.
Technical teams of Afghanistan, India and Pakistan held talks for two days in Islamabad.
Pakistan’s Petroleum Secretary Ejaz Chaudhry was quoted by The News daily as saying that the parleys had ended inconclusively yesterday.
However, Indian officials told that the talks were held in a positive atmosphere and there was considerable progress on all major issues.
The three countries were trying to settle their differences on the issue of transit fees, the officials said.
Afghanistan will charge Pakistan and India a transit fee for gas passing through the pipeline from Turkmenistan and Pakistan will charge India the same amount as the Afghan side.
Chaudhry said Afghanistan had demanded 54 cents per MMBTU (million British Thermal Unit) as the transit fee but this was rejected by India. Subsequently, the Afghan side made a demand of 50 cents per MMBTU and India responded with an offer of 47 cents, he said.
The difference between the two sides was just three cents per MMBTU and could be settled if there was political support from the Indian and Afghan leadership and “a push from the US”, which is supporting the project, the Dawn quoted its sources as saying. (PTI)

SEOUL, Apr 17: South Korea has expressed support for the UN Security Council decision to tighten sanctions on North Korea for its botched rocket launch, and called for Pyongyang to refrain from further provocations.
The UN Security Council yesterday ordered tightened sanctions on the communist North over its rocket launch last week and warned of new action if the isolated state stages a nuclear test.
Seoul’s foreign ministry, in a statement released late yesterday, said it supported the move and urged the North to “stop provocations that could threaten peace and security of the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia.”
“The North should clearly realise that the international community” had adopted “a resolute and unified stance on its (rocket) launch,” it said, and also called for Pyongyang to honour existing UN resolutions.
The impoverished but nuclear-armed North, led by its new young ruler Kim Jong-Un, Friday launched what it claimed was a satellite-carrying rocket to mark the centenary of the birth of its late founding president, Kim Il-Sung.
Countries including the US and the South view it as a disguised long-range ballistic missile test banned under UN resolutions.
The launch—staged amid widespread international condemnation—failed when the rocket exploded two minutes after blast-off.
The 15-member UN Security Council—including the North’s closest ally China and nuclear-armed Pakistan—“strongly condemned” the launch in a statement which highlighted “grave security concerns” in Asia.
The council ordered new “entities and items” to be added within two weeks to the sanctions committee list created after North Korea staged nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Both were staged one to three months after missile tests.
It also ordered the sanctions committee to revise the individuals and North Korean firms subject to asset freezes under the international measures.
North Korea has not issued yet an official response to the new UN actions. (AGENCIES)

BEIJING, Apr 17: China has endorsed the strongly worded UN Security Council statement condemning the botched rocket launch by its close ally North Korea and called for more dialogue and consultations.
The UN Security Council statement was a result of consultations by all members of the body and reflects the basic consensus of the international community, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Liu Weimin said.
“It has been proven that dialogue and consultations are the only correct way to solve problems,” Liu said in a statement.
His remarks came after the 15-nation UN body issued a presidential statement stating that North Korea’s failed April 13 rocket launch has raised “grave security concerns” and demanded that Pyongyang fully comply with relevant Security Council resolutions.
Liu said China participated in the Security Council consultations in a responsible and constructive way and it believes that the Council should make “more efforts to promote dialogue and maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula”.
The Chinese government believes it is in the common interest of all relevant parties to resume the six-party talks and continue to make efforts to denuclearise the peninsula, he said.
“China is willing to keep in close touch with all parties concerned to push the six-party talks forward and make unswerving efforts to realise long-lasting peace on the peninsula,” state-run Xinhua quoted him as saying.
Analysts said Beijing’s endorsement of the resolution indicates China was not pleased with the North Korean government’s decision to go ahead with the satellite launch, jeopardising its recent agreement with US to get 21000 tonnes food aid.
Washington has cancelled that agreement following the missile launch to put a satellite into orbit, which failed midway.
Chinese officials also indicated that Beijing was trying to prevail on the North Korean government to not go for the much speculated nuclear test to compensate for the failed launch of the satellite. (PTI)

SALMON, IDAHO, Apr 17: A welder’s torch ignited a small fire on the roof of a building at nuclear research laboratory in Idaho on Monday, prompting an evacuation, but no one was hurt and no radioactive material was involved, lab officials said.
Nearly 100 employees were cleared from the building, part of a complex that includes facilities housing spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste at the Idaho National Laboratory, the US Energy Department’s leading facility for nuclear reactor technology.
The fire damaged 0.4 square meter of the roof and was extinguished about 2-1/2 hours after smoke was first detected, the lab said in a statement yesterday.
No radioactive material was affected or involved in the fire, and there was no release of radiation, the lab said.
The complex of buildings where the fire erupted sits near the edge of the sprawling 890-square-mile lab site in the high desert of eastern Idaho, about 61 km fr om the city of Idaho Falls.
In November 2011, 16 Idaho lab workers in an adjacent building were exposed to radiation during an accident that occurred while they were preparing to remove an old plutonium fuel cell from a decommissioned reactor.
The building whose roof caught fire yesterday houses research laboratories but no spent fuel or radioactive waste, lab spokeswoman Misty Benjamin told Reuters.
Several thousand employees and contractors work at the Idaho National Laboratory, the US Energy Department’s leading facility for nuclear reactor technology. (Agencies)