London, September 16 : A new study has reported an object that brightened intensely and then faded back into obscurity over a period of about seven months, which is unlike anything astronomers have seen before.

According to a report in New Scientist, the Hubble Space Telescope first spotted the object, called SCP 06F6, in the constellation Bootes in February 2006 in a search for supernovae.

Nothing had been seen at its location before it started to brighten, and nothing was spotted after it dimmed, which suggests it is normally too faint to observe and that it brightened by at least 120 times during its firefly-like episode.

Washington, September 16 : Two University of Southern California researchers have written a piece of software that can help create a musical accompaniment in the style of any chosen artist, or even the particular style used in select pieces by the artist.

Elaine Chew, an accomplished pianist and professor at the USC Viterbi School Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and graduate student Ching-Hua Chuan have revealed that they started developing the system called ASSA (Automatic Style Specific Accompaniment) two years ago.

San Francisco - Hewlett Packard, the world's largest computer maker, is to cut 24,600 jobs over three years as part of its plan to integrate enterprise technology firm Electronic Data Systems Corp, the company announced Monday.

The cuts represent about 7.5 per cent of HP's workforce and will force HP to take a 1.7-billion-dollar charge.

HP bought EDS in March for 13.2 billion dollars. The combined company had a workforce of 320,000 employees.

Washington, September 15 : An Indian-origin mechanical engineer and his colleagues at the University of Utah have developed a new approach to slice thin wafers of the chemical element germanium, so that they can be used in the most efficient type of solar power cells.

Dinesh Rakwal, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, believes that the new method can lower the cost of such cells by reducing the waste and breakage of the brittle semiconductor.

Microchip, a highly developed integrated circuit, used in almost all modern electronic gadgets and gizmos completed 50 years on last Friday.

LG Electronics has revealed its new phone the Lotus, created in collaboration with fashion designer, Christian Siriano.

Targeting fashionable women, the purple or black colored flip phone, is equipped with amazing features, which includes One Click,  a highly-customizable user interface that enables texting, web access, email, Sprint Navigation, Sprint TV, and Sprint Music Store(SM).

Besides making a style statement, this new Lotus phone  integrates a full QWERTY keyboard, a 2 megapixel camera and camcorder, stereo Bluetooth, music player with external controls and a microSD memory slot.