Washington, Oct 28 : In a new project, scientists have used laptops to detect several earthquakes, taking the help of small accelerometer chips inside the machines.

The project is known as the project Quake Catcher Network (QCN).

Scientists have found out that the tiny accelerometer chip is a pretty good earthquake sensor as well, especially if the signals from lots of them are compared, in order to filter out more mundane sources of laptop vibrations, such as typing. 

The project has about 1500 laptops connected in a network that has detected several tremors, including a magnitude 5.4 quake in Los Angeles in July this year. 

Berlin, Oct 28 : Researchers of the Fraunhofer Technology Development Group TEG have developed a new fluidic energy transducer that produces electricity from gas and water.

Air compression systems can be found in many manufacturing operations. If a leak occurs anywhere in the system, the air pressure drops and production comes to a halt until the source of failure has been found. 

Sensors constantly monitor the pressure in order to keep costly fault-related losses to a minimum. 

At present, these sensors are either battery-driven or connected up by complex technical wiring. This often makes it very difficult or even impossible to install sensors in places that are hard to reach. 

Washington, Oct 28 : A new study has determined that some of the world’s most beloved species of flowers like lilies, orchids, violets, roses, and dogwoods have also been hit by global warming. 

The study, by scientists at Harvard University, US, have found that different plant families near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, have borne the effects of climate change in strikingly different ways.

Over the past 150 years, some of the plants in Thoreau’s woods have shifted their flowering time by as much as three weeks as spring temperatures have risen, the researchers say, while others have been less flexible. 

Washington, Oct 28 : Online shopping can turn out to be more fun when you can try on new clothes on your own computerised image, all thanks to a new program that creates an accurate computerized image of a person''s body even when the subject is clothed.

Developed by Brown computer scientists, the new technology could be put to use in fashion, film, forensics, sports medicine, and video gaming.

The program can accurately estimate the human body''s shape from digital images or video.

"If you see a person wearing clothing, can the computer figure out what they look like underneath?" asked Michael Black, professor of the computer science at Brown.

Washington, Oct 28 : A research has determined that despite being protected longer than anywhere else on Earth, Yellowstone National Park’s amphibians are declining fast, all due to climate change.

Yellowstone National Park, founded in 1872, has been protected by law longer than anywhere else in the world.

In 1992 and 1993, researchers in Elizabeth Hadly’s group at Stanford University surveyed amphibians dwelling in ponds left behind by glaciers in northern Yellowstone National Park. 

Over the last three summers, Hadly’s graduate student Sarah McMenamin repeated the study.

Washington, Oct 28 : A previously unknown population of vampire moths has been found in Siberia by entomologists, who say that the bloodsuckers may have evolved from a purely fruit-eating species. 

Only slight variations in wing patterns distinguish the Russian population from a widely distributed moth species, Calyptra thalictri, in Central and Southern Europe known to feed only on fruit. 

According to a report in National Geographic News, when the Russian moths were experimentally offered human hands this summer, the insects drilled their hook-and-barb-lined tongues under the skin and sucked blood.