1. Lyonnais cooking is epitomized by the so-called "bouchons".

2. Michel Bouchon at the University of Grenoble, France, and a team of French and Turkish geologists studied seismograms recorded before the Izmit earthquake, which killed some 17, 000 people.

3. Bouchon and Falcon's punched card loom appeared in 1775, later improved on by Jacques de Vaucanson.

4. "The difference in time between these two arrivals was always the same, implying that they came from the same spot on the fault, " says Bouchon.

5. The Parkfield quake was magnitude 6.0, compared to Izmit's 7.6 and Bouchon thinks foreshocks may only occur in very large quakes.