MOSCOW, July 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Company TTK today announced the preliminary results of its new development strategy for 2008-2015, showing significant growth in new market segments within this new framework. The strategy will see TTK develop retail and broadband Internet access, local and long distance call telephony, as well as other retail telecommunication services across Russian regions and aims to increase TTK's regional fixed communications market share to 17 percent, or more than 2 million households, by 2015.

PARIS, July 2 /PRNewswire/ --

- Multaq(R) Approved to Reduce the Risk of Cardiovascular Hospitalization in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation or Atrial Flutter

- U.S Commercial Launch Planned for the Summer of 2009

Sanofi-aventis (EURONEXT: SAN and NYSE: SNY) announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Multaq(R) (dronedarone) 400 mg Tablets. Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) or atrial flutter (AFL) soon will have a new treatment option to help improve current management of their disease. Multaq(R) is the first drug approved in the United States that has shown a clinical benefit to reduce cardiovascular hospitalization in patients with AF/AFL.

If you're like us, you are eagerly awaiting those July 4 fireworks displays because you get to blow stuff up using science (not just the US, Canada too, though they picked the wrong day by using July 1 for  Canada Day celebrations) - if only we could have awesome fireworks yet not ruin the planet.

Maybe we can.  A new generation of "green" fireworks is trying to take off.  Hint: that's "green" as in environmentally friendly.  And take off as in ... oh, never mind.

PARIS and DEN BOSCH, Netherlands, July 2 /PRNewswire/ --

Dyadem today announced that it is expanding its presence in Europe in order to support its growing European customer base. Dyadem, the leader in Operational and Quality Risk Management, has seen its revenues grow 357% from 2003 to 2008, and now has offices in Paris and Amsterdam to complement its existing infrastructure in London, Houston and its headquarters in Toronto, Canada.

LONDON, July 2 /PRNewswire/ --

- Vkontakte.ru Ranks as Most Popular Social Networking Site in Russia with 14 Million Visitors

comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study of the social networking category in Russia, based on data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service. The study found Russia to have the world's most engaged social networking audience, with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080115/COMSCORELOGO)

Two-Thirds of Global Internet Users Access Social Networking Sites

L'Oréal and New Scientist today announced the results of a poll revealing the most inspirational female scientists of all time. Nuclear physicist and chemist Marie Curie topped the poll which was created to celebrate 10 years of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science program, with around a quarter (25.1%) of the vote. 

Voted for by more than 800 members of the scientific community and visitors to http://www.NewScientist.com, the poll highlights the absence of modern role models on the list; Astrophysicist Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell (4.7%), responsible for the discovery of radiopulsars, and Jane Goodall, the primatologist (2.7 per cent) were the only scientists in the top ten to have research published in recent years, polled 4th and 10th, respectively. 

A new printable battery that can be produced cost-effectively on a large scale has been developed by a research team led by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Baumann of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS in Chemnitz together with colleagues from TU Chemnitz and Menippos GmbH.

Like your t-shirt, the batteries are printed using a silk-screen method.

They are also different from conventional batteries in that these printable versions weigh less than one gram, are less than a millimeter thick and can even be integrated into bank cards.

When glaciers advanced over much of the planet's surface during the last ice age, what kept  Earth from freezing over entirely?  Climate scientists are unsure because popular numerical models indicated that over the past 24 million years geological conditions should have caused carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to plummet, possibly leading to runaway "icehouse" conditions - yes, we needed CO2-related global warming, they said - but researchers writing in Nature claims plants are a missing piece of the puzzle.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft's two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).

As the moon rotates beneath LRO, LROC gradually will build up photographic maps of the lunar surface.

Just when you thought evolution couldn't get attacked by anyone else, a zoologist writing in Science and his colleagues are contending that changing winter conditions due to global warming are causing Scotland's wild Soay sheep to get smaller despite the evolutionary benefits of having a large body.  Yep, climate change can trump natural selection, it turns out. 

So much for adapting to the environment.   Too bad Darwin didn't know about CO2.