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.  

TORONTO, July 2 /PRNewswire/ --

- Leading financial group in Hong Kong automates compensation to drive productivity and time-to-market

Varicent Software, an innovator and provider of incentive compensation and sales performance management (SPM) solutions, today announced its flagship product, Varicent SPM, has been selected by Convoy Financial Group (Convoy) to manage its sales performance across the organization.

Varicent Software partnered with Beans Factory, a leading provider of e-business solutions and information integration services in Asia, to introduce Varicent SPM which will be developed as a core engine of Convoy's Sales Performance Management in order to cope with the rapid growth of business in Hong Kong as well as in the Greater China region.

As a kid, there were few things more satisfying to me that being given a helium balloon... and then almost immediately letting it go for the pure enjoyment of seeing it float out of sight into the sky. For some reason, seeing a small balloon set against a vast blue background gave me a small sense of power simply from knowing that I was the one that put it up there. A silly grin would spread across my face as I stared at the small dot in the sky, knowing that only a minute earlier I held that very same balloon in my own little hand. I felt like a small part of me was launched along with it, and had just started off on a grand adventure. Since I was never able to actually go along for the ride, it was up to the limits of my imagination to envision where the balloon would land.