Create your own free news widgets.

In the wake of claims that there may be life on one of its moons, John Crace offers a primer on our sixth planetIn pictures: Visions of SaturnIt's being touted as a stunning find. After decades of searching the outer limits of space for signs of life, it's been hiding away right under our noses all along. After Nasa's Cassini spacecraft picked up sodium salts near the south pole of Enceladus, Saturn's smallest moon, scientists believe there may be water beneath the surface. Just as Earth's oceans became salty after prolonged contact with rocks, so Nasa believes these sodium deposits are indicative of hitherto unknown underground reservoirs. And where there's water, there may be life. 'We need three ingredients for life, as far as we know - liquid water, energy and the basic chemical building blocks,' says John Spencer, a Cassini scientist from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. 'We seem to have all three at Enceladus, including some fairly complex organic molecules'

Carbon dioxide being absorbed by the oceans is having a puzzling effect on fish their ears get bigger, scientists say.

Florida's attorney general has reached a national settlement with a Palm Beach County-based diet and health supplement company that offered free trials of its products, but then automatically charged and sent customers the products after the trial period ended.

Louisville-based Lightyear Network Solutions LLC plans an expansion that could mean adding 148 jobs.

Fish ears grow up to 17 percent larger when CO2 levels are increased in water.

July 4th is the American Independence Day typically celebrated with firework displays. In 2005, NASA arranged their own fireworks display by purposely ramming part of their Deep Impact probe into Comet Tempel 1. The Deep Impact mission was designed to fly in close to a comet and launch a projectile into the core while the flyby satellite analyzed the ejected debris. This would give scientists a glimpse of the the early makeup of the Solar system when comets were believed to be formed. The comet contained many expected materials such as water ice and silicates, but also contained unexpected materials. Carbonates and aromatic hydrocarbons were also found. This data will affect the theories about how planets are formed and it remains to be seen the effects of this mission's data. Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.

Microsoft Corp., trying to revive its flagship product in the middle of a recession, is pricing the primary edition of Windows 7 for home users 17 percent below the retail price of its predecessor. (MSFT)

July 4 holiday plans could be affected with few public boat ramps on popular Lake Travis open due to increasingly low water levels.

Phase Forward , a leading provider of data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety, announced the availability of Empirica Study, formerly the Clinical Trials Signal Detection product .

Archaeologists find a group of water wells in western Cyprus believed to be among the oldest in the world.