Q: DEAR TIM: My husband installed a new gasket on the toilet in our master bathroom as part of adding a new ceramic tile floor. He's pretty handy, but I soon noticed a sewer gas odor in this room.
There wasn't an odor before. He can't smell it, and I'm reluctant to have him do the job over. The

t... Members of a credit union that serves active-duty military personnel and others connected to the Pentagon are at risk for identity theft after a laptop was hacked, exposing the personal and financial records of an undisclosed number of troops and their families.Discovering your DNA sequence is cheap and easy, and that genetic knowledge could change – even save – your lifeA decade ago, researchers completed what was one of the greatest scientific achievements of our time when they decoded the last of the three billion letters that make up the human genome. Since then, the cost of sequencing has dropped dramatically – from $3bn for the first human genome to a few thousand dollars today.Inexpensive sequencing created a whole new industry, enabling individuals to access their own genetic information. You may never have thought about what's in your genome, but one day soon you will, and it will be an important part of your healthcare.Far sooner than anyone would have thought possible, the real-world benefits of genetic science and access to the data itself are available to people the world over.
Today, genetics is not just for scientists. Each of us can now explore our own DNA. I
co-founded the personal genetics testing company 23andMe in 2006 with the mission of enabling people to get access to their DNA and create the software tools so they can understand it.
 I am asked regularly, "Why would you ever want your genetic information?"Learning about your genetics enables you to optimize your health.
It will take us decades to understand all 3bn base pairs in the human genome, but today we already know what forex growth bot important genetic differences mean for individuals. We know that genes affect your risk for conditions like cystic fibrosis and breast cancer, and we know how your genes affect your responses to drugs like Warfarin. As
genetic testing becomes more affordable, more people can benefit from understanding their genetics and use that understanding to improve their health, help them prevent the harmful side-effects of some drugs and potentially avoid preventable deaths.For example, roughly 8% of people with European ancestry have a genetic variant that puts them at higher than average risk for blood clots. There are a number of easy ways to minimize this risk, ranging from avoiding oral contraceptives to staying hydrated and maintaining mobility during airplane flights.  A decade ago, NBC journalist David Bloom died at the age of 39 on assignment in Iraq after spending many hours with limited mobility in a tank. Bloom's wife has said he didn't know he was genetically predisposed to blood clots.
If he had known, could he have changed his fate? It's easy to get tested for this genetic variant and it enables those individuals with high risk to make changes in their lifestyle that decrease their risk.  Some genetic variants can be informative about one's risk for Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. While effective medical interventions might not exist today to reverse those diseases, individuals might opt to make choices based on that knowledge – have children earlier, or retire sooner.
The knowledge might also spur lifestyle changes that could help mitigate the effects or stave off the onset of those diseases. My husband found out he is genetically at a higher risk for Parkinson's disease. That information motivated him to exercise more, moderate his diet and drink coffee – choices that research shows could decrease his risk.

 Learning of his genetic risk for Parkinson's also motivated my husband to participate in research. There is now a community of more than 700 individuals who have

the same rare Fibroids Miracle download that puts them at a higher risk for Parkinson's disease. Partnering with researchers this community is trying to answer a number of important questions: why do some people get the

disease and some don't? What environmental factors might contribute to, or possibly help prevent, the disease? What treatments work best? Combining genetic data with the efficiency, scalability and global information exchange enabled by the internet has opened up a whole new world to researchers.  The next decade will bring about tremendous discovery and alter the way we approach healthcare.
Prime Minister David Cameron's administration recently announced plans to spend £100m to sequence 100,000 people and create a national human genome database.
This database alone will trigger tremendous understanding of the genome and fuel medical innovation.  The genetic revolution is here. Just as computer technology and the internet created whole new industries and extraordinary benefits for people that extend into almost every realm of human endeavor from education to transportation to medicine, genetics will undoubtedly benefit people everywhere in ways we can't even imagine but know will surely occur.GeneticsMedicineDNA databaseHealth policyHealthAnne Wojcickiguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds The offerings of a Chinese brokerage firm and a unit of

Sinopec, which seek as much as $3.5
billion in total,

have been eagerly anticipated.     Deputy PM says Theresa May's rewritten plans to monitor web and social media use are still unworkable and disproportionateNick Clegg has vetoed Theresa May's rewritten "web snooper's charter" plan, killing off the home secretary's last remaining hopes of getting any communications data legislation in the Queen's speech.The Liberal Democrat leader told David Cameron and Theresa May on Wednesday that he could not support the home secretary's latest proposals to monitor internet and social media use because they were unworkable and disproportionate.The
decision provoked delight within his party and among privacy campaigners: "This is truly an vision-without glasses for any liberal, and every Liberal Democrat," said Julian Huppert, the party's backbench home affairs spokesman."These
plans were based on scant evidence, scaremongering and a disregard for our personal lives; treating everyone as a suspect and our online activity as 'fair game'," he said.
The announcement was also hailed by the party's president, Tim Farron.The
privacy campaign Big Brother Watch tweeted: "The snooper's charter is dead, long live Clegg."Conservative
critics of the legislation welcomed the decision. The Tory former shadow home secretary David Davis said Clegg had done the right thing.
"This draconian law would have been a massive, unnecessary extension of the state's power," he said.
"It would have trampled all over the privacy of innocent people without improving our security one jot."Davis
said it raised the question as to why the Home Office spent more than £400m developing the proposals when it clearly never had enough support within

government to go ahead.May has fought

hard for the legislation, designed to fill a growing gap in the ability of the police

and security services

to access records of the web and social media activity of serious criminals and terrorists.The
deputy prime minister sent the original legislation – the draft communications data bill – back to the drawing board after insisting it was first scrutinised by a committee MPs and peers.The
committee's withering verdict described it as "overkill", complained that it "trampled on the privacy of British citizens" and said its cost estimates were "fanciful and misleading". They did, however, agree that new legislation was needed to plug the gap caused by rapid changes in technology.The revised proposals tabled by May offered significant concessions but did not include movement on access to blogs or people's internet histories, or on requiring British phone and internet companies to intercept data from overseas providers.Both parties campaigned on general election promises to roll back the surveillance state and May's proposed legislation did not form part of the coalition agreement, so tinnitusmiracle is not necessarily a coalition-breaker.Clegg announced the decision on his weekly LBC radio phone-in

programme. "There is work that clearly needs to be done on issues where I think most people would reasonably think you do need to keep up [with] the technology," he said."[But] the full-scale approach of basically saying you're going to scoop up and hold huge

amounts of data for instance, literally recording every website that you visit and everybody visits so you've got this great treasure trove of data which you can then dip into if you need to, I don't think the British public would support that, I don't think it's in many ways workable and I don't think it's necessarily proportionate."He
said a blanket record of websites visited and communications on social media was "not going to happen with Liberal Democrats in government", and referred to the necessity of obtaining a balance between security and liberty.Clegg's only concession during the interview was that the government should look at whether there should be an internet protocol (IP) address for every device, which police and security services have lobbied for.
Further work is expected on how new legislation might be introduced to deal with the limited problem faced by the police in matching IP addresses with individual mobile phones or computers.Clegg later told party members in an email: "In the coalition agreement we committed to 'ending the storage of email and internet records without good reason', moving away from Labour's database state.

But this proposal wouldn't meet that test: expanding the collection of personal data without a solid justification for doing so, and without allaying concerns about the workability of these changes."There
is always a careful balance to strike between security and individual liberty and I have always agreed that we must help our law enforcement agencies keep up with the challenge of policing in the internet age – like the technical issue of what

to do when there are more mobile Shapeshifter-Yoga not enough IP addresses to go round. But the idea of a wider bill didn't get

the balance right.
It would have been neither proportionate nor workable and would not have enjoyed widespread support in Parliament or across the country at large."The
police provide an invaluable service and we should give them our support to get on with fighting crime at every level. But the proposals on the table were not the right solution and will not go ahead."The prime minister's spokesman was reluctant to be drawn on the

developments, or whether legislation in this area would feature in the Queen's speech on 8 May.
He suggested discussions were ongoing, but appeared to acknowledge that a problem had developed. He said: "The reality of technological change has not gone away.
These are sensitive issues around this and discussions are continuing on how progress is to be made."The
internet industry was left seeking urgent clarification from Whitehall on whether or not the current proposals would be brought forward.Nick CleggPrivacyQueen's speechData protectionInternetSocial mediaBloggingLiberal DemocratsTheresa MayHaroon SiddiqueAlan TravisPatrick Wintourguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds     Tiger scat offers DNA traces that can help conserve

Nepal’s struggling tiger population.    
Photo: Dominick Reuter Rosalind Gutierrez has become legend among New York Public Library officials for her obsessive approach to collecting signatures on forms decrying possible city budget cuts to the libraries.     In a first, the United Nations tries to tackle the proliferation of increasingly hazardous new drugs and the parallel easing of restrictions on some old ones.
President Obama's Friday news conference did little to advance U.S. policy on Libya or clarify the White House's position on resolving the budget impasse in Congress. The president nonetheless conveyed one unmistakable impression: He is now focused intently on winning back independent voters. Citing the separation of church and state, federal directory of ezines review Russ Kendig said it would be unconstitutional for the court to cede control of the bankruptcy filing of alleged Ponzi schemer Monroe Beachy to the Amish community. Developers of an Azeri natural gas field have decided to build a pipeline to Europe that would end in Italy rather than Austria.     This word has appeared in 734 New York Times articles in the past year.
On his first visit to India as secretary of state, John Kerry urged the nation to take action against global warming.    
Under the direction of Mr. Mendes, “Skyfall” — which featured an Academy Award-winning title song performed by Adele and a regrettable title — sold more than $1.1
billion in tickets worldwide.
“The Staircase 2: Last Chance” is Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s sequel to his eight-part documentary “The Staircase,” an examination of a sensational murder trial in Durham, N.C. Taking a cue from the “dark” theme, several toys featured monsters, wizards or ghosts.
Two games centered on haunted houses.
One of these resembled a board game, with monster-themed pieces moving around the house as directed by a thrown die, accruing specific items from treasure chests; the other was an action game in which players used a claw-like device to catch pingpong-ball “ghosts” ejected from the roof. Another team produced a game of wizardry, with a book of spells and “wands” equipped with motion sensors that could disable lights on an opponent’s medallion.Others developed nefarious stuffed animals with flashing eyes and spooky sounds, or

capable of firing beams of light with

a flick of their tails. Lights and actionMany of the inventions, in fact, made use of lights: In one variation on the party game Twister, the circles on the floor mat lit up and changed colors electronically.
A ring-toss game featured towers that lit up in different colors depending on whose ring circled the tower last. Another team created a floor covering that would illuminate in response to footsteps, glowing more brightly with Pregnancy Miracle elaborate toy consisted of a game board coated with phosphorescent paint and two brightly lit, remote control vehicles that left glowing trails as they moved.
Successfully crossing an opponent’s trail would extinguish

lights on the crossing player’s vehicle.Mechanical
engineering graduate students Geoff Tsai and Lindy Liggett taught the class — which aims to teach basic design, building and testing processes — under the supervision of mechanical engineering professor David Wallace. “The goal is for students to get an experience they get jazzed up about,” Wallace says, and learn about “technology and tools they haven’t worked with before.”Contests
and startupsWhile the scoring by audience members had no effect on students’ grades, students took the projects very seriously. After prior semesters of 2.00b, “some have won toy design contests,” Wallace says, “and some have started their own companies.” Some of this year’s toys made use of sound or motion: a “drum” that lit up and played a variety of sounds in response to pressure on its drumhead, or motion sensors attached to shoes to produce music in response to dance steps.
Another team created an electronic version of the old paper-and-pencil game in which two people alternately draw line segments, earning points for each box they complete. But in this version, the goal was to use pieces of wire to create circuits including a battery and a light, which illuminated

when the circuit was complete.An
acrylic cube modeled on the Rubik’s cube was multiple puzzles in one.
The cubes had to be “solved” like the 1980s original, but with an extra complication: The transparent cubes also contained metal balls that had

to be manipulated through a series of holes and mazes from their starting position to a goal in another part of the cube.At
a reception following the presentations, audience members examined and played with the various toys, and enjoyed appropriate refreshments: milk and cookies.
John and Anne D Hederman met during her first week in Princeton, and i want my girlfriend back ways grew up together. President Obama thinks the National Championship is heading back to the Hoosier State.


Obama picked Indiana University in his NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament bracket this year.
The president, a big sports fan, says the Hoosiers

will defeat Louisville University in the national championship game.
Both teams are the top seeds in their quadrants of the 68-team field.
Read full article >> Kobe Bryant is working hard to get back on the court and not wasting any time thinking about Dwight Howard.     Open letter from writers including Stephen Fry says defamation bill is in danger of being killed off by Leveson rowSome of the Britain's most acclaimed authors and playwrights including Sir Tom Stoppard, William Boyd, Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie have called on

the main party leaders to honour their pledge and implement a defamation bill aimed at transforming 170-year-old laws they say have silenced scientists and authors as well as journalists and activists.In an open letter the authors tell David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband they were "deeply concerned" that the bill was going to be killed off after three years going through the legislative process simply because it had become entangled in a political row over the Leveson report on press regulation in the past month.They
said it was "entirely inappropriate, and even reckless, for libel reform to be sacrificed to the current political stalemate" in the letter, organised by the writers' lobby group English Pen.Current British libel laws, the

authors argue, have not changed substantially since 1843, have made London the libel capital of the world and are "not just

a national disgrace" but an international concern. In 2010 the US president, Barack Obama, introduced laws in America to protect US citizens from British courts.The signatories, who also include Julian Barnes, Claire Tomalin, Ali Smith, Dame Antonia Fraser, Sir David Hare, Stephen Fry, Susie Orbach and Michael Frayn, are natural vitiligo treatment download improved libel laws are on the verge of collapse because of amendments inserted by Lord Puttnam into the bill in the past month during its final stage in the House of Lords.The
bill has been three years in the making and was included in the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It did not touch on press regulation until last month, when a group of peers, frustrated by the lack of progress on the Leveson report among the political parties, won overwhelming support in the Lords to add sections to the bill covering a newspaper watchdog's activities.Writer
Gillian Slovo, daughter of the anti-apartheid

leader Joe Slovo, told the Guardian: "It would be a terrible thing if the bill was killed, not because it isn't supported by all three parties, because it is, but because it became entangled in Leveson. It would be a great loss."She said that "one of the great strengths of Britain was freedom of speech but its achilles heel is the libel laws which are mostly used to silence the less well-off".Libel reform campaigners including Lord Lester, believe it can be salvaged but only if it gets on to Commons business by the middle of March. Political sources have confirmed it is not currently slated for discussion and will not be while Leveson talks continue, raising fears the bill is already dead.Boyd, vice-president of English Pen, said Puttnam's amendments had "nothing to do with the principle of libel reforms, whose validity had already been established" through consultation and debate in three parliamentary committees.The
amendments include proposals for a new arbitration unit to resolve disputes with newspapers and an incentive system that would mean publishers who did not sign up to the new press regulator could face punitive damages and costs in high court libel actions.The
authors say that in the past three years a number of scientists have faced "ruinous libel suits simply for

blowing the whistle on dangerous medical practices".
If the trademiner became law, the risk of libel action would be lessened because of a new public interest defence. Big corporations such as drugs companies would also have to prove serious financial harm before they could take action."If the law is not reformed, bullies will continue to be able to prevent the publication of stories that are often not only in the public interest, but a matter of public health and safety," the letter says.Other
signatories are Lisa Appignanesi, Jake Arnott, Amanda Craig, Victoria Glendinning, Mark Haddon, Ronald Harwood, Michael Holroyd, Howard Jacobson, Hisham Matar, Philippe Sands, Will Self, Kamila Shamsie and Raleigh Trevelyan.Downing
Street said it supported the bill but said it was stymied as long as the Puttnam amendments remained.
"The government is strongly behind

the objectives of the original defamation bill. The government does not support the Puttnam amendments and is clear the Puttnam amendments will not make it onto statute," said a spokesman for Number 10.A
Labour spokesperson said: "Labour's commitment to modernising our outdated defamation laws can be seen in the sheer effort we've put into knocking into shape an original set of proposals that really weren't up to the mark. It would be an outrage if the government prevented parliament from having its say given how much work has gone into proposals that give our defamation laws a

much-need updating."Libel reformDefamation lawFreedom of speechPress freedomLeveson reportNewspapers & magazinesLeveson inquiryLisa O'Carrollguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Married gay couples in states that recognize their unions will gain access to more than 1,000 federal benefits, but how couples in other states will fare is less clear.    
After a year in the United States, Chen Guangcheng finds himself enmeshed in controversies over partisan politics.     The decision to hold a stand-alone event reflected the company’s emphasis on interactive entertainment, including chats and playing along with a game show at