SELLERS: PREPARE FOR QUICK SALE

Want to make a quick sale? Here's some advice on getting ready.Clean. The tidier the house, the better it shows. Remove clutterfrom countertops, closets, bedrooms and even the home office. Prune.Remove extra furniture. Don't make your home look cramped. Spartandecor helps buyers visualize better. Paint. A fresh coat of paintcan work wonders. Use light colors. Prospective buyers may notshare your tastes, so make your interior as neutral as possible.Curb appeal. Fix broken gutters, pull weeds, paint the garage door.Make the exterior crisp. Fix. Have a leaky faucet? Fix it.Windowpane cracked? Fix it. Buyers who see minor flaws will assumebigger ones are lurking behind the walls. …

FIFA rejects Mohamed bin Hammam's appeal against life ban in bribery case

ZURICH (AP) — FIFA rejects Mohamed bin …

Sri Lanka 128-1 at lunch on day 1

Tillakaratne Dilshan has scored a brisk half-century to lead Sri Lanka's dominant start to the second cricket test against India.

Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to bat Monday, and Dilshan took advantage of a placid pitch at the Sinhalese Sports Club to score 54 off just 42 balls as the hosts went to lunch on the …

Extracting Kinetics from Single-Molecule Force Spectroscopy: Nanopore Unzipping of DNA Hairpins

ABSTRACT

Single-molecule force experiments provide powerful new tools to explore biomolecular interactions. Here, we describe a systematic procedure for extracting kinetic information from force-spectroscopy experiments, and apply it to nanopore unzipping of individual DNA hairpins. Two types of measurements are considered: unzipping at constant voltage, and unzipping at constant voltage-ramp speeds. We perform a global maximum-likelihood analysis of the experimental data at low-to-intermediate ramp speeds. To validate the theoretical models, we compare their predictions with two independent sets of data, collected at high ramp speeds and at constant voltage, by using a …

Colombian Rebel Group Frees 2 Hostages

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombia's largest rebel group has released two police officers taken hostage nine days earlier, the Red Cross said Friday.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, released Edwin Perez and Carlos Jeferson Munoz on Friday to a Red Cross mission near the town of Toribio, about 190 miles southwest of Bogota.

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Eduardo sees return as 'best day of my life'

Arsenal striker Eduardo da Silva described his return to club football in which he scored two goals against Cardiff City in the FA Cup as "the best day of my life."

Eduardo made his comeback Monday night, nearly a year after his leg was broken in a tackle. He scored the first goal in Arsenal's 4-0 win over Cardiff in a fourth-round replay and later converted a penalty after drawing a foul in the area.

"I couldn't imagine that I would play like that," Eduardo said. "For one year, I worked hard. (It was) the best day of my life. Now I know I can play again like before."

He scored in the 20th minute with a header after …

New hotel woe: `The door locks ate my key card'

KANSAS CITY, Mo. Because they don't credit their guests with enoughintelligence to look after a room key, an increasing number of hotels(particularly in the United States) are issuing cards to guests withwhich to open their room doors - if they're lucky.

Each new guest gets a new card perforated with a differentseries of holes to activate an electronic door lock. The numberprinted on the key-card does not correspond with the number of yourroom. That number is written on the envelope containing the card.The guest is expected to memorize the room number, and then destroythe envelope. Or write the room number down somewhere else, and thenmisplace whatever the number was …