Ubiquity

It is odorless, colorless and quietly lethal. It is carbon monoxide, the deadly byproduct of incomplete combustion and poor ventilation, and it is the leading cause of poisoning death in the United States. When the so-called killer gas took the life of former tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis, 40, in New York last week, public awareness of the threat got a tragic but timely boost. "It's a ubiquitous toxin, recognized since man first brought fire into the home for cooking," says Dr.

The Holy or the Broken Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley & the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah" Alan Light Atria: 272 pp., $25 There's a great scene in Penelope Spheeris' 1992 film "Wayne's World" - find it on YouTube under the title "May i help you riff" - in which an impatient guitar-store employee prevents Wayne from plucking out the opening arpeggios of "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. Pointing with great urgency, the guy directs Wayne's attention to a sign hung on the store's wall: "NO STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN," it reads.

If you love tech and the business of tech, then 2013 should be a very interesting year. We'll find out whether Marissa Mayer can keep the momentum going at Yahoo and whether the Web dinosaurs Myspace and Digg can successfully reinvent themselves. Will this be the year everyone starts using Square? Will Leap Motion's motion sensor change the way we interact with computers? PHOTOS: 10 tech companies to watch in 2013 Who will fall flat on their faces, and who will dazzle us with their innovation?

'Rose' perfume can smell green, spicy, powdery, sparkly, fruity or more. The ubiquity of roses in early to mid-February can be overwhelming (their prices, shocking), but their association with love and romance - and perfume - is hardly a modern convention. Roses are referenced in Greek and Roman mythology, and humans have distilled fragrant oils from rose petals for millennia. Rosewater colognes were popular with both sexes in the 19th century. But it's only recently that scientists discovered that essential rose oil contains more than 400 individual components.

PALM SPRINGS — For Elizabeth Young, Desert Shadows was a place where she could shed her blouse, pantyhose, sensible heels — and everything else — and dive into a game of water volleyball. She and her husband, John, drove from Orange County to the nudist getaway a few times a year to escape their 9-to-5 lives. After its owner filed for bankruptcy in 2007, the Youngs feared someone would raze the hotel, or force guests to wear pants. So they bought the place and renamed it Desert Sun. At first, nudist groups embraced the couple as a welcome addition to their oft-misunderstood industry.

Hey, reader. If you bristle ever so slightly at the presumed familiarity of that salutation, you're almost surely over 40, and you likely grew up well north of the Mason-Dixon line. If you say "hey" back, the demographic possibilities are a lot broader. Everyone from anywhere who was born after 1980 seems to have adopted this onetime Southern regionalism, as have over-40s who work in a business that uses "trending" as a verb and requires them to stay forever young. I get "hey" emails and in-the-hallway greetings from students who've never been as far south as Philadelphia, who hail from India and Austria, from the Northeast and the Midwest and Canada.

A VIDEO SHOWS a line of people trudging up a snow-covered footpath. A shot is heard; the first person in line falls. A voice-over says, "They are killing them like dogs." Another shot, and another body drops to the ground. A Chinese soldier fires his rifle again. Then a group of soldiers examines the bodies. These images were captured in the Himalayas by a member of a mountaineering expedition who claims to have stumbled on the killing.

Meet Kang Ho-dong. Kang Ho-dong is a South Korean celebrity, a former wrestler turned TV personality whose ubiquity on Korean television approaches what you might get if you added Ryan Seacrest's TV appearances to those of Charlie Sheen's. Last year, before his career was briefly interrupted by accusations of tax evasion, since tossed out of court, Kang starred in four prime-time shows: three variety hours, plus a reality show that combined travelogue with aspects of "Celebrity Rehab.

If you thought peanut allergies were bad, meet what may be a far worse affliction: Approximately 2% to 3% of the population suffers from severe allergies to spices, according to a presentation Friday at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting in Anaheim by its past president, Dr. Sami Bahna. Spices are everywhere. So while it may be possible to avoid peanuts and other common allergens when dining at restaurants, the ubiquity of spices makes eating out extremely difficult, and can also restrict the use of store-bought and processed foods, as spices are not always listed on packaging.

Adobe Systems Inc. plans to acquire Virtual Ubiquity Inc., maker of the Buzzword word processor, to compete with Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. San Jose-based Adobe is looking to a team of former Lotus application developers to enable users of its Adobe Acrobat software to work together on publishing shared documents. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The software lets users collaborate on shared documents and allows them to save data or format changes online.