Liberty already controls number two Dutch operator UPC (1.67 million homes) and has built up a 28.5 percent minority stake in Ziggo ahead of its takeover bid.
But in an official statement, Ziggo said Liberty's offer was “considered inadequate and there is no certainty that Ziggo will receive any revised offer.” Financial details of the bid were not disclosed, but at current prices, a takeover would have cost Liberty at least $6 billion (€4.5 billion).
Malone's cable group is looking to consolidate operations across Europe. Early this year, Liberty acquired Britain's Virgin Media in a stock-and-deal worth around $15.8 billion. The group controls Germany's second-largest cable operator, UnityMedia, and tried to buy number one cabler, Kabel Deutschland (KDG), but was recently outbid by U.K. mobile group Vodafone, which paid $10 billion for KDG.
Hold Your Horses: The main flavor of a sour beer is tartness, like a strawberry or lemon. But many sours also have a "funky" taste that some say smells like a horse blanket or a barnyard. Credit: Morgan Walker
Move over, bitter IPAs and chocolaty stouts. There's a new kid on the craft brewing block, and it's going to knock your salivary glands into action.
It's called "sour beer." When you take a sip, it's like biting into a Granny Smith apple that's soaked in a French red wine: crisp, refreshing and a bit odd.
Look for descriptors like tart, funky, wild, barrel-aged and spontaneous fermentation at bars and restaurants. These beers will very likely be sour. Here are a few bottles to look for in wine and beer shops or even Whole Foods Markets. Just be ready to shell out at least $10 for a 750-ml bottle.
American Sour Ales
Belgian Sour Beers
Do you think you can handle the sour side of beer?
Courtesy of The Bruery
Sour beers are probably the oldest style of brew in the world, but they're just starting to get popular in the States. They were all the buzz at this year's Great American Beer Festival. And with hundreds of brewers now dabbling in sours, it's easier than ever to find them at a local bar or grocery store.
Most sour beers have few or no hops. So they're a good option to try if you don't like bitter beers or you're a wine lover who prefers a pinot noir to a Pilsner, says New Belgium's CEO, Kim Jordan of Fort Collins, Colo.
New Belgium, which produces the ubiquitous Fat Tire Ale, has started a whole series of sour beers called Lips of Faith — one of the most widely available lines of sour.
So what in the heck are these strange brews?
Sours beers are to the adult beverage world what yogurt is to dairy. Its beer that's been intentionally spoiled by bacteria — the good bacteria.
"We use the same microbes that make yogurt, miso and salami," says Alex Wallash, who co-founded The Rare Barrel, in Berkeley, Calif., one of the few breweries in the U.S. devoted solely to making sour beers.
Bacteria gobble up sugars in the beer and convert them into acids, like the ones in Granny Smith apples and lemons. The microcritters also churn out a smorgasbord of flavors and aromas. The result is a brew that has all the complexity of a wine and the zing of a Sour Patch Kid.
"Sour beers are tart like a raspberry or strawberry, but a lot of them are dry, like Champagne," Wallash says. So their taste sits somewhere between an ale, wine and cider, he says. "It will definitely change your expectation about what a beer tastes like. It's a new flavor experience all together."
And one that you might not like right away.
"When I first tried a sour, I was shocked," says Patrick Rue of The Bruery in Placentia, Calif. "I thought it had spoiled, and I threw the rest of the beer down the drain."
But it was too late for Rue. He had been bitten by the sour bug and went on to make some of the first sour beers in Southern California, including the popular Tart of Darkness.
In traditional beer-making, yeast is added to boiled grains to ferment the sugars into alcohol. Then the brew is ready for bottling.
But for sour beers, the process doesn't stop there. Brewers also add the bacteria Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. Sometimes they'll include a dash of Brettanomyces, a type of wild yeast that makes cherry, mango and pineapple flavors as well as an earthy aroma that some call funky, horsey or leathery.
Most sour beers are moved to oak barrels for aging, which can be a messy business. Now how would Homer Simpson handle this situation?
Courtesy of The Rare Barrel
Most sour beers are moved to oak barrels for aging, which can be a messy business. Now how would Homer Simpson handle this situation?
Courtesy of The Rare Barrel
The alternative approach for brewing sours is to go old-school and just let all the wild yeast and bacteria in the air drop into the beer naturally. It's risky but — when done right — can produce magnificent beer.
That's the strategy Ron Jeffries at Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter, Mich., uses. He's a pioneer of the sour movement in America, and he made some of the first commercial sours way back in 2004.
"There's wild yeast and bacteria everywhere, especially if there are orchards nearby," Jeffries tells The Salt. "When you make a happy home for them in your barrels, they just show up and spontaneously ferment — and sour — a beer."
"For thousands of years, all beer had sour notes to it," Jeffries says. "It was refreshing and crisp because people didn't understand how to keep things clean.
"Then with pasteurization, refrigeration and an understanding of how to keep cultures free of bacteria, beers started to become nonsour," he says.
A handful of breweries in Belgium continued to produce sour beers, known as lambics, Flanders ales and guezes. But it's craft breweries in America that are making them fashionable again.
"They're taking the beer style in crazy directions, just like they did with IPAs and porters," Jeffries says. "The reason why you're seeing sour beers gaining popularity is because they taste great, but also because of the creativity of American brewers."
President Obama at the White House on Oct. 17, 2013, drawing lessons from the shutdown.
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
“There are no winners here,” President Obama declared at the White House this morning. Then, with an elegant air of nonpartisanship, Obama began to fashion the shutdown into a political weapon. Here’s how he’s going to deploy it.
1. Economic excuse. Obama noted that before the shutdown, the economy was recovering, and the deficit was falling. The fiscal standoff changed all that: “Every analyst out there believes it slowed our growth.” Obama rattled off the damage: families going without paychecks, home buyers and small businesses unable to get loans, consumers cutting back on spending, CEOs reporting that the fiscal anxiety had “set back their plans to hire over the next six months.” Even the “threat of default,” said the president, “increased our borrowing costs, which adds to our deficit.”
Today, this litany of laments looked like simple compassion from the president. But over the next year, it can serve as an excuse. If economic growth or deficit reduction isn’t where we’d like it to be, Obama can blame the shortfall on the “Republican shutdown” or the “Tea Party shutdown.” He’d be following in the footsteps of his predecessor, who spent three years after Sept. 11, 2001, blaming economic disappointment on the damage done when “the enemy hit us.”
2. Republican downgrade. Two years ago, when Standard and Poor’s downgraded the government’s credit rating, it cited our high deficits as well as the 2011 debt ceiling standoff. Ever since, Republicans have argued that the deficits, not the standoff, caused the downgrade. This time, we haven’t been downgraded, but we’ve been put on a credit watch by Fitch, another ratings agency. And this time, there’s no ballooning deficit. Obama wants to make that difference stick. He wants the downgrade threat of 2013 to reinforce the Democrats’ narrative about the downgrade of 2011. “The agency that put America’s credit rating on watch the other day explicitly cited” the congressional standoff, Obama pointed out. The Fitch report, he went on, said that “our economy remains more dynamic and resilient than other advanced economies and that the only thing putting us at risk is—and I’m quoting here—‘repeated brinkmanship.’ ” “That wasn’t a political statement,” Obama added, politicizing the statement.
3. National security. Even after killing Osama Bin Laden, Obama is constantly accused of weakness. No matter what he does in Iran, Egypt, Libya, or Syria, the old portrait of the Democratic president as soft on foreign policy never goes away. What usually helps Democrats in this area is economics. Their devotion to American labor at the expense of free trade comes across as tough on foreigners. But the fiscal showdowns of 2011 and 2013 could add a new twist. This morning, Obama reported that U.S. diplomats have
been hearing from their counterparts internationally. Some of the same folks who pushed for the shutdown and threatened default claim their actions were needed to get America back on the right track, to make sure we’re strong. But probably nothing has done more damage to America’s credibility in the world, our standing with other countries, than the spectacle we’ve seen these past several weeks. It’s encouraged our enemies. It’s emboldened our competitors. And it’s depressed our friends who look to us for steady leadership.
If Republicans stage another big fight over the next debt ceiling, that would be three in a row. It might facilitate a significant political development: the transformation of debt payment into a national security issue. Republicans could become the deadbeat party. Obama seems quite willing to attack them from this angle. And in framing economics as the key to American power, he has reality on his side.
4. The value of government. What happened in 1995 and 1996 has happened again: Closing the government has made Americans miss it. In his remarks today, Obama proposed,
One of the things that I hope all of us have learned these past few weeks is that it turns out smart, effective government is important. It matters. I think the American people, during this shutdown, had a chance to get some idea of all the things, large and small, that government does that make a difference in people’s lives. You know, we hear all the time about how government is the problem. Well, it turns out we rely on it in a whole lot of ways. Not only does it keep us strong through our military and our law enforcement—it plays a vital role in caring for our seniors and our veterans, educating our kids, making sure our workers are trained for the jobs that are being created, arming our businesses with the best science and technology so they can compete with companies from other countries. It plays a key role in keeping our food and our toys and our workplaces safe. It helps folks rebuild after a storm. It conserves our natural resources. It finances startups. It helps to sell our products overseas. It provides security to our diplomats abroad. So let’s work together to make government work better, instead of treating it like an enemy.
Congratulations, Tea Party. In the midst of Obamacare’s glitch-ridden debut, you did the one thing that could make us love our government: You took it away and held it hostage. Don’t expect any thanks from the president you helped.
Brain scans show unusual activity in retired American football players
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Sam Wong sam.wong@imperial.ac.uk 44-207-594-2198 Imperial College London
A new study has discovered profound abnormalities in brain activity in a group of retired American football players.
Although the former players in the study were not diagnosed with any neurological condition, brain imaging tests revealed unusual activity that correlated with how many times they had left the field with a head injury during their careers.
Previous research has found that former American football players experience higher rates of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The new findings, published in Scientific Reports, suggest that players also face a risk of subtle neurological deficits that don't show up on normal clinical tests.
The study involved 13 former National Football League (NFL) professionals who believed they were suffering from neurological problems affecting their everyday lives as a consequence of their careers.
The former players and 60 healthy volunteers were given a test that involved rearranging coloured balls in a series of tubes in as few steps as possible. Their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they did the test.
The NFL group performed worse on the test than the healthy volunteers, but the difference was modest. More strikingly, the scans showed unusual patterns of brain activity in the frontal lobe. The difference between the two groups was so marked that a computer programme learned to distinguish NFL alumni and controls at close to 90 per cent accuracy based just on their frontal lobe activation patterns.
"The NFL alumni showed some of the most pronounced abnormalities in brain activity that I have ever seen, and I have processed a lot of patient data sets in the past," said Dr Adam Hampshire, lead author of the study, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London.
The frontal lobe is responsible for executive functions: higher-order brain activity that regulates other cognitive processes. The researchers think the differences seen in this study reflect deficits in executive function that might affect the person's ability to plan and organise their everyday lives.
"The critical fact is that the level of brain abnormality correlates strongly with the measure of head impacts of great enough severity to warrant being taken out of play. This means that it is highly likely that damage caused by blows to the head accumulate towards an executive impairment in later life."
Dr Hampshire and his colleagues at the University of Western Ontario, Canada suggest that fMRI could be used to reveal potential neurological problems in American football players that aren't picked up by standard clinical tests. Brain imaging results could be useful to retired players who are negotiating compensation for neurological problems that may be related to their careers. Players could also be scanned each season to detect problems early.
The findings also highlight the inadequacy of standard cognitive tests for detecting certain types of behavioural deficit.
"Researchers have put a lot of time into developing tests to pick up on executive dysfunction, but none of them work at all well. It's not unusual for an individual who has had a blow to the head to perform relatively well on a neuropsychological testing battery, and then go on to struggle in everyday life.
"The results tell us something very interesting about the human brain, which is that after damage, it can work harder and bring extra areas on line in order to cope with cognitive tasks. It is likely that in more complicated real world scenarios, this plasticity is insufficient and consequently, the executive impairment is no longer masked. In this respect, the results are also of relevance to other patients who suffer from multiple head injuries.
"Of course, this is a relatively preliminary study. We really need to test more players and to track players across seasons using brain imaging."
###
The participants were enrolled by David Hubbard MD at the Applied fMRI Institute in San Diego, California. The study was funded by the Hubbard Foundation and the Canada Excellence Research Chair Program.
For more information please contact:
Sam Wong
Research Media Officer
Imperial College London
Email: sam.wong@imperial.ac.uk
Tel: +44(0)20 7594 2198
Out of hours duty press officer: +44(0)7803 886 248
Notes to editors
1. A. Hampshire et al. 'Hypoconnectivity and Hyperfrontality in Retired American Football Players' Scientific Reports, 17 October 2013. DOI: 10.1038/srep02972
2. About Imperial College London
Consistently rated amongst the world's best universities, Imperial College London is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research that attracts 14,000 students and 6,000 staff of the highest international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and business, delivering practical solutions that improve quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture.
Since its foundation in 1907, Imperial's contributions to society have included the discovery of penicillin, the development of holography and the foundations of fibre optics. This commitment to the application of research for the benefit of all continues today, with current focuses including interdisciplinary collaborations to improve global health, tackle climate change, develop sustainable sources of energy and address security challenges.
In 2007, Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust formed the UK's first Academic Health Science Centre. This unique partnership aims to improve the quality of life of patients and populations by taking new discoveries and translating them into new therapies as quickly as possible.
Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Brain scans show unusual activity in retired American football players
Public release date: 17-Oct-2013 [
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Sam Wong sam.wong@imperial.ac.uk 44-207-594-2198 Imperial College London
A new study has discovered profound abnormalities in brain activity in a group of retired American football players.
Although the former players in the study were not diagnosed with any neurological condition, brain imaging tests revealed unusual activity that correlated with how many times they had left the field with a head injury during their careers.
Previous research has found that former American football players experience higher rates of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The new findings, published in Scientific Reports, suggest that players also face a risk of subtle neurological deficits that don't show up on normal clinical tests.
The study involved 13 former National Football League (NFL) professionals who believed they were suffering from neurological problems affecting their everyday lives as a consequence of their careers.
The former players and 60 healthy volunteers were given a test that involved rearranging coloured balls in a series of tubes in as few steps as possible. Their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they did the test.
The NFL group performed worse on the test than the healthy volunteers, but the difference was modest. More strikingly, the scans showed unusual patterns of brain activity in the frontal lobe. The difference between the two groups was so marked that a computer programme learned to distinguish NFL alumni and controls at close to 90 per cent accuracy based just on their frontal lobe activation patterns.
"The NFL alumni showed some of the most pronounced abnormalities in brain activity that I have ever seen, and I have processed a lot of patient data sets in the past," said Dr Adam Hampshire, lead author of the study, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London.
The frontal lobe is responsible for executive functions: higher-order brain activity that regulates other cognitive processes. The researchers think the differences seen in this study reflect deficits in executive function that might affect the person's ability to plan and organise their everyday lives.
"The critical fact is that the level of brain abnormality correlates strongly with the measure of head impacts of great enough severity to warrant being taken out of play. This means that it is highly likely that damage caused by blows to the head accumulate towards an executive impairment in later life."
Dr Hampshire and his colleagues at the University of Western Ontario, Canada suggest that fMRI could be used to reveal potential neurological problems in American football players that aren't picked up by standard clinical tests. Brain imaging results could be useful to retired players who are negotiating compensation for neurological problems that may be related to their careers. Players could also be scanned each season to detect problems early.
The findings also highlight the inadequacy of standard cognitive tests for detecting certain types of behavioural deficit.
"Researchers have put a lot of time into developing tests to pick up on executive dysfunction, but none of them work at all well. It's not unusual for an individual who has had a blow to the head to perform relatively well on a neuropsychological testing battery, and then go on to struggle in everyday life.
"The results tell us something very interesting about the human brain, which is that after damage, it can work harder and bring extra areas on line in order to cope with cognitive tasks. It is likely that in more complicated real world scenarios, this plasticity is insufficient and consequently, the executive impairment is no longer masked. In this respect, the results are also of relevance to other patients who suffer from multiple head injuries.
"Of course, this is a relatively preliminary study. We really need to test more players and to track players across seasons using brain imaging."
###
The participants were enrolled by David Hubbard MD at the Applied fMRI Institute in San Diego, California. The study was funded by the Hubbard Foundation and the Canada Excellence Research Chair Program.
For more information please contact:
Sam Wong
Research Media Officer
Imperial College London
Email: sam.wong@imperial.ac.uk
Tel: +44(0)20 7594 2198
Out of hours duty press officer: +44(0)7803 886 248
Notes to editors
1. A. Hampshire et al. 'Hypoconnectivity and Hyperfrontality in Retired American Football Players' Scientific Reports, 17 October 2013. DOI: 10.1038/srep02972
2. About Imperial College London
Consistently rated amongst the world's best universities, Imperial College London is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research that attracts 14,000 students and 6,000 staff of the highest international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and business, delivering practical solutions that improve quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture.
Since its foundation in 1907, Imperial's contributions to society have included the discovery of penicillin, the development of holography and the foundations of fibre optics. This commitment to the application of research for the benefit of all continues today, with current focuses including interdisciplinary collaborations to improve global health, tackle climate change, develop sustainable sources of energy and address security challenges.
In 2007, Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust formed the UK's first Academic Health Science Centre. This unique partnership aims to improve the quality of life of patients and populations by taking new discoveries and translating them into new therapies as quickly as possible.
Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
We already knew that the NSA was collecting a lot of data with its many surveillance tools—like, a lot of data. But new details about the agency's role in the CIA's drone program show that they're collecting incredibly detailed data, too. Detailed enough to catch a terrorist with a single email.
Citing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the Washington Post reported on how the NSA and CIA work in tandem to gather information on suspected terrorists and their whereabouts, information that they later use to plan drone strikes to take out those terrorists. In one instance, a single "innocuous" email to al-Qaeda agent Hassan Ghul from his wife proved deadly. From the Post:
The e-mail from Ghul's wife "about her current living conditions" contained enough detail to confirm the coordinates of that household, according to a document summarizing the mission. "This information enabled a capture/kill operation against an individual believed to be Hassan Ghul on October 1," it said.
Of course, the NSA had other irons in the fire. The WP reports that the agency had also "deployed an arsenal of cyber-espionage tools, secretly seizing control of laptops, siphoning audio files and other messages, and tracking radio transmissions." But one single email to confirm! That's either some very sophisticated surveillance or one very detailed email.
It's hard to walk away from the Post's story about the NSA and the CIA's drone program—which is worth reading in full—without wondering if some of these same tools are being used on American soil, either to track suspected terrorists or spy on Americans that may or may not be connected to them. Based on what we know from the Snowden revelations, it seems like they probably are. [Washington Post]
"Thor" is coming to the Lucca Comics & Games Fest.
ROME -- The new film from the successful Thor superhero franchise will have its Italian premiere at the upcoming Lucca Comics & Games Festival, organizers said Tuesday.
The Oct. 30-Nov. 3 Tuscan event, dubbed Saturday, Nov. 2, "SaTHORday," with the day's activities rotating around the premiere of Thor: The Dark World, directed by Alan Taylor and starring Chris Hemsworth reprising his role as the muscled Norse god from the original Thor and The Avengers -- both of which will screen ahead of the premiere of the latest film.
The festival will also give priority entry to any moviegoers dressed like any of the superheroes from the Marvel universe.
On the same day, the Lucca fest will also play dress-up with another anticipated blockbuster: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, with models and one festival attendee invited to dress like characters from that film with the help of an acclaimed stylist and a designer. The selected festivalgoer will also be awarded a trip to Rome for the world festival premiere of the new Hunger Games film at the Rome Film Festival on Nov. 14.
Thor: The Dark World will open wide in Italy Nov. 20 under the umbrella of The Walt Disney Co.-Italia.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will be released in Italy a week later.
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