As always, this list is made up of places that opened in the last year. So here it is, a guide to the best new cafes and coffee-focused restaurants in New York.
Source: http://ny.eater.com/archives/2013/06/coffee_heatmap.php
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Microsoft rolls out the next version of windows, 8.1, at its annual Build developers conference today. It's a big deal. Windows 8 was a crazy ambitious step, what follows is just as important. This is what Microsoft's taken from your months of feedback (or just, yelling).
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Our class of newbies learns how to pick up that buttery taste in a glass of Chardonnay.
Heather Rousseau/NPROur class of newbies learns how to pick up that buttery taste in a glass of Chardonnay.
Heather Rousseau/NPRWine tasting has taken it on the chin recently.
"There are no two ways about it: the bullsh*t is strong with wine."
That's what Robert T. Gonzales recently wrote on io9.com in a post that eviscerated wine tasting as a form of skilled craft. "Wine tasting. Wine rating. Wine reviews. Wine descriptions." he writes. "They're all related. And they're all egregious offenders, from a [expletive deleted] standpoint."
But then Gonzales goes on to cite a piece written by disgraced science journalist Jonah Lehrer to back up his argument. And that's when I start detecting hints of bologna.
Gonzales's comments swirled up the bee's nest. And wine lovers have come up from the cellars to defend their sniffing, gurgling and spitting on the blogosphere.
We're not here to enter the debate. But rather, we wanted to give you an insider's look at a few places where the science of wine tasting is clear-cut ? and relatively easy to learn.
Most of what we taste in wine comes from its aroma. Connoisseurs like to talk about the complex aromas of wine ? hints of strawberry or citrus, for example. But don't let that intimidate you. Mastering three or four of these aromas will take you far in the wine tasting world, impressing even your most die-hard oenophiles. Here's what you need to know.
1. Put your face close to some wood. Take a deep breath.
Got a pretty good idea what that smells like now? Good. That's what Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon smell like when winemakers store them in oak barrels.
Swigging for science: A hint of oak, our winetasting newbies learned, is more common in reds than whites. It's a marker for expense in both.
Heather Rousseau/NPRSwigging for science: A hint of oak, our winetasting newbies learned, is more common in reds than whites. It's a marker for expense in both.
Heather Rousseau/NPRMany red wines spend time in oak barrels. So if you call a California red "oaky," chances are, you'll be correct. But no one will be impressed.
The way to get a little cred is to state confidently whether or not your Chardonnay has been stored in oak. As in: "Hmm, I really like the oak flavors of this Chardonnay." Or conversely, "I enjoy a Chardonnay that hasn't been oaked."
The woody aroma comes from compounds called whisky lactones, which leach out of the barrels into the wine over the years. An oaky aroma is generally associated with more expensive wines.
2. Sniff out vanilla.
Here's a trick that will really knock the socks off your wine friends. Next time you're enjoying a red wine, say, a California Pinot Noir, and you smell vanilla, simply proclaim, "Clearly, this wine was aged in American oak, not French." Practice by huffing on some vanilla extract in your kitchen.
Winemakers typically use one of two types of oak barrels for storage: French or American oak. The American wood releases more vanillin into wine than French oak does. And guess what vanillin smells like? Yup, vanilla beans.
So if your sniffer is detecting vanilla in wine, it was likely stored in American oak barrels. But don't ever say this about a French wine, which ? of course ? would never be stored in American oak. Mon dieu!
3. Go slice a green pepper.
Certain types of grapes, a.k.a. varietals, have their own distinctive aromas. Perhaps the most distinctive is the Cabernet Sauvignon grape, which smells like green peppers. Both get their signature smell from pyrazines; with grapes, the scent is strongest when they aren't quite ripe ? and you can still detect that scent in the resulting wine.
So swirl your next Cab. Take a whiff of it. If there's a faint hint of green pepper, then try a statement like, "There are definitely some pyrazines in this Cab. The grapes must not haven ripened fully. Please take this inferior wine away from me."
4. Buy some imitation butter.
Our final party trick is a bit complicated. But it's so worth the investment.
Grapes taste tart because they contain an acid found in Granny Smith apples. Wine makers can get rid of this sourness by adding bacteria into their fermenting juice. The bug converts the tart acid into less tart acids, like the ones found in milk. Along the way, bacteria also churn out a butter flavor, called diacetyl ? the same compound food scientists put in imitation butter and microwave popcorn.
The process is called malolactic fermentation, or MLF for short. Wines that have gone through MLF have a smoother mouthfeel and a butter or butterscotch smell that's a dead giveaway. The more buttery the wine, the bigger the pricetag.
5. Do try this at home.
To master these wine tasting tricks, you probably need some training. Here's a cool way to do it. Take a cheap, flavorless wine and then spike it with one of the compounds above ? say, a few drops of vanilla extract or imitation butter. Then use it as a reference while you sniff the good stuff.
We tried out this training strategy here at The Salt with a few Chardonnays. And the results were impressive. By learning to sniff out the buttery aroma beforehand, 10 out of 10 newbie wine tasters could correctly identify the Chardonnay that went through MLF.
Michaeleen Doucleff is a reporter and producer on NPR's Science Desk. She has a master's in winemaking from U.C. Davis.
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KUWAIT (Reuters) - Israeli and Palestinian leaders are both committed to reviving peace talks, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday, but he acknowledged that progress on the long-stalled negotiations would be difficult.
Israeli-Palestinian talks broke down in late 2010 in a dispute over construction of Jewish settlements on occupied West Bank land that Palestinians want as part of their future state.
Kerry, who held separate talks with both sides in May, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wanted the peace process to move forward. This would be Kerry's fifth attempt to restart talks.
"I believe they believe the peace process is bigger than any one day or one moment, or certainly more important to their countries than some of their current political challenges," he told a news conference in Kuwait with Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah.
"That is why both of them have indicated a seriousness of purpose. I would not be here now if I didn't have the belief this is possible," he said.
Kerry said he did not want to set any deadlines for the peace process but added that there needed to be progress before the U.N. General Assembly in September.
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Sylvia Westall; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-palestinian-leaders-serious-talks-kerry-122607681.html
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Edward Snowden is reportedly seeking political asylum in Ecuador after arriving to Moscow today. Meanwhile, the US has revoked his passport. The former NSA contractor has been on the run since he first revealed details of Verizon's participation in a telecommunications industry program to store information on all telephone calls, and then broke news of the NSA/Silicon Valley PRISM system that watches over the whole Interent. Developing...
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June 22, 2013 ? Scientists from South Africa, Australia and France have discovered a world first association while scanning a 250 million year old fossilised burrow from the Karoo Basin of South Africa.
The burrow revealed two unrelated vertebrate animals nestled together and fossilised after being trapped by a flash flood event. Facing harsh climatic conditions subsequent to the Permo-Triassic (P-T) mass extinction, the amphibian Broomistega and the mammal forerunner Thrinaxodon cohabited in a burrow.
Scanning shows that the amphibian, which was suffering from broken ribs, crawled into a sleeping mammal's shelter for protection. This research suggests that short periods of dormancy, called aestivation, in addition to burrowing behaviour, may have been a crucial adaptation that allowed mammal ancestors to survive the P-T extinction.
The international team of scientists was led by Dr Vincent Fernandez from Wits University, South Africa and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. The other authors from Wits University include Prof. Bruce Rubidge (Director of the newly formed Palaeosciences Centre of Excellence at Wits), Dr Fernando Abdala and Dr Kristian Carlson. Other authors include Dr Della Collins Cook (Indiana University); Dr Adam Yates (Museum of Central Australia) and Dr. Paul Tafforeau (ESRF).
After many impressive results obtained on fossils, synchrotron imaging has led to revived interest in the studies of the numerous fossilised burrows discovered in the Karoo Basin of South Africa and dated to 250 million years ago. The first attempt to investigate one of these burrow-casts surprisingly revealed a world-first association of two unrelated animals.
The fossil was recovered from sedimentary rock strata in the Karoo Basin. It dates from 250 million years ago, at the beginning of the Triassic Period. At that time, the ecosystem was recovering from the Permo-Triassic mass extinction that wiped out most of life on Earth. In the Pangea Supercontinent context, what is now South Africa was an enclave in the southern half called Gondwana. It was the scene of pronounced climatic warming and increased seasonality marked by monsoonal rainfall. To survive this harsh environment, many animals, including mammal-like reptiles (mammal forerunners), developed a digging behaviour, attested by the numerous fossilised burrow casts discovered in the Karoo Basin. These casts have long been thought to enclose fossilised remains, triggering interest from palaeontologists. Early this year, an international group of scientists started to research the contents of these burrows using X-ray synchrotron computed microtomography.
Two burrow casts were selected from the collection at Wits to be scanned using the state-of-the-art facility at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). Using the unique properties of the X-ray beam which enables non-destructive probing, the scan of the first burrow started to reveal the skull of a mammal-like reptile called Thrinaxodon, an animal previously reported in another burrow.
As the scan progressed, the three-dimensional reconstruction displayed results beyond expectations: the mammal-like reptile was accompanied by an amphibian Broomistega, belonging to the extinct group of Temnospondyl.
"While discovering the results we were amazed by the quality of the images," says lead author Fernandez, "but the real excitement came when we discovered a second set of teeth completely different from that of the mammal-like reptile. It was really something else."
Besides the pristine preservation of the two skeletons, the team focused on the reasons explaining such an unusual co-habitation. Fernandez explains: "Burrow-sharing by different species exists in the modern world, but it corresponds to a specific pattern. For example, a small visitor is not going to disturb the host. A large visitor can be accepted by the host if it provides some help, like predator vigilance. But neither of these patterns corresponds to what we have discovered in this fossilised burrow."
The scientists gathered all the information to try to reconstitute the events that led to this incredible fossil aggregation, testing scenarios one after another. "It's a fascinating scientific question: what caused the association of these two organisms in the burrow? One of the more obvious possibilities is a predator-prey interaction, but we inspected both skeletons looking for tooth marks or other evidence implying predation, ultimately finding no support for one having attempted to feed on the other," says Carlson.
His colleague, Cook, adds that the consecutive broken ribs resulted from a single, massive trauma. The amphibian clearly survived the injury for some time because the fractures were healing, but it was surely quite handicapped. According to Fernandez this Broomistega is the first complete skeleton of this rare species that has been discovered. "It tells us that this individual was a juvenile and mostly aquatic at that time of its life," he says.
The scientists eventually concluded that the amphibian crawled into the burrow in response to its poor physical condition but was not evicted by the mammal-like reptile.
Numerous Thrinaxodon specimens have been found in South Africa, many of them fossilised in a curled-up position. Abdala says: "I have always been fascinated by the preservation of Thrinaxodon fossils in a curled-up position that show even tiny bones of the skeleton preserved. It's as if they were peacefully resting in shelters at the time of death."
The shelters prevented disturbance of the skeletal remains from scavengers and weathering. "We also think it might reflect a state of torpor called aestivation in response to aridity and absence of food resources," Abdala says.
Piecing all the clues together, the team finally elucidated the enigmatic association, concluding that "the mammal-like reptile, Thrinaxodon, was most probably aestivating in its burrow, a key adaptation response together with a burrowing behaviour which enabled our distant ancestors to survive the most dramatic mass extinction event. This state of torpor explains why the amphibian was not chased out of the burrow," says Rubidge.
Both animals were finally entrapped in the burrow by a sudden flood and preserved together in the sediments for 250 million years.
Tafforeau says: "Thanks to the unique possibilities for high quality imaging of fossils developed during the last decade at the ESRF, these unique specimens remain untouched, protected by their mineral matrix. Who knows what kind of information we'll be able to obtain from them in the future and which would have been completely lost if the specimen had been prepared out of its burrow cast?"
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