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The legendary television interviewer has signed a deal with Russia's English-language, Kremlin-backed television station to appear on a new show, 'Politics with Larry King.'

By Fred Weir,?Correspondent / May 29, 2013

Larry King appears at the Milken Institute Global Conference last month in Beverly Hills, California. Russia Today announced that it will begin airing Mr. King's online shows in June and will also produce a new show, 'Politics with Larry King,' for its American affiliate.

Fred Prouser/Reuters

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Television legend Larry King has a new political talk show, and a new boss.

Skip to next paragraph Fred Weir

Correspondent

Fred Weir has been the Monitor's Moscow correspondent, covering Russia and the former Soviet Union, since 1998.?

Unique among Earth's creatures, turtles are the only animals to form a shell on the outside of their bodies through a fusion of modified ribs, vertebrae and shoulder girdle bones. The turtle shell is a unique modification, and how and when it originated has fascinated and confounded biologists for more than two centuries. A Smithsonian scientist and colleagues recently discovered that the beginnings of the turtle shell started 40 million years earlier than previously thought. The team's research is published in the May 30 issue of Current Biology.

The oldest known fossil turtle dated back about 210 million years, but it had an already fully formed shell, giving no clues to early shell evolution. Then a clue came in 2008 when the 220 million-year-old fossil remains of an early turtle species, Odontochelys semitestacea, were discovered in China. It had a fully developed plastron (the belly portion of a turtle's shell), but only a partial carapace made up of distinctively broadened ribs and vertebrae on its back. With this knowledge the scientists turned to newly discovered specimens of Eunotosaurus africanus, a South African species 40 million years older than O. semitestacea that also had distinctively broadened ribs. Their detailed study of Eunotosaurus indicated it uniquely shared many features only found in turtles, such as no intercostal muscles that run in between the ribs, paired belly ribs and a specialized mode of rib development, which indicates that Eunotosaurus represents one of the first species to form the evolutionary branch of turtles.

"Eunotosaurus neatly fills an approximately 30-55-million year gap in the turtle fossil record," said Tyler Lyson, a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "There are several anatomical and developmental features that indicate Eunotosaurus is an early representative of the turtle lineage; however, its morphology is intermediate between the specialized shell found in modern turtles and primitive features found in other vertebrates. As such, Eunotosaurus helps bridge the morphological gap between turtles and other reptiles."

Ribs in most other animals protect internal organs and help ventilate the lungs to assist breathing. Because the ribs of turtles have been modified to form the shell, they have also had to modify the way they breathe with specialized muscles. This presents the team with their next challenge. They plan to examine the novel respiratory system in turtles and see how it evolved in conjunction with the evolution of the turtle's shell.

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Scientists discover that turtles began living in shells much earlier than once thought Public release date: 30-May-2013
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Contact: Kelly Carnes
carnesk@si.edu
202-633-2950
Smithsonian

Unique among Earth's creatures, turtles are the only animals to form a shell on the outside of their bodies through a fusion of modified ribs, vertebrae and shoulder girdle bones. The turtle shell is a unique modification, and how and when it originated has fascinated and confounded biologists for more than two centuries. A Smithsonian scientist and colleagues recently discovered that the beginnings of the turtle shell started 40 million years earlier than previously thought. The team's research is published in the May 30 issue of Current Biology.

The oldest known fossil turtle dated back about 210 million years, but it had an already fully formed shell, giving no clues to early shell evolution. Then a clue came in 2008 when the 220 million-year-old fossil remains of an early turtle species, Odontochelys semitestacea, were discovered in China. It had a fully developed plastron (the belly portion of a turtle's shell), but only a partial carapace made up of distinctively broadened ribs and vertebrae on its back. With this knowledge the scientists turned to newly discovered specimens of Eunotosaurus africanus, a South African species 40 million years older than O. semitestacea that also had distinctively broadened ribs. Their detailed study of Eunotosaurus indicated it uniquely shared many features only found in turtles, such as no intercostal muscles that run in between the ribs, paired belly ribs and a specialized mode of rib development, which indicates that Eunotosaurus represents one of the first species to form the evolutionary branch of turtles.

"Eunotosaurus neatly fills an approximately 30-55-million year gap in the turtle fossil record," said Tyler Lyson, a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "There are several anatomical and developmental features that indicate Eunotosaurus is an early representative of the turtle lineage; however, its morphology is intermediate between the specialized shell found in modern turtles and primitive features found in other vertebrates. As such, Eunotosaurus helps bridge the morphological gap between turtles and other reptiles."

Ribs in most other animals protect internal organs and help ventilate the lungs to assist breathing. Because the ribs of turtles have been modified to form the shell, they have also had to modify the way they breathe with specialized muscles. This presents the team with their next challenge. They plan to examine the novel respiratory system in turtles and see how it evolved in conjunction with the evolution of the turtle's shell.

###
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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.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/s-sdt052913.php
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The industry is all a-buzz today with Rand Fishkin?s announcement that SEOmoz is relaunching and rebranding as simply Moz. They are distancing themselves from their history as an SEO company and positioning themselves as a provider of more general marketing tools, with a focus on ?inbound marketing,? the phrase that local Boston company HubSpot and others made (relatively) famous.

I couldn?t help but notice that Rand?s blog post explaining the change included a revision of a diagram he had previously used when discussing inbound marketing. Here?s the new diagram, which distinguishes between inbound marketing and ?interruption marketing?:

What is Inbound Marketing?

And here?s the old diagram, from Rand?s March 2011 blog post:

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

Notice anything missing? That?s right, brainiacs, PPC is mysteriously missing! In the new diagram, PPC is right next to SEO, at the top of the list - where I think it belongs! So what changed?

What (TF) Is Inbound Marketing, Anyway?

Earlier this year, there was a long thread at Inbound.org, started by our own Victor Pan, who petitioned for a PPC category on the site. Tad Chef responded by saying that ?buying ads is outbound?:

Inbound Marketing Definition

Ian Howells echoed this idea, saying: ?Not that I hate on paid search, but erm? the site is called inbound.org. PPC is paid media, which is the polar opposite.?

Martin McDonald then followed up on the topic in a post called ?WTF is Inbound Marketing, Anyway?? at his blog, which drew another long chain of comments. Martin disagreed with both Tad and Ian:

Now frankly, I?m in disagreement with both of the above. PPC is absolutely a part of inbound marketing by my standards.?My definition of inbound revolves around being somewhere with the answer when someone is looking for it, NOT sticking an advert for a product or service in front of their faces. That absolutely includes PPC!

This sparked another thread at Inbound.org, with people continuing to debate whether PPC, being a form of paid media, qualifies as inbound marketing.

Is PPC included in Inbound Marketing?

The answer, as Ed Fry points out, really depends on how you define inbound marketing. Is it about cost of distribution, or context?

Free vs. Paid, Interruption vs. Flow

Some people in the web marketing space have suggested that PPC shouldn?t be included in ?inbound marketing? because you have to pay for placement. But this doesn?t make any sense.

The whole point of introducing a term like ?inbound marketing? is to create a more nuanced distinction than just ?free marketing? and ?paid marketing.? Any marketer who manages a budget knows that no form of marketing is truly ?free.? HubSpot, one of the first proponents of inbound marketing, sells a product that helps you do it ? how is that free? They know that if they called what they?re selling ? a platform for blogging and SEO ? ?free marketing,? it would? be a contradiction in terms. Of course, you can do inbound marketing without HubSpot (duh), but you?re either going to be paying someone or a team of people to do it (a blogger, a social media manager, an SEO specialist, etc.) or you?re going to be doing it yourself, as the business owner, and any time you spend on inbound marketing is time you can?t spend on other business activities, so all those activities have a cost. That?s why ?free marketing? doesn?t cut it.

It makes much more sense to think of ?inbound marketing? as the opposite of ?outbound marketing,? or ?interruption marketing,? than as the opposite of ?free marketing? (which doesn?t exist). By this definition, inbound marketing is any kind of marketing that reaches customers when they go looking for something to buy.

For example: if you own a local pizza joint and you go around stick fliers and menus under people?s windshield wipers and rubber-banding them to their doorknobs all the time, that?s outbound or interruption marketing, because you?re coming to them and getting in their face, even though you have no idea whether they want pizza or even like pizza.

But if someone in your area searches for ?pizza? on their mobile phone at 5 pm, and they get an organic local listing or a mobile PPC ad from your businesses, that?s contextual. Neither option is interrupting the flow of what they?re doing. Either way, you?re giving them information they were already looking for. Because PPC, like SEO, is contextual and query-triggered, it?s inbound marketing. Clearly, Rand and the Moz team realized this sometime in the past couple of years, and that?s part of why they?re changing their position.

Is Paid Media Sustainable?

Hubspot, who helped create and popularize the inbound marketing buzzword, has long argued that PPC is a marketing addiction. At the 2012 HubSpot user conference in Boston, Mark Roberge, a senior HubSpot executive, gave a talk where he claimed that paid search is not sustainable. Here?s a photo from that event!

is Paid Search Considered Inbound Marketing?

I won?t reiterate the irony of HubSpot being a paid product. But I will repeat that all media is paid media. SEO requires tremendous effort. Thousands of new websites are launched every day, but the first page of the search results isn?t getting any bigger. In fact, if we look at the trends in mobile search, if anything, the SERP is getting smaller! That means the competition to get on the first page of Google is getting exponentially greater all the time.

And of course Hubspot knows this. After all, we?ve even done joint webinars together on how to leverage PPC. And they spend 10?s of thousands of dollars per month on PPC advertising to generate leads in a cost effective and scalable way, according to tools like SpyFu and SEMRush:

Hubspot says Paid Search isn't inbound marketing and should be avoided yet they do a lot of paid search

Ian Lurie pointed out recently, SEO is a zero-sum game. There?s only room for 10 organic listings on the first page (if you?re lucky). And if someone else takes those spots, that means you can?t! If you think it?s going to be easy to compete with bigger businesses who have been doing it longer, you?re crazy. And you?re even crazier if you think SEO is free.

I?m glad that more marketers including Rand Fishkin and I realize that PPC is inbound marketing, it is sustainable, and it does work.

Are you on board yet? And if not, why not?

?

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/05/29/what-is-inbound-marketing

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TV

Matt Murray TODAY

6 hours ago

Eight years, countless strangely named nightclubs and a "human roomba" later, Bill Hader sayshe doesn't think Stefon will be back any time soon.The "Saturday Night Live" actor announced earlier this month that the season 38 finale of 'SNL' would be his laston the show, and he sat down with Willie Geist and Megan Colarossi to talk about Hader's fan-favorite character.

Willie: So how does it feel to be done with 'SNL'?

Bill: I feel good. It was more like my wife and I decided we were moving to California because we were flying out there a lot. So it was like, "Can I still do 'SNL' and live in LA?" and it wasn?t going to work out.

Willie: Was there any trepidation about stepping away from 'SNL'?

Bill: No, because to me it was like "I did SNL." I mean, getting "SNL" was pretty amazing so just to be able to have an eight-year career there and be really happy with everything I did, it was pretty big.

Megan: I heard there's an interesting story about you and Andy Samberg auditioning at the same time?

Bill: We both were auditioning at the same time and he was the guy next to me and he had a backpack full of props, not like Carrot Top-style, but people bring props, a lot of people do that. But I looked over and I was going, "I didn?t bring anything, I'm an idiot. Why didn't I think to bring any props or anything?" And he said he was looking at me and thinking, "Oh, he didn't bring any props, why did I?" We were both just wrecks.

Watch: Bill Hader's best celeb impressions on SNL

Willie: The big question everyone wants to know, will we ever see Stefon again?

Bill: That might have been it.

Willie: No Stefon movie?

Bill: No, probably not. Lorne (Michaels) talked about (a movie), and me and John Mulaney who I write that with, we talked about it and said, no I don?t really think there?s a movie there. I mean, it barely worked as a sketch! We couldn?t do it as a sketch, that?s why we put it on "(Weekend) Update." I was like, "Unless I break during the movie, I don?t think people are gonna watch."

Willie: The hands coming to the face, did that come from you laughing?

Bill: No, that was a part of the character, him being nervous. And then it helped when (John Mulaney) would start changing the cue cards and I'd laugh. The cue-card changing, it was really only two or three times where they?d change it and it?d be something completely different that I didn?t know about. Most of the time when I would start laughing was something that we wrote that week and I still couldn?t keep it together, like the Human Roomba joke. But sometimes as I?m walking out, John Mulaney would say, "Oh I changed the club promoter to Gay Liotta. Have fun!"

Willie: It seems like there was a competition to see who could come up with the most obscure reference.

Bill: We?d try to take the Stefon pitches to the amazing writing table at "SNL" and we?d say, "OK, what club should this take place in?" and people would say really funny stuff, but then John would go, "A haunted diaper" and I?d agree and say, "Yeah, a haunted diaper." And eventually the writers just said, "Yeah, go away, we can't." And we don?t really laugh that much while we?re writing it. It?s just kind of sitting there, long stretches of silence. Most of the time it was just slamming your head against the wall. I think with that writers' room thing, it was hard to give notes on Stefon as far as what to cut and what not to cut because it was like, "I don?t know what any of this means."

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/bill-hader-says-we-probably-wont-see-stefon-again-6C10116962

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Murdoch aims to defy naysayers with new News Corp

(Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch tried to convince Wall Street on Tuesday that there is still money to be made in newspapers, reminding investors that he had defied skeptics over the past 60 years to build one of the world's biggest media empires. As News Corp prepares to separate its publishing business from its entertainment assets, Murdoch said that while some brands face individual challenges, as a whole the publishing portfolio is "undervalued and underdeveloped."

Thomson Reuters hires Economist CEO to lead media unit

(Reuters) - Thomson Reuters Corp said on Wednesday it had hired Andrew Rashbass, currently group chief executive of The Economist Group, to be CEO of its Reuters news business. "We are determined that Reuters news should not only fulfill its critical mission but also its potential in creating long-term value for our customers and shareholders," David Thomson, chairman of Thomson Reuters, said in a statement.

IAC seeking buyer for Newsweek: Variety

(Reuters) - IAC/InterActive Corp is looking for potential buyers for Newsweek, the venerable magazine that stopped print publications in the United States last year in favor of an all digital format, the Hollywood trade paper Variety reported on Tuesday, citing sources who have been briefed on the matter. IAC obtained a stake in the 80-year-old Newsweek in 2010, when it merged with the Daily Beast, and under an agreement with investor Sidney Harman, who had bought Newsweek from the Washington Post for $1 and assumption of liabilities.

Readers of German mass daily Bild to pay for some online content

BERLIN (Reuters) - Readers of Germany's best-selling daily, Bild, will have to pay for some online content from mid-June, an executive at Axel Springer said on Monday, as the company fights against an era of "free beer for everyone". Bild's website will adopt a so-called "freemium model", with some content remaining free while items such as exclusive interviews, stories and photos will be subject to a charge.

News Corp to take charge of up to $1.4 billion this quarter

(Reuters) - News Corp said on Friday it will write down the value of its Australian and U.S. publishing assets by up to $1.4 billion, as the company prepares to split its business between its newspaper and entertainment operations. The company said the goodwill impairment charge was primarily for its Australia newspapers though it gave no more details. It also said it expected reduced cash flows in the future.

Obama in heated exchanges with Code Pink anti-war protester

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The woman who interrupted President Barack Obama's speech on counterterrorism policy on Thursday is well-known around Washington as a perennial protester on national security issues. Medea Benjamin, a founder of anti-war women's group Code Pink, began demonstrating years ago on Capitol Hill, becoming an almost routine presence at hearings where high-ranking officials of the Bush administration appeared to talk about the Iraq war.

Attorney general signed off on Fox phone records subpoena

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General Eric Holder personally approved a decision to subpoena Fox News telephone records as the Justice Department investigated an unauthorized leak regarding North Korea, officials said on Tuesday. The Justice Department did not mention the subpoena when it issued a statement on Friday describing how Holder had vetted a decision to seek a search warrant for the contents of an email account used by Fox News reporter James Rosen.

Hulu video site auction attracts four bidders: sources

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former News Corp president Peter Chernin and private equity fund Guggenheim Digital Media have placed bids for Hulu, two people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, triggering a tug-of-war for the online video service. Satellite operator DirecTV and cable operator Time Warner Cable Inc also put in bids, one of the people told Reuters.

Obama orders review of guidelines for probing journalists

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Thursday he directed Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a review of Department of Justice guidelines for investigations that involve journalists and report back by early July. Obama has come under criticism for his administration's pursuit of journalists who have reported leaked material.

Vivendi names new management for SFR

PARIS (Reuters) - Media and telecoms conglomerate Vivendi has appointed Jean-Yves Charlier as chief executive of French telecome operator SFR, its largest unit, where profits are under pressure from a mobile price war. Charlier, a former board member of Vivendi, has been piloting the group's telecom strategy since October as it seeks to sell telecom assets to focus more on media.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-industry-summary-002714617.html

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Samsung Desktop Dock

One of our favorite features of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is that it's essentially the same size as its predecessor, and so a number of accessories released for the Galaxy S3 work with the newer version as well.

That brings us to what you see here -- the Samsung Multimedia Desktop Dock. It's a pretty basic deal -- plop your Galaxy S4 into it and it'll automatically switch to Desktop mode. Plug in with a microUSB cable and you'll charge the phone at the same time. And use the optional 3.5mm line out to play music while the phone's docked.

This thing's pretty portable as well, with the dock section flipping down into itself for easy travel. And perhaps most important, you can get it fairly cheap since technically it's "last year's" dock.

We've got a handful of pics after the break. Give 'em a gander.

Structural Deficiency

First, there's structural deficiency, a designation that can be based on any number of factors. America is awash in structurally deficient bridges. The most famous example in recent memory was the old I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that spanned the Mississippi River. It collapsed in 2007, killing 13 and injuring 145. But the Minnesota bridge was just one of 75,000 such structurally deficient bridges in the country at that time, and that I-35W bridge had carried that designation for 17 years before its failure. It had been slated for replacement in 2020, but the sheer number of structurally deficient bridges (the U.S. has 66,749, as of last year) meant it was simply part of a staggering nationwide backlog.

Functional Obsolescence

The I-5 bridge was not structurally deficient. But it was functionally obsolete, another relatively common designation that means it was effectively over the hill. The bridge was built in 1955, when traffic was lighter and so were the loads borne by trucks.

Functional obsolescence is about modern usage exceeding what the original design intended. It's not about specific cracks, wear, or other structural abuse. Bridges can be both functionally obsolete and structurally deficient. The two designations aren't mutually exclusive, but structural deficiency is more alarming.

Sufficiency Ratings

These are determined by a complex formula taking into account everything from clearance above and below the bridge deck to its ?essentiality" to the public. Sufficiency ratings tend to be based on some of the same factors as designations of structural deficiency and functional obsolescence. But because sufficiency ratings also include nonstructural aspects, the rating serves a different purpose?it attempts to prioritize the repair or replacement of that bridge.

With a sufficiency rating of 47 of 100, the I-5 bridge was a project that desperately needed addressing?not because it was doomed to fail, necessarily, but because it was grossly inadequate. By comparison, the I-35W bridge that collapsed in Minnesota was rated at 50. (Sufficiency ratings are public information, but, perhaps not surprinsingly, the information isn't easy to access. The best source we've see is Nationalbridges.com.)

The Rest of the Story

Still, these designations and ratings don't tell the full story of any given bridge. The I-35W bridge, for example, was a flawed design from the start. Its structure was considered fracture-critical, meaning that a large enough failure would lead not to a staged collapse, but to a systemic shattering. That seemed to be the case in 2007, when construction equipment overloaded its weakened deck during rush hour. When NTSB investigators analyzed the wreckage, however, they found that the I-35W bridge's design was even worse than originally thought, with its too-small gusset plates creating gaps and structural weaknesses far below the observable surface (which was already in a state of cracked disarray, though seemingly for other reasons).

So just because a bridge has a score in the range of these two bridges doesn't mean it's going to fail. Even landmark spans are scary if you look at the statistics: While portions of the Brooklyn Bridge are currently designated as either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, local officials continue to assure the drivers of the 105,000 cars that cross it daily that it's nowhere near failure. The statistics mean what they mean, but aren't always harbingers of disaster.

All of this is why, when disaster strikes, we're left with the coldest comfort of all: structurally deficient and functionally obsolete bridges are everywhere. Our 84,748 functionally obsolete bridges are a problem and deserve attention. But there are also 66,749 structurally deficient bridges in active daily use in the U.S., representing 11 percent of all bridges, including some 7980 fracture-critical ones.

Those numbers are dropping, but slowly. But however perplexing or misleading the lexicon of civil engineering might be, make no mistake?American infrastructure remains in crisis.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/infrastructure/just-how-fragile-are-americas-bridges-15526104?src=rss

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Once again demonstrating the NBC Nightly News is the broadcast arm of MSNBC, anchor Brian Williams ? matching what has animated MSNBC hosts ? devoted a segment to former Senator Bob Dole railing against the modern Republican Party; ie: conservatives.

With ?Fighting Words? on screen, Williams on Tuesday night highlighted comments neither the ABC nor CBS evening newscasts found newsworthy, how the 89-year-old ?made it clear in a rare interview this weekend the GOP of his day is unrecognizable. He thinks they should pause, rebuild and start over.?

After a clip of Dole from Fox News Sunday, Williams touted how Dole agreed with a media theme: ?Dole said Reagan would not have made it in the current-era GOP.? Williams also relayed that ?he considers himself a mainstream conservative Republican.?

Bob Dole was many things and earned respect for a long and powerful career despite a serious war injury, but he was never a conservative.
?
(Dole?s take on Reagan was prompted by interviewer Chris Wallace who had asked if Reagan could ?make it in today?s Republican Party??)

Williams, naturally, ignored Dole?s downbeat assessment of President Barack Obama: ?I think as a President, he lacks communication skills with his own party let alone the Republican Party. And he?s on the road too much.?

From the Tuesday, May 28 NBC Nightly News:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: We heard from Bob Dole this weekend, now 89 years old. The former Senate Leader, Kansas Senator, decorated World War II veteran and presidential candidate, has been largely out of public view at times fighting ill health, but his fighting spirit is clearly undiminished. He made it clear in a rare interview this weekend the GOP of his day is unrecognizable. He thinks they should pause, rebuild and start over.
BOB DOLE, FOX NEWS SUNDAY: I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors: ?Closed for repairs until New Year?s Day next year.? And spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas.
WILLIAMS: Dole said Reagan would not have made it in the current-era GOP and he considers himself a mainstream conservative Republican.

Source: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2013/05/28/nbc-s-brian-williams-trumpets-bob-dole-s-criticism-gop-too-conservative

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Dealing with 'crap' to improve water quality

Public release date: 28-May-2013
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Contact: Sean Nealon
sean.nealon@ucr.edu
951-827-1287
University of California - Riverside

Former UC Riverside student builds replica human colon and feeds it three times per day to understand impact bacteria has on groundwater

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) To better understand how bacteria impact the environment a former University of California, Riverside graduate student spent nearly a year building a system that replicates a human colon, septic tank and groundwater and "fed" the colon three times a day during weeklong experiments to simulate human eating.

Ian Marcus, who recently earned his Ph.D. from the UC Riverside Bourns College of Engineering, said discussion of the research often left people a bit perplexed.

"People would give a kind-of-interested-but-definitely-don't-talk-about-it-during-dinner look because we're literally dealing with crap," Marcus said. "It has got the smell. It has got everything."

The idea for the project came after Marcus noticed that scientists typically study bacteria in an isolated environment under ideal growing conditions. That presents a problem because bacteria typically proliferate in microbial communities with other microorganisms such as archaea, fungi and protozoa.

Marcus set out to solve that problem by creating a simulated environment where the life cycle of bacteria (he used a pathogenic strain of E. coli in these experiments) and the microbial communities they live in can be studied from the human colon to water treatment to groundwater.

In the past, researchers have simulated the gut of humans and synthetic aquatic environments, but no one had combined the two, as far as Marcus can tell.

By comparing his finding with those of researchers who worked with bacteria in an isolated environment, Marcus found that the E. coli strain in the microbial community may be less mobile in aquatic environments and more prone to biofilm that than the isolated strain.

This means that the E. coli would linger longer in the environment, since biofilm provides a refuge for all the microorganisms within it. When the biofilm matures it sends out bacteria to colonize another surface thus the bacteria could survive in the environment for longer periods of time.

"This means that pathogens could potentially linger longer and over a long period of time travel greater distances in the groundwater," Marcus said.

Marcus said his research shows you should study microorganisms as close to possible in their natural habitats.

Marcus, who worked in the lab of Sharon Walker, an associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering, had his findings published in a paper called "Linking Microbial Community Structure to Function in Representative Simulated Systems" in the journal Applied Environmental Microbiology. Co-authors were Walker, and Hailey A. Wilder and Shanin J. Quazi, both former students in Walker's lab.

"It is a pleasure to work with a student who can think outside of the box and bring in fresh ideas on how we can approach our research," Walker said. "Ian's work has provided critical new insight into how microbial communities behave in wastewater treatment and contribute to biological contamination of water, which really changes the paradigm of how we do research and manage our water resources."

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