Publications by authors named "Hillary Smith"

Nearshore coral reefs face an increasing abundance of fleshy macroalgae, an indicator of degradation and threat to ecosystem functioning. Removal of macroalgae is proposed to assist coral recovery, though the ecological and physical impacts have not been studied. Nearshore reefs are also confronted with sedimentation stress, influencing reef dynamics including algal turfs, with flow-on impacts to coral recruitment, fish diets, and trophic cascades.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Coral reefs are facing unprecedented anthropogenic pressures impacting critical processes such as recruitment of juvenile corals. Through larval choice assays and co-occurrence network analyses, a recent study by Turnlund et al. identified microbial taxa within reef biofilms that positively correlate and therefore have potential key roles in inducing coral settlement.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Hydrocephalus is a pathological accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), leading to ventriculomegaly. Hydrocephalus may be primary or secondary to traumatic brain injury, infection, or intracranial hemorrhage. Regardless of cause, current treatment involves surgery to drain the excess CSF.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Dietary intake of whole grains and legumes and adequate physical activity (PA) have been associated with reduced colorectal cancer (CRC) risk. A single-blinded, two-arm, randomized, placebo-controlled pilot trial was implemented to evaluate the impact of a 12-week dietary intervention of rice bran + navy bean supplementation and PA education on metabolite profiles and the gut microbiome among individuals at high risk of CRC.

Methods: Adults (n=20) were randomized 1:1 to dietary intervention or control.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

While coral reefs in Australia have historically been a showcase of conventional management informed by research, recent declines in coral cover have triggered efforts to innovate and integrate intervention and restoration actions into management frameworks. Here we outline the multi-faceted intervention approaches that have developed in Australia since 2017, from newly implemented in-water programs, research to enhance coral resilience and investigations into socio-economic perspectives on restoration goals. We describe in-water projects using coral gardening, substrate stabilisation, coral repositioning, macro-algae removal, and larval-based restoration techniques.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The physics of mutual interaction of phonon quasiparticles with electronic spin degrees of freedom, leading to unusual transport phenomena of spin and heat, has been a subject of continuing interests for decades. Despite its pivotal role in transport processes, the effect of spin-phonon coupling on the phonon system, especially acoustic phonon properties, has so far been elusive. By means of inelastic neutron scattering and first-principles calculations, anomalous scattering spectral intensity from acoustic phonons was identified in the exemplary collinear antiferromagnetic nickel (II) oxide, unveiling strong spin-lattice correlations that renormalize the polarization of acoustic phonon.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Algal turfs trap and retain particulates, however, little is known about the relationship between particulate accumulation and taxonomic composition of algal turfs. We investigated how particulate mass related to algal turf structure (length and density) and community composition (taxonomic and functional) on two disparate reefs. Particulate mass was positively related to algal turf length.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rice bran contains essential nutrients, antioxidants, and bioactives with anti-inflammatory and diarrheal protective properties important for infants. This 6-month randomized controlled trial investigated the effects of heat-stabilized rice bran supplementation during Malian infant weaning. Fifty healthy 6-month-old infants were randomized to a rice bran intervention (N = 25) or non-intervention control group (N = 25).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adenomatous polyps are associated with an increased risk of developing colorectal cancer. Physical activity (PA) and spending less time sedentary may reduce risk of polyp recurrence and cancer incidence. This study examined associations between PA, sedentary time, and stool metabolites in adults at high risk for developing colorectal cancer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In the search for life beyond Earth, distinguishing the living from the non-living is paramount. However, this distinction is often elusive, as the origin of life is likely a stepwise evolutionary process, not a singular event. Regardless of the favored origin of life model, an inherent "grayness" blurs the theorized threshold defining life.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A central need in the field of astrobiology is generalized perspectives on life that make it possible to differentiate abiotic and biotic chemical systems McKay (2008). A key component of many past and future astrobiological measurements is the elemental ratio of various samples. Classic work on Earth's oceans has shown that life displays a striking regularity in the ratio of elements as originally characterized by Redfield (Redfield 1958; Geider and La Roche 2002; Eighty years of Redfield 2014).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Corals are dependent upon lipids as energy reserves to mount a metabolic response to biotic and abiotic challenges. This study profiled lipids, fatty acids, and microbial communities of healthy and white syndrome (WS) diseased colonies of Acropora hyacinthus sampled from reefs in Western Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, and Palmyra Atoll. Total lipid levels varied significantly among locations, though a consistent stepwise decrease from healthy tissues from healthy colonies (HH) to healthy tissue on WS-diseased colonies (HD; i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Examine the feasibility and preliminary effects of a lifestyle intervention of rice bran plus navy bean supplementation, and physical activity (PA) education on intake of fiber and whole grains, and PA levels.

Design: Randomized-controlled, single-blinded.

Setting: Academic institution and free-living.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrocephalus is a serious condition that impacts patients of all ages. The standards of care are surgical options to divert, or inhibit production of, cerebrospinal fluid; to date, there are no effective pharmaceutical treatments, to our knowledge. The causes vary widely, but one commonality of this condition is aberrations in salt and fluid balance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microbiome assemblages of plants and animals often show a degree of correlation with host phylogeny; an eco-evolutionary pattern known as phylosymbiosis. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing to profile the microbiome, paired with COI, 18S rRNA and ITS1 host phylogenies, phylosymbiosis was investigated in four groups of coral reef invertebrates (scleractinian corals, octocorals, sponges and ascidians). We tested three commonly used metrics to evaluate the extent of phylosymbiosis: (a) intraspecific versus interspecific microbiome variation, (b) topological comparisons between host phylogeny and hierarchical clustering (dendrogram) of host-associated microbial communities, and (c) correlation of host phylogenetic distance with microbial community dissimilarity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The coral microbiome is known to fluctuate in response to environmental variation and has been suggested to vary seasonally. However, most studies to date, particularly studies on bacterial communities, have examined temporal variation over a time frame of less than 1 year, which is insufficient to establish if microbiome variations are indeed seasonal in nature. The present study focused on expanding our understanding of long-term variability in microbial community composition using two common coral species, , and , at two mid-shelf reefs on the Great Barrier Reef.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Disease is an emerging threat to coral reef ecosystems worldwide, highlighting the need to understand how environmental conditions interact with coral immune function and associated microbial communities to affect holobiont health. Increased coral disease incidence on reefs adjacent to permanently moored platforms on Australia's Great Barrier Reef provided a unique case study to investigate environment-host-microbe interactions . Here, we evaluate coral-associated bacterial community (16S rRNA amplicon sequencing), immune function (protein-based prophenoloxidase-activating system), and water quality parameters before, during and after a disease event.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Interpretation Bias Modification (IBM) interventions have been effective in reducing negative interpretation biases theorized to underlie depressive psychopathology. Although these programs have been highlighted as potential short-term interventions for depression, mixed evidence has been found for their effects on depressive symptoms. There is a need to examine attitudes towards training as well as individual difference factors that may impact symptom outcomes for IBM depression interventions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ocean acidification (OA) as a result of increased anthropogenic CO input into the atmosphere carries consequences for all ocean life. Low pH can cause a shift in coral-associated microbial communities of CO-sensitive corals, however, it remains unknown whether the microbial community is also influenced in corals known to be more tolerant to high CO/low pH. This study profiles the bacterial communities associated with the tissues of the CO-tolerant coral, massive spp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Wildlife hunting is essential to livelihoods and food security in many parts of the world, yet present rates of extraction may threaten ecosystems and human communities. Thus, governing sustainable wildlife use is a major social dilemma and conservation challenge. Commons scholarship is well positioned to contribute theoretical insights and analytic tools to better understand the interface of social and ecological dimensions of wildlife governance, yet the intersection of wildlife studies and commons scholarship is not well studied.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Coral reefs face many stressors associated with global climate change, including increasing sea surface temperature and ocean acidification. Excavating sponges, such as Cliona spp., are expected to break down reef substrata more quickly as seawater becomes more acidic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

sp. strain HR-1 was isolated from the Lō'ihi Seamount vent system in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 1,000 m. Reported here is its 3.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Interpretation Bias Modification (IBM) is gaining attention in the literature as an intervention that alters cognitive biases and reduces associated symptoms. Forty, primarily college-aged, non-treatment-seeking adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) were randomly assigned to receive either IBM targeting hostile interpretation bias (IBM-H) or a healthy video control (HVC) condition. Compared to those in HVC, participants in IBM-H reported more benign interpretations and fewer hostile interpretations at posttreatment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

sp. strain SC-1 was isolated from pyrrhotite incubated in the marine surface sediment of Catalina Island, CA. Strain SC-1 has demonstrated autotrophic growth through the oxidation of thiosulfate and iron.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF