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Modern truffle cultivation is based on use of inoculated seedlings, which should exhibit highly colonised roots as well as a vegetative quality enhancing field plant performance. However, poor shoot and fine root growth has been a frequent issue in inoculated Quercus seedlings production. Fertilisation is a common solution in forest nurseries, but high fertilisation levels have been found to inhibit the formation of ectomycorrhizas of many fungal species. The influence of slow-release fertilisation (52 mg N, 26 mg P and 36 mg K per seedling) on growth and ectomycorrhizal status of Tuber melanosporum-inoculated seedlings was evaluated. Host species Quercus ilex and Quercus faginea and inoculation methods involving root-dipping and root-powdering were tested. Fertilisation increased weight of both host species without significant detrimental effects on ectomycorrhizal colonisation, showing that it can be effectively used in inoculated seedlings production. Both host species showed similar response to fertilisation. The inoculation method affected seedling weight and ectomycorrhizal status, suggesting that some inoculant carriers are able to damage Quercus development and T. melanosporum colonisation. The study provided an important basis for fine-tuning the use of fertilisers in truffle-inoculated seedling production.

La enfermedad cerebrovascular (ECV) se define como la interrupción súbita del flujo sanguíneo de los vasos en cualquier área del cerebro. La presencia de depresión se da con suma regularidad en las personas afectadas. Asimismo, las personas que padecen mayor estrés son candidatos potenciales a padecer una ECV. Por tal motivo, la presente investigación tiene por objetivo describir la relación entre la depresión y los estilos de afrontamiento al estrés en una muestra de 50 pacientes con enfermedad cerebrovascular, atendidos en consulta externa en el servicio de neurología del hospital Daniel Alcides Carrión. Utilizándose para ello el Inventario de Depresión de Beck y el Inventario de Estimación de Afrontamiento en su forma disposicional breve de Carver. Se encontró una correlación estadísticamente significativa entre las variables depresión y estilos de afrontamiento al estrés evitativo, sin embargo, no se hallaron correlaciones significativas entre las variables depresión y estilos de afrontamiento al estrés centrados en el problema y centrados en la emoción respectivamente.

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Background: Truffle cultivation is evolving rapidly and new agronomic practices such as 'truffle nests' (localized peat amendments of the orchard soil) are being developed. Truffle nests improve the shape of truffles and their depth in the soil and reduce the occurrence of insect damage but have also raised concerns about their impact on the ripeness and maturity of the harvested truffles. In this study, the effect of the nests on the volatile organic compounds profile and the aromatic profile of black truffles was evaluated, as well as the existence of perceptible sensorial differences in truffles. For this, truffles growing in nests were compared with truffles growing in the bulk soil of the same host tree., Results: Gas chromatography showed that nest truffles had a less complex volatile organic compound profile than bulk-soil truffles. Olfactometry indicated that nest truffles were associated with higher modified frequency values of odorants corresponding to sulfur-containing compounds. Despite this, sensory evaluation with consumers could not clearly show that nest truffles can be distinguished sensorially from bulk-soil truffles., Conclusion: The results prove that soil conditions can influence the aromatic profile of truffles and thus suggest the possibility of managing truffle aroma using agronomic practices. © 2024 The Author(s). Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.)

The aroma is critical in the reproductive biology of truffles and in their commercial quality. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on characterizing ripe ascocarps. We characterized the volatilome of the highly-prized black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) ascocarps from July, in an early development stage, to March, in the late harvesting season, and investigated the relationships among aroma, ascocarp growth and morphogenetic development. The aroma profile was analyzed using a head space gas chromatography technique coupled with mass spectrometer. Seventy-one volatile compounds were identified and three development stages were clearly distinguished according to the volatile profile. In unripe ascocarps of July-September, the profile was dominated by methanethiol (19 %), 4-penten-2-ol (11 %) and acetone (11 %), the monthly mean weight of ascocarps ranged 2-20 g, and morphogenetic stages 4-6a were prevalent. In unripe ascocarps of October-December, the most abundant volatiles were 4-penten-2-ol (21 %), methanethiol (20 %) and ethanol (13 %), the monthly mean ascocarp weight ranged 28-43 g, and morphogenetic stages 6a, 6b-c were prevalent. In ripe ascocarps (December-March), the most abundant volatiles were 4-penten-2-ol (17 %), dimethyl sulfide (16 %) and ethanol (10 %), ascocarp weight did not increase significantly, and 6b-c was practically the sole morphogenetic stage. Thirty volatiles were associated to one of these three development stages. Amongst those with higher occurrence, 4-penten-2-ol, dimethyl sulfide, ethyl acetate, 2-pentanol and 2-butanone were associated to ripe truffles, whereas methanethiol, isobutyl isobutyrate, butanedione and 3-methylanisole were associated to unripe truffles., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Sergio Sanchez reports financial support was provided by National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology [grant number RTA2015-0053-00-00]. Pedro Marco reports financial support was provided by Spain Ministry of Science and Innovation [grant number PID2022-139407OR-I00]. Eva Tejedor-Calvo reports financial support was provided by Spain Ministry of Science and Innovation [grant number JDC2022-048252-I]. Other authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Vowelless words are exceptionally typologically rare, though they are found in some languages, such as Tashlhiyt (e.g., fkt 'give it'). The current study tests whether lexicons containing tri-segmental (CCC) vowelless words are more difficult to acquire than lexicons not containing vowelless words by adult English speakers from brief auditory exposure. The role of acoustic-phonetic form on learning these typologically rare word forms is also explored: In Experiment 1, participants were trained on words produced in either only Clear speech or Casual speech productions of words; Experiment 2 trained participants on lexical items produced in both speech styles. Listeners were able to learn both vowelless and voweled lexicons equally well when speaking style was consistent for participants, but learning was lower for vowelless lexicons when training consisted of variable acoustic-phonetic forms. In both experiments, responses to a post-training wordlikeness ratings task containing novel items revealed that exposure to a vowelless lexicon leads participants to accept new vowelless words as acceptable lexical forms. These results demonstrate that one of the typologically rarest types of lexical forms - words without vowels - can be rapidly acquired by naive adult listeners. Yet, acoustic-phonetic variation modulates learning., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors have no competing interests to declare., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Formants (vocal tract resonances) are increasingly analyzed not only by phoneticians in speech but also by behavioral scientists studying diverse phenomena such as acoustic size exaggeration and articulatory abilities of non-human animals. This often involves estimating vocal tract length acoustically and producing scale-invariant representations of formant patterns. We present a theoretical framework and practical tools for carrying out this work, including open-source software solutions included in R packages soundgen and phonTools. Automatic formant measurement with linear predictive coding is error-prone, but formant_app provides an integrated environment for formant annotation and correction with visual and auditory feedback. Once measured, formants can be normalized using a single recording (intrinsic methods) or multiple recordings from the same individual (extrinsic methods). Intrinsic speaker normalization can be as simple as taking formant ratios and calculating the geometric mean as a measure of overall scale. The regression method implemented in the function estimateVTL calculates the apparent vocal tract length assuming a single-tube model, while its residuals provide a scale-invariant vowel space based on how far each formant deviates from equal spacing (the schwa function). Extrinsic speaker normalization provides more accurate estimates of speaker- and vowel-specific scale factors by pooling information across recordings with simple averaging or mixed models, which we illustrate with example datasets and R code. The take-home messages are to record several calls or vowels per individual, measure at least three or four formants, check formant measurements manually, treat uncertain values as missing, and use the statistical tools best suited to each modeling context., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

This study compares how English-speaking adults and children from the United States adapt their speech when talking to a real person and a smart speaker (Amazon Alexa) in a psycholinguistic experiment. Overall, participants produced more effortful speech when talking to a device (longer duration and higher pitch). These differences also varied by age: children produced even higher pitch in device-directed speech, suggesting a stronger expectation to be misunderstood by the system. In support of this, we see that after a staged recognition error by the device, children increased pitch even more. Furthermore, both adults and children displayed the same degree of variation in their responses for whether "Alexa seems like a real person or not", further indicating that children's conceptualization of the system's competence shaped their register adjustments, rather than an increased anthropomorphism response. This work speaks to models on the mechanisms underlying speech production, and human-computer interaction frameworks, providing support for routinized theories of spoken interaction with technology., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Nowadays, the truffle aroma attribute is not included as a quality parameter in the current recommendation that explains the truffle quality (UNECE standard 53 FFV3) and establishes the truffle commercial categories. However, the aroma is the main reason why truffles are worldwide appreciated. Indeed, more than 30 aromatic molecules compose it, and this is the reason why the human evaluation and identification of these odorants, without previous training, is quite subjective. Analytical techniques such as gas chromatography techniques, however, can establish an aromatic profile and detect potential aromatic markers. In this study, 16 tasting experts were trained to make more objective the truffle aroma evaluation and odorants identification. For this, a comparison between solid-phase microextraction gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (SPME-GC-MS) and sensory expert evaluation was carried out in six sessions during different harvesting times in the black truffle season (December, January, and February). Both techniques were able to separate truffles depending on the harvesting time. Also, a list of volatile organic compounds related to the aromatic attributes was reported. This information will help to provide a more objective T. melanosporum truffle sensory evaluation.

Black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) is one of the most appreciated fungi in the world mainly due to its aromatic properties. In the emerging markets such as Argentina, the aroma of locally produced truffles has not been described yet. The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from 102 black truffles from Argentina were analyzed using solid phase microextraction gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometer detector (SPME-GC-MS). Several factors such as commercial category, maturity stage, host tree, geographical origin, and aromatic defects detected during classification were also registered and considered. As a result, 79 VOCs were detected, among which 2-methyl-propanal, 2-butanone, 2-methyl-1-propanol, butanal-3-methyl, 3-methyl-1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol were present in high percentage in fresh mature truffles, whereas immature truffles were associated with 3,5-dimethoxytoluene, 2-phenyl-2-butenal, 2,3-dimethoxytoluene. The Argentine black truffles showed significant similarities in their aromatic profile when compared with their Australian and European counterparts, but with some distinctive notes., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The use of mycorrhized seedlings has been critical to the success of modern truffle cultivation, which nowadays supplies most European black truffles (Tuber melanosporum) to markets. Ascospore inoculation has been traditionally used to produce these seedlings, but little scientific information is publicly available on the inoculation methods applied or on the possibility of combining them. We evaluated the potential of sequential inoculation for the controlled colonization of holm oak fine roots by T. melanosporum, with two different nursery assays and a full factorial design. Three inoculation methods were sequentially applied: radicle inoculation, inoculation of the substrate in seedling trays and inoculation of the substrate in the final pot. Despite the differences in the results of the two assays, which suggest that cultivation conditions and/or the timing of nursery operations may influence the relative effectiveness of inoculation methods, the sequential application appeared as an effective and realistic alternative for commercial inoculation of holm oak seedlings with T. melanosporum. The increase in the amount of inoculum applied with each inoculation method improved the mycorrhizal colonization of seedlings, whereas separately none of the inoculation methods appeared clearly superior to the other ones. The depth distribution of truffle mycorrhizae pointed that the inoculation in the final pot was more effective than other methods in lower parts of the root system, whereas the early inoculation appeared more effective to reduce the occurrence of the opportunist ectomycorrhizal fungus Sphaerosporella brunnea., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Eva Gomez-Molina reports financial support was provided by Diputacion Provincial de Huesca., (Copyright © 2023 British Mycological Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Nowadays black truffles are so highly valued that truffled products are available in supermarkets whereas fresh truffle is mainly used in the restaurants. It is known that truffle aroma can change because heat treatments, but there is no scientific evidence about what molecules are transferred, in which concentration, and how much time is needed to aromatize products with truffle. In this study, four different fat-based food products (milk, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil and egg's yolk), were used to study black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) aroma transference for 14 days. Gas chromatography and olfactometry results showed different volatile organic compounds profile depending on the matrix used. After 24 h, some key truffle aromatic compounds were detected in all the food matrices. Among them, grape seed oil was the most aromatized product probably because of its odorless properties. According to our results, dimethyl disulphide, 3-methyl-1-butanol and 1-octen-3-one odorants showed the highest aromatization power., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Truffle growers devote great efforts to improve black truffle productivity, developing agronomic practices such as 'truffle nests' (peat amendments that are supplemented with truffle spore inoculum). It has been hypothesized that improved fruiting associated with nests is linked to stimulation of truffle mycelia previously established in soil or to changes generated in soil fungal community. To assess this, we used real-time PCR to quantify black truffle extraradical mycelium during 2 years after nests installation. We also characterized the fungal community via high-throughput amplicon sequencing of the ITS region of rRNA genes. We found that neither the abundance of truffle mycelium in nests nor in the soil-nest interphase was higher than in the bulk soil, which indicates that nests do not improve mycelial growth. The fungal community in nests showed lower richness and Shannon index and was compositionally different from that of soil, which suggests that nests may act as an open niche for fungal colonization that facilitates truffle fruiting. The ectomycorrhizal fungal community showed lower richness in nests. However, no negative relationships between amount of truffle mycelium and reads of other ectomycorrhizal fungi were found, thus countering the hypothesis that ectomycorrhizal competition plays a role in the nest effect., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of FEMS.)

The highly prized black truffle is a fungus mostly harvested in orchards planted with mycorrhizal seedlings. It is an obligatory outcrossing fungus with a single MAT locus containing two alternative mating-type idiomorphs. In the orchards, at the mycorrhizal level, these mating types are frequently spatially segregated. Some studies found that this segregation was pronounced from the nursery stage, whereas others did not find such a marked segregation. Besides, information on the host tree species and nursery conditions used in Spain, one of the main truffle-producing countries, are very scarce. In this study, we investigated the temporal dynamics of mating types in nursery seedlings of Quercus ilex and Quercus faginea, as well as the influence of cultural conditions in the nursery. Our results indicated that at the plant level, there was a trend for one of the mating types to dominate over the other from the first to the second year in the nursery, in both host species and both nursery conditions tested. However, this segregation process was not so sharp as previously reported. Our results support the hypothesis that intraspecific competition results in reduced evenness of mating-type abundance from the nursery stage, although almost all seedlings maintained both mating types and, at the seedling batch scale, the occurrence of both mating types was roughly balanced., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Purpose: This study investigates the debate that musicians have an advantage in speech-in-noise perception from years of targeted auditory training. We also consider the effect of age on any such advantage, comparing musicians and nonmusicians (age range: 18-66 years), all of whom had normal hearing. We manipulate the degree of fundamental frequency ( f ) separation between the competing talkers, as well as use different tasks, to probe attentional differences that might shape a musician's advantage across ages.o ) separation between the competing talkers, as well as use different tasks, to probe attentional differences that might shape a musician's advantage across ages., Method: Participants (ranging in age from 18 to 66 years) included 29 musicians and 26 nonmusicians. They completed two tasks varying in attentional demands: (a) a selective attention task where listeners identify the target sentence presented with a one-talker interferer (Experiment 1), and (b) a divided attention task where listeners hear two vowels played simultaneously and identify both competing vowels (Experiment 2). In both paradigms, f o separation was manipulated between the two voices (Δ f o = 0, 0.156, 0.306, 1, 2, 3 semitones)., Results: Results show that increasing differences in f separation lead to higher accuracy on both tasks. Additionally, we find evidence for a musician's advantage across the two studies. In the sentence identification task, younger adult musicians show higher accuracy overall, as well as a stronger reliance on o separation lead to higher accuracy on both tasks. Additionally, we find evidence for a musician's advantage across the two studies. In the sentence identification task, younger adult musicians show higher accuracy overall, as well as a stronger reliance on f o separation. Yet, this advantage declines with musicians' age. In the double vowel identification task, musicians of all ages show an across-the-board advantage in detecting two vowels-and use f o separation more to aid in stream separation-but show no consistent difference in double vowel identification., Conclusions: Overall, we find support for a hybrid auditory encoding-attention account of music-to-speech transfer. The musician's advantage includes f , but the benefit also depends on the attentional demands in the task and listeners' age. Taken together, this study suggests a complex relationship between age, musical experience, and speech-in-speech paradigm on a musician's advantage.o , but the benefit also depends on the attentional demands in the task and listeners' age. Taken together, this study suggests a complex relationship between age, musical experience, and speech-in-speech paradigm on a musician's advantage., Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21956777.

Truffles are highly valued by their aromatic properties and can aromatize food products. However, the truffle aroma could be reduced or lost with heat treatments (pasteurization and sterilization) necessary for products security and safety. In this study, sunflower oil and honey were aromatized with black truffle (lyophilized and fresh) using two different concentrations (5 and 10 %) for 24 h and then heat treatments (pasteurization and sterilization) were carried out. Truffle organic volatile compounds from products were investigated by SPME-GC-MS and sensory analysis by trained panel. More than 80 compounds were detected. Some of them were affected differently by heat process depending on the food matrix. Professional tasters scored higher key aromatic attributes such as sulphurous and olive oil in fresh truffle products, regardless the heat treatment applied., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

A PLE (pressurized liquid extraction) method was adjusted following a full-factorial experimental design to obtain bioactive-enriched fractions from Tuber aestivum and Terfezia claveryi . Temperature, time and solvent (water, ethanol and ethanol-water 1:1) parameters were investigated. The response variables investigated were: obtained yield and the levels of total carbohydrate (compounds, β-glucans, chitin, proteins, phenolic compounds and sterols). Principal component analysis indicated water solvent and high temperatures as more adequate parameters to extract polysaccharide-rich fractions (up to 68% of content), whereas ethanol was more suitable to extract fungal sterols (up to 12.5% of content). The fractions obtained at optimal conditions (16.7 MPa, 180 °C, 30 min) were able to protect Caco2 cells from free radical exposure, acting as antioxidants, and were able to reduce secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines in vitro: IL-6 (50%), and TNFα (80% only T. claveryi ethanol extract), as well as reduce high inhibitory activity ( T. aestivum IC 50 : 9.44 mG/mL).

To investigate the perception of gender from children's voices, adult listeners were presented with /hVd/ syllables, in isolation and in sentence context, produced by children between 5 and 18 years. Half the listeners were informed of the age of the talker during trials, while the other half were not. Correct gender identifications increased with talker age; however, performance was above chance even for age groups where the cues most often associated with gender differentiation (i.e., average fundamental frequency and formant frequencies) were not consistently different between boys and girls. The results of acoustic models suggest that cues were used in an age-dependent manner, whether listeners were explicitly told the age of the talker or not. Overall, results are consistent with the hypothesis that talker age and gender are estimated jointly in the process of speech perception. Furthermore, results show that the gender of individual talkers can be identified accurately well before reliable anatomical differences arise in the vocal tracts of females and males. In general, results support the notion that the transmission of gender information from voice depends substantially on gender-dependent patterns of articulation, rather than following deterministically from anatomical differences between male and female talkers.

Wearing surgical masks or other similar face coverings can reduce the emission of expiratory particles produced via breathing, talking, coughing, or sneezing. Although it is well established that some fraction of the expiratory airflow leaks around the edges of the mask, it is unclear how these leakage airflows affect the overall efficiency with which masks block emission of expiratory aerosol particles. Here, we show experimentally that the aerosol particle concentrations in the leakage airflows around a surgical mask are reduced compared to no mask wearing, with the magnitude of reduction dependent on the direction of escape (out the top, the sides, or the bottom). Because the actual leakage flowrate in each direction is difficult to measure, we use a Monte Carlo approach to estimate flow-corrected particle emission rates for particles having diameters in the range 0.5-20 μm. in all orientations. From these, we derive a flow-weighted overall number-based particle removal efficiency for the mask. The overall mask efficiency, accounting both for air that passes through the mask and for leakage flows, is reduced compared to the through-mask filtration efficiency, from 93 to 70% for talking, but from only 94-90% for coughing. These results demonstrate that leakage flows due to imperfect sealing do decrease mask efficiencies for reducing emission of expiratory particles, but even with such leakage surgical masks provide substantial control.

The highly prized black truffle ( Tuber melanosporum ) has become a model species for ectomycorrhizal fungi biology. However, several questions concerning its reproductive phase remain unanswered. To provide new hypotheses on the fruitbody formation process, we have explored the causal links among development characters of black truffle fruitbodies that are primarily linked to either the mating process, fruitbody growing stage, or maturation. Path analysis was applied to test causal models outlining the relationships among fruitbody development characters such as fruiting depth, weight, shape, and spore maturity. These characters were investigated over a two-season survey and three soil typologies (plus peat-based substrate) under irrigated conditions. We found a clear and generalized relationship between fruitbody weight and shape. Among clusters of fruitbodies we found a positive relationship between the weight of the largest fruitbody and the weight of the remaining fruitbodies. However, no generalized relationships among characters linked to different development stages appeared. Our results were noticeably consistent across soil typologies, both for fruitbodies growing singly and in clusters, indicating that early-developing fruitbody characters did not influence characters linked to subsequent morphogenetic stages. The lack of links among stages opens new perspectives for pre-harvest quality management with stage-specific cultivation practices.

The effects of gamma irradiation (0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.5 kGy doses) on Tuber aestivum packaged under modified atmosphere was evaluated. The respiration rate, microbial populations, sensory characteristics and content of bioactive compounds (total carbohydrates, chitins, β-glucans, proteins, total phenols and sterols) were monitored from immediately after treatment up to day 42 of storage at 4 °C. All the irradiation treatments tested reduced the microbial groups studied by more than 3 log cfu/g. Increasing irradiation doses slowed down the subsequent microbial development throughout the conservation period for all the groups studied. The irradiation treatments did not negatively affect truffle sensory characteristics. Only a slight visible superficial yeast growth was detected at the end of the shelf-life in all doses applied. Total carbohydrate content, chitins, β-glucans and proteins levels were not affected after irradiation. However, sterols, particularly stigmasterol, slightly decreased after irradiation, while levels of phenolic compounds doubled during storage. Gamma irradiation (2.5 kGy) could be used to extend the shelf-life of summer truffles packaged under modified atmosphere, since no remarkable reduction of bioactive compounds were noticed after 42 days of storage, and their sensory and microbial parameters were of higher quality than those of non-irradiated controls., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The cultivation of the ectomycorrhizal fungus Tuber melanosporum has considerably spread in recent years throughout the world. During the first years of truffle cultivation, weed control is a key practice to improve the establishment of host trees and the proliferation of the fungus in the soil. Glyphosate is nowadays the most commonly used herbicide in Spanish truffle orchards. We explored the effect of glyphosate on the proliferation of T. melanosporum mycorrhizae, on extraradical mycelium and on the inoculum potential of T. melanosporum spores in greenhouse experiments using Quercus ilex seedlings as host plants. No detrimental effect on the secondary infection of T. melanosporum was found after three sequential glyphosate applications in young seedlings during one vegetative period. Instead, a change in the distribution of fine roots and T. melanosporum mycorrhizae along soil depth was observed. On the other hand, results indicate that high application rates of glyphosate hinder the infectivity of T. melanosporum spore inoculum, without apparent impact on the host performance. Our results suggest that glyphosate has the potential to jeopardise the role of the soil spore bank as inoculum source for the colonisation of new roots, also raising the question of whether glyphosate could hinder the presumed role of spores in sexual mating.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a surge in demand for facemasks to protect against disease transmission. In response to shortages, many public health authorities have recommended homemade masks as acceptable alternatives to surgical masks and N95 respirators. Although mask wearing is intended, in part, to protect others from exhaled, virus-containing particles, few studies have examined particle emission by mask-wearers into the surrounding air. Here, we measured outward emissions of micron-scale aerosol particles by healthy humans performing various expiratory activities while wearing different types of medical-grade or homemade masks. Both surgical masks and unvented KN95 respirators, even without fit-testing, reduce the outward particle emission rates by 90% and 74% on average during speaking and coughing, respectively, compared to wearing no mask, corroborating their effectiveness at reducing outward emission. These masks similarly decreased the outward particle emission of a coughing superemitter, who for unclear reasons emitted up to two orders of magnitude more expiratory particles via coughing than average. In contrast, shedding of non-expiratory micron-scale particulates from friable cellulosic fibers in homemade cotton-fabric masks confounded explicit determination of their efficacy at reducing expiratory particle emission. Audio analysis of the speech and coughing intensity confirmed that people speak more loudly, but do not cough more loudly, when wearing a mask. Further work is needed to establish the efficacy of cloth masks at blocking expiratory particles for speech and coughing at varied intensity and to assess whether virus-contaminated fabrics can generate aerosolized fomites, but the results strongly corroborate the efficacy of medical-grade masks and highlight the importance of regular washing of homemade masks.

Black truffle is characterized by a black ascocarp and white veins. This hypogeous fruit body is known for its aroma. Understanding metabolic variation during ripening can shed light on truffle biology. In this work, the comprehensive polar metabolome and the volatile organic compounds of T. melanosporum were studied at different ripening stages by means of a metabolomic approach using GC-MS. Multivariate statistical data analysis indicated that the metabolic profile changed during ripening and that the metabolites that mostly discriminated truffles in the early ripening stages belonged to the classes of carbohydrates, while free fatty acids and amino acids, among which precursors of VOCs, characterized the late stages of ripening. Principal component analysis of the volatilome indicated that dimethylsulfide and dimethyldisulfide characterized most of the samples collected in December-January, while 1-octen-3-ol samples collected in February-March., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Truffles, besides the appreciated aromatic compounds, contain other molecules with interesting bioactive properties. A screening of fungal sterols and β-glucans within different truffle species and locations was carried out. These compounds were extracted with pressurized liquids (PLE) generating enriched fractions. Extraction efficiency was studied with a full-factorial experimental design (Response surface methodology, RSM), using water and ethanol as extraction solvents. Polysaccharides from truffle powder (TP) and the optimal PLE extract (EP) obtained were precipitated and analysed by NMR and GC-MS. THP-1 cell cultures were utilized to test immunomodulatory properties. With the optimal PLE conditions (16.7 MPa, 180 °C, 30 min) 64 and 22.5% yields were obtained respect, with water and ethanol, generating fractions containing respect, 9.1% β-glucan and 4.5% ergosterol. NMR analyses detected (1 → 3)-β-glucan structures in truffle. The EP induced a reduction of 40% IL-1β and 60% IL-6 pro-inflammatory cytokines secretion suggesting potential immunomodulatory activity., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

In Tuber melanosporum cultivation, fruitbody traits are gaining relevance due to their increasing prominence on prices. We investigated the edaphic and temporal patterns of fruitbody traits and characterised the effect of truffle nests (localised peat-based amendment supplemented with T. melanosporum spores) on traits. We monitored fruitbody traits throughout two fruiting seasons in three blocks along a soil gradient. Each trait followed specific edaphic and temporal patterns. The number of fruitbodies per dig and spore maturity followed characteristic within-season trends, whereas fruitbody weight and infestation by truffle beetles were subject to complex interactions among edaphic and temporal variables, suggesting a relevant influence of annual environmental conditions. The application of truffle nests increased fruitbody depth, improved its shape and decreased infestation by truffle beetles. Nests increased the number of fruitbodies per dig, but only in two of the soils, suggesting a relevant role of the bulk soil/substrate interface in fruiting initiation. These results outline a complex scenario, with each trait being differently affected by environmental factors. In this scenario, nests proved to effectively modify several traits, although not always in the desired direction.

Listeners show better-than-chance discrimination of nasalized and oral vowels occurring in appropriate consonantal contexts. Yet, the methods for investigating partial perceptual compensation for nasal coarticulation often include nasal and oral vowels containing naturally different pitch contours. Listeners may therefore be discriminating between these vowels based on pitch differences and not nasalization. The current study investigates the effect of pitch variation on the discrimination of nasalized and oral vowels in C_N and C_C items. The f0 contour of vowels within paired discrimination trials was varied. The results indicate that pitch variation does not influence patterns of partial perceptual compensation for coarticulation.

Previously, we demonstrated a strong correlation between the amplitude of human speech and the emission rate of micron-scale expiratory aerosol particles, which are believed to play a role in respiratory disease transmission. To further those findings, here we systematically investigate the effect of different 'phones' (the basic sound units of speech) on the emission of particles from the human respiratory tract during speech. We measured the respiratory particle emission rates of 56 healthy human volunteers voicing specific phones, both in isolation and in the context of a standard spoken text. We found that certain phones are associated with significantly higher particle production; for example, the vowel /i/ ("need," "sea") produces more particles than /ɑ/ ("saw," "hot") or /u/ ("blue," "mood"), while disyllabic words including voiced plosive consonants (e.g., /d/, /b/, /g/) yield more particles than words with voiceless fricatives (e.g., /s/, /h/, /f/). These trends for discrete phones and words were corroborated by the time-resolved particle emission rates as volunteers read aloud from a standard text passage that incorporates a broad range of the phones present in spoken English. Our measurements showed that particle emission rates were positively correlated with the vowel content of a phrase; conversely, particle emission decreased during phrases with a high fraction of voiceless fricatives. Our particle emission data is broadly consistent with prior measurements of the egressive airflow rate associated with the vocalization of various phones that differ in voicing and articulation. These results suggest that airborne transmission of respiratory pathogens via speech aerosol particles could be modulated by specific phonetic characteristics of the language spoken by a given human population, along with other, more frequently considered epidemiological variables., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Mechanistic hypotheses about airborne infectious disease transmission have traditionally emphasized the role of coughing and sneezing, which are dramatic expiratory events that yield both easily visible droplets and large quantities of particles too small to see by eye. Nonetheless, it has long been known that normal speech also yields large quantities of particles that are too small to see by eye, but are large enough to carry a variety of communicable respiratory pathogens. Here we show that the rate of particle emission during normal human speech is positively correlated with the loudness (amplitude) of vocalization, ranging from approximately 1 to 50 particles per second (0.06 to 3 particles per cm 3 ) for low to high amplitudes, regardless of the language spoken (English, Spanish, Mandarin, or Arabic). Furthermore, a small fraction of individuals behaves as "speech superemitters," consistently releasing an order of magnitude more particles than their peers. Our data demonstrate that the phenomenon of speech superemission cannot be fully explained either by the phonic structures or the amplitude of the speech. These results suggest that other unknown physiological factors, varying dramatically among individuals, could affect the probability of respiratory infectious disease transmission, and also help explain the existence of superspreaders who are disproportionately responsible for outbreaks of airborne infectious disease.

Researchers investigating the vowel systems of languages or dialects frequently employ normalization methods to minimize between-speaker variability in formant patterns while preserving between-phoneme separation and (socio-)dialectal variation. Here two methods are considered: log-mean and Lobanov normalization. Although both of these methods express formants in a speaker-dependent space, the methods differ in their complexity and in their implied models of human vowel-perception. Typical implementations of these methods rely on balanced data across speakers so that researchers may have to reduce the data available in the analyses in missing-data situations. Here, an alternative method is proposed for the normalization of vowels using the log-mean method in a linear-regression framework. The performance of the traditional approaches to log-mean and Lobanov normalization against the regression approach to the log-mean method using naturalistic, simulated vowel-data was investigated. The results indicate that the Lobanov method likely removes legitimate linguistic variation from vowel data and often provides very noisy estimates of the actual vowel quality associated with individual tokens. The authors further argue that the Lobanov method is too complex to represent a plausible model of human vowel perception, and so is unlikely to provide results that reflect the true perceptual organization of linguistic data.

Adult listeners were presented with /hVd/ syllables spoken by boys and girls ranging from 5 to 18 years of age. Half of the listeners were informed of the sex of the speaker; the other half were not. Results indicate that veridical age in children can be predicted accurately based on the acoustic characteristics of the talker's voice and that listener behavior is highly predictable on the basis of speech acoustics. Furthermore, listeners appear to incorporate assumptions about talker sex into their estimates of talker age, even when information about the talker's sex is not explicitly provided for them.

The European black truffle is a mycorrhizal fungus native to Spanish Mediterranean forests. In most Spanish regions it was originally commercially harvested in the second half of the 20th century. Experts agree that wild truffle yields suffered a sharp decline during the 1970s and 1980s. However, official statistics for Spanish harvest are scarce and seemingly conflicting, and little attention has been paid to the regime for the exploitation of truffle-producing forests and its implications on the sustainability of this resource. Trends in harvest from 1969 to 2013 and current harvesting practices were analyzed as a case study, taking into account that Spain is a major truffle producer worldwide, but at the same time truffles have only recently been exploited. The available statistical sources, which include an increasing proportion of cultivated truffles since the mid-1990s, were explored, with estimates from Truffle Harvesters Federation showing higher consistency. Statistical sources were then compared with proxies for wild harvest (rents from truffle leases in public forests) to corroborate time trends in wild harvesting. Results suggest that black truffle production is recovering in recent years thanks to plantations, whereas wild harvest is still declining. The implications of Spanish legal and institutional framework on sustainability of wild truffle use are reviewed. In the current scenario, the decline of wild harvest is likely to continue and eventually make commercial harvesting economically unattractive, thus aggravating sustainability issues. Strengthening of property rights, rationalization of harvesting pressure, forest planning and involvement of public stakeholders are proposed as corrective measures.

Apparent-talker height is determined by a talker's fundamental frequency (f0) and spectral information, typically indexed using formant frequencies (FFs). Barreda [(2017b). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 141, 4781-4792] reports that the apparent height of a talker can be influenced by vowel-specific variation in the f0 or FFs of a sound. In this experiment, native speakers of Mandarin were presented with a series of syllables produced by talkers of different apparent heights. Results indicate that there is substantial variability in the estimated height of a single talker based on lexical tone, as well as the inherent f0 and FFs of vowel phonemes.

Abandoned charcoal hearths constitute a very particular habitat for spontaneous fruiting of Tuber melanosporum, leading some harvesters to hypothesise that the fungus could benefit from the alterations that these soils underwent. However, ecological mechanisms involved in this relation are not fully elucidated yet. As a first step to understand it, the influence of long-term soil alteration on the symbiotic stage of T. melanosporum and on selected soil properties considered key to fruiting was assessed by conducting a greenhouse bioassay and a field observational study. In the bioassay, percent root colonisation and relative abundance of T. melanosporum were significantly lower in hearth than in control soils. Hearth soils showed significantly lower resistance to penetration, larger temperature fluctuation, reduced plant cover and reduced herbaceous root abundance. The results do not support the hypothesis that soil from historical charcoal hearths currently enhances development of T. melanosporum mycorrhizas. However, whether this is due to increased infectivity of native ectomycorrhizal communities or to worse conditions for development of T. melanosporum mycorrhizas remains unresolved. Native ectomycorrhizal communities in hearths showed altered composition, although not a clear change in infectivity or richness. Direction of change in hearth soil properties is compared to alteration occurring in soils spontaneously producing T. melanosporum. The interest of these changes to improve T. melanosporum fruiting in plantations is discussed.

The perception of apparent-talker height is mostly determined by the fundamental frequency (f0) and spectral characteristics of a voice. Although it is traditionally thought that spectral cues affect apparent-talker height by influencing apparent vocal-tract length, a recent experiment [Barreda (2016). J. Phon. 55, 1-18] suggests that apparent-talker height can vary significantly within-talker on the basis of phonemically-determined spectral variability. In this experiment, listeners were asked to estimate the height of 10 female talkers based on manipulated natural productions of bVd words containing one of /i æ ɑ u ɝ/. Results indicate that although listeners appear to use vocal-tract length estimates in determining apparent-height, apparent-talker height also varies significantly within-talker based on the inherent spectral and source characteristics of different vowels, with vowels with lower formant-frequencies and f0 being associated with taller talkers overall. The use of spectral and f0 information in apparent-height estimation varied considerably between listeners, resulting in additional variation in the apparent-height of talkers. Although the use of acoustic information in the determination of apparent-height was highly systematic, it does not necessarily follow from the empirical relationship between speech acoustics and actual talker height.

We evaluated genioglossus (GG) gross motoneuron morphology, electromyographic (EMG) activities, and respiratory patterning in rat pups allowed to develop without interference (unexposed) and pups born to dams subjected to osmotic minipump implantation in utero (saline-exposed). In experiment 1, 48 Sprague-Dawley rat pups (Charles-River Laboratories), ages postnatal day 7 (P7) through postnatal day 10 (P10), were drawn from two experimental groups, saline-exposed (n = 24) and unexposed (n = 24), and studied on P7, P8, P9, or P10. Pups in both groups were sedated (Inactin hydrate, 70 mg/kg), and fine-wire electrodes were inserted into the GG muscle of the tongue and intercostal muscles to record EMG activities during breathing in air and at three levels of normoxic hypercapnia [inspired CO2 fraction (FiCO2 ): 0.03, 0.06, and 0.09]. Using this approach, we assessed breathing frequency, heart rate, apnea type, respiratory event types, and respiratory stability. In experiment 2, 16 rat pups were drawn from the same experimental groups, saline-exposed (n = 9) and unexposed (n = 7), and used in motoneuron-labeling studies. In these pups a retrograde dye was injected into the GG muscle, and the brain stems were subsequently harvested and sliced. Labeled GG motoneurons were identified with microscopy, impaled, and filled with Lucifer yellow. Double-labeled motoneurons were reconstructed, and the number of primary projections and soma volumes were calculated. Whereas pups in each group exhibited the same number (P = 0.226) and duration (P = 0.093) of respiratory event types and comparable motoneuron morphologies, pups in the implant group exhibited more central apneas and respiratory instability relative to pups allowed to develop without interference., (Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.)

In the early years of a black truffle plantation, the field proliferation of the nursery-inoculated fungi can be hampered by native ectomycorrhizal fungi colonising the seedling roots. Reducing the soil ectomycorrhizal infectivity in the planting hole before introducing the inoculated seedling could be an effective strategy to reduce this problem. Three bioassays were conducted to evaluate the impact of several soil preparations on the ectomycorrhizal infectivity and richness of a Quercus ilex soil in a truffle-producing region. Microwaves, quicklime, and acetic acid significantly decreased the percent root colonisation and morphotype richness of the native ectomycorrhizal fungi. However, they also decreased seedling survival or growth. Peracetic acid, hydrogen peroxide, and sodium hypochlorite did not show a significant negative effect on the soil ectomycorrhizal community. The results support the potential of soil preparation for reducing the ectomycorrhizal infectivity of forest soils, thus being a promising strategy to reduce the early colonisation by native fungi in truffle plantations. However, the indications of damage to the seedling development must be addressed., (Copyright © 2015 The British Mycological Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Neonates at risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are hospitalized for cardiorespiratory monitoring however, monitoring is costly and generates large quantities of averaged data that serve as poor predictors of infant risk. In this study we used a traditional autocorrelation function (ACF) testing its suitability as a tool to detect subtle alterations in respiratory patterning in vivo. We applied the ACF to chest wall motion tracings obtained from rat pups in the period corresponding to the mid-to-end of the third trimester of human pregnancy. Pups were drawn from two groups: nicotine-exposed and saline-exposed at each age (i.e., P7, P8, P9, and P10). Respiratory-related motions of the chest wall were recorded in room air and in response to an arousal stimulus (FIO2 14%). The autocorrelation function was used to determine measures of breathing rate and respiratory patterning. Unlike alternative tools such as Poincare plots that depict an averaged difference in a measure breath to breath, the ACF when applied to a digitized chest wall trace yields an instantaneous sample of data points that can be used to compare (data) points at the same time in the next breath or in any subsequent number of breaths. The moment-to-moment evaluation of chest wall motion detected subtle differences in respiratory pattern in rat pups exposed to nicotine in utero and aged matched saline-exposed peers. The ACF can be applied online as well as to existing data sets and requires comparatively short sampling windows (∼2 min). As shown here, the ACF could be used to identify factors that precipitate or minimize instability and thus, offers a quantitative measure of risk in vulnerable populations., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Wildfires are a major threat to Mediterranean forests. Firebreaks are built as a prevention measure, but require a periodic and expensive maintenance. Cultivating the ectomycorrhizal mushroom Tuber melanosporum Vitt. in firebreaks could reduce costs and improve their sustainability. But firebreaks are built on forest soil, considered nonoptimum for T. melanosporum cultivation. A pot experiment was used to study the persistence of T. melanosporum in firebreak soils in the short term, as a first step to assess the viability of these plantations. The influence of seedlings, soil heating, and liming was also tested. During the 2 y after plantation, T. melanosporum mycorrhizas increased their number, showing its ability to proliferate. Percent root colonisation by native fungi importantly increased from month 12 to 22; although T. melanosporum remained dominant, with a colonisation level similar to those in standard truffle plantations. The age of seedlings at the time of planting influenced T. melanosporum proliferation, supporting a key role for nursery seedling quality in the performance of young plantations. Heating the soil before planting reduced the richness of native fungi, suggesting that this could increase plantation success. The results tend to support the viability of T. melanosporum cultivation in firebreaks, and encourage experimental field plantations., (Copyright © 2013 The British Mycological Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The vocal tract length of a speaker is the primary determinant of the range of formant frequencies (FFs) produced by that speaker. Listeners have demonstrated sensitivity to the average FFs produced by voices, for example, in estimating the relative heights of two speakers based on their speech. However, it is not known whether they can learn to identify voices based on the acoustic characteristic associated with the average FFs produced by a voice (this characteristic will be referred to as FF-scaling). To investigate this, a series of vowels corresponding to voices that differed in their average f0 and/or FF-scaling were synthesized. Listeners (n = 71) were trained to identify these voices using a training procedure where, for each trial, they heard the vowels representing a voice and then had to identify the stimulus voice from among a series of candidate voices that differed in terms of their FF-scaling and/or their f0. Results indicate that listeners can identify voices on the basis of FF-scaling quite accurately and consistently after only a short training session and that, although f0 weakly influences these estimates, they are most strongly determined by the stimulus FFs.

Many experiments have reported a perceptual advantage for vowels presented in blocked-versus mixed-voice conditions. Nusbaum and colleagues [Nusbaum and Morin (1992). in Speech Perception, Speech Production, and Linguistic Structure, edited by Y. Tohkura, Y. Sagisaka, and E. Vatikiotis-Bateson (OHM, Tokyo), pp. 113-134; Magnuson and Nusbaum (2007). J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 33(2), 391-409] present results which suggest that the size of this advantage may be related to the facility with which listeners can detect speaker changes, so that combinations of less similar voices can result in better performance than combinations of more similar voices. To test this, a series of synthetic voices (differing in their source characteristics and/or formant-spaces) was used in a speeded-monitoring task. Vowels were presented in blocks made up of tokens from one or two synthetic voices. Results indicate that formant-space differences, in the absence of source differences between voices in a block, were unlikely to result in the perception of multiple voices, leading to lower accuracy and relatively faster reaction times. Source differences between voices in a block resulted in the perception of multiple voices, increased reaction times, and a decreased negative effect of formant-space differences between voices on identification accuracy. These results are consistent with a process in which the detection of speaker changes guides the appropriate or inappropriate use of extrinsic information in normalization.

The ectomycorrhizal fungus Tuber melanosporum fruits in association with Quercus in natural forests of Spain. Some of these stands are managed to keep an open canopy and meet the habitat requirements of the fungus. However, there are few quantitative studies analysing in these forests the relationship between soil environment and T. melanosporum. Eight forest stands which produce T. melanosporum have been monitored for 6 years in order to characterise the below-ground ectomycorrhizal community and to assess its temporal dynamics after experimental canopy opening. The brûlé, the ground where T. melanosporum fruits, shows a distinct ectomycorrhizal community, characterised by lower density of active ectomycorrhizal tips, lower morphotype richness per soil volume, higher abundance of T. melanosporum and lower abundance of Cenococcum geophilum than soil closest to the trunk of the host Quercus ilex. Opening the canopy has not stimulated an increase in T. melanosporum, suggesting that a shift in the soil environment alone will not trigger the formation of new truffières in the short term. The dry climate of these truffières may be a factor as T. melanosporum abundance appears to be sensitive to annual weather conditions.