Frequency F0 Research Articles

Unifying Initial Geminates and Fortis Consonants via Laryngeal Specification: Three case studies from Dunan, Pattani Malay, and Salentino

Initial Geminates (IGs) are often assumed to differ from singletons mainly in duration, while fundamental frequency (f0) and intensity are described as secondary, variable cues. Accordingly, IGs are phonologically represented with a [+long] feature or by associating the consonant to two timing units. On the other hand, more recent work on IGs has suggested that the boundary between IGs and fortis stops is tenuous. To further support this claim, we present converging evidence from 3 understudied languages, Dunan (Japonic), Pattani Malay (PM, Austronesian), and Salentino (Indo-European), suggesting that IGs may also be reliably cued by intensity, possibly as a byproduct of longer closure duration, and f0 throughout the following vowel. Reliance on these acoustic cues is strongly reminiscent of fortis stops in, e.g., Korean. Accordingly, we propose that languages prototypically described as having IG contrasts should be phonologically represented with a distinct laryngeal specification that takes into account the constellation of acoustic cues at play.

Optimizing distortion product otoacoustic emission recordings in normal-hearing ears by adopting cochlear place-specific stimuli.

Distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) provide a window into active cochlear processes and have become a popular clinical and research tool. DPOAEs are commonly recorded using stimulus with fixed presentation levels and frequency ratio irrespective of the test frequency. However, this is inconsistent with the changing mechanical properties of the cochlear partition from the base to the apex that lend specific frequency-dependent spatial properties to the cochlear traveling wave. Therefore, the frequency and level characteristics between the stimulus tones should also need to be adjusted as a function of frequency to maintain optimal interaction between them. The goal of this investigation was to establish a frequency-specific measurement protocol guided by local cochlear mechanics. A broad stimulus parameter space extending up to 20 kHz was explored in a group of normal-hearing individuals. The stimulus frequency ratio yielding the largest 2f1-f2 DPOAE level changed as a function of frequency and stimulus level. Specifically, for a constant stimulus level, the frequency ratio producing the largest DPOAE level decreased with increasing frequency. Similarly, at a given f2 frequency, the stimulus frequency ratio producing the largest DPOAE level became wider as stimulus level increased. These results confirm and strengthen our current understanding of DPOAE generation in the normally functioning cochlea and expand our understanding to previously unexamined higher frequencies. These data support the use of frequency- and level-specific stimulus frequency ratios to maximize DPOAE generation.

The Influence of Male- and Female-Spoken Vowel Acoustics on Envelope-Following Responses.

The influence of male and female vowel characteristics on the envelope-following responses (EFRs) is not well understood. This study explored the role of vowel characteristics on the EFR at the fundamental frequency (f0) in response to the vowel /ε/ (as in "head"). Vowel tokens were spoken by five males and five females and EFRs were measured in 25 young adults (21 females). An auditory model was used to estimate changes in auditory processing that might account for talker effects on EFR amplitude. There were several differences between male and female vowels in relation to the EFR. For male talkers, EFR amplitudes were correlated with the bandwidth and harmonic count of the first formant, and the amplitude of the trough below the second formant. For female talkers, EFR amplitudes were correlated with the range of f0 frequencies and the amplitude of the trough above the second formant. The model suggested that the f0 EFR reflects a wide distribution of energy in speech, with primary contributions from high-frequency harmonics mediated from cochlear regions basal to the peaks of the first and second formants, not from low-frequency harmonics with energy near f0. Vowels produced by female talkers tend to produce lower-amplitude EFR, likely because they depend on higher-frequency harmonics where speech sound levels tend to be lower. This work advances auditory electrophysiology by showing how the EFR evoked by speech relates to the acoustics of speech, for both male and female voices.

Novel Stepped Impedance Microstrip Bandpass Filters for Radar Applications

In this paper, the design and realization of A Novel Microstrip Stepped Impedance Resonator Bandpass Filters with two selected center frequencies (f0) 12GHz and 16GHz presented. For The design of Band pass Filters “Rogers 6035HTC" substrate material with relative dielectric constant of 3.55, Standard thickness of 0.020” (0.508mm), thickness of pec is 0.035mm and simulated on High Frequency System Simulator (HFSS). Both the designed filters performances are discussed and compared with literature. The designed Stepped Impedance microstrip BPFs have insertion loss of <1dB with the optimal average performance of 37% and 32% FBW, and return losses are 47 dB and 32dB, which is reported better when compared with the reference designs.

Effects of Infertility on Voice in male patients.

In this study, we aimed to determine the differences in normospermic, oligospermic and azoospermic infertile men by performing voice analysis and to discuss this in the light of the literature. 71 male patients who applied to the urology clinic due to infertility and were then referred to us were included in the study. Hormone analysis and spermiogram were requested from the patients for routine infertility tests. Testosterone, Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), Luteinizing hormone (LH), Prolactin levels of the patients were recorded. Age and spermiogram results were recorded. According to the spermiogram results, the patients were categorized as Group 1 (azoospermic), Group 2 (oligospermic), Group 3 (normospermic). Voice Handicap Index-10 Turkish version (VHI-10) was applied to the patients and the results were recorded. The age of the infertile patients ranged from 20 to 37. The mean age was 28.23. The distribution of the patients was 21 patients in Group 1, 40 patients in Group 2, and 10 patients in Group 3. The mean Testosterone level of the patients was 2.78; mean FSH level 12.14; mean LH level 7.26; mean Prolactin level was 8.1. The mean VHI-10 scores of the patients were 10.52. The fundamental frequency F0 Hz (mean pitch) values of the patients were 176,468; jitter % (frequency perturbation jitter) values average 0.25; shimmer % (amplitude perturbation shimmer) values average 2,322; HNR dB values averaged 24,862. Testosterone is more effective on the voice, especially in male individuals.It would be more logical to think that many hormones, growth factors and local factors are effective instead of a single hormone.

Egyptian vowel second formant in isolation and in transition following high-frequency fricatives by NLFC hearing aid in children: how does the pattern compare to typically hearing peers?

BackgroundHigh-frequency consonants form an area of difficulty among children with hearing impairment. Many technological setups have emerged in order to improve their audibility, among them nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC). Therefore, the following study was carried out in order to evaluate change in production of high-frequency fricatives by hearing-impaired children utilizing NLFC hearing aids. This was through spectrographic analysis of F2 onset of transition elicited by fricatives in a prevocalic context, and results were compared to typically developing (TD) children. A change in mid-frequency sounds due to high-frequency compression was also tested through production of sustained vowels in isolation.ResultsA preliminary prospective case-control study involved 9 patients with NLFC hearing aids, evaluated at 1- and at 6-month post-fitting, without receiving speech therapy. Spectrographic analysis of F2 formant onset in [a] and [i] vowels when combined with [s] and [f] fricatives in a CV (consonant-vowel) pattern, presented auditorily and audio-visually, was observed and analyzed. One patient was excluded due to noncompliance in attendance. In the 8 patients who completed the study, very high-frequency level of F2 onset in CV was notable in second versus first evaluation in NLFC group, to the extent of surpassing the typical value in TD control group with [i] vowel. Contrastingly, F2 of sustained vowels in isolation took a trend of a lower value after 6 months of NLFC hearing aid use, as compared to the first evaluation. Consequently, the gap between sustained vowel F2 level in TD and NLFC groups widened.ConclusionMean high-frequency range of F2 onset of transition in CV patterns of voiceless fricatives [s] and [f] with [i] and [a] vowels 6 months after NLFC fitting reflects an enhancement in the frequency range production of these sounds. A shift toward a lower F2 frequency range in sustained mid-frequency vowels, on the other hand, remains to be carefully investigated as a sequel of nonlinear frequency compression in the Egyptian hearing-impaired children.

Intelligibility Improvement of Esophageal Speech Using Sequence-to-Sequence Voice Conversion with Auditory Attention

Laryngectomees are individuals whose larynx has been surgically removed, usually due to laryngeal cancer. The immediate consequence of this operation is that these individuals (laryngectomees) are unable to speak. Esophageal speech (ES) remains the preferred alternative speaking method for laryngectomees. However, compared to the laryngeal voice, ES is characterized by low intelligibility and poor quality due to chaotic fundamental frequency F0, specific noises, and low intensity. Our proposal to solve these problems is to take advantage of voice conversion as an effective way to improve speech quality and intelligibility. To this end, we propose in this work a novel esophageal–laryngeal voice conversion (VC) system based on a sequence-to-sequence (Seq2Seq) model combined with an auditory attention mechanism. The originality of the proposed framework is that it adopts an auditory attention technique in our model, which leads to more efficient and adaptive feature mapping. In addition, our VC system does not require the classical DTW alignment process during the learning phase, which avoids erroneous mappings and significantly reduces the computational time. Moreover, to preserve the identity of the target speaker, the excitation and phase coefficients are estimated by querying a binary search tree. In experiments, objective and subjective tests confirmed that the proposed approach performs better even in some difficult cases in terms of speech quality and intelligibility.

Iconic Associations Between Vowel Acoustics and Musical Patterns, and the Musical Protolanguage Hypothesis

Vowels are the most musical and sonic elements of speech. Previous studies found non-arbitrary associations between vowel intrinsic pitch and musical pitch in senseless syllables. In songs containing strings of senseless syllables, vowels are connected to melodic direction in close correspondence to their intrinsic pitch or the frequency of the second formant F2. This paper shows that also vowel intrinsic duration is related to musical patterns. It is generally assumed that low vowels like [a ɔ o] have a higher intrinsic duration than high vowels like [i y u] and that there is a positive correlation between the first formant F1 and duration. Analyzing 20 traditional Alpine yodels I found that vowels with longer intrinsic duration tend to align with longer notes, whereas vowels with shorter intrinsic duration with shorter notes. This new result might shed some light on size-sound symbolism in general: Since there is a direct match between vowel intrinsic duration and the “size” of musical notes, there is no need to explain the “size” of musical notes via Ohala's “frequency code” hypothesis. Moreover, I will argue that the iconic associations found between vowel acoustics and musical patterns support the idea of a sound-symbolic musical protolanguage. Such a protolanguage may have started with vowel syllables conveying pitch, timbre, as well as emotional, indexical, and sound-symbolic information.

Context effects in perception of vowels differentiated by F1 are not influenced by variability in talkers' mean F1 or F3.

Spectral properties of earlier sounds (context) influence recognition of later sounds (target). Acoustic variability in context stimuli can disrupt this process. When mean fundamental frequencies (f0's) of preceding context sentences were highly variable across trials, shifts in target vowel categorization [due to spectral contrast effects (SCEs)] were smaller than when sentence mean f0's were less variable; when sentences were rearranged to exhibit high or low variability in mean first formant frequencies (F1) in a given block, SCE magnitudes were equivalent [Assgari, Theodore, and Stilp (2019) J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 145(3), 1443-1454]. However, since sentences were originally chosen based on variability in mean f0, stimuli underrepresented the extent to which mean F1 could vary. Here, target vowels (/ɪ/-/ɛ/) were categorized following context sentences that varied substantially in mean F1 (experiment 1) or mean F3 (experiment 2) with variability in mean f0 held constant. In experiment 1, SCE magnitudes were equivalent whether context sentences had high or low variability in mean F1; the same pattern was observed in experiment 2 for new sentences with high or low variability in mean F3. Variability in some acoustic properties (mean f0) can be more perceptually consequential than others (mean F1, mean F3), but these results may be task-dependent.

Machine learning techniques for estimating seismic site amplification in the Santiago basin, Chile

Seismic site amplification and seismic hazard maps are crucial inputs for decision making and risk evaluation in places where seismicity imposes a significant risk to human life and infrastructure. In this work, we propose a novel machine learning (ML) based methodology to integrate qualitative and quantitative data to map the degree of seismic amplification in an area of Chile, one of the most seismically active countries on Earth. Our method uses measurements of surface shear wave velocities (Vs30) and predominant frequencies (f0) combined with gravity anomaly maps to update the geographic extension of seismic amplification classes. Additionally, we trained the predictive models to interpolate and extrapolate Vs30 and f0 to the unsampled sites. Applying this method to the Santiago basin resulted in (i) a refined seismic amplification map, and (ii) maps of Vs30 and f0 estimated with improved accuracy. The best predictions, obtained by ML techniques and validated through cross-validation, are possibly due to the inclusion of spatial covariates for algorithm training, enhancing the ability of the model to capture the spatial correlations of geological, geophysical and geotechnical data. The estimation of predominant frequencies (f0) is improved considerably by including gravity as a covariant. The accuracy of the f0 predictions apparently depends more on the choice of covariates than on the algorithm used, while the Vs30 predictions are more sensitive to the chosen algorithm. These results illustrate the great potential of machine learning predictive algorithms in digital soil mapping, which surpass traditional geostatistical techniques. The major contribution of this work is to introduce a novel methodology, based on artificial intelligence models, to extend local measurements of site-specific dynamic properties. This information can be used to quantitatively estimate seismic hazard over a regional scale.

Relevance of the voice in the process of gender affirmation in transsexual women: A cross-sectional study

Introduction. Voice is a gender marker and can therefore be a source of gender dysphoria. There is a relationship between symptoms of anxiety and depression and voice-related difficulties in trans women (TW). Hormonal replacement treatment (HRT) in TW does not play a role in voice feminization. Access to voice feminization procedures is limited while the population demanding transgender healthcare is increasing. Objective. To describe the degree of voice-related dysphoria experienced by TW that seek a voice feminization treatment. Method. A descriptive, cross-sectional study, 26 TW completed quality of life (QoL) questionnaires and stated their reasons for seeking voice feminization. Fundamental frequency (f0) was measured. Results. 77% of the participants were legally recognized as women, 96% were under HRT, and 27% had a history of gender affirmation surgery. Median f0 for TW was 131 Hz. f0 had a poor correlation with QoL measures. The mean score in the Trans Women Voice Questionnaire was 95 (SD = 14.3). Achieving a feminine voice that allows gender conformity was the main reason for seeking treatment. Discussion and conclusion. Voice non-conformity affects QoL. None of the participants perceived their voice as feminine while 97% described their ideal voice as feminine. The inability to satisfy gender assurance needs has a detrimental effect on QoL. Improving access to affirmation procedures in public institutions without pathologization of transgender people is a pending agenda. Despite evidence that TW benefit from voice feminization treatments, it is difficult to define how to measure success.

Frequency Analysis of KIC 1573174: Shedding Light on the Nature of HADS Stars

We propose that KIC 1573174 is a quadruple-mode δ Scuti star with pulsation amplitudes between those of the high-amplitude Delta Scuti star group and average low-amplitude pulsators. The radial modes detected in this star provide a unique opportunity to exploit asteroseismic techniques up to their limits. Detailed frequency analysis is given for the light curve from the Kepler mission. The variation of the light curve is dominated by the strongest mode with a frequency of F0 = 7.3975 day−1, as shown by Fourier analysis of long cadence data (Q1–Q17, spanning 1460 days), indicating that the target is a δ Scuti star. The other three independent modes with F1 = 9.4397 day−1, F2 = 12.1225 day−1, and F3 = 14.3577 day−1, have ratios of P 1/P 0, P 2/P 0, and P 3/P 0 estimated as 0.783, 0.610, and 0.515, which indicate that KIC 1573174 is a quadruple-mode δ Scuti star. A different approach has been used to determine the O − C through the study of phase modulation. The change of period (1/P)dP/dt is obtained resulting in −1.14 × 10−6 yr−1 and −4.48 × 10−6 yr−1 for F0 and F1 respectively. Based on frequency parameters (i.e., F0, F1, F2, and F3), a series of theoretical models were conducted by employing the stellar evolution code MESA. The ratio of observed f 1/f 2 is larger than that of the model, which may be caused by the rotation of the star. We suggest high-resolution spectral observation is highly desired in the future to further constrain models.

Impact of pulse dynamic loading direction and surface curvature on the stress-strain state of a three-layered spherical shell

On two size types of the semispherical three-layered structures, impact of the surface curvature and impact of the pulse dynamic loading on the stress-strain state (SSS) of these structures has been investigated. The layered hemispheres have been analyzed with the clamped footing and diameters (D1=0.30 m, D2=0.60 m), which had similar bearing layers’ thickness (h1=h3=0.010 m), polymeric filler with h2=0.020 m thickness, reinforced with the 5 discrete stiffening rings rigidly bound to the bearing layers.
 Values of normal stresses and vertical displacements of the structures’ bearing layers and distribution of these indicators along the spatial coordinate have been determined. Distribution of displacements’ and stresses’ magnitudes along the spatial coordinate α was determined by the software complex Nastran through the direct transient dynamic process algorithm within the time interval 0 ≤ t ≤ 10T. The time interval step duration was 0.25*10-6 s and the total number of steps was 200. The detailed and accurate calculation results have determined the choice of the solid finite element type.
 Value of the Gaussian curvature of the layered shell structures impacts their stress-strain state. Increase of the surface curvature of spherical structures under the impact of the dynamic pulse load increases the displacement and stress of their bearing layers.
 In addition to the vertical displacements and normal stresses of the bearing layers of the analyzed semispherical three-layered structures, their first natural frequency (f1) was also calculated.

An analysis of prosodic boundaries across speaking styles in two varieties of German

Previous research has shown that differences in the marking of prosodic boundaries exist not only between varieties of the same language, but also between speaking styles of the same variety. Our aim is to gain insights into how these two factors interact in the case of German and Austrian German read and conversational speech. Analysing four acoustic cues, representing durational and fundamental frequency (f0) measures, we observed that pause duration was the strongest cue to prosodic boundaries and that f0 reset was the weakest, in both varieties and across speaking styles. In read speech however, we noticed differences between the two varieties in the weighting given to the four cues. We then employed the four investigated acoustic cues for the annotation of the less-resourced variety, by examining ways of exploiting resources from the more well-resourced variety. Testing three automatic approaches for boundary detection, we obtained an overall high performance: 82.4% and 76.6% F-score for read and conversational speech, respectively. Moreover, our results showed that training on more data from the well-resourced variety did not outperform the same system trained on less data from the target variety.

Comparison of clinical and laboratory characteristics and frequency of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis C of the first and third genotypes

Introduction. There is a discussion about which genotype of viral hepatitis C (HCV) is the most aggressive. Some authors consider that the 1st genotype is the most aggressive, others define the 3rd HCV genotype as a factor that determines the high activity of the pathological process. The solution of this issue is important for optimizing the tactics of patient management.Aim. To compare the clinical and laboratory characteristics and the incidence of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis C of the first and third genotypes.Materials and methods. 297 patients with genotype 1 of HCV and 231 patients with genotype 3 of HCV were examined. The diagnosis of chronic viral hepatitis C was established according to the recommendations of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (2016, 2018). Liver fibrosis was studied by shear wave transient elastometry with METAVIR score.Results and discussion. The frequency of elevated ALT in the blood prevailed in patients with HCV genotype 3 compared with persons with HCV genotype 1 (90.5% vs. 82.8%, p = 0.02). ALT levels above 3 norms were registered in 29.0% of patients with genotype 3 and in 16.8% patients with HCV genotype 1 (p = 0.001). The frequency of liver fibrosis F2 according to METAVIR was 11.8% in patients with genotype 1 and 21.2% in patients with genotype 3 of HCV (p = 0.005); the frequency of liver fibrosis F3–F4 according to METAVIR was 20.5% in patients with genotype 1 and 32.5% in patients with genotype 3 of HCV (p = 0.003). The combination of high viral load and high inflammatory activity, which was associated with liver fibrosis F3–F4 according to METAVIR in both compared groups, was determined in 16.9% of patients with genotype 3 and only in 10.4% of patients with genotype 1 of HCV (p = 0.04).Conclusion. The obtained data allow us to consider that in the surveyed population the course of chronic viral hepatitis C with genotype 3 is clearly more aggressive than in persons with genotype 1 of HCV.

Auriküler Vagus Sinir Stimülasyonunun İnsan Ses Özelliklerine Etkileri

Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has been used in the treatment of epilepsy and depression for more than 20 years. Although the invasive cervical method is the most preferred application, side effects such as cough, voice change and hoarseness can be seen due to negative effects on the recurrent laryngeal nerve (a branch of the vagus nerve). Auricular VNS has been preferred recently due to its non-invasiveness, but uncertainty about the stimulation parameters continues. We tested the hypothesis that auricular VNS can affect voice and its features indirectly via afferent nerve connections reaching the nucleus tractus solitarius. Two patients previously using auricular VNS device for different diseases were requested to record their voices before and after the stimulation. Their devices (Vagustim) were changed with new version to check the usage of the patients. Sound recordings at different VNS frequencies (1-150 Hz) were collected by a mobile phone and analyzed with Praat and our MATLAB algorithm. Fundamental frequency (f0), jitter, shimmer, and harmonic to noise ratio (HNR) owere evaluated. The alteration was highest at 100 Hz and 30 Hz VNS for the male and female patients respectively. Audio recordings before and after 30 Hz (for female) and 100 Hz (for male) VNS at different durations (5-30 min) on different days were repeated and compared by Praat and our algorithm. Some discrepancy between the parameters jitter, shimmer, and HNR are detected between the algorithms, which is accounted to the fact that it is not standardized whether the algorithm uses only a specific part of the input signal or the whole signal. However, when the ratio of change of these parameters are considered, fundamental frequency and the HNR were found to be highly consistent for developing an algorithm to govern the stimulation parameters in an automated way. Furthermore, the same ratios for jitter and shimmer are also promising after some improvement to be included in such an algorithm. These results suggest that auricular VNS can affect voice and its parameters, but this change is related with stimulation parameters. It seems necessary to develop specific software and algorithms that can detect this change well.

The eclipsing binary systems with δ Scuti component – II. AB Cas

ABSTRACT We present a complex study of the eclipsing binary system, AB Cas. The analysis of the whole TESS light curve, corrected for the binary effects, reveals 112 significant frequency peaks with 17 independent signals. The dominant frequency f1 = 17.1564 d−1 is a radial fundamental mode. The O − C analysis of the times of light minima from over 92 yr leads to a conclusion that due to the ongoing mass transfer the system exhibits a change of the orbital period at a rate of 0.03 s per year. In order to find evolutionary models describing the current stage of AB Cas, we perform binary evolution computations. Our results show the AB Cas system as a product of the rapid non-conservative mass transfer with about 5–26 per cent of transferred mass lost from the system. This process heavily affected the orbital characteristics of this binary and its components in the past. In fact, this system closely resemble the formation scenarios of EL CVn type binaries. For the first time, we demonstrate the effect of binary evolution on radial pulsations and determine the lines of constant frequency on the HR diagram. From the binary and seismic modelling, we obtain constraints on various parameters. In particular, we constrain the overshooting parameter, fov ∈ [0.010, 0.018], the mixing-length parameter, αMLT ∈ [1.2, 1.5] and the age, t ∈ [2.3, 3.4] Gyr.

Dynamics of bubble formation in spontaneous microfluidic devices: Controlling dynamic adsorption via liquid phase properties

HypothesisThe interplay of interface evolution and surfactant adsorption determines the formation and stabilization of bubbles, and can be controlled by the liquid phase properties. ExperimentsWe studied bubble formation in an Edge-based Droplet GEneration (EDGE) microfluidic device at relevant length and time scale, allowing investigation of sub-events in a single bubble formation cycle. We vary the properties of the continuous phase that contains whey proteins and study a range of trans-pore pressures (Pd∗). FindingsThe shallow pores highlight the crucial role of the Laplace pressure and dynamic adsorption of proteins to the meniscus. Bubble formation is divided into two regimes by the Laplace pressure of the bare meniscus inside the pore. At Pd∗<1400 mbar, pre-adsorption of proteins is required to lower the Laplace pressure; the bubble formation frequency f0 increases with increasing protein concentration and is hardly affected by velocity and viscosity. At Pd∗≥1400 mbar, bubble formation immediately occurs upon applying pressure, and f0 mainly decreases with increasing viscosity. In both regimes, the initial bubble size d0 mainly increases with the viscosity (~η1/3). Bubble coalescence is only observed at Pd∗≥1400 mbar and can be effectively suppressed by raising protein concentration and viscosity within certain boundaries, yet ultimately this is at the cost of higher polydispersity of the bubbles. Our insights into the formation dynamics of micrometer-sized bubbles at time scales down to tens of microseconds can be used for effective control of bubble formation and stabilization in practical applications.

Long duration advertisement calls of nesting male plainfin midshipman fish are honest indicators of size and condition.

The plainfin midshipman fish (Porichthys notatus) has long served as a model organism for neuroethology research on acoustic communication and related social behaviors. Type I or 'singing' males produce highly stereotyped, periodic advertisement calls that are the longest known uninterrupted vertebrate vocalizations. Despite the extensive literature on the acoustic behaviour of this species, it remains unclear whether reproductive males signal their quality via their highly energetic, multiharmonic advertisement calls. Here, we recorded the advertisement calls of 22 reproductive type I males at night in a controlled laboratory setting in which males were housed in aquaria maintained at a constant temperature (13.9±0.3°C). The duration of the advertisement calls from type I males was observed to increase from the first call of the night to the middle call after which call duration remained steady until the early morning hours and first light. A strong positive correlation was observed between loudness (sound pressure level and maximum sound pressure level) of the advertisement call and body size (mass and standard length; rs>0.8). In addition, an asymptotic relationship was observed between the harmonic frequencies (f0-f10) of the advertisement calls and male body condition, with harmonic frequencies initially increasing with body condition indices, but then plateauing when body condition measures were high. Taken together, our results suggest that type I male advertisement calls provide reliable honest information about male quality regarding size and body condition. Such condition-dependent information of calling males could potentially be used by receptive females to help facilitate mate choice decisions.

Bottom-up scalable temporally-shaped femtosecond laser deposition of hierarchical porous carbon for ultrahigh-rate micro-supercapacitor

With the accelerated development of electronic devices, micro-supercapacitors (MSCs), as energy storage devices that can charge and discharge quickly, have attracted considerable attention. To improve the rate capability of MSCs with consideration of the energy density remains a challenge. We demonstrated a facile method for the preparation of thin films through bottom-up femtosecond pulsed laser deposition. The femtosecond laser irradiated the polyimide film through a transparent substrate to uniformly sputter the electrode material onto the lower surface of the substrate. We successfully deposited porous amorphous carbon, graphene, and carbon quantum dots with controllable properties by temporally shaping the femtosecond laser. The resulting MSC exhibited an ultrahigh frequency response and good performance at scan rates up to 10,000 V s−1. The characteristic frequency f0 of the MSC was as high as 42,000 Hz, and the relaxation time constant τ0 was 0.0238 ms. The MSC reached an impedance phase angle of −82.6° at a frequency of 120 Hz, an ultrahigh power density of more than 30 kW cm−3, and an energy density of 0.068 W h cm−3. This method provides a novel perspective for the preparation of ultrahigh frequency filters for future miniaturized portable electronic devices.