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Affective prosody recognition is an important area of research in autism spectrum conditions where difficulties in social cognition have been frequently observed. To probe into the mixed results reported in the literature, we conducted a systematic review with meta-analysis and examined potential factors that could explain the inconsistent results. Our literature search included six electronic databases for studies that compared the affective prosody recognition performance in individuals with autism spectrum condition with typically developing participants, which yielded 23 papers eligible for quantitative synthesis. Using a random-effects model, we obtained a moderate-to-large pooled effect (Hedges' g = -0.63) for the overall affective prosody recognition performance of autism spectrum condition participants, which, however, reduced substantially (to -0.26) and became non-significant after the correction for publication bias. The number of answer codes was found to be a significant moderator for the effect estimate, whereas the number of speakers was not. Moreover, the magnitude of the pooled effect estimate varied across emotions. The findings suggested moderate differences in affective prosody recognition ability between autism spectrum condition and typically developing individuals, which reduced to marginal difficulties for autism spectrum condition when the impact of publication bias was taken into account. Diversity in the number of answer codes could have differential effects on affective prosody recognition performance in autism spectrum condition, which varied across emotions. The present review and meta-analysis demonstrated the insufficiency of research on affective prosody recognition in autism spectrum condition, highlighting a need for further exploration of the contributors and underlying mechanisms for specific affective prosody recognition difficulties.

Straw biochar prepared by three methods (i.e., pyrochar, HNO3-modified pyrochar, and hydrochar) was added to the anaerobic digestion system with acetic acid and ethanol as substrates to explore the effects of biochar on methane production, substrate degradation, and microbial community structure. The biogas yields of the biochar-supplemented groups all increased, and the maximum methane yield was found in the hydrochar group, which was 45.4% higher than the control. In the ethanol-fed reactor, the maximum partial pressure of hydrogen in the headspace of the hydrochar reactor was reduced from 3.5% (blank reactor) to 1.9%. Overall, methane production is directly proportional to the electron exchange capacity (EEC) value of biochar. Furthermore, the bio-aging process increased the EEC of each kind of biochar to 5.5–8.1%, which was favorable for the sustainable promotion of methanogenesis. The increased methane yield from the bio-aged biochar could either be attributable to the changes in surface oxygen-containing functional groups or the selectively enriched microbial community on the biochar, such as Geobacter, which could participate in direct interspecies electron transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]