The purpose of this study was to evaluate the transmission of pathogenic respiratory bacteria to thirteen 5-month-old specific pathogen free (SPF) pigs, during the slaughtering process in a commercial slaughterhouse. Before transportation, the SPF pigs and the lorry were checked to confirm the absence of pathogenic respiratory bacteria. Nine SPF pigs (group 1) were in contact in a conventional ...

Digital image processing (DIP) of bacterial smears is a new method of analysing the composition of the gut microbial flora. This method provides the opportunity to compare and evaluate differences in the complex highly concentrated anaerobic fraction of gut microbial flora, based on micromorphological differences. There is ample evidence that this fraction can be characterized as related or unr...

Silene latifolia is a well-studied model system for plant XY sex determination. Three maleness factors are thought to function on the Y chromosome, gynoecium suppression factor (GSF), stamen-promoting factor (SPF), and male fertility factor (MFF), and their deletions result in hermaphrodites, anther defects, and pollen defects, respectively. Although a framework map of the Y chromosome exists, ...

Intestinal microbes are an important system in the human body, with significant effects on behavior. An increasing body of research indicates that intestinal microbes affect brain function and neurogenesis, including sensitivity to stress. To investigate the effects of microbial colonization on behavior, we examined behavioral changes associated with hormones and hormone receptors in the hypoth...

Subarachnoid pleural fistula (SPF) is an extremely rare complication that occurs after dural space and vertebral columns injuries. SPF is divided into two diagnoses based on the absence or presence of pneumocephalus and pneumorrachis. While pneumocephalus is defined as the presence of air the cranial cavity, if there is air in the spinal canal, this is defined as pneumorrhachis. In general, the...

A specific pathogen free (SPF) barrier colony of breeding marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) was established at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies. Rodent and other animal models maintained as SPF barrier colonies have demonstrated improved health and lengthened lifespans enhancing the quality and repeatability of aging research. The marmosets were screened for two viruses and se...

In this paper we propose the idea of using Bionomic Algorithm (BA) for the shortest path finding problem. SPF is a very important issue associated with many other tasks like network routing and graph/map analysis etc. Different techniques have been used for solving the SPF problem, some of them being Dijkstra Algorithm, Floyd Algorithm, Genetic Algorithm, Tabu Search etc. The choice of algorith...

Symbolic (Java) PathFinder (SPF) is a symbolic execution tool that is used for the automated generation of test cases that satisfy various coverage criteria, such as condition, path and MC/DC coverage. The tool has been used at NASA, in academia, and in industry, most notably at Fujitsu. We describe our experience with using SPF and we identify some of the challenges for making the tool more us...

The single-photon fluorescence (SPF) of IR125 can be enhanced when the laser polarization changes from linear through elliptical to circular [A. Nag and D. Goswami, J. Chem. Phys. 132, 154508 (2010)]. In this paper, we further explain and discuss the physical control mechanism. Our theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that the SPF enhancement can be attributed to the nonresonant two...