Invasion of intestinal epithelial cells is a critical step in Salmonella infection and requires the expression of genes located in Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1). A key factor for SPI-1 expression is DNA adenine (Dam) methylation, which activates synthesis of the SPI-1 transcriptional activator HilD. Dam-dependent regulation of hilD is postranscriptional (and therefore indirect), ind...

Received: 29 December 2008 Revised: 1 October 2009 2nd Revision: 13 November 2009 3rd Revision: 28 February 2010 Accepted: 1 March 2010 Abstract Software Process Improvement (SPI) projects are large-scale, complex organization-wide change initiatives. They require considerable investments in personnel, time and money and impact just about every aspect of software firms. The group charged with c...

Software Process Improvement (SPI) has become the most popular approach to delivering improvements to the software product. Based on statistical process control, the underlying theme is that by understanding and defining the current state of a company’s software development processes, quality practitioners and managers can sufficiently determine and control areas within the development process ...

In this paper we present findings from our recent empirical study of software process improvement (SPI) implementation critical barriers (CBs) in twenty-six Australian software companies. The objective of this study is to summarise the issues that playa negative role in the implementation of SPI programmes and to identify the key barriers. Through our empirical study we identified 5 barriers (o...

Chemical cross-linking modification can significantly enhance the tensile strength (TS) of soy protein isolate (SPI)-based composites, but usually at the cost of a reduction in the elongation at break (EB). In this study, eco-friendly and high-potential hybrid SPI-based nanocomposites with improved TS were fabricated without compromising the reduction of EB. The hybrid of carboxymethylated chit...

Different advances have been made in the development of software process improvement (SPI) standards and models, e.g. capability maturity model (CMM), more recently CMMI, and ISO’s SPICE. However, these advances have not been matched by equal advances in the adoption of these standards and models in software development which has resulted in limited success for many SPI efforts. The current pro...

A novel filarial serine protease inhibitor (SPI) from the human parasitic nematode Onchocerca volvulus, Ov-SPI-1, was identified through the analysis of a molting third-stage larvae expressed sequence tag dataset. Subsequent analysis of the expressed sequence tag datasets of O. volvulus and other filariae identified four other members of this family. These proteins are related to the low molecu...

The topoisomerase I inhibitor GL147211C [7-[(4-methylpiperazino)methyl]-10,11-(ethylenedioxy)-(20S)-campto thecin trifluoroacetate], a camptothecin analogue, has significant activity in tumor cell cytotoxicity assays in vitro and antitumor activity in both animal tumor models and human patients. Its toxicity is significant, however, effectively limiting the amount of drug that can be administer...

Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi (S. Typhi) is a causative organism of typhoid fever. A number of Salmonella serovars express a capsular polysaccharide antigen known as Vi, the biosynthetic and export proteins of which are encoded within the viaB locus of Salmonella Pathogenicity Island -7 (SPI-7). SPI-7 is inserted between two partially duplicated copies of tRNA -pheU gene. We have investiga...

Software Process Improvement (SPI) became known in the last twenty years. SPI is crucial to augment software process capabilities in software companies to face present demanding and global market. There were numerous published studies in United States, Europe, Australia and North America. Yet, there was still being short of research and published studies on SPI in Malaysia. This research attemp...