The safety of raw milk sold in Northern Italy was investigated in relation to hygiene quality parameters and presence of Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, thermotolerant Campylobacter, and Verocytotoxin producing Escherichia coli O157:H7. The performance of different analytical methods used-official culture method (ISO), modified Bacteriological Analytical Manual cultural method (mBAM), ...

Q: Why are we using circuit lower bounds here, as opposed to a claim such as E ̸⊆ P for example? A: The proof of the Nisan-Wigderson pseudorandom generator relies on nonuniformity, by showing that distinguishing a pseudorandom generator implies a circuit for solving a hard problem – this reduction involves hardwiring advice into a circuit in order to solve the hard problem. A contradiction requi...

Modern game engines make it easy to create complex realistic environments for entertainment or for training, but scripting the behavior of agents in these environments is still a major challenge. Spatial computing languages such as Proto [1] provide a possible solution, but need to be adapted for practical scripting use. We have begun to address this problem by linking Proto with the Unity game...

The Albayzin 2012 Language Recognition Evaluation (Albayzin 2012 LRE) is supported by the Spanish Thematic Network on Speech Technology (RTTH) and organized by the Software Technologies Working Group (GTTS) of the University of the Basque Country, with the key collaboration of Niko Brümmer, from Agnitio Research, South Africa, for defining the evaluation criterion and coding the script used to ...

Mycobacteria have features that make them attractive as potential vaccine vectors. The nonpathogenic and rapidly growing Mycobacterium smegmatis can express both Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens and heterologous antigens from other pathogens, and it has been used as a viable vector for the development of live vaccines. In order to further improve antigen-specific immunogenicity of M. smegmat...

Tissues of cattle intended for human consumption can be contaminated by Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP). Although different studies attribute varying roles of MAP in Crohn's disease progression it is thought that the exposure of humans to this bacterium should in any case be minimised. In this study, we have collected samples of intestine, mesenteric lymph nodes, muscles of di...

The aim of the annual agent contest is to stimulate research in the area of multi-agent systems, to identify key problems and to collect suitable benchmarks. We provide a brief description of the 2012 competition and the PythonDTU system. We analyse the contest especially between our own system and Federal University of Santa Catarina’s (UFSC) system as we had some very intense battles. We have...

Involuntary culling (IC) is where a cow is disposed of due to injury, poor health or infertility. The main reasons for IC are infertility, mastitis and lameness. These reasons have differing age profiles in when they affect cows, cost variable amounts to treat and have an effect on the value of the cow at market. They also reduce cow welfare in different ways. These factors influence the econom...

A cryptic lineage of hammerhead shark closely related to but evolutionarily distinct from the scalloped hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini) was recently documented in the western North Atlantic Ocean. Here, we demonstrate using nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences that this cryptic lineage also occurs in the western South Atlantic Ocean, extending its distribution >7,000 km from its only previously ...