Undetected air leaks in a high-vacuum sterilizer can defeat the sterilization process. For this reason the maintenance and supervision of these sterilizers needs expert engineering care. The importance of controlling the high-vacuum sterilization process from the centre of a load rather than the chamber drain is emphasized, and a method of detecting any failure in a high-vacuum process is descr...

Satisfactory spore preparations for testing hospital sterilizers can be made from B. stearothermophilus and comparatively simple methods for loading and drying the papers are considered to be valid. Each batch of spore papers should be calibrated by plotting dose-response curves for exposure to steam. A minimum standard in terms of the L.D.50 to moist heat is proposed and confidence limits sugg...

Liquid propylene oxide added to a variety of disinfectant solutions resulted in a significant reduction of the bacterial spore content of these solutions.

Passive antibody treatment of macaques prior to simian/human immunodeficiency virus infection produces "sterilizing immunity" in some animals and long-term reductions in viral loads in others. Analysis of viral kinetics suggests that antibody mediates sterilizing immunity by its effects on the initial viral inoculum. By contrast, reduction in peak viral load later in infection prevents CD4 depl...

We investigate the evolution of virulence of pathogens that reduce their hosts' fitness primarily by affecting host fecundity. We show that, under many conditions, such sterilizing pathogens evolve high rather than intermediate levels of virulence, and this pushes the pathogen population and sometimes the host population toward extinction. We also show that spatial population structure can reve...

Gynodioecy is a breeding system where both hermaphroditic and female individuals coexist within plant populations. This dimorphism is the result of a genomic interaction between maternally inherited cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) genes and bi-parentally inherited nuclear male fertility restorers. As opposed to other gynodioecious species, where every cytoplasm seems to be associated with male...

DAY, W. C., GOTTLIEB, S., AND PELCZAR, M. J. 1952 The biological degradatioin of lignin; The inability of Polyporous versicolor to metabolize sodium lignosulfonate. Appl. Microbiol., 1, 78-81. FOLIN, 0. 1929 Two revised copper methods for blood sugar determination. J. Biol. Chem., 82, 83-93. KAYE, S. 1949 The sterilizing action of gaseous ethylene oxide; The effect of ethylene oxide and related...

Paper presents a technique for performance of UV sterilizer for room air bacteria. Patterns of decay of room air bacteria concentration during sterilization and build-up there after as a function of time is studied. Decay process seems to follow exponential pattern. Half-lives during decay are estimated. For single sterilizer unit with a dose of 16 W the decay half-life is around 8.6 min. For t...

Some of the factors affecting the efficient steam sterilization of dressings have been examined. A jacketed sterilizer will process a load more quickly than a sterilizer without a jacket. The level of fore-vacuum is critical and must reach an absolute pressure of 20 mm. Hg (29.2 in.Hg vacuum) or less. This will overcome all conditions of overpacking studied. The level of after-vacuum should be ...