Background. Surgical noxious stimuli generate a stress response with an increased sympathetic activity, potentially affecting the perioperative outcome. Surgical Pleth Index (SPI), derived from the pulse plethysmogram, has been proposed as a tool to assess nociception-antinociception balance. The relationship between SPI and autonomic nervous system (ANS) during general anesthesia is poorly und...

Research on Symbolic Probabilistic Inference (SPI) [2, 3) has provided an algorithm for re­ solving general queries in Bayesian networks. SPI applies the concept of dependency­ directed backward search to probabilistic in­ ference, and is incremental with respect to both queries and observations. Unlike tra­ ditional Bayesian network inferencing algo­ rithms, SPI algorithm is goal directed, per...

Every so often, a new methodology is launched onto the software engineering landscape with all the force of a religious crusade. From its humble beginnings, Software Process Improvement (SPI), which includes initiatives such as CMM and ISO 9000, has spread its wings into virtually every sector of the software engineering community and in the process has transformed itself from a bag of tools an...

Isoflavones are phytochemical components of soy diets that bind weakly to estrogen receptors (ERs). To study potential estrogen-like actions of soy in the mammary gland during early development, we fed weanling male and female Sprague-Dawley rats a semipurified diet with casein as the sole protein source from postnatal day 21 to 33, the same diet substituting soy protein isolate (SPI) for casei...

Salmonella enterica can cause intestinal or systemic infections in humans and animals mainly by the presence of pathogenicity islands SPI-1 and SPI-2, containing 39 and 44 genes, respectively. The AraC-like regulator HilD positively controls the expression of the SPI-1 genes, as well as many other Salmonella virulence genes including those located in SPI-2. A previous report indicates that the ...

In this paper, a Scalable Proportional Integral (SPI) active queue management (AQM) algorithm for High Speed TCP (HSTCP) is proposed. Based on the linearization model for HSTCP, we give a stability analysis for the closed loop interconnection systems (HSTCP and SPI AQM). Then, an adaptive parameters setting method for SPI AQM is presented. Using ns2 simulation, we illustrate that SPI shows sati...

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following quest...

Nowadays, when software has become part of most everyday appliances, the significance of the software industry and especially small software companies is growing. The vast majority of companies world-wide are Small or Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). In Finland, over half of the software companies have only two to ten employees. Improving the operations of a company is necessary in order to mai...

PURPOSE To ascribe the serine protease inhibitor 3 (SPI-3) as an ocular acute inflammatory molecule and to clarify its producing cells in an endotoxin-induced uveitis (EIU) model. METHODS Male Wistar rats were injected with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), and the expression of SPI-3 mRNA in the ocular tissues was examined by in situ hybridization (ISH) and Northern blot analysis. A combination of I...

In order to survive inside macrophages, Salmonella produces a series of proteins encoded by genes within Salmonella pathogenicity island 2 (SPI-2). In the present study, we report that Fur, a central regulator of iron utilization, negatively controls the expression of SPI-2 genes. Time course analysis of SPI-2 expression after the entry of Salmonella into macrophages revealed that SPI-2 genes a...