At present, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is the most widely used drought index to provide good estimations about the intensity, magnitude and spatial extent of droughts. The main advantage of the SPI in comparison with other indices is the fact that the SPI enables both determination of drought conditions at different time scales and monitoring of different drought types. It is wi...

BACKGROUND The surgical pleth index (SPI) is proposed for titration of analgesic drugs during general anesthesia. Several reports have investigated the effect of SPI on the consumption of opioids including remifentanil, fentanyl, and sufentanil during anesthesia, but there are no reports about oxycodone. We aimed to investigate intravenous oxycodone consumption between SPI-guided analgesia and ...

Our objective was to determine the metabolic availability (MA) of sulfur amino acids in dietary proteins using the indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO) technique. Five to seven men received graded levels (20, 40, 60, and 70%) of the mean total sulfur amino acid (TSAA) requirement of 13 mg x kg(-1) x d(-1) as a crystalline AA mixture, casein, and soy protein isolate (SPI) (40, 50, 60, and 70%),...

To elucidate the pathogenic mechanism of Salmonella enterica serovar Gallinarum, we examined the expression of the genes encoded primarily in Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 (SPI-1) and SPI-2. These genes were found to be induced as cultures entered stationary phase under high- and low-oxygen growth conditions, as also observed for Salmonella serovar Typhimurium. In contrast, Salmonella serov...

from the paper: Software process improvement (SPI) has had its roots primarily in software engineering, nowadays this approach has grown and covers management of software companies SPI is widely used in software companies to improve quality, stakeholders' satisfactions, reduce time-to-market, and introduce cost savings within the company. The current literature widely reports certain critical s...

Software Process Improvement (SPI) is an approach to systematic and continuous improvement of a software producing organization’s ability to produce and deliver quality software within time and budget constraints. SPI initiatives often experience difficulties and problems when the improvements are going to be implemented and institutionalized in the organization’s daily practices. In this paper...

Software processes improvement (SPI) is a challenging task, as many different stakeholders, project settings, and contexts and goals need to be considered. SPI projects are often operated in a complex and volatile environment and, thus, require a sound management that is resource-intensive requiring many stakeholders to contribute to the process assessment, analysis, design, realisation, and de...

The present study investigated the effect of dietary soy protein isolate (SPI) on tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF) productivity in peritoneal macrophages from nephritic and hepatoma-bearing rats. Dietary SPI significantly inhibited the elevated production of TNF by lipopolysaccharide-stimulated macrophages in nephritic and hepatoma-bearing rats compared with dietary casein, while it exerted no...

While software process improvement is well established as a practice, it still presents challenges for some adopters. Drop-outs from SPI programs are not uncommon. The paper argues that SPI sustainment is a function of the organizational context of the program, not just of the program (or SPI ‘product’) itself. Critical in this context is the organization’s operational capabilities and capacity...

BACKGROUND Three pathogenicity islands, viz. SPI-1 (Salmonella pathogenicity island 1), SPI-2 (Salmonella pathogenicity island 2) and T6SS (Type VI Secretion System), present in the genome of Salmonella typhimurium have been implicated in the virulence of the pathogen. While the regulation of SPI-1 and SPI-2 (both encoding components of the Type III Secretion System - T3SS) are well understood,...