The prevailing paradigm of Salmonella enteropathogenesis based on monolayers asserts that Salmonella pathogenicity island-1 Type Three Secretion System (SPI-1 T3SS) is required for bacterial invasion into intestinal epithelium. However, little is known about the role of SPI-1 in mediating gastrointestinal disease in humans. Recently, SPI-1 deficient nontyphoidal Salmonella strains were isolated...

In recent years a substantial number of organizations have gained experience in software process improvement (SPI). Furthermore, some researchers have studied such organizations by collecting and analyzing costs and benefits data on their SPI efforts. The objective of this report is to review and summarize the empirical evidence thus far on the costs and benefits of SPI. The intention is that t...

Software process improvement (SPI) approaches have been designed to produce changes at many levels, i.e. in the strategies, culture and working practices, of software development. Studies have shown that nearly two thirds of all SPI efforts have failed or fallen short of expectations. It is often stated in SPI-related literature and practice that "commitment" to SPI plays an important part in d...

Soy protein isolate (SPI) in the diet may inhibit colon tumorigenesis. We examined azoxymethane (AOM)-induced aberrant crypt foci (ACF) in male rats in relation to lifetime, pre-weaning, or post-weaning dietary exposure to SPI and also within the context of fetal alcohol exposure. Pregnant Sprague Dawley rats were fed AIN-93G diets containing casein (20%, the control diet) or SPI (20%) as the s...

In an assessment of software process improvement (SPI) in 15 software smalland –medium-sized enterprises (software SMEs), we applied the broad spectrum of software specific and system context processes in ISO/IEC 12207 to the task of examining SPI in practice. Using the data collected in the study, we developed a four-tiered pyramidal hierarchy of SPI for software SMEs, with processes in the hi...

The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a structured representation of software development processes that can support an organisation’s software process improvement (SPI) strategies. However, CMMI and SPI initiatives generally exhibit low levels of adoption and limited success. One of the major reasons for these shortcomings is that many organisations undertake SPI initiatives with...

The authors report in this article from a survey of medium-sized and large software companies in Denmark where major variations were found in the practice of software process improvement (SPI). Many software companies intend to do SPI; but few companies invest the necessary effort in improvement, and few perform maturity assessments. In general, across the surveyed companies, the effects of SPI...

Although numerous studies have discussed the importance of the relationship between knowledge management and software process improvement (SPI), a research gap still exists in relation to how the specific role of knowledge sharing influences successful SPI implementation. This study advances our knowledge by developing an innovative model for exploring the impact of knowledge sharing on SPI suc...

Software Process Improvement (SPI) typically involves rather complex organizational changes. Acknowledging that managers can approach these changes in quite different ways, this paper addresses the following question:what perspectives do the research literature offer on SPI as organizational change and how is this knowledgepresented andpublished?To answer this question,weanalyzed SPI researchpu...

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs), originating from hematopoietic progenitor cells in the BM, are a unique dendritic cell subset that can produce large amounts of type I IFNs by signaling through the nucleic acid-sensing TLR7 and TLR9 (TLR7/9). The molecular mechanisms for pDC function and development remain largely unknown. In the present study, we focused on an Ets family transcription fact...