FIG. 2.

Relationship between the logarithm of the final bacterial concentration and its standard deviation after several heat treatments. Results are shown for E. faecalis (circles), L. innocua (squares), P. fluorescens (triangles), and S. Enteritidis (diamonds) in saline solution (filled symbols) and whole milk (empty symbols). The dashed line shows the relationship expected by assuming that the inactivation times of the cells within a population are identically distributed and independent of one another.