Background: This study was conducted to evaluate fibroblast co-culture and Activin A on in vitro maturation and fertilization of mouse preantral follicles. Methods: The ovaries from 12-14-day-old mice were dissected, and 120-150 μm preantral follicles were cultured individually in α-MEM as based medium for 12 days. A total number of 456 follicles were cultured in four conditions: (i) base mediu...

Safety-critical systems have made extensive use of software for some time, and they have a very good overall safety record. The size and complexity of these systems is increasing, however, and while software development technology is advancing, it is unclear that the pace of that advancement is rapid enough to match the increase in complexity. This research proposes to develop the key aspects o...

Throughout this orientation of satellite operations, you have been exposed to the modern world's dependence on space systems. This dependence varies from simple commercial long distance calls to the implementation of a nation's strategic offensive and defensive forces. Furthermore, the United States Government and military forces require space systems support, such as early warning, navigation,...

This paper introduces a new model for node behavior namely Correlated Node Behavior Model which is an extension of Node Behavior Model. The model adopts semi Markov process in continuous time which clusters the node that has correlation. The key parameter of the process is determined by five probabilistic parameters based on the Markovian model. Computed from the transition probabilities of the...

Society is growing increasingly dependent upon large-scale, highly distributed systems that operate in unbounded network environments, which like the Internet, have no central administrative control and no uni$ed security policy. Despite the best efforts of security practitioners, no amount of system hardening can assure that a system that is connected to an unbounded network will be invulnerab...

In a period where the evolution of the space environment is causing increasing concerns for the future of space exploitation and sustainability, the design for demise philosophy has gained an increased interest. However, satellites designed for demise still have to survive the space environment polluted by space debris. Within this context we are developing a model to evaluate the effect of pre...

The issues of survivability of networks, especially to some open year round services have increased rapidly over the last few years. To address this topic, the effective survivability metric is mandatory for managerial responsibility. In this paper, we provide a survivability mechanism called Degree of Disconnectivity (DOD) for the network operator to detect risks. To evaluate and analyze the r...

The survivability of critical infrastructures is not assured today because of their reliance on complex, vulnerable information systems. Survivability enhancement will require changes to system architectures. Experimental systems research in this area is complicated by the private ownership, criticality, and complexity of infrastructure systems. A key research method is therefore to explore and...