Zona pellucida (ZP) hardening (resistance to proteolysis) has been classically identified as a post-fertilization event that contributes to the block to polyspermy. Di-(N-succinimidyl)-3,3'-dithiodipropionate (DSP), a permeable amine-reactive cross-linker, was recently shown to induce pre-fertilization ZP hardening and to improve porcine IVF productivity. The objectives of this study were to in...

The effect of irradiance during low temperature hardening was studied in a winter wheat variety. Ten-day-old winter wheat plants were cold-hardened at 5 degrees C for 11 days under light (250 micromol m(-2) S(-1)) or dark (20 micromol m(-2) s(-1)) conditions. The effectiveness of hardening was significantly lower in the dark, in spite of a slight decrease in the Fv/Fm chlorophyll fluorescence i...

FIPS 140-2 does not presently have security requirements that cover software-hardening techniques. Software hardening is a method of transforming an executable and associated data into a form that does not easily permit reverse engineering or reconstruction, but that has the identical execution properties of the original software. With software hardening it is possible to embed secret data such...

A 3-D numerical model for pulsed laser transformation hardening (LTH) is developed using the finite element method. In this model, laser spatial and temporal intensity distribution, temperature-dependent thermophysical properties of material, and multi-phase transformations are considered. The influence of laser temporal pulse shape on connectivity of hardened zone, maximum surface temperature ...

We demonstrate that a hardening rule exists in cubic solid solutions with various combinations of ionic, covalent and metallic bonding. It is revealed that the hardening stress ∆τFcg is determined by three factors: shear modulus G, the volume fraction of solute atoms fv, and the size misfit degree δb. A simple hardening correlation in KCl-KBr solid-solution is proposed as ∆τFcg = 0.27 G. It is ...