Cloud services (CCS) are a crucial element in the service sector, but there are still challenges left in their design, implementation, operation and dismissal, due to issues such as the integration of physical and technical components, interaction of social and technical aspects, dynamic and elastic reconfiguration. In modelling service systems, ontologies have been recognized as a useful instr...

BACKGROUND Excessive nerve growth factor (NGF) is commonly found in the follicular fluid of patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Furthermore, oocytes from PCOS patients exhibit lower developmental competence. The purpose of this study was to explore the association between excessive NGF and low oocyte competence in vitro. METHODS Excessive NGF was added to mouse cumulus oocyte comp...

Copper (Cu) is an essential trace metal that is toxic in excess. It is therefore important to be able to accurately assess Cu deficiency or overload. Cu chaperone for Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (CCS) protein expression is elevated in tissues of Cu-deficient animals. Increased CCS content in erythrocytes is particularly sensitive to decreased Cu status. Given the lack of a non-invasive, sensitiv...

Cytochromes c are hemoproteins, with the prosthetic group covalently linked to the apoprotein, which function as electron carriers. A class of cytochromes c is defined by a CXXCH heme-binding motif where the cysteines form thioether bonds with the vinyl groups of heme. Plastids are known to contain up to three cytochromes c. The membrane-bound cytochrome f and soluble cytochrome c6 operate in p...

We present a robust connected-component (CC) based method for automatic detection and segmentation of text in real-scene images. This technique can be applied in robot vision, sign recognition, meeting processing and video indexing. First, a non-linear Niblack method (NLNiblack) is proposed to decompose the image into candidate CCs. Then, we feed all these CCs into a cascade of classifiers trai...

The cardiac conduction system (CCS) is the component of the heart that initiates and maintains a rhythmic heartbeat. As the embryonic heart forms, the CCS must continue to develop and mature in a coordinated manner to ensure that proper pace making potential and distribution of action potential is maintained at all stages. This requires not only the formation of distinct and disparate component...

RATIONALE To date, there has been no specific marker of the first heart field to facilitate understanding of contributions of the first heart field to cardiac lineages. Cardiac arrhythmia is a leading cause of death, often resulting from abnormalities in the cardiac conduction system (CCS). Understanding origins and identifying markers of CCS lineages are essential steps toward modeling disease...

Despite competing views about climate change policy, the time is ripe to drive carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) forward . National and state investment in and support of CCS are completely consistent with the Donald Trump Administration’s goals to invest in infrastructure projects, continue U .S . reliance on fossil fuels, and create jobs . This Article, excerpted from Michael B . Gerrard...