We present a new approximation technique for quantum field theory. The standard one-loop result is used as a seed for a recursive formula that gives a sequence of improved Gaussian approximations for the generating functional. In a different setting, the basic idea of this recursive scheme is used in the second part of the paper to substantialy speed up the standard Monte Carlo algorithm. http:...

INTRODUCTION Lung involvement is a common extra-articular manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that confers significant morbidity and mortality. The objective of the present study is to assess which respiratory symptoms and patient and disease characteristics are most highly associated with pulmonary function test (PFT) abnormalities in an RA patient cohort without clinical cardiovascular...

PURPOSE This study investigated associations between injuries and individual components of the Marine Corps physical fitness test (PFT), self-reported exercise and previous injury history, and Functional Movement Screen (FMS) scores. METHODS A cohort of 874 men enrolled in either 6 wk (n = 447) or 10 wk (n = 427) of Marine Corps officer candidate training was recruited. They completed an exer...

The prevalence of exercise induced asthma (EIA) in Iran is not known. In the present study the prevalence of EIA among female students of guidance school in the city of Mashhad was evaluated. A total of 1690 female students aged 12-14 years in ten randomly selected schools in north east of Iran (Mashhad) completed an asthma symptoms- specific questionnaire. One hundred forty four randomly selec...

BACKGROUND Although pulmonary abnormalities have been recognized in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), their prevalence and clinical significance are not known. AIM To study the prevalence and clinical significance of pulmonary abnormalities in patients with IBD. METHODS Ninety-five non-consecutive patients with IBD (12 Crohn's disease, 83 ulcerative colitis; mean age 41.9 [SD...

A polar Fourier transform (PFT) method is described that facilitates determination and refinement of orientations of individual biological macromolecules imaged with cryoelectron microscopy techniques. A three-dimensional density map serves as a high signal-to-noise model from which a PFT database of different views is generated and against which the PFTs of individual images are correlated. Th...

The peripheral finned-tube (PFT) is a novel air-side geometry for compact heat exchangers. Previous studies (Pussoli et al., 2012) evaluated the thermal-hydraulic performance of the PFT geometry under dry conditions (i.e., no frost or condensate formation on the air side). The present study focuses on quantifying the thermal-hydraulic performance of the PFT geometry under frosting conditions. A...

BACKGROUND Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) may present with extra-articular involvement in the lungs. We aimed to evaluate the abnormal pulmonary multidetector computed tomography findings of patients with AS and compare them with the clinical symptoms, duration of illness, laboratory results and pulmonary function tests (PFT). MATERIAL/METHODS We evaluated the chest multidetector computed tomogr...

Bacterial pathogens modulate host cell apoptosis to establish a successful infection. Pore-forming toxins (PFTs) secreted by pathogenic bacteria are major virulence factors and have been shown to induce various forms of cell death in infected cells. Here we demonstrate that the highly conserved caspase-2 is required for PFT-mediated apoptosis. Despite being the second mammalian caspase to be id...

Visual object tracking is one of the most vigorous research area in Computer Vision. A lot of algorithms already achieve high performance and accuracy. Whereas, most of visual object tracking algorithms proceed separately from detection algorithm because of difference between tracking and detection descriptor. Instead, we propose adaptive cell-size HoG (acHoG) based Particle Filter Tracking (PF...