Field experiments were carried out to study the interactive effects of plastic mulch and tillage method on yield and quality of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) during 2007 and 2008 growing seasons. Mulch levels in the study were plastic-mulching (PM; black plastic mulch) and no-mulching (NM) and tillage treatments were conventional tillage (CT; moldboard plowing + two passes of disk harrowing)...

We extend the Frank-Wolfe (FW) optimization algorithm to solve constrained smooth convex-concave saddle point (SP) problems. Remarkably, the method only requires access to linear minimization oracles. Leveraging recent advances in FW optimization, we provide the first proof of convergence of a FW-type saddle point solver over polytopes, thereby partially answering a 30 year-old conjecture. We a...

Let X denote a finite nonempty set, and let W denote a matrix whose rows and columns are indexed by X and whose entries belong to some field K. We study three planar algebras related to W . Briefly, a planar algebra is a graded vector space V = ∪n∈Z+∪{+,−}Vn which is closed under “planar” operators. The first planar algebra which we study, FW = ∪FW n , is defined by the group theoretic properti...

A dynamic human gastrointestinal (GI) model was used to digest cooked tubers from purple-fleshed Amachi and Leona potato cultivars to study anthocyanin biotransformation in the stomach, small intestine and colonic vessels. Colonic Caco-2 cancer cells and non-tumorigenic colonic CCD-112CoN cells were tested for cytotoxicity and cell viability after 24 h exposure to colonic fecal water (FW) diges...

Forward walking (FW) and backward walking (BW) are two important forms of locomotion in quadrupeds. Participation of the motor cortex in the control of FW has been intensively studied, whereas cortical activity during BW has never been investigated. The aim of this study was to analyze locomotion-related activity of the motor cortex during BW and compare it with that during FW. For this purpose...

BACKGROUND Effective myocardial reperfusion after primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) may be limited by distal embolization. We tested the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of the FilterWire-Ex (FW), a distal embolic protection device, as an adjunct to primary PCI. METHODS AND RESULTS Fifty-three consecutive patients undergoing primary PCI with FW protection were compared with a ...

The Frank-Wolfe (FW) algorithm has been widely used in solving nuclear norm constrained problems, since it does not require projections. However, FW often yields high rank intermediate iterates, which can be very expensive in time and space costs for large problems. To address this issue, we propose a rank-drop method for nuclear norm constrained problems. The goal is to generate descent steps ...

Few studies have made direct estimates of the energy required for ion transport in gills of freshwater (FW) and seawater (SW) fish. Oxygen consumption was measured in excised gill tissue of FW-adapted cutthroat trout ( Oncorhynchus clarki clarki) to estimate the energy cost of NaCl transport in that osmoregulatory organ. Ouabain (0.5 mM) and bafilomycin A1 (1 μM) were used to inhibit the Na+-K+...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the effect of flywheel (FW) resistance training with Eccentric Overload (FW-EOT) on muscle size and functional capacities (i.e. strength and power) in athletes and healthy subjects, and to compare FW-induced adaptations with those triggered by traditional resistance exercise interventions. DESIGN A systematic review and meta-analysis...

We consider optimization of geodesically convex objectives over geodesically convex subsets of the manifold of positive definite matrices. In particular, for this task we develop Euclidean and Riemannian Frank-Wolfe (FW) algorithms. For both settings we analyze non-asymptotic convergence rates to global optimality. To our knowledge, these are the first results on Riemannian FW and its convergen...