Surrogate Buyers in Corporate Buying of Luxury Hotel Rooms

Hotel industry is a significant stakeholder in the Indian tourism sector. According to Knight Frank research, 2008 Indian hotel industry is currently adding about 42,022 five and four star category rooms in the major cities. Hotel demand has grown much faster than supply, but the need to market the hotels, optimally remains. The persons who handle the travel arrangements for corporate houses are not buying the hotel services for their own personal use. This is the reason why, they can be termed as surrogate buyers. An identification of the how these surrogate buyers contribute to sales of luxury hotels, is what the researchers are trying to establish through this research. A study of a stratified sample of Sales Managers of all the hotels which fall into the luxury category of hotels in the city of Kochi, Kerala is undertaken during the first quarter of 2012, using the tools like a questionnaire and personal interview of Sales managers of these hotels. Thus the observations were arrived at. Hotel managers have to recognize this fact and should try to pamper these surrogate buyers by creation of business relationships. Also we would like to argue that that out of all the room business received from corporate, almost all (up to 95%) are routed through these surrogate buyers and they are definitely a business source. Managing them can surely bring additional business for any luxury hotel. Keywords: Hotel, Bookers, Surrogate buyers, Corporate busines

Impact of Visual Merchandising, on Impulse Buying Behavior of Retail Customers

Visual merchandising has been over the years thought to be marketing tool in retail industries. The researchers embarked upon a study to find the impact of visual merchandising with reference to the retail sector. For this they have taken the reliance trends as a case and has done an in depth study using its sample customers to find the impact of their buying behavior. The research was of a descriptive in nature and helped to develop the concept to clearly establish priorities, to divulge adequate information which the researchers feel will help in decision making for the company. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain information and to assess the impact of visual merchandising, on impulse buying behavior of customers. A random sampling technique was used in the study and care was taken that the respondents were as diversified as possible. A sample size of 100 respondents was taken from Cochin and Kottayam. To draw conclusions easily, the data was converted into XY (Scatter) diagrams. Research findings suggest that impulse buying accounts for substantial sales across a broad range of product categories in the stores. Since impulse buying is a pervasive aspect of consumers’ behaviors and a focal point for strategic marketing plans, it is worthwhile for retailers to understand factors within the retail setting that trigger consumers’ impulsive reactions. Retailers can help customers to find the right products through focused merchandising, intelligent store design and layout, and other visual merchandising practices, such as product displays, packaging, and signage. It is has also been found that all the four visual merchandizing factors affect the impulse buying behavior, but the effect of Promotional offerings at the entrance is comparatively very high. A greater importance should be given for visual merchandizing factors by retailers for differentiating itself from the competitor

Monte Carlo configuration interaction with perturbation corrections for dissociation energies of first row diatomic molecules: C-2, N-2, O-2, CO, and NO

Dissociation energies for the diatomic molecules C2, N2, O2, CO, and NO are estimated using the Monte Carlo configuration interaction (MCCI) and augmented by a second order perturbation theory correction. The calculations are performed using the correlation consistent polarized valence “triple zeta” atomic orbital basis and resulting dissociation energies are compared to coupled cluster calculations including up to triple excitations (CCSDT) and Full Configuration Interaction Quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) estimates. It is found that the MCCI method readily describes the correct behavior for dissociation for the diatomics even when capturing only a relatively small fraction (∼80%) of the correlation energy. At this level only a small number of configurations, typically O(103) from a FCI space of dimension O(1014), are required to describe dissociation. Including the perturbation correction to the MCCI estimates, the difference in dissociation energies with respect to CCSDT ranges between 1.2 and 3.1 kcal/mol, and the difference when comparing to FCIQMC estimates narrows to between 0.5 and 1.9 kcal/mol. Discussions on MCCI's ability to recover static and dynamic correlations and on the form of correlations in the electronic configuration space are presented

An Unruptured Anterior Communicating Artery Aneurysm with Bilateral Infraoptic Anterior Cerebral Arteries. Case Report and Review of the Literature

Variations of the anterior cerebral artery-anterior communicating artery complex are commonly identified in aneurysm surgery. An infraoptic course of the anterior cerebral artery is exceedingly rare. Robison first described this anomaly from an anatomic dissection in 1959. A unilateral anomalous infraoptic anterior cerebral artery is more common than anomalies of bilateral infraoptic anterior cerebral arteries. We present the case of an unruptured aneurysm at the anterior communicating artery in a patient with bilateral infraoptic anterior cerebral arteries, identified by computed tomography angiography and verified during surgery. Implications for aneurysm formation and surgical treatment are discussed

HyFL: A Hybrid Framework For Private Federated Learning

Federated learning (FL) has emerged as an efficient approach for large-scale distributed machine learning, ensuring data privacy by keeping training data on client devices. However, recent research has highlighted vulnerabilities in FL, including the potential disclosure of sensitive information through individual model updates and even the aggregated global model. While much attention has been given to clients' data privacy, limited research has addressed the issue of global model privacy. Furthermore, local training at the client's side has opened avenues for malicious clients to launch powerful model poisoning attacks. Unfortunately, no existing work has provided a comprehensive solution that tackles all these issues. Therefore, we introduce HyFL, a hybrid framework that enables data and global model privacy while facilitating large-scale deployments. The foundation of HyFL is a unique combination of secure multi-party computation (MPC) techniques with hierarchical federated learning. One notable feature of HyFL is its capability to prevent malicious clients from executing model poisoning attacks, confining them to less destructive data poisoning alone. We evaluate HyFL's effectiveness using an open-source PyTorch-based FL implementation integrated with Meta's CrypTen PPML framework. Our performance evaluation demonstrates that HyFL is a promising solution for trustworthy large-scale FL deployment.Comment: HyFL combines private training and inference with secure aggregation and hierarchical FL to provide end-to-end protection and to facilitate large-scale global deploymen

Secure protocol for ad hoc transportation system

Abstract—We define an ad hoc transportation system as one that has no infrastructure such as roads (and lanes), traffic lights etc. We assume that in such a system the vehicle are autonomic and can guide and direct themselves without a human driver. In this paper we investigate how a safe distance can be maintained between vehicles. A vehicle which has been compromised by an adversary can cause serious chaos and accidents in such a network (a denial of service type of attack). A simple key management scheme is then introduced to ensure secure communications between the components of the system. Keywords–collision avoidance, cyber-physical systems, secure communications I

Intra-arterial Onyx Embolization of Vertebral Body Lesions

While Onyx embolization of cerebrospinal arteriovenous shunts is well-established, clinical researchers continue to broaden applications to other vascular lesions of the neuraxis. This report illustrates the application of Onyx (eV3, Plymouth, MN) embolization to vertebral body lesions, specifically, a vertebral hemangioma and renal cell carcinoma vertebral body metastatic lesion

PrivMail: A Privacy-Preserving Framework for Secure Emails

Emails have improved our workplace efficiency and communication. However, they are often processed unencrypted by mail servers, leaving them open to data breaches on a single service provider. Public-key based solutions for end-to-end secured email, such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), are available but are not widely adopted due to usability obstacles and also hinder processing of encrypted emails. We propose PrivMail, a novel approach to secure emails using secret sharing methods. Our framework utilizes Secure Multi-Party Computation techniques to relay emails through multiple service providers, thereby preventing any of them from accessing the content in plaintext. Additionally, PrivMail supports private server-side email processing similar to IMAP SEARCH, and eliminates the need for cryptographic certificates, resulting in better usability than public-key based solutions. An important aspect of our framework is its capability to enable third-party searches on user emails while maintaining the privacy of both the email and the query used to conduct the search. We integrate PrivMail into the current email infrastructure and provide a Thunderbird plugin to enhance user-friendliness. To evaluate our solution, we benchmarked transfer and search operations using the Enron Email Dataset and demonstrate that PrivMail is an effective solution for enhancing email security

Middle Meningeal Artery Arising from the Basilar Artery

Various anomalies for the origin of the middle meningeal artery (MMA) have been described in the literature. However, origin of the MMA from the basilar trunk is an extremely rare variant. We report on a 54-year-old female who presented with frequent headaches; magnetic resonance imaging showed a right parietal meningioma. The abnormal origin of the middle meningeal artery from the basilar artery was diagnosed by angiography performed for preoperative embolization of the tumor. We report on the case with a review of the embryologic basis, possible explanations for this aberrant origin, and its clinical implications