r-2,c-6-Bis(4-methoxy­phenyl)-c-3,t-3-dimethyl-1-nitro­sopiperidin-4-one

In the title compound, C21H24N2O4, the piperidine ring adopts a distorted boat conformation. The crystal structure is stabilized by C—H⋯π inter­actions involving one of the methoxy­phenyl rings

Fixed-Budget Differentially Private Best Arm Identification

We study best arm identification (BAI) in linear bandits in the fixed-budget regime under differential privacy constraints, when the arm rewards are supported on the unit interval. Given a finite budget $T$ and a privacy parameter $\varepsilon>0$, the goal is to minimise the error probability in finding the arm with the largest mean after $T$ sampling rounds, subject to the constraint that the policy of the decision maker satisfies a certain {\em $\varepsilon$-differential privacy} ($\varepsilon$-DP) constraint. We construct a policy satisfying the $\varepsilon$-DP constraint (called {\sc DP-BAI}) by proposing the principle of {\em maximum absolute determinants}, and derive an upper bound on its error probability. Furthermore, we derive a minimax lower bound on the error probability, and demonstrate that the lower and the upper bounds decay exponentially in $T$, with exponents in the two bounds matching order-wise in (a) the sub-optimality gaps of the arms, (b) $\varepsilon$, and (c) the problem complexity that is expressible as the sum of two terms, one characterising the complexity of standard fixed-budget BAI (without privacy constraints), and the other accounting for the $\varepsilon$-DP constraint. Additionally, we present some auxiliary results that contribute to the derivation of the lower bound on the error probability. These results, we posit, may be of independent interest and could prove instrumental in proving lower bounds on error probabilities in several other bandit problems. Whereas prior works provide results for BAI in the fixed-budget regime without privacy constraints or in the fixed-confidence regime with privacy constraints, our work fills the gap in the literature by providing the results for BAI in the fixed-budget regime under the $\varepsilon$-DP constraint.Comment: Accepted to ICLR 202

Impact of a Formal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Curriculum: A Prospective, Controlled Trial

Objective To assess the impact of implementing a dedicated Patient Safety and Quality Improvement (PSQI) curriculum for otolaryngology residents. Methods Residents in two otolaryngology residency programs were recruited to participate in the study. Residents at institution A (intervention group) participated in a formal, newly developed, year-long PSQI curriculum. Residents at institution B (control group) participated in traditional, morbidity, and mortality conference-based PSQI education, with no formal curriculum in place. Curriculum participants completed anonymous surveys to assess learner satisfaction. Validated instruments were administered to assess for changes in resident confidence in the ability to develop PSQI projects, their attitudes toward patient safety, and PSQI-related knowledge. The number and quality of PSQI-related resident projects were also assessed. Results Survey responses demonstrated excellent learner satisfaction with the curriculum. Based on validated instrument-based responses, both programs demonstrated similar confidence scores (P = 0.05), safety attitudes (P = 0.82), and PSQI knowledge (P = 0.29) at the beginning of the year. The residents of institution A demonstrated significant improvement in confidence (P = 0.00009) and knowledge (P = 0.0006) after completing the curriculum, with no improvement noted for residents at institution B in either confidence (P = 0.06) or knowledge (P = 0.79). Neither program demonstrated improvement in attitudes toward patient safety at the end of the year-long curriculum. Conclusion Implementing a formal curriculum dedicated to PSQI led to an improvement in PSQI-related project development confidence and PSQI knowledge. Attitudes toward safety did not improve over the course of a year. Longer-term studies involving multiple institutions and other interventions are needed to evaluate the impact and duration of changes that occur. Level of Evidence 1b Laryngoscope, 129:1100–1106, 201

1-Formyl-r-2,c-6-bis­(4-methoxy­phen­yl)-c-3,t-3-dimethyl­piperidin-4-one

In the title compound, C22H25NO4, the piperidine ring adopts a distorted boat conformation. The two benzene rings are approximately perpendicular to each other, making a dihedral angle of 86.2 (8)°. The crystal packing is stabilized by C—H⋯O and C—H⋯π inter­actions

Relationship between electrophilicity index, Hammett constant and nucleus-independent chemical shift

Inter-relationships between the electrophilicity index (Ω), Hammett constant (óp @#@) and nucleusindependent chemical shift (NICS (1) - NICS value one ångstrom above the ring centre) have been investigated for a series of meta- and para-substituted benzoic acids. Good linear relationships between Hammett constant vs electrophilicity and Hammett constant vs NICS (1) values have been observed. However, the variation of NICS (1) against CO shows only a low correlation coefficient

SELECTED SINGLE FACE TRACKING IN TECHNICALLY CHALLENGING DIFFERENT BACKGROUND VIDEO SEQUENCES USING COMBINED FEATURES

The commonly identified limitations of video face trackers are, the inability to track human face in different background video sequences with the conditions like occlusion, low quality, abrupt motions and failing to track single face when it contain multiple faces. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to track human face in different background video sequences with the conditions listed above. The proposed algorithm describes an improved KLT tracker. We collect Eigen, FAST as well as HOG features and combine them together. The combined features are given to the tracker to track the face. The algorithm being proposed is tested on challenging datasets videos and measured for performance using the standard metrics