Techno-Economic Analysis of Hybrid Layered Manufacturing

Subtractive manufacturing (CNC machining) has high quality of geometric and material properties but is slow, costly and infeasible in some cases; additive manufacturing (RP) is just the opposite. Total automation and hence speed is achieved in RP by compromising on quality. Hybrid Layered Manufacturing (HLM) developed at IIT Bombay combines the best features of both these approaches. It uses arc welding for building near-net shapes which are finish machined to final dimensions. High speed of HLM surpasses all other processes for tool making by eliminating NC programming and rough machining. The techno-economic viability of HLM process has been proved through a real life case study. Time and cost of tool making using HLM promises to be substantially lower than that of CNC machining and other RP methods. Interestingly, the material cost in HLM was also found to be lower. HLM is a cheaper retrofitment to any 3 or 5 axis CNC milling machine or machining center.Mechanical Engineerin

Excess Observed in CDF Bs0→μ+μ−B^0_s \to \mu^{+} \mu^{-} and SUSY at the LHC

The recent excess observed by CDF in $B^0_s \to \mu^{+} \mu^{-}$ is interpreted in terms of a possible supersymmetric origin. An analysis is given of the parameter space of mSUGRA and non-universal SUGRA models under the combined constraints from LHC-7 with 165 pb$^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity, under the new XENON-100 limits on the neutralino-proton spin independent cross section and under the CDF $B^0_s \to \mu^{+} \mu^{-}$ 90% C.L. limit reported to arise from an excess number of dimuon events. It is found that the predicted value of the branching ratio $B^0_s \to \mu^{+} \mu^{-}$ consistent with all the constraints contains the following set of NLSPs: chargino, stau, stop or CP odd (even) Higgs. The lower bounds of sparticles, including those from the LHC, XENON and CDF $B^0_s\to \mu^+\mu^-$ constraint, are exhibited and the shift in the allowed range of sparticle masses arising solely due to the extra constraint from the CDF result is given. It is pointed out that the two sided CDF 90% C.L. limit puts upper bounds on sparticle masses. An analysis of possible signatures for early discovery at the LHC is carried out corresponding to the signal region in $B^0_s \to \mu^{+} \mu^{-}$. Implications of GUT-scale non-universalities in the gaugino and Higgs sectors are discussed. If the excess seen by the CDF Collaboration is supported by further data from LHCb or D0, this new result could be a harbinger for the discovery of supersymmetry.Comment: References added, text update

KAFA: Rethinking Image Ad Understanding with Knowledge-Augmented Feature Adaptation of Vision-Language Models

Image ad understanding is a crucial task with wide real-world applications. Although highly challenging with the involvement of diverse atypical scenes, real-world entities, and reasoning over scene-texts, how to interpret image ads is relatively under-explored, especially in the era of foundational vision-language models (VLMs) featuring impressive generalizability and adaptability. In this paper, we perform the first empirical study of image ad understanding through the lens of pre-trained VLMs. We benchmark and reveal practical challenges in adapting these VLMs to image ad understanding. We propose a simple feature adaptation strategy to effectively fuse multimodal information for image ads and further empower it with knowledge of real-world entities. We hope our study draws more attention to image ad understanding which is broadly relevant to the advertising industry.Comment: ACL 202

Cholestenoic acid, an endogenous cholesterol metabolite, is a potent γ-secretase modulator.

BackgroundAmyloid-β (Aβ) 42 has been implicated as the initiating molecule in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD); thus, therapeutic strategies that target Aβ42 are of great interest. γ-Secretase modulators (GSMs) are small molecules that selectively decrease Aβ42. We have previously reported that many acidic steroids are GSMs with potencies ranging in the low to mid micromolar concentration with 5β-cholanic acid being the most potent steroid identified GSM with half maximal effective concentration (EC50) of 5.7 μM.ResultsWe find that the endogenous cholesterol metabolite, 3β-hydroxy-5-cholestenoic acid (CA), is a steroid GSM with enhanced potency (EC50 of 250 nM) relative to 5β-cholanic acid. CA i) is found in human plasma at ~100-300 nM concentrations ii) has the typical acidic GSM signature of decreasing Aβ42 and increasing Aβ38 levels iii) is active in in vitro γ-secretase assay iv) is made in the brain. To test if CA acts as an endogenous GSM, we used Cyp27a1 knockout (Cyp27a1-/-) and Cyp7b1 knockout (Cyp7b1-/-) mice to investigate if manipulation of cholesterol metabolism pathways relevant to CA formation would affect brain Aβ42 levels. Our data show that Cyp27a1-/- had increased brain Aβ42, whereas Cyp7b1-/- mice had decreased brain Aβ42 levels; however, peripheral dosing of up to 100 mg/kg CA did not affect brain Aβ levels. Structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies with multiple known and novel CA analogs studies failed to reveal CA analogs with increased potency.ConclusionThese data suggest that CA may act as an endogenous GSM within the brain. Although it is conceptually attractive to try and increase the levels of CA in the brain for prevention of AD, our data suggest that this will not be easily accomplished

Tuning supersymmetric models at the LHC: A comparative analysis at two-loop level

We provide a comparative study of the fine tuning amount (Delta) at the two-loop leading log level in supersymmetric models commonly used in SUSY searches at the LHC. These are the constrained MSSM (CMSSM), non-universal Higgs masses models (NUHM1, NUHM2), non-universal gaugino masses model (NUGM) and GUT related gaugino masses models (NUGMd). Two definitions of the fine tuning are used, the first (Delta_{max}) measures maximal fine-tuning wrt individual parameters while the second (Delta_q) adds their contribution in "quadrature". As a direct result of two theoretical constraints (the EW minimum conditions), fine tuning (Delta_q) emerges as a suppressing factor (effective prior) of the averaged likelihood (under the priors), under the integral of the global probability of measuring the data (Bayesian evidence p(D)). For each model, there is little difference between Delta_q, Delta_{max} in the region allowed by the data, with similar behaviour as functions of the Higgs, gluino, stop mass or SUSY scale (m_{susy}=(m_{\tilde t_1} m_{\tilde t_2})^{1/2}) or dark matter and g-2 constraints. The analysis has the advantage that by replacing any of these mass scales or constraints by their latest bounds one easily infers for each model the value of Delta_q, Delta_{max} or vice versa. For all models, minimal fine tuning is achieved for M_{higgs} near 115 GeV with a Delta_q\approx Delta_{max}\approx 10 to 100 depending on the model, and in the CMSSM this is actually a global minimum. Due to a strong ($\approx$ exponential) dependence of Delta on M_{higgs}, for a Higgs mass near 125 GeV, the above values of Delta_q\approx Delta_{max} increase to between 500 and 1000. Possible corrections to these values are briefly discussed.Comment: 23 pages, 46 figures; references added; some clarifications (section 2

Solid state nuclear bromination with N-bromosuccinimide. Part 2. Experimental and theoretical studies of reactions with some substituted benzaldehydes

N-Bromosuccinimide reacts with aromatic aldehydes in the solid state to yield exclusively nuclear brominated products while a similar reaction in the solution phase produces a number of products under varied conditions. The reactivity and regioselectivity have been studied in terms of the energies of HOMO, HOMO–LUMO difference, reaction free energy, reaction conditions and crystal packing. Single crystal X-ray structural analysis of 3,4-dihydroxybenzaldehyde has been carried out. Crystal packing energies of some of the reactive and unreactive benzaldehydes indicate the importance of molecular bromine diffusion in the solid state

Resveratrol Inhibits KSHV Reactivation by Lowering the Levels of Cellular EGR-1

In the field of herpesvirus research, the exact molecular mechanism by which such viruses reactivate from latency remains elusive. Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) primarily exists in a latent state, while only 1–3% of cells support lytic infection at any specific time. KSHV reactivation from latency is an exceedingly intricate process mediated by the integration of viral and cellular factors. Previously, our lab has described early growth response-1 (Egr-1) as an essential component for the KSHV reactivation process via its ability to mediate transcription of KSHV ORF50, the gene encoding for replication and transcription activator (RTA), a viral component known to control the switch from latent to lytic infection. In here, electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) and chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) experiments revealed that Egr-1 binds KSHV ORF50 promoter (ORF50P) in at least two different GC-rich binding domains. Expression profiles of cellular egr-1 and KSHV-encoded ORF50 follow a similar pattern during de novo KSHV infection. Over-expressing Egr-1, a signaling component downstream of Raf>MEK>ERK1/2, in KSHV-infected cells activates KSHV lytic replication. Through performing more physiologically relevant experiments, we analyzed the effect of a dietary supplement containing resveratrol on KSHV-infected cells. Our results, for the first time, demonstrate resveratrol to act in lowering ERK1/2 activity and expression of Egr-1 in KSHV-infected cells, resulting in the suppression of virus reactivation from latency. Taken together, these findings will undoubtedly contribute to future studies on not only combating KSHV related disease conditions, but also on other herpesviruses-induced pathogenesis