INA: An Integrative Approach for Enhancing Negotiation Strategies with Reward-Based Dialogue System

In this paper, we propose a novel negotiation dialogue agent designed for the online marketplace. Our agent is integrative in nature i.e, it possesses the capability to negotiate on price as well as other factors, such as the addition or removal of items from a deal bundle, thereby offering a more flexible and comprehensive negotiation experience. We create a new dataset called Integrative Negotiation Dataset (IND) to enable this functionality. For this dataset creation, we introduce a new semi-automated data creation method, which combines defining negotiation intents, actions, and intent-action simulation between users and the agent to generate potential dialogue flows. Finally, the prompting of GPT-J, a state-of-the-art language model, is done to generate dialogues for a given intent, with a human-in-the-loop process for post-editing and refining minor errors to ensure high data quality. We employ a set of novel rewards, specifically tailored for the negotiation task to train our Negotiation Agent, termed as the Integrative Negotiation Agent (INA). These rewards incentivize the chatbot to learn effective negotiation strategies that can adapt to various contextual requirements and price proposals. By leveraging the IND, we train our model and conduct experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our reward-based dialogue system for negotiation. Our results demonstrate that the proposed approach and reward system significantly enhance the agent's negotiation capabilities. The INA successfully engages in integrative negotiations, displaying the ability to dynamically adjust prices and negotiate the inclusion or exclusion of items in a bundle dea

Diurnal variation of slant path Ka-band rain attenuation at four tropical locations in India

34-41Rain attenuation is very severe at Ka and higher frequencies especially in tropical regions. The conventional fade mitigation techniques are not be able to mitigate this severe fade and hence, suitable diversity technique is required for this purpose. In this paper, rain characteristics and slant path rain attenuation at 30 GHz using synthetic storm technique has been presented. Three years of high resolution rain rate data obtained from disdrometer at four tropical and equatorial locations in India have been utilized. The results indicate that the fade margin requirement is very high (above 50 dB at 30 GHz) for 99.99% link availability for these locations. However, the diurnal analysis shows that in most of the places, the rain occurrence is much less in morning/early-morning hours and therefore, the fade margin requirement will be considerably lower (around 30 dB at 30 GHz) in the morning hours compared to the afternoon hours. The result indicates the suitability of using selective time period for high link availability data communication over the locations studied

Joint statistics of rain rate and event duration for a tropical location in India

353-360The optimum microwave link design requires the knowledge of rain rate distribution as well as of the duration statistics of the rain events. The rain rates measurements at Ahmedabad, a tropical location in India, are analysed and models for various event parameters are developed using three years of continuous measurements. The average number of cases with at least 1 min event duration shows an exponential dependence on the rainfall rate with a correlation coefficient of 0.93. Also, the average durations for different rainfall rates are found to follow a power law with a correlation coefficient of 0.97. It is found that the average duration more effectively represent the event duration at higher rain rates. The results are compared with those obtained for the temperate and other tropical locations to indicate the distinctiveness of the studied parameters over the location. It has been observed that although the tropical locations show similar qualitative features, the characteristics of the Indian region show quantitative difference from other tropical regions

Is fare increment desirable for ensuring operational viability of private buses?

The paper reports an investigation on the requirement of fare increment for achieving the operational viability of private buses in the context of an emerging country. Taking an existing route in Kolkata city which is served by private buses, several scenarios were investigated to achieve the viability of service through interventions in fare, design of service, and supply of buses. A simulation framework was used for the evaluation of various scenarios. The study brings out new evidences to question the conventional approach of increasing the bus fare to satisfy the operational viability. It is shown that the fare and the revenue requirements are distorted due to the oversupply of buses and non-optimal service. The analysis shows that even with the present fare, it is possible to resolve the viability issue by optimizing the service and supply. The results presented in the paper are case specific but are likely to encourage policy makers to carry out similar investigations in other cities in India as well as in other developing countries to improve urban bus service without putting an additional burden on the users

Pregnancy and non-valvular heart disease - Anesthetic considerations

Non-valvular heart disease is an important cause of cardiac disease in pregnancy and presents a unique challenge to the anesthesiologist during labor and delivery. A keen understanding of the underlying pathophysiology, in addition to the altered physiology of pregnancy, is the key to managing such patients. Disease-specific goals of management may help preserve the hemodynamic and ventilatory parameters within an acceptable limit and a successful conduct of labor and postpartum perio

Pupil vignetting artifact on optical coherence tomography angiography

Purpose: To discuss the features of an artifact on optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), termed “pupil vignetting artifact,” and describe how it may masquerade as true chorioretinal pathology. Design: This was a retrospective, observational case series. Methods: The authors studied 12 eyes at a vitreoretinal clinic in Eastern India, reviewing a dark shadow such as an artifact on OCTA images. Results: In all 12 eyes, there was an appearance of a dark shadow on OCTA imaging, located at the macula, superior, superotemporal, or superonasal to the fovea, which did not correspond to any ischemic area responsible for flow-void or any media opacity casting a posterior shadow. It was believed to be an artifact caused by the vignetting effect of the pupil as the incident OCT beam clips the iris during OCTA scanning, and therefore reduces the amount of total light incident on the retina. The variability in the size, shape, and location of the artifact is contributed by a few factors such as variable angle of incident light on the pupil, pupillary dynamics, and curvature of the retinal surface. Conclusion: Pupil vignetting artifact is a unique undescribed phenomenon appearing at the macula on OCTA imaging that can masquerade as numerous true chorioretinal pathologies. This article aims to describe this artifact to avoid misinterpretation and further confusion in real-life clinical practice

Mammographic mass classification according to Bi‐RADS lexicon

The goal of this study is to propose a computer‐aided diagnosis system to differentiate between four breast imaging reporting and data system (Bi‐RADS) classes in digitised mammograms. This system is inspired by the approach of the doctor during the radiologic examination as it was agreed in BI‐RADS, where masses are described by their form, their boundary and their density. The segmentation of masses in the authors’ approach is manual because it is supposed that the detection is already made. When the segmented region is available, the features extraction process can be carried out. 22 visual characteristics are automatically computed from shape, edge and textural properties; only one human feature is used in this study, which is the patient's age. Classification is finally done using a multi‐layer perceptron according to two separate schemes; the first one consists of classify masses to distinguish between the four BI‐RADS classes (2, 3, 4 and 5). In the second one the authors classify abnormalities on two classes (benign and malign). The proposed approach has been evaluated on 480 mammographic masses extracted from the digital database for screening mammography, and the obtained results are encouraging