Influential Billboard Slot Selection using Pruned Submodularity Graph

Billboard Advertisement has emerged as an effective out-of-home advertisement technique and adopted by many commercial houses. In this case, the billboards are owned by some companies and they are provided to the commercial houses slot\mbox{-}wise on a payment basis. Now, given the database of billboards along with their slot information which $k$ slots should be chosen to maximize the influence. Formally, we call this problem as the \textsc{Influential Billboard Slot Selection} Problem. In this paper, we pose this problem as a combinatorial optimization problem. Under the `triggering model of influence', the influence function is non-negative, monotone, and submodular. However, as the incremental greedy approach for submodular function maximization does not scale well along with the size of the problem instances, there is a need to develop efficient solution methodologies for this problem.Comment: 15 Pages, 6 Figure

Theoretical and Experimental Studies on Pulse Tube Refrigerator

The pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) is a cryocooler which is capable of reaching temperature of a few tens of Kelvin in a single stage and a few Kelvin in two stages. Unlike ordinary refrigeration cycles which utilize the vapor compression cycle, a PTR implements the oscillatory compression and expansion of gas within a closed volume to achieve the desired refrigeration. Pulse tube refrigerator has the advantages of long–life operation, high reliability and low vibration over the conventional cryocoolers, such as G-M and Stirling coolers because of the absence of moving parts at their low temperature end. Due to its associated advantages, pulse tube refrigerators have several applications such as cooling of infrared sensors, night vision equipments, SQUID, cryopumping etc

Membrane cholesterol depletion enhances ligand binding function of human serotonin<SUB>1A</SUB> receptors in neuronal cells

Membrane lipid composition of cells in the nervous system is unique and displays remarkable diversity. Cholesterol metabolism and homeostasis in the central nervous system and their role in neuronal function represent important determinants in neuropathogenesis. The serotonin1A receptor is an important member of the G-protein coupled receptor superfamily, and is involved in a variety of cognitive, behavioral, and developmental functions. We report here, for the first time, that the ligand binding function of human serotonin1A receptors exhibits an increase in membranes isolated from cholesterol-depleted neuronal cells. Our results gain pharmacological significance in view of the recently described structural evidence of specific cholesterol binding site(s) in GPCRs, and could be useful in designing better therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative diseases associated with GPCRs

MisGUIDE : Defense Against Data-Free Deep Learning Model Extraction

The rise of Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) has led to the widespread deployment of machine learning models trained on diverse datasets. These models are employed for predictive services through APIs, raising concerns about the security and confidentiality of the models due to emerging vulnerabilities in prediction APIs. Of particular concern are model cloning attacks, where individuals with limited data and no knowledge of the training dataset manage to replicate a victim model's functionality through black-box query access. This commonly entails generating adversarial queries to query the victim model, thereby creating a labeled dataset. This paper proposes "MisGUIDE", a two-step defense framework for Deep Learning models that disrupts the adversarial sample generation process by providing a probabilistic response when the query is deemed OOD. The first step employs a Vision Transformer-based framework to identify OOD queries, while the second step perturbs the response for such queries, introducing a probabilistic loss function to MisGUIDE the attackers. The aim of the proposed defense method is to reduce the accuracy of the cloned model while maintaining accuracy on authentic queries. Extensive experiments conducted on two benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly enhances the resistance against state-of-the-art data-free model extraction in black-box settings.Comment: Under Revie

Solid waste management practices in Kirtipur Municipality, Nepal: Findings from a household survey

This working paper, based on a questionnaire survey with more than 400 households in Kirtipur (Nepal), identifies household waste practices (segregation, recycling, disposal, burning, etc.) with special attention to changed practices during and after crises (Earthquake/Indian blockade/ COVID-19)

Influential Slot and Tag Selection in Billboard Advertisement

The selection of influential billboard slots remains an important problem in billboard advertisements. Existing studies on this problem have not considered the case of context-specific influence probability. To bridge this gap, in this paper, we introduce the Context Dependent Influential Billboard Slot Selection Problem. First, we show that the problem is NP-hard. We also show that the influence function holds the bi-monotonicity, bi-submodularity, and non-negativity properties. We propose an orthant-wise Stochastic Greedy approach to solve this problem. We show that this method leads to a constant factor approximation guarantee. Subsequently, we propose an orthant-wise Incremental and Lazy Greedy approach. In a generic sense, this is a method for maximizing a bi-submodular function under the cardinality constraint, which may also be of independent interest. We analyze the performance guarantee of this algorithm as well as time and space complexity. The proposed solution approaches have been implemented with real-world billboard and trajectory datasets. We compare the performance of our method with many baseline methods, and the results are reported. Our proposed orthant-wise stochastic greedy approach leads to significant results when the parameters are set properly with reasonable computational overhead.Comment: 15 page

Gender Dimensions of Food Security, the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty in Nepal

The right to food is the right to life. Ensuring food security for all the citizens and their food sovereignty is the responsibility of the State. Currently, the need for food security, especially for marginalized and oppressed sections of society, including women in Nepal, is inadequately addressed. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to examine the gender dimensions in food policies and programs in Nepal. The paper explores five dimensions of food security, the right to food and food sovereignty, and analyzes gender inclusivity in food policies and governance in particular, since the advent of the sixth periodic plan (1980-1984) that included gender issues for the first time in the planning history. The paper, employing qualitative methods, recognizes that ensuring food governance is not only essential for equitable food security and the right to food, but also to the process of transforming discriminatory cultural norms and values into equitable ones and strengthening the psychological well-being of women. This paper argues that exclusion of women from decision-making processes leads to their psychological disempowerment. Women’s participation in socio-cultural, economic, and political spheres directly impacts processes to identify and recognize their needs, preferences and priorities in food policies and programs. The article concludes, that since food security and the right to food impact women and men differently, a transformational process must respond to gender-differentiated interests, choices, preferences and entitlements. This paper proposes a framework to promote gender responsive food systems and concludes that gender responsive food policies, programs, institutional arrangements and behavioral change of individuals, families and communities are crucial to ensure the right to food for all

2,5-Dimethyl-7,8,9,10-tetra­hydro­cyclo­hepta­[b]indol-6(5H)-one

In the title mol­ecule, C15H17NO, the dihedral angle between the benzene and pyrrole rings is 1.45 (13)°. The cyclo­heptene ring adopts a slightly distorted boat conformation. In the crystal structure, inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds are found

9-Ethyl-N-(3-nitro­benzyl­idene)-9H-carbazol-3-amine

The title compound, C21H17N3O2, crystallizes with two mol­ecules in the asymmetric unit. The carbazole groups show relatively small deviations from planarity [maximum displacements from the mean carbazole plane are 0.077 (7) and 0.101 (7) Å]. The dihedral angles between the 3-nitro­benzyl­idene­amine and carbazole groups are 37.9 (1) and 37.0 (1)° in the two mol­ecules