Visual design plays an important role in online display advertising: changing the layout of an online ad can increase or decrease its effectiveness, measured in terms of click-through rate (CTR) or total revenue. The decision of which layout to use for an ad involves a trade-off: using a layout provides feedback about its effectiveness (exploration), but collecting that feedback requires sacrificing the immediate reward of using a layout we already know is effective (exploitation). To balance exploration with exploitation, we pose automatic layout selection as a contextual bandit problem. There are many bandit algorithms, each generating a policy which must be evaluated. It is impractical to test each policy on live traffic. However, we have found that offline replay (a.k.a. exploration scavenging) can be adapted to provide an accurate estimator for the performance of ad layout policies at Linkedin, using only historical data about the effectiveness of layouts. We describe the development of our offline replayer, and benchmark a number of common bandit algorithms.

The findings of this study thus suggest that bhang may impair fertility in male mice through alteration in the testicular endocannabinoid system and that chronic bhang exposure in humans would be predicted to alter male fertility.

This paper assesses farmer adoption of rice varieties and new genotypes introduced through participatory varietal selection (PVS) in villages which represent submergence-and drought/submergence-prone villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. It focuses on the involvement of women farmers in participatory research for screening improved varieties for areas which suffer from abiotic stresses. It further assesses the impact on the decision-making authority (or women's empowerment) on rice varietal choice, seed acquisition and disposal, and crop management after participating in PVS trials. It suggests strategies to empower women farmers in making sound and timely decisions on farm-related matters and to enhance their roles in accelerating the adoption of new varieties. I N T RO D U C T I O N

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