A non-intrusive movie recommendation system

Several recommendation systems have been developed to support the user in choosing an interesting movie from multimedia repositories. The widely utilized collaborative-filtering systems focus on the analysis of user profiles or user ratings of the items. However, these systems decrease their performance at the start-up phase and due to privacy issues, when a user hides most of his personal data. On the other hand, content-based recommendation systems compare movie features to suggest similar multimedia contents; these systems are based on less invasive observations, however they find some difficulties to supply tailored suggestions. In this paper, we propose a plot-based recommendation system, which is based upon an evaluation of similarity among the plot of a video that was watched by the user and a large amount of plots that is stored in a movie database. Since it is independent from the number of user ratings, it is able to propose famous and beloved movies as well as old or unheard movies/programs that are still strongly related to the content of the video the user has watched. We experimented different methodologies to compare natural language descriptions of movies (plots) and evaluated the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to be the superior one in supporting the selection of similar plots. In order to increase the efficiency of LSA, different models have been experimented and in the end, a recommendation system that is able to compare about two hundred thousands movie plots in less than a minute has been developed

Mind-body interventions for vasomotor symptoms in healthy menopausal women and breast cancer survivors. A systematic review

Mind–body therapies are commonly recommended to treat vasomotor symptoms, such as hot flushes and night sweats (HFNS). The purpose of this systematic review was to evaluate the available evidence to date for the efficacy of different mind–body therapies to alleviate HFNS in healthy menopausal women and breast cancer survivors. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were identified using seven electronic search engines, direct searches of specific journals and backwards searches through reference lists of related publications. Outcome measures included HFNS frequency and/or severity or self-reported problem rating at post-treatment. The methodological quality of all studies was systematically assessed using predefined criteria. Twenty-six RCTs met the inclusion criteria. Interventions included yoga (n = 5), hypnosis (n = 3), mindfulness (n = 2), relaxation (n = 7), paced breathing (n = 4), reflexology (n = 1) and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) (n = 4). Findings were consistent for the effectiveness of CBT and relaxation therapies for alleviating troublesome vasomotor symptoms. For the remaining interventions, although some trials indicated beneficial effects (within groups) at post-treatment and/or follow up, between group findings were mixed and overall, methodological differences across studies failed to provide convincing supporting evidence. Collectively, findings suggest that interventions that include breathing and relaxation techniques, as well as CBT, can be beneficial for alleviating vasomotor symptoms. Additional large, methodologically rigorous trials are needed to establish the efficacy of interventions on vasomotor symptoms, examine long-term outcomes and understand how they work

Preference elicitation techniques for group recommender systems

A key issue in group recommendation is how to combine the individual preferences of different users that form a group and elicit a profile that accurately reflects the tastes of all members in the group. Most Group Recommender Systems (GRSs) make use of some sort of method for aggregating the preference models of individual users to elicit a recommendation that is satisfactory for the whole group. In general, most GRSs offer good results, but each of them have only been tested in one application domain. This paper describes a domain-independent GRS that has been used in two different application domains. In order to create the group preference model, we select two techniques that are widely used in other GRSs and we compare them with two novel techniques. Our aim is to come up with a model that weighs the preferences of all the individuals to the same extent in such a way that no member in the group is particularly satisfied or dissatisfied with the final recommendations. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Partial support provided by Consolider Ingenio 2010 CSD2007-00022, Spanish Government Project MICINN TIN2008-6701-C03-01 and Valencian Government Project Prometeo 2008/051. FPU grant reference AP2009-1896 awarded to Sergio Pajares-Ferrando.García García, I.; Pajares Ferrando, S.; Sebastiá Tarín, L.; Onaindia De La Rivaherrera, E. (2012). Preference elicitation techniques for group recommender systems. Information Sciences. 189:155-175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2011.11.037S15517518

How do counsellors having menopausal symptoms experience their client work: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

Aim: The aim of this study was to discover if menopausal symptoms have implications for counsellors in their therapeutic work. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three counsellors who have experienced menopausal symptoms. The menopause is a unique experience for the individual therefore Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) allowed for a detailed exploration of the participants’ experiences. Findings: Four superordinate themes were identified: transitioning personal and professional identity during menopause; the limited dialogue about the menopause; the ethical dilemmas of practicing as a counsellor when menopausal and the influence of menopausal symptoms during client work. The findings of this study demonstrated that the participants each had very personal and individual experiences of the menopause. A lack of knowledge and understanding of the menopause and limited dialogue within society to discuss symptoms was also reflected in the counselling profession. The capacity to continue working therapeutically presented potential ethical dilemmas which were affected by menopausal symptoms. Conclusion: Counsellors’ experiences of menopausal symptoms may create challenges in their therapeutic work, ranging from a mild distraction, a disconnection with a client, to the extreme of having to cease engaging with client work. Implications for therapeutic practice are discussed

Negotiating disconnection : a grounded theory study of therapeutic engagement of patients with "medically unexplained symptoms"

"Medically unexplained symptoms" or "MUS" is a term used to reference a poorly understood phenomenon in which patients experience subjectively compelling and distressing somatic symptoms which are not explained by underlying physical pathology. The literature on MUS is replete with controversy regarding the diagnosis and classification of this problem. A dualistic diagnostic system that seeks to classify disorders as either “physical” or “mental” disenfranchises patients with MUS who are so firmly at the intersection, causing problems that reverberate throughout the system. Effective treatment of MUS has been impeded by a complex array of barriers, including structural problems in the health system, lack of consensus over MUS aetiology, lack of effective therapies, and a shortage of suitably trained therapists. A pluralistic review of the clinical literature highlights that no single, universally accepted, and empirically supported model of MUS currently prevails. Furthermore, issues with patient engagement have been consistently highlighted as a problem. Despite this, few exploratory studies on treatment have been conducted so at present, relatively little is understood about either therapists’ or patients’ experiences of therapy for MUS. This research has used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore the process of therapeutic engagement based on depth interviews with specialist clinicians who work with the most complex patients with MUS in primary care. Through a process of constant comparison the analysis identified how multiple interacting layers of disconnections (systemic, interpersonal and intra-psychic) impede engagement. The research introduces a new theoretical framework “negotiating disconnection” that conceptualises the process of engagement in terms of a series of stages: “drawing in” (negotiating systemic disconnection), “meeting patients where they’re at” (connecting in the disconnection) and “nudging forward” (cultivating new connections), and illustrates how the different stages of engagement are negotiated by clinicians. The model shows that it is critical for mental health clinicians to engage the medical system and collaborate closely with GPs in order to engage these patients. However, it also points to some of the challenges that may be encountered doing this, reflecting the complexities of organisational and cultural change. At a clinical practitioner level, the model illustrates the importance of adopting a flexible, pluralistic and integrative approach that is person and process-led. The model emphasises the importance of clinicians and doctors, who must both embrace a holistic (biopsychosocial) stance towards MUS and to be sensitively attuned to its complex phenomenology. Implications for service structure, psychological therapy provision, training and future research are discussed, as well as implications for Counselling Psychology

Link Augmentation: A Context-Based Approach to Support Adaptive Hypermedia

In today’s adaptive hypermedia systems, adaptivity is provided based on accumulative data gained from observing the user. User modelling, the capturing of information about the user such as their knowledge, tasks, attitudes, interests etc., is only a small part of the global context in which the user is working. At Southampton University we have formed a model of one particular aspect of context that can be applied in different ways to the problem of linking in context. This paper describes how that context model has been used to provide link augmentation. Link augmentation is an existing open hypermedia technique, which has a direct application in adaptive hypermedia systems. This paper presents a technique for cross-domain adaptive navigational support by combining link augmentation with a model of the user’s spatial context

An Interface for Learning Multi-topic User Profiles from Implicit Feedback

A text recommender system recommends sets of documents for individual users on the basis of user models, which are incrementally constructed given feedback on previous recommendations. Users are reluctant to take the time to provide such feedback explicitly. One of the contributions of this research is an interface design for a recommender system which infers document preferences by monitoring users' actions. A second problem for recommender systems is determining the composition of a set of recommendations, especially when users have many interests. The interface presented provides a mechanism for users to define multiple topics of interest and control the proportions between them. Observations from initial usability tests are encouraging---they demonstrate the system successfully learning multi-topic user profiles using only the implicit feedback of users' clicking and dragand -drop actions. Introduction This short paper will summarize recent work on creating an interaction design f..