Improving the quality of the personalized electronic program guide

As Digital TV subscribers are offered more and more channels, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to locate the right programme information at the right time. The personalized Electronic Programme Guide (pEPG) is one solution to this problem; it leverages artificial intelligence and user profiling techniques to learn about the viewing preferences of individual users in order to compile personalized viewing guides that fit their individual preferences. Very often the limited availability of profiling information is a key limiting factor in such personalized recommender systems. For example, it is well known that collaborative filtering approaches suffer significantly from the sparsity problem, which exists because the expected item-overlap between profiles is usually very low. In this article we address the sparsity problem in the Digital TV domain. We propose the use of data mining techniques as a way of supplementing meagre ratings-based profile knowledge with additional item-similarity knowledge that can be automatically discovered by mining user profiles. We argue that this new similarity knowledge can significantly enhance the performance of a recommender system in even the sparsest of profile spaces. Moreover, we provide an extensive evaluation of our approach using two large-scale, state-of-the-art online systems—PTVPlus, a personalized TV listings portal and Físchlár, an online digital video library system

Patient attitudes to sternotomy and thoracotomy scars

Young adults with congenital heart defects expressed dissatisfaction with their surgical scar. The impact extended to their social life and ability to form close relationships, and has implications for holistic practice. Presented at Association for European Paediatric Cardiology conference in Munich

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2011

The international economy is in a period of great uncertainty. On both sides of the Atlantic, governments are faced with difficult choices regarding levels of debt. In the United States, this has led to the first ever downgrading of sovereign debt by a major ratings agency. In Europe, governments have agreed major changes to the mechanism for bailing out troubled eurozone countries, although financial markets are not convinced that this is enough. While this agreement has brought about improved terms for Ireland’s bailout, and thus made the road to fiscal sustainability easier, the issue of burden sharing remains to be addressed. At present the cost of the restructuring of the covered banking system has primarily been borne by Ireland, even though the benefits of this restructuring are shared throughout the eurozone

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Autumn 2011

The situation in the international economy has deteriorated in recent months. The eurozone debt crisis has not been resolved, rather it has spread, and now two major economies, France and Italy, are pursuing restrictive policies to contain budget deficits, in tandem with contractionary policies in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland. As a consequence, output in the eurozone economy will perform very poorly and may contract year‐on‐year and is certainly likely to contract from the end of 2011 to the end of 2012. This will have the effect of making it difficult for all eurozone countries to meet fiscal targets. This outcome will also hamper the restructuring of the UK economy and reduce its growth prospects. The US economy now seems to have recovered from the poor performance that began in the fourth quarter of 2011. Given this very unfavourable background the Irish economy is likely to experience very limited growth – less than 1 per cent for GDP and a fall in GNP next year. Three months ago the possibility of building on an improved performance in 2011 made us reasonably optimistic about growth in the economy and growth in employment. The deterioration in the eurozone economy makes that unlikely now, though the fiscal targets set for next year are achievable

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Winter 2011/Spring 2012

The euro zone financial crisis remains unresolved. The euro zone economy is slipping into recession due to the impact of both the austerity measures and the effect of policy uncertainty in the euro zone on investment, consumer spending and employment. The euro zone banking system needs to be recapitalised, and account must be taken of the effect that the write‐down of Greek debt will have on this. The UK economy has been adversely affected by the euro zone crisis and is unlikely to meet its fiscal targets unless more restrictive measures are introduced, which in turn will worsen its economic performance. By contrast the US economy seems to be performing somewhat better than many had expected. Thus in the two regions that are of great importance in trade terms for Ireland – the euro zone and the UK – the country is facing weak or declining demand, while in the US, demand is growing modestly. The overall picture is weak