Interest rate restrictions on credit for low income borrowers

The aim of this report is to examine the extent and variety of interest rate restrictions within the EU and further afield with a view to assessing the appropriateness of introducing such a restriction in the Irish market given its specific circumstances and financial environment. Moneylending is a form of lending which is legislated for and is subject to authorisation and regulation within the boundaries of the relevant legislative provisions. All licensed moneylenders in Ireland are currently subject to a restriction on their maximum APR and total cost of credit. They are currently licensed to charge up to 188.45% excluding collection charges and up to 287.72% including collection charges. It is important to note the distinction between interest rates and annual percentage rates (APRs). The latter shows the true cost of the loan as it includes both the interest and any fees and charges. It is important to note also that the shorter the term of the loan the higher the APR. Convenience and ease of access are often cited as the reasons why consumers engage with moneylenders, despite the high cost of moneylending credit. However, while it is convenient for the individual, there is a higher than necessary cost for the individual, their family and the wider community. The overall remit of policy, legislation and regulation should be to widen existing alternatives such as credit unions and the Personal Microcredit Scheme. It is in this context that the appropriateness of continuing a legislative provision that, from a customer viewpoint, allows extremely high interest rates and charges to be levied on those who can least afford to pay them can now be questioned. It is acknowledged that the success of any legislative change requires an accompanying infrastructure that will serve as the mainstream alternative to the moneylending sources of credit. The overall remit of policy, legislation and regulation should be to encourage and support existing alternatives, such as credit unions, which are currently the only and practical alternative.On behalf of the Social Finance Foundatio

Financial inclusion among social housing tenants

This research report examines access to and use of mainstream and alternative financial services by social housing residents in Ireland, with a focus on savings and credit

Towards Integration of Artificial Intelligence into Medical Devices as a Real-Time Recommender System for Personalised Healthcare:State-of-the-Art and Future Prospects

In the era of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have the potential to revolutionize healthcare by improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare costs. AI algorithms have frequently been used in health care for predictive modelling, image analysis and drug discovery. Moreover, as a recommender system, these algorithms have shown promising impacts on personalized healthcare provision. A recommender system learns the behaviour of the user and predicts their current preferences (recommends) based on their previous preferences. Implementing AI as a recommender system improves this prediction accuracy and solves cold start and data sparsity problems. However, most of the methods and algorithms are tested in a simulated setting which cannot recapitulate the influencing factors of the real world. This review article systematically reviews prevailing methodologies in recommender systems and discusses the AI algorithms as recommender systems specifically in the field of healthcare. It also provides discussion around the most cutting-edge academic and practical contributions present in the literature, identifies performance evaluation matrices, challenges in the implementation of AI as a recommender system, and acceptance of AI-based recommender systems by clinicians. The findings of this article direct researchers and professionals to comprehend currently developed recommender systems and the future of medical devices integrated with real-time recommender systems for personalized healthcare

Notre Pain Quotidien: Franco-American Entrepreneurs Sustaining Community

https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/fac-interviews-and-lectures/1048/thumbnail.jp

Opt-out bloodborne virus screening: a cross-sectional observational study in an acute medical unit.

OBJECTIVE Recent treatment developments for HIV, hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) have greatly improved prognoses. Current screening practices are mainly risk based and are suboptimal. Improved efforts are critically needed to identify persons with these viruses. The aims of this study were to assess the feasibility of an opt-out bloodborne virus (BBV) screening programme in an acute medical unit (AMU) and to describe the prevalence of HIV, HBV and HCV in this population. DESIGN AND SETTING This was a cross-sectional observational study in the AMU of a tertiary referral hospital in Galway, a city in the west of Ireland. PARTICIPANTS 1936 patients entered the study; 54% were male, mean age was 53.1 years (SD 19.6). During the study period, all patients attending the AMU aged ≧16 years who were having bloods drawn and who had the ability to verbally consent for an additional blood sample met the inclusion criteria for the study. RESULTS Over 44 weeks, 1936/4793 (40.4%) patients consented to BBV panel testing. Diagnosed prevalence rates for HIV, HBV and HCV were 0.5/1000, 2/1000 and 1.5/1000, respectively. There was one HIV-positive result; the patient was already engaged in care. Four patients tested positive for HBV surface antigen; one new diagnosis, one previously lost to follow-up and two already engaged in care. Three patients had active HCV infection; two had been lost to follow-up and are now linked back into services. CONCLUSION BBV testing uptake of 40.4% is higher than previous studies in AMU settings that used opt-in strategies, but lower than expected, possibly due to not incorporating testing into routine practice. The diagnosed prevalence of HBV is notable as little data currently exist about its prevalence in Ireland. These data are valuable in order to inform further prevention strategies for these infections in low-prevalence settings

JWST/NIRCam Discovery of the First Y+Y Brown Dwarf Binary: WISE J033605.05–014350.4

We report the discovery of the first brown dwarf binary system with a Y dwarf primary, WISE J033605.05−014350.4, observed with NIRCam on JWST with the F150W and F480M filters. We employed an empirical point-spread function binary model to identify the companion, located at a projected separation of 0.″084, position angle of 295°, and with contrasts of 2.8 and 1.8 mag in F150W and F480M, respectively. At a distance of 10 pc based on its Spitzer parallax, and assuming a random inclination distribution, the physical separation is approximately 1 au. Evolutionary models predict for that an age of 1–5 Gyr, the companion mass is about 4–12.5 Jupiter masses around the 7.5–20 Jupiter mass primary, corresponding to a companion-to-host mass fraction of q = 0.61 ± 0.05. Under the assumption of a Keplerian orbit the period for this extreme binary is in the range of 5–9 yr. The system joins a small but growing sample of ultracool dwarf binaries with effective temperatures of a few hundreds of Kelvin. Brown dwarf binaries lie at the nexus of importance for understanding the formation mechanisms of these elusive objects, as they allow us to investigate whether the companions formed as stars or as planets in a disk around the primary