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Recommender system approaches such as collaborative and content-based filtering rely on user ratings and product descriptions to recommend products. More recently, recommender system research has focussed on exploiting knowledge from user-generated content such as product reviews to enhance recommendation performance. The purpose of this paper is to show that the performance of a recommender system can be enhanced by integrating explicit knowledge extracted from product reviews with implicit knowledge extracted from analysis of consumer’s purchase behaviour.

The authors introduce a sentiment and preference-guided strategy for product recommendation by integrating not only explicit, user-generated and sentiment-rich content but also implicit knowledge gleaned from users’ product purchase preferences. Integration of both of these knowledge sources helps to model sentiment over a set of product aspects. The authors show how established dimensionality reduction and feature weighting approaches from text classification can be adopted to weight and select an optimal subset of aspects for recommendation tasks. The authors compare the proposed approach against several baseline methods as well as the state-of-the-art better method, which recommends products that are superior to a query product.

Evaluation results from seven different product categories show that aspect weighting and selection significantly improves state-of-the-art recommendation approaches.

The proposed approach recommends products by analysing user sentiment on product aspects. Therefore, the proposed approach can be used to develop recommender systems that can explain to users why a product is recommended. This is achieved by presenting an analysis of sentiment distribution over individual aspects that describe a given product.

This paper describes a novel approach to integrate consumer purchase behaviour analysis and aspect-level sentiment analysis to enhance recommendation. In particular, the authors introduce the idea of aspect weighting and selection to help users identify better products. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate the practical benefits of this approach on a variety of product categories and compare the approach with the current state-of-the-art approaches.

THE reading of books has ever been fostered in Scotland, and in the eighteenth century Scottish education maintained a position hardly inferior to that of other European countries. With many Scotsmen of that period education was almost a passion which had much in common with their other passion—religion. From out of this feeling sprung a desire to lend books as a means of encouraging religious enthusiasm and conversion. To instance only two such schemes we may mention the Leighton Library at Dunblane founded by Archbishop Robert Leighton, and the parochial and presbyterial libraries for the use of ministers, students and schoolmasters in the highlands and islands, established in the eighteen hundreds by the General Assembly of Scotland. The East Lothian itinerating libraries scheme was started to increase the reading of theological books, and a large part of the finances were derived from the profits of the sale of religious periodicals, pamphlets and tracts. The story of Brown's life and scheme deserves retelling.

Bituminous pavement materials have low viscosity at elevated temperatures. This allows effective compaction during the laying process. In laying unchipped materials compaction is necessary to densify the mix whereas in laying chipped materials compaction is necessary to embed the chippings and also densify the matrix. Since wearing courses are normally 40 mm thick the time available for these aims to be met is limited. This time period is a function of the hot‐mix and underlying material properties and ambient parameters prevailing when it is laid.

Describes the author′s work as an indexer for EMBase, one of the major medical databases. Some issues related to teleworking are also discussed: employment conditions, supervision and communication, computer maintenance, health and safety, isolation, and advantages of homeworking.

Banking and finance during the past several decades have become “re‐internationalized,” not simply “internationalized.” This becomes clear when we compare the institutional features of banking and finance today with those in the early part of this century, the last period in which both had a substantial international dimension. It is further apparent in historical data that are analyzed in the paper: cross‐country spreads between real interest rates over the long period 1835 to 1990, and figures for gross foreign assets available for a number of major countries at key points in time from 1885 to 1994. The paper concludes by discussing the factors responsible for the changes that have occurred in banking and finance during the past several decades.

The aim was to determine the number of referrals of people aged 55 and over to three forensic and psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) services in Scotland, and to describe their demographic, criminological and psychiatric characteristics. Of a total of 1838 referrals, 63 (3.4%) were aged 55 and over. Of these, 35 were referred for court reports or prison assessment and half had been charged with violent or sexual offences. Most were diagnosed as suffering from a psychiatric disorder at the time of assessment, 11 (31.4%) were admitted for further assessment. There were a further 28 admissions to PICU beds. Older adults form a small but important minority of referrals to forensic and PICU services. A single case register would aid further study in this area. Further exploration of the clinical needs of these patients would be useful.

ALTHOUGH the first Public Libraries (Scotland) Act was placed on the Statute Book in 1853, it was not until 1899 that the Corporation of the City of Glasgow was empowered to establish and maintain public libraries throughout the city. Between 1876 and 1897 four attempts were made to secure public approval for the adoption of the Public Libraries (Scotland) Acts, but when all these efforts proved unsuccessful, the Corporation decided in June, 1888 to include in a Local Bill for submission to Parliament, certain clauses conferring upon themselves the power to become a library authority. Promoted in 1899, the Bill became known as the Glasgow Corporation (Tramways, Libraries, etc.) Act 1899, and the library clauses passed through Parliament without opposition and received Royal Assent on 1st August, 1899. The powers conferred by this Local Act empowered the Corporation:

This paper describes the results of an observational study of the information seeking behaviour of Members of Parliament. It is argued that political life functions on a flow of information and that information itself is a prime resource. The study sought to determine the characteristics that impact upon the manner in which information is sourced and used by parliamentarians. For this project a shadowing methodology was adopted. The conclusions drawn include that UK Members of Parliament are subject to a range of triggers of information seeking, in an information rich environment where the amount of information presents decision makers with difficulties. Public accountability results in demands from a wide variety of individuals, groups and associations. MPs are also expected to be knowledgeable about a wide variety of issues, while information need is frequently unpredictable and reactive. Members must be efficient information gatherers and managers and they must be flexible in their attitudes to information seeking, while retaining the capacity to critically appraise the quality of sources.

The purpose of this paper is to report an evaluation of a leading-with-compassion recognition scheme and to present a new framework for compassion derived from the data.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews, a focus group and thematic data analysis. Content analysis of 1,500 nominations of compassionate acts.

The scheme highlighted that compassion towards staff and patients was important. Links to the wider well-being strategies of some of the ten organisations involved were unclear. Awareness of the scheme varied and it was introduced in different ways. Tensions included the extent to which compassion should be expected as part of normal practice and whether recognition was required, association of the scheme with the term leadership, and the risk of portraying compassion as something separate, rather than an integral part of the culture. A novel model of compassion was developed from the analysis of 1,500 nominations.

The number of respondents in the evaluation phase was relatively low. The model of compassion contributes to the developing knowledge base in this area.

The model of compassion can be used to demonstrate what compassion “looks like”, and what is expected of staff to work compassionately.

A unique model of compassion derived directly from descriptions of compassionate acts which identifies the impact of compassion on staff.

In support of the UN Year of a Society for All Ages, this article suggests that Scottish Homes should lobby government to increase grants to developers who will build 25 per cent more SMART homes to barrier free standards by 2010. It concludes that as part of the communication campaign, a major re‐education programme should encourage people currently in their fifties to think ahead about their future housing needs.