In visual cortex monocular deprivation (MD) during a critical period (CP) reduces the ability of the deprived eye to activate cortex, but the underlying cellular plasticity mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here we show that MD reduces the intrinsic excitability of layer 5 (L5) pyramidal neurons and enhances long-term potentiation of intrinsic excitability (LTP-IE). Further, MD and LTP-IE...

The convergence of communications and information technology within education, as well as more widely, means that concepts developed within ITS & AIED are now applicable to a wider range of wired, and more interestingly 'wireless', technologies. Interactive TV, supported by broadband broadcasting, offers interesting possibilities for education. The use of TV (and radio) in education has a long ...

We survey the evaluation methodology adopted in Information Extraction (IE), as defined in the MUC conferences and in later independent efforts applying machine learning to IE. We point out a number of problematic issues that may hamper the comparison between results obtained by different researchers. Some of them are common to other NLP tasks: e.g., the difficulty of exactly identifying the ef...

This study investigates two trust building models Mayer’s Factor-Based model, and McKnight’s Process-Based model of trust formation. It critically outlines the two different models of trust formation and adapts them for application in an online environment. Through a series of case studies we undertake a preliminary assessment of which model fits better to online shopper behaviors. We use the c...

We report the results of two experiments investigating conditional inferences from conditional unless assertions, such as Juan is not in León unless Nuria is in Madrid. Experiments 1 and 2 check Fillenbaum's hypothesis about the semantic similarity of unless with if not and only if assertions; both also examine inferential endorsements (Experiment 1) and endorsements and latencies (Experiment 2...

In many simulation studies involving networks there is the need to rely on a sample network to perform the simulation experiments. In many cases, real network data is not available due to privacy concerns. In that case we can recourse to synthetic data sets with similar properties to the real data. In this paper we discuss the problem of generating synthetic data sets for a certain kind of onli...

We study an elections model in which political parties are internally divided between an “elite” and a “base” whose preferences are imperfectly aligned. Elites are better informed about the quality of potential nominees, and their endorsements can identify and promote high quality candidates. However, elites may also choose to restrict their endorsements to candidates who adopt their preferred ...