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Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful Mini Lesson #6
No full textModals, Helping Verbs, English GrammarThis lesson was developed by John Nelson and Tymofey Wowk, 2012
Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful
Mini Lesson #6
Modals: Helping Verbs with Meaning
The purpose of this lesson is to demonstrate that Modals are like Helping Verbs with specific meanings.
As demonstrated in Mini Lessons #4 and #5, Helping Verbs are used with their Main Verbs in English Verb Tenses. They have several grammatical purposes or functions, but they do not add semantic meaning to the sentences in which they are used. Modals are Helping Verbs with one additional feature. Modals add semantic meaning to the sentences in which they are used. To illustrate, consider the following 3 sentences:
He does not speak English.
He cannot speak English
He should not speak English.
In these 3 sentences, speak is the Main Verb; does, can and should are Helping Verbs. If these sentences are made into questions, does, can and should are all inverted with the subject, to form the questions.
Does he speak English?
Can he speak English?
Should her speak English?
In these sentences, does is used to make the sentences negative or to formulate the questions. However, it adds no semantic meaning to either. If you ask: “What is the meaning of ‘does’ in these sentences?” The answer is: “It has no meaning.” However, the word can has the meaning of ability. The question with ‘can’ asks if he has the ability to speak English and in the negative sentence ‘can’ informs us that he does not have the ability to speak English. Similarly, the word should has the meaning of importance or appropriateness. In the question ‘should’ asks if it is appropriate or important to speak English, and in the negative sentence the word ‘should’ informs us that it is not important or appropriate to speak English.
English has nine commonly used MODALS:
will would shall should may might can could must
Unlike Helping Verbs, Modals are not used to show the kind of tense; on their own they do not show past, present or future time; and they do not change form to show agreement with their subjects. However, they are used with, and are often contracted with, not in negative sentences, and they are inverted with subjects to form questions. In this regard they do function like Helping Verbs, as shown above. Also, like Helping Verbs, Modals are used in short answers, they are used in tag questions, they are used to express agreement or disagreement, they are used in questions of surprise or doubt, and they are stressed in sentences to show emphasis.
This lesson was developed by John Nelson and Tymofey Wowk, 2012
Two other expressions are often considered to be Modals: ought to and have to. ‘Ought to’ has the same meaning as ‘should’ and ‘have to’ has the same meaning as ‘must’. However, their structures are slightly different from the Modals presented above because they both include the word ‘to’.
Except for the ‘to’, ‘ought’ is used like the other Modals as shown in these sentences:
He ought to speak English.
Ought he to speak English?
He ought not to speak English.
The Modal, ought, is like the other Modals except that it is followed by the TO Form of the Main Verb.
The Modal have to is different still as shown in these sentences:
He has to speak English.
Does he have to speak English?
He doesn’t have to speak English.
The Modal have to is used like a Main Verb, requiring the Helping Verb ‘DO’ when used in questions or negative sentences.
The most difficult aspect of modals is the meanings that they convey. They are used to make polite requests, indicate ability, suggest possibilities, and offer advice to mention a few of their meanings. Modals provide problems for the learner because most of their meanings can be expressed by more than one modal, and each modal can be used to express more than one meaning
Surreptitious, Evolving and Participative Ontology Development: An End-user Oriented Ontology Development Methodology
No full textOntology not only is considered to be the backbone of the semantic web but also plays a significant role in distributed and heterogeneous information systems. However, ontology still faces limited application and adoption to date. One of the major problems is that prevailing engineering-oriented methodologies for building ontologies do not actively involve end-users but instead rely on a small group of domain experts, which presents barriers to both knowledge elicitation and knowledge sharing. Based on an extensive and critical review of extant ontology development methodologies, a number of issues are identified that could hinder the involvement of end-users in the ontology development process. To address these issues, a surreptitious ontology development methodology is proposed in the dissertation. Based on the result of a usability study, the methodology is refined and a prototype system is developed to implement the methodology. Moreover, a theoretical model is built to predict the impact of surreptitious ontology development on common intentions and conceptual dynamics of the output ontology and commitment by end-users. To test the research model, a field experiment is conducted over a three-month period. The results of data analyses provide support for the proposed methodology in improving the quality and adoption intention of ontology. This research has multifold theoretical and practical implications
Improving the Effectiveness of End User-Developed Software as a Medium for Communicating and Reusing Problem-Solving Knowledge
No full textEnd-user development of software is the largest and ever-growing source of software artifacts. What distinguishes end-user programmers from professional programmers is the goal of their work: for end-user programmers, the goal is solving a problem, and the creation of software is incidental to this. In solving the problem, the end user also creates knowledge about how the problem was solved and the context in which the solution may be applied in the future, as well as design rationale about the implementation of the solution itself. Much of this knowledge remains tacit; the only tangible artifact is the software, which may informally expose some of this knowledge. The lack of explicitness in this artifact-associated information decreases comprehensibility and reusability of the solution presented through the software. The problem addressed in this dissertation is that of providing design guidelines for media through which end user-developed software artifacts can more effectively communicate their associated knowledge to users of the software in such a way as to effect an improvement in problem-solving knowledge transfer and reuse. Toward this objective, the literature across end-user programming, software engineering, human-computer interaction and the design of communications is examined and a collection of evidence-based design guidelines around annotation paradigms appropriate to end-user development needs enumerated. Artifacts embodying these features are evaluated through artifact and user studies, and recommendations for further design iterations and research are discussed
Copying
No full textIdeas revolving around a perceived need to copy the real will be the center of this thesis discussion. Specifically these will be addressed in two forms, the copying of individual objects and the replication of scenarios in which objects coexist and interrelate. Artists' and hobbyists' approaches to copying objects, scenarios, and environments both mechanically and visually will be reviewed along with some discussions on issues of the literal and its relationship to copying and to art production. My specific process of selection, recordation, production, and organization of the copies and scenarios will be outlined. This includes single sided and all sided pencil drawings of what are generally considered ordinary or non-visual objects. In the accompanying installation, five primary aspects of my procedure will be portrayed. These include a life-sized composite copy of an interior that will house real objects, a life-sized scenario depicting an exterior in the gallery, a life-sized copy of an object placed in the exterior, a 1:32 scale table top scenario, and a catalog of all objects and surfaces recorded to date. Influences relating to this need to copy, catalog, and build scenarios owe heavily to ongoing issues that relate to childhood interests in manufactured play sets and scale plastic models. These relationships, the projected continuation of this copying process, and how the byproducts interface with the viewer will be discussed in what is by design an open ended conclusion
Inhibitors of Guanine and Adenine/Adenosine Deaminases Based On Ring-Expanded Purine Structural Skeleton
No full textThe work described in this dissertation is a continuation of decades of research conducted in this laboratory on ring-expanded heterocycles and nucleosides as inhibitors of guanine- and adenine/adenosine deaminases, the key members of the deaminase family of enzymes of nucleic acid metabolism. The dissertation consists of two parts: Part-I: Synthesis and Biochemical Studies of Ring Expanded Purine Analogues Containing the 5:7-Fused Imidazo[4,5-e][1,4]diazepine Ring System as inhibitors of Guanine Deaminase, and Part-II: Development of Synthetic Strategies for Ring-Expanded Purine Analogues Containing the 5:8-Fused Imidazo[4,5-f][1,4]diazocine Ring System as Potential Inhibitors of Adenine/Adenosine Deaminases. Part-I of the dissertation is based on a hypothesis that azepinomycin, a purported transition state analogue inhibitor of guanase, does not represent the transition state of the enzyme-catalyzed reaction as closely as does iso-azepinomycin, wherein the 6-hydroxy group of azepinomycin has been translocated to the 5-position. This is because the hydrolysis involves the C2 and N3 (imine N) atoms rather than C2 and N1 (lactan N) of guanine. Therefore, an aminol intermediate formed by hydrolysis of an imine precursor would be better represented by iso-azepinomycin than azepinomycin. Based on this hypothesis, and assuming that iso-azepinomycin would bind to guanase at the same active site as azepinomycin, several analogues of iso-azepinomycin were designed and successfully synthesized in order to gain a preliminary understanding of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic sites surrounding the guanase binding site of the ligand. Specifically, the analogues were designed to explore the hydrophobic or hydrophilic pockets, if any, in the vicinity of N1, N3, and N4 nitrogen atoms as well as O5 oxygen atom of iso-azepinomycin. Biochemical inhibition studies of these analogues were performed using a mammalian guanase. Our results indicate that (1) increasing the hydrophobicity near O5 results in a negative effect, (2) translocating the hydrophobicity from N3 to N1 also results in decreased inhibition, (3) increasing the hydrophobicity near N4 produces significant enhancement of inhibition, (4) increasing the hydrophobicity at both N4 and O5 considerably brings down the inhibition, and (5) finally, increasing the hydrophilic character near N3 has a deleterious effect on inhibition. Part-II of this dissertation work is geared toward developing synthetic strategies for ring-expanded heterocycles and nucleosides containing the described 5:8-fused ring systems. Most of the analogues investigated in the Hosmane lab so far include ring-expanded heterocycles and nucleosides containing the 5:7-fused ring systems. Little, if anything, is known about the effect of further increasing the size of the 7-membered diazepine ring to the 8-membered diazocine ring to form the 5:8-fused ring systems. Our molecular modeling studies with a hypothetical compound containing the 5:8-fused imidazo[4,5-f][1,4]diazocine ring system revealed that a number of hydrophobic amino acid residues fall near the zinc co-ordination site of ADA. Therefore, ring expansion from the 7-membered diazepine ring to the 8-membered diazocine ring with an extended alkyl chain is anticipated to enhance hydrophobic interactions with the enzyme. Furthermore, the ring expansion from 7 to 8 does not seem to adversely affect the interactions of the heterocycle with the protein. I have successfully synthesized the target parent 5:8-fused heterocyclic ring system as well as its 1-benzyl and 3-benzyl analogues. In addition, the desired nucleoside precursor for the final ring-annulation has also been successfully synthesized. These analogues pave way into the new territory of ring-expanded heterocyclic and nucleoside analogues containing the 5:8-fused imidazodiazocine ring systems
UNIVARIATE CLASSIFICATION OF DEGRADED CARTILAGE SAMPLES USING MRI PARAMETERS
No full textEarly diagnosis of osteoarthritis is important in implementing treatments to control the progression of the disease. In this thesis, we applied univariate classification methods to distinguish healthy and degraded cartilage samples using five MRI parameters. We first replicated the univariate classification method used in the industry. We then tried to improve specificity and sensitivity by introducing new classification methods: standardized distance, likelihood ratio test, and likelihood ratio test with noise added to the validation set. We applied the conventional and the new classification methods to control, 18-h trypsin-digested, and 20-h collagenase-digested samples. Two separate analyses were performed; control group combined with trypsin-digested group and the same control group combined with collagenase-digested group. Specificity and sensitivity were computed and the results of all four methods were compared. Furthermore, a simulation analysis was done to compare the accuracy rate of the conventional method and the likelihood ratio test
Organic Matter in Streams and the Urban Watershed Continuum
No full textUrban ecosystems are constantly evolving, and they are expected to change in both space and time with active management or degradation. An urban watershed continuum (UWC) framework recognizes a continuum of engineered and natural hydrologic flowpaths that expand hydrologic networks in new ways that help us to use hydrologic connectivity to study and characterize downstream fluxes and transformations of carbon, contaminants, energy, and nutrients across four space and time dimensions. Given current tendencies to transition from sanitary to sustainable cities, an UWC helps researchers and managers to acknowledge the evolving relationship between civil infrastructure and ecosystem function. Leaf litter inputs are an integral part of the trophic structure of many stream ecosystems and litter breakdown is a key ecosystem function in forest and stream ecosystems. Urban litter inputs are driven by civil drainage infrastructure rather than riparian sources. Litter breakdown processes determine how much of these inputs are available, and in what form, for habitat and food resources both for local and downstream ecosystems. These were measured in-situ for American Sycamore and London Planetree leaves in a forest and a suburban stream. Leaf breakdown rates were faster in the more urbanized catchment stream, and for some of the more urbanized landscape sources. The dense drainage networks of urban catchments facilitate organic matter transport, creating a gutter subsidy to streams that likely dwarf natural riparian input. Storm and dry weather DOC, and FPOM samples from streams of the BES LTER urban stream network revealed temporally dynamic systems greatly influenced by impervious cover, with high OM fluxes and concentrations. DOC and FPOM patterns and elevated post storm flow concentrations and fluxes suggest that the engineered subsurface drainage networks facilitate transport with both surface and groundwater playing key roles. These create an urban stream continuum whereby upstream zero order stream functions are shifted up-gradient, into the landscape, making urban drainage an important part of an integrated ecohydrologic system