Search results for 'user:wholegrain'

Very Simple Question

wholegrain — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:51:14 GMT

Object with a sharp end = Object with a sharp end or more OR Object with only one sharp end?

What does this sentence mean?

wholegrain — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:23:44 GMT

Many and various are the motives that impel a woman so to ponder; in Anna's case the motive was nothing more exalted than the perpetual presence of a sister-in-law. = in Anna's case the motive was the perpetual presence of a sister-in-law?

Re: Is this a rhetorical question?

wholegrain — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:20:31 GMT

I think it's an error because a rhetorical question must assert or deny something: "the problem cannot be solved", "he has never done anything for me", "he was always there for me", or sometimes "it was unfortunate".

Re: Which one is correct?

wholegrain — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:04:01 GMT

Thank you. I thought the first one made more sense.

Which one is correct?

wholegrain — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:06:08 GMT

O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure? O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low? = O mighty Caesar! Why do you lie so low or O mighty Caesar! Do you lie so low? The second one seem to be unidiomatic, which one is the correct translation?

Is this a rhetorical question?

wholegrain — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:22:52 GMT

Well, I couldn't even remember going there. I remembered one minute I was downtown New York, looking across the river. I did that a lot. And then I was there. I don't remember crossing the river at all. I was drunk, you know. * * * * * You know how it is? Double bourbons and keep them coming. And after a while the bartender stops bringing me the ginger ale because gradually I forget to mix them. I got pretty loaded long before I left New York. I realize that. I guess I had to get pretty loaded to risk the pension and all. == Is "you know how it is?" a rhetorical question? Because it doesn't seem to be the case, but people argue otherwise. Shouldn't a rhetorical question lead to an obvious answer and have a...

They = jukeboxes in general?

wholegrain — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:53:12 GMT

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29503/29503.txt which doesn't make a lot of sense. But it was a bar. It had a big TV set going ya-ta-ta ya-ta-ta in three glorious colors, and a jukebox that tried to drown out the TV with that lousy music they play. Anyway, it wasn't a kid hangout. I kind of like it. But I wasn't supposed to be there at all; it's in the contract. I was supposed to stay in New York and the New England states. == It seems to be the case; however, I wonder if it is correct since he never used the word jukeboxes (he only used the word jukebox).

What do they mean by use?

wholegrain — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:19:43 GMT

Unfolding events in Iraq have prompted some observers to make analogies to the American experience in the Vietnam War. The United States has, they argue, stumbled into another overseas "quagmire" from which there is no easy or cheap exit. Reasoning by historical analogy is an inherently risky business because no two historical events are completely alike and because policymakers' knowledge and use of history are often distorted by ignorance and political bias. In the case of Iraq and Vietnam, extreme caution should be exercised in comparing two wars so far apart in time, locus, and historical circumstances. In fact, a careful examination of the evidence reveals that the differences between the two confl icts greatly...

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:35:45 GMT

I brought it up because it seems they are talking about one specific type of adjustment, I believe, statistical adjustment by controlling for different dietary factors and more general factors.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:17:05 GMT

The antecedent must be explicitely stated in the text (the dietary factors, the analysis). Moreover the antecedent is never more than 5 paragraphs away (in this case it is nowhere to be found), and it is usually in the same or immediately preceding paragraph for readability.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:10:34 GMT

The absence of adjustment for confounding factors (such as age, sex, smoking and dietary habit ) can hamper the statistical estimation causing over- or underestimation of the real association between salt or salted food and stomach cancer. This passage just before seem to suggest otherwise. Your interpretation seems to overstretch things a little bit--I know because I also did the same earlier in order to try to conciliate contradicting elements.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:53:12 GMT

The person who wrote this is I believe a recent immigrant of Chinese origin. In the Chinese language there are no such thing as plural or singular. East Asian culture is very inductive, contrarily to Western culture which is deductive. In East Asia, we tend to think of the world as an encompassing world, instead of a whole made of different parts. In my theory, this led him to mistakedly write analysis instead of analyses. To err is human. Avangi, what do you think?

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:37:50 GMT

Examples of dietary factors: salt, heavy salt, table salt, salted fish, salted vegetables, salty snacks, etc. Moreover, there are orthographic errors in the tables, for example, sated fish.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:33:42 GMT

No dietary variable was adjusted to eliminate the influence of other dietary factors in the review.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:40:01 GMT

The most satisfacting response I got elsewhere was from this guy: anobium625 personal info: I am a retired engineering professor, but I also taught physics, math, history of science, and whatever. My interests include church, chess, computers, literature (especially Jane Austen, Inklings, kiddie lit), musical theater (not as performer!), Appalachia, astronomy, and whatever. "I agree. There is not one analysis (singular), but a number of analyses (plural) under discussion here. Analyses is, of course, the plural of analysis." Others seem to answer just for the sake of answering. Most of them say it refers to a particular analysis--or something similar, but that's very unlikely since there was no footnote or...

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:28:45 GMT

I noticed that a lot of people think analysis refers to an analysis that was carried out in the past or is was carried out in the present review; however, there is no such analysis that was mentionned before or was carried that adjusted dietary variables in the review. The review did certainly mention certain dietary variables, but in no way adjusted them by eliminating confounding variables.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:45:52 GMT

Well, I think we can all agree that dietary variables refer to all the variables found in the analyses; THE ANALYSIS is certainly not a "donkey anaphora"--it is correlated with "each" "every" and other expressions of the type, it doesn't seem to be anything else but an error. Either my interpretation is completely off or it is an error.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:52:05 GMT

I thought about this, but then it must be an anaphora, and the author did not say he was doing a metaanalysis of the studies encompassed in table 1 and 2.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:29:21 GMT

Do you think that THE ANALYSIS is a donkey pronoun? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_pronoun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_quantifier

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:04:39 GMT

No, I really think the plural should have been used. But thank you for you response. I guess there's nothing else to really say about it since I have asked this question a million time.

Re: Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:08:29 GMT

Dog and dogs refer to the same thing, but the former refers to one dog and the latter to more than one dog. Well, I am not necessarily opposed to the idea; however, I don't know if analysis could have been substitued by analyses without affecting the overall meaning of the sentence, and if that's the case why it is grammatical. By here, I meant "in this case, extract". The questions are: ANALYSIS of what? Did the author mean ANALYSES instead? Why is it correct to say ANALYSIS instead of ANALYSES--according to what grammatical rule, logic or whatever rule?

Shouldn't it be ANALYSES (plural) instead of ANALYSIS (singular) here, and why?

wholegrain — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:11:05 GMT

I have asked this before, but I didn't get a satisfacting response; moreover, I have asked this at several occasions and I had all sorts of answers, but no one told me why so I could understand. ANALYSIS and ANALYSES both have the same meaning as defined by this dictionary entry: " ( countable , context , of a thing, concept, theory, etc. ) The process of dismantling or separating into constituent elements in order to study the nature , function <

Re: Question on the usage of the word "THE"

wholegrain — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:27:08 GMT

I don't know why, but I completely forgot that study was used as an adjective here. I guess you are right, except I am still not sure what analysis means.

What do "most" and "such as" mean?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:20:11 GMT

Moreover, it may be difficult to separate the effects of salt from other nutrients that may contribute to stomach cancer risk. The absence of adjustment for confounding factors (such as age, sex, smoking and dietary habit) can hamper the statistical estimation causing over- or underestimation of the real association between salt or salted food and stomach cancer. In Tables 1 and 2, few studies have controlled for dietary factors in their analyses of salt consumption, which makes it difficult to compare the different studies according to the dietary variables adjusted in the analysis. However, the study results that were adjusted by a wide range of potentially confounding variables, such as age, sex, H pylori infection, atrophic...

Re: Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:53:11 GMT

I now think that "the analysis" meant the analysis of the 68th cited research. I can't believe this. You were right after all--well sort of. However, I don't know why you can say "the something" when the something is only precised in the references, which is nonsense to me.

Question on the usage of the word "THE"

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:42:11 GMT

Definite grammatical article that implies necessarily that the entity it articulates is presupposed; something already mentioned, or completely specified later in the same sentence, or assumed already completely specified. Compare I'm reading a book with I'm reading the book. --Wiktionary (best and most concise dictionary ever IMO) I think we can immediately rule out the possibility that the entity preceding "the" cannot be presupposed in a research paper, except for certain evident cases. Ok, the author of the following makes a rather peculiar usage of the word "the": Moreover, it may be difficult to separate the effects of salt from other nutrients that may contribute to stomach cancer risk. The...

Re: Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:28:49 GMT

i think the author meant researches after all, because it doesn't make sense if he says "the" if he did not mention it before or after.

Re: Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:03:12 GMT

Ah wait, no. I can't believe this, but they said the analysis when they did not name it before.

Re: Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:53:24 GMT

I think it's an error. You can't adjust variables in a scientifical review because they don't have all the data; however, researchers can do it for individual research. It says "adjusted in the analysis", it's the stage of a research where we adjust certain raw data considering other raw data.

Re: Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:40:46 GMT

Ok, thank you. I guess it's a perplexing case.

Re: Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:30:06 GMT

http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/15/2204.pdf approximately 600k

Re: Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:27:35 GMT

But I don't know what analysis they are referring to. Here's the whole paragraph: Moreover, it may be difficult to separate the effects of salt from other nutrients that may contribute to stomach cancer risk. The absence of adjustment for confounding factors (such as age, sex, smoking and dietary habit) can hamper the statistical estimation causing over- or underestimation of the real association between salt or salted food and stomach cancer. In Tables 1 and 2, few studies have controlled for dietary factors in their analyses of salt consumption, which makes it difficult to compare the different studies according to the dietary variables adjusted in the analysis. However, the study results that were adjusted by a wide range...

Why "analysis" instead of "analyses"?

wholegrain — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:13:25 GMT

In Tables 1 and 2, few studies have controlled for dietary factors in their analyses of salt consumption, which makes it difficult to compare the different studies according to the dietary variables adjusted in the analysis . However, the study results that were adjusted by a wide range of potentially confounding variables, such as age, sex, H pylori infection, atrophic gastritis, medical history of peptic ulcer, family history of cancer, body mass index, diabetes, total cholesterol, physical activity, alcohol intake, smoking habit and other dietary factors , showed no difference from the crude results.

Re: I just noticed that "AND" can have two meanings

wholegrain — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:15:54 GMT

symptoms of diabete and metabolic syndrome (symptoms present in both diseases) = inclusive AND symptoms of diabete and metabolic syndrome (symptoms of either disease A or disease B) = exclusive AND

Re: What does this sentence mean? (VERY HARD QUESTION)

wholegrain — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:53:53 GMT

Ok, it is different, then truly the sentence is ambiguous because I had several interpretations until now.

Re: What does this sentence mean? (VERY HARD QUESTION)

wholegrain — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:42:02 GMT

Improved for readability May reduce onset risk or symptoms of metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Reduce the onset risk of any of the two diseases and reduce the symptoms present in both diseases? and is used both as an "exclusive and" and an "inclusive and", which makes the sentence a poor one, agree or not?

I just noticed that "AND" can have two meanings

wholegrain — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:54:22 GMT

There is an inclusive AND and an exclusive AND How do you know whether it is an inclusive AND or an exclusive AND if they are expressed by the same word? I posted this earlier: May reduce onset risk or symptoms of metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Reduce the onset risk of any of the two diseases and reduce the symptoms present in both diseases? and is used both as an "exclusive and" and an "inclusive and", which makes the sentence a poor one, agree or not?

What does this sentence mean? (VERY HARD QUESTION)

wholegrain — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:13:16 GMT

May reduce onset risk or symptoms of metabolic syndrome and diabetes Does it mean "May reduce the risk of having both a metabolic syndrome and any type of diabetes and reduce the risk of having an undefined number of symptoms seen both in a metabolic syndrome and all types of diabete?" The sentence is rather vague and seem to be incorrect.

These sites =?

wholegrain — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:46:50 GMT

Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) is a type of lipoprotein that transports cholesterol and triglycerides from the liver to peripheral tissues. LDL is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins; these groups include chylomicrons, very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL), intermediate-density lipoprotein (IDL), low-density lipoprotein, and high-density lipoprotein (HDL), although some alternative organizational schemes have been proposed. Like all lipoproteins, LDL enables fats and cholesterol to move within the water-based solution of the blood stream. LDL also regulates cholesterol synthesis at these sites. It is used medically as part of a cholesterol blood test, and since high levels of LDL cholesterol can signal medical problems like...

What does "evolve into each other" means?

wholegrain — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:31:41 GMT

What does "evolve into each other" means? An ancient Earth was a necessary part of Darwin's vision of evolution, which required vast stretches of time for species to evolve into each other. Doesn't sound right. I would understand if someone said "evolve into something" but "evolve into each other" don't sound right. Does he mean one evolve into the other and the other evolve into the one?

Re: What does "of" mean in this sentence?

wholegrain — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:05:41 GMT

Thank you. Does that mean: look related to death look of death look that death has death's look all mean the same thing?

Re: What does "of" mean in this sentence?

wholegrain — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:53:16 GMT

I think it's "related to" thinking of it. Because I just read a similar sentence: She had the look of death.

What does "of" mean in this sentence?

wholegrain — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:11:03 GMT

What does of mean in this sentence? SHE HAD THE LOOK OF HOPELESS ANEMIA THAT DISTINGUISHES THEM FROM FULLER BLOODED SORTS. A row of Lombardy poplars stood in front of my great-aunt Gertrude's house, on the bank of the Sheepscot River. In personal appearance my aunt was surprisingly like one of those trees. SHE HAD THE LOOK OF HOPELESS ANEMIA THAT DISTINGUISHES THEM FROM FULLER BLOODED SORTS. OF = CHARACTERIZED BY??

What does "bend time" exactly mean (immensely difficult question)??

wholegrain — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:35:44 GMT

Does it mean "travel in the future", "travel in the past and the future", "accelerate time", or something else? Please cite a source or an example.

Re: RATHER

wholegrain — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:06:15 GMT

Ok, thank you. That was quite usefull and instructive.

Re: RETORT

wholegrain — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:01:58 GMT

Thank you. However, I don't agree that it is caustic or witty. It's not necessarily quick either.

RATHER

wholegrain — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:56:10 GMT

He didn't do his homeworks. He did them in a hurry to be more precise. He didn't do his homeworks. He did them in a hurry rather. Are both sentences correct? And more importantly do they mean the same thing?

RETORT

wholegrain — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:45:56 GMT

We could retort that their theory is simply wrong. This sentence is definitively something I would use in a formal speech; however, I don't think retort is used correctly as "their theory is simply wrong" is not an argument it is merely a statement.

Re: Weird sentence

wholegrain — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:49:20 GMT

Another thread: http://www.englishforums.com/English/RephraseSentenceDifficultQuestion/kbdwc/post.htm However, I think I left out an important part, immediately before the extract: One might say, "It's clear what "the same" means--it's utterly unambiguous. We have an absolutely unequivocal paradigm for "the same"," "This is the same as this." One can say that everything is the same as itself. Now, what he meant by explanation was the act of showing the chalks. The book is a collection of notes on a college course he gave. The act makes more sense than the quote "This is...this" because the act of showing is more ambiguous than the expression. Wittgenstein also talked a...

Re: Weird sentence

wholegrain — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:08:38 GMT

Ah, ok, thank you, you just rendered my second thread completely worthless.