6,086 research outputs found
A discourse analysis of e-mail messages in a Malaysian Business Community
The study attempts to investigate recurrent grammatical features and functions of electronic mail discourse in a selected business community, comprising executives in a Malaysian public limited company. It also examines whether the electronic mail system has influenced language forms in the executives' e-mail discourse. Differences between language in the e-mail discourse and language in conventional business writing are explored too. The corpus comprises 102 electronic mail messages from the executives' routine communication in work contexts. The study examines grammatical features, communicative functions and discourse features of the messages. Findings reveal a predominance of main clauses in imperative and declarative moods, and subordinate clauses denoting purpose and reason, reflecting that e-mail communication of the community is used more for requesting and informing, and less for enquiring. Other discourse features like opening salutation, opening statement, closing statement and closing salutation are also found in the e-mail messages although they are not compulsory for such a communication. It is hoped that the language features and functions, and other discourse features identified in the e-mail communication of the business community would contribute towards pedagogy and course design for English for Business Communication, as well as for e-mail communication at the workplace
KOMBASE - a knowledge representation system with frames for an object-oriented knowledge base
Knowledge representation is an important area of research which is currently being done in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In order to manipulate the wealth of information available in a typical AI application, mechanisms must be provided to represent and to reason with knowledge at a high level of abstraction. Knowledge representation with frames is a structured and object-oriented approach to this problem. KOMBASE is a prototype to a frame-based system containing organizational information of companies and other corporate bodies. This paper describes the approach adopted in the development of KOMBASE and discusses its implementation, particularly from a knowledge representational perspective
Can We Observe Galaxies that Recede Faster than Light ? -- A More Clear-Cut Answer
A more clear-cut answer to the title question is, ``Yes'' if the universal
expansion started with a big bang; ``No'' if it started infinitely slowly.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Defects Can Increase the Melting Temperature of DNA-Nanoparticle Assemblies
DNA-gold nanoparticle assemblies have shown promise as an alternative
technology to DNA microarrays for DNA detection and RNA profiling.
Understanding the effect of DNA sequences on the melting temperature of the
system is central to developing reliable detection technology. We studied the
effects of DNA base-pairing defects, such as mismatches and deletions, on the
melting temperature of DNA-nanoparticle assemblies. We found that, contrary to
the general assumption that defects lower the melting temperature of DNA, some
defects increase the melting temperature of DNA-linked nanoparticle assemblies.
The effects of mismatches and deletions were found to depend on the specific
base pair, the sequence, and the location of the defects. Our results
demonstrate that the surface-bound DNA exhibit hybridization behavior different
from that of free DNA. Such findings indicate that a detailed understanding of
DNA-nanoparticle assembly phase behavior is required for quantitative
interpretation of DNA-nanoparticle aggregation.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
Thematic mapper studies band correlation analysis
Spectral data representative of thematic mapper candidate bands 1 and 3 to 7 were obtained by selecting appropriate combinations of bands from the JSC 24 channel multispectral scanner. Of all the bands assigned, only candidate bands 4 (.74 mu to .80 mu) and 5 (.80 mu to .91 mu) showed consistently high intercorrelation from region to region and time to time. This extremely high correlation persisted when looking at the composite data set in a multitemporal, multilocation domain. The GISS investigations lend positive confirmation to the hypothesis, that TM bands 4 and 5 are redundant
Polyyne Ring Nucleus Growth Model for Single-Layer Carbon Nanotubes
We propose, based on recent experimental results, a polyyne ring nucleus (PRN) growth model for the synthesis of single-layer nanotubes (SLN's). The PRN model assumes that (i) the critical nuclei are the planar carbon polyyne rings that are observed to be most stable for sizes in the range C10 to C40; (ii) ComCn clusters (possibly charged) play the role of a catalyst by serving to add C2 or other gas phase species into the growing tube; (iii) promoters such as S, Bi, and Pb serve to modify the rates for these processes by stabilizing the ring structure. We suggest experiments to test and amplify this PRN model, including a flow tube arrangement that might be useful for synthesizing more uniform SLN's
- …