A Reconsideration of Grammatical Categorization in English: The Clause

Various models for categorizing grammatical units exist in the literature. Particularly nebulous, however, are terminologies for conceptualizing categories at the level of the clause. For example, the term complement has been used, confusingly sometimes, as both a functional term and, on some occasions, as a structural term. In this study, a model of categorization is proposed, which keeps functional classification separate from structural classification, in order that concepts used in grammatical analysis can be clearly understood and be applied more easily in text analysis. Accordingly, the specific aim of this study is to examine some already ‘accepted’ subcategories of the dependent clause and, in the process, propose a new approach for the analysis of this clause type. This approach, it is hoped, will remove (a) semantic considerations from the analysis of these grammatical units and (b) the confusion between the notional and syntactic description of the units. In the end, this work involves a reconsideration of some traditional ways of doing grammatical categorization with the hope that it will ease identification of grammatical categories. The overall goal is to offer a more consistent and structured approach to the grammatical analysis of the clause in English.

Order Beyond Chaos: Introducing the Notion of Generation to Characterize the Continuously Evolving Implementations of Cyber-Physical Systems

Authors belonging to different institutions (‘schools’) of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) research and development report on largely different objectives, underpin their work with different theories and methodologies, and target characteristics which can actually better characterize other categories and families of engineered systems. This has resulted in an ontological chaos. Therefore, our research addressed the question: What exists in the form of past, current and future CPSs? Our hypothesis has been that we can have an ordered picture on the landscape of CPSs by introducing the notion of system generation. Generation is a structural term defined as a ‘technological/engineering cohort’ of different individual manifestation of systems that reflect genotypic features of ancestor systems belonging to the same category, but deviates from them with regards to their phenotypic features. Based on our literature findings, we have defined five generations of CPSs, which could be differentiated based on: (i) the level of self-intelligence, and (ii) the level of self-organization. The zeroth generation includes look-alikes and partial implementations of CPS. The 1G-CPSs include systems with self-regulation and self-tuning capabilities, while the 2G-CPSs are capable to operationalize self-awareness and self-adaptation. The 3G-CPSs are equipped with the capabilities of self-cognizance and self-evolution. According to our reasoning model, only the fourth generation of CPSs is supposed to achieve self-consciousness and self-reproduction in the form of system of systems. The paper analyses the major paradigmatic characteristics of these generations. It also provides an outlook to the trends that may have strong influence on the introduced generations of CPSs.

Process of Facilitated Extraction of Vanadium Ions through Supported Liquid Membranes: Parameters and Mechanism

To conduct experiments related to the facilitated extraction phenomenon of vanadium ions (VO2+), three supported liquid membranes (SLMs) were prepared, each containing 0.01 M of methyl cholate (MC), resorcinarene (RESO), or trioctylamine (TOA) as extractive agents. Kinetic and thermodynamic models were developed, based on the interaction of the substrate (VO2+) with the extractive agent T and the diffusion of the formed entity (TS) through the membrane. The experimental results verify the models, and to determine, macroscopic parameters, permeabilities (P) and initial fluxes (J0), and microscopic parameters, association constants (Kass) and apparent diffusion coefficients (D⁎) related to formed entities (TS) and their diffusion through the membrane organic phase. The experimental results indicate that the mechanism on the migration of the VO2+ ions through the membrane organic phase is based on the successive jumps of substrate, from one site to another of the extractive agent. To explain these results and understand the mechanism, we studied influence of temperature factor, and we determined activation parameters (Ea, ΔH≠, and ΔS≠). The results show that this extraction phenomenon is governed by a structural term. Therefore, the membrane performance changes according to nature and structure of the association site presented by each of extractive agents.