Dop I use a or an in the following sentence.  You are invited to attend a European Festival  or You are invited to attend an European festival
In the following example, is it appropriate to use a or an as the indefinite article, and why?     He ate __ green apple.   I know that in the case of just "apple", it would be "an apple," but I've heard conflicting answers for "green apple," where the noun is separated from the article by an adjective.  Also, which is more appropriate in this case:     He ate  __ enormous Pop-Tart.
In linguistics, is there a term describing this phenomenon, i.e., when the syllables of two words are slurred together in the spoken language?  They are not contractions. While contractions are acceptable in any register, this combination of words is very informal and hardly ever found in formal writing.  kinda (kind of)   sorta (sort of)   coulda (could have)   shoulda (should have)   lotta (lot of)   oughta (ought to)   betcha (bet you)   lemme (let me)   tseasy (it's easy)   willya (will you)  Inasmuch as English Language speakers (just like the speakers of any natural language) have a tendency to join word sounds in speech, examples abound and a complete list would be hard to produce. I’m looking for a word or phrase describing this linguistic phenomenon as it occurs in speech. What are the practical applications of the Taylor Series? I started learning about the  in my calculus class, and although I understand the material well enough, I'm not really sure what actual applications there are for the series.  Question: What are the practical applications of the Taylor Series? Whether it's in a mathematical context, or in real world examples. Finding real roots of negative numbers (for example, $\sqrt[3]{-8}$) I have ran into some issues when it went down to install Steam on Debian. The console as well as Apper comes up with missing dependencies  and the package isn't going to install. How to add a Timeout to Console.ReadLine()? Its a .vbproj and looks like this  &lt;Project DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003"&gt;     &lt;PropertyGroup&gt;         &lt;ProjectGuid&gt;15a7ee82-9020-4fda-a7fb-85a61664692d&lt;/ProjectGuid&gt;   all i want to get is the ProjectGuid but it does not work when a namespace is there...   Dim xmlDoc As New XmlDocument()  Dim filePath As String = Path.Combine(mDirectory, name + "\" + name + ".vbproj")  xmlDoc.Load(filePath)  Dim value As Object = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("/Project/PropertyGroup/ProjectGuid")   what can i do to fix this? Is the below a valid circuit implementation and are there any things to watch out for? It's a simplification of the larger circuit but the crux of it is that I need to sink current into two GPIO input pins. The pins are signified by the 1 and 0.  Also, would a diode on the pins be advisable?    Edit: Here's the non-simplified circuit. The question relates to the 3.3v part of it. In essence, the timer and decade counter sequentially pulse current, 'activating' the transistors one at a time. The keypad is a simple matrix keypad. What I'm wondering if I can do is to put a GPIO pin on the line between the keypad and ground. The intended effect is that, when a button on the keypad is pressed, 2 pins will change state - this signifies the row and column.  Note that some of the resistance and capacitance values are notional at the moment. Random number generation and probability Consider the blow-up of the plane in one point. Let $E$ the exceptional divisor. We know that $(E,E)=-1$. What is the geometrical reason for which the auto-intersection of $E$ is $-1$? In general, what does it mean, geometrically, that a divisor has a negative self-intersection or that the "right" number of divisors gives rise to a negative intersection?  Thanks. C-3PO frequently speaks of “the Maker.” Is this a true droid religion, or is this a religious reverence by droids for their specific creators (in this case, Anakin, even though C-3PO has forgotten who he is)? Is this even a droid thing or is it just C-3PO? What else do we know about this “Maker”-worship? No Time in Top Panel (Gnome Classic) I've been using Ubuntu with Gnome Classic for a while and I've noticed recently that in the "Indicator Applet Complete" in the Top Panel, my name and the clock have disappeared.    I think it happened a while ago when I was messing around with packages. Every time I did apt-get... it would say "the following packages can be removed by apt-get autoremove", so I did it and then the clock and my name stopped appearing.   Can anyone help me? Thanks. It would be greatly appreciated. Suppose $\{f_n\} \subset L^+$ , $f_n \rightarrow f$ pointwise, and $\int f = \lim \int f_n &lt; \infty$. Then $\int_{E} f = \lim \int_{E} f_n$ for all $E \in \mathcal{M}$. However, this needn't be true if $\int f = \lim \int f_n = \infty$.   This is the exercise 13 on page 52, Real Analysis, by Gerald B. Folland. $L^+$ is the space of all measurable functions from $(X,\mathcal{M}, \mu)$ to $[0, \infty]$.  I can find a counterexample satisfying $\int f = \lim \int f_n = \infty$. Let $X = \Bbb N$, $\mathcal{M} = \mathcal{P}(\Bbb N)$ and $\mu$ be the counting measure. $f_n = \chi_{\{2i+1:i \leq n\} \cup \{2j:n \leq j \leq 2n \}}$. Then $\int f = \lim \int f_n = \infty$. But when $E = \{2k: k \in \Bbb N\}$,  Then $\int_{E} f =  0$ and $\lim \int_{E} f_n = \infty$.  But how to show the part "$f_n \rightarrow f$ pointwise, and $\int f = \lim \int f_n &lt; \infty$. Then $\int_{E} f = \lim \int_{E} f_n$ for all $E \in \mathcal{M}$"? Merge two PDF files containing even and odd pages of a book I have two searchable PDF  documents, say even.pdf and odd.pdf which contain even and odd pages of a book, respectively.   I can decompile each PDF to separate files 001.pdf 002.pdf 003.pdf, et cetera. The question is how to merge them?  They are both even and odd sequences numbered 1, 2, 3. If the numbering in the decompile process with pdftk were different, e.g. 1, 3, 5 for even and 2, 4, 6 for odd instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, I could simply merge them.  Can I do this any other way? Why do we make a distinction between derivatives and partial derivatives? Finding determinant for a matrix with one value on the diagonal and another everywhere else Let us look the the matrix  $\left(\begin{array}{ccccc} a &amp; b &amp; b &amp; b &amp; b\\ b &amp; a &amp; b &amp; b &amp; b\\ b &amp; b &amp; a &amp; b &amp; b\\ b &amp; b &amp; b &amp; a &amp; b\\ b &amp; b &amp; b &amp; b &amp; a \end{array}\right)$  It has one value, $a$, on the main diagonal, and another value, $b$ everywhere else. Let us assume that we are over a ring and that $a$ is invertible.  I wish to find the determinant of every $n\times n$ matrix of this form ($a$ on the diagonal, $b$ everywhere else). Using row and column operations I have managed to transform the matrix to upper-triangular form and found formula for specific cases. Generalizing it I got to the following formula:  $\det(A) = a\left(a-b\right)^{n-2}\left(a+\left(n-2\right)b-\frac{\left(n-1\right)b^{2}}{a}\right)$  I think I can prove it with row-operations in the general case with a little patience.  However, I'm wondering if there is a "smart" way of getting to this formula that I'm missing and if there is a nicer representation of it. Also, what can be said when $a$ is not invertible? (esp. the case where we are over a field and $a=0$). How to order the Ubuntu Phone? Yes, of course, I want that Ubuntu Phone.   Where is the order now button? How do you find time period as a function of time for a simple pendulum that is in the form of a hollow sphere that is filled with mercury and there is a hole in the bottom through which the mercury is constantly falling at a fixed rate? I tried creating a function for the time period to check how it varies with the mass of mercury, but I had too many variables.   EDIT: This question was a concept based multiple choice question in my homework book. The option were time period becomes erratic, time period increases, time period decreases, time period first increases then decreases. When to answer vs when to just comment How do you know if something you want to say should be an answer or just a comment?  I assumed that anything that answers the question should be in an "answer" field, and clarifications should be under "comment". But I found this question () in the English Stackexchange site.  The original question asks for words related to the word "chain" and all the answers so far were provided via comment to the original question, instead of in a separate answer field.  Is this the recommended way to answer a question that requires only one-word answers? Or should the comments to the original question be converted to answers instead? I just installed Lyx 2.1 on my computer for the first time. I wanted to create my first trial pdf but switching to viewing mode is for some reason not working with the Acrobat Reader DC. I tried many options found on the web but I am afraid my little knowledge is not sufficing to make it work.  I would really appreciate a detailed answer :)   Thanks. extract string between double quotes I have requirement that i need to extract string using quotes. My string as follows.  "abcd efgh" "ijkl mnop" "qrst uvwxyz"   can you help me to get the string between second double quotes(ijkl mnop) using sed or grep command.  In other words if I say give me the string in first quotes I want the  first string; if I say second string it should give me string between second double quotes and similarly third one also.