Meaning of " functional" in the context I am reading the book Development Economics through the Decades: A Critical Look at Thirty Years of the World Development Report by Shahid Yusuf (2008). I struggle to understand the meaning of " functional" in the following sentence:     They are at best functional and at worst weak.   Here is the full context:      The interest of policy makers lies not in whether the state should be large or small or more or less interventionist; the interest is in what specific forms of intervention over a period of time yield the best results under similar external circumstances. The same is true regarding institutions. Everyone can see that market institutions in successful East Asian industrializing countries are at best functional and at worst weak and minimally supportive.   I would be grateful if anyone could explain meaning of the phrase in that last  sentence.
Grammatical function of "at best" idiom state that "at best" is an idiom. But, what is the grammatical function of "at best" (for example, in the below sentences?)        Their response to the proposal was, at best, cool.   The government's response seems to have been at best confused and at   worst dishonest.   If he drops the course now, at best he’ll get an incomplete, and he could fail.      Thanks
How does one experimentally determine chirality, helicity, spin and angular momentum of a fundamental particle? What I want to show is the following statement.  For every prime of the form $2^{4n}+1$, 7 is a primitive root.  What I get is that  $$7^{2^{k}}\equiv1\pmod{p}$$ $$7^{2^{k-1}}\equiv-1\equiv2^{4n}\pmod{p}$$ $$7^{2^{k-2}}\equiv(2^{n})^2\pmod{p}$$ Thus $(\frac{2^n}{p})=(\frac{7^{2^{k-2}}}{p})=1$.  I think that $7$ is important because $7$ is a primitive root but I don't know how to use $7$. Group with order $p^2$ must be abelian . How to prove that? I have recently submitted a paper to arXiv, but the arXiv moderators put my paper in status "on hold", because they have to make a decision on the right classification for the paper.   To those who have experienced a similar situation, how long did it take before they made a decision and published the paper on the arXiv? I just want to have an idea of how long I will have to wait. What happens if you call erase() on a map element while iterating from begin to end? Why doesn't **sort** sort the same on every machine? Using the same sort command with the same input produces different results on different machines.  How do I fix that? Showing range on hexagonal grid Here is the situation.  I have hexagonal board,and a unit on it,with speed or move value 4.Diffrent terrain has a diffrent cost.When i click on the unit,game should show me a move range.  My solution was to check each  hex in range of 4,with A* pathfinding,and if path cost was less than 4 then this hex was in range.Finally game nicely show me range of that unit.  My question is:   Is there other solution to search for range on hex grids or square grid,because even if i am really proud of what i did in my solution,i think,it is a little to exaggerated?:))  What make me ask this question?I noticed that when unit speed is 4 or 6 or even 8,time to computing range for my computer was really good,but when speed was 10 and more i noticed that i needed to wait few second to compute.Well in real games i rather dont see something like this and my A* pathfinding is rather well optimized,so im thinking that my solution is wrong.  Thanks for any replies. Can we let users with privileges on one site have them on another? I have almost 4k reputation on Arqade. On Stack Overflow, I have to suggest edits and can't hit the close button. But I want to help with the close queue, which is at 62k at the time of this writing.  While I realize that people may be inexperienced with the system, I think I am experienced enough. If I want to edit something, I have to let it sit in the queue and get robo-reviewed. Yes, I know more about gaming than about coding. But I think I would know if this question is a duplicate of that, and if this question is off topic.  So, my request is that we should have the same privledges on every site, based on the site that we have the most reputation in. I am not asking that all the reputation be merged. Proof that total derivative is the only function that can be added to Lagrangian without changing the EOM So I was reading this:  and while the answers for the first question are good, nobody gave much attention to the second one. In fact, people only said that it can be proved without giving any proof or any.  So, if I have a Lagrangian and ADD an arbitrary function of $\dot{q}$, $q$ and $t$ in such a way that the equations of motion are the same, does this extra function MUST be a total time derivative?   EDIT Ok, I changed my question a little bit:  Question: If I have a function that obeys the Euler-Lagrange equation off-shell, this implies that my function is a time derivative? (This was used in Qmechanic's answer of this other question: , equation 14.)  Also, why people only talk about things that change the Lagrangian only by a total derivative? If this is not always the case that keeps the equation of motion the same, so why is it so important? And why in the two questions I posted about the same statement on Landau&amp;Lifshitz's mechanics book only consider this kind of change in the Lagrangian? I'm working on a python script that passes file locations to an scp subprocess. That's all fine, but I'm in a situation where I may end up concatenating a path with a filename such that there's a double '/ in the path. I know that bash doesn't care if you have multiple file separators, but I'm wondering how exactly that is rectified. Is it bash that strips extra /s or does it really not matter ever?  I ask because it will save me several lines of code to check for extra /s while concatenating. I know it's not a big deal, but I'm curious as well. I have a bash script that has the line cd //usr (instead of cd /usr), which seems to imply there might be a significance to using multiple /s in a path Constants in Objective-C I'm developing a  application, and I'm using constant NSStrings as ways to store key names for my preferences.  I understand this is a good idea because it allows easy changing of keys if necessary. Plus, it's the whole 'separate your data from your logic' notion.     Anyway, is there a good way to make these constants defined once for the whole application?     I'm sure that there's an easy and intelligent way, but right now my classes just redefine the ones they use. Accessing private member variables from prototype-defined functions Is there any way to make “private” variables (those defined in the constructor), available to prototype-defined methods?  TestClass = function(){     var privateField = "hello";     this.nonProtoHello = function(){alert(privateField)}; }; TestClass.prototype.prototypeHello = function(){alert(privateField)};   This works:  t.nonProtoHello()   But this doesn’t:  t.prototypeHello()   I’m used to defining my methods inside the constructor, but am moving away from that for a couple reasons. How to sync bookmarks across Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox bookmarks? He will understand that I was not joking.   He will understand I was not joking.  Which of the sentences is correct? Are there any specific rules about the use of &quot;that&quot; in the sentences I reported as example? Accessing the index in 'for' loops? Is Bran able to have children after his fall? The thing that made me ask this question was that most of Stark family are dead and Bran is now the "heir" to Winterfell. So I guess he should have children to succeed him, otherwise the Stark line will end. (I'm assuming Arya will not come back to Westeros and Rickon's fate is sealed, though I could be wrong.) I don't remember reading anything about it. How do I join my partitions? What lens characteristics are important in star photography? Why are pointers such a leading factor of confusion for many new, and even old, college level students in C or C++?  Are there any tools or thought processes that helped you understand how pointers work at the variable, function, and beyond level?  What are some good practice things that can be done to bring somebody to the level of, "Ah-hah, I got it," without getting them bogged down in the overall concept? Basically, drill like scenarios. SQL Server: Examples of PIVOTing String data