Applying a verb to two subjects
What form of the verb is used with compound subjects containing "or"?
I decided to make sure that I know this important difference between American and British English, so I wrote what I have found out so far and I would be grateful to anyone who reads this and tells me whether I am wrong, or not.  In British English when people say  to hospital or in hospital when  talking  about somebody being there as a patient they don't use the definite article : "I had to go to hospital", "She spent two weeks in hospital". And the meaning is that somebody was there as a patient.   If then for some other reasons British English speakers  will use the definite article which will change the meaning itself, I noticed that, in American English, native speakers often use the  the and if they need to show that somebody is in church to pray,  in school as a student, in hospital as a patient, in prison as a prisoner, they use 'in' and not 'at'. Do American English speakers use 'at' like British English speakers use 'the' to give the sentences a different meaning?    Are my sentences correct? Do they show American English usage?   He is in the school. (enrolled as a student) He is at the school. (for some different reasons) He is in the hospital. (as a patient) He is at the hospital. (visiting somebody) He is in the church. (to pray) He is at the church. (for some different reasons) He is in the university. (as a student) He is at the university. (not as a student) He is in the college. (as a student) He is at the college. (Not as a student) He is in the prison. (as a prisoner) He is at the prison. (not as a prisoner) why normalize and the definition of directional derivative I'm not understanding how to solve this problem.  I think the problem lies in the fact that I don't understand why normalize and the definition of directional derivative... It's in Portuguese. The question would be: Determine the directional derivative of f in P in direction of vector u: Display Blank when Referencing Blank Cell in Excel 2010 In the chapter on Spellcasting, there is a section called . However, despite the seeming generality of the title, the text of this section only talks about magical effects from spells:     The effects of different spells add together while the durations of those spells overlap. The effects of the same spell cast multiple times don't combine, however. Instead, the most potent effect--such as the highest bonus--from those castings applies while their durations overlap, or the most recent effect applies if the castings are equally potent and their durations overlap.   It makes sense that this section would only talk about spells, since it is in the chapter about spellcasting. However, this seems to leave ambiguous the question of how magical effects from sources other than spells combine. Such an issue could arise, for example, if two different items (or two of the same item) grant a bonus to attack rolls, or a bonus to the same saving throw.  Is there a published rule or official ruling that governs how non-spell magical effects combine?  (This question was inspired by  about the interaction between +X magical ammunition and Oil of Sharpness, and could be considered a generalization of that question.) I am trying to copy multiple files named "F3.bam" two level of directories to up and then rename these files with the name of the sub-directory after copy.  For example:  /samples/mydata1/RUN1/ID_date/PCR2/TIME1/F3.bam /samples/mydata2/RUN1/ID2_date4/PCR2/TIME7/F3.bam /samples/mydataxxx/RUN1/IDxxx_datexxx/PCR2/TIMExxx/F3.bam   Expected results:  1. The files are first copied two directories level up:  /samples/mydata1/RUN1/ID_date/F3.bam /samples/mydata2/RUN1/ID2_date4/F3.bam /samples/mydataxxx/RUN1/IDxxx_datexxx/F3.bam   2. The files are renamed according to the name of the current sub-directory:  /samples/mydata1/RUN1/ID_date/ID_date_F3.bam /samples/mydata2/RUN1/ID2_date4/ID2_date4_F3.bam /samples/mydataxxx/RUN1/IDxxx_datexxx/IDxxx_datexxx_F3.bam   Ideally a bash loop would be great (working on a Mac). Why two inverters cascaded in multiplexer control signal terminals? Why cascaded inverters are used in the multiplexer when it is possible to realize the circuit using a single inverter. Which graphics cards are supported by the new AMDGPU driver in Ubuntu 16.04? The new open source AMDGPU driver pre-installed in Ubuntu 16.04 should support all the "Volcanic Islands" cards out-of-the-box. This means that AMD Radeon R9 285, R9 380/380X and R9 Fury/FuryX graphics cards will be supported out-of-the-box if Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is installed.  However I read that the open source AMDGPU driver has an experimental support for the "Sea Islands" graphics cards (HD7790, R7 260, R9 290, R7 360, R9 390). Is this support enabled by default on Ubuntu 16.04, or will these graphics cards use the Radeon driver?  Thanks I've got bunch of files with ill-formed numbering:  prefix-#.ext       | for files with number 1-9 prefix-##.ext      | for files with number 10-99 prefix-###.ext     | for files with number 100-999   Due to further processing I need all of their names to be in format: prefix-###.ext. Is there any easy way to do that? I am looking for a positive, passionate word to describe the all-round capabilities of a person.   Are there any words better than 'all-rounder'? I would like to remove my Raspberry Pi from my iPhone 8 (running iOS 11.2.1) as a connected bluetooth device.  Normally, I would go into my Settings -> Bluetooth and select the Info button (a small blue circled "i") to show the "Disconnect" and "Forget Device" dialogs:    Unfortunately, iOS does not give me this option for my device. The bluetooth device list does not contain an "i" for the item, and there is seemingly no other way to disconnect.    How do I unpair this device if there is no button to trigger to the unpair prompt?  Due to work restrictions I cannot completely reset the device. I am currently reading about the interactions between light and matter, but I keep coming across conflicting explanations.  My initial understanding (using classical electrodynamics) was that light (EM) waves do not actually travel through glass. Instead, they are absorbed by the atoms and/or electrons within the glass, which then emit new EM waves. The new EM waves emitted by the energised particles make up the forward-radiation, which is the light observed from the opposite side of the glass. So it appears as if light is travelling through the glass, but it's actually being absorbed and then re-emitted with (mostly) the same properties.  The article  by Chad Orzel, based on a related SE question, confirms the above:      To understand the propagation of a wave through a medium, you can   think of each component of the medium– atoms, in the case of a glass   block– as being set into motion by the incoming wave, and then acting   as a point source of its own waves.   But an answer to a different but related question,  conflicts with the above:     the electrons in glass are tightly bound to atoms so they are not free   to move like the electrons in a metal and therefore they do not absorb   the photons.   I know the above is referring to the quantum electrodynamics understanding, but I think it still conflicts as it claims that EM waves are not absorbed by the electrons in glass because they are too tightly bound to their atoms.  Also, the  provides a small explanation of the mechanics behind refraction within glass, which kind of conflicts with both of the above:     In the case of dielectrics such as glass, the electric field of the   light acts on the electrons in the material, and the moving electrons   generate fields and become new radiators. The refracted light in the   glass is the combination of the forward radiation of the electrons and   the incident light. The reflected light is the combination of the   backward radiation of all of the electrons.   From my understanding, the above claims that some of the light is absorbed and re-emitted by the electrons (which conflicts with the linked answer), and that the rest of the incident light travels through the glass (makes up the rest of the refracted light) (which I think conflicts with the linked article, claiming the light is absorbed (although the article doesn't technically state whether all of the light is absorbed and re-emitted, so maybe that's where I'm going wrong(?))  I'm sure this is my misunderstanding, so I would be very grateful if you could clear it up for me:  When a light wave is incident on a sheet of glass, do the particles that make up the glass absorb the waves and re-emit them in the forward direction? Or do the light waves manage to travel through the glass, without being absorbed and then exit the glass? Coupon collector's problem: mean and variance in number of coupons to be collected to complete a set (unequal probabilities) There are $n$ coupons in a collection. A collector has the ability to purchase a coupon, but can't choose the coupon he purchases. Instead, the coupon is revealed to be coupon $i$ with probability $p_i=\frac 1 n$. Let $N$ be the number of coupons he'll need to collect before he has at least one coupon of each type. Find the expected value and variance of $N$. Bonus: generalize to the case where the probability of collecting the $j$th coupon is $p_j$ with $\sum\limits_{j=1}^n p_j=1$  I recently came across this problem and came up with/ unearthed various methods to solve it. I'm intending this page as a wiki with various solutions. I'll be posting all the solutions I'm aware of (4 so far) over time.    EDIT: As mentioned in the comments, this question is different from the one people are saying it is a duplicate of since (for one thing) it includes an expression for the variance and it covers the general case where all coupons have unequal probabilities. The case of calculating the variance for the general case of coupons having unequal probabilities has not been covered anywhere on the site apart from , which this one intends to consolidate along with other approaches to solve this problem.    EDIT: Paper on the solutions on this page submitted to ArXiv: Difference between StringBuilder and StringBuffer What is the main difference between StringBuffer and StringBuilder? Is there any performance issues when deciding on any one of these? Display solution/file path in the Visual Studio IDE I frequently work with multiple instances of Visual Studio, often working on different branches of the same solution.   used to display the full path of the current source file in its title bar, but Visual&nbsp;Studio 2005 doesn't appear to do this. This makes it slightly more awkward than it should be to work out which branch of the solution I'm currently looking at (the quickest way I know of is to hover over a tab so you get the source file's path as a tooltip).  Is there a way to get the full solution or file path into the title bar, or at least somewhere that's always visible, so I can quickly tell which branch is loaded into each instance? Does installing and using Wine open up your Linux platform to Windows viruses? home socket with DC voltage I'm wondering why, in a standard house, instead of using many low power AC-DC rectifier, there isn't a big (like 12V 20~50A) AC-DC rectifier which supplies some wall socket with a DC voltage? In the long run this should be less expensive, given the fact that AC to DC in one big apparatus is done better than in many low-quality transformers, right?  Also, modern chip DC voltage regulators have efficiency of >90%, so smaller (or even larger) voltages are still efficient and possible.  So we could use a 12V socket to charge a phone, desktop computer, laptop, radio etc... and still have an AC socket to move washing machine engine and other things that work better with an AC supply.  Why isn't this done?  edit: real question is: is it convenient, given a standard family (2 laptop, 1 desktop, 4 smarthpone, 1 big tv and some minor electonic) to do so? Why isn't it possible to combine vendor-specific pseudo-elements/classes into one rule set? 'An avalanche of mail'? - it should be 'mails', shouldn't it? I came across this example on WordWeb while going through the meaning of the word ''.     the program brought an avalanche of mail (Just like "a group of man men").   I'm quite sure it should be mails. Kindly confirm. Am I able to change my GPA once I submit a graduate school application? System.ListException: Before Insert or Upsert list must not have two identically equal elements - Deep Dive I had the following exception thrown at me when trying to process more than one selected records via a custom button in the list view.    Class Code  global class MerchandiseInventoryClass {      webservice static void ConverttoInventory(String[] merchandise_id)    {        //Convert Merchandise collection into Inventory Collection...         Merchandise__c[] merchandise_collection = [SELECT ID,Author__c,Book_Title__c,Edition__c,Publisher__c,Total_Merchandise_QtyTotal_Qty__c,Status__c FROM Merchandise__c WHERE ID = :merchandise_id];          Inventory__c i = new Inventory__c(); //Line 1        List&lt;Inventory__c&gt; newInventory = new List&lt;Inventory__c&gt;();        for(Merchandise__c m : merchandise_collection )        {            if(m.Status__c !='Fully Converted')            {            i.Author__c = m.Author__c ;            i.Book_Title__c = m.Book_Title__c;            i.Edition__c = m.Edition__c;            i.Publisher__c = m.Publisher__c;            i.Qty_Available__c = m.Total_Merchandise_QtyTotal_Qty__c;            i.Merchandise__c = m.Id;            m.Uninventoried_Qty__c = 0;            m.Status__c = 'Fully Converted';            newInventory.add(i);            }        }        insert newInventory;        update merchandise_collection;    }  }   By moving the Line 1 to within the for loop solved the issue for me.  Thanks to this post (refer the Best Answer in that post)    What puzzles me is that WHY i have to instantiate "i" for every iteration within the loop.  Why the list collection ("newInventory") is complaining that are duplicate elements and why should it even confuse in the first place when I am performing an "insert" even ?