A. Now that so much data travels via light—i.e., is carried in glass fibers rather than by electrical current—one goal of semiconductor research is to develop a silicon chip that can transmit and receive light signals directly, a development that mav one dav lead to smaller, faster semiconductors.

Sorry, I do not make clear my question.

I can sumarize the choice A above as following:

now that so much data travels via light, one goal of semiconductor research is to develop a silicon chip that can transmit and receive light signals directly, a development that mav one dav lead to smaller, faster semiconductors.

I do not understand this structure. "now that data travels" and "one goal is to develop" are 2 clauses. I do not understand how these 2 clauses is connected.

pls, help. Thank you.

hi Ron - I guess you missed this post. Could you please help me with the above query pls.

Cheers

you may want to go back up to my post (the one you originally quoted in this response) and read it again.
in general, you shouldn't speak of "abilities" or "capabilities" possessed by inanimate objects. you can probably find random exceptions here and there, but, in general, "abilities/capabilities" belong to people and animals, not to things.

in this sense, "a silicon chip with the ability..." still isn't idiomatically ok, since a silicon chip (an inanimate object) isn't the kind of thing that has "abilities".

you are also being too simplistic with the idioms above. you can't just isolate random words, independent of context, and memorize them as an "idiom"!
more specifically,, the questions you're trying to ask above -- e.g., "is 'capability of' correct?" are basically meaningless without a surrounding context.
if you wrote various people's capability of understanding topic X then, yes, that would be incorrect; however, if you wrote the capability of various people to understand topic X, then it would be fine.

the good news is that the gmat isn't really testing idioms in this way anymore -- with possible exceptions for basic idioms that more or less everyone knows, such as "more ... than", "same ... as", etc. -- so you can rest easy.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes

Now that so much data travels via light—i.e., is carried in glass fibers rather than by electrical current—one goal of semiconductor research is to develop a silicon chip that can transmit and receive light signals directly, a development that mav one dav lead to smaller, faster semiconductors.


C. the development of a silicon chip that has the capability of transmitting and receiving light signals directly, a development maybe one day leading

E. developing a silicon chip with the ability to transmit and receive light signals directly, with this development maybe one day leading


are both bolded verb-ings wrong because they adopt the tense of the main clause (present). They should be future right?

hi Ron - Many many thanks re-read the post and this one..... everything makes sense nw. Thanks again.

So can i take the below to be a rule... After you had posted this I came across many questions in which I was able to eliminate atleast 3 ans choices, which used "abilities" or "capabilities" for inanimate objects. So can i chalk this down as rule or would there be exceptions!?

For example I could eliminate B , D and E strait away in 30 seconds : og-sc-105-t1277.html




Cheers

a good sentence shouldn't do that.

you should make sure that there are other answer choices that don't do that. if there are such choices, then you should be able to eliminate the ones that do.

_________________
Being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity [that] religion is powerless to bestow.
C.F. Forbes