Sentence Correction

brief explanations:

(a)
"and with ..." isn't parallel to anything.
AND sets up parallelism, so there must be something to which "with..." can be parallel (other prepositional phrase, or other adverbial modifier). there is no such thing.

(b)
correct.
this is a type of modifier with which you should be familiar. (i have no idea what it's called - sorry)
here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

note that the presence of frozen water SUPPORTS the claim that europa is "far too cold to support life", so it should be a MODIFIER.
this is done here.
it's inappropriate to place these two things in parallel with AND.

(c)
AND is rhetorically inappropriate (see above).
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(d)
this is not a sentence. (the clause before "and" doesn't have a verb; "considered" is a participle, not a verb, here)
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(e)
i don't think "considered to be" is wrong, although it's wordier than just "considered..."
this sentence has no verb at all! the only verb forms present are participles and infinitives, none of which is eligible to be the main verb of the sentence.

duongthang wrote:"main clause, noun+which clause/adjective"---she is beautiful, a fact I know---

in this pattern, noun phrase is a summary of main clause.

yes.
this sort of modifier (COMMA + ABSTRACT NOUN) can be used to refer back to the WHOLE IDEA of the preceding clause.

let's say that scientists discover that X is 60 percent of Y, and that they are shocked by this finding.

then:
recent studies have shown that X is 60 percent of Y, which has shocked many in the scientific community.
incorrect.
this sentence implies that Y itself has shocked many in the scientific community. not the point.

recent studies have shown that X is 60 percent of Y, a finding that has shocked many in the scientific community.
or
recent studies have shown that X is 60 percent of Y, a statistic that has shocked many in the scientific community.
these are correct.
the noun "finding" or "statistic" refers to the whole idea of the preceding clause.

in fact, this is an essential reason for the very existence of these modifiers. they don't even exist in spoken language, but, in written english, they do things that more "normal-sounding" modifiers (e.g., "which") aren't allowed to do.

for 2 problems that use this sort of modifier, see:
* #59 in the purple OG verbal supplement (in which this sort of modifier is present in the NON underlined section)
* #79 in the same source (in which it's present in the correct answer choice)

--

on the other hand, the same type of modifier can also describe the preceding noun (much like "which").

for instance:
james went for dinner and drinks with mr. easton, a consultant from the west end.
here, "a consultant" describes only "mr. easton", not the whole idea of the preceding clause.

james went for dinner and drinks with mr. easton, an outing that was much more enjoyable than working all day.
here, "an outing" describes the whole previous clause (going for dinner and drinks).

note that, if exactly one of these assignments is sensible and the other is absurd, then the sentence is fine--i.e., there's no "ambiguity".
for instance, in the last sentence above, mr. easton is clearly not "an outing", so the exact meaning of this sentence is uniquely specified.

brief explanations:

(a)
"and with ..." isn't parallel to anything.
AND sets up parallelism, so there must be something to which "with..." can be parallel (other prepositional phrase, or other adverbial modifier). there is no such thing.

(b)
correct.
this is a type of modifier with which you should be familiar. (i have no idea what it's called - sorry)
here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

note that the presence of frozen water SUPPORTS the claim that europa is "far too cold to support life", so it should be a MODIFIER.
this is done here.
it's inappropriate to place these two things in parallel with AND.

(c)
AND is rhetorically inappropriate (see above).
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(d)
this is not a sentence. (the clause before "and" doesn't have a verb; "considered" is a participle, not a verb, here)
"considered as" is unidiomatic here.

(e)
i don't think "considered to be" is wrong, although it's wordier than just "considered..."
this sentence has no verb at all!
the only verb forms present are participles and infinitives, none of which is eligible to be the main verb of the sentence.

m&m wrote:Lunar - explanation makes sense except the sentence as is doesn't seem right. If we remove the part between commas (in b) then I would think we should have an "Are" after the word water. Don't know why gramatically but it just doesn't make sense to say "With XYZ its ABC of water thought" it should be "are thought" - right???

no.
look, you're right - this construction is going to look really strange if you've never seen it. in fact, i acknowledged exactly this point above - it's a really weird construction.
here's what i wrote:

this is a type of modifier with which you should be familiar. (i have no idea what it's called - sorry)
here's another example:
john, his arms flailing in the wind, called out desperately for help.

remember the following principle, which will greatly simplify your test-taking life:
* if it appears in an officially correct answer, it's correct.
i don't know whether it says so above, but this is an official problem (it's from the gmatprep software). given that fact, any time you spend trying to question the officially correct answer is 0% productive and 100% wasted.

also, remember the following principle:
it's much, much more important to RECOGNIZE EXAMPLES of grammatical constructions than to explain the actual rules behind those examples.
really.
think about the way you evaluate your own native language. if you come across an example of sloppy writing in your native language, HOW do you recognize it as sloppy? do you actually apply a bunch of formal rules to it?
no, you don't - you just realize, "hey, that doesn't look like what i've seen before." it's pure recognition.

you should try to get to this point with sentence correction.
when you get to this sort of obscure construction, just remember what it looks like and in what context it's found, so you can recognize similar examples in the future.

the poster above has been kind enough to provide the label for this structure: it's called an "absolute phrase". (i didn't know this before.)
that is tremendously useful for looking up more examples online, but, if you actually have to use such labels while you're solving sentence correction problems, you're going to be in some trouble as far as time management is concerned.