Efficient use of the class time when all lectures are already on Youtube

In the US, a class that counts for 3 credit hours normally meets for about 3 clock hours per week. It is often one hour at a time over the course of the week, though it might be otherwise. The typical student in such a course is expected to spend an additional six hours per week on the course, for nine hours total. I'll assume similar expectations for Israel, though I don't know.

You have an opportunity here to "flip" the classroom, though with a few caveats. To flip it, the students would spend their time as follows. About 3 hours per week watching the videos and taking notes. About 3 hours working independently in studying separately from the professor, and about 3 hours in a face to face situations.

A good use of the last segment, in a field like CS, is to have the students work together in pairs and small teams on exercises related to the lectures in the most recent video(s). If you use too much of that face to face time with questions then there will be little time for active work, so a better plan is to have a way, such as a mailing list by which students can ask their questions as they arise while watching the videos or afterwards. To make this as efficient as possible, the students are encouraged to answer each other's questions online and the professor need only enter the conversation when there are misconceptions expressed.

But, much of what would be "homework" is done with the professor (and TAs) present to offer advice to the teams. Teamwork (and pairing) is most effective here since the small groups can often answer their own questions as they arise so that the prof need not answer every such question or deal with every difficulty. The goal is that very few groups are truly "stuck" at any moment, which is normally not the case for students working singly.

So, an hour of watching videos, an hour in "class" working problems and the remaining hour is for other exercises or readings. This balance can give the required reinforcement and feedback that most students need in order to learn. The mailing list ties it all together and lets the students make progress at nearly any time of the day or night without overly burdening the professor.

Also note that with a mailing list, any question asked and answered is seen by every student. This alone is an advantage, especially when students "don't know what to ask" or are too shy to bring up what they see as their own failings. Other social media might work, but I found a simple mail server to be a good tool.

The main caveat is that a 50 minute video is a bit long for concentrated study. Better if they can be broken up into 10 minute segments. Even a recommended pause after 10 minutes or so for reflection is a better solution than a long video. Then, the student watches for a few minutes, perhaps formulates questions for the list or for later study, and then repeats. All of this prior to the face-time that will provide reinforcement of the ideas.

If the students work in groups in the face-time periods, you may need to define the groups or at least guarantee that they mix it up. This helps avoid slackers. If you need to "mark" or "grade" participation, then you also want to consider peer evaluation within the groups. But the "extra" hour (not watching videos and not face-time) can also be used for graded work if you need that.

Another caveat is that you need some assurance that none of your students will be much disadvantaged with the system. People with sight or hearing difficulties might have a different response than those with more normal facilities, depending on what accommodations can be made.


Likelihood of being admitted to a top 10 CS PhD program?

I'm currently in a Computer Science PhD program in Canada, and from my point of view you have a few misconceptions.

Getting into a top school is not necessary to be a successful researcher. Your advisor will have far greater impact on your research output than the choice of school. "Top" schools often have famous professors, who will take on many graduate students and have little time for them individually.
Your demographic does not matter, and it may in fact strengthen your application, if schools have equity programs.
If you manage to get into a grad school, your performance in undergrad isn't necessarily a good indicator of your research abilities. Memorization and exams are  big in undergrad, but hold little weight in grad school. Writing ability, communication skills, and the ability to perform self directed research are far more important.

I would find a school that has a few professors you'd be interested in working with and apply. The worst that happens is you don't get in.


Professor refuses letter of recommendation request

I am sorry for your situation, no one likes to feel under-appreciated. That being said, it is important to know which battles are worth picking. Your professor was very clear in his answer, and I can't see how can you (or anyone, for what's it worth) gain something pursuing this matter further. It would only create an unnecessary and tense atmosphere. You also said yourself that you do not want his LOR anymore. Let it go, and best of luck in the future.


Is it possible to pursue a PhD while working full time and living in another country?

In regard to living in another country, at least in the US, most universities have a residency requirement (for example, Cornell's) that means you have to live there for some amount of time.

As far as working full-time, sure, it can be done. It will be extremely difficult and it may be a challenge to convince an advisor to work with you. A PhD is hard enough doing it full-time. Part timers seem to take 7-9 years in my field and finish with fewer publications.

Something that a potential advisor will ask you is why do you want a PhD if you already have a job and are going to continue working in that position? A PhD trains you to do research but you aren't really doing research as a CTO are you? If you just want knowledge in the field, then take some classes or study on your own.


Automatic failure for not completing all assignments - proper?

your question needs a step back: is university the place to force students' personal behavior and personal decisions?  if yes, then what is the difference between university and school?

My view is simple: University is the transitional place where students learn to make their own decisions and be responsible in preparation for real-life. This means that there is no one anymore chasing you to "please study". At university you are responsible for your own learning and students quickly start learning responsibility after a little while.

If we are going to keep holding the metaphorical stick and say "you HAVE to do everything as i told you to or else" then when will these students learn to make decisions or realize the  consequences of bad decisions in a relatively safe Environment?

Then comes the 2nd question: Is it for you as a university educator to actually force students to do assignments? why?

If they want to have better learning experience from your class they will choose to do more work. If not then not. It is really not your business, their grades cover their learning. whether or not they choose if your class is worth remembering after the  semester end is their own choice.

Finally, some university professors make me feel they just want to control students. I had various discussions before about why for example you'd be offended of having your student use a laptop in lecture or look at his/her phone (this seems to be more common in the USA instructors than in other countries I dealt with for some reason).

Of course I expect like a million comment now about how you are supposed to "do what is best for them". Except that that they are no longer children, what is good for them is to teach them to be adults. This means: guide them not force them


Will time in a non-emergency medical transport driving job help a med school application?

What you need to understand about the medical school admissions process is that they can quickly and broadly screen applicants based on numerical data such as MCAT scores and GPA. This is the "first cut", so to speak. After that, they're looking for interesting human beings, as much as can be determined from a paper application. Your transport job sounds like it fulfills the soft requirement of knowing something about what dealing with sick people is like. It probably isn't going to help "significantly" unless you can describe the experience in a compelling way. You get a short little space to put in a quick blurb about what you did. Statistically speaking, you're unlikely to write anything that would catch someone's eye. That's the cold hard truth when you're looking through a thousand applications, AFTER cutting out the other 10,000 based on MCAT, GPA, and whatever. On the plus slide, most applicants are going to be writing about volunteering in hospital or working in a research lab, but you have the opportunity to stand out! Try and make the most out of it, but temper your expectations. If resources were infinite, most medical schools could easily accommodate many more students than they currently do. If you don't get in the first time, try again!


Is it a good idea to omit part of a multiple surname for publications?

In Spain we typically have a very similar situation: two surnames, with the first being considered the most "important" in the sense that if we need to omit one, we omit the second. For example, someone called Juan García González can be called Juan García or Mr. García for short, but never "Juan G. González" as most US-centric systems would abbreviate it.

The typical approaches most researchers take are either signing just Juan García (omitting the second surname), or adding a hyphen (Juan García-González) to fool the American databases into thinking they are a single surname. Typically the first solution is chosen by authors whose first surname is rare, and the second one by those whose first surname is common and who would have ambiguity problems if they used the first approach (e.g. García is extremely common, so there can be dozens of authors called J. García, and therefore signing as García-González is probably a better idea).

Lately, a Spanish governmental science foundation has adopted these approaches as official recommendations, and many universities have followed suit and recommended them to their personnel as well. It's in Spanish, but just in case you are curious or it can help anyone else, here is the recommendation guide describing this: https://www.um.es/documents/793464/2907606/Recomend+Fecyt+DOC051115-1.pdf/0a403f57-253f-4f07-9bdc-762ff5a9a557

Thus, I think you should be safe both as Sobhan Omranian or as Sobhan Omranian-Khorasani, and you can choose between both depending on whether S. Omranian is common or not. I don't think adopting a middle name in your "pen name" would be problematic either, as you can always provide evidence of authorship of your publications if needed. But I would stick to the simpler, tried solutions just in case. If they are considered to work in Spain and even recommended officially, they should work there too.


Low-quality paper or no paper - which is better for an undergraduate in PhD admission?

If the quality of the work is low, the student should neither publish it in a lower tier conference nor publish it as a technical report.  They should either make the time to improve it or toss it in the trash.  A bad publication, no matter what venue it's published in, is worse than no publication at all.

Similarly, a "publication" listed in a CV or described in a statement of purpose that isn't retrievable via google (unlike most technical reports, which are googlable) is also worse than no publication at all, because we can't tell if the applicant is lying.  (Sadly, some applicants are lying.)


How to cite a paper that gives background and context about another paper

I actually disagree that you should always cite the original source for exactly the reasons you give. Each subsequent paper provides additional context that can help the reader understand the importance of an idea. But it should be clear to a reader who originated the idea even if you cite a later work. "Master Kwan originated the idea of ... as is explicated in the later work of her disciple Master Kuo in as found in ...".
Just make it clear that you don't attribute Kwan's ideas to Kuo, similarly to not attributing the work of others to yourself. And the above assumes that Kuo has properly cited Kwan so the chain is intact.
A Masters thesis, however, could have an extensive bibliography and could even organize it by ideas rather than simply alphabetically or chronologically. Then, there is no real need to choose. So, in the body of the text you could cite original sources, but say elsewhere that the bibliography contains later important sources that explain ramifications of the original. That might be too much for a paper that has severe page limits, but not for a thesis.


Conference organizer pushes to Journal instead of Conference Proceedings

Publishing peer-reviewed conference proceedings in an associated journal is a trend gaining traction in CS lately. Many universities are pushing quantitative evaluation of researcher output and punishing conference-as-publication fields, so this is to help researchers make the case for their productivity to the layers of administration that aren't familiar with the venues of a given field.

But your case sounds odd, especially since you weren't told beforehand, and the journal doesn't seem to be affiliated with IEEE at all. Definitely contact the organizers and make sure this isn't some scammer pretending to be them to snipe the paper out from under them...

If they really have chosen to change the publication venue, you don't have to accept it: you can always decide to withdraw your paper instead and submit it elsewhere.


When applying to graduate school, is it a good idea to email professors to express interest in joining their research labs?

While you live in the US, you didn't specify whether you are applying to schools only in the US. And the answer depends.

Outside the US, especially Europe, quite frequently PhD positions are funded by individual professors. In these cases the hiring/admission decisions are made almost entirely by the professor in charge of the "group", and so the answer to your question is an "Of course!" There simply is no way to get your foot in the door otherwise.

In the US, or in countries where a US-style system is the norm, the admission of graduate students are made in committee, and it is not necessary to contact specific professors in the application process. This, however, is not to say that establishing a faculty contact won't help: sometimes it will at least earn your application a more detailed look, and sometimes you will find a person willing to advocate on your behalf during the committee meeting.

In either case, be thoughtful when you craft your e-mail. In the US and elsewhere alike, professors often get e-mails exploring the possibility of doing a PhD. So make sure to do your homework! If you write a letter to Professor X asking about studying Subject A with him, and he has in fact left Subject A and had been working on Project B for the past 5 years, at best he would politely decline and at worst you may have created a bad first impression. Same thing goes for a bland letter stating "I like your research". By default academics are suspicious of empty platitudes: make sure to discuss your background (to show that you are making a somewhat informed judgment) and state what it is particularly that you like about her research.

Furthermore, note that in some/many US schools, incoming graduate students for PhD programs do not formally choose an advisor until one or two years into the program. This has to do in part with the belief that the students should be allowed to see all the opportunities available to them, and the professors have some time to assess the students, to mutually make educated decisions about their partnerships. So you should also weigh your own feelings: are they strong enough that you absolutely must work with this one professor? Or do you have broad enough interests that you may want to hold off deciding until you learn more about the subjects?

Lastly, if geography is not a barrier, instead of just an e-mail expressing interest, you can also consider writing and asking to schedule a face-to-face appointment. Even if you end up not working with the professors, more often than not you will learn something and get some very good advice from the discussion.


How to take a mental health related leave of absence (immediately before quals) without revealing mental illness to advisor

Have you considered asking for leave due to "urgent health-related issues" without providing more detail than you feel comfortable providing? There is no need to explain exactly what issues you are dealing with at the moment. It is perfectly sufficient to state convincingly -- perhaps with supporting documents from a medical doctor or other health professional -- that the issue is urgent and requires that you take leave as soon as possible. How you phrase this is something to discuss with your counselor.

Personally, I don't think it's reasonable, when your mental health is at stake, to agonize over what your adviser might or might not think of you. Chances are they will be understanding and appreciate that you come to them now and not later, when your health has deteriorated further and more work has piled up. By contrast, if your adviser turns out to be unsupportive or worse, it's time for you to look for someone else to work with! Also this is worth finding out sooner rather than later, so you may see this request as a litmus test of your adviser's qualities.

As another aside, brooding over other people's impression of you is a habit that isn't conducive to mental well-being. I suggest talking this over with your counselor as well, and finding a way to assert your needs and boundaries with confidence. It will come in handy later in your (academic) career.


I do not think the "should" word is appropriate here. Each reviewer decides whether he/she wants to sign it or not. Most reviews today are anonymous. I think it is considered sort of default by the journals today. One might tend to think that a signed review will more fair. But a decent person will do a fair review regardless of whether he/she signs it or not. When a review is signed, this could result in some unexpected complications: suppose a reviewer did not understood one of your analyses. So, once the review is signed, the author might write directly to the reviewer, without involving the editor. This might violate the review process. I also do not think that most of the reviewers are interested in such sort of communication.


Summer Internship - A very well-known Professor

I want to let him know I will pay for my costs

This is not how things are supposed to work. It is normal that young researchers visit other institutions, but these visits are normally paid either by their current institution, or by the accepting one. What you're doing is explicitly proposing to do unpaid work, which is a bad practice and you don't want to work with someone who agrees to that.

What you can do instead is find 5-10 places where you'd like to go for an 'internship' or 'placement', etc and send emails with inquiries. It is fine to ask a professor whether they can hire you as an intern, but I don't think you should propose unreasonable arrangements.


appropriate Word for transfering student from one university to another university

You could simply use the term "transfer student" that you've already used in the question tags.

Collin's Dictionary:

  a student who moves from one institution or course to another at the same level (e.g. undergraduate)

A student can both be said to apply to the new university as a transfer student, and be described as a transfer student at the start of their study at the new university (example).


Professor is upset about student comments about her lectures. What should I do?

What should I do?

Honestly? I suggest that you sympathize courteously, but do nothing else:

She's a grown woman and an experienced academic, she doesn't need you to handle frustrations from student feedback.
You (likely) no longer work at the same university as her.
You're not a close personal friend of hers.
You don't have a good idea of what actually goes on in her classes these days, nor what the student body is like overall.
It is generally the case that students don't complain repeatedly and en masse about a course just for the sake of complaining and regardless of anything else. There's probably something that's wrong with the course (perhaps not even with her behavior) that you just don't know about.

An alternative to doing nothing would be: Suggest that she ask a relevant question here on  academia.stackexchange.com. We could obtain more information which you don't have rather than help her via a third party.


It's actually a little bit more complicated than "soft money" vs. "hard money," but the basic idea is that any scientific position can be categorized on the basis of where the money to support it comes from.

In general, "soft money" refers to positions where the funding source is based on external grants and contracts.  As long as there is a sufficient supply of such money that a person can obtain or that somebody else is willing to devote to their support, they are employed.  If that money dries up, however, the position dries up with it, becoming part time or disappearing entirely.

In contrast, "hard money" positions are not directly project-dependent, but instead are created for a purpose by an organization.  Termination from a hard money position only comes either for cause or due to the organization deciding to remove the position and not shift the person to another position.  They are often more secure (thus the notion of "hard"), but not necessarily.  Tenure-track faculty posts are typically seen as the ultimate in "hard" money: they are ultimately supported by tuition, and even if the students stop signing up for a department, it is typically slow enough that universities tend to prefer to allow departments to age to extinction rather than fire faculty.  A corporate research post is also often "hard money" because it is created by fiat in a company's strategic plan, rather than being dependent on external funds.  It is much less secure, however, because it can be removed by fiat as well.

Where it gets complicated is that various different sorts of "hard" and "soft" positions have different levels of vulnerability.  For example, some "soft" positions are effectively amortized over a large group or include bridge funding, such that they may be nearly as secure as a tenure-track position.

It's a good first-approximation, however, in talking about the challenges of academic fundraising and career management.  The basic rule of thumb is: a PI in a "soft" position needs to raise money to pay their own salary, while a PI in a "hard" position does not.  Thus a "soft" position has a hard time surviving on small grants while a "hard" position merely ends up with few students for a while.


PhD student with mental health issues and bad performance

Be forthright with the student about what they are facing. Explain the various contingencies. They may be unaware or ill-informed. You could ask them which path they would prefer you to take... True, they may not be the best judges of their own best interests, or may not be able to act, but you can ask.

In particular, probably you indeed should not share information that you'd promised to keep confidential, short of issues like potential self-harm or harm-to-others. At the same time, it may be that your university has fairly strong guidelines about your supposed responsibilities in a situation like this. At least try to read up on them... whether or not you think it is humane or wise to comply. I suggest that you keep in mind that the university will be "covering itself" legally, first of all, with concern for students and faculty somewhat subordinate... so it is non-trivial to see what the truly best action will be.

In any case, I think it would be good to avoid allowing a disastrous thesis defense to occur, especially if there is no room for a second attempt (as at my own university). Being late but doing ok is vastly preferable to being on time and catastrophically failing...

No, I do not mean to suggest that laying this out for the student will magically transform them... but that it is fair to inform them of consequences of this and that, and ask them what route they'd want you to take.

And, by the way, is "removal from the program" merely (!?!) loss of funding? In my university, it is possible to continue to register (after everything but thesis and defense are done) without cost... and, thus, without necessarily having financial support from the program.


Choosing course reading materials for students

One way to get students to read is to assign some sort of assessment in relation to the reading. It could be a quiz, project, paper, or whatever you believe is necessary. They must be required to do something with the knowledge they obtain from the reading in order to motivate them to read it. In many ways the assessment awakens a "need" in the student to read.

To ask today's student to read for the sake of knowledge often does not work. There are too many things competing for their time to read something they do not have have too.


How are graduate students funded over the summer (in US)?

As Noah mentioned, I don't think there is a binding contract to provide funding.

A few points  (US Specific)

Within my school itself, there are variable policies across departments. Certain departments provide 9 month guarantees and if you want to hang around in summer, either convince your advisor to find money for you or find your own. Certain departments guarantee funding for all 12 months, if you take an internship or decide to take a break or whatever, you don't get paid.
If you are an international student, AFAIK, You have two (realistic) options : Convince advisor, get an internship. Finding your own summer funding can be quite tough for international students in the US.
Usually, (at least in my experience), if you are doing good work and your advisor doesn't want to lose momentum, he will get you funding. In my field, it's not hard to get internships even for international students but most advisors will try to get funding so as to not break flow of things. But again, this is experience, not fact.


How to react to unfair criticism to my published study?

I have two reasons for not ignoring something like this:

(1) Research does not progress in isolation. Results are reinforced when others reproduce them and validate findings. Similarly, if someone has taken the effort to point out shortcomings/flaws (irrespective of how correct they are in their judgement), the original author(s) should take the time to examine and respond. Its your responsibility to defend something that you stand for, or else accept that you were wrong. To not to do smacks either of arrogance (the 'I don't need to explain myself to everyone'/'Its not worth my time' arguments) or lack of confidence in the work ('let's not muddy the waters further, let things settle down quietly by themself').

(2) All readers in the future will potentially see two conflicting opinions on the same topic, and will be forced to examine both opinions and make their own judgements. Verification is indeed essential but one shouldn't be forced to reinvent the wheel. If you are certain that you have been misunderstood, you can save readers' time and effort by providing your clarification. You would be doing the community a service. A more harsh way of looking at this is, if you don't care enough about justifying your work to the community, probably you shouldn't have published it in the first place.

Having said this, you must ensure that:

(1) You are 100% sure of your position.

(2) You provide a justification, not a counter, especially one directed to individuals. 'John [xx] has evidently misunderstood the foundations of XYZ and proceeds to draw incorrect conclusions' - is the latter. 'The conclusions of John [xx] are based on assumption xyz, which we here demonstrate to be untenable' - is an example of the former.

Since it's an edited chapter, redressal in form of an 'authors note' may be difficult. Nevertheless, if the editor is convinced of your position and attests to it, you can communicate the same to the objecting authors and prevent them from misinterpreting further.

EDIT: There appears to be a belief that contesting criticism can cause some sort of damage to the original author. This is most likely a pervasive myth without basis, as this article in Scientific Reports suggests.  Papers with these criticisms and rebuttals do, in fact, get more citations than the uncontested papers in the same journal.

To clarify, I am not an author or in any way affiliated to the linked article.


When not to contact a professor for a PhD based on what is written on his web page?

I assume the note on the web page is to avoid misunderstandings about the application process. In some places (not the US generally) it is the professor in charge of admissions and he/she actually hires students for the lab. If students from around the world expect that to be the case, the professor may have to deal with too many individual situations, so just makes a general statement.

It isn't, I suspect, a statement that you should not contact him/her, but a warning that you need to go through the administrative admission procedures first before you can be considered.

You can contact the prof for information or to express interest, of course, but be clear that you are also making a formal application through proper channels.

The contact isn't necessary, however. There will be time for that after you are accepted to the program.


Are salaries for academic jobs in New Zealand negotiable?

Your starting salary is indeed negotiable for New Zealand positions. Whether you get what you ask for will usually be tied to your relevant experience. This last point is related to your further question about experience post-phD. For research positions, your research output during your years post-PhD will be a strong driver for what your starting salary will be.


Should the distinction between bibliography and reference be maintained when writing a paper?

From a practical point of view, whenever you send your paper for a peer review, they check if you have all citations both in your text and in sources. It means that "yes" they must be cited.

Saying so, there is normally clear advise from a journal how to cite and produce bibliography. You should do what it says.

At last you can always solve the problem by adding one sentence in your text: "Additional information about ... can be found in [your references]." With this sentence everyone should be happy.


Should I list my work as dissertation or conference paper?

In a CV you try to organize your important personal information in a clear and useful way for others to see and gain a good perspective. In this case you have a thesis. It should clearly be listed so that it is clear it is one of the outcomes of your degree. It is commonplace for people to turn a thesis into papers but that usually involves rewriting the material substantially. Such papers will be listed under headings such as, for example, "Peer-reviewed articles", "Conference contributions", "Abstracts", etc. In your case you could add your article under a heading such as "Conference contributions", Non-reviewed articles" or "Other articles" (the later only makes sense if you have a heading "Peer-reviewed articles") and make sure it is clear that the heading also implies the articles are not peer reviewed.

If your article and your thesis is, in fact practically the same text with the same title, it would not be advisable to follow the guidelines outlined above. the reason is that it may seem to a reader of the CV as if you are trying to inflate your publication record. In that case you could perhaps make a note in the CV in conjunction with the thesis that it has also been published under the same name or to add it under a different heading but stating that the paper is the same as the thesis, thereby taking the possible edge of the double appearance.

In the end it is clearly not a problem to publish thesis material after a degree and still count both the thesis and the resulting article but the basic rule is that a specific text should not be counted twice. It would then essentially count as self-plagiarism. So just act responsibly and be open and honest about issues that can cause confusion or raise eye-brows.


What do people with bachelor's degrees in humanities actually end up doing?

The reason certain courses (engineering, law, medicine) are referred to as 'professional courses' is that they prepare one  for a particular profession, and that is the primary goal of the course.
In any other course, it is a good idea to assume that you are being taught various skills, but not necessarily being prepared for a career. To expect a career out of a humanities degree may therefore be misguided.  Best to look at it as a stepping stone that could lead you in a multitude of directions.


Minor(?) error introduced during typesetting

When you say that issuing a correction looks bad, I imagine that you mean issuing an Erratum/Corrigendum. Now, these really don't reflect that badly on you and your career in the first place, but the error honestly sounds so minor that an erratum would be rather overkill. Actually, I imagine many journals might even decline publishing an erratum for such a trivial case.

However, especially if the publication was quite recent, it might be possible to correct it anyway. At least some journals are willing to make small corrections to published articles, sometimes with a small notice, sometimes accompanied by something like a Publisher's note. In such cases it's quite common to see the journal accept responsibility for errors they've introduced in the notice. It might be worth checking if the journal would be willing to do that.


"Official" grade conversion is skewed at my disadvantage, how to proceed?

As someone who spent several years working in university admissions in the UK, I would suggest that you supply just your Italian transcript to the US university and let them figure out the grade conversions on their own. The US institution should have access to international grade conversion guidelines so it's likely that they'll convert your grades more reasonably than your own university has.

You might want to consider attaching an official English translation from a professional translation company so they can read the course titles etc. in English. Where I worked, we always asked for official translations in English but never for ECTS equivalents.

You can supply them with the supplement (and an explanation) later if they ask specifically for that.


Is it possible to cite from an unknown source without plagiarising?

Plagiarism is about inaccurately claiming a work as your own. Thus, as long as you make it clear that it's not yours and attribute the source as best you can, you need not fear an accusation of plagiarism.

Whether this is an appropriate source to cite, on the other hand, depends on how you are planning to use it and in what degree of formality.  Since this is unclear from your post, I will suggest a few possibilities along a spectrum:

If you are not formally publishing the image and are not dependent on its content, there is likely to be no problem and you can credit very informally. For example, I recently made a presentation that included an humorous image marked: "[Photo Credit: The Internet]".  Even copyright is unlikely to be an issue as long as you do best-effort attribution and aren't annoying a large corporation or unusually litigious artist.
If you are formally publishing the image, then the publication venue will need to have copyright issues resolved. For this, you either need to track down the author or else give up on using the image.  Here, you can use the standard forms for citing a website. That is likely to not be very helpful for anyone trying to trace the image, given how unstable and dynamic Pinterest is, but will at least follow the appropriate forms.
If you are actually relying on the technical content of the image, you probably need to find another source or generate the content yourself. Since you know nothing about the actual ultimate source, there is no scientific credibility to an anonymous snippet on the internet, and it needs to be treated accordingly: for all you know it could be from a UFOlogy pamphlet or a Chick tract.


Asked to draft own recommendation letter for faculty application

I request that the students I am to write recommendations for, including recommendations to faculty positions, provide me with an executive summary of the position they are applying for, and a bullet list of the strengths which they would like me to highlight that they feel would be relevant for that position.

I do not ask them to write the letter for me, just to give me enough input to help write an effective letter.


Do I have to sign a recommendation letter that will be submitted online?

Personally, I always sign my recommendation letters, including the ones submitted electronically.  In fact, I'm not sure I've ever submitted a physical recommendation letter.

I do this for two reasons:

In the United States, at least, it is still quite strongly the custom for such letters to be signed.
It at least proves that the person writing the letter has access to a copy of my signature.

Now, both of these might be a bit archaic in our modern networked world, but the customs haven't really shifted yet, and until they do, it's good to keep doing it the way that will be expected by many recipients.

That said, you certainly don't need to go through the hassle of printing, physically signing, and scanning: if you have a high-resolution image of your signature, you can affix that as an image in the appropriate part of your document.  Some word processors or PDF editors will also allow you to "digitally sign" and associate this with some form of cryptographic signature.

In short: sign your letter, but do it the easy and electronic way if you can.


What is a good answer for an interview question "Why do you want to teach at this teaching university?" (when there are several others nearby)

Let me elaborate on xLeitix's comment.  Applicants sometimes feel anxious about interview questions with hidden meaning or context.  The stereotypical example is "What would you say is your greatest weakness?", which is not a request to confess something awkward or damaging.  Instead it's a test of social competence, of whether the applicant can offer a smooth, natural response that sounds like it is addressing the question and avoids disclosing anything problematic without sounding arrogant either.  These sorts of questions are less common in academic interviews, so you can usually assume a question means more or less what it says.

In particular, this question is trying to gauge how well you would fit into the university and department.  Teaching universities can be really diverse in how they function, which students they serve, or what they consider their mission.  They are looking for someone who will participate enthusiastically and help make the department a better place, not just someone who is willing to teach there (or, worse yet, will feel bitter or resentful about not having found their dream job).

The worst case answer is "Gee, I don't know.  You have students, and I can teach.  What's not to like?"  That basically amounts to announcing that even you don't think you're a particularly good fit.  Your comments sound uncomfortably close to this, like you really don't care or see any relevant differences between these schools.  If that's the case, then you need to spend some time looking into them online or asking your friends or colleagues.  Unless you've applied to an extraordinarily narrow range of universities, I can't really believe they are indistinguishable.  And if they are, then you must have targeted this type of school intentionally, so you just need to explain why.

Austin Henley's answer provides a nice list of criteria you could keep in mind, and there are also big-picture issues.  Are these schools public or private?  How do they present themselves to the world?  Is there anything distinctive about their history, such as a religious or social mission (former or current)?  Is there any special focus, such as technical or liberal arts education?  What sort of student body do they serve?

There are no right or wrong answers here: one person might prefer to teach diverse and economically downtrodden students, while another might be excited about working with exceptionally well-prepared students from the elite.  What's important is that your answer should reflect some genuine resonance between you and the school.  If it sounds like you are saying something generic or canned, then it won't really help your case, but anything insightful or heartfelt could help.


Where and how to search for research problems?

Reading recent papers is a good way to come up with ideas for things to work on.  For example, the last section of a paper often lists open problems and possible topics for future research, and they may also be scattered throughout the paper.  Of course the author or other readers may be working on them, but that difficulty is unavoidable for any problem that isn't communicated privately to you.  Some of the advantages of this approach are:

You have some evidence that the answer isn't already known.  Of course maybe the author just didn't know it, but at least you are getting an expert opinion (which is particularly helpful if you aren't an expert yourself).
Your work may be of interest to other readers of this paper.  This avoids the difficulty of making up a topic and then discovering that you are unable to interest anyone in it.
The published papers on the topic let you calibrate your level of knowledge.  If you can read them, then you probably know enough to work on extensions.  If you can't, then you need to learn more.
There's some reason to think progress may be possible.

By contrast, I would absolutely avoid working on famous problems.  They satisfy 1 to 3 nicely, but the "famous" requirement specifically filters out any reasonable likelihood of a full solution, and progress towards a solution may be very difficult.  Unless you are extraordinarily talented or lucky, choosing problems because of their fame is a big step in the direction of becoming a failure as a researcher or even a crackpot.  Even if you are extraordinarily talented, there's no harm in starting with a warm-up goal, and this avoids the difficulty that many people have trouble estimating their own abilities.

As for how long it will take to solve a research problem, this is unanswerable.  If you are really lucky, you might make important progress within a few weeks.  If you get stuck in a rut or are missing some background, you might work fruitlessly for years on a problem that's not actually all that difficult.  And of course problems vary enormously in their difficulty.  With enough experience, you might be able to estimate how difficult or time-consuming certain problems might be, so you could guess what might make an appropriate Ph.D. thesis problem, for example.  However, even experts are sometimes wrong, and developing this sort of feeling takes substantial research experience.  When you are starting out, I don't think there's any reliable way to guess these sorts of things.  This is one reason why Ph.D. advisors are important: they can offer feedback and advice based on intuitions the student is still developing.

If you are working on research without experience or expert guidance, you could use the following guidelines.  Don't give up too quickly: anything worth publishing is worth spending weeks beating your head against with no apparent progress.  (Of course I don't mean staring at a blank piece of paper, but trying ideas and discovering they don't work, looking at special cases and examples, studying background that may be relevant, etc.)  Once you have a solid background in the relevant mathematics, which could take a long time depending on the field, you should probably be getting somewhere over a period of months.  By "somewhere", I don't necessarily mean clear progress towards a solution, but you should be able to articulate an understanding of the problem you didn't have when you started, you should be coming up with tangential or spin-off ideas that may not solve the problem but could be interesting in their own right, etc.  The ultimate test of successful research isn't whether you accomplish your original goals, but rather whether you find something interesting along the way.  On the other hand, if months go by and you don't seem to be coming up with any interesting ideas or understanding, then this is probably not a fruitful research topic with your current level of background and experience.

Of course you shouldn't take any advice like the last paragraph too seriously.  Research is a highly personal topic, and many people have different research styles.  However, it may give you an idea of one reasonable approach.


If I define acronyms in the abstract, should I define them again in the rest of the paper?

Abstracts are read separately from the paper itself. They aren't an introduction, but more of a condensed version.

So if the paper defines an acronym, it shouldn't rely on the abstract for it. On the other hand, the abstract is supposed to be fairly short, so there isn't usually much of a case for defining acronyms there.

It depends on the paper, of course, but consider spelling out the whole term in the abstract if it is referenced only once there.


Journal won't allow PhD student to be corresponding author

It is an extremely weird policy, and I never heard of any journal having a policy like this one.

I couldn't find a "general rule governing corresponding authors" that would apply to all the journals of the American Chemical Society.

In 2012, the editor on chief of ACS Nano wrote, in an editorial called "Who Are Corresponding Authors?",

  In order to be accessible to those requesting information or materials, the corresponding authors must be stable in their positions and locatable. Unless students or postdocs have long-term positions, it is typically not appropriate for these authors to be corresponding authors, even if they serve the function of submitting the manuscript. (There are occasional exceptions, such as where the senior author has passed away.)

Cf. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/nn301566x

Their policy (that doesn't say anything about having or not a diploma) seems really strict, and, in my opinion, outdated, but it answers your question

  What is the point of making someone corresponding author who doesn't have as much insights as I have?

Well, their idea (at least according to this editor) is that it is better to have a correspondent, even not aware of all the details of the publication, that no correspondent, because the "student without long-term position" left without leaving an address.


In IEEE format, How to cite a website when no author name is given?

In IEEE format, Should I use organization name in citation of a webpage when no author name is given?

Yes. It seems pretty reasonable that the organisation is the author of the content and holder of its copyright. This should apply to all citation styles and not just IEEE.

As an example, the Victoria University library has a how-to webpage explaining this:

  If a publication is published by an organisation, association or a corporation, and there are no personal authors' names listed on the page, then list that institution as an author (this use is known as listing a corporate author, as opposed to listing a personal author). The corporate author may also be provided as the publisher of a source if the publisher's information is not listed on the page.


How should I approach the editor if I have been omitted from the author list of a paper I contributed to?

You need to be very careful. It sounds like you are accusing your former PI of academic misconduct. Even if he committed misconduct, things can (and will) likely get messy fast.

Normally, I would only recommend approaching the editor after other avenues have been explored. For the case where the editor is an author and your former department head, it is going to be hard to avoid the editor. I would suggest you contact all the authors on the paper (this includes the editor/department head) and tell them you were surprised you were not an author. They will hopefully be able to clear up the misunderstanding. Potentially, they forgot to list you as an author, although that seems unlikely, and are willing to contact the journal to get you added. Alternatively, they decided your contribution did not warrant authorship.

If they do not think you deserve authorship, it is best to get their side of the story first. Maybe they recollected all your data and redid all the research that you were involved in, in which case your claims for authorship are weaker. Maybe their argument is that while your data and analysis are included, they do not think it was enough for authorship. Once they tell you their side of the story, if you still think you should be an author tell them why.

If you cannot resolve the authorship issue as a group, then you need to bring in your head of department. In your case, he will be aware of the issues, since he is also an author. Once you raise a formal complaint, he will hopefully hand it off to an independent person (e.g ., the head of a different department).

If the university cannot help you reach an agreement, then you need to approach the journal. Again, in your case the journal will likely be aware of the issue because the author is the editor. Hopefully, the issue will be handed off to an independent editor from the journal.

If you cannot get an independent person from your university or the journal, or you cannot reach an agreement regarding authorship, then you may want to contact COPE.


Does Utilitarian ethics have a place in Academia?

Yes, but not in the way you're thinking.
No, covering up a given researcher's misdeeds because their research is so important isn't acceptable under academic ethics, both under deontological ethics, but also under utilitarian ethics: almost all research is incremental in nature, with the potential direct human benefit being very small. Things like curing cancer or solving world hunger are very large, very difficult problems, that would require far more than a single researcher to solve, no matter how brilliant they might be. Further, by covering up a given researcher's misdeeds, you're creating an incentive (or, rather, removing a disincentive) that would act to increase other individuals to commit similar harms in the future.
However, there is a very important area where utilitarian ethics have a place in academia: the prioritization of research, through mechanisms like grant applications. When a grant committee is evaluating a grant application, they are carrying out a utilitarian calculation, comparing the benefits and costs of the research and thereby evaluating its utility.


Citing different web pages by the same author in APA

The issue is that in APA style the author and year are used in the in text citation keys and these keys need to be unambiguous. When you have the same authors, in the same order, and the same date of publication, you add a letter to the publication date. You do the same thing even when the publication date is unknown. According to the APA blog

  Also remember that if you have two or more “in press” or “no date”
  references with the same authors in the same order, you should use
  lowercase letters—a, b, c, and so forth ... The only difference between these types of references and references with publication years is that “in press” and “no date” references contain a hyphen before the a, b, and so forth:

  American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-a). The knowledge ...

  American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (n.d.-b). A strategy to ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (2011a). The power ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (2011b). Task complexity ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (in press-a). The rapid learning ...

  Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (in press-b). Sometimes a child ...


Using well-established abbreviations for new concepts in the same field

Yes, you should avoid using well-established acronyms to mean something else. I would especially avoid those like the ones you present as examples that are likely more recognizable as the acronym than what the acronym stands for: they are effectively words by themselves with a specific meaning.


How to share a scientific dataset with the research community

Although I think the first thing is to talk to your institute, and if they already have a platform or webpage to share data, use that one in the first place.

You also could use figshare, datahub, or zenodo to share your data.
Actually the OpenData SE site opened a datahub site for OpenData SE, see this question:
How do I share Open Data with others on this SE site?

Furthermore, Open Data commons has some good information on how to share data, and what licenses to use.
Also see:
How can I Share my Data Sets Without Worrying About Copyright Issues?


Topical tag cloud generator for researchers/academics

As I understand the main issues are:

how to extract text from publications,
how to extract disciplines/subjects from the text.

In the first case, following @ff524's comment, see Creating a word cloud from PDF documents. In general, you can try to search for pdf to text conversion (as PDF is a graphical format, sometimes it is tricky to get all content in the exact order, but for this application it should work fine).

When it comes to topic extraction, and elimination of common words, you need to compare your n-grams (i.e. sequences of n words) to some other dataset (for the one by Google). But maybe you need to compare it to n-grams created from scientific words (to eliminate see Fig, et al., previous works).

However, even carefully looking at frequencies is not enough to eliminate all "common words". For example, if you paper discipline-specific words or expressions, it may be hard to distinguish them from discipline names. And, depending on your taste, you may or may not want to include them.

To extract disciplines you need to have some list of it, so you can compare with it. Some time ago I was collecting one (see this gist). One trick to make one is to look at Wikipedia for articles related to your branch.

If you are more in natural language processing, you can look at:

P. Buitelaar, T. Eigner, Topic Extraction from Scientific Literature for Competency Management

or search for similar publications.

For tag cloud visualization you can use http://www.wordle.net/ or something similar. But beware, some people are highly opinionated against tag clouds.

SIDE REMARK:

Personally, I think that graphs are a better tool to convey information, as similar concepts are clustered together (in opposition to having a soup of concepts). See things in line of e.g. TagOverflow or maps of SE (disclaimer: these are my projects).
Once you get tags and some quantity relating them, it is easy to make a nice graph with Gephi.


Is it typical to work 60 hours per week as a PhD student?

The experience of working long hours, for little pay and little power is, unfortunately, an almost universal experience for science PhD students around the world. In the UK and many other countries PhD students are not considered employees at all, and so have no contract of any kind - they are not paid a salary, but a stipend (i.e. a grant to allow them to live).
The situation is difficult because even if you have a good supervisor, there is still a minimum amount that is needed to pass a PhD (which is outside the supervisors control), often a maximum time limit to complete it (also outside the control of the supervisor), and more often than not, a the stipend/salary paid to the student is also outside the control fo the supervisor.
However 60 hours a week is not normal for the simple reason that very few people can be productive for 60 hours a week on a long term basis. So a supervisor that demands this is not only exploiting the student, but also mostly likely not getting good science out of it either. We all have to work 60 hours a week occasionally (and that goes for pretty much any professional job), but as a basic expectation it is in no ones interests.
EDIT:
To clarify the above - I both think working 60 hours a week is unhealthy and unproductive AND that is is less common than people think it is. Long hours, yes. But 60 hours is more than people realize it is, and few students I have known work 60 hours a week, week in, week out for years on end. Not no one, but definitely not "typical" as the question asked.


How to deal with sensitive individual data in open science?

Great question! Unfortunately, I think there are not going to be great answers. Three ideas have come up in my discussions with users of registry data:

Describe data access procedures completely: Be as transparent as you possibly can be about how you acquired the data, how others can acquire them, and what the policies and costs associated with acquisition would be.

Show everything that you can: While you cannot share the raw data, you can likely share a considerable amount of information from the data. For example, you can include descriptive statistics and graphics that convey the univariate and multivariate patterns in the data. You may also be able to share certain aggregated statistics (e.g., data aggregated at a block or city level).

Offer to collaborate: You may have privileged access to data (i.e., other simply will not be able to access it). In that case, to the extent allowed by data access rules, you should offer the ability to run analyses for others and collaborate with them using the data. This would mean that even your critics can use the data in a meaningful public exchange of ideas, even if the data themselves cannot be made public.


This really depends on your personal factors; there's no one-size-fits all answer to your question. Thus, your question is likely to be closed. Still, I'll take a stab at it.

Disclaimer: my background is physics and CS, so I'm completely unqualified to answer your question. Feel free to disregard everything I say.

Nonetheless...

I don't think a master's degree in history from Pittsburg State (not to be confused with the University of Pittsburgh) will get you very far on the academic job market. Of course, good work speaks for itself, and PSU may be better regarded if you want to stay in/near Kansas long term. But jobs teaching history (particularly at the college level) are very competitive and not terribly well paying. $18K per semester seems very high given that reality.

But, I don't like your other option much better. Minnesota is a well-regarded school, but this is even more expensive and gives you a lower degree in another field with high supply and low demand. I do not know what the job market for "philosophical counseling" may be, but I suspect that it's also competitive and not very well paying. You could well end up spending $100K (or, worse, taking out $100K in student loans) to get this bachelor's and then a master's, only to end up with the same job you have now.

My advice is to calculate the full cost between now and graduation for both of these options, and weigh that against the (realistic) job prospects that these will open for you. You may well want to consider other options altogether. It is admirable that you want to go back to school, but I would really hate to see you invest so much time/money and end up without a viable path to a job.


How to mail a professor informing that I am interested working at different place

These sorts of things are best handled face to face, not by email which is less personal. Go see him. Tell him about the situation and that it is an opportunity that you don't think you can pass up. Thank him for his help and interest. Let him know that your project will need to wait or be abandoned for you to do this internship.

If he is doing his job properly, then he will support you. And the face-to-face can actually strengthen your relationship for the future.

You can, of course, say all those things in an email, but it won't have the same effect or impact.


Citing a source that is yet to be published in a conference proceedings

Just cite it as you would normally, but add a note stating it will be presented in the future.

Just make sure you get an advance copy or a final draft to have some solid basis for any claims you do on it. You might want to state this in your note in the bibliography. Also make sure to update the reference as needed.


Well, I am a professional number theorist, so let me give you some feedback that you don't seem to have received yet:

Your paper containing an elementary proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is wrong.

This is what I think, and I am confident that this is what more than 99 out of 100 professional number theorists would think.  Here by "wrong" I mean as a real person would use the term: i.e., probably wrong.  I obviously don't know that it is wrong, and I couldn't without reading it, but in real life there is almost nothing that one knows is right or wrong: we have to go based on probability.   Let me try an analogy: suppose I am an amateur aerospace engineer. I claim that I can walk into anyone's home and, using only the materials that are already there, build a ship that can safely carry me to the moon and back.  Wouldn't you say that I'm wrong?  Wouldn't you say that, if anything, the fact that we have been to the moon and back gives us a better sense of the resources necessary for that, and that gives you more confidence that my estimation is wildly off? That while it's of course possible that I'm right, if I were I would have to be in possession of such vastly superior knowledge and expertise that I could easily provide evidence of it on a smaller scale? That's pretty much how we number theorists feel.

Let me make one point about amateur mathematicians: it is exceedingly rare for an amateur mathematician to solve a problem that has been worked on unsuccessfully by the mathematical mainstream, but it has happened sometimes (more or less depending upon what you mean by an amateur mathematician, but if for instance you count brilliant young people without a college degree: sure, it has happened several times).  However I know of no examples in which an amateur mathematician has solved a significant mathematical problem without having done other substantial mathematical work already.  So...is this your first math paper, or the first substantial piece of mathematics you think you've done?  If so, I really think it's wrong: that's just not how success in any field works.  Nobody picks up a tennis racket for the first time and discovers they can play at the professional level.  On the other hand, if you do already have published papers, then certainly mention that in your correspondence: it will make a big difference.

Anyway, if you want to find out why your proof is wrong, then yes: I agree with the other answers who say that you should pay to enlist the services of a tutor.  If you go to any math department with number theorists and say that you have reading and thinking about FLT and have some ideas you'd like to clarify and are willing to pay, say, $30 an hour to get one-on-one tutoring, I think you're very likely to find some takers.

Let me say finally that my goal in writing this answer is not at all to crush your dreams.  Rather, I hope that you actually like mathematics enough to move past your thought that you have proven FLT and engage with the subject matter more deeply.  Mathematics is a lot deeper and richer than I think you know...in some wonderful ways.  Good luck.


From someone who's been there - I started in a PhD program in mathematics, received only a "Masters pass" on my written qualifiers the first time around, retook a year later to the same result. Left the program with a masters, since we only had two tries. Fast forward 2 years and I'm admitted into a different PhD program in mathematics. This school has oral qualifiers. First attempt at that and I literally break down and cry and ask to just stop and try later. Reprepared, and nailed it the next time.

I just finished my PhD in mathematics. I took longer than most due to qualifier issues at one school, changing to another, changing areas of mathematics, and dealing with increased imposter syndrome due to the experiences at school 1. Long story short, it's not a competition with other students. Don't compare yourself to others. You were admitted to the program and you can do it. Study hard, ask the professors for advice and follow it. If it doesn't happen, it's OK. You can still achieve a PhD, just perhaps at different university and at a different time. I am proof of that. Best of luck.


I want to apply for a Masters degree but have a low average, what can I do?

This really depends on how "low" your GPA really is. Generally universities require a GPA of 3.0 or higher. However, many universities will also accept students who have an average of 3.0 or higher for their final 60 credits (or final two years). Depending on how important this is to you, you can do the following:

Enroll in related undergraduate classes at an accredited institute and get good grades. Many schools will consider your total undergraduate GPA from all institutions you have attended (despite the fact that you already had an undergrad degree). I've known of people successfully doing this.
Get a short course-based master's degree at a smaller university with lax admission requirements and try to get a high GPA. After graduating you can try to get into a better school with higher admission requirements. I had a cousin who did this and moved on to get a graduate degree from a highly reputable university.

Both of these obviously require you to spend considerable money and time (a year or more) on this.


What strategies are there for finding literature for a literature survey when the terminology used is diverse?

I find searches based on keywords to be quite limited. You can play around with various keywords and see how far you get, but this only helps to get a first cut.

To deepen your search, use a snowball and reverse snowball procedure. This should get you around the problem that authors use different terminology. Be aware, however, that this may introduce some selection bias that you need to hedge against.

One way to reduce the bias and to broaden (rather than deepen) the search in addition to starting with diverse keywords is to ask around. You can just asks your colleagues but you can also get as formal as you want and conduct expert interviews or even surveys.


What happens to preprints after the information contained in them gets published in a peer-reviewed journal?

In general, preprints continue to remain available even after publication. In fact, on most preprint servers, such as arXiv, it is impossible to completely remove a preprint once submitted, and any updates are stored as new versions. The preprint itself is a form of publication, where you can disseminate results, get feedback, and get a time stamp for your work without waiting for a lengthy peer review process.
Preprints may be cited and used to derive other works before they are published, so it is important to preserve past versions for the references to be coherent, particularly since a paper may be updated several times before publication in a peer-reviewed venue. The preprint version may be more likely to receive corrections and updates after publication, since that is easier than updating the journal version. It may also contain extra supplementary material missing from the published version due to length constraints, and so it is not necessary that the two versions are identical.
Regarding citations, services such as Google Scholar are usually able to interpret several versions of the same paper as a single entry. However, issues with this do exist, and have so far not been satisfactorily resolved.


Where to draw the line between support, plagiarism and academic dishonesty?

Activities 1-3 are perfectly fine, and fall within the category of teaching and learning.  There is no more issue with these activities than if you undertake approved university courses during your program.  Activity 4 is the only one that could potentially raise issues, depending on your field of study and the extent of the assistance.  If you are undertaking a thesis where the primary activity is coding and debugging, where you are expected to do these activities yourself, then it might not be okay to have assistance on this task.  If you are outside of that field then debugging assistance in your coding is probably analogous to copy-editing services for the textual elements of the thesis, and in that case you should seek guidance from relevant standards applicable to your university (here is an example of applicable standards for copy-editing of theses in Australian universities).

In any case, you should raise this matter with your thesis supervisor, disclose the details of the assistance you got, and make sure you give an appropriate acknowledgement in your thesis, so that the reviewers are aware of the matter.  Your supervisor will be able to point you to relevant policies that apply at your university, and will be in a good position to assess whether the help you have sought raises any issues.  Unless your thesis is specifically about programming/debugging tasks, there is probably reasonably wide scope for basic debugging services (analogous to light copy-editing services) and so it will probably not be an issue.


Is it plagiarism to hire a freelance programmer for an assignment but change a lot of it before you submit it?

If you used code that you paid someone else to write (or found for free online) for an assignment and don't disclose it, then you have plagiarized.

Plagiarism is the practice of using someone else's work and pretending it is your own, in a situation where there is an expectation of originality (as there is in coursework assignments).

If you use someone else's work and you disclose it (by citing it and telling the professor you have done so), and then build on that work by adding your own work, then you haven't plagiarized. You may not have done a good job on the assignment - your professor may decide that the work you have done on your own is not sufficient to earn a good grade, or your professor may set a rule that students are not allowed to use outside sources and then penalize you for not following the parameters of the assignment; but as long as you are honest about the source of the work, it isn't plagiarism.

But it is absolutely required that you make it clear what part of the work is not your own, and what parts are your original contributions.


Important factors for hiring a young mathematician

I don't have anything essentially divergent to say from the other answers, but since you inquired about mathematics specifically and I am a mathematician who has been (and currently am) involved in postdoctoral and tenure track hiring, I thought it might be useful for me to weigh in as well.  Lacking true inspiration, let me just comment on your criteria.
(Let me also assume that we are talking about jobs at a "research university", as it seems you are.)

Research experience (research articles, research talks, expository articles, perhaps books).

Mathematicians are judged on a combination of research promise and research success: as you get older, one looks increasingly for evidence that the former has been converted into the latter.  However, for every kind of research job in mathematics, they are hiring you on the basis of the work they expect you to do in the future.  So, for instance, if you have already solved a major problem, you can coast on that for a time but after a while people want to hear what you are working on now.  Research talks are probably the best way of exploring the dichotomy between past and future research: as such, they are very important whenever they exist, which is almost always on the tenure track job market and in a small (but perhaps increasing?) minority of postdoctoral jobs.
Expository articles generally do not count towards the research component of your application.  (If someone is counting papers, then if you have 8 research papers and 1 expository paper then people will probably say you have 9 papers altogether, so it counts a little bit.  But if pressed, its value could contract considerably: e.g. if there are worries that a candidate has too few papers, than a paper viewed as expository will probably not allay this worry.) Strategically it is probably best to advertise expository articles as having some teaching / mentoring / service component, if at all possible.
With regard to writing books: one of my most distinguished colleagues, Dino Lorenzini, wrote an excellent and rather successful book near the beginning of his career.  He now tells anyone who will listen that junior faculty should not write books.  Of course sometimes the heart wants what it wants, but from a strategic perspective I think this is eminently sound, and I say this as someone who may turn around and write some books now that I am solidly into my mid-career.

Teaching experience (tutoring, undergraduate courses, graduate courses, etc).

Successful teaching experiences are indeed valued for a research job.  At most research universities teaching is still a main component of one's job and, especially, of one's promotion and tenure packages.  Most research departments are looking most of the time for thoroughly solid teachers rather than especially brilliant or innovative ones.  Your teaching dossier should convey most of all that the department who hires you will never have to think about your teaching in a negative way.
Some graduate students do not get to do instruction at all (as opposed to TA work: grading, leading problem sessions, and so forth).  There is a big difference between TA work and instruction, and as a hirer I am very wary of candidates who attempt to convince me that they will be a successful instructor based only on TA experience.  I would strongly advise every math graduate student to be the instructor of record for at least one successful undergraduate course (where "successful" means you can get a strong teaching letter out of the experience).
Teaching experience at the graduate level is almost unheard of for graduate students and is far from guaranteed in postdocs.  Even within my own department, some of my colleagues feel strongly that postdocs should teach topics graduate courses in their areas of interest, whereas other colleagues feel that it is the job of the tenure track faculty to teach these courses.  I lean more towards the latter, and I don't feel that teaching graduate courses is an important part of a tenure track job application: I would be equally impressed or more with other kinds of interactions with the graduate program, e.g. participating in or organizing seminars, reading theses, and so forth.
I'm having a hard time thinking about how tutoring experience could play a significant role.  If you have founded the Khan Academy or the Euclid Lab, you would probably get some attention / consideration for this.  Much less and your employers are unlikely to care.

Academic background (grades, the university of graduation, current affiliation, etc).

No research university that I know of asks for grades or transcripts for candidates for faculty positions.  Of course your pedigree -- i.e., where you did your undergraduate and graduate work, and your current institution -- is of some importance, but not that much importance.  Anyway, what's done is done here: presumably you took what opportunities you could to attend / work at better, rather than worse, institutions!

Reference (who is writing reference letter and how he is writing it).

Or she!  When you are applying for your first postdoc, your adviser's letter may well be the most important part of the application: most graduates, even very strong ones, cannot speak about their research accomplishments and near future goals as convincingly as their advisers can.  Later on your adviser's letter gets less important, but you probably get more letters overall, and they are always a key part of the application.

Personal (natural) features (nationality, race, language, etc).

In the United States it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race.  Nationality is probably a no-go as well.  Language issues are important: if English is not your native language, employers will (or at any rate, should) look carefully at your skills.

Social and family status (connections, marriage, etc).

Professional connections can be important; e.g. they come out in recommendation letters and in your academic pedigree.  It is illegal for employers to inquire about your marital status, sexual orientation, or whether you have children.  It is not illegal for you to bring these things up, and if you have a "two-body problem" -- i.e., a partner who is also an academic -- than you should do so at some point, and that brings an extra layer of complication to the process.  But if a candidate is not looking for an academic job for her partner, I honestly don't care at all whether she is married, gay, celibate, and so forth.  I can assure you that in most American departments any such talk about these matters in the context of a hiring discussion would be rapidly quelled.


Shall acronyms in scientific papers be expanded exactly once?

First, try to avoid acronyms unless you repeat it frequently.

In the case you mention, occurring twice, an acronym is not warranted. New acronyms may be useful if it is likely that it will be used over and over again, both in your paper and in subsequent ones. It is difficult to say how many repetitions is needed before an acronym may become a viable option.

Acronyms generally make a paper less readable. We all know some like DNA or UN and particularly in the first case the acronym is easier to remember than the actual words. So use acronyms sparingly, be careful about what you abbreviate, and avoid publishing acronyms that only your research group uses unless it starts to become a standard (identified by other people also using it in presentations etc.). I think many acronyms start by it becoming jargon first. Trying to be restrictive is the best measure.


A theorem exists in a book but not in a journal - is this considered as a publication?

First, you should take pride in proving a theorem that was significant enough for someone to attach your name to it. Even if it was "not very important", as you say, it was still enough to be worth mentioning. Not many undergraduates achieve that.

When you submit to a journal, you don't submit a theorem, of course -- you submit a complete paper. A typical paper has more than one theorem, unless the one theorem is particularly good. In this case, if you describe your theorem as nontrivial but "not very important", it seems unlikely to make a paper on its own.

If you write a paper, you could certainly include the theorem in question. Because the original book attributes the theorem to you, everyone knows it's your theorem, so there is no issue with 'stealing credit'. In the paper, you could say something like

  The following theorem has appeared in Smith [1, Theorem 4.5].

just before you state and prove the theorem.  This sort of thing is routine, and as long as the theorem fits nicely into the paper it is unlikely that the referee will complain.  To answer part of the question, you should mention that the theorem has appeared in the book already.

At the same time, you will need to make sure that the new content of the paper is enough to merit publication (that is, the previously unpublished results that you put in your paper).   As you read more papers in your area, you will get a better sense of how this works in practice.

I think you have also asked whether you can include the book in your vita. The answer is no. But at various times you are asked to write a research statement or research narrative. Because the book attributes the theorem to you, you can state and take credit for the theorem in your research statement. This is particularly relevant if you are applying to graduate schools.


Is it better to pull out of exams or fail them?

You should go and speak to your course lecturers as soon as possible, and put in a request for special consideration on the basis of illness.  Your university should have a policy of how to apply for special consideration, and the criteria for granting consideration.  This differs from place to place, but most universities are accommodating of problems caused by illness (assuming you can give evidence of this via medical certificates, etc.).  Given your position, I would suggest you request for them to allow you to defer assessment in your courses until you have had time to recover from your illness and study for the exams.  If this is too much for them, then as a fall-back position, ask them to allow you to withdraw from the courses without failure.  Whatever you do, don't just make a unilateral decision on what to do without speaking to your lecturers --- discuss your circumstances with them and find out their position.


For undergraduates, is publishing "weak" research better than not publishing?

There are very few circumstances under which I think it's a bad idea for undergraduates to write research papers. These primarily have to do with the quality of the journal: so long as it is a reputable, peer-reviewed journal, I wouldn't be too concerned with the "strength" of the work.

The reason is that publishing while an undergraduate—particularly as a primary author—demonstrates that you have already started to learn the basics of how to do research in your field. This means that you're less of an "unknown" quantity, and therefore less of a risk for a department reviewing your application. If you don't publish the research, then there's no tangible proof, and then you need to rely on your research supervisor to make that point in a letter of recommendation. (But then the question becomes: "if she could have written a paper, why didn't she?")

As for the exceptions above, so long as you don't publish in "vanity" journals (those which will publish basically anything, so long as people pay the appropriate publication "fees"), you should be fine.


Questions regarding post-PhD research jobs (specifically mathematics)

Discalimer: IANADG, I am not a differential geometrist...

Still, some potentially-relevant fields:

Architecture and materials industry: Surfaces and bodies with complex structures, their behavior, the forces applied to them, their expansion, contortion etc. with weather or with load changes and so on. Specifically, I can imagine a bunch of relevant applications in 3d-printing. This might be relevant (although it's not a specific workplace)
Car industry, for similar reasons
Computer vision and image/video  processing: lots of geometry and lots of derivation going on there. Just as an example, read this (but )

I'll also make another, more concrete suggestion: Various countries have academic-oriented placement/recruitment agencies. While those obviously don't know you perfectly well and can't cater to your interests exactly, they could interest you in a selection of potential positions which you might find appealing - or, at least, will help you realize what kind of work is out there. Also, an up-to-date LinkedIn profile has a bit of that same effect.


Postdoctoral job search: positions and job titles

Contrary to StrongBad, I would say there are important non-terminological differences. While both are junior positions that a recent PhD grad may hold, at my university, a postdoc or Postdoctoral Researcher is intended to be a temporary position for 2-ish years. On the other hand, the Research Associate title is the first in a sequence of permanent full-time research staff positions that goes Research Associate, Research Scientist, and then Senior Research Scientist. While there is no tenure for these positions, the levels are intended to parallel the professor levels here (Assistant, Associate, (full) Professor), and the requirements for promotion are similar (minus teaching).

These permanent positions are expected to continue as long as there is funding to cover them, whereas postdocs are expected to move on after a few years. Given the commitment, most professors, especially the junior ones, will not have Research Associate positions to offer. These are more often affiliated with large labs, centers, or institutes that are large enough and diverse enough to be able to offer long-term funding stability.

There are other differences as well. Postdocs at my university require a special exception to be allowed PI their own grants while Research Associates may PI them from the start without special permission. RAs usually not involved in teaching, where postdoc positions seem to be more flexible in this regard. Also, given the permanence, RAs come with considerably higher status than postdocs, though the respect doesn't really kick in until Research Scientist is reached. Postdocs are a further training position intended to allow a recent grad to finish publishing things from their thesis, branch out into some new areas, and get ready for a faculty position.


Submitting thesis without supervisors' reviews

That depends, first of all, on the PhD regulations of your department or your university. The conditions that have to be satisfied in order to submit a thesis vary from one institution to the other.


Do all the co-authors of a publication own the content and may use RAW DATA, text, figure or table for their own publication?

If authors A-E publish data, then author F can freely use that data. Author C has the same rights as author F: The data is public (to subscribers), anyone can use it.

  After asking the editor permission that co-author C have (he is limited to re-use only 3 tables or figures), do co-author C has the right to publish part of theses data in a new paper as a unique author?

By stating "[author C] is limited to re-use only 3 tables or figures," the editor only seems to be considering copyright. (The consideration seems rather naive, because using three tables or figures might not constitute a copyright violation.)

You can freely use all published data, you cannot include all published data (that might be a copyright violation).

  these data are considered to represent (30%) of the data set for the
  new paper.

That might be too much data to reproduce -- you'll need to consider copyright issues. This probably isn't an issue, because you needn't reproduce everything, e.g., From A et al. [Their Table 1, X], we can infer Your Table 1.

  The same may
  be also applied to the raw data already published as supporting data?

Yes, you can use all published data.


Arrive early and choose a good seat. Focus on the exam and take a bit of care that your work isn't easily visible. Beyond that, relax as much as you can, especially about the circumstances.

I wouldn't raise any issue with a proctor unless you actually need to, but then, don't hesitate to ask to be reseated. You don't need to offer an explanation unless asked. But you shouldn't have any negative consequences if you need to act.

Don't do anything that might be interpreted as disruptive such as shouting at someone copying.


Finding Article Template for New Journal - PRX Quantum

I suggest you use the prx option included in REVTeX-4.2, e.g. using
\documentclass[prx,twocolumn,english,superscriptaddress,floatfix,longbibliography]{revtex4-2} (Without having compared too closely, the style used by PRX Quantum seems to be the same as in PRX.) If you have an earlier version of REVTeX that doesn't support prx, just use the preset for another APS journal. Either way, they'll handle the minutiae of formatting should the manuscript be accepted.
It's not inappropriate to ask journal staff about templates, but they state that submissions in REVTeX or MS Word are preferred, and I think using prx is the closest you can get using REVTeX at the moment.


Whom is a diversity statement written for?

The purpose of having a diversity statement is that you can honestly say that you have one if anybody asks.

The people who will read them would include:

People who are told they have to read them.
People who have nothing better to do.
People who want to confirm that you really do have a diversity statement.

Don't assume that anybody takes any relevant decisions based on the diversity stament.  The people who make decisions will either continue to be fair to all candidates, or will continue to be prejudiced.  Writing a diversity statement won't change that.


Ph.D. studies in Management field after Masters of science in Mechatronics from German university

Yes, you are. In Germany, it doesn't really matter what exactly your masters degree was, as long as it's close enough to give you a good background for your PhD studies. Basically, your masters degree should enable you to self study whatever you need to work on your PhD thesis with very little help from your professor. If it does that, then it is close enough.

Now the difficulty is finding a professor who will take you on as a PhD student. With your masters thesis already in the field of your choice, this should be doable despite the different degree subject.


Details an applicant should include/exclude in an introductory letter to a prospective grad school adviser?

I have a list of things you should do from my seniors (Some might disagree):

Try not to over-sell yourself. There is a fine line between stating facts about yourself and boasting. Stay on the former side.
Try not to mention things and leave them abruptly or incompletely. For e.g., Don't say "I was involved with a project in the University of X where we studied Cancer Treatment." (Thats it). What did you do? Where did it lead? What is the status now? Thats the crux of the information and sadly, that is left out.
Have an interesting question or comment in the mail. Merely stating that you read a paper or attended his talk is not enough. Billions of other students will be stating the same. What made you like it? Why was it relevant to you?
Side note: Surprisingly, many professors who I mailed have been interested on how I stumbled on his paper.
Never ask direct questions that the professor wouldn't like answering (At least in the first mail). Asking him about his funding status isn't the best idea in the first mail. This is true for many reasons: For one, most profs wouldn't like telling you such details without you proving you are worth it (Why would they?). Secondly, your intentions are getting obfuscated. Are you really interested in the professor ( & his research) or his money? If his research was interesting but he couldn't fund you for X years, would you still go?
If this wasn't obvious, don't mass mail/mail merge.
Be honest about what you say. This includes no exaggeration.
Make it short. No one likes reading a billion lines to find out who you are.
Emphasize your work and what differentiates you from the rest rather than your grades and scores. Grades and scores (GRE/AGRE) are bonuses (or deal breakers) but they are secondary.


Is it possible for me to apply for a student and working visa to obtain a post-graduate degree?

I don't think a higher national diploma (HND) degree is recognized as the equivalent of the bachelor's degree from a regular university. Consequently, it is unlikely you would be able to use it to gain entry to a master's program in either the US or Canada.

I can't guarantee this is the way it works in Canada, but at least in the US, most students on visas have limited ability to work outside of the university, and certainly are unlikely to earn enough money to cover tuition as well as living expenses—the wages for typical student employment is on the order of $10/hour, and few students work more than about 20 hours per week. (That's approximately $10,000 per year.)


Is it normal for a PhD program to retract or delay financial offer for international student?

Many departments guarantee that their students will be funded got a given period of time, although they can't provide specific details on where the money will come from in advance. That's probably what's going on here; they can't issue the letter yet because they don't know what they should write.

If you can't afford to wait to apply for the visa, then you should contact the international office at the school you'll be attending, as Bill Barth suggests in his comment. They should have plenty of experience issuing such documentation, or helping incoming students to get the information they need for their applications.


Why are some "online first" articles assigned to a journal issue much faster than others

There are several variations in process that I have seen that may be relevant here, any of which may strongly affect the time between an article going online and the time at which it formally appears in an issue:

The "online first" version of an article is often not quite the final version, and proofing and processing can proceed in any where from a day or two to multiple months, depending on the responsiveness and attentiveness of the particular set of involved authors, handling editor, and processing staff.
Some articles may be expedited to try to avoid a scoop or delayed in order to synchronize with a companion article still undergoing review and revision.
Even if an article isn't part of a dedicated special issue, the journal may choose to cluster or distribute topics and themes.
The computation of metrics like impact factor are still typically linked to formal issue rather than online first date, and a journal may play games with lead time on articles it thinks will become well cited in order to manipulate these metrics.
Finally, all of the above may be amplified by the fact that the article is already effectively published and accessible online, leading both editors and authors to be less concerned about when it is later bundled into an issue.


Can I submit just two great letters of recommendation if the application calls for three?

If the application calls for three letters of recommendation and you only submit two, your application may be considered incomplete and may not be considered at all.

So if you don't have a third letter, you're going to have a problem. But if the third letter is weak, it will hurt your application, too, which means you're stuck between a rock and a hard place.


Should I cancel / alter office hours for committee meetings?

My feeling is that it is fine to cancel or reschedule office hours when other responsibilities conflict, provided:

You announce it to students several days in advance;
You tell students that you  are happy to meet them at another time, if they make an appointment.


Is it acceptable for me (an undergrad) to call professors and other research professionals by their first names?

In all the years at the university, I only called the professors and lecturers by their last name and a doctor prefix. I also used to call them Professor + Last Name.

But never by their first names as far as they were older than me, they were professors and more important, it was not a custom in the universities I studied to call professors by their first names only (it was somehow impolite to call a professor by his first name only, even by other professors or colleagues).

It usually goes back to the custom. Sometimes the professors themselves prefer to be called by their first names. See how others call professors and see if it is polite or not. But my prefer is always Doctor + Last Name.


As a student, can I publish a paper without including the head of the lab as co-author, against his wishes?

To help answer the question "is it ok to publish without a supervisor/head of lab?", consider the following points:

Having more names listed as authors doesn't dilute your own contribution. At job interviews, you will be asked which of your articles you consider the most significant, and what was your contribution to them: your ability to explain these points has nothing to do with the author list.
Having a more experienced researcher co-sign one of your articles may attract more citations. When writing, nobody should ignore previously published relevant work; in practice, getting cited is easier when co-signing with "big names" in a field (not saying I like this situation, but it is what it is...).
Simply by allowing you to work in their lab, this person made a significant contribution to the article (although not a "substantial intellectual contribution"), in the sense that the article would not be the same without you being able to do work in this lab. Some might think this is what the acknowledgments section of an article is for; it depends how you used the lab's resources (was it more like a service that you could have easily found somewhere else, or did you benefit from this lab's unique expertise or equipment?). If it looks more like a collaboration, including this person as author would be fair.