Math teaching job after PhD in the United States for a foreigner

Is the salary increasing from 1 to 3?

Generally, yes.

  This is what I would expect, but I heard that, for example, the salary of a high school teacher is higher than the salary of a no tenure track position/ lecturer even at a good university. Is this true?

The median 2012-2013 starting salary for US high school teachers was (ugh) $36,141.  This varies considerably based on the state: see here.  There is so much variation in the nature of a non-tenure track university position as to dissuade me from trying to look up figures, but in the cases I know of non-tenure track teaching positions at universities which are (i) full-time and (ii) with a PhD, their starting salaries are at least $45K.

In 2013 the median annual salary for US high school teachers was $55,360.  Teachers generally have strong unions and get steady annual raises, which is something that university professors have had a lot of trouble with in recent years, and non-tenure track faculty even more so.  Most people I know who are PhDs and have been in non-tenure track teaching positions for at least ten years are making $50K to $60K.  I would not be surprised if the median salary for these positions was less than $55K.

Note also that the average US high school teacher certainly does not have a PhD.  (In fact, fewer than one percent of such teachers have a PhD.  This is such a small percentage that the "converse percentage" of PhDs who go on to teach high school must be rather small as well.  The last link is to an article which explores this a bit.)  In the realm of high school teaching, having a PhD puts you into a very elite group which is competitive for the best teaching assignments, the best students, and so forth.  If you have a PhD, I think you would have an easier time bringing home a salary upwards of $75K as a high school teacher than as a non-tenure track college faculty member.

  Would the PhD be enough to teach in a high school?

In many states, public high school teachers need to be certified.  My understanding is that certification is not require for private high schools (though this too probably varies by state) and I know of at least some private high schools which do not require it.  Anyway, though I have not done it, my understanding is that certification is a fairly easy process compared to getting a PhD.  In fact many students with teaching interests acquire this certification before they graduate, so it can't be that bad.

  And also, is it gonna be much harder for a non american to get hired at a high school rather than a college?

Sorry, I don't really know.  My guess is that if you do not already have a green card and are looking for immigration status coming from your teaching job, that will be harder.  If you are a permanent resident, speak fluent and intelligible English, and have a PhD (again, this confers highly elite status among high school teachers) from an American university, you're going to look like a catch.  Do recall that America is a nation of immigrants.  If you're teaching in an urban environment, there will be many other foreigners and first generation Americans milling about.  If you go to a small town, maybe they'll chase you out with pitchforks...but probably only if you have bolts sticking out of your neck.

  Would a position in either of the 3 types of institution give me holidays for the summer? I assume high schools are closed in the summer, but maybe colleges will require to teach during summer.

Yes, you should get summers off in all three positions.  For high school this is of course one of the major perks of the job.  In a college or university they will probably offer you summer teaching, and they may pay you little enough to make that attractive, but you certainly don't have to.

Let me put in a vote for high school teaching.  America needs competent, intelligent, serious high school teachers more than anything else I can think of.  Like many jobs, it has some negative aspects, but it's truly important, good work.


Is it acceptable for a graduate student to use their university email and affiliation in furtherance of a commercial interest?

Well, I'd start with university technology-use policies, which this student is quite likely to have broken. Where I am, policy contains the following stipulation:

Commercial, Political, and Non-University Activities
Users may not use University IT resources to sell or solicit sales for any goods, services, or contributions unless such use conforms to {university} rules and regulations governing the use of University resources. They may not use University IT resources to represent the interests of any non-University group or organization unless authorized by an appropriate University department.

Another possibility may be called something like "non-academic misconduct" (to separate it from "academic misconduct" such as plagiarism or cheating) or an "honor code violation."
If you care to pursue either of these avenues, you'll have to hunt down appropriate chapter and verse at the student's institution, as well as instructions for reporting.
If you don't care to be this formal, and if you know any faculty or staff in the student's department, a "what the actual heck is this and did you folks know about it?" email might be the way to go. Where I am this would certainly be grounds for at least a stern conference with the student, and at worst, non-academic misconduct charges.


Who/what determines the order of articles appearing in an issue of an academic journal?

It is the editor, that determines the order. Other than that there are no general rules. Typically, they just pick the order that "makes sense". Maybe a topical article first if one is available. Maybe there are a couple of articles that fit nicely together, and (s)he wants to emphasize that, etc. etc.


Is it a good idea to get the recommendation letter from the head of a professional organization?

Generally speaking, the letter of recommendation should present you, as a candidate, to your potential employer. As such, it should be from someone who:

Knows you in a professional capacity.
Knows you in the capacity which is (at least partly) relevant to the position you apply for.

To successfully learn on the master program, the candidate shall have a certain set of skills (e.g. knowledge of a particular subject), but also soft skills (commitment, dedication, self-motivation, teamwork, responsibility, ability to work independently, leadership, etc.). If the head of your professional organisation can emphasise these attributes in their letter, and justify them using examples and evidence, it is a (very) good idea to have the recommendation letter from them.


Applying for tenure track position in mechanical engineering with lack of relevant coursework experience?

This is not necessarily a big problem, or an unusual one. Not every professor in a department is expected to be able to teach every course. I trained as a physicist, but I'm now in a nuclear engineering department.
As part of your application, you may be asked to write a teaching statement. In this, you should identify i) a few existing courses within the department which you can teach and ii) some brief ideas for new courses you could teach. These new courses could easily be tailored to your expertise. It is also entirely possible to learn new material and to teach it.


Why do some conferences not include the review scores in their notifications?

Conferences do not have a uniform system for how they select papers. Giving papers a score is a very odd concept in my field, and I am not aware of its ever having been done in any of the conferences at which I have presented or for which I have submitted proposals. Alternatively, it may be that scores were given but kept confidential.


Multiple introduction in an academic report

It is good writing practice to think of any document as having a hierarchical -- even fractal, if you're into these things -- structure: Every section contains a mini-introduction that spells out how what you're going to discuss in the following connects to what you've done before, and a mini-summary at the end that sets the stage for how what you just did leads to the next question.

At the sub-sub-subsection level, these mini-introductions and mini-summaries may be just a sentence or two long, but it's good to get into the habit of seeing that every section could be read on its own by connecting it explicitly to material before and after.

As such, it is entirely appropriate to have the mini-introductions you talk about in your question.


Should I apply for a research Internship if I'm not in touch with the subject matter?

It's normal to feel overwhelmed with the complexity of such advanced topics at your level, the goal is to learn about it progressively. However if you don't even feel interested in discovering the topic, then there's probably no point applying.

In order to start evaluating your own interest about a particular topic before applying, it would be a good idea to read a bit about it. you won't understand everything of course, but this way you can get a sense of whether you like the topic or not. This will help you choose, and it will also help you get accepted in case you decide to apply, since an advisor is more likely to choose somebody who knows at least a little about their topic.


If it is possible to determine at the outset who will make the greatest contribution to the research, then you may do so, and set the author order in advance.
In the (more likely) case that you have to actually go through with the research in order to see who contributed the most, then it's probably best to save discussions about author order until the end.
I'm not sure I understand your concern about students competing to "produce better work." If students are overstating their own contributions or sabotaging each other's work, then that is an issue to bring up with the PI. But anything short of that can only be good for the research project, no? How inclined would you be help out with a project if you were told at the outset that you would be the lowest-ranked author?
Participating in the research for its own sake, rather than because you think that doing a little more will earn you the spot of second author instead of third, is an essential component of academic maturity. But because people aren't perfect, allowing the final author order to adjust in acknowledgement of participants' actual contributions is the best way to incentivize active research participation.
In some fields, you may also consider alternative author-ordering schemes such as alphabetical.


How do theorists obtain summer funding after the beginning of February?

It is difficult for a first-year graduate student in theoretical physics to obtain research funding for the first summer at most universities, as you have already learned. If your department offers courses during the summer, there might be TA positions available, though you presumably have inquired about those by now. Another possibility might be to look for a summer TA in the math department, though they will presumably give preference to their own students for any available positions. Other than that, I can only offer sympathy.


Can you switch the co-first author position after the article is published?

Journals generally don't want to change things after publication - especially things like authorship order that would cause havoc to past citations. It thus seems unlikely that your coauthor will even try, and even less likely that the journal would acquiesce to such a request. I think most (well-run) journals would also try to contact all involved authors if there is such an unusual request, so you're likely to be informed if your coauthor were to try something. Finally, even if such a change were to somehow go through, usually people take the idea and statement of co-first authors ("these authors contributed equally to the work presented in this paper") at face value, so it'd be unlikely to affect either of your careers to any significant extent (with certain exceptions). Though of course, there's the usual caveat that conventions in your field about co-first authorships might be different.


How to export references from Endnote web to Endnote X5?

Here's a step-by-step guide, provided on the EndNote's Online Help page:

Export references following the export instructions using "RefMan (RIS) Export" as the export style;
click the Save To... button and save the export file to your computer;
open EndNote;
open an existing or new library;
select Import from the File menu;
in the Import dialog, click Browse to select the export file;
select "Reference Manager (RIS)" as the Import Option;
for EndNote 8 or later, select "No Translation" as the Text Translation (not applicable in your case).


Current status "minor review" what is next?

Ask the editor for guidance on this. It is hard to predict how long any review will take since the time available to reviewers for this work varies so much and is usually unpaid. Whether it goes to the same reviewers or not is up to the editors. If they want things done quickly (not a given) then going back to the same reviewers (or a subset) helps move it along.
But perhaps you can get some assurance, though not a guarantee, that the paper will actually get published. Let the editor know why this is important to you at the moment and that you aren't just anxious as all authors tend to be.


Is it an ethical issue if about half of a subsection of a paper consists of quotations?

With a proper citation,
and if the total content of the paper has enough substance that is original,
and the supervisor/advisor is happy with it,
and the other faculty are too,
then it is fine.


Is it possible transfer from a MS program into a PhD program within the same school?

This is usually kosher, but it can depend on the school and field. The department might want to see what you do over the first year or so, both academically and in terms of clicking with faculty and their research. The best thing for you to do now would be to find a faculty member whose research really interests you and try to find opportunities to work with them. If that doesn't work right off the bat, sign up for a class they teach and kick ass in it, then try again. Once you have this relationship, and assuming you're producing good work for them, it's rare that they wouldn't support you staying on, so long as they have the resources to fund you.

You, as a Masters student, are essentially a free trial for the school/department/professor. They get to see how you fit in the department and what you're capable of *plus* they don't have to pay for you. If you're a good fit, there shouldn't be a reason why they wouldn't want to keep you. However, they'll likely still ask you to apply (formalities).


Can I do an MS in CS in USA after a 5-year integrated MSc degree in CS?

The rules are theirs, not mine, but I would interpret what you say as indicating you would be ineligible. Your current university doesn't consider your degree to be a "glorified undergraduate degree", of course, nor will a university that you apply to.
There is some resistance generally for accepting people who already hold an "equivalent" degree even if there are no firm rules. This is to allow others the opportunity to advance when there are limited slots available. The question that would be asked, even if only in the minds of some, is "Why do they want to do this?" and you would need a compelling reason to overcome that sense.
One possibility for a compelling reason is that the MSc part of your degree seems to be practical, not theoretical. Applying to a highly theoretical MS in the US might seem like something new to readers of your application. Maybe enough to overcome any reluctance.

And, for the record, you are almost certainly qualified to apply to a doctoral program in the US. This would probably come with a paid position as a TA (or similar). Likely also no costs for tuition if you are a TA.


Any experience in working with aged emeritus supervisors?

Quick Answer: The downside might be his age, but the upside is plenty!

It is obvious that the age might be a factor, however you are not dealing with a dance instructor or a body builder here. Look at Prof. Stephen Hawking, beside his age, there are other limitations; but everyone listens to him and want to learn from him. Put his name on a conference, and people will line up. The following points popped up in my head:

Experience: Being dominant in a field for any amount of period, let alone 3 decades, is not easy. What you will get is a world of experience and vision (my second point here).

Vision: It is not all about hard work to be on the top, the individual needs to have a vision of the field as well. You will have the privilege to lean how he come up and deal with research issues. Believe me, I had supervisors that did not have the 'vision' part, and working with them was not pleasant.

Less Politics: He already 'done it all', and therefore not looking forward that much to the next promotion or something of that sort; what you get is a person that everyone knows that he is the leader in a field; so all the help you get you from him; you get it through no or much less jealousy and/or office politics.

Decision On Your Overall Career: If you get a position to work with a young supervisor, you can't truly answer the big question: What I will do after my PhD?. However if you work with an experience academic, you can see yourself after 20/30/40 years. You can see how hard you need to work to get there and is it something you want to do or not.

Conclusion: Take the position, there might be a little downside because of his age, but the positive points are plenty.


How to responsibly apply for more than one PhD position?

No reasonable person can fault you for exploring different options since

there isn't a guarantee of a job
you haven't committed to this job.

Definitely tell your advisor so that you'll be in the right frame of mind for your other interview and can excel there as well !


As an undergraduate, should I graduate 1.5 to 2 years early with little research experience or 1 year early with a decent amount of research?

For the title question, graduating 1 year early and accomplishing more is definitely better than graduating 1.5 or 2 years early, and accomplishing less. In fact, there's a strong case to be made for taking four years and accomplishing as much as you can. In PhD admissions, you'll be competing against people who were also ahead of the game in their first few semesters, but stayed in school and kept gathering feathers in their cap. Some of these feathers will be more impressive than graduating early. Also, more time as an undergrad means more chances for professors to get to know you, and this is what translates into good letters of recommendation.

Now, that is all general advice. Factors particular to your situation may tilt the balance in favor of it making sense to graduate early. I would recommend talking this over with your professors, because they know your record and can give you realistic advice about your prospects after graduating in X semesters, for various values of X.


How to decline a postdoc offer a few days after accepting it?

Being on the receiving end is very unpleasant, and it will have probably cost them more than just 2-3 days; the bureaucratic arrangement, possibly losing other postdoc candidates, having to go readvertising etc. is a very serious hassle, let's not pretend it isn't. Being there, done that.
Nonetheless, you need to take a decision and inform them as quickly as possible. There is no point for you taking a postdoc that you (and ultimately them) will regret. Decide and inform. This is an unpleasantry that is part of life. Yours and theirs.
To contain the damage as much as possible, you need to face it upfront. Good luck!


Peer-review -- Can I ask to cite my already published paper that is relevant?

If you are absolutely certain that you know (say) two papers which are clearly relevant for their work, you should state it:

The authors should comment on the work presented in [1, 2] and how their work improves on that or is different.

Add more details if you want to be helpful to the authors; for example, if the work [1, 2] uses a very different methodology than the present paper, you may want to offer a bit more detail to help the authors out. But it is voluntary. Also, whatever you write might end up copy-pasted in the final paper.
If you are not absolutely sure the papers are the most relevant and would improve the paper, you might still write:

The authors may want to comment the related work [1, 2].

maybe with more qualifications or detail. You can certainly make friendly suggestions, but given the power relations in play, you should explicitly mark them as voluntary improvements or such.
Also consider that there might be a lot of related literature that would be as appropriate to discuss as yours and the authors had to cut off their literature review at some point. In such a case, asking them to cite your paper in particular seems suspect. You should adjust the certainty of your recommendations according to how well you know the field.


Is it worth registering for an innovations in medicine conference, being a CE student?

Full disclosure: I originally planned to go to medical school, but things happened and I received an MS in CS instead.

The question on whether you should attend weighs heavily on something you haven't clearly specified: how serious is medicine for you?

If you're just "Oh, I might do something medically related and want to attend" feel free to attend. However, unless you're actually studying biology or other related medical topics, this conference will not provide you very much besides being a CV stuffer.

Both medicine and CS alone are full-time education paths. If you're learning 10 CS courses for 1 intro to biology course, then I would say medicine is not really an associated topic of study. I would say, at the very least, you should have enough credits to have a minor in Biology or some other medically related field to indicate an actual understanding of the medical field.

If you are super-interested in the topic of medicine and feel that "Yes, this is what I want to do," then this is a program you should attend. You will meet people, make connections, and possibly end up doing research with them. The conference is a source of opportunities. You have to back up that dedication with actually learning biology, chemistry, and physiology. Like any set of study, learning medicine is a commitment.

That being said, medicine and computer science together tends to be more towards the Bio-Medical Engineering field. Or Bioinformatics, both of which are graduate-level programs as well. Plenty of things in these fields, like robo-surgery or automated diagnosis, and all great research-friendly topics. Electronic medical records software and clinical trials software, however, medical knowledge is usually not required and can be provided by people trained in the medical field.


What does it actually mean by the sentence "tuition is paid by the supervisor"?

Different schools, departments and supervisors approach tuition payment differently. As far as I'm aware, most universities demand that tuition get paid somehow. Some universities might not collect tuition, but given what you've posted, I surmise that your university does. Where the tuition funds come from is how it will vary.

I've seen these different approaches:

The department / school pays tuition automatically for all of its admitted students. This is rare, but it does happen sometimes. It guarantees that the student won't have to pay tuition and can focus on research that the supervisor and student decide on, without having to pursue other external funding sources for the tuition. In this case it generally wouldn't matter who your supervisor is.
The department / school pays tuition pays tuition only for the students that hold a job within the department (e.g., teacher assistant, research assistant, researcher, lecturer, etc.).
The department does not offer to pay tuition, but the supervisor already has guaranteed funding (e.g., through external grants or donations), so the supervisor has guaranteed to pay your tuition with that money. In this case, whether or not your supervisor pays your tuition depends on which supervisor you have.
Neither the department nor the supervisor offer to pay your tuition. You are expected to pay for it yourself (e.g., via student loans) or apply for external funding (e.g., grants and scholarships) yourself to be able to pay for tuition.

The sentence "tuition is paid for by the supervisor" makes me think that it is up to the supervisor's discretion whether or not they will pay your tuition (e.g., make it contingent upon whether you are making progress and / or pursuing a topic that the supervisor approves of).

In addition to tuition payments, you should also consider where your income / stipend will come from. Sometimes your stipend comes from similar money buckets like those listed above for tuition.


Is it OK to refuse to cite paywalled papers?

If I was reviewing a paper, and the authors failed to cite important literature, I'd recommend rejection until the authors provided correct citations.  It's the authors' responsibility to provide appropriate references.

I assume that many other reviewers would feel the same.


Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal

Get legal advice. I don't see any other way about this unfortunately. They could easily say the 1819 EUR charge was a typo and it should've been 1819 USD. It also clearly says on the website that there's a withdrawal charge, although it doesn't say how much. They have removed the reason for the withdrawal charge from their website; however I'm sure I saw in previous versions of the page that the reason is you've taken up the editors' + reviewers' time, which is a defensible argument.

You may have to provide an explanation for why you submitted an article to them in the first place. If you can e.g. point to a deceptive call for papers which did not mention the article processing charge, you have a stronger case.

Having said that, don't worry too much, you're probably going to get away without too much pain. Reasons:

The publisher is OMICS, which has a reputation as the worst predatory open access publisher out there (see their Wikipedia page). You can point to action by the US government against OMICS, which should be especially relevant if you're based in the US.
Because OMICS is so bad, there're likely to have been many authors who wanted to withdraw their articles. If OMICS has initiated legal proceedings against these authors, I'm not aware of them (and they would undoubtedly have been publicized by the victims).
OMICS has already been involved in lots of legal suits, on the wrong side (i.e. they're the defendants). Courts are not likely to be sympathetic to predatory OA publishers.
OMICS has little to gain by filing a suit. The most they can hope for is 1819 USD. That's probably not enough to be worth the effort.

I'd guess that the most likely result is that you'll be blacklisted by OMICS. They might refuse to consider any more of your papers or they might charge higher article processing charges the next time you submit an article. They might even take you off their mailing lists. Do you care? One might even send them some genuine thanks if they do.


Should I mention NDS programs I am pursuing in my Masters application?

Technically, a "Non Degree Student" program isn't another school you are "applying to", so, in an online application or a form, you probably shouldn't list it as if it were.

But it would be good to find a way to list such things elsewhere if you have the opportunity, such as in a personal statement. Getting more CS instruction will be seen as a positive thing no matter how you go about it.

I also doubt that there is any ethical constraint on you dropping out of any program if things change. There really is no expectation, especially in such a program, that you will complete it, and you leave no-one disadvantaged if you go.


What skills are necessary to become President(Rector, Chancellor)?

This will vary hugely between countries and individual universities.

In the UK most universities are formally led by a Chancellor: see this link for more information. Since their role is largely ceremonial, what is important is that they are people seen as being prestigious enough to represent the university. The current Chancellor of Oxford is Lord Patten, who used to be Governor of Hong Kong and chairman of the BBC trust. To the extent that a chancellor may sometimes publicly advocate for the university (especially for funding) it's also valuable for them to be something of an 'establishment' figure on good terms with those in positions of power.

If you mean to ask about the qualities of the person who actually controls the university (which in the UK would normally be the Vice-Chancellor) that deserves a separate answer, but one would expect them to be experts in the education sector and experienced at leading large complex organisations.

To answer your numbered questions:

It wouldn't normally be a requirement that they be a doctor.
I imagine speaking multiple languages would be a benefit (particularly speaking English in a non-English-speaking country), but I can't see it being a formal requirement.


How to cite multiple sections of book using IEEE Citation Style

If youe thesis is going to be published by an IEEE journal or conference, then you should look at that venue's site for instructions on such details. Otherwise, look to your institution's guidelines. If there are none, then you may do what you want. Personally, I would avoid cluttering my BibTeX files with multiple @inbook citations which only differ in the referenced page numbers and use the latter citation reference you suggest if it is supported by the IEEE style file.


Opting out pension scheme when you are a postdoc abroad

But still, can someone tell me a reason to not opt out the pension scheme?

Because you are likely to get more out of it (at old age) than you pay into it (now) — and even if you don't, it may be safer for you to put away money in a way you cannot (easily) access until you no longer have direct income from work.

Both you and your employer are opting into the pension scheme.  Despite recent threats, it is still a defined benefit scheme.  If you and your employer have paid into the pension scheme for x years, you will get money out of it after you reach the retirement age, regardless of where you live.

Depending on where your next (long term) job is, your (next) pension scheme may have agreements which might allow you to transfer the money paid into your UK pension scheme to your next pension scheme.  Consult a professional.

I have pension savings from temporary (academic) positions in Sweden, Canada, the UK, and Germany.  Once I'm fairly certain to remain in the same country until retirement, I will consult with a professional for advise on whether it is possible and wise to pool them all together into the fund of the country where I will then live.


How are arXiv papers cited using IEEE citation style?

I used Zotero to generate the following citation in IEEE style (see original paper here). You can manually duplicate it if you wish, but I highly encourage you to consider using a reference manager to make your life simpler.

  J. Nettelblad and C. Nettelblad, “CannyFS: Opportunistically Maximizing I/O Throughput Exploiting the Transactional Nature of Batch-Mode Data Processing,” arXiv:1612.06830 [cs], Dec. 2016.

Also see here for more info on how to create a reference to a specific arXiv paper/version.


Value of recommendation letters from professors in a different field

Recommendation letters may also represent soft skills. Hence, they are important. Your personality is independent from your field of study, so there is little point in withholding recommendation letters - indicating what kind of person you are - to future supervisors (or committees) if you are going to spend the next 3-4 years working in a team or with a supervisor on a project.

Source: PhD Student


Cost of living in China as an international student

I am from Shenzhen. If your numbers are accurate, then that's a very, very good stipend.

You have about 70-90k RMB excluding accommodation and tuition each year. The university cafeteria is probably about 20 RMB or less per meal. If you want to eat out frequently for better food, then maybe closer to 30-50 RMB per meal (if you include the occasional 150 RMB Cantonese restaurant, the average might be closer to 40-50 RMB). Utilities, etc., shouldn't exceed 1000 RMB per month.

Assuming you don't have many expensive habits (e.g. spending a lot of your salary in Macao), that leaves you about 30-50k in savings per year, which is pretty decent even for (working) young people in Shenzhen.


If a professor says "my funding does not allow me to supplement a student at the PhD level," he is explicitly saying that he cannot take on another student due to lack of funding. It's implied as a prospective PhD student that you are simultaneously looking for funding when applying to schools and/or contacting potential advisors.

That being said, you have mentioned that your situation is different than the norm. By all means, reply back thanking him for his consideration and bring up the fact that you have your own funding and exactly how long you plan to self-fund yourself. Perhaps he will be able to take you on, perhaps not.

Personal side note: Before responding to him, make sure you are certain about self-funding, even for a year. It costs quite a bit just to attend a PhD program, let alone to live during that year. There's a reason that the expectation of PhD programs (or advisors) is to offer funding to their accepted students. As a student, handling graduate-level studies and research can be stressful; handling money issues on top of that can sometimes be too much.


Strategies to overcome "academic-apathy" in the final stages of the PhD?

Here is what kept me motivated and got me through the last year of my PhD:

A comment from a professor that the best dissertation is the one that is written.
My advisor kept pushing me to get her chapters.  I'm not sure where you stand with your advisor, but if he/she (and your committee as a whole) wants you to finish up, that can be motivating.  If you want to push this angle, send out an email to your advisor and committee with your plan to finish -- that will help keep you working!
I had set a deadline for myself (as mentioned in point 2), and backed all my planning up to make sure I met the deadline.  It sounds like you've gotten to the point where it is just the writing you have left, and I suggest setting up a schedule of when you will complete each chapter.
My deadline revolved around the job market -- I knew I needed to be ready to start at a job in August, so I knew I needed to be completely done by then.
I took breaks when I needed to.  I treated myself to a day off when I got a chapter completed and sent to my advisor, and I had one weekly TV program that I watched religiously.  Finishing a PhD is a lot of work, but it doesn't need to be soul-crushing (and soul-crushing work is bad for you, anyway!).
I really wanted to see the finished product -- I thought it was cool to have this giant, polished document, and that kept me tinkering on it.

Good luck!


Is it rational to lose confidence in authors whose books contain many typos?

Your assumptions are faulty. Unless a book is self published, it is the publisher only who hires reviewers, and, more importantly, editors. They are too expensive for the author to engage. A text that sells for about $90 USD returns about $5 USD to the author and sells between 0 and a few thousand copies (with a few exceptions). The cost of the textbook prep is all up-front other than reprinting.

For many (most?) people, proofreading your own work is nearly impossible. If you made an error when you first wrote it, it was because of some slip of the mindset. Thinking one thing and writing another. When you go to re-read it you actually read what you thought you wrote, not what you actually wrote. It is the publisher, and more important, the reviewers who should catch these since they read it with a fresh mind. The author isn't perfect but he/she is innocent here.

Some authors and publishers will pay bounties for errors caught by readers so that they can be corrected in future printing (and editions). Donald Knuth famously did this for The Art of Computer Programming.

Many authors an/or publishers will also put errata lists online where readers should be able to find them.

Typos are annoying, of course, and the other qualities of any given work have to be sufficient to overcome that annoyance.

But it is the publisher of the book that pays the upfront costs of editing, review, typesetting, etc. They (publishers) earn a ton of money for this and are responsible when it goes badly. While reviewers often work for free, editors don't. They are employees of the publishers.


Should Textbook chapters Contain a "Summary" Section

I've been struggling with this for months.  I think I've found the answer to my implied question in the words of another textbook author, Ken Saladin.
"...tell students what they should know about, but not what to know about it."
Following Saladin's advice, I've re-titled the summary sections Summary of Learning Objectives. Each summary section now starts with the following:

This section of the chapter tells you the things you should know about, but not what you should know about them. To test your knowledge, discuss the following concepts and topics with a study partner or in writing, ideally from memory.

That's nearly a direct quote from Saladin's suggestion.  I hope the first sentence will dissuade students from thinking they can read the summaries only.
I suggest those interested in the question read Dr. Saladin's entire, but short, blog post: https://blog.taaonline.net/2020/02/textbook-pedagogy-improving-chapter-summaries-encourages-collaborative-learning/


I don't think it really matters for admissions purposes whether you block your account.  If you have anything on your social media accounts that would be unusually damaging in a professional context, then it's probably a good idea to adjust your privacy settings (and/or posting habits) now rather than waiting for it to become a problem in the future, but ordinary Facebook usage is not likely to be an issue.  In my admissions committee experience, I've never heard anyone refer to an applicant's Facebook profile and I've never looked at one myself.  I've occasionally searched for information about an applicant online, for example to find a research paper that wasn't included in the application or to get more information about an award that was mentioned but not explained.  If I run across something else that seems academically substantive (such as a math blog or mathoverflow account) I'll look into it, but I wouldn't bother to look at Facebook since I don't expect it would include anything relevant.

  Can my reluctance to give away some (personal) information be perceived negatively?

Under ordinary circumstances, I don't think anyone cares at all.  For all the admissions committee knows, you never post to Facebook, and they wouldn't be interested in any case.  It would come across as suspicious if it looks like you are actively hiding something scandalous (for example, if there are rumors going around about terribly offensive things you've said on Twitter, and now your account is private), but that's presumably not the case here.


Can my PhD admission offer be rescinded due to COVID-19?

I don't think any of us here really knows. My best bet is that most universities will choose to honor offers of graduate fellowships and certainly will honor acceptances that come without any financial support.

But it's a legal question that will likely depend on the laws of the country and state the university is in, whether the university is public or private, and a number of other possibilities. It may also depend on the financial position the university is, or will be, in. You're unlikely going to get a definitive answer here, but you can always ask the people at the university that gave you the offer for guidance.


Academic mobility and the 2020 UK research review

TL/DR: We don't know yet, but outputs will probably not be portable.

In July 2016 Lord Stern published the Independent Report: Research Excellence Framework Review. The report identified recruitment (i.e., poaching) as a behavior designed to "game" the system and:

  We therefore recommend that outputs should be submitted only by the institution where the output was demonstrably generated. If individuals transfer between institutions (including from overseas) during the REF period, their works should be allocated to the HEI where they were based when the work was accepted for publication.

This report was a reflection on the 2014 REF (and earlier RAEs). The post 2014 REF has not been fully defined (or really even partially defined). The Department for Education responded on 13 October 2016 to Lord Stern's report. In general, the response was positive and the Department for Education has asked HFECE to create "specific and detailed practical arrangements". The HEFCE posted a brief on 16 Oct 2016 about the plans going forward. Specifically, they are now looking at "non-portability of outputs". Consultation is slated to begin November 2016.


To break mental health condition to potential new advisor?

First, congratulations on taking that first step towards recognizing yourself for who you are and seeking assistance to change yourself and get closer to becoming the person you would prefer to be. That is a huge step that many people are not willing to take, and I must applaud you for your courage.

Now, the issue at hand is whether you should reveal your current state of mind to your advisor. That's a delicate and deeply personal issue which can really only be left to your choice. That being said, if I were in your shoes, I would do so. In fact, I did exactly just that, both to my advisor during school and all my supervisors at work, and I benefited greatly from it. (Note that this is personal experience. If your advisor's personality is… less than accommodating, you may have a different experience.)

One of the most important roles of an advisor is to make sure that their students stay on track, both in terms of the scope of their research and their timelines. The last thing a professor wants is to be an inadequate advisor and as a result have a student take longer to graduate or turn out mediocre papers. Of course, this does depend on how busy the professor is, and they may ask other faculty for help or ask you to be mostly responsible for your own work (the last of which is relatively rare but not unheard of).

Psychological issues can cause many problems, including motivation. You can only benefit from having external motivation to keep you from deviating from your intended timeline, especially from someone you respect. At the same time, having that someone understand that you have difficulties will release you from the pressure of wanting to not disappoint that person, which ironically would have possibly caused you to stress out and as a result end up disappointing that person, then get stressed out from that outcome in a vicious cycle. Inform your advisor of your issues, and then together you can work out how to best manage your workflow. Perhaps you might need more frequent reminders, or require a little more detail with advice/instructions. Most advisors that I know love being helpful to their students, and hopefully your advisor will be the same.

Please note that you wouldn't be using your current state of mind as an excuse. You are already self-aware of your issues, which means that you will recognize when you attempt to avoid doing something and are capable of changing the course of that behavior when it occurs. Having that external motivator could be the extra push you need to help you turn away from avoidance and back to getting things done.

As for the issue of disclosing your psychological condition, it is not required unless it is directly relevant to the matter at hand. In fact, as mentioned in the answer to the question you linked, it can be considered unethical to unnecessarily disclose such information. If your adviser does find it necessary, let them know about your concern and work together to word it so that it minimizes any undue negative connotations.


Can I ask a Master's student to have their text proofread?

As a supervisor it is not your job to proofread your student's work, but it is your job to help them produce good-quality work. Good communication skills are critical in research, therefore you should take some sort of action to improve your student's writing. When you communicate this to your student, make sure to present it in a constructive way, rather than as a criticism.

As to how you should proceed, you have a few options. One option is to ask another student in your department that has stronger English skills to help your student proofread their work. That only works if both you and your student know another student that you're both comfortable working with, and if that student has time to help. A second option is to ask your university's proofreading service if they can help your student. A third option, which may be the best bet if your student's writing needs a lot of work, is to suggest they enroll in a technical writing course to develop their skills.


I would not do a multi-language literature search for Master's degree (due to limited time, as you mentioned, plus simply because expectations for a Master's level of research are significantly lower than the one of Ph.D. level. Having said that, I've seen some pretty solid research-focused Master's theses, but they are relatively rare.

On the other hand, performing a multi-language literature review for a Ph.D. research seems like a good idea, as it would allow you to cover the topic as well as related fields of study and research streams much more comprehensively (in both width and depth), which is an expectation for a doctoral-level research. However, you should always be focused on your main goals and assess your literature search with overall Ph.D. program's and dissertation's time frames in mind. It is so very easy to get addicted to exploring vast volumes of existing research, even restricting yourself to a particular subject domain. That introduces the risk of spending way too much time on that, jeopardizing other essential parts of your research study. You have been warned! And good luck!


Slept through final, professor is giving me a zero and failing me – is there anything I can do to change this?

It feels like one of the deadly sins but it's actually a physiological need...

If it's a physiological need because you were sick at the time of the exam, then your school should have a policy about how such situations are to be handled.

While I sympathize with your plight, it sounds like the problem was that you were too tired and just slept through the exam. If that is the case, then I'm afraid to say that the professor may have every right to assign you a zero for not taking the exam. There are some schools where the policy would be to assign an incomplete in such circumstances, but this is entirely school-dependent.

The essential issue is that if you do not have an excused absence for an exam, you're at the mercy of the instructor and any existing policies. At my school, for instance, the policy says that anything other than an approved university activity cleared in advance is at my discretion. So if the instructor chooses to give you a zero, there's nothing you can do.

You also need to consider things from the instructor's point of view: giving you a do-over because you slept through the exam would require that she give any future students who did the same the opportunity for a do-over as well—after all, why should only you get special treatment? Granting your request would mean that, in the future, all you'd need is to say "sorry, I overslept" and you could postpone an exam you weren't ready for. This is simply unfair to the instructor and to all the students who prepped for the exam at the scheduled time. This is simply not a fight you can possibly expect to win unless there are exceptional attenuating circumstances that have not been mentioned.


Do US universities still use imperial units in teaching?

When I was an (engineering, US) undergrad, the textbook in one engineering mechanics class included problems using SI units and problems using imperial units. The problem sets for homework and exams came from the book, and could be in either SI or imperial units.

(You can see these examples in a sample chapter).

Every other class I've taken as a physics and engineering student used SI units exclusively.


When one does not have well-defined research interests for PhD Programs

In mathematics it is common to have little specific idea of what you want to do in a PhD at the point of applying. Unlike in many arts subject, for example, your supervisor will largely choose the research question for you (hopefully with your input). At a graduate open day, we were told that SOPs range from 'I want to do a PhD in pure maths' to 'I want to prove the Riemann Hypothesis'. Indeed, my own loosely said 'this is what I've done, so something a bit like that might be good'. Exactly how much detail you need to give will depend on the structure of the PhD programme, and local rules/funding arrangements.

I think the thing you will need to set out clearly is why you've chosen to switch to mathematics, and how you will achieve the same standard as those who have done a maths undergrad/major.


How should I email professors regarding online research during covid-19?

Sure you can.
Sending an email is the best way to find out if a particular professor/researcher is available. You can reach out to them via Email introducing yourself and your research area and what you intend to look into/research keeping in view the professor's research output.
If they dont reply then you can send a follow-up email after a week or so.
Hope this helps.


The easiest way to tell if fall grades will be taken into account is to look at the application instructions. If you see instructions asking you to provide your mid-year grades, then that's a pretty clear indication that they will be taken into account during the admissions process. If you are not asked to submit it, then follow that guideline.

If it's optional for whatever reason, I would assume that you should plan as if it were a mandatory submission.


Research ethics and Google Forms/Survey Monkey

In Australia, human research is conducted under the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research [1] released by the National Health and Medical Research Council in 2007. Since the National Statement was released, the use of online survey tools has ballooned and Human Research Ethics Committees have been forced to acknowledge their use in research projects.

I am aware that Swinburne University has released advice to its staff about the use of the platform [2]. In addition, several other universities such as Deakin and Monash require that (1) the option to collect IP addresses be disabled and (2) that the recruitment of participants be undertaken outside of the SurveyMonkey platform (that is, cut and paste the survey link onto an email that you distribute separately from outside SurveyMonkey.)

You should note that SurveyMonkey itself has sought to address its relationship to HREC and IRB requirements [3].

I hope this help, despite the more than 18-month delay in my response.

Perhaps you can update us about your experience, thereby closing the loop somewhat.


Co-authors with the same initial and surname

The computer scientist brothers Marcin and Michał Pilipczuk have written many papers together. I think I've seen them referred to as "Ma." and "Mi.", though I can't find an example in writing. This is similar to an older style of initials for non-Roman alphabets which would, e.g., initialize Yuri as "Yu." and Phokion as "Ph."

However, journals seem to handle them inconsistently. For example, Algorithmica says we should cite one of their papers as "Cygan, M., Marcin Pilipczuk & Michał Pilipczuk". However, the same authors have a paper in the SIAM Journal on Computing which consistently cites the brothers as "M. Pilipczuk, M. Pilipczuk". There are also papers on ArXiv where they use initials in citations and just refer to themselves as "M. Pilipczuk", which suggests they don't feel a strong need to disambiguate. (I don't know them personally so this is pure speculation on my part.)

So, if it's possible, you could try using the second letters of your first names to make your initials unique but, if you do this, there's a good chance that the journals (and other authors!) will mess it up and you'll both be "J. Doe". And this doesn't work very well if you're James and Jason. An alternative would be to invent middle initials. There's no requirement to publish under your legal name, and there are famous cases of people having middle initials that don't stand for anything (e.g., Harry S. Truman and Ulysses S. Grant). However, the downside of this is that whoever chooses the initial earlier in the alphabet will always be listed first if your discipline orders authors alphabetically and, again, people will mess it up and not realize that they need to use both initials, especially for papers where only one of you is an author.

Another, rather off-the-wall suggestion is that some English names have abbreviations that were often used in company names up to, I'd guess, about a hundred years ago. So you'll often see "Wm" for William, "Thos" for Thomas, "Jas." for James, "Geo." for George and so on. But that only works for certain, traditional, English names, it's archaic and I doubt the journals would go with it.


Twitter changes behavior after submitting a research paper about it to conference. What to do?

Technology and technology based applications keep changing all the time, and frequently so.

Research methodology requires that you document these changes as they happen and annotate all references with dates. For example, you may add information that can act as a sort of disclaimer: For example:

  N.B: As of March 30, 2017, Twitter discontinued its 140 characters
  limit for replies. At the time of submission of this paper, the 140 Characters limit was still in force.


Advisor tries to reproduce my results to ensure my honesty. Is it the norm?

As many have pointed out in the comments (Nate Eldredge, Dan Romik, Per Alexandersson, etc.), the point is not to catch you cheating (as if you were intentionally trying to manipulate your results), but rather to verify your process of obtaining such results. We all should be so lucky as to have an adviser take the time out of his/her schedule to verify our processes.

I would also like to add that -- and this assumes your thesis could/will lead to an academic publication at a journal or conference -- that your adviser's reputation is potentially on the line by attaching his/her name to such a document. In other words, by becoming a co-author on your [future] publication, your adviser is essentially saying, "Yes, I helped work on this, and I am sure of the methods and the results contained within."

The bottom line (tl;dr) is that you shouldn't take this as a personal attack. You should be thankful to have someone who can invest the amount of time necessary to ensure the correctness of the work you've done.


If I accept a PhD offer but change my mind about attending, do I have an obligation to attend for some number of years before dropping out?

The April 15 resolution is a commitment that you won't accept another PhD offer without the OK of the school whose offer you accepted:

  However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15 commits the student not to accept another offer without first obtaining a written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made.

and also a commitment not to accept an offer you don't expect to honor:

  Acceptance of an offer of financial support* (such as a graduate scholarship, fellowship, traineeship, or assistantship) for the
  next academic year by a prospective or enrolled graduate student completes an agreement that both student and graduate
  school expect to honor.

It doesn't obligate you to go to grad school if you decided you don't want to, after all.

If you are really sure you don't want to do a PhD, the department will be much happier if you don't start (rather than starting and dropping out), so that they can offer your spot to someone else. In the first part of a PhD, the department is investing (time, money, teaching and supervision) in you with an expectation of future returns. You're not doing them any favors by letting them invest those resources in you when you don't plan to really use them.

You can politely inform the person responsible for the program (e.g. director of graduate studies) that you don't plan to attend after all.


Rejecting an admit to Computer Science Graduate School and re-applying

Do apply. If you don't get admitted, nothing needs to happen. If you do get accepted, accept the position if you're in a position to do so. If you can't accept the position, then talk to the graduate adviser and see if they're willing to defer you going there by a year. Most departments will be willing to do this -- they've already found you fitting for the job, so whether you come this year or next is not all that important to them. Deferrals for good reason are not uncommon.

The point is that if you don't apply, you won't get admitted this year (if circumstances would allow you to take the position), and you don't have a guarantee that you'll be admitted next year either.


Is it okay to ask a former tenured professor why he suddenly left his job?

Unless you are a very good friend, you should not ask the question. You can, of course, continue to meet him in private if he is up for that. I do not recommend prying into the issue if he does not talk about that from his own initiative.


Mentor says I cannot be first author of my paper because I am an undergraduate

My mentor tells me that no magazines will accept me as a first author

This is clearly wrong. Of course I cannot speak for every journal in your particular subfield, but rejecting papers only because of the academic rank of the first author would be ethically dubious. At the very least, there are some megajournals that do not have such criteria and which should accept your work – given that it is scientifically sound, etc. (Mind that I am not saying that megajournals are your best or only choice; they are just the easiest counter example.)

Moreover, a typical journal won’t even ask for your academic rank and may not bother to investigate it and neither do the peer reviewers. The journal may even practice double-blind peer review, in which the reviewers won’t even know your name and thus probably lack all means of finding out your academic rank.

Finally, while there are some people who judge a work by whether they know the authors (though they shouldn’t), they usually do not look at authorship positions. If somebody is going to be more benign to your work because your mentor’s name is on it, they will likely not care whether they are the first or last author.

  by the rules, mentor must to [the statistics]

There are certainly no universal rules for this. Where did this come from?

Anyway, your problems rather are these:

Doing the statistics almost certainly qualifies your mentor for authorship, so he must agree on all publishing decisions. (The opposite also applies.) Even if you re-do the statistics, it will be difficult to argue that you did so completely independently. Also mind that any intellectual contribution qualifies for authorship, so think about any feedback or advice you got from your mentor on this work.
Your mentor may have some power over you. I don’t know them, but you must consider the possibility that they freak out over this and try to sabotage your career and particular this very paper.
The biggest advantage of having an experienced mentor contributing to your paper is their experience in writing. It is very unlikely that anybody produces proper scientific writing on their first attempt without help from somebody experienced with it.

Unfortunately, you have to judge your mentor’s mentality yourself.
However, unless you are sure that they do not abuse their power, I strongly suggest that you find another professor or similar who can advise you and possibly act as an arbiter in this situation.


Publishing articles in not peer-reviewed journals

You call them "important journals". Others would call them "magazines". Most fields have them and "recognized experts" can present useful information to practitioners. But they seem to be more "popularizers of field X" than true journals. Their only control is editorial. For a recognized expert, they probably have a bit of value come time for salary and promotion decisions as they may give an indication of the external reputation of a person.

I think that if a person writes a research paper sufficient for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, they would do send it for peer review. They wouldn't submit it to a non-peer-reviewed place at all. On the other hand, a "layman's" or "practitioners" article on the consequences of the research would be suitable for such a journal, but it would be backed by the earlier research publication. Likewise, if a person does some work, but it isn't up to the standards of a peer reviewed journal, but has important applications, it would be good to get it out there for practitioners. But, by definition, it isn't up to par for the peer reviewed journal.

Therefore, for entry to a doctoral program, I think they would have very little value. The problem is in the analysis of the work. If you publish in a peer reviewed journal, someone evaluating your CV can depend on the quality of the work because they know about the system and how it works. They can trust that experts in the field have looked closely at the work and judged it worthy. That isn't the case with non-peer-reviewed work. Therefore they would need to evaluate the work themselves and would not be especially willing to do so.

The Elsevier series you mention is, perhaps, a bit better than a magazine, but not like a true "journal." Publishing here is unlikely to hurt you, as some other things might (predatory journals), but won't help much. You will need the rest of your CV to be adequate to support your candidacy.

Caveat: The above is opinion. It is how I would look at the CV of a candidate, nothing more. You would still have to make your case otherwise.


Is it ethical to post an exam question and answer to the internet?

There is an alternative that avoids the question asked here entirely and would even be more valuable to your readers.

Think about what it is about that equation (or other question) that makes it interesting. Abstract from that to a more general question that also covers the specific case.

Then present a way of thinking about that class of problems that will lead someone to a successful solution. Explain the thinking process. Explain any connections to similar things. Etc.

Then, you can publish that freely.

Note that words, but not ideas, can be bound by copyright. Take the idea and expand it. Anyone is free to do that.


How to refer to relationship with a "research mentor" in PhD application?

Sounds like this person is a “course instructor and mentor”. Honestly it does not matter what you put on the form - the letter is what matters. Typically I don’t look at what the student says about the relationship on the form, I only look at the letter.


Should Professors and by extension their TA's, hold student athletes to the same standard?

The following is specific to my university, the University of Michigan, but I would guess that the situation is similar at many other universities.

As far as I know, I am not allowed to apply different grading standards to different students in the same class, except that, if a class has both graduate and undergraduate students, then the graduate students may be held to a higher standard. (I've never used different standards for grad and undergrad students, but I believe it is permitted.)

Despite the general rule, there are oft-repeated stories about a particular professor (not in my department but in my college) who allegedly applied easier grading standards to athletes, over a decades-long career, and apparently got away with it. I don't know whether a tenured faculty member could get away with it nowadays, but I certainly wouldn't advise a TA to try it.

Apart from grading, though, athletes in major sports have one advantage, which may compensate for the time demands of their sports. The athletic department provides tutoring for student-athletes and tries to keep an eye on their academic progress (partly so that they don't become academically ineligible to play, partly to keep up a respectable graduation rate, and partly for the genuine benefit of the students).  I once had two varsity hockey players in my class, and an assistant coach phoned me (this was long before email) to check on their progress and to ask me to let him know if they had difficulties in my class.


Using papers published before admission to partially fulfill PhD requirements

Is it realistic to expect that these papers can be used to partially fulfill PhD requirements?

Probably not, if you're in the U.S.  There's a concept of a "Ph.D. by research", which is awarded on the basis of past research accomplishments.  This only barely exists in the U.S., although it's more common in some other countries.

Instead, the way most U.S. Ph.D. programs work is that the dissertation must be based on research conducted as part of the program.  One reason I've heard is that overseeing research in person makes it easier to judge how well or honestly you are carrying it out or how much assistance you might be getting.  In any case, being unable to use your previous papers in your dissertation is generally not a real obstacle to graduating quickly, if that's your goal.  Much of the time in a Ph.D. program is spent developing the ability to do high-level research, and if you already possess that ability upon entering you could finish substantially more quickly than usual.  (I'm not convinced that finishing quickly would be a good career move: it's almost always much better to focus on depth rather than speed.  However, you shouldn't worry that putting your prior work off-limits for your dissertation will be a burden.)


When suggesting referee names, where do you draw the line for conflict of interest?

The National Science Foundation in the US has clearly articulated guidelines for what constitutes a conflict of interest for reviewers of grant proposals.  These are probably safe — and certainly defensible — guidelines for you to follow.  Specifically (and for the reason you mention), research collaborations are considered to be a conflict only if they occurred within the last 4 years (there are other rules as well, please see the document).


Why do some articles recite/repeat known concepts?

Not everyone who reads a paper is going to be in your field and have the same background no matter how basic it might initially seem. In researching literature, I often come across sociology, economics, history, etc, papers. That initial regurgitation in a paper might seem really obvious to sociologists, economists, and historians, but it isn't necessarily so obvious for me (and nicely tends to give references if I feel the need for further background knowledge).

It also helps out people in the field, especially when they're not as current on the specific topic (when was the last time a scholar of modern American theater read Beowulf? Likely graduate school). It helps for understanding the approach used as well as seeing the paper's context, relevance, and importance within the field. Even at a basic level, when someone recaps a plot/situation in a single paragraph for me, it's enough to jog my memory and save me from needing to pull the book back out and read a hundred pages just to follow the paper.


Can student second author go to conference?

As others have already stated, it is perfectly acceptable to show up at a conference when you are not the first author of your paper, or even if you have no paper at all at the conference.

Depending on your research group and how well-funded it is, funding your trip may or may not be a problem. Your first partner in such attempts should certainly be your co-author, and there is nothing wrong about asking him whether you can go and to what extend his grants or the university can support you. The prof. will also know about other funding sources you may apply to. For instance, you could apply as a student volunteer for the conference (usually levies the conference fee), or you could ask for a travel stipend from the conference organizers (although these are often indeed reserved for first authors, at least in my field).

As a sidenote, most professors around me are actually really happy about undergrads that want to go to conferences, as it shows that the undergrad really cares about research and wants to see how it is being done. People love that, because both, in my Swiss current and Austrian previous university, getting good undergrads to stay for a PhD was a perpetual concern and worth quite some money in up-front investment to professors that had some travel money to spare.

(PhD admission works different to the US around here. Most of our PhD students come from our own pool of undergrads, and it's definitely a students market (i.e., few good students, lots of professors looking for them). Good undergrads are basically wooed by professors to do a PhD with them.)


I have one bad grade on my transcript and I'm thinking of applying for MS CS programs at top US Graduate schools. How badly would my chances be hurt?

There's no question it will hurt.  You already know that.  How much it hurts depends on where you're applying and whether it's to a master's or PhD program.
Top PhD programs could fill every spot with students who only have 4.0 (perfect) averages.  The reason they accept students with less than perfect averages is because they also consider your LORs (letters of recommendation) and your essays, especially, your SOP (statement of purpose), which may be enough to overcome that one bad grade.  Lesser programs accept less.
If you're applying to a master's program, admissions are generally more accommodating since they don't have to assign a faculty advisor and they know most master's students are heading into industry, not academia.


I have thought about this too. I am also a math grad student. I went to a liberal arts college in the US. I took lots of non-math courses, didn't take any graduate courses, and didn't do any extra math activities like the Budapest semester. At some point I made a list of the math I learned as an undergrad and what I learned in grad school and it is a huge amount more in grad school. Another thing that helped was realizing that some of the grad students who, based on impressions, would do very well, never finished the program due to various reasons.

One thing that could help is to befriend grad students with whom you could let your guard down. There can be a lot of posturing, but much of it is quite obvious. Grad students who do that can still be helpful to talk to. It also helps to talk to faculty members whom you feel comfortable chatting with. They can really help you feel more at ease. I was at a workshop/school once and overheard a senior faculty member telling his math professor friend that by the end of a math conference, everyone feels like an idiot. So what if some grad students know more than you? At some point when you specialize you'll know a lot about quite a lot of things, and find joy in looking back at your accomplishments.


What is a 3 Year (Indian) Engg. Diploma equivalent to UK education standards(HNC, HND or other)?

it is equivalent to RQF Level 3 (BTECH NATIONAL DIPLOMA/EXTENDED DIPLOMA)


Have I waited too long to ask for letters of recommendation and when should I send a follow up email?

No. You gave enough time for them. However you can't count the holidays as work days, they are coming back to work in the next days and then they will have approximately three weeks to write the letter.

I would send an email at the end of this week politely asking the second professor to confirm whether he will be able to write the letter or not. In the negative case you still have enough time to ask to another professor.


Can I add a link to my website in a paper I'm coauthoring?

Since the OP has commented that they've never seen an example of a published paper including the URL of an author's website, here is an example of such a paper:

Local Selectivity of Orders in Central Simple Algebras, Benjamin Linowitz and Thomas R. Shemanske, Int. J. Number Theory 13 (2017), no. 4, 853-884.

Our website URLs appear with our institutional information on the last page of the paper.

By the way, here's another lesson to draw from this example: try to use email addresses and website URLs that are permanent. By the time this paper was published I had already moved to a different institution and the University of Michigan had deleted the email and web accounts I listed in the paper.


What is the best way for an amateur researcher to communicate with an academic?

There are some general facts to consider here. First, researchers are always busy. This means you only have a few seconds to attract their attention. Second, they're usually knowledgeable in very specific areas of interest. This means, they will be more willing to consider your idea if they know its background already. The "crank" should consider these facts to improve her chances to attract the researcher's attention:

Choose a researcher who has investigated the specific problem addressed by the result before.
The initial e-mail should be brief as well as terse. 3-5 sentences. One sentence should state the problem. One sentence should intelligently summarize the researcher's previous work on the problem. One sentence should summarize the novel idea to solve the problem.
Any more detailed explanations should be attached to the e-mail in a readable and well-organized form, preferably as a PDF file.


How to start researching for a thesis topic

Great suggestions above, here is the methodology I follow:

First off, determine the general term for the area of your thesis, for example, "civil engineering" or "genetics".
Create a word document (literature review) where you keep track of citations and books you have read in this topic.
Perform a "Google Scholar" Search for your topic, add list of citations to your literature review as you save each article and print to keep in a notebook. In addition, add a 'review' of each journal article you read including Summary, Main Hypothesis, Strengths/Weaknesses and Date Reviewed.
On Google Scholar, you can see what other articles have cited the article you are reading. This is a great way to gain further resources for your search.
Do this every day for a few weeks and you will be sufficiently immersed to have a background in the previous work to understand your thesis topic and background.

Additional Tips: When performing research, it's important to begin focusing on what new insights, methods or understanding you can bring to this field of study. In many ways, academia is a 'competition' where the winners are rewarded for their efforts with additional funding, facilities, and prestige. By performing background research (aka Literature Review), you are able to learn from the hard work and progress of others, and expand on their insights in order to 'make a better mousetrap'.


How should I reply to this Professor's email?

Can anyone suggest a draft of the email that I can send to this Professor?

Reply to the Professor's original email, so that your response appears in the same thread; perhaps include the original snippet, i.e.,

  Thanks for writing and for the great ideas -- I see a lot of energy and promise in your thoughts, and I encourage you to try to pursue some of these questions -- most, in fact, are exciting and open research areas. I also encourage you to apply for PhD at YYY University.

and write something along the lines of:

Further to your positive encouragement, I have submitted my PhD application to YYY University.

Thereafter, it depends on your agenda. E.g., you might want to reopen discussion of  joining her group, for which you could use:

Given the seeming alignment between our research interests, I would like to join your group. Can we discuss that possibility, perhaps by telephone?


For government / industry research posters, should I include my university's logo?

Here is how I would think about it:

You were at the government lab when you did the research, so its logo definitely needs to be there
You are preparing the logo and presenting the poster while at the university, so it's reasonable for its logo to be there as well.

With such things, it's usually better to err on the side of inclusiveness: people or organizations are much more likely to feel it's problematic to not be included than to feel it's problematic to be included, as long as there is some reasonable connection.


High school student scooped by PhD student in the same lab

The situation that you describe sounds like extremely unusual and improper behavior on the part of the professor.  The graduate student is part of the problem, but the real responsibility lies with the professor who committed two major instances of misconduct:

Allowing the graduate student to co-opt your work without giving you credit.
"Giving" you authorship on a paper that you did not participate in.

Whether or not you should have been first author is not necessarily clear---one would have to know a lot more about the final form of the work to judge for certain.

As for your actions, I think that the primary actions that you took (raising the issue with the professor, then walking away from the situation when the problem was not addressed) were appropriate.  I think that you should probably feel uncomfortable about the paper that has your name on it when you don't feel you deserve authorship.  You can get that fixed by the publisher, if it makes you uncomfortable enough.

I think that you are making a mistake, however, in allowing this experience to sour you on academia.  Unethical people who will take advantage of you can be found in every profession, and in academia at least there are clear rules on what the ethics are supposed to be.  You won't necessarily find that in the business world, where it is often considered ethical to exploit people for money (see: fiduciary duty to stockholders).


What to write for subject when contacting potential supervisor?

When I was applying for PhD, I used "prospective graduate student" as a subject line, which was quite sufficient. If your potential supervisor accepts students for different programs, you can specify the degree you are seeking (Master's) in the subject line.

The rest of the information (your background, interests, etc.) should be in the email body.

Good luck :)


Yes, normally via the editor.

This is part of the point of blind reviews: to control the exchange and the editor is the "referee" to decide when the purpose is achieved.


Journal refuses to call near verbatim copies plagiarism

Contact the editorial board. It sounds like the journal's staff aren't very familiar with academic norms, so they don't know what to do; besides they likely won't do anything without the editorial board's approval. So approach the editorial board, probably the editor-in-chief, with evidence of the plagiarism.

I should say it further sounds like the paper has been published, which narrows the options available. They can't send the paper back to the author for revision; they can't recall the copies that have already been sent to subscribers and/or printed. If the editors agree with you that the paper is plagiarized, their most likely action is to retract the paper.


How much does reputation matter in NSF review panels?

In my experience, your ability to be believable when you say you can accomplish the work needs to be demonstrated as shown by your prior work as demonstrated by your publications in the area or your work done setting up the proposal. But otherwise your personal reputation as known by the people on the panel has less to do with it. The fit of your work to a program, however, is very important. The panel only gives a recommendation to the NSF Program Officer who will make a further recommendation to their boss which may go further up the chain. Those people will decide what projects get awarded under a program, and they have probably never heard of many of the awardees. The panel's recommendation will carry a lot of weight with the PO and their bosses, but it's not determinitive. Lower-ranked proposals can be elevated by the PO over the panel's recommendation and vice versa.

If the program is an ongoing or annual program, look at who has won prior versions of it using NSF's search page. If you know the luminaries in your field, expect to see some of their names, but also expect to see people you've never heard of. That's your clue that people with little or no reputation in the area are capable of winning awards in programs with a good fit. Read their abstracts, and see how well they align with the RFP/call.

There are very few awards in each program every year compared to the number of submissions. It varies from the high teens to low twenties across the directorates, and it's around 23% for the whole of the Foundation. The reasons for funding a particular proposal get pretty esoteric pretty quickly. I recommend finding the best fit, calling them, and asking them if you can give them a quick description to see if they think it's a fit, too. Most POs are happy to tell you if they think it's a good fit. They won't tell you if they'll fund it (they can't), but they can steer you around a bit. They may even steer you to a different program. Better to talk to them than a senior faculty member who has a hunch unless they sat on program A or B's panel last time around. If they did, they're not supposed to be telling you that.


Can I hand in an essay which I have written last year, but not as part of a course?

Could I just hand in this essay, or would I violate some rules with
  that?

If you wrote it as a personal exercise and it was never submitted to any course (i.e. never read), I can't see how anyone would notice the difference - provided you are right about the fact that it answers your assignment perfectly and you are not subconciously trying to make it fit into the assignment.

  Should I just hand in this essay?

Aside from the rules, consider the teaching value of writing an essay (which you obviously already know, since you wrote one as a personal exercise!).
If your workload allows it, you might find that re-working on that essay a year later is really instructive. Your perspective (on the content, but also on the writing level) probably changed in one year, and with the head-start of having a first version already, you could dig deeper into the subject and end up really learning a lot and producing an essay worth an amazing grade. Or, if you don't feel like reworking this one, maybe you could pick another subject altogether? The teaching goal of essays is usually to have you research a new subject; handing in your already written one, while being legal, would certainly not serve that purpose.


Is there evidence that open source research software produces more uptake of methods?

You ask "In particular, is there evidence that by publishing software alongside research papers means that more people use the methods described in the paper?"

I am not aware of any large scale empirical studies that have assessed this for software at present [1] however there is anecdotal evidence and related studies looking at the impact of open data.

One piece of related anecdotal evidence came from short survey I carried out in 2013 looking for people who had been "scooped" as a result of publishing their code openly (i.e. someone else had published a paper using that software to get to the same scientific results before the author of the software). Whilst there were very few examples of people getting scooped, there were many more examples of researchers who had gotten new collaborations, new citations, and new funding as a result of publishing their code openly. Many said that this was because others were more able to try out the methods because code was available.

More convincingly, there have been several good studies looking at the effects on citations (a proxy for the sort of impact you mention) from making data openly accessible [2-6]. Many of the reasons for the data citation benefit discussed in [7] appear qualitatively to be true for software as well [8-9].

Finally, in the area of Applied Mathematics, you might like to look at some of the outputs of the ICERM workshop on Reproducibility on Computational and Experimental Mathematics [10], as well as some of the publications of the participants.

[1] One of the reasons for this is that up until very recently, it was difficult to conduct such a study - it was difficult to link software to a publication, few authors were publishing code, and it was difficult to data mine journals to assess impact. This is changing, an I expect studies to start emerging based on tools like ContentMine and ScienceToolbox.

[2] Piwowar, Day, Fridsma (2007). Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate. PLoS ONE.

[3] Gleditsch NP, Metelits C, Strand H. 2003. Posting your data: will you be scooped or will you be famous? International Studies Perspectives 4(1):89-97

[4] Pienta AM, Alter GC, Lyle JA. 2010. The enduring value of social science research: the use and reuse of primary research data. The Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research Workshop

[5] Henneken EA, Accomazzi A. 2011. Linking to data - effect on citation rates in astronomy.

[6] Dorch B. 2012. On the Citation Advantage of linking to data. hprints.

[7] Piwowar H, Vision T. 2013. Data reuse and the open data citation advantage. PeerJ. PubMed 24109559

[8] Howison J, Herbsleb, J. 2013. Incentives and Integration In Scientific Software Production. CSCW 2013.

[9] Howison J, Bullard J. How is software visible in the scientific literature? Preprint available from https://github.com/jameshowison/softcite/blob/master/paper/HowisonBullard-SoftwareCitation-WorkingPaper.pdf?raw=true

[10] "Setting the Default to Reproducible: Reproducibility in Computational and Experimental Mathematics," ICERM Workshop report, with D. Bailey, J. Borwein, R. LeVeque, W. Rider, and W. Stein.


Are there any pre-print services that accept manuscripts already accepted by a journal?

arXiv has no such restrictions as far as I know.  If your copyright agreement with the journal allows you to post the article on preprint servers, then arXiv will happily accept it before or after acceptance / publication.

When posting to arXiv, you'll need to choose a license that's compatible with your agreement with the journal.


Is it common in academia to not have any written "contract" when you get a scholarship?

Caveat: A US view, and there are exceptions even here as noted below.

There will, I think, always be an "agreement" even if it isn't a formal contract. It probably isn't something that is negotiated, with the student having any say. But accepting such a scholarship is a formal agreement to abide by some set of rules, that may be just statements of policy somewhere, perhaps visible on a web site. All the details may be spelled out in the letter of acceptance, but it is more likely that the student simply makes agreement to obey the rules in force.

The most common "rule" is that the student maintain "good standing" which involves something about GPA, perhaps, and not being sanctioned for misconduct. Whether it rises to the level of a "contract" however, depends on too many things (local law,...) to have a definite answer here.

I suspect that in many cases the (informal) contract can be modified by the university without explicit consent of the student. The student's only likely recourse is to accept the new terms or stop receiving funding.

Note also that this differs (drastically) in some places and some situations. It also depends on what you mean by "scholarship". If there are specific duties attached (not the common case in US) then the contract is more likely to be a formal one. In particular a TA position has certain duties and so additional requirements.

If a scholarship has no duties attached then it is probably also possible for the university to terminate it for many reasons, including financial ones. But the student can also leave the university (possibly needing to return pre-paid funds) without penalty. This might be different if there were a formal contract.


Can I be a good scientist if I only work in working hours?

It is possible. For the last eleven years (from the seventh month of my PhD trajectory onwards) I have worked the standard 40-hour work week: Monday through Friday, from nine to five. I don't work weekends, and I don't work evenings. Last Summer I got tenure.
Even though it is possible, it is not necessarily easy. You will need to be very efficient within those 40 hours a week, and you will need to have the support of those around you. If your university has the culture that faculty are available for work at all times, it's going to be hard to break through that culture on your own. Even if your university supports you in fighting for a reasonable work/life balance, you still may need to manage the expectations of those around you; I have made my colleagues aware that they shouldn't expect, for instance, email replies from my side on the weekends.
It is also entirely possible that in the long run, my 40-hour policy will reduce my chances for promotion: if full professorships open up, I may lose against those people that have worked 80-hour weeks. I'm not convinced that this will necessarily be the case: by regularly taking time to relax, I ensure that my mind is very sharp during the working week, and that makes me more productive in those 40 hours than others can be in 50, 60, or even more. But even if my policy will cost me an eventual promotion to full professor, I will not regret my choices: by working 40-hour working weeks, I get to spend lots of time with my family, which is simply more important to me.


Do Universities have a right to stop students from talking about questions on tests?

From your link:

  Where a government-funded or affiliated entity such as a University attempts to limit the freedom of expression of its students it must carefully consider the students’ Charter right to freedom of expression, and ensure that any limitation is reasonable, justified and compliant with the Charter.

It seems like the difference between punishing people for sharing test questions and punishing them for criticizing professors is that one of these is "reasonable and justified," while the other isn't.


How can I make the most of this opportunity? Any suggestions for a 2nd/3rd year student interested in research?

Keep in mind, I'm not in math, so I'm not sure how much a lot of this will apply.

I think if you're just starting out and trying to learn the ropes, I think an important first step is to get a feel for what research looks like in your field so that you're better positioned to conduct your own research independently in the future. If I were guiding a student in my field, I'd want them to understand: 1) how are papers structured in our field, and what type of information is generally included in most papers? 2) how does new research critically examine and contribute to the existing research? 3) how are empirical studies designed in terms of their methodologies? What considerations to investigators make in selecting participants, instruments/tasks, their methods of analysis?

Publishing is a rough process, but a reasonable goal once you have a strong understanding of what the norms are in your field. RE: writing to reiterate/further support existing findings...I'm not too sure. I think it depends; I feel like if you're further proving ideas that are fairly new/not quite established, it might work. However, if there's already a huge body of literature supporting said idea, then I don't think most journals would be interested in publishing that.


Acknowledging local government for quarantine measures

I decided to elevate my comment to an answer.

  When this is all over, and most of your readers will probably know multiple people who died during the crisis, this would not be a good [look].

This is a global crisis that is only just beginning. By the time the dust settles, millions may have died from the virus alone. It would be a rare reader who does not personally know someone affected. More will have died because of how overwhelmed the global healthcare system is.

Even more will be affected by the economic fallout.

Viral infections can have lifelong consequences, even if you live.

If you're in a medical field, many of  your readers will be caregivers who were worked to the bone for months, and had to make impossible triage decisions.

For your readers, researchers are forced to halt research, often at great expense. Many studies cannot be paused for three months and picked up at the same place.

And you're proposing to put in your acknowledgements "gee I got so much done while quarantined!" This is offensive at best, and obscene at worst. We in universities are extremely lucky that our pay will most likely not be stopped, and we can just pick up and work from home. That is not happening for most of the nation.

Frankly, I would be ashamed to be your co-author, and if you were in my field, put you on blast across every channel I knew how. Do not do this.


PhD (Dr.) student willing to finish thesis after several years of inactivity

Did you ever experience a PhD handing in the thesis many (>5) years
  after completition? If yes, was it accepted?

Our department actually just went through this. Our process involved a justification of why the gap occurred, a defense of the student's standing both at the time the gap occurred and now, and a defense of the scientific merits of the research (and how it wasn't completely stale).

  If it was accepted, has it been evaluated based on the state of the
  art when the thesis work was done, or based on the current state of
  the art?

Current.


Dropping out of a master's program to pursue a PhD

When I was an undergrad I had no idea how the machine I was scuttling about in worked.
This was brought to mind by

Is it even typically allowed?

Here's the thing. Masters and PhD students are an asset. Somebody wants you to study with them as much as you want a higher degree. People start PhD programs at all kinds of weird times, even when there's a "normal" intake period. The rules to which you allude are practices that are followed to make administration easy. They are not inviolable Laws.
So my advice is to talk to the academics involved. First, your current advisor, then the other person. While you should take care to avoid being seen as disloyal, those people will eventually find out anyway. So try to get them onside from the start.
It's easy to make assumptions about what is or is not possible, to your detriment. So don't assume. Talk.
And that machine? It's made of people. Good luck.


positioning yourself for research positions after graduating from a PhD in a different country

The most important thing you can do in your first year is to master the material and do well in your courses.

Present your research at conferences in Australia (assuming your program has some funding available for this). This is a more effective way to meet people in your field than sending emails to busy faculty who know nothing about you or your abilities as a researcher.

I don't know how long your PhD program is, but you have time, and presenting repeatedly at Australian conferences would be an excellent way to develop professional connections. You will encounter the same people multiple times at these events over the years. I have even developed lifelong professional friendships with colleagues I first met on the conference circuit.


"It is our policy not to include attributions of figures and tables" - what does this mean?

While I have not encountered this before, my guess is that the journal has decided to discriminate against non-academic citation (e.g., crediting of image sources per Creative Commons licenses).

While I believe that this is improper and unethical, I have encountered worse.  I have, in fact, encountered a major journal that refused to allow citation of anything that was not a journal article, because that journal's field does not typically have peer-reviewed conferences.  To somebody coming in from computer science like myself, this is clearly incorrect and unethical: the editors of the journal, on the other hand, saw themselves as manning the barricades in defense of scientific quality and refusing to allow inadequately peer-reviewed material to infiltrate their publication.

In short: I think this is another case of "academia varies more than people think it does," in this case unfortunately being baked into a journal's policy, and would recommend anyone encountering such a policy to simply make their case as suggested by the policy.