How do international PhD students typically obtain health insurance in the United States?

This is very university-specific. My university pays the health insurance for students who are appointed to a graduate research assistantship or TA-ship at the half-time (20 hours/week) level. Half-time is the minimum to get the insurance paid, the maximum time allowed for a graduate student to work, and the usual appointment for the vast majority of graduate students. To add a spouse is about $450/mo. I do not know how much children cost to add. The coverage varies all over the map because insurance varies so much by state, institution, and plan in the US. The plan at my institution is for medical care only. Vision and dental are separate and funded entirely by the employee (though they're pretty cheap).

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) may have changed this for some institutions which did not provide insurance options to grad students, but mine has for the last 20 years or so, so I don't really know.

All of this information should be on the website of the university you want to attend. You may have to look in the section for employees rather than students, but it's usually there. Look for "benefits" as well as "insurance".


Do some universities not give paper diplomas to their PhD graduates?

In the US, in general, universities do offer the student a fancy paper diploma when they complete a degree.  This is such a strong tradition that I would be pretty surprised if there are any universities that don't do it at all.  I don't think that JeffE meant to imply that there were.

However, in this culture, this diploma is usually considered to be purely ceremonial in function, and isn't normally used as proof of the degree.  For one thing, diplomas usually don't have meaningful anti-forgery security features.

And there are various circumstances in which a student who had completed a degree might not have a physical diploma.  Maybe they didn't attend their graduation ceremony, and the university didn't have their current address to mail it; or maybe they used to have it but lost it at some point.  Since it's a ceremonial document, some people might not go to the trouble to obtain or replace it.

As such, in the US, if Alice needs to prove to Bob that she holds a certain degree, the standard method is that Alice sends a request to the university that they send Bob a copy of her transcript, which not only records her degree but also her grades in all the courses she took.  This will normally be printed on security paper, sealed with an official seal, and mailed directly from the University to Bob, so that Alice has no opportunity to tamper with it.  (There could still be ways for Alice to have a fake transcript sent to Bob, but it's harder, and so this process is usually considered adequate.)

For privacy reasons, Alice's transcript can only be sent upon Alice's request (and she'll have to authenticate the request somehow, e.g. by giving her university student ID number which isn't normally known to anyone else).  Bob can't get it without Alice's cooperation.

JeffE may have overstated the case when he said this was the only way to prove it, but it's by far the most common in the US higher education system, and other forms of proof are much less likely to be accepted by Bob.

(I think JeffE was also objecting to the term "PhD title" since this term isn't used in the US to refer to a physical document confirming a degree.  So if you asked someone for their "PhD title", they would not know what you were talking about.)


Is it legal to make submitted research paper public

In which concerns publishability, it depends upon the journal policies regarding pre-prints and media coverage. However, this is not a legal issue - there is nothing illegal about the situation you have described.
In the case of IEEE you can see here that they allow authors to share their work anywhere.

Prior to submission to an IEEE publication
Authors may post their article anywhere at any time, including on preprint servers such as arXiv.org. This does not count as a prior publication.

Caveat: please read the whole content of the link to be aware of the full policy. They ask you to use a disclaimer that the work was submitted to IEEE:

The following text should be included on the first page of the submitted article when it first is posted in any of the above outlets: “This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.”


How to write formal letter for PhD after completion of MS

If you studied in the same department, you (should) have at least two advantages:

1) You know the culture there -- how important "rules" are.

2) You know people: Professors (your MS thesis advisor), Master students, PhD students, your student union.

So try to use this to find out how to write the letter. Ask the people you know how they wrote their letter/ what they recommend/ if it really matters. (You may find out that nobody even cares if you really write the letter.)

In my university for example, there is also such a rule -- however, in reality, nobody looks at the letter and it's even possible to just write "I want to do my PhD". The official rule of course doesn't say so and secetaries also have no idea.

If this fails and you do not get any information, include at least: your name, your previous studies, your prospective advisor, if you will get funding and how and a detailed description of your project.

I wish you good luck!


Receiving a "Major Revision" After undergoing a "Minor Revision"

There are a lot of things you can do, but if you want the paper to be published by this journal, it is almost certainly necessary for you to undertake the major revision.
Refusing to  revise will almost certainly result in an immediate rejection, based on the editor comments.
You can withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere as always.
I'll note that "reviewer10" might not mean the tenth actual review of your paper, but a nominal identifier. There may have been some reviewers invited, but who did not submit reviews, for example. I'll also note that it may be "reviewer10" with the most knowledge of the area, though that isn't necessarily so. In that case, the other reviews were too superficial. And the opposite may also be true, of course, with that reviewer having too little experience.
But the editor's comments are not to be ignored. You can do your own analysis about whether the comments of the reviewer have validity or not. If they say it is standard work with little innovation, then that should be possible to check. You could, of course, ask for evidence of those statements if it hasn't been included.


Using a list to explain symbols used in an equation?

In some journals there are page limits, and so your first example becomes more relevant. But I agree your second example is more readable.


How to prepare for undergraduate research of which I have no background in?

My advice is to discuss this matter directly with whoever your supervisor will be -- tell them about your past experience, your concerns, and ask for their advice. They may be able to have you shifted -- or they may tell you that they were explicitly looking for your biology background.

As to why they would be explicitly looking for your biology backgrounds -- computer scientists frequently collaborate with other scientists when working on large-scale simulations. The reason for this is that there's two sides to the simulation -- the actual code required to run it, and the domain knowledge required to design the code in the first place. As @Sumyrda pointed out, this may be one of the goals of the internship (to give you experience in working with/as the domain expert).


Why is a professorship sometimes called a chair?

etymonline.com:

chair (n.)
"a seat with a back, intended for one person," early 13c., chaere, from Old French chaiere "chair, seat, throne" ... from Latin cathedra "seat" (see cathedral).
Figurative sense of "seat of office or authority" c. 1300 originally was of bishops and professors. Meaning "office of a professor" (1816) is extended from the seat from which a professor lectures (mid-15c.). ...

The etymology is much more obvious in Romance languages: see e.g. the Spanish word catedrático.
Note that there's a specific type of chair which is also used figuratively to refer to the authority of the person who is entitled to sit in it: throne. Usage is probably parallel, although digging out examples to demonstrate this would be a non-trivial research project.

I see from comments that there are two opinions about what the question meant by asking about usage. To address the other opinion, in as much as it's not already answered by user2768: professor in British English is reserved to those who hold a chair, which may be an endowed or a personal chair. In American English it  is used far more widely. Cognate words in other languages may be used even more widely still: in Spanish, profesor is used for teachers from primary to tertiary education, although as mentioned above there's also a word catedrático which corresponds to the British professor. I would expect that most of the Commonwealth follows the British usage, with the possible exception of Canada, but I would not be surprised to be corrected on this in comments.


"My research output is much better than him". "Better" is not well defined in academia. No one has grades: you can't compare an A to an A-. Instead, everything is "graded" more casually.

But this casual grade has nothing to do with how hard or difficult the work is. If you mean "better" as "I work harder, have more publications, and my publications use more difficult techniques etc." then I think you have the wrong definition of "better". In academia, "better" means your research is clear and interesting. Doing better in academia seems to usually be less about doing harder and more technical work, and more about picking the right problems to pursue and communicating the results well. This has nothing to do with how "good of a technical mathematician/scientist" you are, rather it has to do with how good you are at understanding what is interesting to a research community and clearly communicating results which reflects the interests of said community.

Your classmate is likely doing "better" because his PI is very interested in the results of his research. Others must be interested as well: that's why he got awards. You should look at his work and ask: who finds this interesting and why? See what you can learn about what his success says about the research community you are engaged in.

A good practice to do from time to time is to take a few papers from a high-impact journal and just try to understand why these are considered as highly impactful. What I have found is usually two things:

1) They have a really clear introduction which motivates this work as part of some larger research question which many people are interested in.

2) They are simple.

The first is pretty simple: writing clearly is important. "Selling your work" is important because if people don't know at a glance that your work is interesting, they will never dig into the paper to find out. The second point is kind of counter-intuitive. Academia tends to be very elitist about "being smart", but a lot of the most impactful work is actually relatively simple in its methods and arguments. One reason this occurs is because a simple result is easy to generalize to other fields: biologists can follow clear and simple mathematical results, but a more advanced mathematical treatment is a subject for mathematicians, meaning breakthrough mathematical models without all of the extra bells and whistles are the results which are most widely known and applied. But also, people more easily understand it and see all of the nuances they can add to it, generating a lot research interest surrounding the idea (i.e. you left something for someone else to look into!).

Of course, this depends on the audience. In mathematical journals sometimes very dirty mathematical derivations contain some of the most cherished results by other mathematicians. Knowing your target audience for each paper/presentation is the best way to make sure your research is read and appreciated.


Is there an honors system in graduate schools?

At my university, you can graduate at the doctoral level "with distinction." This is the only honor we offer (aside from dissertation prizes) and it's entirely based on the dissertation, not on coursework.

We don't even calculate the GPA of our graduate students.


General guidelines for those who do not have college degree and are not students but they could publish an article?

Sorry to have to say it, but the first step is to assure yourself that you aren't a crank. You don't sound like someone trying to "square the circle", so the first comment was just for completeness. But if you aren't sure about the validity of your research then getting some feedback on it from a pro would be helpful. Perhaps you are close enough to some university to make contacts and talk about what value your ideas might have.

But in the final analysis, you publish in a journal by submitting your work to the journal. If you get desk-rejected by an editor you have some information that your work isn't up to the required standard. But otherwise your work will be given to experienced reviewers for comment.

You don't need any credential or affiliation to publish. Just quality work.

Longer term, however, forming some circle of collaboration can help get you in the game. It can help you up your game as well.

You don't say what you mean by "lack of support". If you edit the question to add more, I might have more to say as well.


Can I use paragraphs from an already published article in a new article?

No. That's self-plagiarism and most venues will not accept it. It is flagged by plagiarism-detecting software, and is likely to lead to desk rejection.


Research topics that gain importance quickly

In my (limited) experience in academia, I've noticed that the research topics that gain the most importance & attention tend to be the ones that impact the most people.

Sometimes (often) it takes a while for new research to become important. For example, in my field of computer engineering, machine learning has been researched for decades. But only in the last 5-10 years has it truly caught fire, as computational power, software libraries, etc. finally reached the point where the average researcher could quickly and easily make use of machine learning techniques. Now, you see its use in everything from engineering to the social sciences because of its power in extracting useful information from large datasets.

Sometimes new research topics become important because they disrupt a large amount of research. Einstein's theory of special relativity (eventually) opened up vast new fields of research -- but not before facing criticism from classical physicists who saw their life work as being under attack.


A chapter that does that is fine; I had one in my thesis. It can for example serve to set the stage for your original work. But someone with a PhD has to be able to do more than just repeat the work done by others, and the thesis has to show that capability. Replications are valuable, but a thesis consisting solely of replications won't show what it needs to show.

Instead we should try to find a way to make replications publishable (especially if they show what is already known) and worthwhile for established authors, rather than diminishing its value by delegating it to students.


Can you study and contribute to physics if you are a mathematician?

Yes, technically speaking, you can cross the fence -- either direction -- between those two disciplines, but be aware of their different agendas.

Physics uses the language of mathematics to construct mathematical models of reality, but the physics is really contained in the following three non-mathematical tasks:

Establishing the association between mathematical symbols and reality (interpretation of the mathematical models).
Verifying the validity of the conceived mathematical models (physical theory verification).
Establishing their limits of validity.

You can be a great mathematician, but if you fail in understanding the above not-so-easy tasks, you will be a bad physicist.


I don't have any personal experience here - but some googling suggests that CCNY only offers a M.A. in art history - and that the language exam it requires is about reading skills rather than conversation:

  Each semester City College offers exams in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Classical Greek, Japanese, and Latin. This examination tests your ability to translate a short document from your chosen language into English. You are permitted to bring a dictionary to the exam if you wish. You must register in advance for the exam. Each semester we will post the deadline for registration. You can register for this exam in the MPIR office during office hours. You may prepare for this exam in any way you choose (for example, taking a class). If you are multilingual, you will not need any special preparation.

This seems in line with language requirements in math programs - the idea being that there may be important texts in your field that either a) haven't been translated to English, or b) would be advantageous to read in the original language.


If something is publicly visible in the Internet, does it mean I can use it for research?

There are at least three largely-unrelated questions buried in here. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and in any case its correctness may vary a little according to where you are.

The first thing to establish is that "appearing on the internet", whether in Google Images or elsewhere, does not mean that something is in the public domain. Something may be public domain, or it may be copyrighted with a permissive license, or (most commonly) neither of these may apply - although you can configure Google Images to search for pictures with public domain and/or Creative Commons licenses.

Now, the three questions:

If something is available online can you use it in your research? I don't see any copyright reason why not, since you're not distributing it; downloading an image to perform research is not fundamentally any different to downloading an image (in your browser) to view it.
You might need to be careful that your research (which you presumably do want to distribute) is not a "derivative work" of the copyrighted material. Reporting something like "50% of pictures on the internet are of cats" would not be a problem, but for less clear-cut cases - for example where part of the original material remains - you might want to check.
If something is available online can you redistribute it? No, or at least not by default. Not unless it is public domain or licensed in such a way as to permit this. "Fair use" considerations may modify this answer in some jurisdictions.
Can you distribute a list of the URLs of copyrighted works that others could download for their own research? Probably, but there have been some attempts at really bizzare laws in this area in some countries, due to websites that provide links to pirated movies, etc., that they do not host.


Interview strategies for faculty positions - to focus on their research or your own?

When you have a meeting with a "distant" potential colleague, you should let the interviewer determine the initial flow of the interview. The important thing is to not spend too much time trying to figure out if this is just for information, or if you're being "tested" in some way. (The answer is, yes, you're probably being tested.)

Sometimes, the interviewer will want to talk about his research, to see if you are willing to think about new ideas, and how to fit them into your work. Sometimes, they will want to talk about your research, to see how well you can explain your ideas and work to people outside of your field. And other times it will fall somewhere in between these two extremes.


For a first year math PhD student, should the student read their graduate level math textbooks page by page, sentence by sentence?

While it may be good for something, it isn't really the best way to learn anything. To learn, you need to get practice (reinforcement) and feedback. The exercises in the book will do two things for you if the book is a good one. First, they will exercise the more important ideas, giving you the practice, but also giving you an outline of the chapters. Second, the problems will point you, indirectly, to the examples, theorems, and proofs that are the most important to study.

The big idea here is that not every word in a math book has equal weight.

Trying to "memorize" the textbook is also a terrible way to prepare for exams. Find more exercises and solve them.

Your brain isn't like a thumb drive that you can pour information in to an then expect that you have "learned" it. Think of a novel that you read a year ago. How much of it do you really remember? If you read a lot, then it is unlikely that you will have retained very much about that old book. A few people can do that, but they are very rare. Chances are slim that you are one of them.

Finally, if you can't solve an exercise you know what you need to ask the professor about. Hopefully the prof will give you feedback on your work - the other essential to learning. That way you are less likely to develop misunderstandings that need to be corrected later.


My (ex-)advisor is holding our paper hostage

If you really don't care about the paper then A seems ok as long as the paper isn't published without you.
But you could nudge the professor and then decide what you want to do. If you get unreasonable demands then you can back away which should prevent the paper being published (ethically, at least). But it is possible that your worst fears won't be realized and you have a simple way forward.
But I would save any ultimatum for a later round after you hear a response to a request to submit. You want to be the "reasonable party" in any conversation.


How do I clear my name when wrongfully accused of cheating?

Putting myself in the shoes of the TA, I would say that you haven't even been accused of cheating.

You say:

  I received an email from the TA asking why I submitted an entirely different project than what was being asked, and my only simple answer is that I had no idea what I was doing. Obviously, that isn't a good enough answer when someone is implying you cheated.

The answer is right there: Your TA asked you why you submitted an entirely different project than the one you were supposed to complete and you said you didn't know what you were doing, which, by the way, completely confirms your TA's suspicions (i.e., that a clueless student completed a project in one of the most completely incorrect ways).

TL;DR: I wouldn't worry about the cheating "accusation."

(but do worry about whether you are putting your best foot forward with respect to completing course assignments and projects the way they're intended to be completed, etc.)


How to apply to a prestigious American university as an international student?

I am planning to do a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in the US, more specifically California

Many American prospective graduate students limit their search with severe geographic restrictions.  I view this as being a poor investment in a future academic career, but if someone truly prioritizes being an easy drive from their family and childhood friends, that's certainly up to them.  If you are coming from abroad it makes no sense to me to concentrate your search in "California".  California has some excellent institutions, but certainly only a minority of the nation's best institutions are in California.  Moreover, if by chance you have family living in, say, Los Angeles, going to graduate school in San Francisco is not going to put you close enough to them to be helpful to you.

  I understand that an American Ph.D. program is very different from a European one in that it usually takes around 5 years to complete and involves coursework.

First of all, American PhD programs can take less than five years to complete -- though it is quite rare to see a student graduate in less than four -- and also more than five years to complete.  In my field (mathematics) the time to completion is certainly less than the overall average, but I think there are very few, if any, math PHD programs where the average time to completion is 5.0 years or less.  (I went to one of the top programs in the country.  I did graduate in five years, which was most common in my program.  I think though that more students took more than five years than less than five years.)

  If a master's degree was already obtained, do American universities allow for a more European style Ph.D. completed in around 3 years?

I think you may be misunderstanding the system slightly.  There are (virtually) no length requirements in American PhD programs.  You probably do have to complete a certain amount of coursework, but this is just what you would automatically get by spending 2-3 years in the program.  In most cases you can get "course credit" for your thesis work, so the amount of actual courses that PhD students take varies considerably and to a large degree is up to them.

Entering a PhD program with a master's degree makes much less of a difference in an American PhD program than you might think, and the better the program the less it matters.  For instance, I had a sort of "secret master's degree" in that I got it along with my bachelor's degree.  I don't think having this master's degree impacted my studies at all (except of course to convey that I had roughly equivalent training to the excellent foreign students who were admitted to the program).  At a certain point in our PhD program we "earned a master's degree" and could, with a little paperwork and a small fee, formally collect it.  I seem to recall a few people did that, perhaps to get a leg up on some summer job.  I already had one; I could have gotten another, but what PhD student needs two master's degrees in the same field?

My present PhD program (mathematics, UGA) is around the 50th best in the country, and things work differently.  Up until a few years ago having a master's degree was actually a formal disadvantage to our entering students in that it conferred one year less of guaranteed PhD funding.  But we observed that students with entering master's degrees were not in general better prepared than students without, so we rolled back that requirement a few years ago.  In this regard let me say: in the American system a master's degree is kind of a "no man's land": we have absolutely no agreed upon notion of what skills and work a master's degree should convey.  If you get a master's degree from a low quality institution, you are probably less prepared in every way than if you get a bachelor's degree at a solid institution.  Conversely, a master's degree at a pretty good institution is worth something: of my first four PhD students, they only one who graduated in five years came in with a master's degree from a good place.  This counted for something: in fact he started working with me in his first year in the program, whereas many PhD students spend a year or two or three entirely focused on coursework and exams with no research in sight.

  Does a Ph.D. necessarily involve paying the university's tuition fees?

Nooooooo.  As a good rule of thumb, if you are in a STEM field, you should not enroll in a PhD program unless your fees are being paid.

  Ph.D. students in Europe are employed by their university, receive a monthly salary and don't pay tuition. Does this model exist in the US, i.e. is there any way to avoid paying tuition fees as a Ph.D. student?

Yes!  Most PhD students in STEM fields not only do not pay tuition, but also receive a livable stipend (which is some combination of money for teaching, for research assistance and outright scholarship money).  There are some circumstances in which one might want to consider enrolling in a STEM PhD program without such a stipend, but they are the exception, and you should think very carefully before agreeing to this.


How to find collaborators for a research project(paper or a series of papers)?

You can probably find colleagues easily.  The challenge is interesting them in a collaboration with you.

The basic rule is that collaborations are successful when everyone benefits.  In order to get collaborators, you need to make it clear that they will benefit by working with you on your idea.  Benefit in academia usually takes the form of:

Funding
Publication authorship
Advancing the collaborator's pre-existing research interest

You have already mentioned one potential benefit of your work: high-impact publications.  The key is communicating (and convincing) colleagues that they will benefit.

Here are some things that might help:

Have a concrete proposal. While some open-ended early discussions might be useful, once you are ready to invite people to collaborate, invite them to something specific.  Do you want to write a paper together that demonstrates XYZ? is a clear idea that colleagues can quickly evaluate to decide whether they are interested.  On the other hand, Should we work together in area X? is far too open-ended.  It is not clear whether it will lead to anything useful, and busy academics will be reluctant to invest a lot of time in discussions that might not lead anywhere.*
Demonstrate credibility.  A colleague might be interested in your idea, but still reluctant to get involved if they don't know whether you  are able to accomplish what you propose.  The bigger and bolder your idea, the more skepticism you are likely to face from others.  Some ways to demonstrate credibility:

Existing track record (publications, etc.)
An introduction from someone known who can vouch for you.
Networking and conversations that give people an insight into your knowledge.

Offer to collaborate with others on their ideas.  You ought to be the kind of colleague that you hope others will be for you.  This means being willing to contribute to other projects.  Offering to help others, besides being nice, also gives you a network and credibility for advancing your own ideas later.  And in practice, advancing your own ideas often means compromising with someone else on a project that does some of what you both want.

*When I was trying to get collaborators on a grant application, I made the mistake of being too open-ended.  It seemed like appropriate deference to others who were more experienced to approach them without a well-formed idea.  However, these discussions didn't go anywhere.  Eventually I realized that making a clear, concrete proposal was a service to everyone, as it gave them a much better idea of what I was talking about and whether it was worthwhile.  "Let's apply for funding from this specific grant call, based on this short summary idea" got an immediate response from others.  In the end, more experienced colleagues did shape the proposal quite a lot, but the specific proposal was a much better starting point for successful collaboration.


Should I pursue a research area even after finding that papers have already been written on it?

Papers have been written on nearly every topic you can possibly think of. I would be shocked if someone HADN'T written a paper on your potential research area by now. The trick to good research is to position your research in the space alongside other papers. What did 'Emerging fiber optic networks in Africa' conclude? What was their methodology, sample size, literature review or most importantly their conclusion? Each one of these areas can be used as a jumping point for your research to confirm, critique, dispute, refute or supplement theirs. It's good that others have come before you to beat down the path so that you can potentially tread a little further off the beaten trail. To answer your question, I personally think you should continue to pursue your research area, there is always scope to perform more research, especially in your field of interest.


Should one continue their journey on the academic path if they love their field of study and research but are not proficient at it?

Not being able to do certain things is no reason to leave the field. Instead, the student could focus on what they can do, not on what they cannot do. In fact, it is often the people that "lack" the "advanced" knowledge who come up with creative ideas and new approaches that are different from everybody else.
And if it turns out that the student needs fancy new algorithms anyway: all the others are doing that already and it can take as little as a phone call to start a collaboration. Also, the "fancy algorithms" may be in fashion now, but nobody knows what happens in five or ten years.
Of course there is no reason for the student to stay in the field if it does not make them happy. Changing field or changing from academia to the private sector are not as hard as people often assume. There are plenty of interesting jobs outside of academia and it should not be seen as a failure to leave the academic world.


How to tell my advisor I don't want to stay in academia

How do I tell my supervisor? I want to avoid leaving the impression I think our research field is boring.

The other answers are already very good. You don't have a specifically academic problem, yours is a communication strategy issue.

be honest: in your specific case, tell your advisor as soon as possible in order to avoid a situation when too individuals want/wish each other only good and due to a misalignment it ends up in a clash;
focus on the positive side: Communicate that you are motivated to go for an industry position. It's easier than to focus on why you don't want to stay in academia.

There are always two sides of a coin. Your question sounds as if you wanted to avoid something (staying in academia) and that is always difficult to communicate, since it pushes you to defend your decision. Try to formulate it as if you were positively pulled to somewhere else. Then it's not you who is on defense, you took the active part in the conversation and usually it will be the other party to defend their position why not to do something (going to industry) is a bad move. As pointed out by others, you own a decision to do something (subjective, hence any reason is good enough), but there usually arises a need to explain why you don't want to go the default route (calls for more objective arguments, which are much harder to formulate). Your motivation for being pulled somewhere can stay vague, I wouldn't even hesitate to invoke emotions, such as I feel like I would like such a job and want to give it a try.


Starting collaboration through first e-mail. Can it work?

Let's elaborate on my comment in this answer. Here are the issues:

There are just statements in your draft, no actual question.
The tone of the mail is a bit informal for the case you don't know Prof. Y (at least in my opinion). Leaving out the "Greetings" will make it better.

Here's my proposal for the mail:

  Subject: Request for collaboration -- Problem A and Problem B

  Dear Prof. Y,

  I have learned about you from Prof. X during my works with him.

  I have gone through your recent papers: [this] and [this]. Recently, I have worked with Method1 and Method2 which could suitably address your problem. Would you be interested to (Removed: collaborate on [thing] with me?) talk with me about the topic in a phone call or meeting? It would be a pleasure to work with you on this topic.

  My recent works can be found in [this profile link].

  Looking forward to hearing from you.

  Sincerely,

  me

  -- [my signature]


Just like the grass is always greener on the other side, it is somewhat usual for people to think that their particular area of expertise is somewhat more valuable than others. I have seen it in all fields I have heard of…

And it's not restricted to academic life: I'm sure the cardiac surgeon feels that his work is so much more important than that of the family physician, while the later thinks that he's the one tasked with stopping epidemics and diagnosing the important stuff to save lives.

But I'm sure you already knew that… so, what is your question exactly?

Edit: how does one avoid thinking that way?

The most difficult part, for me, in thinking objectively about other fields is to be able to correctly identifying the challenges they face. I find that it is altogether too easy to think “hey, that's a trivial optimization problem” or “know that they know the compound formula, I wonder why it takes them so long to synthesize it”. Better overall understanding of other fields helps a lot avoid this way of thinking. It takes a lot of effort to acquire such a broad general knowledge: reading, listening to conferences outside your area of expertise, chatting with colleagues, …


How do you address unknown peers in email?

It is of course never wrong to use the title of the person to whom you write. In general I think it is fine to use Dr. since that is the degree most have. This may not work so well in cultures where titles are more of an obsession or where hierarchy is still well established. If the person writing is a professor, then you are of course writing from the top position and so you will either direct letters to someone at the same level or lower. This simplifies things compared to if you, yourself were not at the professor level.

As an editor of a journal I often use the term Colleague instead of Dr. this or Professor that. This is because the tile may not be completely obvious from the manuscript and I do not permit myself time to Google every author to find out. Since I am also a professor, it feels relatively safe to call everyone a colleague.

To sign off I often use my first name except if the mail has some formal aspect where, if it was a letter, I would have used my full name. In all my e-mail correspondence, I have found almost without exception, that once I sign with my first name, the mail reply will inevitably greet me by first name and be signed by a first name. I try to be a little sensitive about it but not overly so; I have "my" culture, the person I correspond with his or hers and none is above the other in my view. So In any correspondence I will open the first mail with Dear Colleague or Dear Dr. So-and-so. If the response is signed by first name then: titles away. Otherwise I will countersign correspondence with first name to break the ice.

It seems e-mail is often more forgiving than regular letters or traditional contacts. I think internet has an informal context which implicitly signals to everyone that it is less formal. I have not seen research on this but I can see, for example how students can ask quite blunt questions over e-mail while almost trembling and excusing themselves when standing at my office door (not that I am in any way trying to be intimidating).


Submitted Assignment Late - Wrong to ask for in-depth analysis?

You submitted late and did half-baked job. It does happen to the best of us.

It does not, however, make sense to expect the lecturer to invest on a piece of work that you yourself consider subpar. Any information that they could give you would probably concentrate on the things you anyway know are problematic in this submission. If you did your best job, detailed feedback from the lecturer is valuable in refining your work.

But if you didn't, and you know it anyway, you would just utilize their time/attention to little effect and would take it away from students who did - in this particular instance - a better attempt.


How do conferences work for deaf scientists?

I am neither a deaf scientist nor an organizer for conferences. However, I was a student and staff member at a university with a significant deaf population so I'll speak from that perspective.
The prevalence of interpreters and other accommodations for those with disabilities varied significantly. It was a given that American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters would be present at large scale events and presentations aimed at the community as a whole. Additionally, interpreters would be provided for deaf students taking classes taught in spoken English.
Beyond that, it was usually the responsibility of the deaf person to arrange for an interpreter; though many interpreters were employed by the university, there was no guarantee one would be available on short notice. This may explain why I seldom saw interpreters at club meetings and other smaller events, especially those that emphasized spontaneous direct communication. For example, interpreters were present at the anime club where much of the activities involved watching Japanese animation with subtitles, but I did not see any at the club for tabletop role playing games where interpersonal interaction was constant.
In short, students and staff had the accommodations necessary to fulfill their primary goal(s) but often not enough for secondary ones, such as socialization. I suspect a similar dynamic applies to scientific conferences.
Conferences that regularly have deaf people attending likely organize interpreters themselves but the rest will only provide accommodations when requested. (In other words, at a typical conference, you're not going to see an ASL interpreter unless there's at least one deaf person present!) The effectiveness of such accommodations are apt to suffer if the organizers lack experience and/or resources. This would discourage deaf people from attending unless the conference was essential - for example, a topic of particular interest is being discussed or a colleague is in need of material or moral support - or had a positive reputation of proper accommodations.
In summary, the attendance of deaf scientists at conferences is presumably dictated by the following:

The importance of the conference to the individual deaf scientist
The presence and quality of accommodations that enable deaf scientists to be productive
The number of people with whom the deaf persons can readily communicate with
Each deaf scientist's personal comfort level with attending conferences designed primarily for hearing people


How to overcome the need to know everything about a topic?

I propose that your behavior is not caused by flawed methodology but stems from certain acquired beliefs about your self worth, that you should try to address to solve this "problem".
Reason for Behaviour
The need to

read everything stems from the need
know everything which stems from the need to
not miss anything important/useful which in turn stems from the need to
submit the perfect paper or thesis which stems stems from the need to
get appraisal from your advisor or peers which is a
source of happiness

Thus, unconsciously you are afraid that, if you miss some information your work will be less than perfect and you will not get the approval that you are used to get. People will be disappointed, saying something like "This is not the quality of work we are used to get from you".
Recommendation
It is usually hard to change these core beliefs about ourselves, but you could

realize that even with a non perfect paper you will be much better than other researchers (if the need to be the best is not something you can change)
realize that your advisor values it more, if you finish your research in time than making the best work possible ("Better done than perfect"). Therefore you will get more appraisal for finishing quickly.
look for other sources of happiness and validation in life that will make imperfections in your work seem less important

friends that value your company
spouse that loves and values you as a person
children
teaching, where the amount of knowledge you need to acquire is much lower and the reward (admiration from students) is easier to achieve

(Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician)


How do I get out of my overly vain 'trophy' mindset when it comes to universities?

Since nobody seems to answer this somewhat vague question, I will:

1) Your question is not related to Academia directly, it is simply a question about fighting negative emotions (perhaps, jealousy?) that stem from failure in some sort of a competition. You say your negative emotions interfere with your everyday functionality, so the standard advice is to go to personal psychological counseling.

2) The one bit that is related to academia is:
"One of my friends got into Oxbridge and I don't think he's more intelligent than me or particularly gifted at all to be honest, -but I just don't understand?"

The answer to this is that academia is not an intelligence contest. It doesn't matter at all whether someone is intelligent or dumb. What matters is, for better or worse, whether you can deliver good research results.


Can a literature review be a "master's thesis"?

At least in my Faculty (of Computer Science), a master thesis can be "just" a literature review. A literature review can be an important contribution, and is part of what is usually called secondary research.

However, you should consider performing a systematic literature review, which is a literature review comprising several analytic and precise steps to enhance the reliability of the study. A systematic literature review is a time consuming research activity but a very useful one. Please verify that such a review has not already been conducted recently, before starting it by your own.

Systematic reviews are publishable research and often get many citations. As for thesis, I think that any publishable research activity can be a student's master thesis. However, ask your (potential) advisor.


Worth attending discipline's national conference as early grad student if not presenting?

Attending conferences is very useful for several reasons. Usually, the work presented at conferences involve the latest developments in the field. This may provide you with new ideas or tools for your own research. It will give you a good overview of what is happening. You will also become familiar with who is doing what. In addition to this you also have the possibility to get in touch with colleagues and strike up new contacts with persons working on questions for interest to you. This can become useful in the sense that you can possibly start up collaborations or simply become known to others in the field. The latter can be important, for example, when you publish since reviewers might easily be someone you meet during the conference. Obviously, presenting something makes this even easier but being there is far better than not.

The reason I can see from not going is if you do not think the conference is of major interest or if you do not think you will meet people interested in similar questions to yours, in other words if you cannot see any academic benefits from going. Saving money is of course also a valid question if you think you can use that money more wisely on, for example, another conference.

But, in general, go to good conferences regardless of whether you have something to present or not.


Fundementals of Engineering exam with Math degree (not ABET-engineering?)

According to this National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) website:

The NCEES board of directors recently approved an amendment to the policy that governs the NCEES Engineering Standard to expand access to its credentials evaluations service. NCEES uses this standard to evaluate educational credentials of engineering licensure candidates with degrees from the following:

Engineering programs outside the United States
U.S.-based programs in engineering, engineering technology, related science, or mathematics that are not accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, when coupled with a master’s degree or doctorate from a program that is EAC/ABET-accredited at the undergraduate or graduate level

So, it seems that having an undergraduate degree in math is not, by itself, a showstopper for sitting for the FE exam, provided that you have a MS or PhD in engineering from an institution that is ABET-accredited, either at the undergraduate or graduate level. In this case, it sounds like you will be referred to the NCEES Credentials Evaluations service to have your background reviewed in order to determine if you are prepared well-enough to pursue engineering licensure.


How fungible are personnel salary allocations in an NIH grant?

Generally I think yes, but definitely talk with your institution/department's grant staff about this even if you're still in the writing phase - they'll be your best friends.
For example (from NIAID but I don't think this is Institute-specific):
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/putting-effort-your-application

Don't worry if your effort changes over the course of your grant. Reviewers know that can happen, and NIAID allows you to change your effort as your work progresses (with some limitations we'll discuss in a future issue).

One of the exceptions is substantial reductions in effort for key personnel:
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps/html5/section_8/8.1.2_prior_approval_requirements.htm

A significant change in the status including but not limited to withdrawal from the project; absence for any continuous period of 3 months or more; reduction of the level of effort devoted to project by 25 percent or more from what was approved in the initial competing year award.

You'll have some opportunity to firm up the budget if your award is funded and during the extensions process.


How to tell to my advisor that I want a co-advisor?

A legitimate way of supervising PhD students is to start fairly intensive, but as they progress gradually reduce the amount of supervision/help. The purpose of a PhD thesis is to show that you can do independent research, so the advisor needs to enable that by not being too closely involved. This is obviously a tricky balance act, but that could be an alternative explanation to the behavior you see. The obvious way to find this out, especially if your relationship is good with your advisor, is to just ask her/him. If the problem is that (s)he is easing you to independence, then you know and you may talk on how to fine tune that process. If the problem is that (s)he is too busy with other things, (s)he would not mind the help of a co-advisor.


Math PhD application references from a postdoc

Will a reference from a postdoc be considered less than a reference from a lecturer/professor?

As a general rule, yes, but it depends who the postdoc is, how strong (and effectively-written) their letter is, and what the letter is for. As an example, I am currently working with a smart undergraduate, and he got accepted to several very good graduate programs (US, mathematics) on the strength of his application, which included a reference letter from a postdoc he did a research project with last year. So such letters can certainly be effective and have value. It all depends on the context.

The main point is that the most important factor in how seriously a reference is considered is not so much the job title of the letter writer (although that is still a factor that has some significance), but their credibility and reputation in the research community. Certainly many postdocs already have high credibility and name-recognition, and a letter from them (at least for a grad school application and to a lesser extent for a postdoc application; less so for a tenure track job application) will be taken quite seriously.


What's the rough budget size for one person year (research asssistant/postdoc) in academia?

The total amount of funding is difficult to guess. If you can't get detailed information, it's better to just state the number of positions in the grant and the total duration. Even that could be left out. If you're applying within Germany, everybody will know what a "typical" DFG grant includes. For applications somewhere else, I'm not sure how relevant this information would be.

The personnel related funding received from the DFG is standardized. See for example there for rates in 2012. The important question here would be wether it's a full-time or part-time position. That is field-dependent.

Overhead cost is standardized at 20 % of the total funding (at least for recent grants, it has been less earlier).

Travel costs and other is really dependent on the project.


What should TAs do if students disrespect them?

The TAs in question should speak with the director of the course first and foremost - it will be important to have that person "on their side", and they likely have a better idea of what actions are available to the TA.

In a more general sense, my opinion is that you try to treat those students with a sort of detached professionalism, but you are under no obligation to go the extra mile to help them. And you are absolutely within your rights to ask them to behave politely.


Should I omit a citation if the authors ask me to?

No.

If you use a source, you must cite it.  The authors deserve credit for their work, even if they don't believe they deserve credit for their work.

Of course, you should also take the authors' advice and also cite the appropriate primary sources (after reading them, obviously).


Is it wise for an undergraduate to contact a professor they would like to work under for a PhD program

What you suggest seems fine to me, but you could, and probably should, take it a step farther. Try to arrange a series of conversations with your advisor about how to approach graduate school in the long term and the admissions process in the short.

In particular, you will learn a bit about what life is like for a student at the institution you want to go to. It won't all be rosy and it will be hard.

He probably also knows a bunch of people other than at his alma mater and could make recommendations about them as well.

The personal touch never hurts, but with some admissions systems it may not help a great deal. The admissions process is often handled by a committee or even by administration rather than by individual professors. You will still need to make a good overall impression on the admissions people in any case.

On the other hand, don't necessarily close down your options to a single person. If that doesn't work you need the flexibility to go elsewhere.


Second PhD and conference biographical notes

Biographical notes are completely your own choice to share your achievements with readers. Alongside your current work, I don't see any reason for not sharing information about your previous PhD and achievements.


How to practice alone for a presentation?

Perhaps you are practicing the wrong thing.  If in fact you have no trouble speaking smoothly when you are front of a live audience, then you don't need to practice that.  You may need to practice how you 'enter' a slide (what concept or thought you will discuss first), or how to transition to the next slide (what is the final concept or thought, and how does it connect with the next thing you want to talk about).  You may need to practice what words you say in the introduction... you don't want to make that up on the fly.

In other words, do what professional musicians do.  They rarely play an entire piece through during practice, but instead repeat the challenging sections.

With the goal of working out the words you will use in the tricky parts, practice will feel less artificial and more productive.  Don't sweat the pieces you already know.  At the end, do a dry-run with an audience to test the timing and the flow.


How to follow up on the status of the official offer letter

You can probably safely wait a bit longer for the reasons you suggest. The staff that normally handles such things may not have complete access to their office systems and may be poorly supported for distance work.
There is some turmoil generally in hiring now and if the university is part of a State system they will be bound by directives from the legislature. But there is nothing you can do to affect that in any case.
So don't wait more than another week and ask for an update. Just note that you don't have the official notice yet and would like an update.
If you have other offers pending with deadlines don't wait too close to those deadlines to ask for the update. I don't expect bad things to happen, but it is hard to make predictions in times of chaos.
And congratulations.


Citing papers that use unpublished data that I want to publish

If you have at least 40 % new material you can submit your paper to journals and you should also cite the other paper without any hesitation.


Academic application - how to address lack of citations?

It is important that this is an entry level position, since a lack of publications is not that harmful and may be seen as normal. Lack of citations is entirely out of your control - it may theoretically be improved by publishing in more visible journals, social media networking/ promotion etc, but eventually the majority of academic work is cited the proud number of 0 (zero) times.

On the number and quality of publications, it cannot change in the short-run but you can present it in a more representative or favourable way. You can discuss the quality of your work ("first-rate" work published in "second-rate" journal is a very real situation, either for getting it out more quickly or due to the maladies of refereeing), focus on having a pipeline of research and ongoing paper output (which always matters) and talk about how you plan to improve. Since, for better of for worse, the names and numbers will not impress, you could bring forward what is relevant, innovative and generally a strong point, and what this continuation of publications show about you as a post-doc and researcher. Finally, there is a fine balance between self-awareness, self-promotion and self-defeating.


I'm an advanced graduate student in Physics, and I've gotten a B- in a class. I have also gone through rigorous job application processes, and generally, nobody will care about your GPA.

In Academia, papers, references, and networking will determine your postdoc or faculty position, grades won't even be considered.

If you plan on going into industry, a completed PhD and the brand name of your institution might be very important to get an interview, and depending on the job your comfort with problem solving and advanced technical concepts might matter. Companies will generally only look at your transcript after they've hired you to confirm your enrollment and completion of the program.

One B- is nothing to worry about, especially for a PhD student!


Software engineer vs research associate in not-so-related subfield for CS PhD

Lots of trade-offs. I don't think either of these is necessarily better than the other for later admission for theoretical CS. Money is good. Research is good. Quicker entry may be good, though that depends on many other things.

In a situation like that, I'd guess that "follow your heart" is probably best. You don't seem to suggest that the money is driving you - which is a good attitude for an academic.

Either would add something, but neither would be determinative, IMO.


Why are researchers at some think tanks titled professor?

The word "professor" is most often used by universities, but the content of the word more generally refers to a person whose job is some mixture of higher-level education and research.

Thus, while it is unusual for a place like the Santa Fe Institute to call some of their employees professors, I would judge it to be a reasonable description of their work given that the institute is well-respected in the academic world as both an educational and research institution.

Most other industry or "think tank" organizations do not have a similar mission and it would thus be less appropriate for them to give such a title to their staff.


Do scientific methodological beliefs affect the topics that are investigated?

The obvious answer to that is, of course, yes. Scientists are people, too, and while we try our best to conduct the actual research as objective and unbiased as possible (and sometimes we fail at that as well), lots of very subjective and "unscientific" factors go into the selection of concrete hypotheses, problems, and methodologies to work on / use.
These include perceived chance of success (nobody wants to spend a lot of time and money on a study they assume will fail in uninteresting ways), perceived importance, personal taste (if you hated mathematics the question you raise in your introduction would likely not even cross your mind), chances of writing a high-level publication (people are much more likely to commit to a study that could get into their favorite A* venue than one that is unlikely to), and many other factors.

But if "scientific methodological beliefs" for example assume that "empirical is hard", then could this motivate more studies on "easy approximations", rather than "phenomena themselves"? Intuitively they need to agree somewhere, but I was more thinking along the lines of:
Is it possible to produce a lot of research by researching "easy approximations" than "studying the real thing"? Does scientific belief justify this by making people "okay with easy approximations"?

"Perceived difficulty", especially in relation to expected impact and publication chances, are certainly one of these factors that make people choose which concrete problem to work on over others. However, I would argue that this is less about "beliefs" and more about fairly pragmatic cost/benefit estimations: if empirical works take a long time and are not valued highly, then fewer people will work on them. Again, researchers are people, too, and as a group researchers (just like anybody else) react to the incentives that are presented to them.


I like my supervisor but not how he does things; What do I do?

First, research doesn't come with a specification with all details ironed out.  In most cases, many things are undefined and unknown; hence, it is called research.  We could change direction at any time, especially when we realize there is a better problem or the problem at hand is rubbish.  Consequently, the code in academia is pretty bad, poorly designed, and ad-hoc as compared to what you find in the industry; although codes in the industry can be one bowl of spaghetti too.

On your question, think about the problems at hand.  Try to plan them out as best as you can.  Collect evidence to justify the strength and weakness of a given tool/solution.   Bring these pieces of evidence to your supervisor.  If he/she is rational, he/she will either side with you or give you better reasons to not go a certain way.


Should I review the journal extended version of the same paper I reviewed for a conference?

I see no problem...

People re-review the same content all the time.  This applies to resubmissions of rejected conference papers but also journal articles.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I have been asked to review some journal submissions in the past specifically because the editor (who might also have been the program chair for the conference where the earlier version appeared) knew I had already reviewed it.

In this case, if you felt it was preliminary at the time of the conference, that does not by itself mean the extended version is unsuitable.  You would have to read the extended version and decide.  But just because you didn't expect to see a version suitable for the journal doesn't IMHO mean you're so biased you can't review it objectively.

P.S.  I'm pretty sure I saw a question similar to this in the past few months, but I'm not finding it.


When should one apply for a PhD in the UK?

Everyone doing a Master's is in the same boat. PhD applications aren't usually due until late January or early February, so that's a good four or five months into your Master's course. This gives you plenty of time to work on the applications and get to know your lecturers to secure a reference letter or two.
Plus, you may end up working on something completely different for your PhD than you did for your Master's so it doesn't really matter how far along in your Master's work you are at the time of applying for PhDs. Furthermore, admissions committees are fully aware of this situation.
Good luck with the applications.


How to search for upcoming conferences that will be held in a specific subject

By doing reasonable googling. As you didn't state your topic let me make an example when searching for conferences on magnetism. The operators I use should be self-explaining. Most conferences will be announced on websites of universities or mentioned, to exclude old ones search only within 2014..2014, and so on...

See also my other answer which has some links how to use google properly


What are the 'right questions' to ask professors at a visit day for prospective graduate students?

Good question.  I am a tenured (associate) math professor at UGA.  To be (too?) honest, I sometimes find graduate visitation days to be slightly awkward.  With most of the students, they and I want to have something to talk about; for many of the students, we will have something to talk about at some future point; for a few of the students, we will become so close that it will be hard to remember these first awkward conversations.

I just remembered a visitation day where I almost sullenly plopped myself down at a barroom table next to a certain prospective student and a bunch of current students.  They were more trying to have a conversation than actually having a conversation.  At one point the topic turned to some elementary topology problem the prospective student had in mind for some reason.  One of the current students was studying topology and she got interested and started to try to work it out.  Alas I was still bored, and after a few minutes I quietly uttered a few words.  The current student paused for a second, then her eyes lit up, and very soon after I got my chance to politely excuse myself and get another drink.  That prospective student is now my PhD student, but the bond was not forged on that day.

But still, we should try.

  1) I hear you study X.  I've studied only a little bit of it so far, but I remember learning about Y.  Can you tell me a little about your work?

"Can you tell me about your work?" is a very natural question that sadly can often be a showstopper.  The honest answer for many professors when talking to perfectly capable students who may later turn out to be their students is often "Not very meaningfully, no." Above I tried to frame the question in a little better way.  How is it better?  Well for one thing, asking a professor in a department you're visiting what they do can come off as lazy: almost everyone has a wealth of information available on their webpage now.  If the student really cared, wouldn't they look a little bit in advance?  So the framing of the question shows that the student has looked a little bit in advance.  It also clues the professor in to what might be an appropriate level at which to pitch the explanation.  If X is number theory (as it is for me), then if Y is "Wilson's Theorem" I'm going to say something very different than if Y is "the Chebotarev Density Theorem".

Still it's probably best not to say too much.  I remember asking one professor this when I was a prospective student and he said, "Yes, I study number theory, as do several other faculty members here.  I guess what distinguishes me is that I've also become very interested in representation theory, and my work uses that to a larger extent than the others.  Does that make sense to you?"  The person who said this to me was Dick Gross, and yes it did make sense, and as a two sentence orientation to who he was and what he did it functioned brilliantly then and it still does, but I see now what a lot of confidence and experience he must have had to know to say so little.  And he asked me if I understood, and if I hadn't he probably would have said something else: he seemed like a nice guy...and it turns out that he is.  (I don't remember what I said after that.  I think it would have been like me at the time to try to show some knowledge by asking a question -- that's a young math student type of thing to do.  So I'll imagine that I asked "What kind of representation theory?" because I would have known that there were finite groups, Lie groups and so forth.  And Gross would have replied "Algebraic groups".  At that point I would have had to admit that I was totally lost...and my being lost would be of no lasting significance: suffice it to say that I have since learned about that topic!)

  2) Do you do any computer work?

I think that's an increasingly important question.  Nowadays a math student has to locate himself on the spectrum of more computation / less computation.  If you're thinking about working with a faculty member, you definitely want to know this.

  3) Are you interested in real-world applications of your work?  Have you ever done any consulting or other outside work?

Again, a key question.  You should already be starting to think about these sorts of questions for yourself.  I, for instance, have absolutely zero contacts in industry, so I would be a terrible advisor for a student who was inclined in that direction, even if we had common mathematical interests.

  4) How long have you been here?

That's a nice question for one human being to ask another.  The professor will probably respond with some personal information about the town or their housing situation or their family or...something.

  5) Where did you get your PhD?

You would think that would be a kind of backward-looking question to ask a professor, but actually academics ask each other that kind of thing all the time.  Sad to say we really do try to have little portions of the CVs of hundreds of people memorized, even though we can look much of it up instantly if needed.  Also this question subtly asks the professor to put himself in your shoes.  It may also lead to some kind of insightful contrasting between the professor's PhD experiences / program and the current PhD program.  On the other hand many faculty did their PhD at better places than the ones in which they are currently employed, which can be a little embarrassing.  But there are various ways to spin this; maybe a temporal comparison is more interesting than a programmatic comparison.  If a faculty member is old enough they can tell you that their graduate stipend was 75 cents a day plus all the potatoes they could carry, or something fun like that.

  6) Do you have any PhD students?  [Then ask plenty of followup questions.]

That's getting serious.  You want to find out whether the professor is even on the table for being a potential advisor.  And if a professor names his students, you can then go and seek out those students and talk to them about their advising experience...that can be very enlightening.

  7) Are you happy here?

That's a bold question, and you might try to come at it a little obliquely, but again it's a very standard question for academics to ask each other.  Currently academia has an itinerant feel to it: we are all looking elsewhere around the terrain and asking each other, "Hey, long time no see, could you show me a blade of grass over there?  Hmm, that's pretty green, right?  I mean, do you think?  How does it compare to this blade, would you say?  Greener?  In what ways?"

Sometimes when you ask this question you may hear that the professor has already made or is currently making plans to leave!

  8) How would you compare this program to other programs Y and Z?

Again, we're good at this, by and large.  Even if we inflate our own program (it seems to be called for to do this at least a little), we are likely to be quite honest and rather knowledgeable about other programs.  If you go to five different places and ask around, you're likely to get some good consensus data.

  9) What advice would you give to a student who wanted to be successful in your program?  Are there any specific pitfalls to be avoided?

That's an obviously good and relevant question.

Note that you can't ask "Will I be happy here?" for a simple reason: we don't know.  If you're lucky, we know here and we know us.  We don't know you.  I think that you can in some ways get better information about the answer to this question by talking to students than to faculty, but any way you slice it, it's something you're going to have to largely figure out for your own.  No one at the visitation day is going to know you like you do, after all.

Good luck.


Finding (correct) citation info for math references

For mathematical articles I'm not aware of any citation database of (nearly) as good quality as MatSciNet --- your university is probably also paying a significant subscription fee for it.

As Paul Garrett already mentioned, you can probably access it from home via your university's library. There is actually an even simpler method (at least with a laptop): while at your university you can "pair your device" to automatically have access under your university account for 90 days, when you need to repair it. See the green/blue icon in the top-left corner of MathSciNet, linking to http://www.ams.org/pairing/pair_my_device.html

If you have a desktop at home, you might also do this though a VPN or library site of the university, and then you're set for the next 90 days.


When you email him, at your current rate, how often do you get responses? Has he indicated that it bothers him? (either directly or by showing signs that it annoys him) If not, why are you worried about it?

I'll add that the right question to ask is probably not “how often can I email him?”, but rather “am I emailing him with the right questions?”. What will definitely annoy your advisor, and pretty much any other person, is if you ask them series of questions to which you could have found the answer yourself, or questions whom they are not the right person to ask.


Cite paper under review on a paper that is going to double-blind review?

Typically, there are two ways to cite yourself in a double-blind paper:

Cite the paper as though it were written by somebody else
Blank the information in the citation (e.g., "Blinded paper currently in review")

You should use the first whenever possible, since it is more informative and allows the reviewer to consult the reference.  The second case is used when it cannot apply and maintain blinding, like citing the conference version of a paper in an extended version for a journal.  Your case is another good example: the paper is under review and so cannot be read by the reviewers in any case, so blanking the citation is fine.  The article formatting guidelines may even give you a specific preferred method for doing so.


List of majors offered by each US College/Univ

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) runs a database called IPEDS that contains data about virtually all institutions of higher education in the US (any institution that receives federal financial aid funds is required to report to IPEDS.)  Along with information about graduation rates and student demographics, you'll also find a list of all of the degree programs offered by each institution.

You should also be aware of CIP codes.  These "Classification of Instructional Programs" codes provide a standardized system of numbers to identify college majors.

It's possible to download data from IPEDS.  The system is somewhat cumbersome to use and it can be slow, but there is an immense amount of available data and you should be able to get the CIP codes of the programs offered at all of the thousands (over 7,000!) of institutions in the US. If you haven't worked with IPEDS before, I'd encourage you to find someone who is an expert to help you understand the system.

IPEDS also has a user-friendly "College Navigator" search that can be used to search for a particular college and lookup its data.


Would it be alright to break down the Acknowledgements into sections?

Provided that you don't get pushback from your advisor or committee, I think it should be fine. Those are the main concerns about style for a dissertation. If you send it out for publication, the editor may accept it or not.
But write it they way you think it should be and consider any advice you get from folks that have influence over you.


May a man attend a workshop entitled “Young women in [domain]”?

Yes, you should attend if you want to.

From their site, the point of the workshops is giving women a "platform...to present their research".

In other words, the point is that the speakers are women, not that everyone present is female.  I would expect there to be plenty of men in the audience (And if the point is to empower women, surely they are more empowered when they can share their work with everyone, not just other women).


Do STEM PhD admissions committees check a candidate's Statement of Purpose for plagiarism?

At my institution there is no such practice and I haven't heard of it at other institutions.

  What if, for instance, a successful math PhD applicant to University X gives his Statement of Purpose to his friend for him to apply next year at a similar PhD program at University Y?

It is quite common for people do consult other's statements as a reference, that is why you can find many of those (besides teaching statements, research statements, etc.) on various academic web sites. However, a blatant plagiarism would probably hurt your application more, no matter how good the original statement is. The reason for that is that such documents are usually personally tailored. They are written to highlight the writer's ambitions, goals and plans and make them compatible with the school's (or adviser's) vision. It is very hard to find statements that can fit multiple students, except if they are very generic and thus rather bad. Also, don't forget that the statement is a part of a larger package, which is also tailored to tell a convincing story why a student should be admitted. Part of that package are also face-to-face interviews. All of that taken together makes it undesirable to have one document sticking out, and it will stick out at some point of the process.

Personally, even if I found a student that has plagiarized another's statement, I wouldn't call it plagiarism but rather a disappointing lack of dedication. If you can't be bothered to put together a few paragraphs on what is important to in your future and also find it easy to blend into another's view of theirs, it's a way more serious problem then plagiarism.

Finally, as said before, the statement is only one part of the application, it is by no means the most crucial one. So, even if you "get away" with plagiarizing it, it won't guarantee your acceptance.


Practically, no one copy & paste citations they way you try doing. There are programs like Endnote or Mendeley that are used for citation formatting. Each journal has its own citation formatting, so you do not want to reformat citations by hand each time.

So, after installing the program,  you first import the citations using for example google scholar (see below). Then, in program (at least in Endnote) you choose a style and it will format you citations in Word file accordingly. In case there is no corresponding style, you can edit the existing one.


Approach expert in field - afraid of losing idea if expert doesn't need me

Due to time constraints I would not be able to do this on my own so I do not have many alternatives, how should I proceed?

As the comments note, you have essentially answered your own question - by not approaching the expert, who has data and can (in theory) advance the question where you have admitted you can't, you have essentially already "lost" the idea. An undeveloped idea has no inherent value.

However, beyond that, you should be aware that most professional researchers have more ideas than they have time to pursue. Right now, for example, my planning board has a 4:1 ratio of Projects I'd Like To Work On : Projects I'm Working on. This has two implications:

You shouldn't be worried about losing your idea, because in all likelihood, they already have more ideas than they know what to do with and won't particularly be searching for more to add to that pile.
You should prepare for the very likely answer to this proposal to be "I don't have time/funding".


Unsatisfactory research subject enforced by the advisor

First there are two possibilities arising from your question that are worth entertaining:

Your supervisor, with greater experience, sees some hidden value that you miss in the work. You acknowledge that the problem is important and such research problems are not typically solved within the context of a Masters. So perhaps your supervisor views your topic as a stepping stone towards some other result, or perhaps they view it more as exploratory and something for you to "cut your teeth" on.
You are correct and the topic is not going to (even indirectly) produce useful results and, furthermore, should not have been given to you as a Masters topic.

If (1) is even a slight possibility still, talk to your supervisor and express your concerns as strongly as you consider appropriate given your relationship. Having such concerns should be taken as you caring about your topic and the impact of your work and your supervisor should work to address them, even if only to tell you that the topic was a long shot and it is becoming clear now that the results are negative.

Aside from this, assuming your masters topic is a bit worthless and you are quite sure that (2) is more the case: what to do? Look to the longer term. Since you are a masters student, this is not the end of the world. If you wish to do a PhD and are accepted for the program, my advice would be to put your focus into that. Working on a masters topic you are embarrassed by is a difficult pill to swallow, and in an ideal world one you would not have to swallow. But doing PhD's is rife with such difficulties for all but a lucky few. And it is worth noting that your professor is also human and one of the hardest challenges of academia is to come up with new, worthwhile research topics; furthermore, the nature of research is such that there are no guarantees that a topic that seems initially promising will fulfil that promise.

In summary, my advice is: Do what you need to do to complete your Masters thesis and then look to get the best start/topic/supervisor possible for your PhD.

Regarding embarrassment about the Masters topic, again assuming the topic really is worthless, there are three things to note:

Anyone whose opinion has value will understand in the context of a Masters thesis that probably the topic came from the professor, not you, and will understand the difficulties you faced.
If you continue to do a PhD and progress further onwards into academia, in a few years time, nobody is all that likely to read about or care your Masters thesis (unless, perhaps, the results were published as a research paper).
The standard expected for a Masters thesis varies wildly from institution to institution, but solving an important research problem is certainly not to be expected. (I mention this because perhaps you have set very high standards for your thesis.)

Aside from all that, even though your Masters topic has not been great, probably you have learned at lot from pursuing it (about the problem itself, the other work done in the area, how it could be done better, how to conduct and describe research, how to avoid a similar dead-end topic in future, etc.). The main result of yours Masters is you (and what you learnt), not your Masters. Your Masters is one or two years of research; it is a gateway to potentially decades more research on the topics of your own chosing.


What kind of career path might be possible for a professor following a plagiarism scandal?

Past a certain point in their career and education, I think it's hard for somebody to ever clean off the stain of serious, prolonged, and deliberate misbehavior.  The more that a person has built up authority and trust on a false foundation, the harder it is to ever trust them with regards to that subject again.

When a young student engages in academic misbehavior, we treat it as a teaching moment.  When an undergraduate does it, we try to put fear into them and rehabilitate them.  When a graduate student does it, we try to figure out whether it is worth salvaging.  When a professor does it, it pretty much destroys their academic career.

And to my mind, I think that's OK.  We're talking about serious and deliberate professional malpractice that undermines the basis of the whole endeavor.  That can waste millions of dollars or leave people injured or killed.  Would you ever again trust a doctor who deliberately injured their patients, or an engineer who deliberately mis-designed a bridge so that it might collapse?  I think that it is the same for an academic who engages in massive and systematic fraud.


What to do when you have accidentally submitted an article to a predatory journal

You can now submit it elsewhere. It has not been published and it is not under consideration anywhere, so you are free to resubmit it.
The fact that the first journal was predatory is only relevant because that was the reason you withdrew the paper.


How much is the teaching duty of university administrators?

You are right that professors in various administrative positions typically have a reduced teaching load. However, this is hard to quantify and depends mostly on the institution's policy and maybe even the specific agreement (or contract) negotiated. The full range is possible: from no reduction in teaching load (position with little time requirement) to full “exemption” from teaching (e.g., dean or university president).


What to do when on-line instructor is ignoring questions?

The first two kinds of questions should be asked in the course's public discussion area so that the answers will benefit all students.  Since you've used "all the other tools" in the course, perhaps you've done that.

I suggest a concerned phone call to the department chair.  If the professor is not present in the course at all, ask, "Is Dr. X OK?  He hasn't been in the course in several weeks."  If he's around, but ignoring you, ask, "Do you know whether I've somehow offended Dr. X?  He hasn't answered any of my questions in several weeks."

The point is to give the chair a chance to make corrections without having said anything like "ignoring me."  If it has already been several weeks, I'd suggest doing this very soon. Be as specific as possible about dates when the instructor stopped responding, how other work such as quizzes is handled, etc.


MLA in-text citation of documents written by an organization, like UNESCO?

The document you refer to is written by an organization or a corporate author (UNESCO).  The general rule in such cases is, you treat this as an ordinary source written by an author named UNESCO.
From the Purdue Online Writing Lab, on listing work written by an organization in your works cited list:

A corporate author may include a commission, a committee, or a group that does not identify individual members on the title page. List the names of corporate authors in the place where an author’s name typically appears at the beginning of the entry.

The same general idea applies to in-text citations of sources written by an organization or corporate author:

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

Here's an example, courtesy of Red Deer College Library:

Parenthetical Citation
(Natl. Research Council 55)
Works Cited
National Research Council. Beyond Six Billion: Forecasting the World's             Population. Washington: Natl. Acad., 2000. Print.


How to deal with bogus and unethical journals?how to stop unethical journals?

This is a problem you should simply don't care about. Do good research and sooner or later it will be recognized.

People taking shortcuts will always exist and you cannot do anything against. Just ignore and go straight.


What is the meaning of "...the cost of a 5 year R01..."?

According to the yearly NIH report, in 2018, a total of 625 NIH Research Project grants (R01) were awarded, and the total cost for NIH (funding + other costs) of these grants was $347,466,328. This averages to $347,466,328/625, or about $556,000 of funding per year in one grant, or $2,780,000 in total for a 5-year grant

The Specific Aims application document is considered to be (one of) the most important part(s) of the application. The example document on that website has 601 words. The tweet in your question exaggerates the importance of the Specific Aims document, and implies that the document is "worth" the whole $2,780,000 of the grant. The cost of each word would then be $2,780,000/600, or approximately $4633 per word.


If you get stuck in research, at what point in time should you ask for help?

I find that grad students always wait too long to ask for help, either out of fear of looking "stupid", or out of inexperience, or out of a misplaced sense of stubbornness. If you've spent a few weeks on something and you're thoroughly stuck, then you should absolutely ask someone (advisor, other students, anyone with knowledge). You'd be surprised at how often you were merely barking up the wrong tree, or just didn't know a very important fact or reference, or just had to reformulate the question differently. All of this takes experience, and that's what an advisor is supposed to provide.


When to get rid of undergraduate stuff on CV

I do not think there can be a generalised answer to your question, however there are multiple factors to consider about what you might want to put on your CV.

As Solar Mike mentioned in the comments some programmes have certain requirements. These should obviously not be omitted.
Some programmes might have preferences about their applicants, e.g. valuing research experience, volunteer work, social engagement or experience abroad. Such preferences might become obvious from the descriptions on their website, advertisements or alumni interviews. You could try to tune your CV according to these.
You can also choose how you want to portray yourself. Maybe you want to show extra enthusiasm by including that besides coursework and research you have even spent summers doing internships? Or you want to focus on just the hard facts?
Which leads a potentially very important point: The length of your CV. If you think summer internships do not add anymore weight to your research experience and rather obstruct the reader from getting a quick overview of your education and work experience, then there is little point in keeping it on there.


What is the distinction between "graduate school" and "professional school"?

At least in my geographic region (Texas, or the US southern states), a professional school implies a curriculum that targets specific skills for a particular vocation. In effect, this is akin to my awkward bastardization of several concepts:

  "Teach a man to fish and he can become a fisherman ... help him learn
  how to think and he can pursue a career in whatever he wants."

The former refers to a professional/vocational school.  The latter refers to accredited universities with broader range of curriculum missions.  Granted, this reflects my biased perspective: admittedly, vocational schools have a (usually) noble and useful purpose, but proper universities can offer so much more to enrich the whole student, and potentially brighten the intellectual and career outlook for years to come.


How do we identify a Scientist as Early-career scientist?

"Early-career" can mean any number of things, depending on who you ask and in what context (from just PhD students, to everybody except tenured professors). Usually, it is just a label and hence matters little.

Where it actually can and does matter is in the context of grant applications, as many funding agencies have special calls for early-career researchers. However, in these cases, the agency will specify exactly what the boundaries of eligibility are. For instance, the Swedish Research Council (VR) has a Startup Grant that is available between 2 years and 7 years after getting a PhD.


I very much doubt any of them "forget" in the sense of "Who are you, and how did you get this number?"
The relationship one has with their former advisor will depend on both the advisor, the graduate, and their relationship - and it will evolve over time. Some are happy to go their separate ways, some continue to be long time collaborators or friends, and the amount of political capital they will spend on their former graduates varies wildly.
Some advisors (wisely IMO) step back a little bit to make sure that their former PhD students develop an independent research agenda and voice, and clearly have a separate career from their advisor.
But it all depends. Personally? I keep in touch with my advisor, see him at conferences (back before COVID-19), and when the opportunity is right, we collaborate, but we don't actively seek out those opportunities.


Will an industry funded PhD hurt one's research career?

I see no inherent problem with industry funding for Ph.D., and in many cases it can be a benefit.  Certainly in computer science there is a broad spectrum of options for different types of research career (government, large industry, startups, etc.), and it's not unusual for people to move between them multiple times over the course of a career. As long as you are publishing well and frequently, you'll have lots of options.


How do industrial researchers get access to online journals?

But I suppose normal industrial jobs (e.g. software engineer in Amazon) don't grant online subscription to journal (like, access to a network IP with subscription, just like many university accounts).

Some industry research labs do subscribe to digital libraries, though in my experience, not as many as a university. For example, in the industry research lab where I'm currently spending my summer, I can access the ACM digital library, but not Elsevier journals.

To access papers that are not available by subscription, researchers in industry usually try one of the methods described in the answers to these questions:

What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper?
Access to journals for individuals outside of an institution?
Ways to get free and legal access to research papers as a researcher


Which countries in Europe have teaching positions that do not require doing research?

Germany has "Akademischer Rat", which can be permanent or nonpermanent. Depending on the faculty, it can contain various combinations of research, teaching and administration -- permanent "Akademischer Rat" positions in the sciences often consist purely of teaching and administration, but they are rare these days.

Furthermore, the German "Fachhochschule" or "Hochschule" offers professorships which consist mainly of teaching, but they require at least 3 years of working experience in industry.


Is it possible to be a paid RA in a math or computer science lab in order to be immersed in the academic research context?

Opportunities to work in specific labs are abundant, but you need to start up a conversation with the professors who run individual labs or research groups to see what is available at your school.  Whether or not you can get funding for a position will vary per lab/RG.  It is generally more difficult to get a funded position in a math or theoretical computer science research lab because without experience, there isn't much you can do to justify getting paid (whereas in an experimental lab you can at least help out with the menial work that is inherent to experimental labs).

My suggestion: make appointments to see professors or lab directors in the labs or groups you might like to work in.  Plan on working for free for at least a year, in order to prove your worth.  If that means taking a second job elsewhere, so be it.  Be prepared to discuss why you think you will make a valuable team member to include a discussion of your long-term goals.  This should be more than "I might want to work in theoretical computer science."  Do some pre-reading of recent papers that have come out of the lab, and know something about the professor's background.

Unfortunately, jumping into a theoretical research group probably isn't the best way to test the waters for a particular field (esp. without a good background already), so you may get more worth out of continuing to take courses in those disciplines you find interesting, and doing a good deal of reading on your own.


If research design, data analysis, and results only are good, where is the line between suggesting major revision and rejection?

I would recommend emailing the journal editor to ask for some of these clarifications. There might be certain unwritten policies endemic to that particular journal.
In general, you can ask for multiple rounds of revisions (major or minor) until you are satisfied. Peer review is supposed to be an iterative conversation. However, as I mentioned earlier, there could be certain journal policies regarding the number of revisions which you might get addressed if you talk to the editor.
As a reviewer, if you feel that the article should be rejected, you are free to make that claim. However, personally, I always give at least one chance to a paper (however horrible it is) to redress my comments.


Evaluation criteria for 3-minute teaching demonstration over Skype?

The easiest thing is to ask what  the criteria of evaluation is. Given the small time they probably want to see if can you actually teach something in three minutes. This take incredible content and communicative mastery to find a topic that fits within this time limit and can be explained. The typical expert knows too much to share with such direct and concise simplicity.

In relation to visuals, I would have one as a maximum that I might explain to my audience. I would  not try to do any active learning because just explaining what to do will take up all the time and there will not be any time to discuss whatever you had them do.

You  could consider asking a question or two during the demo. However the question should not be open ended because of the time constraints. You want to use the questions to lead to the goal of the lesson.


Sign of researcher's professional maturity

Signs of professional maturity in a researcher:

Having written and administered a grant proposal
Having been invited to sit on a review panel
Having been an invited speaker
Having guided or mentored students
Having organized a conference session
Having published a review paper