Postdoctoral application asks about 'ability to assess resource requirements'

This sounds like a fairly standard postdoc requirement - to be able to assess what you (or your group) needs to succeed (resources) and then use them effectively.

Basically, if your supervisor comes to you and asks "What do we need to get this done?", they want you to neither badly undershoot, nor overspend, and when you get those resources, to use them appropriately.

I'd discuss any experience you had with managing project requirements, seeing something through to completion that had a budget, or just being able to cogently talk about being able to assess your position's needs.


Extension work to a paper which is currently under review process : Is it good to communicate this?

I would suggest putting the new results into a new paper. There is no reason to notify the editor unless you plan to withdraw the current paper.

The current paper will/must stand on its own. If it does, then it will be published and the new results give you a new publication, perhaps.

But if your current paper is rejected for some reason, then is the time to think about integrating the new results with the old, which really would tend to increase the value.

I think the outcome is probably better if you wait and continue work, rather than creating a possibly confusing situation for the editor.


The fate of a thesis is much the same as any other scientific publication: many will never be used again and will lie forgotten where they are published.  Some will be useful to somebody and will be cited or built upon.  And a few of those will actually be truly significant.


To what extent do academic promotions share similarities with promotions in industry?

They are really not very similar at all.

(This answer describes common structures at US universities.)

There are a number of very significant differences between "promotion" in academia and in industry.

The vast majority of faculty members will be promoted at most twice in their entire career.  Once from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, and once from Associate Professor to Professor.
Promotions cannot be granted unilaterally by a single manager.  Either of the two promotions mentioned above typically requires something like: a majority (or supermajority) vote of the faculty in the department, the recommendation of the department chair, the approval of a dean and a provost (and maybe a Promotions Committee), and often the university president and the board of trustees.  All of these are required for the promotion to take place.
Promotions cannot be sped up.  University policies usually require a fixed minimum (and sometimes maximum) number of years of service at one rank before being eligible for promotion.  In some cases a candidate may be able to negotiate to adjust these timelines at  the time of hiring, but usually not afterward.
Entering management isn't the "normal" path.  The Professor ranks described above are not really management positions, and the duties of each rank are roughly the same: teach, do research, engage in institutional service.  The most common "management" position for a professor would be department chair, and in many cases this is a fixed-term position, after which the professor resumes their previous duties.  A professor could also try to become a dean; but since this typically means the effective end of their research and teaching career (or at least a drastic reduction or long hiatus), it's not something they do lightly.
Management structures in academia are relatively flat.  A department chair may supervise up to 40-50 tenure-line faculty members or more, and perhaps a larger number of non-tenure-line faculty, postdocs, etc.  A dean may supervise a similar number of departments.  At my medium-sized university, there are only three levels of "middle management" between an ordinary assistant professor and the university president.  As a result, there are relatively few "management" positions available, compared to the number of "rank-and-file" professors.
Universities are to some extent run from the bottom rather than the top.  Significant decisions are often made (or recommended) by vote of the rank-and-file faculty, rather than by an executive; this concept is called "shared governance".  As such, management has less power than they would in a company, and professors don't need to move into management to have some influence on the overall direction of the institution.

As such, the sort of things that are commonly recommended when seeking promotion in business (showing value to the organization, currying favor with management, demonstrating ability to supervise others, etc) are not nearly as effective for advancement within academia.


Talks with one name only

Here I think that customs vary between having a long list of authors and a long list of collaborators* and only the speaker spelled out on the title, possibly including a long list of authors on the abstract.

* e.g. a slide listing the contributions of all the collaborators.

I'd recommend having a look how other people in the department handle this, and then maybe expressing astonishment (semi)publicly because where you came from it was handled differently. I think it is preferable to have a public discussion and the customs/style of the lab developing in some way than to offend everyone just because your previous lab put authors and not the speaker on the front slide.

Related issue: I like to know who tells what about my work. But OTOH, I think it is quite usual that you don't recognize your own work when a collaborator presents it... There are also drawbacks to being spelled out on the first page of a talk.

Only student's name in code

I think this is much clearer. And, as you say the code is in a git repo, it is still easy to sort out things now.

As a first step, talk to the student privately and request that he rolls back these changes and adds "Contributions by " (ideally a contributions line for each logical step in the development with date and name - but the git messages can do that as well) only where he actually contributed code. Of course, if he is the sole author of new files, those stay "his".

I'm in a field where software isn't (yet) really a category of publication in the mind of most researchers. However, the usual result of not thinking about that is that there is no statement of authorship nor of a license. In contrast to that, deleting author lines is an active step.
As a second step, I'd explain that deleting the authorship lines from source code is as serious as taking a colleague's manuscript and submitting it under his own name without even mentioning the collaborator.

As a next level of pressure, you could explain to him that you talk to him privately as you do not want to unneccessarily endanger his graduation: from a legal point of view this is a clear violation of your author's moral rights (not necessarily copyright - although also the terms of the license could have been violated). Violation of author's moral rights is an offense that is extremely relevant for academia and thus may put him onto the fast lane to being thrown out of his programme without graduation.
Which you also should keep in mind if you need to go to your boss with the problem: be careful not to destroy more than absolutely necessary here.

(Always assuming of course that the copyright is actually yours as opposed to your previous employer's. But, if you find out that you just have author's (moral) rights, but not the copyright that is a point that makes it necessary right now to "heal" the legal issues by putting the proper copyright and authorship lines into the code ;-) )


Fair use amount in short journal articles?

Fair use is a concept that is defined in quite a fuzzy manner, at least in the US, and there is no defined "safe" amount.

The key question is why you want to copy so much from somebody else's work, and for what purpose---i.e., how it relates to the other elements of the "fair use" test.  If you are copying into a scientific article that you are writing, then even a fairly short amount is likely to be quite high and hard to justify, whereas if you are making a handout for discussion in a small class you might be able to reasonably use the full work.


I'm not interested in working with this potential advisor. What to tell him? Or should I reconsider?

Given that the supervisor has more experience than you, it may be best to follow his advice. Don't let ego get in the way of improving your work.

I wonder if your second interaction as described might be the result of his feeling that you were rejecting his advice without considering it.

On the other hand, it is good to have an advisor you are comfortable with. Whether it is possible or dangerous to change supervisors depends on the particulars of your institution. Since you say "potential supervisor" it would be a good time to evaluate your options.

But in general, once you have an advisor, it is good to take their advice, for strategic reasons if no other. You want to finish successfully in a reasonable amount of time with good recommendations. Fighting with your supervisor achieves none of that.


Can I publish a report from a personal project?

There are two different questions in here, one about personal projects and another about whether it's worth publishing a non-peer-review tech report.

For the first: there is no need for "official" blessing on any scientific work; I've published personal side projects just as happily as projects in my "proper" line of work.  These can end up being quite significant: one of my bits of side-dabbling, published in a minor workshop, kicked off my entire current line of synthetic biology research.

That surprising consequence also leads us toward the answer to the second: significance is where people find it.  If you've put work into something, and written it up in a non-embarrassing way, there's no reason not to put it up online in an archival format, whether arXiv, tech report, or some other low-impact format.  Symposia and workshops can be a lot of fun too, since they often accept things that are interesting but not expected to necessarily be high impact.

If a piece of work is non-embarrassing, what's the worst that can happen if you put it online?  Nobody cites it.  But you never know... your coauthor might end up building something more significant out of it later (happened to one of my side-publications), or it might get noticed by people who happen to be dealing with a similar problem (happened to another of mine), and collect a few citations or even unexpectedly many.

In short: there is never a reason to throw good work in the trash.  Put it online, and let the universe decide whether it's neutral or positive.


How to explain things in the motivation section of a mathematical paper without proper definitions?

When I was a Ph.D. student working on my own dissertation, I went to the university writing center for help and had a revelatory experience.  The person working with me sat down with the first page of my introduction and effectively dissected it to identify the problems without understanding any of my technical jargon.  They did this by reading aloud as we discussed, substituting blank/nonsense words for every piece of jargon, e.g.:

  Here we apply method X to determine whether adjective thingies can be made to wibble.

This type of substitution forces you to step back from the technical world that you have dedicated so much time and love to, and understand your narrative---or lack thereof.

In your motivation, you need to take a couple of steps back and ask: why does anybody care about additive-finite measure space ("frobs") and how it relates to the space of mu-integrable functions ("greebit-space") or a stochastic process ("wibbling").

You didn't pick these elements at random.  There must be some reason why you picked them and how they relate to the bigger community.  Are they intended to solve a puzzle that a lot of people care about?  Or a small piece of such a puzzle?  Do they unite two sets of concepts that people thought were different?  Will they help understand string theory or give better tools for interpreting MRI imaging?

You want to be able to write something like this:

  People have wondered about how to better understand frobs ever since Richard Feynman first used them to pick the locks in Los Alamos.  Although X, Y, and Z attempts have been made, none of them got very far because they were all green-colored.  In this dissertation, I examine an alternate path, reducing the problem of frobs to the simpler system of greebit-space by means of an innovative application of wibbling.  These results bring us one step closer to solving the problem of frobs, and how they can be better used to quickly and cheaply pick locks.

Now, what I've written is pure gibberish, and your motivation will almost certainly be much longer.  The point, however, is this: your goal in a motivation section is to motivate by explaining that there is a problem that people care about and that you have an approach that gives at least a piece of the solution.  Explain it in a way that your jargon can just be placeholders in the reader's mind, and it will be fine to leave the complex definitions for later.


How to calibrate the time constraint of an exam for a new course?

This is totally unscientific, but for my exams (mathematics) I use the following rule of thumb:

After writing the exam, I sit down with a stopwatch and work the exam from start to finish. Of course, I know how to solve the problems (since I wrote them) but I go carefully through all the steps and write what I would consider a thorough and exemplary solution. I note the time I spent  on each problem.

Then I take the total time and multiply it by 3 (or sometimes 4). If this exceeds the allotted time for the exam, I remove or simplify some questions. (This is where it helps that I wrote down the time I spent on each question, so I can remove a question and recompute the time without actually retaking the whole exam.)

As a side benefit, this also helps ensure that I haven't made any mistakes in creating the exam, and that all the problems have the solutions I intended. It also gives me an answer key.


To address a few of your points.

There is no standard definition of undergraduate research. In many US universities one can graduate with a degree without doing an independent thesis, so in effect it is possible to obtain a bachelor's degree without having anything resembling "research experience". Therefore some people would be generous and count the research for bachelor's theses as "undergraduate research". For some people the phrase excludes theses but includes REU experiences, and for some only original research leading to publications count.

It is not too unreasonable to expect that the work put into independent projects, even an undergraduate thesis that basically is just a review of existing results, can be beneficial to graduate research.
Yes; but where did you get the idea that undergraduates only learn some linear algebra and real analysis? Combinatorics is a field in which the barrier to entry is somewhat lower, and is especially approachable to the Math Olympiad types; and discrete mathematics is certainly on the rise in the past decade or so in terms of undergraduate education. And many undergraduates do have quite a bit more under their belt than you seem to believe.

Having worked in Europe for the past 5 years, I feel comfortable asserting that the claim

  the level of mathematics taught in European undergrad programmes is typically higher than in the US an normally involves courses which are classed as graduate courses in the US.

is not quite true. What is true is that the mathematics in European undergraduate programs often start out at a higher level and with more rigour, but at the advanced undergraduate level the US schools usually have caught up. (Note also that the US degrees are usually 4 years compared to 3 years in Europe, so they have a bit more time to build.) Couple that with the liberal arts tradition you'll often find elective classes at the top level of undergraduate education in the US which have no analogue at all in Europe.

While it is certainly true that good European universities offer undergraduate courses that are at the level of graduate courses in mediocre US universities, the reverse swapping European/US is also true.
It depends on the answer to (1). The rare individual who actually did original research and obtained publishable results will likely get some bonus points when the admission committee deliberates, but it is certainly not a norm and one is not expected to have done such necessarily.
I don't have any statistics. Hearsay suggests that original research leading to something published in a research journal is somewhat rare. (Publications resulting from REU or similar programs, or publications in undergraduate journals are less rare.)
If your master's thesis contains original results, then you are likely more than on par with the typical applicant to US PhD programs, in terms of research experience.


I wouldn't include it.  I doubt it makes much of a difference, but you yourself say it's not an appropriate item. I agree.

To expand a little bit, let me say this: the things you should put on your CV are those that directly connect to the job you want to have.  Something like a job you had in an unrelated field is worthwhile in that it shows you were employed and not a hobo, but most other things that aren't really directly part of your career (jobs, education, publications, info about teaching, conference presentations, grants, etc.) is just a distraction, and will make it look like you are padding.  I think high school achievements are especially bad in that they focus things too much in the past.  Nothing on my CV goes earlier than my junior year of college (and probably I should cut that; nobody cares where I studied abroad).

Of course, it's good to have lots of things to list on your CV, but you also want to keep the average high.  There are only a few things on there that are really important, and you don't want to distract people from what they are.

It would be great to discuss your experience as an Eagle Scout in a personal conversation, say if you have an informal dinner or drinks during an interview, but I just don't think the CV is the place for it.

EDIT: A point which a deleted answer raised also occurs to me: one reason to avoid putting extraneous things on your CV is that you can't control what associations people reading it might have.  For example, the Boy Scouts of America have stirred up a lot of controversy with their stances on homosexuality, and for many people that maybe be the first thing that pops to mind.  It's unfair to connect one scout to that, but people aren't logical.  They read "Eagle Scout," they think homophobia, and they have a negative reaction to your application that they weren't even conscious of.

I recently read an application for graduate school by a student who listed on their CV membership in some political groups with which I vehemently disagree.  I don't think that should affect my judgement of their file (luckily, I'm not on the committee, so I didn't have to try to make a judgement), but I honestly did not want to know about that aspect of their lives.  I'm sure they thought it showed something about leadership, but to me it looked like very poor judgement.


Asking to get paid for academic research work

Given that payment was offered but just not followed up on, it is entirely possible that this professor does not realize that he never got around to the paperwork for paying you. (I say this having seen that exact scenario play out more than once.)

I would recommend just bringing it up casually, e.g.: "When we spoke in May, you mentioned the possibility of payment. Is that something we can arrange now?"


Is it recommended to email a professor at other institution to work with him over the summer

Sure, just reach out with SHORT emails.  I would not expect too much reply since it is a cold call but "a shot on net is always a good play".  Mention a sentence or two to indicate you looked at their webpage or pubs and have an interest in their work.

In addition, try to send some inquiries (similar format) where have some connection (e.g. you mentioned friends had visited specific places in Italy, England).  Professors like to get some "pipeline".  (E.g. "we have had periodic Elbonia Uni students".) Just gives some slight familiarity for you/them and some feeling for them that they may get more positive experiences in future.  However, note that expectations for undergrad visitors is not high.


How best to present publications in different areas on a CV?

Why not just make three lists of publications (one for each field) and place each with its own subheading under the general heading "Publications"?

i.e.:

Publications

Biology

pub 1
pub 2

Astronomy

pub 1

Mathematics

pub 1
pub 2


The use of words such as "clearly", "obviously" etc. in a technical paper

Seconding posdef's appraisal, but being a little more blunt: if one is in a position to get away with bullying or intimidating people by implying that it's their problem if one has not explained well enough ... well, I'd say it's still a jerk-y thing to do. If one is in a lower-status position, such words will often be red flags.

Or, coming to functionality versus rhetoric versus "formal proof": at best these words are functionless filler. That is, saying something is clear is not what makes it clear: if it is clear after these words, it was clear before. Conceivably a thing is clear _once_noted_, and thus deserves "Observe that...". But this, too, can be abused if used outside situations where one is noting that something is "a-fortiori" true, that is, is weaker than what the argument has already demonstrated... but presumably suffices for the issues at hand.


Since they haven't pointed out what mistakes you have, it is unlikely they have a list of errors they have found; therefore, enumerating your changes is pointless. Also, since you got "major revision", a good chunk of your text should be changed anyway.

Just make sure you double check the language before resubmitting, preferably by someone else (native speaker would be ideal).


How to ask for an extension on a manuscript review?

Just tell the editor how much time you need to do a good job. You don't need to give reasons, and certainly not to apologize. They will accept it or not. I suspect they will, since sending it to another reviewer will take even more time.
There is no problem mentioning that there was a delay in getting necessary files, of course, but these delays happen to everyone eventually if you review a lot.

In this particular case, I'm assuming that the editor already knows why the delay has occurred. In the general case delay is common enough that it is planned for by editors and doesn't disrupt unless it is excessive.


Do Australian academic jobs have similar tenure track policies as USA?

I don't want to contradict Samuel too much, but his account of what can happen has definitely happened to some people. But it is extremely rare and I would argue a little over-simplified.

For starters, my paycheck from a major Australian university has the word "tenured" on it. So my first point is, yes, continuing positions are "tenured" - but lets not get bogged down in semantics because tenure def means something different in Australia. Indeed I believe the union considers this to be a f(ph)urfy so let's say there is some subjectivity there.

Having tenure does not guarantee that you cannot be fired though. You can be. But as one manager said to me once, it is more expensive to fire an under performing academic than to simply retain them as long as they keep doing their teaching etc. I work with lots of unproductive academics and many have been asked to leave. They simply said no thanks and stayed. The only time I have seen academics forced out, they left with large redundancies and, simply put, wanted to leave. When you read about retrenchments at Australian unis in the newspaper, often more want to leave than are given packages.

Gross incompetence or dangerous behaviour? Yes you can be sacked. But as far as I have seen you cannot be fired on a "whim" as someone suggested. A business case would be made (declining enrolments, lack of research activity, lack of administrative roles)

And yes, as Samuel said, management teams will go after departments at times. But redundancy packages are often generous and often people from an eliminated department will be shifted to another department (good academics stay, crap ones move to a lower ranked uni).

I also don't want to make this a peeing contest, but I have worked in the US system too and the Australian system is more protectionist of staff than the US system. But indeed tenure is probably harder to lose than in Australia.

I am tenured at a Australian uni. I say this to people regularly and no one corrects me. But yes, I know union types that tell me my tenure is not tenure. I heard this a lot 5 years ago, but not recently

In short, to answer the initial question, the Australian system, broadly speaking, is the British system. Tenure with probation (3 years, recently raised to 5 I think)


Why isn't pre-registration required for all experiments?

Pre-registration is not the easy "cure" for publication bias that you seem to think it is. In short: Who is going to enforce that authors actually follow their pre-registered plan and publish their results (which takes time, effort, and money to check)? What kind of consequences can be imposed on those who don't?

There are no major incentives in place for editors, reviewers, or authors to enforce this, except for their desire to advance the field and enhance the rigor of their discipline. Clearly, this intrinsic desire is not enough to prevent authors from throwing out negative results, reviewers from recommending rejection of negative results for not being interesting, or editors from declining to publish negative results.  Pre-registration alone does not change that incentive structure; changing the incentive structure is not easy to do.

In medicine, pre-registration of clinical trials has been required by many major journals as a prerequisite for consideration for publication since around 2004-2005. However, there is no clear evidence that this has had an effect on publication bias in that field. Authors continue to submit papers in which the primary outcome of experimental protocol deviates from the registration, and reviewers often don't check the registration document to catch this. Non-publication is still common. And many journals are unwilling to take a hard line on pre-registration.

You said,

  The description of the experimental procedure should be untouchable once the experiment commences,

In medicine, the pre-registration did not actually achieve this. See e.g.  Mathieu, S., Boutron, I., Moher, D., Altman, D.G., & Ravaud, P. (2009). Comparison of Registered and Published Primary Outcomes in Randomized Controlled Trials JAMA, 302 (9):

  Of the 323 included trials, 147 (45.5%) were adequately registered (ie,
  registered before the end of the trial, with the primary outcome clearly specified). Trial registration was lacking for 89 published reports (27.6%), 45 trials (13.9%) were registered after the completion of the study, 39 (12%) were registered with no or an unclear description of the primary outcome, and 3 (0.9%) were registered after the completion of the study and had an unclear description of the primary outcome. Among articles with trials adequately registered, 31% (46 of 147) showed some evidence of discrepancies between the outcomes registered and the outcomes published. The influence of these discrepancies could be assessed in only
  half of them and in these statistically significant results were favored in 82.6% (19 of 23).

You also said,

  it removes the option of simply failing to publish

Pre-registration does not, as you seem to believe, compel the experimenter to publish the results.  How could it? Who would enforce this?

Pre-registration can potentially make it much easier for the results to be published than they otherwise would have been; some journals offer peer-review and conditionally accept the article based on the pre-registration, before the experiment has actually been conducted. (Negative results can be quite difficult to publish otherwise.)

But non-publication remains common in medicine, even among registered clinical trials. From Ross, J. S., Mulvey, G. K., Hines, E. M., Nissen, S. E., & Krumholz, H. M. (2009). Trial publication after registration in ClinicalTrials. Gov: a cross-sectional analysis. PLoS Med, 6(9), e1000144:

  We examined reporting of registration information among a cross-section of trials that had been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov after December 31, 1999 and updated as having been completed by June 8, 2007, excluding phase I trials. We then determined publication status among a random 10% subsample by searching MEDLINE using a systematic protocol, after excluding trials completed after December 31, 2005 to allow at least 2 y for publication following completion. Among the full sample of completed trials (n = 7,515), nearly 100% reported all data elements mandated by ClinicalTrials.gov, such as intervention and sponsorship. Optional data element reporting varied, with 53% reporting trial end date, 66% reporting primary outcome, and 87% reporting trial start date. Among the 10% subsample, less than half (311 of 677, 46%) of trials were published, among which 96 (31%) provided a citation within ClinicalTrials.gov of a publication describing trial results. Trials primarily sponsored by industry (40%, 144 of 357) were less likely to be published when compared with nonindustry/nongovernment sponsored trials (56%, 110 of 198; p<0.001), but there was no significant difference when compared with government sponsored trials (47%, 57 of 122; p = 0.22). Among trials that reported an end date, 75 of 123 (61%) completed prior to 2004, 50 of 96 (52%) completed during 2004, and 62 of 149 (42%) completed during 2005 were published (p = 0.006).

And authors have many reasons for not publishing, reasons that don't necessarily go away with pre-registration. From Song, F., Loke, Y., & Hooper, L. (2014). Why are medical and health-related studies not being published? A systematic review of reasons given by investigators. PloS one, 9(10), e110418:

  We included 54 survey reports. Data from 38 included reports were available to estimate proportions of at least one reason given for not publishing studies. The proportion of non-submission among unpublished studies ranged from 55% to 100%, with a median of 85%. The reasons given by investigators for not publishing their studies included: lack of time or low priority (median 33%), studies being incomplete (median 15%), study not for publication (median 14%), manuscript in preparation or under review (median 12%), unimportant or negative result (median 12%), poor study quality or design (median 11%), fear of rejection (median 12%), rejection by journals (median 6%), author or co-author problems (median 10%), and sponsor or funder problems (median 9%). In general, the frequency of reasons given for non-publication was not associated with the source of unpublished studies, study design, or time when a survey was conducted.

Actually verifying that the details of a manuscript match the pre-registration document involves some overhead for reviewers and editors. See e.g. Mathieu, S., Chan, A. W., & Ravaud, P. (2013). Use of trial register information during the peer review process. PLoS One, 8(4), e59910, which found:

  1,136 authors (n = 713) and reviewers (n = 423) responded (37.5%); 676 (59.5%) had reviewed an article reporting a clinical trial in the past 2 years. Among these, 232 (34.3%) examined information registered on a trial registry. If one or more items (primary outcome, eligibility criteria, etc.) differed between the registry record and the manuscript, 206 (88.8%) mentioned the discrepancy in their review comments, 46 (19.8%) advised editors not to accept the manuscript, and 8 did nothing. The reviewers' reasons for not using the trial registry information included a lack of registration number in the manuscript (n = 132; 34.2%), lack of time (n = 128; 33.2%), lack of usefulness of registered information for peer review (n = 100; 25.9%), lack of awareness about registries (n = 54; 14%), and excessive complexity of the process (n = 39; 10.1%).

Finally, publishers and editors may be reluctant to require pre-registration because they fear that authors will simply go elsewhere. From Wager, E., & Williams, P. (2013). “Hardly worth the effort”? Medical journals’ policies and their editors’ and publishers’ views on trial registration and publication bias: quantitative and qualitative study:

  Only 55/200 journals (28%) required trial registration according to their instructions and a further three (2%) encouraged it. The editors and publishers interviewed explained their journals’ reluctance to require registration in terms of not wanting to lose out to rival journals, not wanting to reject otherwise sound articles or submissions from developing countries, and perceptions that such policies were not relevant to all journals. Some interviewees considered that registration was unnecessary for small or exploratory studies.


How often do the arxiv moderators reclassify submissions?

As @user2768 points out, we can't know exactly why your article is on hold.
However, there could be several reasons: proper classification, pending moderator approval, presentation issues, copyrighted PDF, etc., to editorial concerns. Sometimes due to oversized submission. You may want to look at arXiv submission status. You can try reaching to arXiv moderators if you need to enquire about this.
As you are asking about experience with long on-hold status: Yes, I have experienced once this status for over 45 days. Note that, I didn't bother asking them either. They automatically posted it in subsequent announcement. But this was more than 2 years ago.


How do I ask my teacher for his honest opinion about my capabilities

As your teachers have offered to train you, it is highly unlikely that they don't believe you capable. It probably wouldn't be in either their interest or yours to continue if they thought you weren't.

Having said that, in your position, I would still seek guidance from your teacher. The way I'd go about it is to speak to your teacher face to face and say something like:

"I'd like to take the opportunity you offered to train my programming skills. Could I set up some time with you to discuss what I need to change in order to be successful this time?"

And go from there. Good luck.


Tips for engineering students applying math in their research

My background is in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, so I cannot comment on EC/CS directly.  However, much of my work is mathematical in nature, so generally speaking I would offer the following:

Do not be intimidated those fluent mathematical results.
In my experience, for every "hit" that has an elegant result there were probably multiple "misses" that did not lead anywhere.
Balance perseverance with distance.
Even techniques that seem ideally suited to your problem will inevitably have challenges,  otherwise someone would likely have published the result already. It is important to stay positive and keep working at it.  At the same time, sometimes it helps to take a step back and work on something else for awhile and give your mind a break.  When you get some distance from your original problem, you may find an insight that helps you to overcome your roadblock.
Read widely.
I am sure you have been reading papers related to whatever problems you are working on, but oftentimes there are techniques used in tangentially related or even unrelated fields that may be adapted to work on a problem in your area.  Even if such studies do not lead to a usable result for your current work, they may lead to inspiration down the road.

Just like in your classes, learning to apply mathematical techniques to research problems takes time and practice. If it is possible, try to scale down your problem as much as you can to something very basic.  Finding a solution to the more basic problem will increase your confidence in the method.  Then you can slowly start to scale your problem back up. By attacking the problem this way, you get a number of small successes that help build your background with whatever techniques you use.  Overcoming the smaller problems can give insight into the issues you may be having with your larger problem as well.


How to address a doctoral candidate who is ABD (All but Dissertation)? Is "Dr" appropriate?

Address them the same way you would address any other person without a doctorate: e.g. in many English-speaking cultures, "Mr. Smith", "Ms. Jones", "Mx. Brown",  or if you are on friendly terms, by their first name.
If they have successfully defended their dissertation but not actually received the degree, this is a bit of a gray area (see When can you call yourself doctor?) but I think "Dr. Brown" is reasonable.


How to affiliate papers that I worked on both as a PhD student and as a postdoc?

This is a mathematics specific answer.  My understanding is that conventions may be different in other fields.

The primary purpose (in mathematics) of the affiliation on your paper is to distinguish you from other people with the same name and to provide a way for readers to contact you.  Therefore, you should put your affiliation at the time the paper is submitted.  Furthermore, if you change affiliations between submitting the paper and getting the paper proofs before final publication (which is likely to happen), you should make the change on the paper so that the published version matches your affiliation at the time.

You can (and in my opinion generally should) acknowledge your former affiliation(s) in an acknowledgement section.


Contacting university after graduating for help contacting a professor who isn't replying to emails

you should not contact the head of the department or any other Prof. just to get in touch with a professor, that is just a bad idea on many different levels.

If you are really desperate, I would perhaps send an email to one of his PhD students and ask if he has been around for if he is on vacation. As another resort, you could try calling the secretary of the department and ask if they have seen this Prof. around. Client physically to the professors office does not seem like a good idea either, unless you set up an appointment. If you know the professor well enough that I would perhaps consider just calling his/her office number directly and during office hours. some people acknowledge that they are bad at answering emails, so in that case I do not think he would mind a cold call.


What are academic resources that provide open source lecture notes?

There exist a significant number of repositories that, in one way or another, contain open source lecture notes and similar or related information materials.

First and foremost, large open courseware repositories contain information on various courses, for many, including course notes. For example:

MIT OpenCourseWare;
Open Course Library by Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges;
repository and search engine by The Open Education Consortium.

The second significant source is represented by a multitude of repositories of open source textbooks on various subjects. Such repositories include:

OpenStax College repository;
Open Textbook Library by Open Textbook Network;
MERLOT repository by California State University System and its partners;
Open Textbooks repository by Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources;
Open Access Textbooks project by Florida Distance Learning Consortium;
College Open Textbooks search engine by The College Open Textbooks Collaborative;
The Global Text Project;
Wikibooks and Wikiversity projects.

Finally, additional stream of information can be traced to individual university departments, groups, and labs. Usually, such resources are quite narrow in their coverage and might apply to specific areas of a discipline or a course. For example, see the ETH's open source course notes on advanced methods and strategies in organic chemistry. Also, many (IMHO, most) individual professors share their own course notes on their personal university-affiliated websites.


How to deal with supervisor who required me to share all my work with him?

I think you must give your supervisor all your "code, figure files, data, etc" pertaining all paper you have published together, as your supervisor is a co-author of your publications. Co-authors should have access to all relevant material behind published research under their responsibility, particularly corresponding authors.

And preferentially when you do so, share all of that in at least one data repository such as FigShare or Dryad, linking the raw material to their pertaining papers. If you have published research, make it public, so that everyone can benefit from your work. Scientific research equates with reproducible research, which heavily depends on transparency.

I believe you have an issue with having included your supervisor and perhaps some others as honorary/gift authors to work which was solely done by yourself. You should have objected to doing that before. Running away with important background scientific data will not send the right message nor mend this flaw.


Dealing with unpleasant people in conferences

Unpleasant people? If you are convinced that you did not do anything to deserve their castigation (and from your story, it sounds like you didn't), purse your lips, raise a slight Spock brow, wait a second, and go/look somewhere else. Nothing shows your opinion about them more clearly than this wordless sequence. They will be seething, but you have better things to do.
If you can not avoid interacting with them, be unwaveringly polite, but distant. You may even exaggerate the politeness by using "Sir" etc. This increases distance.
It's not your job to educate someone who failed to learn basic manners at school. Their manners are not your responsibility.
If they stalk you at a conference, indifference is another strategy. Non-reactivity is boring and they will look for a more reactive victim.
Of course, many conferences have these code-of-conduct declarations now and you could try to invoke them, but I have no idea how effective that is in a case like yours.
Personally, I distrust the effectiveness of formalized rules of behaviour for anything but really egregious and obvious breaches of conduct, and even then I am not sure they really work, unless you belong to a well-delineated group that is seen as requiring special protection. But, your mileage may vary.


Is there any problem with students seeing faculty naked in university gym?

I think that if this is a shared student/faculty gym with open showers, there’s an expectation of seeing some of your fellow university goers naked. I wouldn’t worry about it. Your students are adults and this is the norm at the gym.


Accused of cheating because math proof is similar to online solution

I'll assume here that you didn't cheat, nor go outside the bounds of what is acceptable in your course.
The path, hopefully successful, is just to insist that you didn't cheat and keep on insisting on it. Don't try to "prove" that you didn't cheat. That isn't your job and will probably lead nowhere, or even to some "gotcha moment". If you didn't cheat, say that and keep saying it.
If your work process was that you solved the problem on your own using course materials and your notes, then say that.
No one can, of course, guarantee that this or anything will be successful. If offered a follow up, possibly an oral question, consider taking it.
But accusations need to be proved, not assumed.
Good luck. The world isn't necessarily fair.


Is obtaining a MS degree in Chemistry useful to strengthen your CV if you wish to apply to a top PhD program in Chemistry?

Short answer is yes, you probably should take it or a position like it if you want a PhD from a top US school. It sounds like you don't have many or any papers as a coauthor and your current school's reputation is unknown. So, getting a Masters from a US school with a good reputation, even though it may be a smaller institution could give your application a boost. Also, you will want to see if you can get an internship during the summer with a major research institution while you're doing it. That will open many more doors than the Masters alone.


How should I handle reviewer comments when grammar makes the meaning unclear?

First, work through the comments with someone else to parse their meaning as closely as possible. A native speaker might be able to explain what the reviewer was trying to say in his/her comments. If several people are not able to understand or do not agree, then you may contact the editor for clarification. But try not to reach this point--nothing in the snippet you have provided seems that problematic.

Next, revise and resubmit as directed by the journal editor. In your response to reviewer comments, I would create a numbered list of comments. Before stating how you addressed each comment, you should briefly restate your understanding of what the comment was conveying. If you have not adequately addressed the comment because you did not understand it, then this should at least prompt the reviewer to clarify their comment, rather than become annoyed at your response.


How to address any professor in formal letter

In Germany, omitting the dear is close to an offense, even though most people know that it is common in the US.

So the answer to your question is definitely country specific.


Is it appropriate to ask a professor how I may be able to improve my letter of recommendation?

I think it is okay to ask the question.  However, I do not think you should suggest that professors read your solutions since they are likely very busy.

You may do better to tell the professors what you have been working on, including your GRE score, and then ask them if there is anything else you can do to prepare yourself for graduate school.  Then follow their suggestions.  Essentially it is the same question, but I think it could show you are a "deep learner" rather than a "strategic learner" who only cares about the letter.


If your advisor hasn’t contributed anything to the paper intellectually then they can’t ethically put their name on a paper they didn’t contribute to. That has nothing to do with funding or RAships.

That said, what I described above is the ideal. Students are often under pressure to do what advisors say. Authorship is best discussed directly and if you have any issues you should speak with your advisor and establish standards in your group.


How to get into position to teach college Arabic?

It is my opinion that unless you have a PhD in Arabic or something intimately related to it you won't get more than a part-time adjunct instructor position. If your goal is to teach some classes without working towards a full appointment, then you might not need the PhD.


Why is data falsification reported to be more usual in some fields than others?

Your quotes from the Plos One meta analysis highlight problems in clinical, medical and pharmacological, but your question is about biomedicine and psychology. The meta analysis paper found no evidence for increased rates of reporting misconduct in either biomedicine or the social sciences suggesting that those fields are not "special". The authors then present a reasonable conjecture about why the reports of misconduct in medicine might be higher

  However, as all survey-based data, this finding is open to the
  alternative interpretation that respondents in the medical profession
  are simply more aware of the problem and more willing to report it.
  This could indeed be the case, because medical research is a preferred
  target of research and training programs in scientific integrity, and
  because the severe social and legal consequences of misconduct in
  medical research might motivate respondents to report it.

I think base on the meta analysis I would argue that data falsification is NOT more usual in some fields than others, but simply that reports and sensitivity to it is more usual when a field specifically trains individuals to recognize it.


Master's Degree Admission with a different Bachelor's specialization

I have the same situation. I applied for a CS program after finishing a bachelor in Biomedical Engineering. I just gave an interview just because my bachelor was not relevant and then they accepted me. Depends on your field of interest and your background in that field.

My field was Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition sand I used to apply them to medical data/signal/images and I just continued the same as a master student in CS. As you see the huge overlap between these two made it easier for me so first think of what you are going to do next and some tips:

You need to know programming! in BME we used to use MATLAB but this is not enough for a computer scientist.
If you are going to do Analysis (algorithm based fields, data analysis and etc) you need to have a good impression of algorithms and math. Of course not professionally but you need an algorithmic & mathematical mind to work in analytics-based fields of CS.
If you are going to do something more related to software stuff or computer networks or information technology, you need to be comfortable with different softwares (depending on the field) and operating systems.
And finally the most important point: All what you read above was only my experience and point of view!

Hope I could help and good luck!


I'm a pure mathematician, and my first impression is that your question seems to be assuming a dichotomy in pure mathematics that isn't really there. The vast majority of pure mathematicians, it seems to me, at times have to deal with abstract structures and do the sort of "thinking and reasoning" with them that you've seen in your analysis and group theory courses. On the other hand, in a comment to another answer you defined tricks as "coming up with clever ways to prove certain things/attain certain results." My assertion is that according to this definition, virtually all research in pure mathematics involves the application of tricks. After all, there's only so much you can do that is of interest to the mathematical community that can be obtained purely by combining known results and definitions in straightforward ways.

Nevertheless, I should point out that pure mathematics does indeed lie on a spectrum when it comes to abstract reasoning versus clever problem solving. The former approach to mathematics is perhaps best epitomized by Alexander Grothendieck, who "avoided clever tricks that proved the theorem but did not develop insight. He likened his approach to softening a walnut in water so that, as he wrote, it can be peeled open 'like a perfectly ripened avocado.'" At the other extreme are mathematicians like Paul Erdos, who largely worked on concrete problems that one could solve using 'clever tricks'. (Although it should be pointed out that, as Federico Poloni noted in a comment, when one uses a trick more than once it becomes a method. Erdos' probabilistic method arose this way.) There is a nice quote about this approach to mathematics in Gowers' essay The Two Cultures of Mathematics:

  At the other end of the spectrum is, for example, graph theory, where
  the basic object, a graph, can be immediately comprehended. One will
  not get anywhere in graph theory by sitting in an armchair and trying
  to understand graphs better. Neither is it particularly necessary to
  read much of the literature before tackling a problem: it is of course
  helpful to be aware of some of the most important techniques, but the
  interesting problems tend to be open precisely because the established
  techniques cannot easily be applied.

Having said all of this, I'll reiterate what I said at the beginning of my answer. This is largely a false dichotomy, and the vast majority of mathematicians have to use both clever tricks and abstract reasoning in their research.


How to address a professor that makes offensive comments (that they don't realize are offensive)?

I'm afraid you lose a lot of my sympathy by complaining about a lecture that you rarely attend.  I don't really understand what you mean by "the luxury of other options".  If you can take the class from a different instructor and would prefer to do that, do it.  If the attendance in the lecture is not required and you feel that you can get what you want out of the course without attending the lectures: that's your choice too, but is it a good choice?

You seem to be prioritizing sociopolitical beliefs over the material of the course.  It's very easy to be offended if you want to be.  I won't comment on the gender stuff, but I will say that the bit about accounting over sociology really doesn't rate as an "offensive" comment.  I think it's true that accounting is a more practical field than sociology and that most American adults need to do some accounting in their daily lives in a way that they do not need to do sociology.  Not knowing how interest and loans work will have a more direct negative effect on most people than not understanding the difference between mechanical and organic solidarity.  Of course "practical" is not necessarily better: it is a matter of taste and goals.  I am a mathematician, I have taken courses in sociology but not accounting, and I am fully content with that decision: in fact, I would be hard-pressed to imagine a university course that sounds less interesting to me than accounting.  But that's just my own personal taste: the idea that the accounting instructor prefers accounting over sociology is neither offensive nor even surprising.  We have a right to like what we do better and tell that to students.

Not everyone has the same views that we do.  But an accounting instructor's views on gender, shopping and clothing seem incidental rather than professional: it is very unlikely that she is pushing these views on the students or that she is holding herself up as an authority figure on them; they're just part of the way that she likes to present her lectures.  Ask yourself this: what are the negative effects of her expression of these views?  Is it likely that the men and women in the class will adjust their own behavior or views in accordance with hers?  Will men feel worried about their own cooking and shopping agency?  It just doesn't sound that insidious to me.

In my opinion, if you disagree with the views and feel strongly that the lectures would be improved by not sharing them, then have the courage of your convictions and convey this to the instructor, either in person or by email during the class, or after the class is over.  But not attending the lecture because you don't like the incidental views that the instructor expresses?  I'm sorry to say that I don't find that to be a very mature reaction.  In so doing you are compromising your own educational experience in exchange for...what, exactly?  What is anyone gaining by your failure to attend the lectures?

Added: If from the first day of class you have a problem with the instructor which is severe enough that you can only bring yourself to attend the class sporadically because of it, you have an excellent reason to drop the course or change sections right away.  Staying in a course with an instructor that you find personally offensive doesn't seem like a very good plan.  In fact, if you tell your advisor that you want to change sections for this reason, you can probably get additional help with the particulars of that: it is in everyone's best interest for you to take a different course.


Should I apply to PhDs in the US (theoretical physics)?

I think that the only issue here is that you intend to change fields. You will need to show a US institution that you have adequate background in needed physics topics to begin advanced study. But you may be fine there also, depending on your course of study.

The reason that the US degree takes longer is that it makes fewer assumptions about the candidate's background on entry. A doctoral program (here) normally requires some advanced coursework leading to comprehensive (qualifying) examinations. So, there is some opportunity to make up for missed subjects, provided that you can convince a department to take you. Letters of recommendation might be essential, especially if they can speak to your readiness to switch fields.

And, you might be able to get into a top program (depending), since the entrance requirements are a bit less than for Oxbridge, which has a different educational system. In particular, an undergraduate degree in UK is normally more specialized than one in US, whereas most students here can enter doctoral programs with only that less specialized undergraduate degree.

Following your edits, I can only add that the decision about whether it is "worth it" is personal and can only be answered given your own preferences. Weigh the plus and minus aspects of each decision as you would for any important one. You are unlikely to suffer any major setback to your career no matter which way you jump.


How should I organize my life towards a PhD in the next year?

Get a job that allows you to do work in or related to the field you are interested in studying in - in a worst case scenario, do such work as a volunteer.

Self-study work you do is highly highly unlikely to be any value to an admissions committee, regardless of any "reports" or "implementations" or other work you attempt to produce - no one will have time to review things like that.

What you need to do is build evidence that you are capable of doing academic research. Evidence means references - people in positions where they can vouch for your knowledge and capability. Self-study will provide you with no references. Spend a little time searching around Academia.SE for all of the people who are asking what to do when they don't have enough references and are trying to apply to graduate school. Don't get in their position, there are few answers.

The ideal jobs would be in academic labs doing work similar to what you want to do in grad school under greater supervision. At my institution, these positions are typically called "research interns" (though they are paid positions) or "research specialist" - I have also seen titles like "junior scientist/researcher" - these are positions that typically require a bachelors degree and often go to recent graduates of the institution but are available to others. However, depending on your field, these positions may be rare or not exist at all.

If there is no such position available in your field, you are still much better off continuing to work another job while doing self-study.

Master's programs may require less research experience - in that case, you are likely already in a position to apply to masters' programs, where you can get precisely the experience I am describing to prepare you for a PhD. This includes systems like in the U.S. where it is common in many fields for people to apply directly for PhD programs without a master's degree.


What software can I use to poll my audience during presentation?

The Software Carpentry instructors do lots of presentations where they need/expect rapid, interactive feedback. They (especially Greg Wilson) have lots of experience of different ways of doing this. Note that their current method, that works extremely well, is to use different coloured sticky notes.

I haven't seen a technical solution that worked better; most are considerably worse. However, this is only practical for yes/no or multiple choice polls.


Undergraduate international computer science student [Can i go to grad school?]

In my experience, most graduate programs that have competitive admissions (as would probably be the case with "top 30-40" programs, whatever that means concretely) require a minimum GPA to be considered for admission (see for instance UC Berkeley).

The first thing you can do is look up some of the programs that interest you to see if they have a minimum GPA requirement. If they do and your GPA is lower than what they're asking for, then the answer to your question is almost certainly no.

Now, suppose that you were to satisfy the minimal GPA requirement of some "top 30-40" programs. Provided you satisfy their other minimal requirements, it is possible that you could be accepted. However, a low GPA will be seen as a weakness in your application. The admission to "top 30-40" programs are most likely going to be very competitive, and you will be competing against candidates who will have a high undergraduate GPA together with a strong application overall. Consequently, you would need to compensate for this. This could be done, for example, by managing to get well-known faculty write amazing letters of recommendation for you, or by demonstrating an exceptional aptitude for research.


Under what circumstances is there a conflict of interest for a researcher to be a reviewer of a submitted academic paper?

The answer to your question depends on context.  I find three key elements to the decision of whether or not to declare conflict of interest:

Formal rules: some venues have an explicit conflict of interest policy; if so, abide by it.
Size of reviewer pool: sometimes, you have an extremely specialized subject, in which the number of people qualified to review a paper at all are quite small.  In such a case, one should generally be more permissive.
Formality of venue: conflict of interest for a journal or top conference is generally more strict than for less formal venues like workshops, especially for ones intended to discuss early-stage work where all you're really looking for is a sanity check.

Now, to address some specifics:

I generally hold that it's a bad idea to review one's current or recent collaborators except in the most informal of venues.
Co-authors is often the same as one's collaborators, but not always --- one might be collaborating but not yet be published together, or might be a very distant co-author (for example, I'm not going to worry about conflict of interest with most of the co-authors on my 600+ author paper).
I also don't generally count co-organization as collaboration, since that's often a fairly narrow relationship.
Being at the same institution (currently or in the recent past) may or may not be a conflict depending on how close the organization is: in some places different departments might as well be different institutions; in others, it's one tight family.
Being funded by an organization is almost certainly a conflict of interest.


How should I reference this? Should I reference this?

As your implementation is based on the Quora solution, you obviously have to credit the author. Depending on how big a part of the entire thing this solution is, you might even consider offering the mathematician coauthorship for this.

If it suffices to acknowledge: As the Quora post is public, I would suggest to cite the post (and potentially do the thanks via footnote/acknowledgement section in addition). This ensures in particular that an interested reader can go and read the original post, which might be of interest in addition to your implementation.

Regarding the published paper: First, given that finding this solution was not trivial, I would suggest to cite it in your paper already only for the sake of others searching for these things. Moreover, you should give context for the solution you implemented, and the paper might belong to that context.


Cultural Differences in the Hard Sciences

It's not impossible that there is some effect, but figuring it out would be a complex task. A researcher would also need to guard against making value judgements that would, in the end, be treated as racist.

However, if you look at other fields, you see some differences, but I would attribute a lot of it to language more than culture, and some to history. In literature, the South Americans in general have produced some amazing stuff in Spanish and Portuguese that is quite different from literature elsewhere yet shares some characteistics. Art is another field in which different cultures have produced qualitatively different things, say China and Europe.

As humans we use language to express ourselves and the language both captures and guides thought patterns. If your language structure helps you think in a certain way that may effect how you think about, for example, mathematical problems and what insights you have naturally.

Likewise history (and the accidents of history) play a role. If one region of the world generally does something different than others, it may just be the accident that some person started a line of thought in a place and it was picked up by others.

On the other hand, the academic community is pretty much a world-wide phenomenon now, with a long history of students and teachers moving about. The effect you suggest is likely dampened, if it exists at all, by this world wide exchange of ideas and the consequent sharing of thought patterns.


If the same paper had many contributions in many fields, can I cite each contribution separately?

Yes

If a paper provides such information that it can be used for several paragraphs - then absolutely you can, and you actually should, cite the useful paper whenever and wherever you use the information from within the paper (in your case, the algorithms with their enhancements).


Is it okay to repeat core findings of a cited work in detail?

When you say "core content" I'm assuming you mean the conclusions and, perhaps, something of the methodology. The "findings" of the work.

If you properly cite the other work, you aren't copying it. You can quote it or paraphrase it accurately, so long as it is cited. But your basic inclination to be complete in this case seems correct. This is especially true if you need to interpret (and justify the interpretation) of the other work(s) in any way. If your readers need to make their own interpretations, things might be more confusing to them as well as being painful to have to find and read the other papers.

I'm assuming, of course, that a reader of your work won't need to actually completely digest the works on which you base  yours.


How should I handle questions about family/spouse on the job market?

I have thought a lot about this topic. I am a married woman with a kid who had attended the big professional conference while 7 1/2 months pregnant. Most of my interviewers knew this information about me, so was often asked these questions on the job market. [1] I also mistakenly revealed the information a couple of times because I wanted to know about workplace culture. In the end, I got 0% of the jobs where the department knew I had a kid and 100% where they didn't. (Not statistically significant because of low sample size, but still...) Ever since that experience, I have paid special attention to articles on this topic.

I would abide by a few principles:

1) Provide as little information as possible. Anything you reveal may be held against you. If at all possible, provide a deflective, non-answer answer (including a joke). Frankly, any member of the search committee who is aware of the laws/cares about the discrimination will probably be grateful to you for avoiding this complication to the hiring process. Finally, even if you have a "good answer" like "my spouse would be happy to move," the committee may still decide not to believe you and penalize you for a two-body problem.[2]

2) Be collegial. A great deal of weight is placed on collegiality once you have made it to the stage of a flyout. This is why you should not just say "That's illegal." or respond in a way that might be confrontational (especially if you are a woman or person of color). In my case, I found that people who asked these illegal questions were using them as a lead in to sell you on aspects of the university such as great child care, fun couples activities in town, etc. When the asker (possibly incorrectly) thinks they are helping you, they take umbrage at a confrontational response.

3) If the information is already out there, give them the answer they want to hear. First, assume anything that they can Google is "out there." This includes wedding announcements, gift registries for babies, etc. After you account for the information that is part of the "public record", I think you are under no obligation to be actually honest about details. You should spin your situation to your heart's desire. They should not be using this information, so it should not matter, right?

4) Pivot back to job-relevant topics as fast as possible. Any time you spend discussing personal matters like this could probably be better spent positioning yourself as the most qualified applicant who would be the biggest asset to the department. So move back to these topics as fast as possible.

Some examples:

"Do you have children?" "Some days I feel I have 60 children! I can't tell if my undergrads are 19 are 9 most days. I often find that they don't listen well to directions... [here is one way I have handled that in my teaching]"

"How is your new baby sleeping through the night?" is "Great! They are such a good sleeper and I am back to full-time productive research!" (HA!)

"Are you married? What would your spouse do if you moved here? The university career services office is happy to help with spousal relocation." "It is great that the university is able to offer that type of support for new faculty. Are the students in the department also able to take advantage of career services? What are the placement rates like for new graduates from the department?"

[1] It was clearly something that the committees discussed about me. I had a prep call with a faculty member in advance of my first flyout. The conversation started with the person asking me what my daughter was going to be for Halloween. I had never met her and she did totally different work so did not attend the professional conference where I had been pregnant.

[2] Important study related to this topic (paywalled): journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417739294  This finds that hiring committees often use information about marital status to make problematic assumptions about female candidates and illegally use that info in their decision making. The examples (the researcher was allowed to sit in on real hiring meetings at an R1 university) were incredibly egregious, including not offering the job to a top candidate because, even though she insisted her husband was happy to move, they didn't believe her.


Giving feedback as external reviewer for grant application outside own field of expertise

Consider asking for guidance from the grant manager(s) on this. They should have some guidance regarding the style, content, and formatting of comments. Further, as you sound as though you are a little unsure about your ability to comment on and, thus, evaluate this grant. This is something else to share with the grant manager(s) as they may decide you are not the right person to do this. Thus, best thing to do is contact whoever asked you to review the grant and have a chat about this.


What can be done about a terrible galley proof of my accepted paper, which would be a lot of effort to correct?

In such extreme case (which, by the way, are disturbingly frequent at larger, very expensive commercial publishers) I recommend sending an e-mail to the editor, including the proofs to show that you are not talking about a misplaced comma, and simultaneously answering the production that you do not allow them to proceed. Beware not to sign or click anything that might make them able to pretend you allowed them to send the paper into production (as it would be much more difficult to get things right then). Ideally (i.e. if you are not forced through a web platform) you would e-mail the production team with copy to the Editor in Chief or handling editor for the record, or the other way round.

I don't recommend trying to fix manually an absurd amount of problems in Galley proofs: 1. Many libraries put a lot of money to pay for this work, you and your institution should not pay with your time; 2. you are bound to miss some of the bad stuff, half your corrections might be ignored, and new problems could be added after galley proofs (I would not believe that if I had not seen it myself -- my first paper actually).

I don't recommend sending a new version and suggesting they start back from that. It is pretty unpredictable what they could imagine doing, and if they use the same process again it will not be pretty.

Any diligent Editor in chief, when receiving your e-mail, should reach out to the publisher's management to have things sorted out. Without management involvement, the production team will probably do what they are probably asked to by default: treat things quick and dirty.

Last, I hope you put your preprint on the arXiv. If you did, you can at least have this as a version of record (and Elsevier allows you to update it to a postprint, including referees' remarks). If you did not already put the preprint on the arXiv, then Elsevier's policies are too complicated for me to understand and remember.


First, third, or "we" for Marie Curie Individual Fellowship

Optimally, you would check this with people in your field, in the best case somebody who has already written a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship proposal. In my area, the usage of "I" has become fairly standard for personal grant applications, to the extent that using "they" would be considered somewhat unusual. Using "we" for such grants is not recommended, as apparently some people want to see this as a sign of lacking independence. (I completely disagree with this assessment, but why take the risk?).


What do professors do with personal copies of old textbooks?

At my school the custom seems to be just leaving them in a stack in the hallway next to one's office door. Anyone walking by can peruse through them and take anything they want. At some point the janitorial stuff disposes of the stack as rubbish.


What if I get B's in my first semester in graduate school (engineering program)?

Ultimately, your grades as a graduate student matter very little, except for:

A handful of employers who have GPA requirements for graduate programs;
Fellowship programs, which may require a GPA minimum;
The academic regulations, which may also specify a GPA minimum to continue in good standing.

However, it should also be noted that most graduate courses are based on the premise that a grade lower than B is a failing grade. Therefore, it's better to get A's than B's in graduate classes. But, at the end of the day, having B's is probably not going to impede your career much—especially once you enter the working world.


Do résumés written in LaTeX show more promise when applying to graduate schools?

No. Almost no one cares. You should learn LaTeX if you intend to work mathematics and will need to write up your work. It's much simpler to typeset formulas in LaTeX than MS Word, and it's also free.


Importance of publications if one decides to go industry after PhD?

Publications demonstrate several things such as:

Ability to conduct, complete, and document work
Ability to communicate clearly
Interest in broadening the field's knowledge
Interest in staying aware of the "state-of-the-art"

All of these are good attributes to demonstrate with a publication record.  Continuing to publish in industry is also valuable, but it is seldom "publish or perish."

Regarding important factors: use elements of your Ph.D. to demonstrate that you can work independently to solve difficult problems.  A strong work ethic and ability to solve problems are key traits that employers are looking for.


Citation of a website: How to determine the year?

The Publication Date may be in the webpage's meta data or source

There may be date information contained in the meta tags in the page source. If you are not using a tool (see below) to extract this information, you can view the page source and attempt to interpret it. There are many different ways publication date information may be stored in meta tags. The most common ones will begin with <meta. The number of ways in which an appropriate date may be stored in in these tags is just too numerous to cover in a single post. If you are not familiar with what these might look like, a tool (see below) to extract the data will be quite helpful.

Extracting the date from meta tags, and picking the correct date (there may be several), can be complex. How, exactly, to do so varies from website to website. In addition, each site may change their format from time to time. If you are going to be referencing more than one or two webpages a well maintained tool to extract the reference information will be very helpful.

As an example, this page (randomly selected for testing some time ago), which does not display a date if you have JavaScript turned off (dates are displayed if JavaScript is turned on), contains appropriate publication dates in the following tags (there are more tags that contain dates that are not appropriate):

<meta name="parsely-pub-date" content="2014-10-14T23:45:00.011Z" data-ephemeral="true">
<meta name="date" content="2014-10-14T23:45:00.011Z" data-ephemeral="true">
<meta name="iso-8601-publish-date" content="2014-10-14T23:45:00.011Z" data-ephemeral="true">
<time class="published-at time-based" datetime="2014-10-14T23:45:00.011Z" itemprop="datePublished">
<time class="updated-at__time" datetime="2014-10-15T05:07:37.564Z">
<meta name="pubdate" content="Tue Oct 14 2014 19:45:00 GMT-0400" data-ephemeral="true">

That page also contains the publication and update dates located in multiple


How do I ask to draft recommendation letters for my references?

Short of asking to draft the letter (which many letter writers consider inappropriate), you can simply ask the letter writer to address particular issues in your letter.   You should also supply copies of your resume, academic transcripts, and any statement of purpose that you've written so that the letter writer can tailor the letter to support your application.

For example, you might say something like (to your industry professional), "I think that your letter could help by commenting on my work habits and skills in software development.  As you can see, I'm particularly interested in doing a dissertation related to machine learning, so you might also address my experience in machine learning at XYZ corp."


How to balance application for a faculty position between exceptional and ordinary?

One non-surprising way to help your application rise to the top is to have your advisor or another letter-writer contact a colleague they know at a school you're interested in and give you a good word in person (obviously not always an option).

If you are really in the position where you are "too good," then you should follow the advice in the other thread you mentioned, and explicitly spell out in your cover letter why you want to work at a particular institution.


Why are 31.8% of retracted papers not noted as retracted?

The only reasonable answer I can think of is "laziness".

In particular, when journals existed only in print, the only thing a journal could do when it retracted an article was to print a notice in a new issue.  There was no way to modify or recall issues that had already been sent to subscribers.  Some journals may still have retraction policies from that era, which don't contemplate trying to actually do anything to the original article.

Note that the article you quote is almost four years old, so matters may have improved in the meantime.


I am preparing for my PhD applications, and my referee passed away unexpectedly. What should I do?

I had faced with a similar situation, some time ago:

As an applicant, you should have a list, including people who are
    qualified in your view to present LoR. This list should be sorted
    based on the priority, reasonably. If one assumes the late professor
    as the first person in the list, your exclusive option is just
    choosing the next one. I just contacted the other professor, who was aware of my collaboration with the late professor and knew
him
    for a couple of years. So, he, not only, did his best to show off my
    characteristics, but did try to depict some points about that famous
    professor and justified his tendency to work with me, as a bonus for
    my personal and technical features. In other words, all he did was
    presenting me as a right person to admission committee, in both his
    own view and the late professor's view (virtually!).

Therefore, in my estimation, if you are eager to be known as a person with a sort of related connections to that professor, just
try to be recommended by one, who knows you both and is aware of
your collaborations (at least in some aspects)
Typically, applicants mention the name of their supervisors within
the CV, in addition to their references. If the late professor was
not your supervisor, one might not consider citing his name in CV,
as a reasonable stuff. However, assume that you have passed a course
with him and had presented a seminar-based project with a report as
its outcome. You can mention that report within the scientific
accomplishment section in your CV and add a (Supervised by: Prof.
XXX), in front of it. It's all to show that you have the
experience of collaborating with that man, at least within a
short-time research project.

Furthermore, you can elaborate on his effects on your research
methodologies and personalitywithin your SoP, undoubtedly.

Good luck with your application!


Should I switch from an M.A. to an M.S. program if my department allows me to choose?

In general, I believe your assessment is correct—for scientific disciplines where both an MA and MS are possible, the MS degree is usually regarded as more rigorous than the corresponding MA degree.

That said, whether you should switch is a matter that requires some thought. Does the change require you to complete more courses? Will there be any impact on your expected graduation date, and the cost of getting the degree? If not, then I would definitely switch. (Moreover, since you already have an MS in engineering, there's no point in getting an MA afterwards. If you didn't have a master's, you'd need to figure out the relative advantage of finishing faster versus the more rigorous degree.)


Is it reasonable to use full word and abbreviation in parenthesis in a chapter title?

I can not say this is incorrect, but it is probably unorthodox. If there are no strong reason to put an abbreviation in the title, you may wish to introduce it in the first sentences of the chapter itself.


What sources of funding do faculty in Computer Science dept. in US universities have other than NSF?

Off the top of my head, I can think of American CS faculty who have been supported by grants, contracts, or gifts from each of the following:

US funding agencies: DARPA, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, National Instutites of Health, Department of Homeland Security, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, Department of Education, NASA, ...
Foreign funding agencies (usually in concert with NSF, for international collaborations): Deutsche Forshungsgemeinschaft (Germany), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France), Israeli Science Foundation, Danish National Research Foundation, ...
Private foundations: Sloan, Packard, Simons, Fulbright, Guggenheim, ...
Industry: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Cisco, Boeing, Adobe, NVidia, ...


Uploading assignment answers - for prospective employers?

Most employers do not want to see your work.  They want to see grades/marks because it is easy for them.  Only bother if an employer asks for it or you work in a field where a "portfolio" is common.
Post only your own work, not the materials provided by faculty.  This eliminates all concerns about plagiarism.  We do not know your university's intellectual property policy.

might be easier for future students to access and therefore make plagiarism easier.

Post the materials after the course is over.  If the faculty decide to give the same assignment again in the future, that's the faculty's problem, not yours.
The purpose of education is to make learning easier, not to make cheating harder.


Should I add the Poster or the article published in the proceedings to my CV?

Your CV isn't governed by any legal rules. You can include what you like. But you should label things correctly to avoid criticism.
In this case I see no reason, and no ethical concern, not to include both if you label one as an article and the other as a poster, perhaps with the same title. Partly this is because you were invited to write the article. Therefore they really are two different things unless you just wrote the same thing in the article as in the poster, which seems unlikely.
But, it probably isn't a "conference paper" if it didn't go through the normal review process in its final form.
And, if you only want to include one, then I'd think the article is the more important one.


Is it plagiarism to use other paper's section and subsection titles without modification?

It is plagiarism if you copy someone else's "creative contribution". For example, if the section headings are

How does the method identify errant patterns in spider webs?
An analysis of one million images of spider webs
Results of our analysis and an attempt at tying web patterns to genetic disorders in arachnids

then copying these section headings is likely plagiarism unless you specifically reference that you are following the same structure as previously used by the founder of the field, A. Rachnidova, in her seminal paper "On the patterns of spider webs", Arachnophobia, vol. 13, 1962.

On the other hand, if you section headings are

Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion

then there is no creative contribution in this -- everyone uses these sections headings, because they are descriptive of what these sections are. Consequently, you can also be "one of everyone" and use this without attribution.


If you have documentable evidence of registration when asked to produce it, it should not be a problem. This is especially true in your case, where we're talking about a period of a week and you're representing your current address.


How Does Funding for Graduate Students in U.S. differ from Undergraduate Scholarships?

Eligibility: some scholarships are awardable only to undergraduates and never to graduates, or vice versa.

As a graduate you'll have access to more scholarships and awards, and lose access to others.

Also note that most graduate funding is merit-based rather than identity-based. Thus, it will focus more on academic achievements (published papers, presentations, GPA) etc. rather than being a Welsh American or something like that. (There are some external scholarships for minorities but far more of the funding is not based on this).

Specificity: at the undergraduate level, many scholarships are particular to a programme or degree, but can be awarded to anybody studying that programme or degree.

For example, a science scholarship could be awarded in chemistry, physics, biology, maths, geology, astronomy, and so on. An arts scholarship could be for literature, sculpture, photography, art history, or other areas.

Graduate scholarships are often more focused, not just on a programme or degree, but a particular field. This gets more particular at higher levels where scholarships almost morph into small grants.

For example, instead of being for sciences, it may be for science research related to a specific industry. Instead of being for art, it may be for work done in or about a particular style and technique.

This answer is a community wiki. Please add additional points of difference and a succinct description of them, as above.


Practical aspects -- how to change subfields between PhD and postdoc?

When would be the best time to do this catching up? If I do it after beginning a postdoc, my postdoc work will be delayed during this (probably months) of catch-up time.

A piece of post-doc advice that has worked for me is to have your fingers in several pies. Build up some new expertise while working on some low-hanging fruits from your existing background that will lead to immediate results.

  If I were a PI, I would favour candidates who had demonstrated a capability in the field already. How can I demonstrate an ability to do theoretical work if it was not a large component of my PhD?

The qualities that advisors are looking for may vary significantly. If they are looking specifically for a candidate with a strong theoretical background, there's only so much you can do. Others will prioritize broader research skills, like

a strong ability to finish projects (which you can show by building an appropriate track record; so be sure to have your pending papers out before you apply), and
a strong ability to tell a good story (which you can show by being outstanding in your application materials and communication to them; basically, explain how you will help their team succeed based on your expertise).


How to write your research work in simple way

Use a hierarchical structure that is clearly shown to the reader.    https://www.amazon.com/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing-Thinking/dp/0273710516  Make a bulleted outline of each section of work before writing.
Be honest and direct.  https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/media-arts-and-sciences/mas-111-introduction-to-doing-research-in-media-arts-and-sciences-spring-2011/readings/MITMAS_111S11_read_ses5.pdf
Look at the "directions to authors" for each journal you submit to and follow them rigorously, like a checklist.
Write frequently and get frequent feedback and incorporate it.  Look for those who are good writers to review your work.

P.s.  I disagree with the advice to write in your native tongue and then have a translation made.  You will not learn well that way.  Stick to your flawed English but get better as you use it.  If anything being weaker in English will force you to a simpler sentence structure (fine).  Issues with clarity are very likely not the language problem but poor structure or poor logic.  "Clear writing is clear thinking."


When should a source be marked as available online?

There are two general cases for supplying a URL or DOI for information:

Information where a URL is required in order to locate and uniquely identify a source, e.g., referencing a website or a software distribution. In this case, you must always include the link, typically along with the date retrieved, as the contents at the end of the link may vary over time.
Information where a DOI (or similar persistent link) is a "nice to have" that gives a fast link directly to the original source, e.g., referencing a standard journal article. In this case, it is "best practice" to always include the link, but not strictly necessary.

Personally, I am lazy, and include DOIs in the second case only when the bibliographic source I'm pulling from includes them in the reference already---unless specifically asked for them I will no go through the trouble of looking up what is (strictly speak) redundant information.  For this same reason, whenever I am hard up against a page limit, the DOIs are the first thing to be deleted, because it is better to delete redundant bibliographic information than to remove content from the text.


Graduating from a terrible department in an ok University vs. a fantastic department in an obscure university

Generally speaking, for your future academic career, prestige of University as a whole is less important than prestige of department, and that is less important than prestige of advisor. And all of that is tempered by the strenth of reference letters you will obtain, and by the directly observable quality of your work. (By the latter, I mean how good your dissertation / publications are, the specifics of this highly dependent on your field).
Also worth saying, however, is that if you leave academia, the rank order of those factors for getting a good nonacademic job is generally reversed. (Ph.D. students generally don't like seriously thinking about nonacademic career prospects since their goal is an academic career, but in many disciplines the proportion who will go on to nonacademic careers is shockingly high, so you should at least contemplate this.)
In your instance, I would add 2 factors to consideration.

It's clear you aren't happy where you are now, and feel you would be happy somewhere else. Life is too short to deliberately choose an unhappy road to a (good) Ph.D. if a happier one is or becomes available to you.

"The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." Don't overindex on the negatives of what you are experiencing now, and compare that with only expected positives of what your potential alternative is. In particular, look hard in the mirror: what have you learnt to do differently if you go to a new place, and do you have a tendency in life to frequently hit the restart button -- especially multiple times in a row? (Bluntness alert!) Everyone in academia develops pattern recognition for smart people who somehow serially fail to deploy, and are always restarting, but the restart only leads to another restart later on. We don't know you, so don't treat this as an implied accusation that this applies to you  -- but do look in the mirror to consider whether this is the case, and if so, what you need to do differently to not have to restart again.

With all that, best wishes, and do what (with self-reflection) feels right!


How to determine if the presenter will attend as a session chair

I think you are misunderstanding the instructions.

Let's say a presenter is scheduled to begin their talk at 11:00.  If they are not there at 11:00, they have failed to attend, for the purposes of these instructions.  The instructions go on to say what you should do in that case.

It's not asking you to predict the future, or to guess at 11:00 whether they will show up at 11:15.  What happens at 11:15 is irrelevant.  If they weren't there at 11:00 they missed their talk.  Even if they show up later, it's too late.


I'm having a lot of trouble nailing down your question.  After reading it several times, I think you mean that you have an opportunity to go on to study a PhD in geometric group theory at your current university.  (Is it specifically relevant that you are going abroad tomorrow?  How does this fit in with the rest?)  From this I am guessing that you are not in the US, because in the US one would not have a position in "geometric group theory" specifically; one would just apply to the entire math department.  It could be helpful to know what country you are studying in.

So I think you are really asking whether you should go on to do a PhD?  You say that your motivation is to do mathematical research: for that you essentially need a PhD, yes.

  Along the way I created the vision that I would finish my master degree as a dedicated student in algebra.

Yes, okay, you're studying algebra.  I feel like I'm missing some nuance here: what's the "vision"?

  As mentioned my dream is to do my own research, but more generally/important: I want to develop new ideas and be dedicated to something and I would love to follow/explore my passion.

Again, I feel like I'm missing a nuance.  Doing your own research means precisely to developing your new ideas and being dedicated to something.  Doesn't everyone want to "follow/explore their passion"?  That comes off sounding mean, which is not my intent: rather, I feel like you're trying to say something here and I'm missing it.

  I don't know much about geometric group theory, but I do know that I love group theory. So I would really like to know if this is an opportunity or if I should just forget it.

It seems clear that a PhD in geometric group theory is an indeed an opportunity to do everything that you said you wanted to do...in geometric group theory, which is a subfield of the field that you say you like.  Whether you will like GGT specifically seems best answered by learning some and finding out.  If the PhD program is so specifically invested in GGT that if you find out you don't want to do GGT per se then you'll need to leave the program, then you should study GGT on your own / during your master's degree first in order to find out whether it's interesting enough to you to spend years of your life on.  (I think GGT is really interesting.  If I hadn't done arithmetic geometry, I think I would have had fun with it.  So I assure you that there is nothing wrong with that subsubfield of mathematics!)

  I don't want to pursue a PhD for anything in this world. I just want to stay focus on creating a meaningful work life around my passion.

Huh?  This time I don't understand at all.  Please elaborate/rephrase.


Do I have to be secretive about my research until it's published?

If you act in spreading out your work without official publication, against your advisor's explicit suggestions you risk:

making a costly mistake in that you find your work being presented by others without attribution (I for sure know cases where this happened)
upsetting your advisor if the work included ideas that he wanted to accumulate credit for using in a publication
taking away the impact that a well-established impressive publication can achieve and exchanging that for a gradual acclimatisation of the community in the sense that "yes, we always knew this works, it is kinda obvious" (I have witnessed this too, namely that an idea which nobody seemed to have before, but was pushed incrementally rather than in a singular step was later called obvious)
losing credit for novelty if someone else presents it even if you are attributed; after all, the work has been presented, and your later publication will have lost freshness  (again, I am aware of a concrete example).

That being said, there are benefits of being open, namely when it is unlikely that people will claim the work, or it is hard to copy, or so exotic that people are not likely to engage in it. In this case, your problem is to convince them that it is good work and you have to permit them to acclimatise to it, anyway. Then, being open and spreading the idea to get them to get used to it is helpful. This is the counter scenario to above setting.