Is it normal for an instructor to refuse to tell students their current grade?

I've been that professor several times. Much to my own chagrin, there often is no such thing as "the current grade". On a typical day during a typical semester, there are scores for homeworks, quizzes, midterms and whatever other assessments have been completed so far, and there is a formula in the syllabus that computes a "final score" from all the assessment scores, but:

the formula assumes all scores to be known, not just the first few. Extrapolating is not trivial, particularly if the rules include things like "the lowest homework score will be dropped" or "later midterms will be weighted more" or "the first homework will be dropped if the next ones show improvement".
the cutoffs for the grades are rarely decided upon in advance; they often are determined by looking through students's work (the final midterm or exam is particularly good for that, being fresh in the lecturer's mind) and clustering students into categories (e.g., if you see someone doing really good work, you put that student into the A-cluster, so the cutoff for A will be no higher than their score). Some lecturers also curve based on pre-determined ratios (something I avoid, but I've heard of lecturers forced to do this by the admininstration), but again it is impossible to predict the final relative position of a student just based on their current status, as some students improve heavily during the semester.

So computing a "current grade" is a nontrivial exercise in forecasting -- and a thankless one, as the reward curve is biased to the negative (getting students' grades right will net you some thanks; getting them wrong will cause trouble all the way up to disciplinary action). Teaching is hard enough without it.


I eventually found some preprints that happened to show this bibliographic data section, e.g. 1805.02262. Clicking the What is Bibex? link, I note that the current version of the arXiv Bibliographic Explorer is 0.1, from September this year. In addition, they refer to this functionality as a project. Hence, I think you're looking at a somewhat experimental feature, still in development. Most likely then, this feature simply hasn't been able to extract the data it needs, for whatever reason. You could use the "report data issues" link to send them a feedback email to help the development forward.


Is it right to ask for a PhD position at a conference?

It is definitely OK. You should be more like @JeffE suggests "How do I apply?" rather than "Would you accept me for a PhD?".

Conference is a great opportunity to meet and discuss with your potential supervisor. You should try to judge, as much as possible, how easy would it be to work with that person for quite a few years. On the other hand, note that high profile academics are used to get approached by random people and you shouldn't be discouraged to formally apply even if they seem way too busy to have a long chat with you.


I am re-taking the 4th semester. How does that look in the eyes of a graduate school admission committee?

To the admissions committee:

You'll definitely want to explain it in your Statement of Purpose (or whatever the equivalent may be in your country). It will probably be noticed but there isn't anything you can do about it now except do better and possibly seek help about your issue if you haven't already.

Some relevant questions are Explaining bad grades in application: SOP or separate letter and How do I make a bad semester not look bad during my scholarship application?.

To employers:

This is highly dependant on the field and employer. In Computer Science/software engineering, from my experience, employers don't care. They care about your abilities and the only time they even want your transcript is to check off HR's requirement that he/she does indeed have a degree. Larger and more corporate companies may care more, but my horrible undergraduate transcript has passed many times without any question (as have my colleagues').


I am always in favor of the approach of disclosing a mistake and sharing any work you have done towards understanding the impact of that mistake, whether it suggests the original result is still viable or not. For example, depending on the exact type of mistake you made, it might be possible to model the influence on the outcome (e.g. if something is out of focus, but you know how out of focus it was, you can estimate the expected scattering of your resulting data).

Certainly someone can judge you based on whatever their personal criteria for perfection are, but especially if you are an inexperienced researcher I would lose much less respect for you under these circumstances than I would for someone who was going to judge you poorly after making one mistake, acknowledging it, and studying the likely impact of the mistake. Your issue would be one of learning to be a careful researcher; their issue would be one of personal character. Which is easier to resolve?

I would also point out that showing you will acknowledge a mistake in one area of your work does not discredit the other work; if anything, it suggests you have more self-awareness and insight into your data than someone that presents everything as if it is definitively free of all flaws.


Advisor-student meeting patterns in very high-end theoretical research

Once the instant gratification of homework scores are removed, in full time research mode how is progress measured on weekly scales?

There are three ways to make progress.

The big picture: identifying problems to work on, conjectures and consequences, outlining potential proof techniques.
The little picture: examples, computations, completing the proofs of individual lemmas.
Background reading/study: figuring out what you need to know and learning it.

In any given week it's reasonable to expect some progress on at least one of these.  It might not be dramatic or important progress, but at least you can work out some more details for a key example or read another chapter in a book you need to get through.  You can also refine your ideas, for example by identifying obstacles or additional ideas for a proof outline.  This sort of progress is on a much smaller scale than a research paper, but it lets you measure your progress and ensure your research is on track.

It might occasionally happen early in grad school that you spend a week feeling bewildered and completely unsure of what to do, but at that point your advisor should intervene and help you find something productive.

  I want to know of specific details of advisor-student meetings, frequencies, patterns in very high-end theoretical subjects like say algebraic geometry or string theory.

I don't think this would be as illuminating you as hope.  There's not a lot to learn from these patterns, and what you do learn could even be misleading: one advisor's approach might be a poor fit for another advisor, and a famous researcher may or may not be a wonderful advisor.

However, if you are looking for examples, Kiran Kedlaya and Ravi Vakil have descriptions on the web of their advising styles.  (As one would expect, they differ in some respects, for example on meeting schedules.)  Some of the details are probably relevant only if you are considering them as possible advisors, but both pages contain some excellent advice that is more broadly applicable.


Lengths of review process of mathematical journals

The AMS maintains a list of the backlogs of research journals, which should give you some indication.

The most recent one (I think) can be found here: http://www.ams.org/notices/201310/rnoti-p1390.pdf


How do American universities handle cases of discrimination?

If you're talking about classes, you can appeal in the usual ways.
It doesn't sound like you're talking about classes though, which makes it tough. If it's a bias / microaggression type situation your best bet is avoidance - find a new advisor. Quietly tell people who could be in the same situation (especially if you have an international student organization) that the professor is a problem. Be polite and professional and if anyone you don't completely trust asks about it, explain it was a personality conflict.
If it's a more serious issue, you should document it to the best of your ability and then bring it to a tenured professor in the department that you trust and ask for advice. However, in the absence of corroborating complaints from other students the likelihood of any real action being taken is minimal.
Escalating to HR is not advisable - HR minimizes legal risk to the university, but the minimum legal risk is usually telling you to take a semester leave of absence and then refusing to sign your I20.
The international student & visa situation in the US is very prone to abuse and you have very, very little leverage to fight back. It isn't impossible, but it isn't easy and even if successful you're likely to help future students but end up hurting yourself.


Cite page of paper vs page of proceedings

Page numbers are largely irrelevant. There are not so many dead tree copies around, and a digital copy may be modified. In that case, searching for the title on it is trivial. You are providing the DOI, that is a permanent identificator, so you don't have to worry about it.

On a practical thing, I just use DOI's API to get the citations, and leave them worry about the details:

[david@LCARS david]$ curl -LH "Accept: text/bibliography; style=bibtex" http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15

That gives you:

  @article{Rozinat_2006, title={Conformance Testing: Measuring the Fit and Appropriateness of Event Logs and Process Models}, ISBN={http://id.crossref.org/isbn/978-3-540-32596-3}, ISSN={1611-3349}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11678564_15}, DOI={10.1007/11678564_15}, journal={Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, publisher={Springer Science + Business Media}, author={Rozinat, A. and der Aalst, W. M. P.}, year={2006}, pages={163–176}}

It is easy, fast to generate if you have the DOI, and minimises the risk of typos.


How do multiple PhD scholarships combine?

Dave's answer is mostly correct: you should not accept both without the explicit written permission of both scholarship providers.

Some scholarships can be combined, if the fellowship sponsor allows it. However, in general, large-scale fellowships cannot usually be accepted in conjunction with other fellowships. You'll need to choose one or the other.

On the other hand, if you're talking about actual scholarships—by which I mean cash awards directly to you, without being tied to a specific course of study at a specific university—the rules may be more relaxed.

The important thing is to read the rules and conditions associated with each award, and then to ask the sponsors if you have any questions.


Writing a letter of recommendation for a mediocre student

Before you write the letter, discuss this with the student, and be blunt about it. Most likely the student needs a letter for something and this is the best they've got. One thing is to turn this in to a teachable moment about the need for students to make connections with their instructors. Depending on what the student wants the letter for, this may be sufficient for their purposes. Some things requires letters but don't pay close attention to them. Did the student say what they wanted the letter for? That maybe should be impact what you say and whether you should write it.


How many people read an individual journal article?

Sounds like a Fermi Problem :)

A question I asked myself recently, based on the many cases of plagiarism by top-politicians in Germany in humanities, was, are in humanities more articles/texts published than scholars can actually read completly. The amount of copied text in single phd thesis showed by plagiarism-detection communities in Germany like Vroniplag or Guttenplag is shocking to me. Often 50% of text is not marked correctly as citation. Even the supervisors at the local universities look like they never read some of these thesis completly. I really hope this is not representative, but fear it might be the tip of the iceberg in humanities (in Germany).

Personally, coming and working in a STEM field, I did a very specialized thesis, there are often less than a dozen groups worldwide working on such a narrow-specialized topic (matter of scientific competition/finding a niche, time, expertise and lab hardware in such fields). So there will be articles in peer-reviewed journals that are not really interesting to more than 20-50 researcher and probably a similar number of industry-researchers worldwide in STEM (competition between companies and research groups being not that different due to economic contraints). Without modern search engines, most non-scholars/private men would have a hard time to find such articles. This is another point in your estimation. The reader count for nature/sciene vs. very specialized journals varies a lot, I don't think any average number really helps you a lot or is that interesting. If you know your specialized field, you should notice pretty fast studying some journals, how many scholars have really a interest in that field.

Your PlosOne link is interesting. I can back this up a bit to give you at least a rough magnitude of order, what the reader count of top, specialized, ... journals is. I think it's quite normal, to read articles not completely (even if you cite them), but I take a close look on articles I downloaded, often due to the fact that I use many keywords and google operators to really filter out the stuff I'm looking for. This is something that varies also a lot between different scholars/students. I'm often shocked how students make use of search engines, if it is laziness or ignorance of search operators. This can save you so much reading time. Therefore, I think the extrapolated reader count based on citation factor might be more representative and reliable than using site views/downloads due to scholars, private people, laymen often downloading articles with information they didn't look for because of bad search engine use. Growing redundancy/plagiarism is a further factor here.

Some possible heuristics:

comparison of published aricles per month and web site/interface visitors per month on download platforms like PlosOne, arxiv, nature.

arxiv has around 6000 published articels per month, unique visits 100000, 12,4 million downloads by academic institutions, 50 million overall vs. 12x6000 articles 2011 means downloads/view of abstract of around 170 (I used 12,4 million here), of course, that doesnt count articles not published in that year, so the average read count of a single arxiv article is probably lower than 170 and more touching the 20-50 mark I explained above. But here you have IMO a reasonable and quite objective minimum and maximum limit for a scientific article other scholars are really interested in, 50-170

nature has 900000 unique visits per month, around 200 articles per month, so you see why having an article published in nature is probably more worth than 10 articles on arxiv, PlosOne or many other specialized journals in a distinct branch, even if they are peer reviewed ;)

looking up bibliographies of a some phd thesis in your field at your local university, the number of cited articles is in STEM often in the range of 50-200 (You see even here it varies a lot what a single phd student will/has to read). Of course you do not cite all articles you read, but the factor shouldn't be higher than 2 between (or your search engine use is imho suboptimal) cited and read articles. Considering the phd student will publish 3-5 (in STEM reasonable number or 1 nature article :) ) articles during his phd work and multiplying 3-5*20-50 (average read count by institutional scholars) you also get the number of articles in a phd thesis bibliography of 50-200. Pure Chance?! Looks like a strange calculation, but there is a link between how much article input a average scholar needs and how much output he creates (thats why I multiply both values) and it strengthens my experience/analysis above that 10-100 readers is a reasonable magnitude of order for people being really interested in an single average article. To me it doesn't look like pure chance, but that's the main problem with Fermi questions and answers :)

PS: notice this analysis is focused on STEM, I believe the average read count is much lower in humanities and side-effects like different languages and plagiarism seem to play a bigger role to make a really objective guesstimate


How to stop feeling guilty about unfinished work?

tl;dr: Keep forgiving yourself and keep working.
I am having the same problem, and only recently it got better.
I have it only for open-ended work (scientific projects, other personal projects - everything which is of type "I should have it done" and the same time it is not closed; even worse when others are waiting for results). It seems to be very different from "normal" work (when someone gives me a particular task) and work with an expiry date.
The wisest (and most successful) piece of advice I found is this one (from Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls - Book of Hook, which has more good points and is definitely worth reading):

6. Do not overpromise to make up for poor productivity.  There's a tendency when we're falling behind to try to overcompensate with future promises.  "When I'm done, it'll be AWESOME" or "I know I'm late, but I'm positive I'll be done by Monday".  By doing those things we just build more debt we can't pay off, and that will eventually lead to a catastrophic melt down when the super final absolutely last deadline date shows up.  Just get shit done, don't talk about how you're going to get shit done.

Also, somewhat related is forgiving yourself for being not productive enough (constantly feeling guilty does not help; not only for me, but it seems it does not work for most of people):

The key finding was that students who'd forgiven themselves for their initial bout of procrastination subsequently showed less negative affect in the intermediate period between exams and were less likely to procrastinate before the second round of exams. Crucially, self-forgiveness wasn't related to performance in the first set of exams but it did predict better performance in the second set.

And from a bit different angle, from Elizabeth Gibert's TED talk on genius
(it's about treating inspiration, but it is similar for everything - no matter how good you are, you won't do everything; so why should you be bothered by missing a few things?):

And [Tom Waits]'s speeding along, and all of a sudden he hears this little fragment of melody, that comes into his head as inspiration often comes, elusive and tantalizing, and he wants it, you know, it's gorgeous, and he longs for it, but he has no way to get it. He doesn't have a piece of paper, he doesn't have a pencil, he doesn't have a tape recorder.
So he starts to feel all of that old anxiety start to rise in him like, "I'm going to lose this thing, and then I'm going to be haunted by this song forever. I'm not good enough, and I can't do it." And instead of panicking, he just stopped. He just stopped that whole mental process and he did something completely novel. He just looked up at the sky, and he said, "Excuse me, can you not see that I'm driving?" (Laughter) "Do I look like I can write down a song right now? If you really want to exist, come back at a more opportune moment when I can take care of you. Otherwise, go bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen."

And from my personal stuff (I mean things that I found helpful):

using to-do list only for task (i.e. things I know I can do in a few hour max), not projects (it's depressing to have "finish this paper" on the same list for long months, cf. relevant PhD Comics strip),
underpromise and overdeliver to oneself; i.e. committing to do each day less task than expected (this way, with the same results, it's "wow, I did things from the list plus 2 extra" instead of "I only made almost half of the first point out of 7"; extrapolating one's maximal efficiency does not work...).


Dissertation topic in one field and degree in another field?

You write that you do not feel confident in your knowledge. However, experts in your field have put your knowledge to the test, and deemed it worthy of publication in a journal. Not once, not twice, but three times. Trust those experts. If they think your knowledge is good enough for three journal publications, then the committee members are highly likely to think similarly positively about your dissertation.

A solid background in mathematics is fertile ground for an exceptional career in any engineering discipline. If you stop worrying about the limitations of your knowledge, and instead accept that everyone's knowledge is by definition limited, you have a bright future ahead of you.


Software for managing departmental alumni relations

LinkedIn is a fine resource for this sort of thing, especially for keeping track of alums' careers and contact data. I encourage my students to link to me for exactly this reason.


Applying for industry jobs: how early do you submit job applications?

Most articles found by a search for "how long does it take to find a new job" state anywhere between 3-6 months. Anecdotally, both for myself and for my friends, this is quite accurate. This, combined with the fairly frightening statistic that unemployed people have a MUCH harder time finding employment, would lead me to strongly recommend that you start well before you graduate.

Most positions that hire PhDs are familiar with the nuances of hiring someone who hasn't yet graduated. I currently work in industry, and we've had a number of people who've had to take a few days vacation to defend their thesis. You should mention during the interview process where you currently stand in your PhD work so the employer knows what to expect, but from my experience it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Do note that some positions require the PhD of their employees, so you would not be eligible for those types of positions until you graduate. I would still recommend interviewing anyways so you're not starting from scratch... you can just contact them and continue when you actually receive the degree.


Can I remind a professor that I submitted a "good" essay in her class? (LOR request)

A better outline might be somehting like:

  Dear Professor Smith,

  I am planning to apply to Teleportation programme at the University of
  Wonderland for my graduate studies. They require two reference
  letters, and your area of interest is related to the programme I am
  applying to.

  Would you please be kind enough to write a letter of recommendation?

  I have taken your course Introduction to Supernatural Incidents (ISI
  101) in 2016 - 2017 Fall semester, and you have noted that one of my
  assignments were outstanding.

Keep in mind that if you suspect that the professor wouldn't even remember you, it is better not to ask that professor for a letter of recommendation, because chances are they are going to write a mediocre letter.

Why did I pick this outline

Because first of all, the reason for you writing a mail should be explained at the first sentence. An avarage professor mailbox receives around 100 mails per day. Thus, they decide whether or not to read the full mail in a few seconds.

The actual reason for such mail is your application for graduate studies, and you give solid reasons for the letter of recommendation. Note that in your outline, the letter of recommendation is just mentioned. It seems like you wanted to remind the professor that you were his student, and handed in a good essay.

Another reason is, the punctiation and language. Although overly-formal emails are not good, using a proper language helps.

To sum up, the professor wants to know three things very clearly, and as soon as possible:

Why are you writing this mail?
What do you want from me?
Why would I grant your wish?


Professor wants my "non-funded" master's data

She never did any investment apart from giving her time

Whoa, there! That sounds like a significant investment, to me.  Indeed, it's hard to see what other investment you could reasonably expect her to make. She's not responsible for your funding; she can't do the work for you because it's supposed to be your master's project, leading to your degree, not hers.

Nonetheless, it is typical for an advisor to provide sufficient guidance intellectual contribution to the project that they could reasonably expect to be a co-author on most papers coming out of the project. This is joint work and it belongs as much to your collaborators as to you, even if you don't get along with your collaborators any more.

What does it cost you to hand over the material? Do you expect to benefit from it in some way that will be diminished by giving it to the professor? If it costs you little or nothing, it's hard to see any justification for not handing it over.  "I don't like her" is spite, not justification.  The main benefit that I see from handing it over is that you can expect to be a co-author of any paper that results directly from the work you have done. And, if you do hand over the data, you should make this a condition.

You should also consider the impact of your decision on your future career. If you intend to leave academia then it's probably minimal: you're unlikely to be asking for a reference from this professor and it's unlikely you'll have any interaction with her in the future. However, if you intend to stay in academia, you need to think carefully about this. People's perceptions of your actions will depend very much on who they think was at fault. If, for example, your professor has a reputation of being difficult, maybe you gain sympathy from the community. However, if she has a reputation of being reasonable, trustworthy and easy to work with, there's the danger that you acquire the reputation of being difficult to work with, falling out and torpedoing projects.


What are examples of penalties for "self-plagiarism"?

It depends on many factors. Examples of those factors: Was it a first offense, was it an undergraduate or graduate student, was it faculty member, was it for an assignment or a publication? The list of penalties can range from using the incident as an "object-lesson", a failing grade for the paper or course, a formal sanction, expulsion, loss of funding and/or termination. Each university usually has an Academic Integrity Office, so you could always consult yours to see what the penalties are based on the seriousness of the charge.


How long should an academic CV be for someone applying to post-doc positions in Europe?

The notion of a curriculum vitae is confused by the fact that it gets used in two very different ways:

A comprehensive list of all of one's academic accomplishments
A short summary of one's background and skills (like an American resume)

For a postdoc position, you will generally want to be using the first---at least, that has been the way it has been for all countries that I am familiar with.

That, then, may be as long as it takes to list everything out; when applying for a postdoc position, your record will likely still be fairly short.  Well established researchers, on the other hand, can easily end up with 20+ pages and may consider switching to a "best of" format in which only the most significant highlights are shown.


Is ABET accreditation important for a bachelors degree in software engineering?

My experience is that ABET accreditation is generally not very important, in the fields of software engineering and software development.

If the University program is well-regarded by employers, ABET accreditation is not important; their positive impressions will outweigh any accreditation.  If the University program is poorly-regarded, ABET accreditation is not going to make up for their poor impressions.  If the University program is unknown to employers, they will probably look at other measures first (like past projects you've done, your performance on a phone interview, etc.) before they care about ABET accreditation.

What is important is the quality of the undergraduate program.  Since you are choosing among multiple universities, you should be looking carefully at the quality of their programs.  While it's true that ABET accreditation is potentially a signal or indicator of quality, I don't think it's a very good measure of quality.  (I know of some extremely high-quality computer science programs that are not ABET-accredited.)  Instead, to decide where to study, I'd be looking closely at the programs, to assess their quality in as many ways as possible.


Vetenskapsrådet (the Swedish Research Council) international post doc - criteria

It appears this information is made available on the webpage once each call for applications has been issued.

On this webpage here you can find this year's call for applications. Or you can visit vr.se/inenglish and follow the links to Research Funding > Apply for Grants > Call for proposals > Closed call for proposals, all past funding rounds are listed.

The last round of applications closed on 2 September, so you'll have to wait until next year. It looks like you need your PhD before the closing date. I can't see a specific mention of citizenship as a requirement (you can always email the research council).


Associate Professor to Assistant Professor

Within one university this would be a demotion so it is possible but rare, and could happen if the appointment and ensuing titles were given by courtesy, i.e. the appointment is not a regular full-time appointment.  Rank associated with this courtesy appointment might then be tied to some specific commitments.

I’ve never seen this happen for a regular position: I would guess that such demotion of a regular faculty member would lead to dismissal or resignation.  For courtesy appointments my experience is that these are either renewed or not, but I know of one place where such a “demotion” is technically possible.


How to address being interested in two areas in statement of purpose

I assume when you say "communication" you mean an area of engineering closely allied to signal processing, rather than communication in the context of the arts or social sciences.

In this case, you may as well just talk about some specific problems you are interested in, without worrying too much about how to categorize them. If you can talk in detail and with confidence about your past projects and potential future plans, then you can write a good statement of purpose. It is more important to spend words on demonstrating your understanding of the actual research problems (What do you want to do? Why is it important? Why is it hard? Why is it original? etc.) than on classifying topics within the overall field. The former is what readers really want to know about.


How much do figures need to differ to avoid copyright claims?

In general, I would argue that the new plot needs to do one of two things:

present materially different content relative to the old image
present the same material in a different context.

Graphs are generally visual representations of numerical data. The numerical data itself cannot be copyrighted (because the data are "facts"), only the presentations thereof. However, simply changing axis labels or colors, and other similar "gloss" changes, don't really make the graph any different. Rotating a 3D graph, or changing significantly the relationship of blocks in a mind map or diagram to show off different features would represent a change in the message and presentation, and therefore would be OK.

However, chemical structures and mathematical equations are not normally considered subject to copyright, as they represent "facts," and cannot be arbitrarily drawn or represented; there's only so many "legal" ways to write them. That said, cutting and pasting somebody's figure from another article would be a copyright violation; recreating it yourself would not. (Otherwise, we would never be able to write E = mc^2 without it being a copyright violation!)

If there are doubts, however, you can always try to contact the journal in question. If needed, you can ask for permission to reuse a figure, especially if it's one you've already created. Most journals already permit self reuse, so long as you include an appropriate credit and citation of the original.


Is there a tool for visualizing the geographic locations of research?

this is an active aera of research in Geography of Science. We've been working with sociologists of science and bibliometricians to assemble a geocoded database of scientific publications, based on the Web of Science database.

We've not (yet) produced a publicly available interactive search tool like the one you describe, but it's a possibility. Instead, we have published several papers and an interactive tool to geovisualize the collaborations between co-authors of papers : http://www.coscimo.net/ (in french)

If you're interested in this question, i can provide a bibliography.

A conference paper :
http://sticonference.org/Proceedings/vol1/Grossetti_Geographical_348.pdf
A research paper :
http://usj.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/11/20/0042098013506047.full.pdf


Does the talk count as invited if my PI invited me?

Since you have graduated already I would say that it is perfectly fine to list it as "invited". If the other speakers are able to do so, then you should also. This is especially the case since your use of the CV is for graduate school admission, not some later career stage purpose.

It might be a bit presumptuous to list a ten minute talk as an invited talk if you had just earned a doctorate with this professor, but for someone in your position it is an honor to be asked, even for such a short talk. I'll guess that few such BA/BS students are in a similar position.

However, while the "invited" part seems fine to me, you might want to take care about how you state the rest of the description. "Invited talk" might imply more than you intend. "Invited short talk" or "Invited workshop presentation" might be more accurate. I assume you don't have a lot of these requiring a general description for a section of your CV.

Your advisor had options about who to invite. He wasn't obligated to invite you and trusts that you have something to offer.

However, since he will be writing you letters of recommendation for grad school, I assume, you can ask him what is best here.


People with multiple PhDs and People teach in different departments

There is, in general, no prohibition on getting multiple PhDs.* However, it is usually not recommended. This topic is covered in another questions on this site, e.g., When does one go for a double doctorate?

Teaching in multiple departments at a university is unrelated to having multiple PhDs. Usually someone who teaches in two departments effectively teaches "one thing" that is relevant to both departments, rather than teaching two unrelated things. For example, someone who specializes in internet law is likely to be associated with both the law and computer science departments.

*Although some universities/departments won't let you join their PhD program if you already have a PhD


Impact of holding non-TT positions on potential for a TT position

In many academic fields it has become the norm for new PhDs to work in post-doc, visiting assistant professor, or other temporary non tenure-track positions before moving into a faculty position.  This is normal and expected. It should be obvious how a research post-doc will help you to gain experience in research.  For new PhDs with limited teaching experience, a good visiting assistant professor position can help with gaining teaching experience.

However, there's a difference between a research oriented post-doc and a long term full time (or worse part time) non tenure track position as a lecturer.  In the latter case, you will have little opportunity to continue working on research and may be put to work teaching very low level courses.  It can be very hard to work up from such a position into a tenure track position, and the longer you do it, the worse it will look on your resume.

Even with good research post-docs and visiting assistant professor positions, there's a limit to how many years you can do this work before you'll be seen as having failed in your academic career.  Too many years of post-doc experience is worse than having too little experience.


What is the purpose of peer evaluation of teaching?

I'm attending a similar program at my university (also UK based), and I was observed by a senior member of my faculty, and by another attendee of the same program.

The main point was to initiate a reflective process of our teaching. Hence, the observation was not an evaluation, but simply the collection of some pieces of evidence, that described our lecture. Our actual assignment was not the observation in itself, but how we reflect upon the evidence, by describing how we feel about it, how we analyse it, what conclusions do we make about it, and what are the next steps we decide to engage on.

Interestingly, I've collected different types of evidence from my two observers: the senior member of my faculty made some observations in particular related to the content of my lecture, while the observer who was on the same program made some observations related to some of the techniques taught in the program that I used during the lecture. In both cases, all observations were really useful to start the reflective process. I can only assume this is the rationale for you to have three different observers.


Pros and Cons of assigning homework for large classes

Given that your job is teaching, not just lecturing and grading, I don't see any cons. If the students don't practice, they won't learn. People learn through practice and repetition, not from hearing lectures and taking exams, cramming from notes and a book.

Learning something involves physically rewiring the brain. The neurons get new connections (synapses) that need to be reinforced. See The Art of Changing the Brain by James E Zull for the science behind this.

Sadly enough, students don't really know how to learn in too many cases, nor do they have the time or discipline to do what is not required of them. So you need to give them meaningful practice as well as a goad to get them to do it. I think, actually, you would be more effective if the percentage of the grade for homework was much higher than 10%.

If you have adequate support (TAs) then there should be little reason not to have such graded homework with comments not just numbers on them.

If students get a lot of practice they will actually remember things and be able to put it to work later. Otherwise it is as fleeting as the end of the course.

Even if it is impossible to grade all the work you give them, give them the assignments anyway. While it doesn't solve the goad problem, it at least gives guidance those with a bit of discipline. Even if you permit them to work together on homework or to grade each other's work, it is better than expecting them to learn without practice, practice, practice.


Chain referencing is not required unless you reference some information from the chain reference that is more than what is already referenced within the first citation.

To add clarity, if you want to cite a matter from [A] which is cited as a quote from [B], then citing [B] would be appropriate. Otherwise if [A] adds some insights to [B], then citing just [A] would be fine. If in addition to this you derive some insights from [B] which is not noted in [A], then you must cite both [A] and [B].


Do authors appreciate the work of peer reviewers?

Contrary to the impression you may get reading this forum, mostly authors do appreciate the work of referees.

On a few occasions, when a referee provided valuable information, I have added it to the paper and thanked "an anonymous referee" for it in the paper.


My department delayed my viva and is being unprofessional. Should I report this?

Complaining about this won't speed up your defense or get your thesis to your committee any faster. It will just make you disliked within your department. Accept the loss of time, do your defense, get your degree, and start your next job. Unless there are specific rules against doing so, take the lesson that when getting your thesis to your committee and scheduling your defense date, no administrator will ever take the issue as seriously as you. So instead of delegating something you care a lot about to someone who doesn't care at all about this task, you could do these tasks yourself and get them done under a timescale you like.


What can cause the date of submission status to change without a change of status "under review" for Elsevier editorial systems?

When a paper is assigned to a reviewer, the reviewer may decline or fail to review the paper.  In this case the editor will assign the paper to a new reviewer.  The status date will change at the day the new review was assigned, but the status will remain the same.


Condensed citation of multiple GitHub issues

As hinted in a comment, "the numbers alone would be enough." Those numbers can appear in the main body, e.g.,

During the course of this research, twelve bugs were reported for the  mythril security analysis software. (Those reports are numbered 584, 1270, 1232, 1235, 1293, 1294, 988, 1300, 1303, 1291, 1238, and 1295, all of which are accessibly from the following url: \url{https://github.com/ConsenSys/mythril/issues/}.)

You could push the bracketed details to a footnote, since they are less interesting. You could also summarise any particularly interesting reports, perhaps you've already done that.


Finding research papers for undergraduate research

Academic knowledge is connected through a web of citations and references. Once you have a piece of that web, you can follow the threads towards other papers.

Start at the Wikipedia Page, specifically the Notes and References sections.

See if any of the links there take you to a PDF... look for DOI numbers, or PDF in the link. If not, use Google to try to find a paper. Start reading it.

Look for a word or phrase you recognize, and want to know more about, or something seems about the direction you want to go. Likely, this will be cited... look in the references section of that paper, then google that paper (or follow the kindly provided links).

You're traversing a web of references, so you'll come back to the same papers sometimes. If I were you, I'd keep notes about each of the papers I look into.

Title
Authors
Link to PDF
Single sentence summary.

Once you've been doing this for a day or so, you'll notice that there are some authors who have a good connection to the topic you're interested in. Look up their university web page; Often they'll have a list of their papers.

Essentially, you are crawling the web of references yourself. Keep following the links, keep track of where you've been, where you want to go.

Oh, one other thing: Google Scholar is a decent choice for getting an overview of a topic because it will sort papers by reference count: Highly cited papers often contain important information; Be it an excellent summary or a novel insight.


Is this a good way to finish a PhD current status conference?

A problem with that kind of ending is that the last slide tends to be shown the longest, because of the upcoming questions section, and it's somewhat distracting to ask with a funny picture behind. Something an instructor told me long time ago, for any slightly formal presentation, is to just show the first slide again (the title slide), so that you can answer questions with just the title of the talk behind you, avoiding distraction.


Must I decline to review a former colleague's work?

Assuming you reviewing the paper would not violate any guidelines of the journal or conference in question, the primary issue is objectivity: can you review the paper on its own merits, or will your association with the author in question "color" your opinions?

Personally, I would never review a paper written by a former co-author or personal friend. However, I may accept the review of someone whom I know professionally but have not worked with in any formal capacity, provided that I am not working on a similar project.

In this particular example, you claim that the person is "a friend." If that is the case, then I would recommend leaning against accepting the review.

The issue of informing the journal editor is a separate matter. You may explain that the reason is you know the author, but you are not necessarily obligated to do so. If you want, you could simply say "I don't have the time right now," and that would be just as valid a reason as "it's a conflict of interest." But I don't think there's anything lost by informing the editor of why you don't feel comfortable providing the review.


Can a project be "too good" for a Master's?

From my reading of the conversation between the two of you, he meant 'too good' in one of two ways:

"Too Good" as in the topic will yield many high-quality results, potentially many publications, and opportunities for continued/extended research.
"Too Good" as in requiring too much time to complete in the typical Master's degree time period, and actually should be understood as "Too advanced" or "Too in-depth".

In answer to your second question 'will future advisor know the boiling point?' Yes. That is what they are there for, to help guide the scope of your project to a Master's level.


In every program I've been involved in, undergraduate research in some form has been considered a positive, and often the most compelling single piece of an application (the other being letters...especially letters discussing undergraduate research).


Can "revision authors" be dropped from a paper?

I believe: The OP has written, but not submitted, a manuscript, which they discussed with some potential co-authors, who provided minimal input.
If the OP didn't discuss authorship, then they can immediately proceed to submission without listing the potential co-authors. (Discussion doesn't generally merit co-authorship.) Even if authorship was discussed, they may be able to immediately proceed, it really depends on the discussion.
For instance, the OP may have offered co-authorship in exchange for help...with the design and intellectual work and if there's no evidence of fulfillment, the OP can immediately submit without listing the potential co-authors. It gets tricky when the OP is unsatisfied, but there's evidence of partial fulfilment.
If the OP is in a position to immediately submit, then they are under no obligation to communicate with the potential co-authors. Nonetheless, the OP could send a thank you email, e.g., Thanks for your input on XYZ. Your wisdom helped improve my manuscript (attached), which I'll be submitting to ABC. I've listed you in my acknowledgements, which I trust is okay.
For trickier situations, I'd need more information to offer advice.


Is there a way to participate in research, when I am no longer a student?

The first step in getting a recommendation letter is to ask for one from prior instructors. It is best to do this in person if it has been a long time, as you may not be remembered by name. But you might be surprised - especially if you were a hard working student back when. This is harder, of course, if you studied at an especially large institution where you had little actual contact with professors. In that case your contact would need to include reminders of who you are and of why some professor might remember you. At such a place, even after four years, it isn't impossible that an old TA is still around to help you.

The more direct answer of course, is that you can, indeed, get connected to a research group to help them. But be upfront with the PI that you are trying to build reputation in order to advance your education later.

The best way, again, to make contact is in person, which implies that you can travel to talk to people. Their work is probably public knowledge, so some research on your part can help you avoid obviously bad fits. If you want to provide primarily programming backup to a research group you may not need to actually sit with them in real space-time, but the initial contact should be face to face, perhaps with a chance to get to meet all the participants so that you can both explain what services you can provide and assure them you are capable of it. Thereafter, it may be possible for you to work remotely. But if all of their meetings are face to face you may need to deal with that also, at least periodically.

An additional benefit of what you suggest to do is that you will invariably learn something about whatever research they are engaged in. That can only help your future educational opportunities, even if you study something different.

There are no ethical concerns here. If you do good work for someone and ask them to recommend you for something related to your work it is all good.


Can a professor use his/her student's work as his own work?

All learning activities you do as a student of University should, ideally, serve one purpose — to benefit your learning. Your assessment is only a way of measuring this learning. All requirements/restrictions for assessment should, ideally, serve one purspose — fairness of assessment.

I see no problem in lecturer taking samples of student's work to teach next cohort, as long as these samples are properly attributed and/or anonymised as appropriate. The lecturer should not, of course, pass students' work as his/her own — this is plagiarism. Samples should be clearly marked as such.

However, working with samples is lecturer's job and it does not justify the restrictions imposed on the format of your assessment.

I can understand a requirement to submit work in a format that lecturer can read — e.g. typeset not handwritten. I can understand why files need to be submitted using a universally accessible/open format, such as pdf. Forcing student into a proprietary format with no clear benefit to their learning is a bad practice. Forcing them into this format only because the lecturer does not know how to take a page out of a pdf document is very bad practice — it only demonstrates that the lecturer is incompetent with IT. The lecturer is not using their position of power and trust to the best.

Unfortunately, the world is not ideal, and in quite a few places educational system leaves to be desired. If you decide to file a formal complaint, assess your strategy and make sure it does not backfire you. It is a good idea to consult someone local — don't act simply based on advice from the Internet.


How to feel confident with knowledge if I have not taken relevant classes during my postgraduate degree?

The classes from undergrad and what you took from them enabled you to self-study all the relevant maths on your own. That is a much more valuable thing than the knowledge on its own and should give you the confidence.
If you absolutely need the "external validation" to build the confidence: As a postdoc you are still in a University setting? Then why not take some time out of your schedule and take the classes now? Or take some online courses that include tests and a certificate.


How do really talented people in academia think about people who are less capable than them?

I wouldn't say I'm a 'top' professor - hopefully someday, heh - but here's my take on it.

I couldn't care less how 'smart' my students are or aren't. It's tough to quantify, and different people have different strengths, and it's easy to mistake knowledge/experience for intelligence. At any rate I feel that my job is the opposite of competing with my students in any respect. I want to help them do well in (class/research/etc.) and find it all interesting and rewarding.

I always urge my students to ask me for help if need be, because:

I do try to explain things well and clearly, but I don't always know if it totally gets across
All of my students are different in a gazillion respects, meaning that they're not all going to understand the same things easily
Providing extra assistance is part of my job!

I tell my undergrads that someone who has gotten an A in my class and gotten lots of help from me deserves that A exactly as much as someone who has gotten an A in my class with no help. Everyone is entitled to my assistance, even on a weekly basis or whatever. I don't think poorly of students who request extra assistance. The course is meant to have my students learn a thing or two; if they're a bit confused, I'm more than happy to clarify. The students I worry about the most are the ones who could benefit from extra help - which all of my students are permitted to seek whenever they'd like - but who haven't sought it out!

The only students I actually get at all impatient with are the ones who show indisputable signs of dishonesty or implausible excuse-making or picking on classmates or whatnot. Those ones irritate me. The rest are a joy, whether or not they seek extra help.


How to learn something by reading a textbook?

The first thing you need to do is to create a sechdule for your reading. You also need to study your cognitive domain but since you love to watch videos, focus on watching video lectures of the topics in the text book and take notes of important key points which can be easily read and remembered anytime anyday.


If you have the time and means to do so and you are interested in this opportunity, I would suggest doing it; it does not hurt and as someone who used to work in Higher Education, it was not out of the ordinary for scholars from other fields to contribute to conference proceedings (just as you presented at this conference) because Education as a discipline is inherently understood as multidisciplinary in scope. None of us can necessarily give you your chances without assessing the strength and merit of each person who would also be submitting. The positive news is that if you write something that you feel good about, if it is not accepted, provided there are no limitations imposed by the organization that hosted the conference, you still nonetheless have a publishable work in your pocket that can ostensibly be sent to journals for publication.


Is it ethical to do paid literature searches of research journals for other students?

What would be unethical is for the other person to misrepresent work that you did as having been done by them, or for you to knowingly aid someone in such a misrepresentation. It’s important to credit people for the work that they’ve done.

There's nothing intrinsically unethical about the work you describe, or about charging people for it.


What does the publisher mean by “Manuscripts […] are not returned to the authors”?

Back in the Olden Days, to submit a paper you would mail a hard copy to them. This notice says that they will not mail it back to you; they will only send you a letter with their decision. But nowadays, when we do things by the internet, this notice is largely an anachronism. However this journal does say it still can accept submissions also by ordinary mail.
Assuming you submitted your paper by Internet, I expect you will receive a decision on publication by email in due course.
As a mathematician, I always wait at least 6 months before I inquire about a paper I have submitted.


description of papers that have not been submitted to a venue?

Work in Progress might be good as it implies that there may still be some work to do in the writing - and even some uncertainty about the final title. In addition it also subtly says that you are still active and not resting on your old achievements.

You could, in addition, mark each paper according to its readiness, or at least those that are ready for submission.

I think that Research Papers carries a connotation that they are internal and may not be published.


Necessary to state power when using 'billion' in UK publication?

It would be unusual to me to see million or billion used in academic scientific contexts, except for a few cases where there would be absolutely no ambiguity (number of people on earth or age of rocks, for example, would only fall under the American/modern usage of billion), and even in those contexts, only for loose descriptions (versus reporting of data). (I did a brief Google Scholar search for both million and billion; although there were many many results, most seemed to be referencing either authors surnamed Million or Billion, or the use of the terms in these loose forms or in the context of geology, as in "three billion year-old rocks)

I can't think of a circumstance where scientific notation or use of SI prefixes would be a problem when writing for an scientific academic audience. If writing for a lay audience or outside the hard sciences, it might make more sense to use million/billion: most respectable outlets will either have a style guide or refer to another established style guide for proper procedure. It seems like the BBC and University of Cambridge embrace the 10^9 billion and do not caution specifically against its use, only noting the previous definition. Certainly in no context should you use billion to mean 10^12.


Years ago, a professor agreed to write a LOR, but never sent it. Therefore, I'm not accepted in any school. What can I do?

That sounds like a frustrating and discouraging situation.  Whether you have any recourse may depend on the system.  For U.S. universities, there's not much you can do, since applicants are generally considered responsible for monitoring whether their applications are complete and reminding letter writers.  However, these cultural issues might vary internationally.

One puzzling aspect of your question is that you describe the professor as deceiving you and acting unethically.  Without some specific evidence, I'd assume it was forgetfulness rather than deliberate sabotage.  Forgetting to submit letters is still irresponsible, but not as bad as intentionally not submitting them.

If you have compelling evidence of sabotage, it would be worth bringing to the attention of the university administration.  However, it's not clear to me what sort of evidence you might plausibly have.

If it's a matter of forgetfulness, things are murkier.  If there's a pattern of irresponsibility, then the department head might want to know.  On the other hand, a single incident would probably be ignored.

What makes this tricky is that professors get asked for recommendations in all sorts of suboptimal ways, such as a brief hallway conversation while both people are rushing to get to class.  It's easy to forget under these circumstances.  That doesn't make it right, and responsible letter writers will try hard not to overlook requests.  However, some circumstances make it more understandable than others.  If you do file a complaint with the administration, you should make the circumstances clear.  (But without evidence of dramatic or recurring irresponsibility, I'm not sure it would be worth the effort.)

Have you tried asking the professor about it?  It's too late to fix your applications, but you deserve an apology.  Furthermore, he may have forgotten about it so completely that he doesn't even realize this happened, in which case you'd be giving him a valuable warning that he needs to be more careful (and you might save future students from this problem).


How to cite the supplemental material from the main text?

There are many different ways how to cite supplementary data/supporting information - whatever you'd like to call it. In general, your title for the supplementary data is perfectly valid. Within the supplementary data, tables and figures including pseudocode are typically numbered in a similar way as in the main text with the exception that they are labeled with the prefix "S" for supplementary/supporting.

Say you have figures (Figure S1, S2, ...), table (Table S1, S2...) and some equations in the supplementary data, there are several possibilities to cite them:

If you want to refer to the supplementary data, you might just do so, i.e.: For detailed information, see the supplementary data/supporting information.
If you want to elaborate on an aspect with further data in figures and tables, you refer to them similarly to main figures and tables, i.e.: see Figure S1, or cf. Table S1
In the case of pseudocode, the best way probably is to format them as figures and label them as such including the appropriate references (see above).
In the case of equations you might refer to them as follows: for detailed calculations please refer to the equations in the supplementary information

Another approach how to enumerate data in general in the supporting information is the prefix "S" followed by a running number, i.e. S1, S2 and so on. This way you can give each part regardless of figure, table, pseudocode or block of equations a title with section index.

If you want to refer to a section in the supplementary data, you might cite them as follows: see supporting information S1, or for detailed calculations refer to supporting information S2.

EDIT:
As suggested by jakebeal, journals also offer guidelines for authors including formatting of text, and labelling of graphics and tables. If there are not explicit guidelines available previous publications in the same journal are a good indication as well.


Is it OK to let somebody know I refereed their paper?

but refrained myself because peer review is supposed to be anonymous.

Continue to refrain yourself. You can certainly say that you are familiar with the work of somebody else -- published articles can be read by anyone, after all -- but openly declaring that you were one of the reviewers would not add anything to the discussion and could put you in an awkward situation, if the authors haven't actually liked your review.

I work in a narrow field where almost all of the authors know each other and where it is not so difficult to guess who the reviewers are, also because journals ask the authors to suggest possible reviewers. These authors collaborate quite frequently, but I've never heard of anyone disclosing their role.


Faculty (lecturer in UK) interview presentation - what to include around teaching?

Congratulations for getting an interview for a faculty position!

  I'd like to show that I have done some research on the school's teaching programmes.

This should be highly appreciated. Interview panels are not only judging the quality of your research but also how well you would fit with them. They would be happy to know you have been looking into the details of how they operated the inner workings of their institution.

  But I don't want to sound like I am challenging the school's existing
  programmes.

Agreed - you should't challenge the status quo - that is way too early for you to do so. Not because you are too junior to come up with good ideas! This is a general rule in joining a new organisation: you need first to the understand the decision making process and find the influential people that will help you implementing the changes you suggest if you want to succeed. What you can do is to hint (you have only few mins after all!) at how you can add value (value here means original contribution both in terms of ideas and skills) to the current curriculum

  The job description does not mention the development of new modules,
  either.

That never really appears in job descriptions - and it's typically not in the panel's mind. That is why an original suggestion may be well appreciated - it shows you care about teaching, and you want to contribute there originally too. Only, try to do it in a way that shows a strong desire to contribute, rather than a willingness to disrupt.


How to improve chances of graduate admission following major, long-term burnout?

First of all, I gotta say congrats for editing the question in a way which will make it more interesting to us.

Regarding the parts of the question that you have removed: You know, bad things happen, and they will happen in the future as well, it is your reaction that matters the most. Kudos in that regards as well, since you have decided to look around for a solution for your problem. That is a nice start nevertheless.

You can refer to this post regarding you question about getting into graduate school. However, are you sure that you really like research, have you had any experience in the past? If not, how do you know you like it? Or you just like the Phd title? Bear in mind that the graduate school and later academic career is full of rejections: paper-, grant-, acceptance-. It is obvious that you will have to change the way how you react to rejection, based on how you have reacted to rejection for the colleges that you have applied.

You should have kept you motivation high and work as much as possible to show that committees that did not accept you they have done wrong. But that is past already, you say you have 1 year left to finish your undergrad studies. Try to do you best in the courses that are left.

After all coursework is not the main factor in showing your research capabilities. When you will apply to other institutions later on for research/phd position you will have to convince them that you are capable of doing research. That's the main thing.

It would be great if you could stick around some research projects taking place at your current institution. Maybe some papers come out from there, even you can impress the professors, which might want to write strong recommendation letter for you later on. Strong recommendation letters are important as well.

Finally, do not be that obsessed with the colleges that you have targeted before. There are good colleges doing great stuff over there. Also, you can consider switching continents, in that case your GPA would matter less, as you will have to undergo two extra years of Master studies (in Europe) in order to get a Phd.

To answer your questions precisely:

You have clearly stated that you don't want to screw up any future you might have. So, remind this to yourself daily, try to focus on this. Try some self-motivation stuff!
The link I provided above should be helpful. Got no research experience? Then, simple... get some!
Do a Masters, in US or abroad before getting to Phd; Perform well in the Masters, most recent GPA matters the most.


Popular software used in research is incorrectly reporting solution is optimal: what to do?

You should create a reproducible test case that demonstrates the flaw conclusively.  If you are that confident and the software is that widely used, it warrants publication in a technical journal. They key is to involve the company. Show them your test case and mention you have interest in publishing the result. Offer to collaborate with them on the publication. That way, they will be forced to either demonstrate you are wrong or admit you are right. In the latter case, they save face by admitting the problem. If they ignore you, press ahead.


Affiliation in the transition period between studies at different universities

Be pragmatic. If you need to provide affiliation for, for example, presenting work you have already done, then use the old affiliation. It would be odd to provide your coming affiliation in such cases. Even later when you are at your new place you may want to use the older affiliation along with your new one to show where you did the work and where you are now. If you need to provide contact information not related to work you have done then the new affiliation migt be good. That said, however, it would be wrong to use the new affiliation until you become officially affiliated by a contract (equivalent). From this perspective your old affiliation can be used until the new one is official (find out by asking your new location when can be applied). There is of course not wrong to clearly state that you will be at your new affiliation starting such-and-such time.


PhD application denial - Is it usual to ask reasons/recommendations?

You can certainly try asking, but I expect you won't get a useful answer.  In the cases I'm familiar with (mathematics departments in the U.S.), you aren't likely to get any official answer beyond "no comment".  This isn't because the department is being unhelpful or deliberately withholding information they could reasonably share.  Instead, it's because offering useful feedback is really hard.

Rejected applicants sometimes imagine that the rejection may have been due to some identifiable flaw they could fix, but in my experience this is rarely the case.  Most rejections are based on an overall evaluation, rather than isolated flaws.  Even if a single problem derailed the application, there might have been other issues that were never identified because discussion stopped when the application died.  Nobody wastes times on hypotheticals like "Would the candidate have been admitted if it weren't for this problem?", since the committee is eager to move on to the more contentious cases.  So even if the committee can point to a specific problem, they generally can't predict that fixing it would lead to admission.  It's not particularly useful or encouraging to be told "Here's a serious problem with your application, but don't assume you'll get in if you fix it.  We haven't even considered that question, so who knows?"  (Plus there are legal issues: you don't want to be sued by someone who is told their application was rejected for a specific reason and then discovers that you admitted another applicant with the same issue.  You might have had an excellent reason - perhaps the rest of the other application was magnificent - but it could still look like a pretext for discrimination.  It's safest not to offer any explanation that oversimplifies the full decision making process.)

These cases with isolated flaws are really not typical.  Instead, most feedback would fall into two categories: "Your application just wasn't good enough overall for us to even consider you" or "Your application was good and you made the short list, but you were outcompeted by people with even stronger applications".  The first sort of feedback adds insult to injury, and it's wise to avoid making enemies among the applicants you reject.  The second sort of feedback is also not constructive, since there's usually no good way to convey to the applicant how the final comparison was made.  The evaluation process consisted of multiple readers, perhaps with differing opinions, followed by a committee discussion that compared the application with the competition.  Confidential letters of recommendation played a major role, and in any case the process was lengthy and involved enough that it's difficult to summarize it usefully.

For comparison, U.S. National Science Foundation review panels provide applicants with copies of the written reviews and ratings of their proposals, together with a brief summary of the panel discussion.  This is about as much transparency as one could reasonably hope for, but it rarely leaves rejected applicants with a clear idea of how to improve their future proposals.  In many cases they don't even have a good understanding of why they didn't make it (beyond "some other proposals were even more compelling").


Rejecting a PhD offer after having accepted it. Advice?

I am assuming you are going to go to the better place, so asking our opinion is rhetorical.

The consequences depend on the people at the university:  if they are reasonable folks, they should understand.  But you never know.

You should do your best to make it as painless as possible FOR THEM.  My suggestion is that you should decide where you want to go, and accept there. And the AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, send a very very nice and very very apologetic letter to the person you had said yes to, explaining that you have decided to go elsewhere.  The key here is "as soon as possible" so they have the opportunity to offer acceptance to someone else -- that will lesson any annoyance they have.


How to contribute to friend's mathematics paper without overshadowing?

Tell him what you have figured out.  Maybe he will want to modify his own proof and add you as an author.  Maybe he will just add a note that it has been pointed out to him that the result can also be proven using other specified methods.  Maybe he will look over your shorter proof with interest but not change his manuscript at all.

Understanding how a result can be proved is obviously of key importance in mathematics, but do not forget that result that he has proved ought to have some interest unto itself.  It can be more important to know that something is true than to have the most elegant proof of its truth, and realizing that a result is provable and interesting is a significant accomplishment on its own, even if a "better" proof can be found later.


Is research experience in a different field relevant for PhD application?

While field-specific research experience is always the best kind, I think there is a role for good research experience in any related field. Close-by disciplines that share similar research methods and approaches will carry much more weight than something much further removed. (For instance, as a chemical engineer, I wouldn't put much stock in somebody doing sociology or clinical medical research, but somebody who had a background in research in applied mathematics or mechanical engineering would be potentially of interest.)

So, if you're going to go into an area of economics where your mathematical statistics background will be of benefit, I think that will (or at least should) be viewed favorably by an admissions committee.

That said, you will want to make sure that your research supervisor understands that you're applying to economics programs, and tailors her letter of recommendation accordingly. Also, if you have a lot of experience in a different field, you will need to make clear to the admissions committee why it is you want to pursue the new field.


Should I inform students that there are cheaper alternatives to the on-campus book store?

Politically?

Sure, but there is always a chance that you will step on someone's toes if you do anything. I fully agree with Nicholas that you have subtle ways to do it.

Ethically?

In the given situation the bookstore is a for-profit entity that gives below-average service to your students on an above-average price. Whatever approach you use to define the main mission of a university, it should include a good and fair service to your students for their 10-20-30 k$/year they pay. So I would say it is unethical to not tell them that they are not obligated to use a sub-par money-sucker service, and they are free to buy from internet, e.g. Amazon. If anyone is unethical in this situation, it is the person who is supervising the B&N shop's license to run at your university. But it is again a politically sensitive issue.


Should I provide a useful update to a professor currently grieving a parent?

Receiving an email starting with "No action needed, just an update" adds an infinitesimal amount to ones workload.
Wondering about whether some project is still going on, if its time yet to check in on the junior people involved and writing a request for information does take mental energy and a bit more time.


Authorship of PI and/or other advisor on independent work?

There have been a number of discussions on this site about authorship, and looking at the authorship tag will reveal them.

Ultimately, the conclusion of all those discussions has been that conventions on authorship are field-dependent and define "contribution" in different ways for different areas. In your case, it sounds like your advisors have both encouraged you to work together and have not requested authorship. Since the usual response to questions like yours would be 'ask your advisor', it sounds like they've answered, by saying that you don't need to include them. But I'd check with them anyway.

The remaining part of your question deals with purely tactical considerations: to whit,

  Can augmenting the author list increase chances of the paper being accepted for publication ?

I think the consensus on this site, and in general, is that misrepresenting or exaggerating contributions for any reason would be considered quite unethical (where again contributions must be evaluated in a field-specific manner).

The work must stand or fall on its own merit, and be reviewed accordingly. It might be rare in your community for graduate students to author papers without PIs, but there's always a first time (and in my community it's quite common).

On the more mundane issue of paying for publication (I assume you're thinking of one of the open access journals that charge such an amount), that's a discussion for you to have with your advisor(s) before submission. They might suggest alternate journals, or even be willing to pay the fees (again, the equivalent would be a PI in my field paying for a student to attend a conference and present a paper not co-authored by the PI: this is also quite common)


Is it common to offer a position to someone before the position is advertised?

Offering a position informally is illegal, but unfortunately still common practice in academia in the UK and some other countries. By offering you this position, the University violated good business practice and possibly breached several laws (although I am not a lawyer and can not speak in confidence here).

From purely human perspective, consider other candidates, who will find this post advertised online, will spend hours and days preparing and polishing their applications, put their time and effort in this work. Some of them will eventually be shortlisted, and will come to the interview, some of them travelling from other countries in hope to get a better job. And their desires and hopes will be for nothing, because this position is already promised to you, and all the process is in fact fake.

You describe your sense of insecurity. But for other candidates it could also be a very frustrating experience to be selected for an interview and then turned down for no obvious reason, often without a decent feedback or even a polite letter of rejection.

Finding a job in academia is increasingly difficult, but this is exactly why fair hiring practice is now greatly important to ensure that the best candidates have the positions of the base of their merit. Although you may have no better options than to join the University which offers you the position, it is important to realise that their current practice is toxic and should be improved.


What is the etiquette for asking a professor I don't know to suggest universities for me?

I would advise against it.

I don't think most people have in their heads a list of "good universities in my field".  When advising students who they know on where to apply for grad school, they try to recommend schools based on everything they know about the student, their interests, talents, constraints, etc.  For a student who they don't know and have never met, this would be hard to do effectively, and I don't think most people would really be interested in trying.

If you send such an email, I suspect you will either get no response, or a brief "Sorry, I can't help".

Instead, I would suggest that you talk to a faculty member in your field at your own university, someone who knows you well and whose opinion you respect.  They would be a much better source of advice for you.


I don't know what sort of hold the advisor has over you. Perhaps you are in a field that "requires" that he be a co-author on your work.

After you graduate, assuming that your postdoc is elsewhere he would seem to have little control over your actions.

But, if it is really just motivation that you want to maintain, you can always write the papers and see what you have. Even if custom prevents you from publishing now, it won't always and it might also serve to bring your thoughts together.

After you graduate and move on, your relationship to the advisor will also change and you should have more authority over your own actions.

I realize that this advice is somewhat optimistic and my field may be different enough from yours that it is inadvisable. But, my view, is that you should be treated with more respect.


How to maximize the chances to get a good PhD position in algorithms

I have few suggestions for you:

When you are applying for PhD there are few documents which needs to be submitted along with your application like Your transcripts, Research statement/proposal, Resume, Recommendation letters etc.

Now what you can do is: Prepare a very good research proposal, since you believe in your skills make sure that you highlight them with some examples like previous projects, your contributions etc. Remember, your research proposal is read very properly, so if you are bale to justify yourself well that would work for you

Also in your recommendation, you can ask your supervisor to mention your skills, appreciate your strong point enough.

Also there is no harm in mentioning the reason of not having published papers in your cover letter.

I hope this answer gives you some insight to get into a good PhD position.


Almost 14 months after submission the associate editor informed me they still did not start with the review process

Unfortunately, these things happen, and it sounds like the journal is at least being appropriately apologetic.

If you go do a different journal, you'll be starting all over again.  If this is a good journal for your field, and you think it's an honest mistake, then I would instead recommend asking for an expedited review process.  Since the editors are acknowledging they messed things up, you are likely to get faster and better consideration from them than another equivalent peer journal.

So: be collegial and gracious about their mistake, and next time you'll have good reason for when you send an earlier status query.


Reasons for an academic to need administrator rights on work computer

So far, I have only come across one reason for needing something close to administrator rights on a fixed department machine: using scientific software.

When you start using a new scientific piece of software, you often have its source code, and need to build it first. Typically, there is no documentation of what exact packages in your Linux distribution are needed (as this changes over time, and there are many Linux distributions as well). So the process is:

Try to build
Identify the cause of error (installing new software, updating the compiler, ...)
Fixing the cause of error (requires administrator rights
Repeat steps 1-3 many times until done.

You can only move towards the respective next issue when one has been resolved. It is unrealistic to assume that you can give an admin a list of required packages upfront,

Without admin rights and an admin reaction time of, say, ~6 hours, this process may easily take a week. With admin rights, the process will be much faster.

BTW: When you start using scientific software professionally, there may be more packages that you need to install (LaTeX, screen, ...), so the process continues.

If you tell the IT people that this is the (unavoidable) process with most scientific software, and you will need to work with ~10 such tools during your PhD, then you should have a good point. On a technical level, there may also be the possibility for "admin light" access, namely by whitelisting your username for "sudo"ing a package installation request. Perhaps that is an option as well in your case.


How should I react if my supervisor for my master thesis gives me low quality supporting information?

Working with a supervisor is like working with a manager.

In both cases, they can only help you as well as you empower them to help you.

Ask yourself about previous 'help' moments you required from your supervisor:
what went well and not so well about it?
why was it not as helpful as you wished it would be?
how can you help your supervisor be more efficient and effective at helping you?

More often than not, things boil down to communication issues.

You need to provide all the information that you have and that your supervisor may need to help you. You also need to be able to convey to your supervisor what you expect from what they will help you with.


Where does the budget surplus of a conference go?

Here are some models I am aware of; combinations of these also exist:

There is a sponsor (e.g. government, local university or some academic organization) that covers part of the expenses but their rules for sponsoring are such that you cannot make surplus. You will need to return some of the sponsor money back to them so that the bottom line is non-positive.
There is a contingency fund for the conference series. Surplus from one year is used to cover deficit in another year, or to support other conference-related activities in the future years (say, sponsoring student travel).
There is a scientific organization (e.g. ACM) that runs the conference series and takes any surplus (and promises to help if something goes wrong).
The local university that organizes the event will keep any surplus (and they will also be responsible for helping if something goes wrong).
The local organizers will figure out some way to avoid surplus. More free coffee, additional student travel grants, last-minute conference fee discounts, additional awards, free city tour, honorariums for keynote speakers.
Some part of the income can be flexible. For example, the registration fee for local participants may be fixed only after the conference, once all other income and expenses are known, so that the bottom line will be close to zero if possible.


Does anyone pay that much attention to the school? The answer is "yes". There are tens of thousands of universities in the world and even more programs / supervisors. No human can keep track of all of them. At some point, at least for non-academics (think recruiters), people will use your university's reputation as a proxy for how good the program is. The bias can actually get pretty substantial. Examples:

Alice graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles. Bob graduated from the University of San Diego. All things equal, some people will assume Alice is more competent than Bob. This applies regardless of topic and regardless of whether USD has a top-class program in that topic.
Charlie graduated from Nameless University in New Zealand, Denise from Sseleman University in Romania. Some people will assume Charlie is more competent, because NZ is a developed country and Romania is not.

In your case, Florida State will be more recognizable because even if one is unfamiliar with the university, it has "State" in the name, and state universities are generally more recognizable. Whether or not it's worth it to pay for it is up to you to decide. Some points to think about:

See calculations like this one and apply it to your own circumstances. The key takeaway is that there's a massive difference between having to pay interest on loans and earning interest.
If you intend to work in the US, chances are much better the recruiter will recognize both universities, in which case bias applies less (the recruiter might still not know which university has the better program in your field).
If you intend to pursue an academic job, the name of the university is less important, since you'll be judged by people who can understand your academic work.


what factors affect your admission in PhD in Biological Sciences

At least in the US, graduate admissions committees tend to look at many factors. The three "big" areas tend to be your recommendation letters, personal statement, and standardized scores. They probably will look at your CV as well. You might be able to make up for a deficit in one area with strengths in other areas. For example, admissions committees might favor an applicant with at least one published paper prior to his/her application, even if he/she does not have the best GPA or GRE scores out of the entire applicant pool. I am less familiar with admissions outside of the US.Unfortunately, there isn't any one magic formula to guarantee admission to any program.

That being said, I think you are correct in wondering how your GRE score will impact your chances of admission. Assuming that you took the most updated form of the GRE (where the range is 130-170 instead of 200-800 for each section), your score is low since you scored 35 points above the absolute minimum score. Most competitive graduate programs claim that successful applicants have GRE scores in at least the 50th percentile. As such, your low GRE score would likely be a major red flag for these programs, unless you indeed scored above the median. However, other programs tend to overlook GRE scores entirely (they will say you don't need to submit them) or weight them fairly low.

Is there a way that you can postpone your applications and retake the GRE? If not, you need to put together the best application possible, which means putting extra effort and attention into the other parts of your application, like your personal statement. You might also consider applying to programs that explicitly do not require standardized scores or weigh them low, which means that if the GRE is the only weak point of your application, you're likely fine. A third option might be to talk to people at your university to see if you can turn your Master's degree into a PhD. Even if it's not in the same department (you seem to be going from Biotechnology to Biological Sciences), sometimes internal candidates can gain a slight edge over external candidates, particularly if they are doing good work and can carry their momentum over from the Master's degree to the PhD.

Again, there is no way of any of us knowing what you can do to guarantee admission, but in your situation, I would suggest that you make the things still within your control the best they can be.


How should I complete the "Statement of the problem" part of my thesis proposal if it there are very few similar works in the literature?

For my money, you won't be able to describe your contribution in terms your audience will understand until you can contextualize it in related work. Literature review is both an opportunity to adopt the established language of other researchers, and one to sharpen the contours of your idea.

Cast your net a bit wider. Certainly related work exists, and once you find it, you will see lots of ways to compare and distinguish your ideas from those of the authors that came before you.


University Teaching Certifications for Different Countries

Traditionally, the formal teaching requirement at universities in continental Europe is the so called Habilitation. It's a formal exam which requires submitting a thesis and defending it in a colloquium much like the PhD, but (supposedly) on a higher level. Usually it also includes a teaching-related element. The habilitation used to be a requirement for being appointed as a professor, but in recent times also other criteria, which represent a comparable achievement to a habilitation, are being used. In Germany, having passed the habilitation allows you to use the title "Privatdozent" (even before being appointed as professor), with the same teaching entitlements as an ordinary professor.

However, also other personnel may teach at the university. Even fresh graduates from one study program may find themselves in front of a class of students who could be just a year or two behind them. However, that will always be under the supervision of a professor, or on the formal commission of the department dean.

In addition, there are recent efforts to offer a more formal teaching education for university staff, including certificates for those who take part in the programs. I'm mostly familiar with the situation in Germany, for example this or this (in German), but I imagine similar efforts exist in neighboring countries. At the moment, these certificates are however not a requirement for university teaching, and I even doubt that they will become so in the near future. Yet, in some announcements for professor positions it seems to be included as a desirable applicant qualification.


Do academic journals check plagiarism against papers in student repositories?

Why would you care? The real issue is whether your paper contains plagiarism or not. Remember, by the way, that plagiarism is "presenting the words and/or ideas of other people as if they are your own". Turnitin and similar systems are advertised as "plagiarism checkers", but that's marketing. In reality they check for text overlaps, but overlaps do not necessarily constitute plagiarism. Overlaps can appear due to heavy use of cliche phrases or extensive but proper citing of others' works. Yes, universities sometimes take these "plagiarism scores" at face value and can reject your submission without looking further. It makes sense, unfortunately, as high plagiarism scores in case of student essays/term papers/etc. almost always appear due to blatant copying.

Scientific journals and conferences, on the other hand, are supposed to do a more rigorous job. They can (and sometimes they do) check incoming papers with automated systems (since blatant copying happens in this world, too), but they really then must look inside and uncover the real reason of this high score. If you indeed present the ideas of others as your own, that's bad. Otherwise the editors might complain about excessive quotations or lack of original content, but that's another issue, not directly related to your question.


Am I required to return sabbatical payment if I do not return afterward?

You will probably have a contractual obligation for one year. You may even need to sign a document affirming it before you can be paid. Talk to someone at your institution to learn the rules and the consequences of not returning. You might want to find someone outside your department if you don't want to signal your ambivalence.

You might also consider that any new institution might not be pleased if you step away from an obligation at the old one. No way to be sure, of course.


Is Accepting others mistake wrong in acaemia?

If they are wrong, Instead of being harsh, I try to accept their argument then explain my argument.

I think the problem may be this false dichotomy.

Imagine a student comes to you and says "I think the Earth is flat because I went to the top of a tower in the midwest and everything looks flat."

One option (what it sounds like you're doing) is saying okay, that makes sense, but there is evidence the Earth is round -- satellites, circum-navigation experiences, etc.
Another option (what it sounds like you're complaining about) is saying no, that's not a good argument, the Earth is large enough that apparent flatness on the scale of ~50 miles does not imply that the entire 26,000 mile Earth is flat.

Of these, the second has a clear advantage, in that it actually addresses the actual reason the student is confused. Just telling the student how to do it properly is no more helpful than telling him to read the textbook; explaining where the student's thinking is incorrect is where you can be really helpful.

Of course, same goes for colleagues rather than students -- when dealing with a disagreement, you need to both defend your ideas and refute their ideas. Otherwise you're both just restating your positions and not actually resolving anything.

Now the reason I called this a false dichotomy is because there is no need to be harsh when refuting others' ideas. The best way is to ask leading questions so that the they realizes their mistake all on their own. Usually, doing this requires an excellent understanding of the subject matter. When dealing with colleagues on research topics, one may not have a strong enough understanding to do this gracefully, resulting in what seems like harshness (or one may just be a jerk).


Mentioning future work, that is now complete

The material is highly relevant to your presentation so you don't need to ask people on the internet whether it should be included.

You can and should mention it. Your talk should be based on the current best understanding of the subject, whether that comes from your conference paper or from a subsequent journal submission. It would be silly to give a talk about how, for example, your experiments show that gravity causes apples fall from trees and you're planning future experiments about its effect on other fruit, if you'd already done those experiments and, in fact, submitted a journal paper about how gravity causes all massive objects to be attracted to one another. Indeed, I've often been to conference talks where people have presented stronger results than they'd originally submitted. That's just a natural consequence of the submission deadline being some time in advance of the conference.

In a comment, you mentioned that you were worried because the originally submitted material has been peer-reviewed but the more recent material hasn't. That's a legitimate concern but not, I think, a serious one. Conference reviewing is very much "PeerReview lite™" and reviews are more at the level of "There's nothing obviously wrong with this and I think it's interesting enough to be in the conference." Journal reviewing aims more towards "As far as I can see, this is correct."  Since your original submission was of an appropriate standard, it's very likely that the additional material is of a similar and acceptable standard. Given that you were confident enough to submit that material to a journal, you should be confident enough in its correctness to tell people at the conference about it.


Why do papers sometimes appear unlinked in Google Scholar?

The paper appears black because Google Scholar has not found the full-text of the paper during its crawls. Rather it has extracted the document as a citation from other documents it has seen.

Hence Google Scholar knows that the document exists (it has been cited) but does not know where to find it.


Resources for English speaking students with poor command of grammar and writing style

I know that this can be the source of great frustration for teachers, especially when they do not teach writing. However, writing is one of those things, like other communication skills, that I think we all need to teach (at least a little bit) if for no other reason that our students will fail if they cannot compose a well-reasoned essay, even if they understand the material from our subject quite well.

There are plenty of universities which provide very good source material for this. Here is one from the US. Here is one from the UK. I have used materials from both (and many others) but I do not find that I can simply point the students to these sites and expect everything to work out.

As educators, sometimes we need to teach things which are more fundamental in nature. Unless your school has a 'writing center' so you can direct students there for help (my school does not). I find I need to spend 1-2 hours per semester to cover core writing issues.