What is the difference between a concentration and a track within the major?

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
  'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

  'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so
  many different things.'

  'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's
  all.'

  -Through the Looking Glass

"We don't have majors, you see..."

First, some institutions don't have "majors", they have "concentrations". This doesn't seem to be what you are interested in specifically, but I include it to avoid confusion. And it's also a good example of just how much definitions of these terms can vary between places.

Track

A "track" usually means there are two (or more) relatively independent paths of study within a single program (major), especially when the goal is to be ready for a certain end-goal (such as for a certain profession or field of research). These usually have suggested courses to take in a certain order, and while they may have a common core at the beginning, by later years people on different tracks will likely have completely different courses to satisfy their graduation requirements.

A very common use of track is to cater to those who are planning to go on to graduate school vs those who want to go directly into industry, or even to cater to different professional requirements. This is perhaps heavily influenced by many high schools in the US having "college track" and "job track" offerings/programs.

Focus

Similar to a track but with less differentiation between tracks, many institutions will offer a "focus". This usually means that all focus areas have most of the same basic courses and electives, but that just a few select higher-level courses and electives are in a certain direction and have maybe additional lower-level requirements. A Computer Information Systems program might offer a focus for software development vs networking/infrastructure, for instance. Focus options might only differ by 3-4 classes, and often have all other classes in common.

Concentration

A concentration (when it isn't a synonym for a major) is often just a more extensive and directed version of a focus. A concentration at an undergraduate level will usually have 4+ courses to satisfy a specific concentration, and often have additional special requirements. A psychology program might offer a general psychology major and a human services concentration for those who have a particular interest in being a clinician, for instance. Using my example programs, a concentration might have preset options for core classes (a choice to take a class in personality vs abnormal psychology is made for you if you want to concentrate in human services), electives are replaced with required classes or must be chosen from a restricted list, and some have special requirements for a final course or internship/residence experience.

So just at my one present institution the words concentration, track, and focus are all used and they all mean different (yet relatively consistent) things. Other colleges in the US often use similar definitions, but the range on this is pretty wide; as I pointed out above, some colleges use completely different meanings for these terms.

Minor Details

I've heard some programs even replace the idea of a "focus" or "concentration" with having a minor program to be chosen, for instance. As a small taste of diversity even within a mid-size institution, over in our History department they offer a minor in Peace Studies, yet its requirements are not very different than a "concentration" offered in our Psychology department.

Typical Physicists

This is to say nothing of our Physics department, which offers no less than five versions of a bachelor's degree - plus a pre-engineering two-year option and a tight relationship to Astronomy - and they don't call them a track, concentration, focus, or minor: it's an "emphasis"!

YMMV

My list here highlights meanings and differences within just a single mid-sized institution, and I've pointed out at least one place where the words mean something completely different, and shown a small taste of variation between programs.

For any specific case of actually deciding what your department would offer, I'd suggest looking up a few hand-fulls of 'competing' departments from a variety of US institutions and comparing how they handle the officially listed tracks and meanings - I suspect they will be all over the place, but I think this general idea will be a common theme. It might also be wise to compare your department to others within your specific institution, under the assumption that there will be more interaction within campus than between far-flung US campuses (though your recruitment/admissions office might not agree with that).

If nothing else it will 'feel' more scientific and professional than handing out darts at a faculty meeting (and perhaps less dangerous).


What does "scientific merits" in a job application mean?

It seems the use of "scientific merits" (and obviously especially the Finnish version of it) in a CV or application is specific to Finnish academic culture.

"Scientific merits" can be applied to a study, but the meaning of it there is hard to apply to a person.

I found its use in a Finnish application, where it is used as a title for "publications, teaching and student supervision and awards". So basically it could also be called "accomplishments" or "proven experience".

The linked example was the only actual use in a CV I could find (quickly). Of course, it is a single example, so I could be very wrong about my assumption this makes it part of "Finnish academic culture" more than general use.


Found errors in paper: What happens now?

The very first thing you should do is notify the authors that you found errors. This serves two purposes:

Gives the authors the chance to correct their results and publish an erratum to their paper.
Gives the authors the chance to rebut your arguments in case it is you who is wrong. Since they are obviously familiar with the work they might be aware of something you have missed. It would be very embarrassing for you to publish a Comment pointing out a problem that doesn't exist.

Be extra careful and polite when notifying the authors about the error and give them the benefit of the doubt. If you are helpful they would and should acknowledge your help in the erratum or revised paper. Since you said they are going to submit the work to a journal it could be that they even offer coauthorship.

They might choose to ignore your comments or, if they disagree with them, not take any action. In that case you can submit a Comment to their paper, write to the editor, or write a paper yourself with the correct result. Some authors have a hard time acknowledging mistakes and some editors might be unresponsive about wrong results that have already been published, so you might hit a wall or two along this road.

Again, whatever you do, make sure it is not you who made a mistake before making any claims.


Are en-route masters in physics viewed differently from terminal masters in physics in the Canadian job market?

My understanding is that an en-route masters is simply a masters awarded with an understanding that the person will also continue onto a PhD. I don't think this assumption/understanding makes it any less of a masters. In other words, the masters is not conditional on work done in the PhD. My impression is also that the person would have needed to do several significant things to get the en-route masters, and the magnitude of those things is likely similar to the person who got a terminal masters.

So, no, I don't think en-route is viewed differently in general.

Note that I am Canadian.


How to add ResearchGate preprints manually to google scholar?

Google Scholar may well index your preprint on ResearchGate automatically after a few days, although it's rarely possible to be sure what Google Scholar will do, since it appears to run largely unattended.
You can manually add articles to your Google Scholar profile by going to your profile page and clicking on the plus icon just above the list of your publications:

Other people can cite anything you post to ResearchGate, although the citation format will depend on the citation standard (Harvard, APA, MLA etc) that they are using. ResearchGate says it issues DOIs for preprints, which make it easier to cite them.


Can a paper be presented by two presenters in a conference

Registration and presentation of a paper are two somewhat separate issues. Normally, presenters at a conference must register, but there is no rule that says only one author of a paper can register for a given conference.

In general, however, papers normally have only one presenter, as the logistics of a conference normally work against having multiple speakers for a single presentation. (The presentation time is not that long, transferring a microphone between speakers, ensuring proper "flow" of the talk across the change in presenters, and so on, all tend to work against the idea of multiple presenters for a given paper.)


Looking at the website you cited (matt-koehler.com/vita) He is evidently just linking to the cluster page.

Here is how I was able to recreate that sort of link:

Go to your Google Scholar profile. Click on the paper you want to link. The pop-up window you mention will appear. At the bottom of the pop-up, there is a link that says "All X versions" where X is some number. That link will contain the URL you want.


which option should i prefer Thesis vs Non-thesis for MS in CS?

In my experience, many non-thesis options are used as bailout options for students admitted to PhD programs that get deep into the program but decide not to finish. On the opposite side of the coin, some professional Master's programs have both thesis and non-thesis options where there's no discernible downstream difference between the two. If you want to continue in academia, having a good Master's thesis to point to in your PhD program application is probably better than having nothing. If you plan to go to industry, the Master's thesis may do you no good unless you're trying to reach a job in a research department at a company or national lab.

If you can answer some of these questions about what you want to do with your life after your Master's degree, you might be able to sort out an answer.


How to translate "profesor auxiliar" from Spanish to English?

In the US, the usual title for such a position is Adjunct Professor.

See What are the roles and responsibilities of an adjunct faculty?


Cryptocurrency 3rd year dissertation using other source code?

Plagiarism is representing the work of others as your own. There may be patent restrictions on your work (I don't actually know), and there are copyright restrictions on published material. But if you use ideas and cite the sources, then you aren't plagiarizing.

Science, in fact, works by extending the work of others. We just give them credit for that earlier work.


What's the shortest "acceptable" postdoc length?

If you know that you are not interested in staying in academia, the common advice is indeed to go on the industrial job market as soon as possible.

Every month you stay in a lowly-paid postdoc, if you are not enjoying it and are not building an academic profile, is essentially wasted.

Your question is based on the somewhat suspicious premise that an industrial recruiter cares about how long you stayed in your postdoc, i.e., that your market value goes up by staying in a postdoc. I highly doubt that this is the case, but you can easily evaluate it yourself: go on the job market right now (without quitting your postdoc!) and see if you get offers that you find acceptable. If you do not (for whatever reason), you can still continue your postdoc and improve your market value on the side; if you do, well, quit within an appropriate time frame and start your new life.

Note: this advice is based on the assumption that you can delay the start date of your industrial job by a few months so that you can leave your postdoc in order. In my experience, this is often the case for the kind of jobs that PhD holders tend to look for, but obviously your milage may vary on this.


How were scientific plots made in the 1960s?

Those were typically made with lettering guides and French curves (I'd have liked to take a few pictures of mines, but I cannot recall where I put them: hundreds of hours at high school spent using them1), drawing with technical pens like Rapidographs. In certain cases, you could have also used dry transfer letters. As a drawing desk, a drafting machine was typically used (you can also buy tabletop ones).
In many cases, graphs and drawings were made by professional graphic designers, and that's why many old pictures look so good.
1A typical homework punishment in drawing classes for anyone who made too much noise in class was to fill an A3 sheet with text written with the smallest lettering guide.
Addendum:
I could find the lettering guides:

And while digging for the lettering guides, I could also find a graph paper that I drew when I was at high school using rapidographs and dry transfer letters, and with a tabletop drafting machine . It's a graph paper I used to plot the frequency response of amplifiers. Not exactly what you want, but just to give you an idea of what a non-expert could do with those tools.


Is typical ebook reader with pdf support enough to read scientific papers

No. Not sufficient. Kindle DX, an almost full-sized page, was not big enough. Refresh rates are not fast enough for flipping back and forth. Zooming interface is terrible. E readers are good for simple flow text, one page after the next. That is not how I read papers. Tablets do much better.


Should someone who wants tenure (or a research position) have hobbies totally unrelated to their work?

I suspect Sean Carroll is emphasizing this more than most people would, thanks to his tenure denial.  It's not always important - plenty of serious bloggers have received tenure, and I know of one mathematician who published a novel before successfully getting tenure at a serious research university.  However, Carroll's right about the risks: it will hurt your chances if people spend too much time comparing what you did accomplish to what they imagine you might have accomplished if you had focused more.  If your hobbies could be viewed as taking time away from research, then it gives anyone who doesn't want you to get tenure an excellent opportunity to try to derail your case.

So basically, if your tenure case could be viewed as marginal or you might have enemies in the department (or among your letter writers), then you should worry about this.  Otherwise, I wouldn't let it dictate your life, but I guess it depends on your tolerance for risk.  One common-sense approach is not to go around emphasizing to colleagues how much time you are spending on hobbies.


Busy Backson Syndrome (as coined by Winnie and Hof https://universityoflies.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/what-to-do-when-your-phd-adviser-ignores-you/)- My adviser suffered from this.  These people are Too Damn Busy flying around the world, giving lectures anywhere other than their home university, being on TV, and frolicking through the lavender fields of Provence and buying age-inappropriate accessories with Johnny Depp.

-You are too late. If I have presentation tomorrow, I will make sure everything is prepared and checked by my supervisor 2 weeks before.

what now you can do since your presentation is tomorrow is:

1. Again, Write him an Email with high priority indication:

2. Meet with the department chair faculty if any available: and ask if it possible to check it with you.

3. If it all fails: print your poster and be prepared to the presentation and make sure your impress the audience


can I take an internship at my own company during that time?

As a matter of pure semantics, I think the answer is that you cannot logically intern at your own company, in the sense that being a founder, owner, and regular employee (let alone CEO or some other high-level function which presumably you have) of a company is a distinct status from that of an intern. So being an intern at your own company is simply a notion that doesn’t make sense.
However, this seems to be just a matter of how you phrased the question. What you really seem to be asking is a slightly different question, which is, if I’m understanding correctly:

will working over the summer months at your company satisfy your school’s requirement that students in the program you’re enrolled at do research or an internship over the summer?

The answer to that is:

Only your school can say for sure. You’ll have to ask them. But also,

I think it’s very likely that the answer will be yes, at least if your school is reasonable and your company can be convincingly shown to be doing interesting things that are related to the kind of research your program wants students to be doing.

What's the right way to do this?

Explain the situation to the people at your school and ask them whether they would approve for you to keep working at your company over the summer months in lieu of the usual internship/research requirement. Be prepared to explain what kind of work you’ll be doing and to provide evidence that the company is a real company working on real things. It might be helpful if you have other people who are involved and can attest to the nature of the venture, such as a co-founder or investors, since trying to convince people based on your word alone might come across as a bit sketchy, at least if the venture is new and still hasn’t produced anything substantial.
Good luck!


Should I choose a journal for submission from the journals I have cited and should I cite papers from the journal I intend to submit to?

is it necessary to cite papers from the particular journal for which I am going to submit my paper?

No.


Do any scientific publishers have a stated commitment to authors regarding copyright infringement?

Since you also ask for anecdotal evidence, I have a first hand experience with a commercial publisher (Wolters Kluwer) that reacted quickly and professionally to my message reporting prohibited commercial use of my work. This particular journal gives free access to articles after a one year embargo.

An internet magazine based in India copied verbatim large parts of the introduction and abstract of one of my papers with some words in between to try to make it look like an original journalistic report. The 'article' was available for a fee.

Since I formally transferred my rights to the publisher in the author agreement, I really only reported the issue out of interest for the outcome. They took contact with the 'company' that subsequently retracted the content from their website.

I suspect established publishers like Wolters Kluwer have significantly more legal firepower than a one-person operation run from an internet cafe in Hyderabad.


What problems are caused by pedagogical blogging about a class?

First, you need to decide the purpose of your blog / your targeted audience.

If you are writing something so your class can be more interactive, you would clearly write it one way (being very careful not to embarrass anyone) - simply removing names might not actually hide identities in a class of 20 students. In this scenario, I don't see a reason to hide your own identity.

If you are writing something for other teachers, to discuss pedagogical issues, then you would write in a very different way. In this case, anonymizing your student names is very important (for different reasons) and you might want to hide your own identity as a way to stop your students or anyone else connecting your writings to a particular group of students.


How many free copies of a textbook is a publisher typically willing to provide?

You have to understand that in the undergraduate textbook market, the publishers are competing intensely for textbook adoptions and will do what it takes to make the sale. (This is not so much the case for e.g. the monographs that might be used in graduate courses). The marginal cost of production of an additional book is very low, people who get desk copies were quite unlikely to purchase for their own use, and so it costs the publisher very little to give out desk copies ad libitum.

At my large R1 school we have different TAs for our intro classes every quarter; sometimes ten or more of them. We have no problem getting desk copies for each TA.


Using "towards" in a title is perfectly acceptable, as indicated by the large number of papers that you can find with this word in their title.

I've also used it myself, in just the sort of manner that you are considering, and found no objection from reviewers.


Should I remind my potential PhD advisor to know his feedback regarding my solutions to a problem set given by him?

Yes, absolutely. If it's been more than a week, it's definitely appropriate to send a polite reminder. He probably gets a lot of e-mails and may have just missed yours.

In general, I've found it's best to follow up after a week if there's any chance that the other person missed or forgot about the e-mail. If he's aware that he still needs to respond, no harm done. If he's not aware, then it's a good thing you're letting him know.


When is it wrong to look at previous exams?

A major principle of academic integrity is when in doubt, ask the professor.  Academic integrity codes cannot cover all possible cases, and it's expected that all parties will act reasonably and request clarification when it is needed.  You should not assume that "everything not explicitly forbidden is permitted", nor that "it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission."  The answer to your second question is absolutely yes.

The case you describe in your first question is sufficiently questionable that I don't think you should proceed without explicitly checking.  There is certainly the potential for this to be unfair to the Monday students who don't have the option of talking to anyone before taking the exam.  If several of your friends consider that this may be cheating, that's a clear warning sign.

There are a few possibilities:

The professor hasn't thought of this issue.
The professor has thought of it, and doesn't want students to do it, but is afraid that mentioning it will only encourage students who wouldn't otherwise have thought of it.
The professor has thought of it, but thinks it goes without saying that this is inappropriate.
The professor has thought of it, and has taken other steps to ensure that students can discuss the exam without inequity (e.g. giving completely different exams).

In case 1, it would be inappropriate for you to take advantage of the professor's oversight.  If you ask her about it, you might suggest that she make a policy and announce it explicitly.

Case 2 is perhaps a questionable decision on the professor's part, but in any case, by asking, you protect yourself from inadvertently running afoul of integrity rules.  See also Case 3.

In Case 3, you also protect yourself by asking.  Note that the university bodies that enforce academic integrity codes usually have no problem prosecuting students for doing things that they consider "obviously" inappropriate, even if no written rules explicitly forbid them.  And since they are usually composed in large part of professors, they are likely to have a similar sense of what is "obvious" to your professor.

In case 4, when you ask, you'll be told to go right ahead.

My own practice in such cases is to write on the Monday exam "You may not discuss this exam with anyone, not even to say whether it was easy or hard, until Tuesday at 1:30".  (In some cases I might weaken this to "anyone who has not yet taken it".)  I do this even if the exams will be significantly different, partly because I feel that any differential in available information is a potential inequity, and partly so as not to tip my hand as to whether the exams will be similar or not.  But as I said, you should not interpret the absence of such a warning as permission.


Scientific hackathons or other intense voluntary bottom-up events

In math we have various programs where a group of people get together to do focused work on a problem, usually at one of the mathematical institutes (I know of the SQuaREs program at AIM and the Research in Pairs program at Oberwolfach, and there are probably others).  These are usually for 2-6 people, and the time frame is longer.


How hard is it to get into a good Postdoc position (or advance in Academia generally) after coming from a generally mediocre place?

The most important is not really where you do your PhD but rather if you can publish some quality research papers during your PhD. I have a few post-doctoral researchers in my team, and I have hired them because they are somewhat close to my research area but mostly because they have shown that they can write and publish good papers during their PhD. This give me confidence that they will also do good research in my team as post-doctoral researcher.  Thus, my recommendation is that if you choose to stay in your country, work hard to publish in top journals/conferences in your field, and also have international collaborations.  If you have good papers, then people will recognize your research ability.


What if the typesetting process puts a paper overlength?

It used to be the case that proceedings articles submitted to
a Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume were published
in unchanged form.
Regrettably, this has changed. Since a few years, Springer sends
the LaTeX files submitted by the authors to some copy editing office.
The copy editor inserts a copyright notice on the first page,
checks the bibliographic entries, and possibly makes some further
changes to the formatting of the submission. This has some
undesirable consequences. One of the consequences is that
the authors have to spend an afternoon checking
the PDF proofs that are sent back by Springer
by visually comparing them to the original submission
(and no, the modifications introduced by the copy editors are
not always sensible).
The second consequence is that the copy editing process may
change the number of pages required for the paper.
In fact, I've seen proceedings volumes where virtually every
paper had been carefully
formatted by the authors to fit into exactly 15 pages,
and where virtually every paper
used 16 pages after the copy editor had inserted the copyright notice.
But in all cases I've seen so far, this was nothing that
the authors or proceedings editors had to worry about.
In fact, making the authors or proceedings editors responsible
for changes introduced by the publisher would be absurd.


Should I choose a research field that I'm not really good at, but have strong interest?

Doing research on a subject is the best way to get a good understanding of something.  Presumably, if you do reasonably well in the parts of your coursework covering algorithms (in the eyes of the professors), you're doing well enough.  Mathematics and rigour are hard, even for most people who are capable of doing good work in the area.  Also bear in mind, humans are subject to the impostor syndrome.  If you find a professor who knows you and is willing to guide you in research in this area, then I don't see a problem.


Postdoc Proposal: Can I quote from viva examiners' report?

(Expanding my comment into an answer, as suggested by Bryan Krause.)

I think it'd be unusual, and I honestly feel a little weird about it. Perhaps it can be done well, but consider how it would look before doing so. If you're using the quote in support of claims in your research statement, I'd wonder a) is there no support in the literature for that claim (why?), or b) if you're not confident in your own claims. If you instead hope to use the quote in support of your abilities or talent, I think it'd be better to ask the report writer to also write one of your recommendation letters. After all, if they wrote so in the viva report, chances are that they highly enough of you and your work to write a good letter. (It'd also look a lot better on paper than "X said I'm awesome!")

The second aspect to consider is if the quotes can be verified. In the systems I'm somewhat familiar with, these reports are usually not publicly available - at least not easily so. This means that those reading your application would likely be unable to confirm that the quotes are valid, making the value of including them kind of dubious. What's more, the report writers might have an expectation that the report isn't made public, and might disapprove of you using their words this way. (Now, you could of course solve that by asking them, but again, if it's central to your application, a recommendation letter would make the point more convincingly.)

Finally, to address your second question: If you choose to do this, you could probably just cite it as company report or internal report, ideally adding a link if it's available online. If your university do make these reports public in a more official manner, it might also be classified as a technical report, but I sort of doubt it. Generally, however, exactly how you cite something in your application probably matters a lot less than what you cite.


Going into academia if the research is interdisciplinary

We can't really make general statements about one focus of research being better than another. Maybe in this hiring season there are 6 jobs out there perfectly suited to someone doing X, while there are 7 that specifically want (or just prefer) someone doing X+Y. And another year the ranking of numbers might switch.

Certainly "interdisciplinary research" has a strong positive connotation. My guess is that is because it most commonly entails the combination of a traditional (perhaps stagnant) old field with some sexy new field. The idea is that you are progressing toward "the future" where the field will be evolving in these new directions. While the old pigeonholing of research into particular categories becomes increasingly outdated.

On the other hand if you just combine a couple overcrowded fields that have been around forever you may not gain anything.

One possible drawback I can think of would be in teaching. Even when the hiring committee looks for someone with a lot of breadth, they still may require a lot of depth in their main field. They don't want to be stuck as the only one who can teach that boring old core required course forever.


Are standard metrics of academic output skewed by the relative popularity of a field?

The comments are already spot on, but let me elaborate a bit.

Comparing h-indices (or any other "hard" metric) is already dangerous in narrow fields and downright foolish if used for comparisons among different fields. This is not only because some fields are larger than others, but also because:

Differences in publication standards. In applied CS we write lots of papers, in many natural sciences, much fewer papers get written per researcher and time period. Arguably, this is because many empirical fields require the setup and analysis of lengthy experiments, something that is not typically (but not never) done in CS.
Difference in co-author ethics. Just check around here on this stack exchange, and you will see that standards for co-authorship are not at all uniform in all fields. Clearly, fields with more loose co-authorship standards also expect researchers to be part of more paper projects, hence leading to higher h-indices on average.
Differences in citation standards. In some fields, papers traditionally have 10 or less citations. In others, multiple dozen references are considered an informal minimum, again leading to higher average h-indices.

(and this is even without going into how easy h-indices are to manipulate if you are willing to - keyword "citation rings")


Create something impactful or just generalize results?

The people who can truly follow your advisor's advice are actually very rare. The advice is good, but not necessarily the best way to begin your career. In the long term you want to look at what can be done that is entirely fresh, but in the short term, you need to finish your degree and find employment.

If you want to make a big impact, IMO, you need to be able to work in a highly collaborative environment in which a lot of productive people are willing to share ideas in seminars and such. Depending on your current university, that may already be happening around you. But when it comes to finding employment, seek a place with a larger, rather than a smaller, faculty. Or, if it is small, make sure that they collaborate closely on semi-related ideas.

However, you need to follow your advisor's advice enough so that s/he will approve of and sign your dissertation. Most people at your stage of career are happy enough with A++. But it is even better if in doing that you gain insight into the larger issues of mathematical creativity.


If you are using a numbered referencing format (rather than an Author,Year format), there should be one numbered entry in your reference list for each individual source you reference.

Use the same superscript throughout the manuscript to refer to that reference; it might appear once or it might appear several times.

The exception to this rule would be if you are in a field that uses footnotes. Footnotes are a different matter entirely.

Ideally, you should get used to using a citation manager even at this early stage, it will make your life much easier now and in the future. Your citation manager will handle a lot of this sort of thing for you once you've learned how to use it.


How to apply for teaching jobs with no formal teaching experience?

You said that your true interest is writing and teaching. If this is the case, then it is justified to join a teaching job.

For this, you already have fair amount of experience such as teaching in seminars and workshops. You might have received some amount of formal appreciation such as a certificate or any written document. This could be added as an experience certificate. You also mentioned that you were TAing for few times. That is a nice experience, which adds to your profile.

When the criterion says "at least 2 years", just mention the above points as follows (or something similar to it):

Teaching experiences:

Talk on "Title 1" in the International Conference on ABCD
Taught "Title 2" in the International Workshop on DCBA
Teaching Assistant (From -- To) at the University of Alphabets


There are plenty of options when it comes to promoting your work, both amongst fellow scientists and the general public.
The first and most obvious is giving talks about your work either within your own institution or at other universities. If you're really keen to do this, don't wait for an invitation to speak. It's ok to email the organiser of a department's seminar series and ask if they have any free slots in the next few months. Most seminar organisers I know are very grateful when someone volunteers to speak, as it makes their organisational job so much easier. One bonus of the pandemic is that everyone is giving talks online at the moment, so you can probably give more talks than usual and in locations that might normally be too expensive to travel to for one fifty minute seminar.
Related to this is speaking at conferences. The typical conference season is the summer, but again with everything being online at the moment, more and more conferences are happening at different times. Talking at an online conference is obviously not a good replica of meeting in person, where it's much easier to strike up casual conversation about your work in the queue for coffee, but it's better than nothing.
Furthermore, you can try using social media. In my field, it's quite common to write a Twitter thread explaining your results when you publish a new paper, so you could do something similar. This only works if most of your followers are fellow academics; if your only followers are friends from school or fellow football fans (for example), they may be less interested. Personally, I prefer to write a blog post about my work and then draw people's attention to the post on Twitter. A friend of mine makes Youtube videos. This is your chance to get creative!
Finally, if your work is sufficiently high-profile, you could get in touch with your university's press office and ask if they will write a press release for you. This is presumably a more difficult process to go through but is clearly an excellent way to promote your work to a much wider audience than just academics.


How do I complain to chair if my advisor regularly writes to scam journals to get tenure?

Your relationship with your advisor is extremely important for you getting a PhD. I would only contact the chair if you are absolutely certain that you would be able to find a new advisor if things went bad between you and your current advisor. When her tenure comes up for review, someone on the panel will know that these are scam journals. The fact that the chair has already denied one of her expenses means there is likely a red flag in her file (metaphorically). Now if she forces you to publish in one of these journals, you should absolutely complain, but don't complain about what she is doing with other students unless you think it is worth losing your advisor completely and creating enemies in the department. You can talk to the student who actually was going to go to the conference suggest he complains, but ultimately I think that is his responsibility. So again, refer to the first point; make sure you have an escape plan so to speak, and make sure that you are OK with potentially not earning your PhD because you stood up for yourself.


Addressing Background Deficiencies In Statement of Purpose: An Initial Solution

If your potential advisor wants to fund you as a PhD student, then it is very likely you will be given admission as their student regardless of whatever background deficiencies you may have. This is especially true now that your potential advisor is aware of those deficiencies. In terms of writing your statement of purpose, it is probably sufficient to say that you worked with Prof. x to create a plan to remedy these deficiencies.


I misunderstood an assignment, how to write to the professor apologizing and asking for extension?

The first key question that I think you need to consider is the reason why the professor has asked you to do this assignment.  Is it for your educational benefit, or is it so that the professor can evaluate your capabilities as a programmer?  Often, when dealing with students, especially foreign students, a professor will pose assignments as a way of gaining more insight into the students actual as opposed to "on paper" knowledge and skills.  You are also in a situation where even if you have been working hard for the past few weeks, the professor has no way of observing that, and may gain an impression of you as a person who slacks off and makes excuses.

Given these two statements, my recommendation would be to send a short email containing the following three items:

A short statement of your mistake, just as you gave here.
A short polite request for an extension, including an estimate of how many days you will need to finish the assignment correctly.
An attachment of all of the work that you have produced thus far (or link to it, if is is more an ~1MB in size, to avoid possible email bounce problems)

Attaching the work that you have done will allow the professor to make use of it in deciding how to interpret your mistake and request for extension.  Assuming you've been doing solid work, they will be more likely to a) not evaluate you as a slacker and b) actually grant the extension.  Moreover, if the specifics of the assignment was less important than the quality of the work you produce, the professor might even change the assignment to match what you have done.


It is not a FERPA violation per se, but it might be a violation of university policy which is put in place to guarantee the privacy of student records. This is analogous to the law corresponding to the IRB requirement -- the US government doesn't say what the rule and procedure must be, just what the purpose is and that there must be rules and procedures. The main consideration is that student records can't be "shared" with unauthorized parties, the the university has an obligation to be sure that only authorized parties receive access to these records. My institution classifies all electronic communication with students as "student records", and requires all student records to be viewed and stored only on official university computers on campus, encrypted, and sent to an official campus email address. Technically, this means that if a student emails me a question, I can't reply until I'm on campus using an authorized university computer, and my response has to be encrypted.


Asking for advice: Leaving Academia after finishing Physics PhD - Hoping to start a career in Data Science right after

There actually is sufficient demand for data scientists and engineers that there are specific 7-8 week long postdoctoral training programs. Such a program could be a good idea, both as a way to build skills and to show that you've actually completed a relevant project. I have no first-hand experience myself, but I know a former physics postdoc who successfully attended the (free) Insight Data Engineering program and now works as a data scientist. (They also have a program focused on data science.) Another such program is The Data Incubator, and I imagine there are more out there.


Is there any disadvantage to having PhD skipping M.Sc.?

No.  Once you have a PhD, nobody cares about your previous degrees, or if you even graduated from high school.

(I know at least one tenured professor who did not graduate from high school.)


Is it more ethical to hire a tutor to prepare or to cheat on a test?

Measuring the ability to learn tricks (including financial ability) is actually of use to most employers etc., while measuring the ability to cheat is if anything a measure of what employers etc. want to avoid (since typically the risk/reward scheme for them is very different from individuals).

Thus, while having a tutor is not completely fair to those who cannot afford it, it is still a reasonable proxy for desirability.  Cheating is (usually) not.  So it's ethically better than cheating inasmuch as the right people for the positions will tend to be selected for them.


What, if anything, obligates a student to work with an advisor who lobbied for him/her to get funding?

I think it is hard to answer this question without actually knowing the system and seeing whether such switches are commonly done. Typically, admission systems are either central (e.g., US-style, you apply with the faculty and once you are admitted you get an advisor) or decentral (e.g., central European, you apply and get funded directly by a specific professor). In the former case, transfers are not entirely uncommon. In the latter case, transfers are a bit of a dicey topic as students really only apply with and get accepted by one specific professor.

Your system sounds a bit like a mixture of both - somehow, admissions are centralized, but it sounds like individual professors have so much say in the process that it in practice may well work like a decentral system. One important question may be how this "lobbying" for students works in practice. Does every professor have an "alotted" number of students that they can choose (either explicitly or by common practice)? That is, does the transferring student "take away" an alotted place for a professor and add one for another? If that is the case, I would assume that transferring will indeed lead to some hard feelings. However, if the system is more flexible, and "lobbying" for a student really just means that the advisor sent a recommendation without many more implications, I think transferring may be just fine for everybody.

In the end, I think you need to see whether transfers happen regularly, and how the students that transferred are seen by the old and new faculty. If they never seem to happen, I would assume that professors will not be thrilled about the idea.


What happens if my GRE scores arrive after the deadline?

Ask the university. If they know your situation in advance, they will probably be able to accommodate you. Ask if you can either submit the whole application late, or if you should submit the rest of your application on time and send just the GRE score through when it arrives.


What are some good ways to showcase one's research capabilities while applying for graduate programmes

If you are applying for graduate school, you need to show that you can do good research. More than the actual field of research, it's more important to show the ability to do good research. That being said, of course, doing research in the area in which you're applying shows that you are motivated and equipped to solve research problems in your field.

Here are some things you could try :

Reach out to a professor in your alma mater (someone you've worked with during your undergraduate studies) - offer to be a voluntary research student. Work with the prof part time, if you have a full time job, otherwise volunteer to be a full time unpaid researcher. This doesn't mean you get a freebie research position, the prof still wants to know you can do quality work. Remember, the prof is also investing his/her time to coach you, and answer questions you (probably will) have during your voluntary research term. This, by far, is the best way I know of that you can do research outside of university.
Get an IEEE membership, or use google scholar. Go through research papers in your field, and see if there are any interesting problems you can solve (there are millions of awesome problems yet to be solved :) You may think you're way in over your head, but that's how you learn. Once you have an interesting problem to solve, reach out to peers (senior students, or current graduate students you know) and professors (including potential professors you want to work with during your Masters) with your work. Remember, researchers are looking for talented and passionate people more than anything else - test scores and grades are just an indicator of that, but not the only indicators. So if a professor is genuinely interested in your work and convinced that you have potential, they will  be interested.
It's about passion, intensity and potential - less about content. At the risk of being repetitive, the work you do demonstrates how much potential and passion you have. Your work is not a means to an end  - don't "do research" with the aim of getting into graduate school. Graduate school should be a natural continuation of what you are already passionate about doing.

Good luck with your future and applications.


How should I refer to a professor as a undergrad TA?

This has a cultural element so it varies. Some places tend to be quite formal and others not so. My perspective is the US.
But as an undergrad you probably shouldn't make assumptions and use a title until told otherwise. Of course, you can also ask.
I normally expected my undergrad and even master's students to be fairly formal as I think a certain separation is helpful to them since it is occasionally necessary to be an authority figure. But I accepted things like "doc" or Dr. B" from those who worked closely with me.
When I was in the PhD program I was the only one who called many of the faculty by their first names (not my advisor, though). My fellow students (also TAs) were all more formal, but I was a special case, joining at an older age with a young faculty. I insisted my own doctoral students called me by my given name. But many of them resisted, wanting to be more formal.
But, if you are working closely with a faculty member it is good to just ask.


From what you are telling, your advisor has not bred a competitive lab but rather a horde of children. The behavior you are describing is unacceptable and shows no respect for each other at all. It normally is the professors job to make clear how the lab is working, to make sure the speaker in a talk is listened to and discussions are postponed to a break or after the talk, etc.

Furthermore, if everyone in the group is competing over a task, this shows that they don't have enough tasks of their own and go for everything that is available. Once again, it is the professors job to have regular discussions (in private!) with lab members about their current projects, to make sure that they go along well and that such a case as you described in the last point, i.e. everyone has nothing to do, does not happen.

All in all, it looks like this lab you are describing has no real leader, no one capable or willing to set ground rules and advice and guide everyone. I think and hope this is not the common case in labs and would advice you to avoid such a place if possible; maybe you are able to find a new advisor?

Side note: Of course competition will always be a thing and a healthy competition is good. But what you described is not healthy at all and in all the labs and research groups I visited so far (math, CS and engineering mostly), there was a decent amount of respect for each other.


How to interpret quality of computer science journals that charge publication fees?

From a comment of yours, you seem to be specifically interested in the Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society.

From the website it appears that this journal is part of a set of Springer journals with an open access policy (Springer Open). This is also clearly stated in the fees and funding page:

  Open access publishing is not without costs. Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society therefore levies an article-processing charge of £695/$1085/€885 for each article accepted for publication.

Among the reputable journals there are usually three different publication policies:

Closed-access journals. Authors don't pay a dime, or they pay only if their paper is longer than a certain number of pages. Here the publication fees are covered by those -- typically libraries -- who subscribe to the journal. Only the subscribers can access the journals' content. Actually, many publishers require institutional subscribers to buy the subscription to a large number of journals, with very high subscription costs (can be in the range of 30 k$/yr).
Journal with mixed access. Here the authors choose what type of access they want. If they opt for closed access, they don't have to pay, but their paper will be accessible only by subscribers; if, instead, they opt for open access, their paper will be accessible by anybody but they have to pay a fee, which can be as high as 2-3 k$. The fees should, in principle, pay the article-processing costs (something that is questioned by many people).
Open-access journals. Here authors have always to pay a fee which covers the article-processing costs. The articles are however free to access to anybody.

I would highlight two points from the fees and funding page that may be of interest to you. First:

  If the corresponding author's institution is a Member, the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable.

And the final paragraph:

  It is the wish of the JBCS team that all quality articles will be
  published in the journal independent of the funding capacity of the
  authors. Thus, if the authors are unable to pay the APC charge, we
  recommend that they contact the editors. The JBCS team will provide
  support to find alternative ways of funding. In particular, a grant
  from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee helps sponsoring the
  publication of many JBCS articles.


The sum up papers you are referring to are called review articles. In order to write one, you should know the research area in question very well.

Note that there are also systematic reviews and reviews of reviews (tertiary reviews).


can I publish (alone) papers which are a continuation of my PhD research (without my supervisior's name as a co-author)?

The answer is "almost certainly yes". If the work is yours you don't need to include others as co-authors, no matter what happened in the past. But there is the issue of whether a new paper includes "intellectual contributions" of others, not just help in writing the paper. If the old advisor's intellectual contributions still appear in your new papers, especially if they are fundamental, then you owe at least an acknowledgement of that, but possibly more. I can't judge that of course.
And, if your old advisor is in a position to still advance your career and including him would be an advantage then there is, perhaps, some incentive to err, if necessary, on the side of including him. Future collaborations might be very valuable - or not.
But, at some point, every student leaves their advisor behind. The advisor should celebrate when that happens, actually.


Two authors with same name – multiple author citations

Not sure about Chicago, but the APA Style says: "Never include initials for second or subsequent authors in in-text citations."


Where do PhD scholars get data to test their thesis on?

The question is very vague. For some fields such as linguistics/language there are huge open-access research corpuses available such as the British National Corpus, maintained by academic or charitable organisations. For some things, e.g. images, you can also use open, permissively-licenced sources like Wikimedia Commons, which offers a lot of APIs for searching and processing; the Internet Archive has a huge collection of video, texts, audio, etc. For some subjects it is possible to use internet searches or other archives. Many commercial entities will have large databases and research project are often done in conjunction with a commercial partner, as mentioned in a comment. You can also purchase data, but that will probably require a commercial partner to pay for it.


I'm not sure what your discipline is, but I understand the situation you're describing.  Does your school have a general education-type program in which you could offer some tantalizing courses?  We've had a lot of success with a course on "banned books," "Shakespeare on Film," or "The Vampire Tradition."  Such courses, if interesting enough, might bring more students into your major.  I taught a "Fundamentals of Lit" class that was intended for non-majors, and I had Engineering and Computer Science students who told me it was the first time they'd read a story in college and they really enjoyed the class.

The other point you raise somewhat indirectly -- the value of the study of humanities.  This is one of those "don't get me started" kinds of topics, because I believe the value of it is tremendous in a number of ways, but most important to other majors is the increased ability to communicate effectively.  Business majors may get what seems to be a "good-paying job" upon graduation, but without the communication and critical thinking skills they would learn in the Humanities, they're not going to progress very far.


Re-applying to a Ph.D. program after acceptance?

Its hard to make generalizations due to the varying selectivity of programs. That said, there are a finite number of first-round offers any graduate program can make. In our department, if we ‘spent’ one on a candidate who then decided not to take it, we would probably hesitate to accept them the next time.
That said, a few years later the people reviewing applications may have changed, and university IT systems vary, so in a large graduate program they may not even know that you had applied in the past.


Copyright regulations for and sharing implementations of previously published computer code

When you create code based on an existing implementation, this is referred to as porting, and the code is considered a derivative work covered by the "derivative works" clause in the software license of the original.  For the code written in an executable language, that is generally the copyright you need worry about, not the copyright of the publication (which is also "borrowing" the code from its original source).  If the code has not been published elsewhere, such that there is no stated code license, then it's probably a short and algorithmic enough segment to think about it like pseudocode.

Pseudocode is a more iffy subject, where people disagree about whether it is copyrightable or not, since mathematical equations and recipes cannot generally be copyrighted but software can be.  Personally, I would take the position that pseudocode used to express an algorithm in a scientific paper should be considered non-copyrighted, since the communication is explicitly intended to enable reproduction of the scientific results.


Should I ask a letter of recommendation from a prof who I rarely see?

A question you have to consider is - does the Professor know enough about your work, work ethic, attitude etc to be able to write a strong and meaningful reference for you.  A 'vague' and 'form-letter' type of reference could potentially harm your application, if it is the main reference you use.

Having said that, it would not hurt to ask and obtain a reference (if the Professor is comfortable doing so) to add to your portfolio.


Tool for obtaining a BibTeX entry from a key, without creating it manually

I doubt it. In all but the most verbose or non-human friendly (e.g., DOI) key style, the problem is a one-to-many mapping in that each BibTeX key maps to many sources even though any single source has just a single BibTex key. Even in relatively small personal bib files, conflicting keys are common and need to be disambiguated (usually with an additional letter or number).  The bigger the database (and Goggle Scholar is a big database) means that there will be lots of collisions.


What are the benefits and drawbacks of fitting one's problem within an advisor's research?

With regard to choosing to do your PhD research with a group working in your field of interest:-

Benefits:

In-depth subject specific knowledge, meaning that:

You will get started faster.

Your early mistakes and false leads identified and corrected earlier.

You will get a faster entree into the best collaborative networks.

You will get noticed by the community faster.

You will be associated with experts in the field.

Disadvantages:

Depending on the supervisor, you might get rail-roaded into doing the science his/her "way", leaving less opportunity for you to strike out on your own path.

You are dealing with a new advisor, and that relationship takes time to cultivate.

For your situation, it seems that you will have to get a source of funding.


Is providing more references than the required number in my PhD application acceptable?

It's usually best to carefully read the application's supporting materials (FAQ, 'help' section, explanation pages, etc.), as some programs I've seen explicitly say "please do not send more than 2 [or usually 3 in the US]". Some programs require 2, but allow 3 (I've seen fellowships accept up to 5, but not a PhD program that does that).

However, I mainly answered to suggest you carefully consider how you pick your two "guaranteed" reference letters. If you are going into a program that is friendly towards industry practitioners, and your job and experience is relevant, and if your industry writer would be in a position to talk about relevant aspects of your application (technical skills desirable to the program, work ethic, reliability, etc), then it is possible that such a letter is actually better than a bland academic one by itself. This varies heavily by field, but if the program explicitly says something about how to professional references are OK (often with a stipulation that at least 1 be from an academic), then I think there's a case for you to go with one academic and one professional letter. Then you can put the 3rd in, if the system allows it, as your additional academic reference.

This can be very field and program specific, so I'd advise you to try to get some more guidance from someone closer your target program to give you there advice. But some fields - especially in applied areas of computer science, like many robotics programs, software engineering, etc - are far more appreciative of certain kind of professional reference letters than others.


Old Cambridge examination: Draw, from memory, a wheelbarrow turned upside down

The original question appears to be here:

III. 2 Drawing from Memory
[One hour allowed for this Study.
The Candidates may add any amount of shadow that they think necessary to the full expression of the subject.]
The Candidate is required to make a careful drawing, from memory, of a wheelbarrow turned upside down, with its wheel and legs in the air.

Some scrolling reveals that the prefixed numbers correspond to "the subjects in the regulations". We find that, for students under 16 years of age, the relevant numbers correspond to (bolded for emphasis by me)

Part III.
Students may also offer themselves for Examination in

Geometrical and Mechanical Drawing
Drawing from the Flat, from Models, from Memory, and in Perspective.
The Grammar of Music.

So this section of the examination was optional. For students under 18 years of age, part II includes an optional section G, which is described as

Section G.
Drawing from the Flat, from Models, from Memory, and in Perspective; and Drawing of Planes, Sections, and Elevations.
Design in Pen and ink, and in colour.
A fair degree of skill in free-hand drawing will be required in order that a Student may pass in this section.
Questions also will be set on the history of principles of the arts of Design.

In conclusion, I think the purpose of the question isn't related to mechanical drawing (which would've fallen under III.1) but to test more artistic drawing skills. It's also worth noting that it's a very broad examination - covering fields such as religious studies, English, Greek, etc. - seemingly intended to determine placement of students:

After each Examination the names of the Students who pass with credit will be placed alphabetically in three honour classes, and the names of those who pass to the satisfaction of the Examiners, yet not so as to deserve honours, will be placed alphabetically in a fourth class.  ...

In other words, the context in OP's link (a math assignment) is very different from the purposes of the exam where the question showed up.


find the right journal to publish my manuscript

You can find information about open access publishing in various online places such as the wikipedia article linked here.

Note the section on funding, however. Since readers of open access materials can do so without charge, the costs must be covered by other means. Often this means that the authors are charged a fee for publishing.

Perhaps your advisor is objecting to the cost of publication. But perhaps he is confusing it with predatory journals that also usually charge authors for publishing. The difference is that open access journals are often completely reputable (as are the ones you list), but predatory journals are not.

I believe that some reputable journals will publish either with or without the open access option. You can then avoid the fees (perhaps), but readers will need to subscribe or otherwise pay the publishers for access.

However, even without open access, most university libraries can obtain access to scholarly materials through sharing arrangements, so researchers can get access without fee. And when a journal is published by a scholarly society, the articles may be accessible to members for reduced (or no) fees.


Yes, you must include it in your CV. Concealing it could result in all sorts of trouble later.

Your cover letter or statement of purpose should explain what went wrong last time and what will be different this time around. For example, you could discuss the job vs. studies uncertainty you had last time, contrasted with your current intention to retire and study heart and soul.

For the age concern, see How old is too old for a PhD?. In particular, I did my PhD after retirement, in my 50's, and have no regrets.


Advisor on medical leave only a few weeks before dissertation defense

Something (somewhat) similar happened to a friend of mine. The key to her solution was to get another chair while at the same time allowing her advisor to "save face" in the department. Basically she made it a matter of logistics (rather than irresponsibility or personality).

She approached another (full professor) member of her committee to act as an ally. Then she copied the ally on a friendly email to her chair suggesting that the ally had "volunteered" to be a "co-chair" for the logistical purposes of the defense/graduate school paperwork. She explained that of course she wanted to keep her original advisor as the chair, but that the work start date seemed like it was making that arrangement impossible. She and her ally were able to arrange it so the original, medically unavailable chair would still get credit internally for having her as a student and would remain on the committee (as a "distance"/Skype examiner).

I have found that, in general, difficult professors respond to subtle pressure from their peers (never their students) and prefer solutions where they can save face!


Journal requests reviewers' comments from previous submission to other journals

I haven't encountered this myself, but as an editor, I think it would work in the author's favour if:

The review comments were generally positive, but the first submission was to a higher impact journal with a very high bar for acceptance; or
The review comments were mixed, but the authors have convincingly addressed all the major criticisms in revision the manuscript before submitting it to the second journal.

In this case, the author benefits because the editor and reviewers for the new journal are likely to treat the paper as a revision rather than an initial submission, so the re-review may be faster and requested revisions may be more likely to be minor.

It would work against the author if:

The review comments were very negative or impossible to address in revisions; or
The authors have chosen not to revise the manuscript and respond to reviewers' comments; or
The original submission was sent to a journal that the editor of the second journal believes has low standards for acceptance.

In this case, as an author, I would be inclined not to comply with the request.


Citations - when should you add the initial?

I've recently come to think that one should always add an initial or two, just to reduce potential confusion. Also, doing so consistently is some push-back against the pop mythology that some people are in the special category that everyone knows who they are, and are referred-to in a different, more heroic style. (The simplistic, so-called "Great Man" theory of history of science and everything-else makes it harder to understand what actually happened and happens...)


What to do after missing the registration deadline for the GRE subject test in mathematics

Although not a direct answer to the question, there is a third option:

Take the October test on standby

From the ETS website:

  Standby testing may be available if sufficient space, test materials
  and staff are available at the test center. If you'd like to attempt
  to test as a standby, report to the test center by 8:15 a.m. with:

  a completed Registration Form for the GRE Subject Tests (PDF) payment
  (including the registration and standby testing fee) acceptable photo
  ID Standby registration is not available for Monday testing, testing
  in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, India, or Iran, or those
  requesting disability or health-related testing accommodations.

I don't know how many standby seats are generally available, but it seems worth a shot rather than delaying your studies by a year.


Making the most of writing a review paper

Writing a review paper gives you several opportunities. Especially when it is invited an published in a renown journal in your field. But the purpose can not be to use or optimize towards a funding proposal. A review paper should serve your community and especially new researchers in the field. The chances I see are:

doing a complete review of the literature up to the time the last related review was published. When do you really have the time to do this in time of information overload and time pressure. Now you are asked and paid to do this
outlining interdisciplinary relations to your field that emerged in recent years or which are prospective
making yourself a name in the community, review papers are often very much cited, but this also means you should take your time to judge very thoroughly which results published in the field in the past you should push into the foreground to not offend some peers
contact other peers in your field to ask to review the article before submission and discuss with them. In a big field you will not be able to judge importance of all publications on your own and you will need the help of peers to decide what has to be referenced and maybe explained and highlighted in detail
outlining what the open questions in your field are and suggesting new PhD topics to students. Often also so called "roadmap" or "opportunities" articles are published, so you chould check if recent articles of that kind exist.


Converting a degree program to a non degree one

Non-degree programs are usually reserved for people who already have a bachelor's degree but want to pay a university to take some courses without planning to claim a degree at the end. Sometimes people do this out of sheer interest, but in other cases they might be seeking to bolster their transcript before seeking graduate admission in a subject very different from their bachelor's degree.

As such, simply stopping taking courses is a fine way to unofficially convert a degree into a non-degree program. If you don't finish, you don't get the degree. At that point, the only difference I can think of surrounds what happens when you have taken too many credit hours but still haven't graduated. Many universities have some thresholds in place after which incentives start to push students towards graduation. That might be more expensive tuition or hard caps on the number of hours they can take without graduating. Given all this, I don't think many universities would allow a student to convert their degree program into a non-degree program.


Do I have to worry about self-plagiarism if I do undergrad research on an original topic that I've put forth considerable information online?

Generally, no.  Self-plagiarism normally refers to reusing material from your previous published, peer-reviewed works.  Using material that has not previously been published in a book, peer-reviewed journal or conference, or similar outlet, should not be an ethical problem.

Regarding grants: a grant application would normally ask what work you have already completed on the topic.  Ethically, you should include any progress that is described in your blog posts.  If you've already solved the problem, and you just need to put it in a paper and submit to a journal, you probably won't get the grant.  But if your existing, not published-in-journals work, is only preliminary in nature, it shouldn't stop you from getting the grant, nor from using your existing work in a paper to be published.  Note that for this, it is irrelevant whether your existing work has been posted on your blog or not; either way, it's progress that you should report in your application.

(Note: some of the awkward wording above is intended to clarify matters to readers who use the word "published" to include non-peer reviewed documents posted on web sites, arXiv, etc.  That is not my understanding of the common usage of the word in academic circles, but I do not want to be misunderstood; otherwise I would just say "material that has not previously been published".)


Seeking advice: Failed PhD due to academic + psychological reasons. Should I apply two years later?

Does this sound doable in general?

This sounds doable to me in general (which is rare, because most of the time when failed students ask questions like this I am pretty skeptical of their plans), but probably not at the same institution.  The main thing I note from your post is that your previous candidature gave you a full suite of foundation courses in the field and over a year of practice in research.  Yes, you failed, but you were coming in with a low base of existing knowledge/skills, whereas now have an additional three years of work under your belt before entry.
Now, if you were to apply immediately to the same institution then it will almost certainly be a no --- they have terminated your candidature so they are saying you are not good enough for the program for now.  In any case, I note from your question that you feel you are not a good fit in that research group anyway.  Consequently, you are probably best off applying at another institution.  Your plan to work in industry for a few years while looking out for program opportunities sounds like a good idea.  It will put some temporal distance to your previous program removal and also give you some new professional skills in the field, which is more likely to make you an attractive candidate.  You should also note that time in industry may allow you to develop research ideas that are useful in the field, which might open up opportunities for a good PhD candidature working on a problem that comes from industry.

What kind of job you would recommend if I want to go back to graduate school in near future?  Or, what would be my best strategy?

Obviously, a job in physics.  If you can work an industry job as a physicist, or at least working on physics problems or related problems, this will give you additional experience and skills that will assist you with entry to a PhD program in physics.
As a secondary matter, you want a job that pays you a lot of money, to allow you to save up for your later time as a student.  If you have any serious desire to go back to being a PhD student later then you will need to make sure you do not get used to having a high disposable income.  Be frugal and save a portion of your money, so that when you go back to being a PhD student it is not too big a drop in lifestyle.

How should I explain this part of my life to [the admissions committee] when applying?

Pretty much the same way you just explained it to us ---i.e., you previously tried a PhD program, but you went in with a low skill base and it was too much for you.  You now have three additional years of work, including covering all the foundational courses in the field and getting some exposure to research work.  None of that sounds too bad to me, so I can't see an admissions committee having a major problem with it.
What the admissions committee is going to want to see is that you are mature and capable, and you are able to self-reflect on past failures and diagnose the problem sensibly.  They will also be impressed that you take responsibility for that failure and do not attempt to pass if off onto someone else.  Your story sounds like one where a student tries a PhD program before they have the skills to be ready, and it is too much for them.  The gain of this experience, plus a couple of years in industry, is likely to put you in a much stronger position.


Do Europe committees care about my community service for GRE learners?

Q: So, is it worth the space to mention about the contribution for GRE learners?

I see no difference in this matter between US and European schools. If you felt it was worth the space for the US, keep it in. Your "community service" was to create a Anki deck for a common test. Whether the school you are applying to is using this specific test or not does not change the value of your contribution.

If you are worried that the admission committee reading your application does not know the GRE, you can always add a short sidenote that explains what it is.


Will graduating a semester early hurt applications to grad schools?

Your application will be essentially complete by the end of fall term, but it should very pointedly mention what further work you will be doing in the spring term, whether or not you are paying tuition for the privilege of studying and thinking about mathematics.

There really needn't be a formal structure imposed on your work/study/research, and it needn't have any official label "research" versus "study". But do write what you plan to do, and do mention the guidance you hope/expect to have from more-experienced mathematicians (as opposed to just doing whatever strikes your fancy off in some closet). That is, do be sure to make the point that you will be engaged with actual contemporary mathematics, arguably more intensely, and at a more serious level, than the usual homework-exam model would encourage or allow.

If you can describe your plans for "spring term" in vivid and enthusiastic detail, you can make it sound far better than "taking classes". I'd not worry about hype-ing "research" too much, although, yes, it would be intellectually dishonest to not follow one's curiosity. But, of course, one's personal discoveries, however novel to oneself, may be old news to experienced professionals, so one should not presume.

Just tell your plans!


When would it be appropriate to disagree (in a publication) with a paper you have proofread?

The fact that you proofread the paper does not change anything: once the paper is published it is available to anyone who wants to criticize it.

The most appropriate course of action however is to try and correct the error in collaboration with your colleague: either by publishing an erratum or a new paper. Or maybe you will decide (after discussion with said colleague) not to correct the error, eg. because it is not important enough. Your colleague will probably not appreciate it if you publish a paper about him being wrong without discussing with him first: doing so is one sure way to destroy any friendship or future collaboration.

Secondly, simply pointing out that another paper is wrong is usually not enough to get a publication.


A frequent reviewer seems to have a grudge against me. What to do?

I've had a similar experience, but on the other side of the table.  I was the reviewer (the journal was JAES, the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society).

There was an author who published a boat-load of papers on a subject where I have published just one.  But my paper dealt with some very fundamental issues (I called the paper "Wavetable Synthesis 101, A Fundamental Approach" or similar).  The AES Editor did not send any of this author's papers in my direction and when enough of these papers that made only incremental advancements did get published in the Journal, I finally wrote a Letter to the Editor (that was published) that was a little critical, because this author consistently ignored a mathematical issue (phase) that my 101 paper did not.

Anyway, after about the 10th or 15th new Wavetable paper to come from this author, the JAES editor did finally send a manuscript to me to review.  I was not nasty, but I did continue to point out what this author was obstinately choosing to side step (offering no mathematical justification).

I am sure the author knew who that reviewer was, even though I was supposed to be anonymous.

So, if the reviewer with a grudge is picking on you for just anything, maybe the reviewer just doesn't like you and there could be any number of bad reasons.  Maybe he/she thinks you're encroaching on his/her turf and/or hadn't paid your dues yet.  Maybe this reviewer wants to be cited by you where he isn't.  Who knows?

But if this reviewer is picking on you for about the same reason, on these multiple submitted manuscripts, I might, if I were you, think about what that particular reason is and answer it one way or another.  One might be a consistent technical omission.  Or maybe, just like the "bad reviewer" above, this reviewer thinks you're missing critical citations and his/her work is among the missed citations.

Whether the reviewer has a grudge or not, he/she is not the only reviewer.  But you still are obligated to take seriously every criticism and suggestion for improvement offered by the reviewers.  It doesn't mean that you will agree with every one, but then be prepared to respond to each critique or suggestion that you disagree with.  Persuade the reviewer, the other co-reviewer (who is not picking on you) and the editor, that the critique is mistaken.

Finally, if, after all this, you feel that this reviewer is useless, find some way of asking the journal's editor or assistant editor (whoever has dispatched your submission to whoever appropriate reviewers) to consider getting a third or fourth opinion.  Even suggest a couple of persons in the field that you respect but make sure they are not in the same institution you are in nor have ever co-authored a paper with you.


Do references count towards the word limit for Science Magazine?

If you want to get published, follow the guidelines for authors meticulously.

If you're not bothered about getting published, then you are free to reinterpret them as you wish.

But if you do want to get published, read the words, obey the words.

You've already given us the definitive link for authors. The guide says 2500 words including references. So that's your limit. Keep to it. Yes, it does include titles. References include titles.

It doesn't matter that published articles are longer: they've been through peer review and editing. Your article hasn't, yet.

So if you want to get published, follow the guidelines for authors meticulously.

If there's still any doubt in your mind, talk to the editor. Remember, you want the editor to treat you fairly, so treat them fairly, be polite, don't waste their time, and don't ask them things that are already explicit in the guide for authors.


With most applications status available online, follow up or not?

A single polite e-mail after a respectful amount of time (which varies greatly depending on field and whether you're talking about paper review or job application) is not likely to hurt you. Badgering, demanding, and aggression are likely to hurt you.
Admissions and job hunts are probably the places where you might consider a follow-up e-mail as a way to demonstrate continued interest.
With a journal submission you might send an e-mail if the editor is clearly "sitting" on the paper, or the status hasn't changed in some long period of time (2-3x the typical review cycle for that journal, for example). But in my case this kind of e-mail almost never yields a useful result except to have the editor write back "we're still waiting on reviewers."
For a grant application there is zero chance that this will help you or yield any useful information. There is usually no information until all of the information is publicly available and you can't do anything except sit back and wait.
So, to possibly try and get a general trend here: the utility of a follow-up e-mail is inversely proportional to the size of the organization you are e-mailing. For a small research group or company where only a few people are likely handling all of the applicants for a job posting, it might be helpful. For a governmental organization of 1,000s of people with a highly codified way of doing business (or possibly even laws regarding transparency), an e-mail is just shouting into the darkness.


Is being the second author out of two authors for papers from my PhD thesis going to affect my future job prospects?

There are a lot of variables here. I'm in the US and personally never considered the order of authors significant, assuming generally that all were contributors. But in other places and with other persons it may be different. Do people assume that the first (or last) author is the "real author" and everyone else gets a free ride? I hope that isn't so. But I can't guarantee it.

Many people, it seems, include their dissertation advisor on papers arising from that work. I doubt that it is necessary and others are recommended to ask the advisor before they send the paper for publication. Many would suggest they not be included, but other advisors would have other advice. You might be able to avoid the OP's dilemma.

For purposes of job applications it will be useful, of course, if these are not the only papers you have in publication. If you have a few more, on which you are the sole author you will likely be in a good place.

However, your job prospects depend on more than your CV. Focus on that. If someone is hiring and gets a lot of applications, the first thing they do, typically, is to sort the candidates into two piles. The big pile is people who won't be considered. You want to get yourself into the small pile, but that will depend on more than the publications on your CV, including what you say about yourself in the opening (cover) letter. It will depend on your experience as well and how suitable your background is for the advertised job.

If you can make up a complete application package that gets you into the small pile, then your concern won't matter at all, since you will probably get an interview for the job and, if necessary, explain that this work was your dissertation work, done by you, with appropriate assistance. Your respect for your advisor led you to list him/her first. I don't think you can successfully explain that other than in person, however. It isn't the sort of thing that should be in the CV.

However, it might be possible to add a parenthetical note to the listings of the articles that this paper was based on your dissertation. Don't say more, however, and be careful even about that. I suggest it as a possibility, but don't necessarily recommend it.

But, again, your goal is to get an interview in which you can show the interviewers how suitable you are for the position.

And write a lot of papers as sole author if possible.


Importance of peer-reviewed proceedings in particle physics

Publications aren't equal: A workshop publication on a work-in-progress will carry less weight than a journal article on the final result, generally.*
*It's plausible that a work-in-progress is published at a top workshop, whilst the final result is found to be less interesting and appears in a low-ranked journal, which might be ranked below the top workshop.


Can I accept offers from universities in other countries before I apply to a German university?

I doubt that the German university somehow knows that you are enrolled at other foreign universities, but it's generally forbidden to be enrolled at two German universities at the same time. However, it is possible and legal to enlist as guest student ("Zweithörer" or "Gasthörer" in German) while enlisted as full student at another German university. This might apply to non-german universities as well.

Regarding the application deadline: as far as I know the deadlines for normal applications is mid-july for the winter semester and mid-january for the summer semster. Normally, you get the results within 2-3 months.


What is a social strategy I can use to respond to "How's your PhD going?"

"It's going well, last week I made some good progress on X. How're things with you?"

The vast majority of people are just asking to be polite. If they're actually curious for specifics, they'll follow up with a more specific question. I personally like to have some kind of a cute story about my research because nobody has any idea what pure math people actually do. (I draw fractals for a living, so I have some pictures on my phone to show around.)

EDIT: Some of the comments bring up relevant points about cultural differences. If the local culture is one in which asking out of politeness is frowned upon (ie German @O. R. Mapper, or grad students @JiK), I think it would be still best to start an answer of the above form. This allows people to either gracefully exit or pursue a more in depth description according to their own interest and cultural mores.


Should you provide citation for an professional organization or learned society?

It usually depends on how well the data source/database is known in the field. In some cases the database is the primary source of data for nearly all publications in that field that no one ever cites it formally (i.e., it's a waste of space). Usually, they just mention in the article that the data was obtained from Foo and perhaps again in the acknowledgments, if they're feeling generous.

As always, check with your specific data source/society to know what they require from you in terms of citation. As an example, these guys only expect a blurb acknowledging them, not a full citation.


Is it usually allowed to use grant money for voluntary contributions?

I have to guess on this one, but can imagine that they haven't mentioned it because they haven't thought of it. I also imagine that they would be somewhat upset to learn of it unless you make provision for it in the grant application.
The reason for my speculation is that few grantors are so rich that they don't much care how their, perhaps, limited funds are spent.
But if you use something that is explicitly funded by donations, then you may be able to make a case that you should donate. Your suggestion of Patreon's involvement suggest that you may be in this situation.
But not all "donations" are prohibited or discouraged. Putting grant funded software in public repositories and making it open source or giving generous licenses to it is often encouraged. Another possible form of donation is the funding of a person so that they can donate their time and efforts to worthy public projects that can't afford their own funding.
I would ask the grant administrator before doing this, and suspect that different people will give different answers. And if the donations are a minuscule part of the grant, it is less likely to be forbidden. But that, too, is speculation.


Is industrial organizational (I/O) psychology considered a STEM subject according to USCIS/DHS?

I believe that is the updated list, since it's linked from here for example. While that list doesn't name your field, there is a separate CIP code for Industrial and Organizational Psychology defined by the Department of Education. As you can see here it falls under category "42.28 Clinical, Counseling and Applied Psychology" rather than "42.27 Research and Experimental Psychology". The ICE list includes all categories under 42.27, but none under 42.28. As such, the major itself would not be classified as a STEM subject or eligible for STEM OPT. However, do check with the International Office of your potential US university. My speculation is that, depending on details of your program, it might be possible for them to classify you under another code.


What if I forgot to bring my poster to the conference?

Print it locally.

Hopefully, your conference is in a city of some non-negligible size and not in the middle of nowhere.  Find a copy shop in the city and print your poster there.

Large conferences may even have their own on-site printing, although a last-minute print job may be expensive or even unavailable.

Some people do this in any case, so that they don't have to travel with a poster.

(Your university/employer may or may not be willing to pay for a 2nd printing of the poster)


Graduate Fellowship: Who to ask recommendations from

Recommendations are only helpful when they come from people that know you well. In particular, your letter writers should be able to give an informed opinion on how you meet whatever selection criteria are relevant for the fellowship, for example they should be able to comment on your academic achievements and potential. Teachers with whom you have not interacted yet, but will only do so in the near future, will not be able to do that, and will likely decline to write a letter of recommendation.

Of course you certainly would not want a bad letter. I would therefore to suggest to specifically ask your letter writers if they will be able to write a strong letter of recommendation. If they think they won't be able to do that, they will hopefully tell you to ask someone else, instead of writing a bad letter.


Don't panic. What you're feeling is very common: so called "impostor syndrome" (where you feel that you're not good enough to be there) is very common in academia.

Talk to your supervisor about how you're feeling, and try to narrow down the focus of your research question. You have plenty of time still, but its important you take the time to understand exactly what your work is trying to answer, which will in turn help you understand where to focus your efforts (for gathering data, publishing papers, etc.).

Some supervisors are more diligent than others, so if you feel yours is too busy or not providing the help you need, don't suffer in silence but talk to someone else. Many institutions have some form of tutor system, or faculty position devoted to helping out students that are under pressure or struggling.


Which is better to stay in shared house or university accommodation?

The University of Reading publishes cost of living information on its website

https://studyabroad.reading.ac.uk/incoming/costs/

The costs of University accommodation are listed at

http://www.reading.ac.uk/ready-to-study/study/fees-and-funding/fees-and-funding-ug/living-costs.aspx

and you can see rental properties on sites like rightmove.co.uk


Do I need to ask permission to use image from a publication

Depends on who's holding the copyright. Whoever has it is the one who gives permission.

Check the first page, in particular the imprint at the top. If it says (c) the authors, then the copyright is held by the authors; if it says (c) the publisher then you have to ask the publisher.


During college I was in an accident, changed majors & took a tough schedule, my GPA is low & no recs from a prof, is grad school still an option?

Stellar GREs can help but they won't get you into a top tier program on their own.  Recommendations from faculty who know you are very important, academic research experience is desired, and in most programs grades matter quite a bit. That's the bad news.

The good news is that there's a fairly straightforward way to address the situation. In a case like yours, a masters degree can often offer a way to reset your record and give you the portfolio you need to get into a good PhD program. You'll get a chance to show your ability in the classroom, you'll presumably get some research experience, and you'll have the opportunity to get to know a number of faculty well enough that they can write strong letters on your behalf.


How to book a flight for faculty interview with no knowledge of available budget?

When you're invited for an interview, the university should offer some guidance on how to book travel and what they will reimburse.  If for some reason they don't, it's reasonable to ask how you should handle it.  By default you should book a reasonably priced economy-class ticket (i.e., given several options don't take one that stands out as much more expensive).  It's wise to save a few screenshots of price comparisons in case anyone suggests you should have gotten a much better deal.  If all the available flights seem remarkably expensive, for example if you are invited to interview with relatively little notice, then you can always check to make sure they are OK with the expense (but they will presumably say yes if the expense could not reasonably be avoided).


Do all Elsevier journals require ONE column format for manuscripts to be reviewed?

In mathematics, usually authors aren't expected to format their paper according to the journal's template until after the paper is accepted. Even then, authors usually don't bother and leave it up to copyeditors. This is the case for Elsevier as well as other publishers. Although publishers' websites often "encourage" authors to format submissions in a certain way, these suggestions are typically ignored.

What is true for math might not be true for optics, so it is probably worthwhile to ask a scientist with firsthand knowledge of the journal (or at least the research field in general). Perhaps such a person will answer your question here. Otherwise, I would suggest that you only invest any effort into reformatting your paper if such a scientist (not an Elsevier employee) confirms that this is indeed important. If it's not practical to ask a colleague, you might e-mail a member of the journal's editorial board with this question.


Is this our fault? corringendum vs erratum

Don't argue with the journal over something as minor as this. Nothing good can come out of it. Just do it and forget about the matter.
Trying to fault someone for this kind of minor error is never a winning strategy in any case, because finding fault in someone is one of the easiest ways to destroy a relationship.


Need suggestions on quitting a computer science PhD

Well i have been in similar situation like yours. I chose not to give up and that is why i was able to defend my PhD last month.

It was very frustrating.I switched advisers 4 times. Would you believe that? I was recommended to be expelled from the PhD program. My situation was much worse than yours. I was almost thrown out of the PhD program in 2010. How i was able to change this? Just like you, i interned in Silicon Valley in 2009 and 2010 where my manager sort of liked me and he stood for me. He and even his manager wrote two letters in my favor supporting that i should not be expelled from the PhD program. They argued that i should switch topic and adviser and continue PhD program. All i was looking for was a good adviser who could trust my skills and luckily i got it.

After that, it was fine. The moral of the story is " i did not give up in circumstances much worse than yours." Does your current adviser like you, have trust in you, have confidence in you? If so, don't worry. Regarding publications, choose mid-tier conferences first to raise your confidence and then go for top-tier conferences.

And now on communities like stackoverflow and various forums for hardware and software, discuss your ideas with experts, shape your ideas here. Talk to your contacts in the industry as to what do they think of your problem or in their opinion what are the hot problems to solve.

Another lesson is be pro-active. Don't procrastinate or live in your own world. Get up


If you do the programming in Python, you could also do the plotting in Python with matplotlib. With a little adjustment of the plotting parameters, it is possible to produce publication-quality plots with this software.

Alternatively, if you need fancy annotations etc., I can recommend the pgfplots package for tikz/LaTeX. You could export data from your Python program to a csv file, and then use that as data source for plotting with pgfplots. If you are also using TeX for the main text, it allows to to produce graphics which nicely fit the formating of the text.