Alternatives to IMRaD for journal papers

I will first list some alternatives I have encountered. I will leave it up to you whether they are true alternatives or just riffs on IMRaD and whether they are actually formalised structures:

Particularly in the life sciences journals request the structure Introduction – Results – Discussion – Methods, where the latter is kind of an appendix. However, this never works as labelled. At the very least, everything about the methods that is relevant to understand the paper is described in the results section, while the methods section contains mostly technical details.

Pure mathematics has Introduction – Definition(s) – Theorem/Lemma – Proof – Definition(s) – Theorem/Lemma – Proof – … (usually without conclusion or similar). This obviously cannot be translated to other fields.

Most simulation papers I know follow the structure Introduction – Model – First Results – Analysis Method – Result – Analysis Method – Result – … – Discussion/Conclusion, but I have never seen it formalised.

I don’t think that there is an alternative to IMRaD as you are looking for:
If you put the elements of IMRaD in any order, it’s obviously this one.
Any deviation from this has to happen on a lower level, such as:

Methods and results alternate, because the reader can only appreciate some methods after the first results.
A short preliminary discussion in the middle of the paper that motivates the second half.
Minor stuff is moved to the appendix.

While all of this may be very justified, it’s also individual and doesn’t lead to a short acronym that can be blindly applied by those who want this kind of thing.
With other words: If you want a rigid recipe that does not contain any conditional clauses or exceptions, it can only be IMRaD.
Now, of course a rigid recipe is the wrong thing to wish for in the first place:
There is no structure that is appropriate for every paper, even if we focus on a single field and exclude such things as method papers, case studies, etc.
Instead, I suggest that you teach IMRaD as a basic recipe that works for many papers and needs to be adapted for others.


Can I publish parts of the Ph.D thesis as a paper in a journal?

As a general rule, you cannot publish anything as original research that has already been published.  (You may be able to reprint it in other venues, but most research journals do not do this.)

Of course, the trick is what counts as "already published".  Nowadays, many publishers (including all mathematics publishers, for example) do not count informal distribution on the internet as prior publication.  It's common not to count extended abstracts from conference proceedings, although the journal may require some revisions or extensions.  Nobody counts submitting a dissertation as prior publication, even if the university makes it available for download or purchase, and technical reports are generally in the same category.

On the other hand, publication as a "real book" definitely counts as prior publication and would rule out journals.  Of course, this just brings up the question of what a "real book" is.  Basically, if it's published by a serious academic publisher, with some nontrivial selection and editorial advice, then that counts as publication.  On the other hand, if it's some random publisher printing copies of Ph.D. theses and selling them online, then you could make a strong case that it's not really published (and that this is not so different from ordering a dissertation copy).

However, I think you need to discuss this explicitly when submitting your paper.  For example, you could add a sentence to your submission letter along the lines of "This work is based on my thesis from University X, which is available for sale by Y but has not been traditionally published".  It's much better to deal with this upfront than to have someone later ask "Wait, why is someone selling copies of this work online?"


Should I persist with article that keeps getting rejected?

It depends. That is my answer.
If you really believe that your paper offers an interesting contribution, then:

Try to improve your manuscript by doing this:

Extend and update the state of the art (maybe adding those related papers you mentioned in your question).
Be honest, be thorough, be critical: What are the weak parts of your manuscript? (Are the introduction, the theoretical aspects, the conclusions... bad written? Is your contribution not clearly highlighted and/or explained? Could you add some numerical examples to your manuscript (if this applies)?) Identify them, and go and try to improve them.
Try to add an explanatory chart of the process/method/solution you are describing or proposing. (Relevant) drawings can help people to understand your article and can make it more appealing to referees.
Get your manuscript reviewed by a colleague you trust. This is a must-do. Maybe you are not seeing something that is obvious to other people.
Of course, double-check the language usage. Ask some expert to review grammar, vocabulary, etc., if necessary.

Maybe the problem is not with your paper. Try to look for the right scientific journal. Some hints:

Look for articles related to your research topic in the Web of Knowledge (WoK, https://webofknowledge.com/) or Google Scholar (GS, https://scholar.google.com/) and see in which journal they were published (for instance, you can use some keywords related with your paper).
Similar to the previous one: If you are interested in sending your manuscript to a certain journal, look for articles related with your manuscript that have been published in that journal (using advanced search in WoK or GS). If you don't find any match, probably it is not the right journal.

If you already tried all the above suggestions and they did not work, then consider to publish your research as a technical report before quitting, at least.
EDIT:
I also recommend you to read these two articles:

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-rejected-your-article
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/8-reasons-i-accepted-your-article


As a master's student, will a GRA or GTA position provide a greater benefit for PhD applications?

If you're planning to go into Academia, you might want to do a GTA (Graduate Teaching Assistantship) to get teaching experience. Because a GTA means approximately 20 hours per week on teaching duties, you may find it harder to work on your thesis or dissertation as much as you want.
A GRA (Graduate Research Assistantship) will focus on research instead but you may not be working directly on your thesis research but instead on another project for which a professor has funding.
At my university (25 years ago), a GTA paid less than a GRA so that's also something to check.


GRE Math Subject Test Overkill for Statistics MS?

If the Math GRE is "strongly encouraged" and you're concerned that your performance in mathematics courses will negatively affect your application, then yes, you should take it. It doesn't matter so much that it's only for a Master's degree, because the GRE is only useful as a predictor for courses, which is Master's-level work.


technologies for remote proctoring / invigilating

As a partial answer, WeBWorK is an open source tool developed by the MAA (homepage here). You can either host it yourself or pay MAA to host it for you. WeBWorK allows for more complicated problems that multiple choice and automatically can give different numbers for problems (e.g., you might get add 2 + 3 and I would get add 5 + 1).

This would help with homework and possibly hosting the quizzes and tests (but not the proctoring part). I used WeBWorK when taking an undergraduate-level linear algebra course and found it quite usable as a student (it was actually better than the close-source software that came with my physics book and was used for homework).


How to score class participation, correcting for natural outspokenness?

Is "speaking in class" or "communicating about the topic in groups" part of your learning goals for your students? If yes, then you should first communicate this to your students and then think about how to include participation in the grading rubric based on the learning goals you set.

However, if you only want students to participate in the lecture to make your own teaching experience better, I think it is unreasonable to include their participation in their grade.

Put differently: I think that the grading should reflect how well the students achieved the learning goals of the course and nothing else. (This may be different in school, but for a undergraduate and graduate courses, I think this is reasonable.)


Is there any unwritten rule in the academia regarding the rate of paper publication during the PhD?

The answer to this is dependent on too many things for any reasonable answer. In some fields it is unusual for a doctoral student to publish anything before finishing the dissertation and even that might be published after the degree is awarded, if at all.

In other fields it is common for the dissertation itself to be a summarization of some set of already published papers, but even then, the expectations will vary with the field and with the individual university. They might even vary with the advisor.

Of course, there are papers and there are papers. When publications are required a larger number of less significant papers may not outweigh even a single significant contribution.

The situation is complicated by normal practice in some lab sciences in which papers have a large number of authors and each contributes differently. In such fields, precisely where you are listed in the list of authors can be significant and can indicate the "amount" of contribution. There are many questions on this site that come from fierce disagreements over author placement. Again, however, having lots of minor placements might not get you very close to completion.

Number of papers produced is a terrible measure of productivity. Citations of those papers by others is a better measure.

But to get an answer that applies to yourself, ask your advisor or some other professor(s) in your field and at your university. That will yield the only meaningful expectation of your progress.


How important is it for the corresponding author to be known in the field he/she is going to publish?

Getting a paper accepted for publication in a normal journal is a matter of credibility: you must be able to convince the peer reviewers that the content of your paper is both true and novel.  Very high status journals such as Nature or Science work somewhat differently: there you cannot reach the peer reviewers until you first convince the editor that your work is "important" and "broadly interesting" enough to consider, which is a somewhat arbitrary process.

Let us consider only normal journals, however, where the bulk of all publication takes place: they still have an editorial filter, but it is generally only to ensure a submission is at least vaguely on-topic, not plagiarized, and basically sane.  These are pretty low bars to pass, though they are definitely affected by being known.  If I see a paper that has come out with a well-known PI as author and that looks like a logical extension on their prior work, I'm unlikely to scrutinize carefully for being on-topic or sanity: it would be such a blow to the reputation of the PI to misbehave there that I am comfortable to take the small risk that the reviewers might get annoyed because the paper turns out to actually be crazy or off-topic.  Not being known won't generally hurt an author here, it will just mean their paper is more likely to actually get checked for topic and sanity, rather than simply trusted.

The peer reviewers are another matter.  Peer review is a very noisy process, and even when double-blinding is used, it is often possible to have a good idea when a well-known person is involved based on the methods that they are using.  Most peer reviewers are conscientious and try to do a good and neutral job, but a (frustrating) minority are sloppy, selfish, pushing an agenda, or abusive.  Even for those who are trying to do a good job are human and thus are subject to same standard cognitive flaws we all are, like implicit bias.

All of this means that an unknown's credibility will likely be assessed differently than a person who is well-known as a good and careful researcher. The unknown person will generally either have to present stronger evidence to be believed or will have the evidence that they do present scrutinized more carefully.  That unknown will actually be better off, though, than a well-known person who has a history of sloppy or controversial work, who will typically have an even harder time convincing peer reviewers.

Do not draw the wrong lesson from this, however: a person most certainly can publish well as an unknown, early in their career, without relying on the name recognition of co-authors.  Many of us do exactly that.  It's just going to be somewhat harder than after one has already established a reputation as a careful and productive researcher.

Final note: if you ever find yourself saying "They only rejected my paper because I'm not [well-known / popular / one of the cool kids / etc]" then you are probably wrong and engaging in sour grapes kvetching.  If they rejected your paper, then you should also have been provided with clear information about what types of evidence would improve your ability to get accepted.  Do that instead.


Is it worth submitting papers to "graduate" peer-reviewed journals?

You want to publish papers in the best journal or conference you can. If your Masters thesis can be published in a serious journal, you should attempt to send it there. Publications are the currency of academia and a publication in a better journal often translates to higher value.

However, there are lots of reasons to send it to a "graduate" or lower-tier journal.

The journals in your field might consider a thesis to be previously published and they might not accept previously published work.
Your Masters work might be unrelated to your PhD work and you'd rather spend your time working on new more important work.
Your thesis would require a lot of work that would take away your new work. It might be better in the long run to work on new ideas as opposed to spending time trying to clean up or improve your previous work.

Without knowing your exact situation, it's hard for random strangers on the Internet to make an exact call. You should talk to your adviser or a professor in your department to get more informed and personalized advice.

EDIT: I should point out that my experience have all been in computer science. Things may differ in the social sciences.


I am glad to know that you are interested in publishing a new piece of work in the field of mathematics. Here is what I would suggest: Look at institutions such as MIT RSI and PRIMES, as well as the Simons/Google/Intel science fairs, and also opportunities in your locality. Look at examples of mathematics reports submitted to them, and then copy that format and write your paper. It may be difficult to submit to an actual journal though for publishing. Academia is a bit brutal, and so it is better to work through the institutions that I mentioned. If your work is actually a breakthrough, then you will still be recognized, and these are good opportunities for students like you.

If not, I would suggest emailing or getting in contact with a mathematics professor (possibly at your local university, and one who focuses in that area of mathematics), and talk to him. Ask him if he would be willing to look over it and send him what you have.


Will past medschool failure history affect Graduate admission in Literature/Linguistic major?

Your past career as a medical student was so long ago that it might as well have been someone else. I doubt that a grad school in your current field will still hold you liable for problems you experienced much earlier in life, especially given your accomplishments since then.

If you are concerned enough to mention it as part of your application, then just make sure to comment about why you believe it’s not relevant to who you are today and why schools shouldn’t worry about a repeat episode. Of course, you can point to your current record as proof of the change!


When to withdraw/is this professor being reasonable?

In the US, it is up to the professor on how he/she wants to handle a student missing class without a valid excuse. Vacations are not valid excuses (doesn't matter how long you've been planning it, and why would it?).

However, medical issues are a valid excuse and the university usually has a policy on how to handle it, which professors have to adhere to. I would recommend talking to your advisor or the chair of the department about this.

As @ChrisPhan mentioned, this particular situations looks to be protected by Title IX in the US. Most universities have staff known as Title IX Coordinators that you can contact. I imagine that they will take this very seriously.


I suggest you post to the ArXiv only after you have an idea of a group of journals to which you will be submitting.  For example, narrowed to economics, or narrowed to physics.  Then you can investigate  a few journals and be sure you have a few places where you can submit after posting to the ArXiv, and with a certain licence.

If I am writing a pure math paper, I just post with what the ArXiv calls the minimal licence, which I have never read. I have never had any pure math journal even ask what licence I picked for the ArXiv.  I hear the New England Journal of Medicine does not publish anything that was on the ArXiv.  The PNAS states "the license selected for a preprint will affect the sharing, adaptation, and reuse of material" so for that level of publication some forethought is warranted.

Perhaps I have bad information and am spreading a rumor.  The point is that nobody can advise you on a licence that will work for every academic journal in the world.  You need to have that narrowed down.  For some journals no option works.  For many, many journals, it probably does not matter.  If you have decided on a basic type of journal you can post here again with a much more specific question.


Should I ask POI for update on PhD application?

It's perfectly fine to send such an email; academics are aware that candidates need to know these things.

Send a concise email explaining that you have an offer elsewhere (A) and ask when you will hear from B.

  If I think hard enough

I know it's difficult, but try not to second guess the inner workings of admissions committees. It's much less stressful if you email them and ask.


Putting "List of Figures, Tables, Conference Talks, etc." in thesis (Chemistry)

Ok, there are two questions here, so let's go one by one:

For the list of figures I think you can put them without problem. They take maybe one or two pages, and that shouldn't make a significant difference that could be considered "page filling". If two pages are 10% of your whole thesis, then you still have work to do.
Especially if you refer to figures during your thesis, it is great to have a list, including page number, instead of having to search every time.

About conference talks: In my understanding (coming from a mathematical background), a PhD thesis is a long, more detailed (and hopefully really good) research paper, that might be read by other scientists. Thus, putting in conference talks seems like begging for a better grade, like "see how great I am, I even went to these conferences", something that has no place in a scientific work.
While going to conferences is surely important, I think it should not be put into the thesis but mentioned at a different place. As your advisor is surely aware of the conferences you visited, ask him how to best communicate this fact to the committee.


Could giving an alternative approach to proving an established result be worthy of publication?

Often enough the proof of a theorem is more important than the statement of it. This is especially true when a new proof gives some insight into a problem that the original proof did not.
I don't know whether your new proof is different enough or interesting enough or gives new insight, but if it is, then it would be an important thing to publish.
An example of such a problem is the Four Color Theorem. When I was in school it was the Four Color Hypothesis and nearly everyone in my age cohort thought about it for a while I suspect. It was originally proved using computers to examine a very large number of special cases. But to a mathematician, this is a very unsatisfactory proof. One would love a short and insightful proof not depending on computation as it would be very likely to give insights into the nature of planar maps.
The reason that such insight is important is that it can often lead to solving additional, unsolved, problems.
So, you can certainly submit such a paper for publication, but it is editors and reviewers that will decide whether it "can" be published. But the feedback you get will be valuable in any case.


How to acquire 3 recommendation letters to apply for jobs when working with 1 advisor?

You need to strategize with your advisor, or a trusted mentor, about this.  You need recommenders who have a high opinion of your work, are willing to put in the time to write a good letter, and know how to do so (which rules out more people than you might think).  Ideally, you need advice from someone who knows what sorts of letters different people write and can help you choose who might be most appropriate.

What I recommend for my students is:

A letter from me, which will discuss in detail what they have done, why it's important, what the student's key contributions were, what the future might hold, etc.  I'll also sit in on a class the student teaches and talk with them about teaching, so I can put in a reasonably well-informed paragraph about that, but the focus of the letter will be research.  (I'll have a different version of this letter, which emphasizes teaching more, to be sent to highly teaching-oriented jobs.)
A teaching letter from someone in the department who is well known for excellent teaching and can evaluate the quality of their teaching.
A research letter from another faculty member in the department.  This will be from someone the student has met with at least a couple of times each semester for the last year or two, if not more often, so they will be in an excellent position to write a serious letter.
A research letter from someone at another university, typically someone I know who has interacted with the student at conferences, seen the student give at least one talk, and read at least one paper by the student.  This proves that the student is developing a reputation outside their university, and it supplies a letter from someone who has less of a vested interest in seeing the student succeed.

Of course, it's hard to set up (3) and (4) on short notice.  It's often helpful if your advisor asks someone.  I can say "You remember my excellent student Alice, the one who wrote the paper on X?  She's graduating this year, and I think she's going to do very well on the job market, but she still needs one more recommendation, and we're hoping for one from another university.  Could you help?"  By contrast, there's nothing a student can write that will be as effective.  (From a student's perspective, the letter is a favor to the student, but faculty sometimes think of it as a favor to the advisor.)

The biggest problem is if your advisor can't or won't help with this.  Then you'll have to pick the most supportive people you know and ask them yourself.  It's helpful to offer to meet with them to tell them about your work, to make sure they are fully up to date.  You should send them copies of all your application materials.  It's also helpful if you supply additional background and commentary, to help give them more of a feeling for your work and its context.  This makes it easier to write the letter, by supplying interesting ideas and facts the letter writer can mention.  (That's the lazy approach to writing a letter, but if someone is going to be lazy, you want to make it as easy as possible for them.)  Make sure everyone writing a research letter actually plans to discuss your research.  It can really hurt your application if a letter just says "Bob took my advanced phrenology class and received an A.  I was particularly impressed with his insightful questions regarding retrophrenology, and I became convinced that this bright young man has an extraordinary future in pseudoscience.  I haven't read any of his papers, but his advisor assures me that they are wonderful, so Bob has my strongest recommendation."  When you get your Ph.D., you should be judged based on your research (and teaching), not your performance in classes.

You should request letters at least one month before the deadline.  It doesn't really take a month to write a letter, but it can take a number of hours (looking at papers and application materials, thinking, and then writing).  Any given week may be very busy - for example, someone may be travelling or facing a major deadline - and faculty members often have to write dozens of letters, so if you do not ask far enough in advance, then there may simply not be enough time for your letter.  If you need a letter very quickly, then you are asking for a huge favor, and the letter probably won't be as long or compelling as it might have been otherwise.

As for some of your sub-questions:  The writer does not need to know the student well, but must know something about the student's work (for example, from papers or talks).  For most academic jobs in the fields I know about, there is no way to avoid submitting recommendations with the initial application.


What does "This question is left for future research" imply?

The existing answers are good.  Let me just add one more phenomenom I've seen in my area: it is not uncommon for the "future research" section to contain ideas that the authors don't plan to follow up on, but they think might be interesting.  Maybe they hope to inspire other researchers.  Maybe they're just curious, but don't have time to continue to pursue those questions.

Occasionally, the future work section is used by authors to respond to criticism that "you should have done experiment X" from reviewers.  Adding a sentence to the future work section is an easy way to respond to the reviewer and be able to claim you've acted on their comment in some way: it lets the authors respond to the reviewer comment with something like: "our future work section makes clear that we didn't do experiment X and we consider it out of scope for this paper, but we agree it would be interesting, and we've added it to the future work section".  You can form your own opinion about whether you think this is a good phenomenom or not; I'm just reporting on what I've seen.  Sometimes I've even seen authors include this kind of statement in the future work section of a submitted paper, as a preemptive innoculation against comments the authors anticipate getting from reviewers.  I don't know whether it is really effective, but you can keep this in mind when you read future work sections.  Occasionally this additional perspective may help you understand better why sometimes stuff gets written in the future work section.


It's potentially a conflict of interest, but some fields are small and have few competent reviewers. Tell the editors, and let them decide. They can offset a bias in their final decision in an informed way, or take you off the review if they believe this poses a problem.


Is it advised to give a suggestion how to cite in the thesis document itself?

I wouldn't include this statement.  Academic authors don't need to be told how to cite theses - they already know.  And I think it does make it sound like you insist on a particular citation style, which may feel awkward to authors who want or are required to use something else.  (I don't see it as "begging for citation", though.)

It is certainly a good idea to include the DOI, but I would just write something like

  Digital Object Identifier:  https://doi.org/10.15420/882.2249

in the colophon or some other convenient place in the document's frontmatter.


What does it mean if a professor does not answer your email in time?

I wrote him an email to ask quick but important questions, like, when do you want me to start. I didn't get an answer even after a week. And similar things happened before as well.

Some professors are notoriously bad in answering emails. This does not necessarily mean anything. Don't fret about it.

  So I want to ask that as a professor, sometimes will you (on purpose) to NOT answer emails in time?

I'm not a professor, but, no, this is not how I would expect an adult person (in a management position, none the less) to behave. If the professor is indeed having second thoughts about you and decided to just not answer anymore, I would say you dodged a bullet there.

However, I really think that this is unlikely. Just send a polite reminder, or propose to have a quick chat e.g., over Skype, at a time of the professor's convenience.


experience/ability in teaching and securing external funds for getting professorship

Your question is based on a few statements which I believe are misunderstanding or over-generalisations.

  Postdoc fellowships are only the external funds I (as an early-career postdoc) can secure.

A fellowship is definitely the most significant external funding a postdoc can typically secure. If you manage to get such a fellowship, you most likely will tick a "funding" box on your tenure-track application in most places. However, this is not the only type of funding postdocs can go for. You can bid for funds to attend conferences, you can often bid for smaller pots of money to organise workshops, conferences, and share knowledge in science fairs, exhibitions,  outreach events. You can also engage in knowledge transfer and get funding from industries or other end-users of your research. And of course you can collaborate with established professors and get your name as a Co-Investigator or sometimes second PI on the grants they submit.

  Teaching opportunity is also limited.

This is true, in principle: postdocs' main aim is to do research and they normally are not expected to teach more than 20% of load. However, although there is a time restriction, it does not limit one's ability to engage fully with various ways teaching is or can be done. If you only do marking for 20% of your time, that does not tick the "teaching" box so well. But if you also conduct tutorials, occasionally deliver a lecture or two, design a (part of) the assessment, contribute a bit to designing the teaching materials, it presents you much better as a well-rounded person who can be put in front of students and trusted with a course. If you also have or start work towards a recognised teaching qualification - even better.


A Break after college , following your passion , going on the right path - the implications?

Most people who are trying for theater or fashion careers need a "day job" that pays the rent and buys the food unless and until their preferred career takes off. For a lot of them, it is a minimum wage job. You can make it much better paid than that if you play your cards right.

I suggest concentrating on your studies until you have your degree. Look for a day job in your degree field, but in whatever city you can reach that has the best opportunities for the alternative careers you are interested in. Look for a part time film or fashion job that you can work evenings and/or weekends.

Take advantage of having a more highly paid day job to save as much money as you possibly can from the combined income. As your career advances, you may want to do things like moving to a different city without having a new day job already lined up. Having a year or so of minimal expenses in the bank would make that easier.


Postdoc application, cold contact, funding proposal

I think that you are throwing in too many variables here. Your plan might work, but it depends a lot on who you contact so a firm answer here is probably out of the question.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that you need to convince them that they want you and your skills. Everything else is secondary. If you first convince them that you have indispensable skills you are in, otherwise they are taking a chance.

As to your funding/grant proposal. If you had a grant in hand it might be different, but you may be complicating their decision, not simplifying it. If the grant doesn't come through where are you. More important from their standpoint is "Where are we?".

On the other hand if you are already a successful grant writer as well as a fantastic biologist then it is a point in your favor.

Cold contacts are always more risky than more naturally developed relationships of course. I don't think your plan changes that very much. Personal contacts through your advisor or current PI are much more likely to meet success.

On the other hand, if someone expresses a lot of interest in you and has lab/office space available but no funding, you might then bring up the idea of seeking your own funding.


Should I include visiting students in my CV

Just to make it transparent for future readers that your question got a (preliminary) answer suggestion:
If you directly collaborated with them, I would put them in the cv and mention what you did (together). This helps the visiting student, because his/her name is mentioned in relation to you. It also helps you to keep track of your collaboration project and to show others (in future applications) what you did in the last years. As you said, being in contact and supervising students for a certain time can also be seen as a form of teaching. Perhaps, later you will publish with some of them papers and then, it is interesting to know that your co-author(s) might have been a former visiting student Otherwise, if you just mention their names in the CV, it might not be clear for a reader of your CV what this 'visiting student list' exactly means.


What is the procedure for citing a source with incomplete information?

If you are in computer science (or anything IT related or IEEE), bibtex download (from ACM or IEEE sites) will be your friends.

Apart from that, if you still need more information, try your best (include everything you know) and it's ok.


As you wrote,

  Sarah's contribution to the paper would be small, and perhaps not normally worthy of a co-authors credit, but without it the paper would be incomplete.

The recommendation is to add her to the authors of the paper. I think that little things would be the gem of your work versus the similar works and you don't neglect the small valuable information with her experiences through working with the technology.

Moreover, adding Sarah as a co-author doesn't reduce the impact of the paper, but it also promotes the validity of your work.


Reusing material from thesis proposal in final thesis

Your advisor should be able to provide you with the guidance.

In general, it is not plagiarism, and you can reuse the material. As you pointed out the proposal is not published. It is a confidential document outlining what you intended to do and is to be shared only with your committee.


When should researchers who take part in the composition and editing of a manuscript be co-authors

This depends on the field of course, but in general it is pretty unlikely unless the "editor" has contributed to the content of the work, rather than just the wording, layout, etc.

This has been debated within the Patterns Writing Community within Computer Science. Part of the process of getting a paper accepted goes beyond editing and review. A Shepherd is assigned to each paper and the shepherd works with the authors over three or four iterations/versions of the paper to get it ready for a patterns conference. These conferences are also rather different from what most think of as conferences as they are also designed to improve the paper for publication using Writers Workshops.

Some authors seem to get so much help from their shepherds that they have asked to have the shepherd included as an author. I believe that it has happened in a few cases, but is not a general rule. The shepherd goes far beyond what an editor would do, suggesting content, for example. But even there, it hasn't become a general practice. I'm currently shepherding one paper for an upcoming conference and have made a lot of suggestions, but wouldn't expect to be a co-author, for example. I would, personally, object if a shepherd asked or demanded to be made a co-author, but that is because of the nature of the culture of the patterns community.

So, if, as you say, the editor contributes content (fact, opinion, whatever), or makes the "author" rethink things generally, then it may be appropriate. But they should be acknowledged in any case.


Two factors can be used to get a broad idea about an Indian engineering student - one is the college and the second is the CGPA.

College:

The Indian Institute of Science and Indian institutes of technology are top technical institutions in the country. Of late, multiple IITs have been set up, leading to (arguably) diminishing quality. The original seven IITs boast of excellent faculty in most departments and are understood to be better than the newer ones.

Besides, there are regional colleges like National Institutes of Technology and Anna University and BITS which are also among the top engineering colleges in the country.

Grading System:

Most of the above colleges use the CGPA system for grading. Students are awarded grades ranging from S (=10) to D (=6) in various courses that they enroll over a period of 4 years. In a course, the top performers could expect an S, the students who have scored 80%-90% could score an A and so on. Obviously, the exact grades depend on the instructor and the overall performance. A student that scores S in all his courses  over 4 years ends up with the perfect CGPA of 10.0. A 9-10 CGPA indicates mostly excellent track record and so on.

It should be clear that the CV in the question reflects a mediocre score in a top college.


Sending an e-mail with multiple attachments?

If you really are stuck in this dilemma and there is no technical solution, then you can do both. Provide your own typed summary and attach the evidence as attachments. But give a warning that the attachments are just the proof and add no additional content.

Then the person can look at the attachments or not.

But commenters have suggested other, technical, solutions that might be better.


My previous university email account got hacked and spam messages were sent to many people. What should I do?

Contact tech support and let them know what happened. They can probably clean it up appropriately. The apology message might be better if it comes from them. In any case, ask them for advice.
Perhaps you need to pay more attention to passwords and watch out for phishing attacks.


How to politely request to magazine editor for the following issue?

Changing a figure and / or title of a manuscript during proofreading isn't a problem. At most, the production team might wonder if you're changing something that shouldn't be changed (e.g. if the author amends the paper to conform to reviewer comments, and then changes it back during proofreading, we have a problem). However you've given a sensible reason to make the changes, so in all likelihood the production team will just make the changes and move on to the next paper.

As for the letter itself, it's a bit deferential, but journal production administrators see a lot of such letters and won't be fazed. The only thing I'd suggest is that, since you say minor editorial changes are necessary, to also include these in the email, e.g. "on page 2 line 5, change "delete the word 'personal'". This speeds things up: the JPA can make all the changes and the typesetter can implement them at once. Without these changes the JPA would have to write back asking what other changes you want to make before he can pass the manuscript to the typesetter.


What percentage of registered participants eventually show up at conferences?

I am afraid that, especially for a small meeting, the variation of how many do not show up will be too large to be useful. For example, if I am organizing a 50-person event I would expect that anything from 2 to 10 would be a "normal" number of no-shows. That is, if you really can't have more than, say, 50 participants you can't really safely overbook at all. However, note that oftentimes a few participants more don't really hurt, but of course this depends on your infrastructure and plans for the meeting.

Some further considerations:

Generally, free events have a very large number of no-shows (sometimes in the 50%+ range, from what I have heard) while paid ones do not. This has led to some meetings I know introducing a nominal attendance fee, just to make sure that people think a little before signing up. Some other meetings have also tried to levy a fee only if a registered participant does not show up, but I am not sure how well this works and if it is worth the administrative and inter-personal hassle.
Note that no-shows are often not independent events, statistically speaking. For example, if you have a bunch of participants from the same group / team and they have an unexpected important deadline come up, they all will cancel at the same time.
If you have a very small meeting and you know (some) of your participants well you can attempt to use this to make a stab at estimating no-shows. For instance, I once planned an event for about 30 people, and I knew that some of the senior professors who initially expressed interest where <50% to actually come. I also knew that for some fraction of the industry participants an important client meeting may come up making them cancel last-minute. Based on this information I decided that 35 registrations for a 30-person meeting was fairly safe (we ended up being 28).


Are undergraduate math courses required to do well on the GRE subject test?

It's difficult to answer this question because a lot depends on the programs that you're applying to and on the undergraduate program that you're currently in (because not all undergraduate programs are equal.)  The GRE subject test in mathematics covers a broad range of undergraduate mathematics that anyone going on to graduate study in mathematics should have mastered.  Your grades in undergraduate math courses should provide similar information to an admissions committee.

However, the graduate admissions committee might not be able to interpret your undergraduate grades (e.g. because they have no experience with students from your institution.) At some places grades are now so inflated that even a 4.0 GPA in math courses with the appropriate GPA says little about what you actually have learned.  A good score on the GRE subject test in mathematics will help to confirm your good grades.  Highly ranked graduate programs will want to see both good grades and a good score on the GRE subject test and for the very best programs this is simply a bare minimum- they'll want to see something beyond this in your admissions packet.

The subject test is really written from the point of view of traditional programs in mathematics.  For programs in computational applied mathematics, the test content isn't as relevant and the subject test is not always required.

To answer your specific question about taking an advanced ODE course vs. a course in Abstract Algebra, you'd probably be better off taking the advanced ODE's course.    In the other direction, if you were applying to a mainstream PhD program in mathematics, than you would almost certainly want to have an undergraduate abstract algebra course on your transcript.  Certainly if you were applying to my graduate program I'd rather see a second course in ODE's than a course in Abstract Algebra (although both would be even better.)


Looking at this link, Professions, as provided by erstwhile editor in the comments to your question, the answer would be Professor Lord [Such-and-such]:

  If a professor is also a member of the peerage, or a knight or dame, the academic style and title may be combined as ‘Professor Lord Ryder’ or ‘Professor Dame Elizabeth Pulteney’. He/she may prefer to be known by title alone.


Funding for applied mathematics postdoc - how does it work?

If you want to fund your own position, probably the best course of action would be to look for the various postdoctoral fellowships awarded by organisations like the NSF, the European Union, and many other national science funding bodies. Your advisor may know some examples that would be most appropriate for you at this career stage. Each fellowship of course has their own rules, so you would need to study them carefully. Generally, the fellowships at this stage would support yourself through either a stipend or by providing your institution with money for your salary. They may or may not pay overheads. In addition, there may be a modest research budget, which for theoretical fields typically can be used to cover for example conference travels.

In case of the fellowships that I am personally aware of, you would have to mention a host instution at which you would want to carry out your research. Typically you would have to provide a signed letter of commitment from the institution, agreeing to hire/support you if your fellowship would be awarded. So indeed it is important to get in touch with possible institutions. You would usually also have to argue in your application why this place would be a good fit for the project.

So how to go about once you have found suitable funding sources? As you said, it is indeed a good idea to contact professors at those universities that would be a good fit for the project that you have in mind. Your advisor might be able to help here as well in suggesting and/or contacting the right people. At this stage, a full research proposal is not really necessary yet, but you should be able to explain briefly what you are interested in, and how it fits in with the group.

Once you have found someone to support you, you can work on your proposal according to the guidelines for the fellowship. Your prospected host instution may provide some feedback on the proposal, but in my experience this is more common only for bigger grants at later career stages. In my experience, professors are generally happy to support your application, since it is relatively low risk for them. But be sure to secure their support in time, since it may take some time to navigate the bureaucracy to get a letter of commitment, for example.

You can only apply for each fellowship once per round, but you can apply with a similar proposal to different fellowships. In some applications you will be required to disclose this, however. And almost certainly, if you would get awarded more than one fellowship, you would have to choose between them since you cannot get funded for the same research twice.

Since typically the institution has to provide a letter of commitment, once you are awarded a fellowship they will be obliged to hire you (or support you, in terms of office space and such) for the duration of the project. At this point it will be mainly up to the adminstration of the university to proceed and prepare the relevant paperwork.

Good luck!


Relation of lecture mandatory attendance and lecture quality

In fact there are many studies undertaken in this topic. Below you may find the link to some of these papers.

Classroom attendance: Factors and perceptions of students and faculty in US schools of pharmacy
Student nurse absenteeism in higher education: An argument against enforced attendance
Student and teacher attendance: The role of shared goods in reducing absenteeism
Why do students miss lectures? A study of lecture attendance amongst students of health science
Does lecture attendance affect academic performance? Panel data evidence for introductory macroeconomics
The impact of charter school attendance on student performance

You can find tons of papers in this topic. Look at this link and her

Hope it helps


How to approach a problem if I am new in the field?

I am still learning, but this is how a few advisors taught me how to approach my field.

First, look for a recent structured literature review of the filed and taxonomies. They give you a good starting point as all relevant paper (hopefully anyway) are listed there, and this gives you a perfect index to learn about the filed. Of cause, if there is none, you could be the first to create one ;).

Then its time to read a lot, create a stack of all relevant paper — Mark of any references that look to help and add them to the stack. Keep going and once your stack starts to shrink more than it grows you should have a grasp about the filed.

In order to do this in a reasonable time you do not have to read every paper deeply. Try to get the idea, and try to fit them into your understanding of the filed. Only read paper deeply that help you further your research question, other just skim.

Other tested methods include: Ask your advisor and other colleagues in around you, they might have looked into it already and can point you to relevant material.


Should I be worried that I have no set dissertation near the start of my 4th year?

There's wide variation in when people settle on a dissertation topic.  I don't think you can specify a particular time to panic or not.

However, it sounds like it's certainly time to sit down with your supervisor and negotiate.  You should agree on answers to the following questions:
What exactly are your supervisor's expectations for what needs to be in your finished thesis?  What are the "must haves" and "nice to haves"?  How long will it take to accomplish those goals?  What difficulties could potentially arise, and do you have plans to overcome them, or contingency plans in case of unexpected failures?  When do you expect to defend? What other publications do you expect to produce along the way? How does this relate to the timing of job applications?

In this process, you may have to be more assertive than you have been in the past.  Don't settle for vague answers.  If possible, put a plan in writing and get your supervisor to agree.


I am afraid your question reveals a rather superficial attitude to the matter. You are talking about the whole continents as places for "better PhD" and mention "AI" as a field you are interested in. A fairly standard textbook on AI sitting on my shelf is nearly 1200 pages long, so how can one judge a continent for being a better place for studying every single topic listed in this book?
You are going to spend several years doing your PhD. So, first go spend at least several days (or, better, weeks) thinking harder what exactly are you interested in. One good starting point would be to think first what you are good at right now. Then, figure out good publications in this area (Google Scholar is your friend) and find out which labs they come from. These labs are the places of your interest, and they might pop up in quite unlikely places (though, granted, in most cases they don't come as a surprise).
Then, of course, there is a question of a job market, but I believe people coming from reputable labs are able to find a job. In any case, this isn't a question of your immediate future.


How to keep plans for a job change quiet?

This is common in academia. I think you have to be honest with everyone who might rely on you being at your current job in the future, let them know what stage you are at, and ask them to keep it to themselves until you get the official offer. You can only control what you say to others while asking others to respect your privacy in the meantime.

Suppose that you told everyone in your current department exactly what you have told us, and for some reason your new position falls through at this late date, what's the worst case situation you're worried about? It seems to me that, assuming your current job is held for you, your worst problems will be interpersonal with other faculty that resented your desire to leave. Is that it, or are you worried about some specific ramifications if word got around?


How to handle communication about the class outside of the official channels, when I am a TA for a class that a friend is taking?

It sounds wise to steer your friend towards your office hours, although there's probably no need to insist on this.

However, I would not give additional assistance with debugging beyond what you would do for anyone else.  The most important thing is for your friend to learn how to do his own debugging!

There's one more thing you can do: fill your professor in on the situation before the semester starts.  And then, as the semester unfolds, if any specific dilemma or uncertainty arises, ask the professor for guidance.

That is my offhand take on this.  However, when you speak with the professor, s/he may have more specific guidance.


Presentation Rules (e.g. 7x7 in Undergrad Communications Courses): are they supported by evidence?

All axiomatic principles with respect to presentations should be taken with a heavy dose of salt, not just a pinch.

The important issue at hand is that you need to communicate your information to an audience effectively. Putting too much text on a slide makes audiences read the slide, and possibly tune out your elucidations and elaborations of the material on the slide. Similarly, putting too many graphs on the same slide causes the same problem—there's too much to focus on, so you get "lost" in the course of the talk, which again is entirely unhelpful.

Principles such as the "7 x 7" guideline are an attempt to balance between having too much and too little information on a slide. They're useful as rough guidelines, but need not be treated as strict rules to follow.


If you believe you have been unfairly graded, stick to the facts in writing to your professor. Don't argue "I should get a higher grade." Instead, frame it as a question.

Dear Prof. X
I am confused about a couple of the comments you made in grading my paper.

On page A, you said "B," but I found (cite literature supporting your claim).
[Repeat for each comment you'd like a response to.]

Could you please explain the discrepancy?
[Closings.]

This usually works better as a way of requesting a regrade than saying "I deserve a higher grade because [reasons]."


How should a new professor sign their name in emails to students?

Sign as you wish to be addressed by the recipient. When I sign an email with my first name, I am giving the recipient permission to address me by my first name. I almost always sign off with my first name, but in the rare instances that I don't want them to address me that way and do want to retain more formality, I use "Dr Firstname Lastname" instead. If I'm really feeling ambivalent, I'll use "Firstname Lastname", which I feel leaves the decision up to them.

I usually also have my full name with title and contact details in the sig at the bottom of my email, separated from my sign-off by a line containing only "--". This is so my contact details are handy, but also for clarity -- even if I am giving them permission to use my first name, it is sometimes useful for them to know my position and qualifications.


At loss about CS specialization/sub-field

Honestly, you sound like someone who is looking for a Magic Bullet to Save The World, not someone who is really informed about or interested in computer science.  You sound like someone in love with the idea of computer science research, but with no real idea what computer science research is.  Computer security against aliens?  Quantum computing?  Artificial intelligence?  These are all dangerously close to science fiction.  There's tons of good research in all those areas, but nothing — in any of those areas — is close to "saving the world", and everything interesting — in all of those areas — requires a fair bit of mathematical maturity.  Sorry, but if you don't like math, you won't like real AI research, or real security research, or real quantum computing research.

If you want to do research, and really do it well, you have to love your tools.  You have to love the math; you have to love the code; you have to love the nights in the lab; you have to love the balky experimental equipment.  You have to love feeling stupid, because researchers spend 99% of their time feeling stupid; they're at the bleeding edge of what mankind understands about Reality, so of course they don't really know what they're doing.  You have to love to work in the face of almost certain failure.  You have to take the world's ignorance, especially your own personal ignorance, as motivation, not frustration.  You have to get over the idea that you are going to Save to World, because you aren't, but you do the work anyway, because you can't not do the work; it's in your blood; it's who you are.

If that's not you, don't bother.  There are much better ways to make money.  There are much better ways to help people.  There are much better ways to be happy than to do something you don't really love because you think it's Cool and Important.

But if you really can't live without doing it, then you really have no choice—do it, and do it well.  And who knows; you may save the world after all!  (But probably not.)


How to tell supervisor too many lengthy meetings are hurting your productivity?

I think this is a time to be direct and honest: just say you are spending too much time in meetings and it should be reduced.  Say what you should be doing instead.  A reasonable person should not be offended and should know that meetings can hurt productivity.

I also recommend considering changing the way the meeting works to align it with your needs.  When I am in a meeting, if nobody is taking charge, I will try to be a leader and give the meeting some direction.  Remind participants of the agenda.  Add the things you want to do to the agenda.  But be tactful.


Should I publish my software independently or publish it along with a case study in higher journal?

In my discipline (political science), one would typically do both. Write an applied article that uses the software for an actual research project and submit that to a substantive journal. Then, separately, describe the software and write it up for a software journal (e.g., Journal of Statistical Software, R Journal, etc.).


What data analysis software should a supervisor recommend to their research students?

Teaching how to program should be a priority in research, in at least Sciences. Doesn't matter what STEM field you are in, almost certainly you will need to deal with data, and using "black box" software only teaches to do whatever the software tells you.

I've seen people give results using standard deviation and mean for non-normal distributions, and its just because they didn't know how to plot their distribution and just used black box software. I've seen people rename file by file a folder with 500 files with data. These are worse than "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion".

Since nowadays almost all research in STEM is performed using computers, understanding computers is a must.

My recommendation is to make people learn MATLAB if you have access to it, or Python if you don't have access to MATLAB or you are a Open source / free software supporter. Both of this languages are designed to be very high level, and not need "advanced" computer science skills (such as inheritance in OOP, or pointers in C)*. Both of the languages are widely used and there are numerous free online courses to learn, in Coursera, Codeacademy, Udacity, EDx or any other online learning platform.

Learning how to code to the basic point should take less than 2 months, considering that meanwhile the student is also doing other things. And they can save thousands of hours of tedious work.

Let me repeat the key message: We need researchers with programming skills. Its incredibly important skill to be able to perform research in the XXI century.

While this answer mainly focuses in STEM, basic programming in other fields that use statistics is also useful.

*Of course, knowing about that helps.


Can a discoverer give the name he wants to his finding?

Usually the way this works is that a researcher discovers some phenomenon and publishes it without giving a name. Then someone else comes along and writes about "Jones' discovery" and before you know it the world talks about the "Jones effect".

Giving things a name yourself is done in some fields - for example, in MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) it is conventional that people who develop a new pulse sequence will give that sequence a "catchy" name (usually some clever abbreviation, never really their own name). So you have names like CAIPIRINHA (which is really the name of a drink, but stands for "Controlled Aliasing In Parallel Imaging Results IN Higher Acceleration").

In the end, the name that the community adopts is the name by which something will be known - so you are free to call it the "teletubby galaxy" but if everybody insists on calling it Andromeda-X42 you will be a lone voice. If you have the good fortune of discovering something new and valuable, name it wisely or be ignored.

Reiterating the point made by Nathaniel: suggesting that a particular phenomenon/constant/equation should be named after you is considered a major faux pas. Others will do it for you - when you try to jump the gun and suggest that it be named after you, you will come across as conceited. I can think of no example of a well known effect that a discoverer named for themselves. Some examples where they did not:

Newton's Laws (he called them "Axiomata sive Leges Motus")

Hooke's Law ("Explaining the power of springing bodies")

Josephson effect (for which he got the Nobel prize... not available for Newton or Hooke, or surely they would have qualified) was described by him (Physics Letters Vol 1, No 7, 1962) as "new effects":

he didn't say "we present here the Josephson Effect".

The list could go on and an. If you are the greatest, you don't need to say so - others will do it. No offense intended, Mr Ali.

If you are interested interested, there is a follow-up question on a sister site, History of Science and Math: What famous laws were named by their discoverer?


What did Peano meant by "R. Universitate"?

[EDIT: corrected adding "regia" after @MassimoOrtolano's comment].

Yes, it surely stands for regia or reale (both words mean "of the king" in Italian); that adjective was common in pre-war Italy and there are other "royal" universities around. The standard Italian form is "regia (reale) università di Torino"; Peano wrote in an unusual language.

Would this and this document be proof enough for you that it was the full name?


Strategy for teaching in a room that is laid out "wrong"

In a tiered lecture hall that has the long continuous tables with chairs, rather than auditorium seats, was the gather students around one end of the long tables and basically have students on one side sitting backwards. The room I did this in has chairs that swivel 360 so this was not actually uncomfortable for them. And then you sit on the end of the table with 2 or 3 students on each side from your point of view. This generally works for small enough groups like you have.


Is it better for me to audit or enroll in a class for independent research?

In general, auditing a class provides somewhat close to zero information for anyone considering your application in the future. At the very best, it shows you were interested in the subject even though you would get no credit for it. Its not much different than taking an online course with no grade, studying on your own, or just showing up to a class without being enrolled. At least in the US, auditing doesn't even require you show up to class, much less do any work, thus why it has little signal meaning.

So I would suggest that if you audit the class, do it for some other reason than what people looking at your application will think of it. It is reasonable to try to audit if you want to improve your training, prepare for a more advanced class (or just taking the same class next semester), just want to do it for fun (I personally plan to audit stats classes in the future, but that's because I'm at a point that no one cares what classes I take so its just for my own utility and interest), want to get to know the professor a bit better to see if you'd like to work more with them or take other classes by them, etc.

If programs you are planning to apply to strongly value or require quantitative/statistical training, though, auditing a class generally won't do it. This completely depends on what sort of program you apply to, as some won't really care about stats preparation anyway, while others will demand a lot more than 1 class in stats and research methods/design. Now would be a good time to look ahead at what sort of programs you are applying to, what they say they like to see, and plan your courses accordingly.


Have there been studies about the effect of idle time vs time pressure in learning?

There is an article on college students under pressure. It details on the effects and the health related issues involved.

  Amy Novotney, "Students under pressure," American Psychological Association, Vol 45, No. 8, pp. 36 September 2014.

Although it doesn't explicitly account on idle time, you should be able to draw conclusions from the content provided.


How do I put industry research in an academic context?

Emphasize strengths that mirror what would be expected for a 10-year Academic career:

No peer-reviewed publications? List instead all the internal white papers you've written.
Mention any academic collaborations when describing roles. (No collaborations? List internal cross-departmental collaborations.)
List trainees/interns you've mentored.
List any important talks/presentations you've given related to your research. It won't be the same, as the level of discourse when talking to other researchers is different than when talking to senior managers, but it does demonstrate presentation experience.
Get very strong letters of recommendation attesting to your strength as a researcher, communicator, and mentor.


What to do about referral for student I would not recommend?

Why do you dread his reaction? You have no responsibility of giving anyone a referral. I doubt "this professor did not write me a referral" would stand as an excuse to allege persecution in any tribunal.  Don't get bullied by a student, just plainly refuse to do a referal if you are not up for it.


How to find out people interested in the same paper and discuss?

Professional societies often have mailing lists and a request there is probably an appropriate item.

Departments sometimes have bulletin boards on which you could post a request.

I found it very useful (before retirement) that our doctoral program had an internal mailing list to which every student and every advisor was subscribed. In fact, there were several lists, some specialized but one for everyone. Communication on such a list is very useful and I encourage others to establish these if they don't already do so. Our program was small, so a single overall list made sense. In a larger place it might be necessary to do this per specialty.

But, don't just look for such things as a place to get help. Consider it as an opportunity for sharing. If you give you can get, but if it is just a request for help, it might be better directed at the faculty - say an advisor.

But if you are faculty, then work to establish cross-university collaboration efforts so that like minded people have a way to communicate ideas. Having a wide range of collaborators is a good thing for most academics.


My advisor completely ignores me what should I do?

If your advisor has stopped funding you, it has already affected your position in the department.

You should consult with the graduate chair of your department and see what your options are. I’d like to say that there are solutions, but this is unfortunately very much a function of who has funding and is doing a project in an area you’re interested in pursuing. You may need to apply elsewhere, if you can’t find a solution at your school.


Why does U.S. Veterans Affairs only pay for classes which are required for the degree?

It looks to me like it is more or less required by the legislation, although I'm not a lawyer so I may not be interpreting it right.  Educational assistance is authorized for pursuing a "program of education" rather than just taking individual courses:

  The Secretary shall pay to each individual entitled to educational assistance under this chapter who is pursuing an approved program of education...

A program of education is defined as:

  The term “program of education” means any curriculum or any combination of unit courses or subjects pursued at an educational institution which is generally accepted as necessary to fulfill requirements for the attainment of a predetermined and identified educational, professional, or vocational objective.

Strictly speaking, this doesn't mean the classes must be required for an academic degree per se, and other sorts of credentials or licenses could count.  However, it does not seem to allow taking isolated classes for their own sake, but rather just as required for the overall program.

I don't know the history or why the legislation was set up this way.  I'd guess that it's because the goal is to help veterans achieve qualifications that will further their careers, not to educate them for the sake of education.  One possibility is that nobody really thought hard about the issue while drafting the legislation, so it wasn't a conscious decision.  Another is that it was intended to save money by avoiding paying for frivolous or unnecessary courses.  A third possibility is that it was intended to help veterans by putting pressure on them to follow a set degree program (rather than squandering their benefits on isolated courses that might never fit together to complete any degree).


Getting a Research Grant for Carrying out Research as Independent Researcher in my home country

What he / he meant maybe formal direct affiliation [like employment or permanent affiliation in an institution] Many wanting to do research but funding agencies asked for formal institutional affiliation where the funds can be monitored. Quite difficult to secure funding with this criteria from funding agencies. The best is to look for agencies which provide or support individual research project.


Rules of thumb: when do you really hear good/bad news from NSF unsolicited proposals

I don't really have an answer to your question, but I can say that I think that the current political climate has resulted in delayed proposal reviews and notification for many federal programs. we submitted and NSF proposal back in December and from what I can tell, the review date changed from the original date and we haven't received any helpful feedback about when decisions will be made. This is my first NSF proposal - I usually submit to the NIH.

I had another grant submitted last November to a different federal program and they delayed notifications until last week (normally, decisions would have been made in February for that program). I wish I had a better answer, and maybe someone else can provide more insight. However, don't thin proposal reviews this year are "business as usual" and not hearing back at this point may not mean bad news. Hope this helps!


Do all PhD programs have publishing requirements?

I think the answer is no, not all do. But if you rephrase it slightly you get a different result. If we define PhD strictly as a research doctorate (though some schools might be weak on that), then a dissertation of some sort is required. In all fields, and for all advisors, I think that the attitude, if not the specific rule, is that the dissertation be of publishable quality. The exceptions, where the committee doesn't have such an attitude, seems to me to be a vanishingly small set.

That is a judgement made by the advisor and committee in many fields. In some fields, and apparently at some universities, prior publication is required. But that is just a way of having an independent judgement about publishable quality; by the journal/conference reviewers. The decision is, then, somewhat distributed.

Some dissertations never get published other than informally (university libraries, University Microfilms, etc). Some result, after the fact, in one or more publications. In my own case (though long long ago) there was no formal requirement other than a submission to what was then University Microfilms. But a shorter version of the dissertation was published a few years later.


Will it be a problem if I take a letter of recommendation from a lecturer in my department?

While a professor would be better, a lecturer should be fine, especially if they hold a doctorate. You want letters from people who know you well enough to make a prediction about your future success, and so a lecturer with whom you have interacted may be a good choice.

The letters need to speak both about your past accomplishments and about your potential for success. Choose the best people for that.

I would worry a bit if the person doesn't have a doctorate, however, unless they are also currently in a doctoral program. They need some experience in the situation you are applying for. But a lecturer - current doctoral student probably will work nearly as well. Note that I have a few misgivings about the last statement. Think hard about it if this is the actual case.


Conference paper rejected without any fault in algorithm

Since you are describing an algorithm paper, I assume you are submitting to algorithms conferences, and the "A*" description refers to the CORE ratings of CS conferences originally developed by the Australian Research Council.  The only A* conferences in algorithms are FOCS, STOC, and SODA. I've served on the program committees for all three.

These three conferences are extremely competitive, and standards for acceptance are extremely high. It is not enough for your algorithm to be correct. It is not even enough for your algorithm to offer a significant improvement on the state of the art for your specific problem. At STOC and FOCS in particular, papers are judged on their likely impact on theoretical computer science research beyond the scope of the specific result. For algorithms papers, that means either that you're describing a significant advance on a problem of central interest to the field, and/or that you are introducing new techniques that are likely to generalize to many other problems, and/or that the PC finds your result both surprising and technically impressive.

I would not expect these conferences to accept a paper that only describes a faster exponential-time algorithm for an NP-hard problem. We've seen lots of those before; yet another one is not that surprising. Unless you are proposing a strong general technique, or the specific problem you address has resisted significant progress for a long time, I would recommend aiming for a lower-tier algorithms conference: ESA, ISAAC, COCOON, WADS, LATIN, ....

All the advice in the other answers still applies when submitting to those penultimate-tier conferences, of course. It's still not enough for your algorithm to be correct. You still need to clearly explain your precise contribution and its importance to the research community. You still need to give a thorough comparison of your algorithm to the state of the art. You still need to convince the PC that they should trust you and care about your results.


Assuming that "apply for a PhD" means that you want to persue a second PhD in Austria; yes that's fine. You can get as many PhDs as you want, but you cannot use the same research for more than one PhD and you cannot do the same program (same university, field and title) twice as far as I know.

If you are asking if you can use your research which was used for getting the PhD in a different country to get one in Austria the no, that's not allowed.


Does helping a PhD student with proofreading violate school policy in general?

I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--cleaning up the language for
  clarity and grammar, etc. The student has asked me to paraphrase the
  information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most
  relevant to her research.

That is fine.

  I am proofreading and editing a dissertation proposal for a student for whom English a fourth language--cleaning up the language for
  clarity and grammar, etc. The student has asked me to paraphrase the
  information of some articles so that s/he can use what is most
  relevant to her research.

That is abhorrent in two levels. First, the student had the guts to even ask. Second, the task itself involves significant amount of intellectual input that is not of the student's.

I understand you wish the student to do well, and the work would reflect on your mentoring ability. But this is just identical to parents helping children with art project the night before school. It can be a fun and educational experience for kids, but outlandish for a grown up PhD candidate.

At the very least, make the student do the major part of the work:

Highlight the parts that he/she feels relevant. The selection of articles and contents should never be done by you. Discuss with the student on the rationale of the selections, and use this as an educational opportunity.
Paraphrase 5-10 various statements and hand them to the student as a guideline/examples, ask him/her to replicate on a dozen or so, check and give comments.
Send him/her away with a complimentary copy of a thesaurus, or some URLs like  http://thesaurus.com
Identify the ESL center in your institute, and ask the student to work with the ESL staff along the way.
Recommend the student to identify an editor. His/her English standard will not become any better. Now you are helping with proposal, a couple years later you'll help with dissertation---vicious cycle.

Also, as how I define it, if English is my mother tongue, then all languages I would learn are my second languages. It'd only be a fourth language of this student if, say, he/she has Russian as mother tongue, then learned Chinese in Russian, then learned Thai in Chinese, then learn English in Thai. I don't think that is a very viable pathway, and you may want to hook the student up with a Russian English teacher/editor.

And lastly, where were you when I was working on my PhD?!


Can a PhD thesis consist of "exploratory research"?

Yes.  A PhD thesis that introduces new methods to old problems can be an excellent thesis if:

The new methods are in some way better than old methods.
The new methods are widely adopted.

Some of the most successful physicists work in this way.


Does a youtube channel with my lectures add to my portfolio in graduate applications if the response is good?

I think this would depend on the location of your institution and how traditionally/modern inclined its culture is, as well as the person itself who reviews your application, but it certainly wouldnt hurt your application in any way. It is certainly a good way to stand out from the rest of the field, since I highly doubt any other applicant to your same programme would also be doing it.
If your graduate programme you are applying for includes teaching or TAing duties then it would be particularly relevant since it shows you already have good skills in explaining concepts to people who are less familiar with them than you are.


Is it appropriate for an advisor to add a student's name (who has no contribution) to a paper because of his nationality

No, it isn't appropriate and is a form of academic misconduct. Those listed as authors need to have made some significant contribution to the ideas in a paper.
But this stuff happens. Too frequently.
Your advisor's motives don't matter. It is misconduct. However, your relationship to your advisor does matter and if opposing this will poison the relationship you need to act cautiously so as not to jeopardize your own career.


Are my chances of getting into a PhD higher if I choose a "not-so-accomplished" supervisor?

The answer to this can be a little tricky. I would say : it depends.
Let's say you have the means to judge that a supervisor is "accomplished" or not and that you have not a GREAT background.

The accomplished supervisor might have nothing more to prove. Thus he can select you because "he has not much thing to lose" if it does not go well (this is subject to debate also). In the other hand because he is already accomplished he might be used to quality work. So why bother himself with a lower quality student ?

On the other hand if you go with a not so famous supervisor. Given he wants to be famous, he might refuse you because he wants a better student to help him also. He might accept you because he has not much choice and need ASAP a PhD student.

In resume the chance of being accepted depends MORE on you and your background than the celebrity of the supervisor. It's normal to want to go with the one you think accomplished because: more contact, more funding. However the less famous can give you much more of his time.


When teaching, which question types are effective for stimulating deep processing of the material in students?

This is a question which is far too big to reasonably answer, particularly without knowing the subject matter and tasks of importance. In terms of theories with solid evidence, ones that I find useful as guidelines are:

Chi's Active-Constructive-Interactive framework. However, it sounds like your system does not naturally lend itself to constructive or interactive activities.  This is unfortunate, because I've seen studies with evidence of learning gains for things as simple as quasi-interactive tasks like allowing people to continue answering multiple choice questions for partial credit after wrong answers (e.g., wrong answers trigger hints for further reflection).
25 Learning Principles: More of a list of known effects rather than a theory, it is still useful to know. The primary issue with some of the items on this list is that it is hard (maybe impossible) to optimize for all of them in designing a course. Also, certain content fits certain approaches better, either because of the type of knowledge or expectations by teachers/students (e.g., embedding math into stories might be pedagogically valid, but jarring/disliked due to unfamiliarity).
Aligning Media to Cognitive Tasks: While there is a broad literature on this (Mayer obviously being the big US name), Schnotz's work highlights the relevance of picking multimedia that naturally communicates the information you are trying to convey. For example, it is incredibly hard to verbally describe an individual chair (picture worth a thousand words) but equally hard to show enough pictures to imply the simple concept that "most chairs have 4 legs." This intuition implies two things. First, that much of "learning styles" literature represents preferences, and shouldn't be mistaken for what actually leads to better learning (since the content affordances will almost always dominate the best approach to use). Second, it highlights the need to align your learning tasks to the modality that makes the right information salient and accessible, at least initially. Later, if the authentic application of those skills involves tasks where they are not salient or easy accessible, tasks to represent that greater complexity are also useful. This represents one incarnation of the general strategy of scaffolding, where tasks are simplified/supported initially, but increasingly approximate unassisted performance of the cognitive tasks needed. This has implications for question sequencing.
Multiple Representations: Related to both of the above, I think it is important to note that multiple ways of testing the same information is important. This has a lot of backing behind it, which is why it is big in the US Common Core for math. It is suspected to have two major mechanisms: a) multiple pathways/cues to recall the same information and b) understanding of the abstract relationships/processes rather than brittle task-specific procedures tied to one representation. This would not generally apply to just different input controls, though, which are likely to be a last-step after the desired learning-relevant processing is done.  Or, put another way, if your question leads to knowledge that is so brittle they fall on their face because they have a checkbox instead of a multiple-choice, they probably won't be able to apply that knowledge in practice anyway.
Generative: Also noted in some of the above, and relevant to the question types that you list, open response is different and generally better. This is particularly relevant because many of the above types (e.g., multiple choice) are actually very hard to build correctly, with most teachers using a strategies like: 1 right answer, 1 obviously wrong/off-topic answer, 2 variants of right answer with flaws. They're very prone to test-gaming, unless you start with open responses and build one with a right answer vs. common misconceptions, for example. Gaming behaviors are known to reduce learning, probably because learners spend their time thinking about the strategy to game the answer, rather than actually processing the domain-relevant information.
Comprehensive Testing: Testing on the full set of knowledge so-far has also been shown to increase learning gains. This was noted by one major report as the single simplest and most effective way to increase course-level learning gains, if I recall, but I don't recall the cite off the top of my head. I also cannot recall if this had implications related to studying more or if it was more of a repeated practice issue.
Question Taxonomies: There are also a few question taxonomies to look into, which have some indications that deeper questions (e.g., causal reasoning) result in deeper learning. However, deeper learning is not necessarily more learning. The relationship can be quite complex, and if all you really want is just recall (e.g., the end-task is recall) then deep questions may not be efficient for that goal. As always, aligning practice to your target task is important: if your ultimate task will be shallow, shallow practice probably works. There might be some value to "multiple representations of different shallow practice" using MC questions vs. Y/N vs. checkboxes maybe, but that seems like such an uncommon situation that I am genuinely not sure if anyone studies it.

In general, I would say that I don't see tons of difference between any of the closed-response questions (Y/N, MC, Checkboxes, Ranking, Likert). Yes/No is a bit flimsier than the others because you only need to evaluate one assertion, but I'd still say you'd do similar thinking when given the same question regardless of how you're entering an answer. I'm not aware of any research that shows substantial differences between these techniques off the top of my head, and even if differences were observed there's a good chance that they're not useful differences. As with the learning styles literature noted earlier, just because you can find a difference when everything else is kept equal (controlled) does not mean that the difference is useful in practice because you generally have much stronger factors to manipulate. Open response is different because you get less cues (e.g., you can't just use recognition, and instead need to use recall). There is some research indicating that is better, but applying the caveat of what better means (e.g., might be deeper but less efficient, if all you truly need is recall).

I will note that there are a few systems out there for making interactive questions for courses. CMU has the CTAT system. WPI maintains the ASSISTments system. Both of these have various levels of retry/hinting support for interactivity, among other types of adaptation. There are also some similar systems for doing this with open-response formats (i.e., dialogs), but I don't currently know any good ones that can yet be easily and freely embedded by instructors into courseware and that also have professional support staff available.

Finally, if it really is the input controls that you're most interested in, you might find more literature on that in fields like HCI or marketing survey design.  Both of those fields tend to focus more on the affordances and optimizations to input mechanisms, while learning sciences and education is typically more interested in the content of the questions (other than the notable concerns about choice-based questions and simple active learning tasks in general).  But personally, I think that the big gains aren't in those minor tweaks.


As a college instructor, the one thing that has meant the most to me in terms of thanks has been when students tell my superiors how much they enjoyed having me as an instructor. Even just an email to my boss from a former student was a very solid form of thanks. It made me look good; it also made my supervisor proud of himself for one of his lowlings having success. For me at least, this was the ultimate thanks.


How much are local (same state or country) applicants favored in PhD admissions?

In the UK, in STEM areas without industry funding (where I have most experience), funding restrictions typically meant there are at least 10 places restricted to home (or in some cases EU) students for every place open to students of all nationalities.


It's hard to tell without the exact context, but in all likelihood "yes".  Two issues to consider are (1) copyright/plagiarism and (2) accuracy.

Don't make an exact copy of the figure or the caption.  Reword it and convert it to your intent somehow.  Also, cite the review paper as the source.
I get a sniff of concern that the curve may be made up ("cartoon") or the like since it is not well referenced or discussed.  This is not the end of the world, but just consider the context to see how much this is a real concern.  Also, how you will use it (e.g. to make a general point or to do detailed calculations from).  You can also cover yourself a bit by actually naming the review author, so it is clear that it is "Smith's" view, not yours.


Publish a paper with a coauthor not affiliated to a university

I published a paper with two high school student co-authors.  I listed their high school as their affiliation.  They were not paid by the university.  It worked fine.


Graduate advisors: what are some qualities that make a graduate student difficult to supervise?

Strange question, but here you go:

Knowing better than the advisor (in reality or imagination) and hammering that point in to the advisor
Knowing better than the nature of the matter at hand and continuing to hammer at it without it sinking in (thanks to Darkwing and computercarguy for the original suggestion)
Being disorganised
Having to be told to do the same thing repeatedly, without effect, without proposing an alternative, or without explicit (justified) refusal
Being unable to write, even while having results
Being a brilliant writer, making weak results look better than they are
Being perfectionist to the point of ineffectiveness
Being sloppy, so that everything that the student does needs to be double- and triple-checked for correctness; sometimes, reintroducing errors after they have been corrected already
Being afraid of success and/or one's own greatest enemy

One thing that does not constitute a difficult to supervise student is a genius who doesn't listen, but gets results and writes them up. It may give a dent to the ego of the adviser, but, like a dent in a Jeep, it's a dent worth having.


I haven't received the support promised in my funding letter. What should I do?

Based on a conversation in the comments, so you have basically no reason to see this as anything but a mistake. You were never told you would be paid anything less than you were offered. You have not communicated to anyone that you are being paid less than you are supposed to be paid. Most likely no one knows you are not being paid correctly.

You have done a very silly thing by letting this go on so long. Go talk to your advisor face to face as if your advisor is a normal human being, let them know you think there is a mistake because have not been paid the amount you expected to be paid, and ask who you need to talk to in order to get this fixed or whether you have misunderstood something. If you cannot meet face to face, you can say the same thing in an email.

There is no need for this to be damaging to your relationship, there is no need for you to accuse anyone of mistreating or abusing you, there is no broken relationship already. It sounds like there is an administrative error that needs to be corrected. Administration in a university is complicated and involves people that don't know you or your advisor personally at all, they may have nothing in their records to show what you should be paid. The likelihood of mistakes increases dramatically if you are supposed to be paid from more than one source.

Only if your advisor refuses to correct the mistake and refuses to let you know who you need to talk to to correct the mistake should you assume any malice.


Should I publish or present in academic conferences before doing science outreach?

That is often not necessary and often unpractical, but there are risks involved. The media and local actors need information now while academia works on a slower time scale. So by the time you finished the discussion in academia (if it ever finishes), the media and local actors will often have lost interest.

However, the risk is that preliminary results often contain errors. Often there are also legal and moral issues (e.g. privacy) you need to take into account. All this will differ to a huge extend depending on e.g. the subject of the study, the design of the study, and geographical context. So the best advise we can give you is to discuss this with your advisor.


How to send a research proposal to find potential PhD supervisor?

In most branches of engineering, sending a research proposal to a prospective PhD advisor is not particularly helpful, unless you are providing your own funding.

The reason for this is that most PhD students are funded through grants obtained by the professor, either from traditional research funding agencies (NSF/DOE/DOD/NIH and their counterparts in other countries), or through industrial contracts. In such cases, the projects that are to be worked on are well-defined, so the possibility of deviating from those projects and using the money to fund other projects—such as the one you propose—are remote.

On the other hand, if you can provide your own funding, things change significantly. Under such circumstances, you could propose a project of your own design, so long as it fits within the general scheme of the professor's existing research (or moves slightly outside of it). However, proposing a project that lies too far outside of the mainstream typically is unlikely to be well-received, since the professor won't be able to provide much useful support.

However, even under such circumstances, the initial proposal should be more like a "white paper"—a faculty member, if he or she reads such a document at all, is not going to spend more than a few minutes reading it. So the initial idea will need to be compellingly presented in a short amount of space—two or three paragraphs at most.

The best way to show your interest in a professor's group is to explain how you could contribute to ongoing research in the group—that is, do you homework before writing to the faculty member. Your email should make it clear that you are writing the specific faculty member, and addressing the concerns and interests of their group. Anything that has the whiff of being a form letter will likely be ignored, unless your CV looks like a perfect fit for the research group!


What to do about advisor with history of possible plagiarism?

First, don't assume that it is plagiarism without more evidence. Parallel research is very common in many fields and a 30 year old paper may not have been well known in the time frame your professor wrote his/her paper. It may well be plagiarism, but it isn't necessarily so.

It is appropriate to point out the newly found paper to your advisor and gauge the reaction, but it is premature to "complain" to higher authority without solid evidence. You are correct to be wary. But showing it to your advisor could be just an "oh by the way, I came across...". Depending on the reaction you may learn more about their general attitude.

It would, indeed, be unfortunate to have to work with someone with poor ethical standards and if your suspicions are verified you might try to move to a different advisor. This is less critical at the MS level than it would be later, but as long as you preserve your own ethical reputation, you should be fine.

But, certainly, the recent instructions about omitting a reference are problematic. It is possible to write a valid paper reproducing and verifying old results without crossing ethical boundaries. But the work clearly needs to be presented that way, rather than as an innovation. If the referees are up to date in the field, such obfuscation may be caught to everyone's detriment.