Student caught cheating when leaving class after handing me the exam

Exact rules will depend on where you are.  But normally the student has due process rights: to be confronted with the evidence of her cheating, and to appeal to some higher administrator or body if she desires.    Two of your options (grade more harshly / secretly lower grade) are things that you would do unilaterally, without the student's knowledge, and without giving her the right to challenge.  In my view, these options are therefore totally inappropriate and unethical.

The evidence against her is your testimony about what you observed.  If you think this would be sufficient evidence under your university's rules, then it is appropriate to pursue formal punishment as the rules dictate.  If you don't think it's sufficient, then do nothing, and let the student complete the rest of the course without prejudice. (Though of course you can watch her more closely in the future, and perhaps institute procedures to deter this kind of behavior in general.)


What are dissertation hours in the scope of degree requirements for PhD?

In my PhD program, I was required to register for various research and dissertation related courses to fill the required 9 credit hours to be a full-time student. Those course ranged from 3 to 5 credit hours depending on what I needed. Those courses never met, and I did not receive a letter grade for them. They seemed to have two purposes: 1. existing to fill my schedule after my actual coursework was done (so that I was listed as being enrolled as a full-time student and so that they had something to charge me for), and 2. giving my advisor credit with the department for supervising a research or dissertation student. The mostly seem to be a bureaucratic slight of hand.

Edited to add: I was also paid 20 hours per week to work as a Graduate Research Assistant, but I basically worked about 40-50 hours per week on going to class (until I was done with my required hours) and working on my research. Towards the end, when I was writing my dissertation, it was more. The hours I was officially paid and the credit hours I took, never really aligned with much, except that a 3-credit hour actual course (like "Functional Analysis") met for 3 hours every week.


I suspect that learning about "current levels of research" in mathematics won't be well represented if you only look at the award winners. I think you will need a much broader sort of search to get an idea about what is really going on and what is generally accepted in current doctoral research.

And not all "current levels of research" is even represented in doctoral theses in the first place. Among the awards, you are more likely to see only theses in relatively "hot" areas of research, and miss the overall picture.

Note that research in really hard areas of mathematics isn't the best candidate for a dissertation problem as the probability of success in a limited time frame is much lower.

If you are asking the question because you are looking to choose your own topic, then you should also note that research in a "hot" area is a bit risky as others are also working there feverishly, and you have a higher probability of getting scooped.


In this time of crisis, would the journals Nature and Science prioritize papers about COVID-19?

Absolutely. Journals are ways of disseminating scientific information, and they do take into account what is of current interest.

More specifically, however: Both Science and Nature do not just publish scientific articles, but also commentary and news stories. For example, in Science they are in the "News" and "Perspectives" parts of the magazine, and they definitely cover current events. As, if I may add, they should.


Having to elaborate or modify an NIH grant aim

The answer somewhat depends on the grant mechanism and whether or not it has been funded. If the grant has not been funded yet, do whatever you want. If you are talking about modifying a submitted proposal, you will want to talk to the program officer.

The mechanism also matters. As you are a graduate student, if the grant is an F31 or T32, then you are not technically incharge and you will want to talk to the PI (likely your advisor). If it is truly your grant, then you may want to talk to the NIH program officer. They are your friends and have a good enough understanding of the field to see if something is truly needed and if it would require some sort of amendment.


Should I cite myself in my PhD proposal?

Yes, you should cite all relevant research: When conducting research projects that extend over multiple papers it is not unusual to want to refer to your past published papers on the topic.  These should be treated just as with other relevant literature ---i.e., if they are relevant then they should be cited properly.


Should I write my master's thesis in English, as a non-native speaker?

The reasons I write all my work in English, regardless of the country in which I work, are threefold:

The scientific community works in English
English texts are easier to reuse
English texts are easier to share and diffuse

Reasons 2 and 3 are effectively based on premise number 1. In terms of the ability to reuse my work, more often than never I might have to give a presentation, a talk or create a poster based on some report/thesis/paper I previously wrote. This scenario is  common to both academia and industry. When this happens I can easily extract sentences, keywords and figures from my previous work if all the text contained in them is in English, without the need to translate it.

Similarly a document written in English can be given to anyone and they'll be able to read and understand it without requiring a translation.

Therefore if I were you I would write the thesis in English, and present it also in English. I don't think that your examiners will feel in any way threatened by this. Ever more so if you are a foreign student and Italian is not your native language. You should not be expected or forced to write and/or present in a language you are not that familiar with, if English is an allowed option.


What are some strategies to deal with perfectionism?

Get counselling. Really.

There is no shame in that, and you don't need to have full-blown burnout to get support from a therapist.

Aside from that, what has worked for me is to schedule private things I like to do (including simple and "obvious" things, such as spending time with my family, watching TV, playing video games, etc.) in exactly the same manner as work tasks. At the very least this makes it explicit that you are actually making a trade-off when you burn the midnight candle at work. Keep in mind that, hopefully, other non-work things are important to you as well, so if you decide to burn 20 more hours on a paper that's basically done you are effectively trading off one thing you want to do for another. If you look at it this way it basically becomes an optimization problem - do I really want to proof-read this paper three more times to make sure that there are no typos in it, or do I rather want to spend this time on something else that is also important to me?

A second thing I do is rigorous time keeping and time budgeting. I actually learned this during the teacher's seminar that our university mandates for all tenure-track faculty, but it's actually applicable to all aspects of academic work. Basically, one can always invest an infinite amount of time into every activity, so it is important to assign a budget of how much time one practically has for a specific activity (say "I can only spend 6 hours to prepare a single lecture"), and then do the best that is possible in that time. This may mean that you can't make the fancy flipped classroom work that you had in mind, or it may mean that this really interesting data analysis will need to wait for the next paper, but time is finite and ultimately a great paper that is never submitted is worse than a good paper that is.

But, again - if you feel like you can't bring yourself to make these trade-offs on your own, get professional help before you burn out completely and/or drop out of academia.


Error in published paper not present in the free copies for author

For online publication, just contact the editor and let them know of the problem, including that you were sent a correct version. It is probably easy to fix as long as they know of the problem, but they might not if you don't tell them.

Emphasize that these aren't new changes you request, but just that they seem to have put up the wrong version.


If someone turns down a university fellowship does it open up a spot for the waitlisted candidates in the same department?

It's impossible to answer in the general sense. The two main constraints on PhD admissions are funding and mentorship capacity.
Someone who received a fellowship turning down the department might not free up any money, so it is possible the department does not have enough money to accept more people.
But that does free up a supervisory spot. So if the PI they intended to work with has the money, perhaps they would move to the waitlist.
Other factors can include the size of the previous cohorts. If they were large, then the department might take this opportunity to reduce the size of the department by not going to the waitlist.


What is the best way to ask for a lecturer position in a cold email?

If your background is only a BA, it is unlikely that you will be able to snag a position as a lecturer.

Usually these are highly competitive, and are either:
1. reserved for graduate students in order to provide a stipend,
or
2. posted publicly as jobs for PhD holders who have gone the teaching route versus research route.

TBH it sounds like you're interested in working with recruiting for the department, and not actually teaching courses. Lecturer positions pay very little, are highly teaching intensive, and will not offer a lot of time for "rebranding" as you put it.

It is great that you have enthusiasm for the field, your school, and the department, but it is likely that your passions would be better fulfilled by working with the department in an administrative capacity. I would write a general letter of interest to the department and see if they can propose a position that would fit your background.

Edit: I should say that my response is based on knowing very little about your background. If you do have an MA in the field you can send a CV including teaching experience, cover letter, teaching philosophy, as well as a sample curriculum to the person.


How do I deal with graduate school rejection from an university that I considered easy to get into?

Speaking from purely personal experience, I wouldn't necessarily worry about it. Of course it's possible that your application was weak and that generally the other schools will feel the same way. On the other hand, it's also possible that something you wrote just didn't appeal to someone working on the applications at this particular school and you were looked over. In my own experience applying to graduate school I actually got rejected from some of my 'backup' schools but was accepted (and was given extra incentive to come to) one of my 'dream' schools.


Where can I easily find best-paper-award-paper of a conference?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of variety in how much effort different conferences invest into making the information on best papers visible and long-term available.

If you're lucky, the website of the conference lists previous best paper winners on their website. Sometimes this only applies to individual editions (years) of the conference.

In a majority of cases, this might not apply. In these cases, you might be able to retrieve individual award winners by googling for search strings like  (if the conference name is ICSE), "ICSE Best Paper" and "ICSE Distinguished Paper". Such search strings may lead to tweets and researcher websites of award winners.

Another option is to contact the steering committee of the conference and ask for the list of best papers. This might have the positive effect of raising awareness that there is interest in this information, which might at some point lead to more efforts into making the information available online.


Formulate an answer on PhD defense about mistakes you've made

If I were on your committee, the key take-away I would look for is that the mistake will be corrected in the literature.  Either an erratum or an explicit correction in a future publication would satisfy me, though in the latter case I would ask, "What additional steps need to be completed before this future publication will be available, and how long do you anticipate that may take?"

If the future publication is still quite far away (by the standards of your field), then I would recommend an erratum in the meantime, which should do no harm.  I would not consider a long period of time since publication a very strong argument against providing an erratum.  Here is one famous paper in my field that received an erratum after 3.5 years.

A promise that no mistakes will happen in the future would strike me as naive and unrealistic.


Under normal circumstances, faculty should never yell or shout at a student. However, faculty are also human beings, and there is always the possibility that under emotional strain, they can lash out at a student.

I will admit to having been guilty of this once as an advisor, when a student came into my office for a discussion about his research, and made some statements that betrayed a total lack of awareness of what he was doing (and this was a "veteran" graduate student who should have known better).

In the context of teaching, students have reason to expect that the faculty member should not shout at them. However, it is unreasonable to expect that any disciplinary action would be taken against a faculty member for a single infraction.


How to ask a former advisor to resume 'contact'?

Send him a short email reminding him who you are amd ask if he is planning on taking a PhD student soon. Let the conversation develop from there.


How should I phrase a résumé if I have an uncertain degree plan?

Facing an uncertain graduate date is a common issue, particularly for many Ph.D. students who aren't sure exactly when they are going to defend.  The thing that you want in your C.V. is to communicate as clearly as possible what are your skills and time of availability to the people considering taking you on for your next career stage after graduation.  Thus, put your current best estimate in; if you want to indicate an option to join a position earlier, put that in as well as an option.


Are small conference posters bad etiquette?

A 2' tall poster is too small. I would not recommend a poster smaller than A0 size (about 3' x 4') nor larger than 2A0 (4'x6'). For a 4'x8' portrait orientated poster board I would recommend not less than 3' wide, but would not go all the way to 4' since often the boards are displayed in an accordion style resulting in lost width. As for height I would go no more than 5' high. While you do not need to be able to easily reach the title, no one likes reading at their knees. In other words, A0 size would be slightly small, but okay.

Depending on the material, I would suggest looking at large format black and white printing. For example, staples will do a 3'x4' black and white engineering print for $7.29.


Synthetic papers are sort of critical reviews that describe important concepts in, often, multidisciplinary fields. These papers are often structured and written in a (slightly) different way than typical reviews (or normal papers).

For example, the synthetic papers in your post describe important concepts that link together mathematics, logic, and computation.


How to stop Endnote omitting the year for some references?

A few options:

It is possible to exclude the year from an in text citation in Endnote. So I'd check that setting. Right clicking the in-text citation should give you a few options.
Make sure you are showing field codes in Word so that you can confirm that you have actually inserted a citation there. Without field codes it's possible that you have written some text manually.
You may want to explore the style settings in Endnote (e.g., go to edit - output styles in Endnote and select the current Endnote style). There are a whole range of settings that you may need to explore. There might be some rules that you can tweak related to how in text citations display.


Where can I publish corrigenda for a conference paper?

If the proceedings is one that was issued by the conference at the same time as the conference (or shortly thereafter), you may be stuck with just publishing it on your website, which is presumably what you meant by a tech report. If the conference was run by a major society, you may at least be able to get the online version of the proceedings updated. You should get in touch with the program chair for the conference at the very least.


Should you list irrelevant work experience on graduate school applications?

1) If we're asking, we want to know. It's fine to list workplaces that seem irrelevant -- for the (professional) graduate program I teach in, a little workplace seasoning is a distinct plus no matter how connected it is to the program. Moreover, some of our applicants are surprised by the variety of experiences we find relevant. (Retail? You bet. Sales? Absolutely. Office temping? We won't have to teach you what a memo is, good.) So yes, it's "permissible" to leave these jobs out, but you're more likely to hurt than help yourself thereby.

2) Rule of thumb: if you wouldn't put it on your résumé, we don't need to know about it. If you babysit regularly enough that you have certifications and know CPR, sure, tell us about that. Help out the neighbors with their kids occasionally? We don't need to know, and we'll suspect that you're trying to pad your application.


Disagreement over how much IP to put in paper

You are probably just stuck. "Trade Secret" is a valid concern of any profit making organization. And the fact that what you have done isn't patentable now doesn't mean that it can't later be combined with other things to result in products and patents in the future. Large organizations hold quite a bit of IP in reserve hoping for future breakthroughs. And even if the company can't think of a way to exploit the work, they would hesitate to provide a boost to any competitor.
So, your manager is probably telling you true. Your employment contract probably says something about that.


How to Reference three authors and their papers in a stretch

You should check with the typesetters/publication team for their style guide and make sure they realize that 5, 6, 7 are different groups if that is the case. Clearly the version they rewrote assumes they are from the same group. That might still be appropriate if the author lists differ but the senior author/laboratory is consistent.

Your last example is fine, but may or may not comport to their preferred style.


Nomenclatures and symbols expansion in text

Unlike papers, theses are longer and typically not read in full (someone is going to say “typically not read at all”, but if you are writing yours, please don't listen to these people!). So expanding acronyms for the first time in each chapter makes sense. On the other hand, people who will read chapter 4 of your thesis are probably experts, and so they already know the common acronyms in your field.

For example, Monte Carlo (MC) is trivially used by anyone who knows molecular simulations and wouldn't need to be expanded more than once. On the other hand, acronyms of less common methods might warrant expansion once per chapter: Transition Matrix Monte Carlo (TMMC), Self-Learning Adaptive Umbrella Sampling (SLAUS), etc.

Another solution is to include a list of abbreviations and symbols at the end of your thesis!


Nuances: PhD F1 Visa/i20 issuance for someone who did their undergrad in the US

The main point is that the I-20 form is from the Department of Homeland Security and the F1 sticker is, like all visas, issued by the Department of State.

The F1 visa sticker in your passport is needed for the actual physical act of entering the country, and its validity has nothing to do with whether you're legally allowed to be in the country - that has to do with the dates on your (latest) I-20. This is why the stamp that you get in your passport when you enter the US has 'D/S' written on it, which means 'Duration of Status', meaning that you can stay in the US as long as you maintain your status as a student even if the sticker expires (but if you leave, you would still need a new sticker to re-enter the US). Conversely, if you stop being a student, you can't then use your F1 visa to enter the US even if the sticker still appears to be valid.

There is no way to apply for the F1 sticker without leaving the US (the department of state is fundamentally meant to work outside the US). It is highly suggested that you go through the process in your home country; technically it's not impossible to try in a third country, but there is a (small) possibility that they will reject your application as a citizen of a third country, unless you have a compelling reason for being there. Some US consulates, I believe, specifically say on their websites that they do not process visa applications from citizens of other countries.

What does this mean for you?

Don't worry, you'll have plenty of contact with the universities before they mail your new I-20. They are used to people in your situation, and they will ask you where to send your I-20. Alternatively, when you accepted an offer to a graduate program, directly contact the international students office and tell them where to send it, to avoid any controversy.
You don't need a new sticker to continue to be a legal resident of the US, as long as you get a fresh I-20. So you could have the university send you the I-20 directly, or have your parents mail it to you while you stay in the US. You only need to apply for a fresh sticker in your passport if you leave the US and wish to re-enter on the F1 status. (There is an exception for short travel to Canada and Mexico. )
Bear in mind that the sticker application process takes a bit of time. The break between undergrad and grad programs is probably the easiest time to apply for a new sticker. You can apply for a new F1 sticker even if your old one still has some time left in it. Probably good to apply sooner rather than later, given the state of US politics too.
The process for applying for a new sticker is the same as applying for a first one, except it might be easier since you've already had this visa and not caused any trouble.
There is a grace period where you are allowed to stay in the US between your undergrad I-20 expiring and your graduate I-20 starting.
You should confirm all of this with your local international students office, as well as the folks where you decide to go.

Best of luck with your applications!

PS: I think this is the right place for this question.


IEEE doesn't care: use whatever best communicates to your readers, and make sure you explain it if you aren't using a blatantly obvious notation.


This is a very applied field, I don't think there are PhD programs related to directly to underwater robots. I did my PhD in this exact field :) so most of this is my experience and knowledge of the field.

Generally you shouldn't worry much about what the PhD program says exactly, as this field is very application driven, so Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are usually designed and built in places where they are needed, close to shore or to oil and gas industries. This usually relates to PhD programs in marine or oceanographic sciences, but the most important thing is the advisor, who can guide and support you in your research.

In a University with "application" departments (like marine science) and "basic science" departments (like CS and Engineering), you can do a PhD in Science or Engineering of AUVs while working to solve some problem related to the application side.

A quick way is to go to Universities and Research Centers in Robotics, for which there are many and they usually cover application fields like underwater, space, rescue, etc. For example, Carnegie Mellon Uni has a Robotics PhD program, for which there should be Professors interested in Underwater Robotics. As you mentioned MIT also has a partnership with WHOI and they do a lot of Underwater Robotics.

But as you mentioned, not many Universities touch this subject. In general Research centers (not always affiliated to a University) usually have the lead in this topic.

In Europe, the leader is definitely the University of Girona with its CIRS research center. They design/build AUVs, and develop algorithms for autonomy. The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Bremen branch (where I work) also builds AUVs and algorithms for autonomy.

In the UK there is also the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton which does a lot of Marine Science supported by AUVs, so they also design/build AUVs and related algorithms. In Norway's NTNU there is AMOS.

I know that there are AUV many researchers in Asia, like at the University of Tokyo and the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.

This list is not exhaustive, AUVs are developed all around the world. About PhD positions, that is something that depends on funding, time and topics, so its up to you to search these. Hope this information helps.


How to translate foreign-language theses into English?

If you have access to the digital copies, then dump the entire thing into Google translate so you can skim read it. Having done that, it would be a good idea to find a native speaker and get them to check the translation of specific sections that seem relevant on the basis of the automated translations. I wouldn't suggest asking a native speaker to translate the whole thing, or even read the automatically generated translation of the entire thing.

Another thing you could do is see if you can find other papers that cite the papers that you're looking at. One of them may contain a summary that'll tell you if you need to bother pursuing that particular paper. This will be pot luck though, and it will be a lot easier to just use Google translate.

Of course, don't use Google's translations in your work; get a native speaker to help you when it comes to that.


My co-supervisor wants authorship in a paper he didn't contribute

Most journals have authorship policies. These are recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html), among others.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has guidance on how to avoid authorship disputes. https://publicationethics.org/files/2003pdf12_0.pdf

Be factual with your supervisor. Provide the authorship guidelines and ask him to list his contribution to the research article. You can explain that the culture on authorship has changed and that automatic authorship for higher level supervisors is no longer considered appropriate by publishers (as evidenced by the guidelines of the publication). Truthfully, it would be best if your host supervisor perform this deed because they are on an equal footing and apparently had some prior connection. Clearly, it puts you in a difficult situation.


What options do I have for publishing in an open way without expensive costs?

This is highly field-dependent, but there may possibly exist journals out there which will publish open-access for free. In my field it's common for papers to be embargoed for 6 months or a year, and then made open access, but again this varies from journal to journal and from field to field.

  However, since ArXiv is not a journal, would it be considered incorrect or misleading to call my paper a publication if I were to post it there?

Yes. The correct term for a paper that has been posted on the arXiv is "pre-print". This is not the same thing as a publication. To call your paper a publication it needs to have been published in a (reputable) journal i.e. to have gone through the peer review process.

  Is it frowned upon or does it look bad if I use my personal Gmail account for contact information?

This would be pretty unusual, and as a reader I would think twice about the legitimacy of the work if a personal email address was attached-- in fact (I may be wrong on this) but I believe you need an academic email address e.g. name@place.edu or name@place.ac.uk to submit to arXiv in the first place.

My advice: talk to your line manager at the company and make a case for publishing the work. It seems strange to me that they have had you write this paper but won't support publishing it.

I think it's also a good idea to talk to a member of academic staff in your university department if you can-- all the better if their area of expertise is related to your paper. Ask their advice about publication in your field. It may even be worth asking if they have time to read over the manuscript draft and provide some feedback.


How to write my project contribution in graduate application essay?

Simply describe the nature of each project and a title, perhaps the title of a publication if possible. and note that the work was done as part of coursework. The implication will be that the work is yours and also that there was some feedback on it.
If the others are co-authors you can describe your work/role as "principal investigator", but make sure that the others agree with that characterization.


Should I always force the use of active voice in my dissertation?

The goal of style guides is to give suggestions for how to write well. These are guidelines and suggestions, not immutable rules. Once you understand what the base suggestions are, and why they’re there, you can begin to understand when not to apply them. As you said, if you don’t know who the “actor” is, an active-voice sentence becomes more difficult to make clear without sounding stilted.

(I’ve tried writing a paper entirely in active voice when I was still a student. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the results.)


Does cum laude mean the end of an academic career in Germany

Well, yes, but also no.
Permanent academic positions that are not professorships are relatively rare in Germany. Since most researchers want to eventually have a permanent position, it is in the interest of all long-term researchers to eventually become "berufungsfähig" (suitable for becoming a tenured associate or full professor).
The vast majority of the universities are public in Germany, and hence the laws of the respective state regulate hiring in the universities. All(?) "Landeshochschulgesetze" (law on higher education) list mandatory requirements for candidates for professor positions.
For instance, the respective law of the state of North-Rhine Westfalia (that has the largest population) states as a requirement:

besondere Befähigung zu wissenschaftlicher Arbeit, die in der Regel durch die Qualität einer Promotion nachgewiesen wird;

In English, this means that the candidate must show a substantial/remarkable/special ability to research work, which is normally indicated by the quality of the PhD. Given that PhDs are thesis-only in Germany (while the defense may also include more general questions about the field of work), this means that the PhD thesis should be particularly good and have a corresponding grade. The state of Lower Saxony has in their law that the PhD should be above average, and given that there are four passing grades, "cum laude" is probably below average.
Now what does should mean concretely? It means that if a hiring committee wants to hire somebody with a bad PhD thesis, they risk the overall hiring process being delayed or even canceled. There may be objections, candidates not snatching the precious professorship may sue, or the respective ministry of education may intervene or simply refuse to send the offer letter to the successful candidate. There have surely been cases of pea counting as far as the formalities of candidates to be hired are concerned in the past, and this adds to the risk. Hiring committees and universities will probably take the risk if there is a very good and demonstratable reason for why the candidate is excellent despite a bad PhD thesis, depending on their legal interpretation of the should and how much they are willing to risk it. In any case, certainly, those candidates with a good PhD thesis have a substantial head-start, and it's quite hard to catch up for candidates with a grade lower than "Magna Cum Laude".
Having said this, there are also other permanent academic positions, such as in Fraunhofer or Max Planck institutes that may or may not have similar requirement. So a Cum Laude may not be a big deal if they want you for a different reason.


What does this number represent in the information about an article?

It is indeed a page number, as evidenced by this overview of the issue and the fact that that very article’s pages are numbered accordingly.

The reason for this is that Physical Review B is a very big journal and (in 2000) used running page numbers for all articles of an issue, which in turn spanned the entire year.


This largely depends on the conference. The way that conferences usually work (at least in my field for computer science - subdiscipline software engineering or human-computer interaction) is that once the reviews come in, the program committee meets and then discusses which papers will be accepted and which ones are rejected. This often comes down to how many papers there are, how many they can accept (subject to things including a mandatory acceptance rate, how big the conference can be, etc) and what other papers are like (if your conference has very few "strong accepts" that year then weak accept is pretty good).

Usually, a paper with few "strong accepts" could end up around the "middle" of the pack are more likely to be held up for discussion where they have a chance for rejection. Most PCs won't extensively discuss a paper where all of the reviewers say "strong accept".

So, we don't know if it'll be published in the conference. However, in general, the more strong accepts a paper gets, the more likely the paper will be accepted.


Sense of humor allowed in academic writing?

There is nothing wrong with humour in scientific writing but it is still advised against. The reason for this is a question of communication.

Consider that the purpose is to convey an idea as succinctly and precisely as you can and you want the recipient to understand everything that you write (my experience says this will never happen, anyway). If you introduce jokes, you run several risks: (1) the reader does not understand the joke, (2) the reader misunderstands the joke and (3) the reader is offended by the joke. These are not outcomes you wish to see and realizing that not everyone's taste is like your own it is easy top realize that the outcome is sure to be one of the three above in some cases. Jokes are different in different cultures and countries so what works in one place may not work in another.

So, as I see it the choice is how much you are willing to gamble. Reviewers and editors may of course weed out things that go too far so what you write is not necessarily what comes into print in the end but it still is mostly up to you.


In fact something great happened: Your research did have impact in the real world and seems to be useful - not everyone can say that!

When it comes to legal issues, things are usually complicated and will involve copyright issues (of yours and of the journal / publisher) as well as authorship issues. Those vary between countries and it will be difficult to give an advise without proper juristical background and line by line comparison of your publications and the library code.

But as I understood your question, you are more interested in the academic credit, and therefore I would suggest to contact the authors, tell them you are happy that your work is used by them, and offer to be part of the development team. You might add a phrase like it would be a pleasure to be listed as author of the library - an in most cases they will understand...


Seeking a permanent job during a postdoc in a different country/continent: official and moral responsibilities

Postdoc advisers understand that postdocs are temporary, and that their goal is to find a permanent position. If such a position comes along -- at times we cannot always predict -- then we're generally happy for our postdocs. At least that's the case for me.

In other words, I think it's ok if you mention that you are looking for jobs and may send out applications soon. You may want to re-assure your adviser that you have every intention to continue working on the project you're on until some position can be found, as well as finish any of the work you started even if you move somewhere else. It's a waste of an adviser's resources to pay someone for work that ultimately never gets finished, but it's an entirely different thing to pay someone for 6 months who will finish up the experiments, proofs, theorems, or the writing started earlier after they moved. In that case, as an adviser, I really only paid for 6 months, but get all of the work.


Is an academic degree an honor, a title, or both?

Depends on the country and education system.

For example, in English, 'bachelor' doesn't mean anything but that you finished that level of education.  In Spanish, finishing university doesn't mean a person gets recognized as having the degree: there are further methods to achieve that (titulaciòn), after which the government officially recognizes the degree and the title that comes white it like 'ingeniero' (engineer) or 'abogado' (lawyer). That is why in some countries the degree is added as a title at the start of a person's name.


How does PLOS ONE maintain its impact factor?

There are, I think, two distinct factors at work that may help explain some of your puzzlement:

Your field's impact factor is not academia's impact factor. For example, society journals in my field have an impact factor of ~ 5, and some of the big names for very splashy studies have impact factors ranging from 20 to 56. Depending on the balance of fields submitting to PLOS ONE, their impact factor may be coming from more cited fields.
Long-tailed citation papers. Impact factors, like many averages, are susceptible to long-tail effects. PLOS ONE is an open-access journal, and a highly visible one. It's possible that the occasional highly accessible generalist paper makes it there, and yields a large number of citations as a result, pulling up the overall impact factor.

Both of these are helped, in my opinion, by the lack of review for "importance" - beyond your suggestion that this does result in less important papers ending up in  PLOS ONE, it's also a benefit to papers that don't quite "fit" in highly specialized journals, but may still be impactful.


Think for yourself. If you're very much interested in Genomics, then working with this Professor would be beneficial for you in the long run. But you're not at all interested in learning those programming languages, then it would be better if you decline his offer. Please keep in mind that you won't always get such an opportunity. So, think we'll and decide. All the best!


Is it a good idea to have really busy advisor?

In general, the answer is no. You normally want an advisor who can spend time and effort with you. This becomes more important at higher levels of education. A too busy doctoral advisor, for example, is deadly. But the specific case may not match the general case.

Much will depend on the nature of the thesis you need to write. How "far out" from your normal studies is it? How well do you already understand the problem and see a path to its solution? A deep research topic in, say mathematics, when you don't yet know the required basics, might be too much. A philosophical paper (in any field) in which you give evidence for and against some point of view might be just fine.

At the undergrad level, having an advisor who is simultaneously doing a PhD might be an advantage as he is connected to a lot of ideas. If you are depending on the advisor for ideas for the thesis this could be a good thing.

How self motivated are you? How dedicated and hard working? You won't get a lot of face time or long answers to email from such a person. Is that ok? Can you push through with only minimal advice? Say in the time it takes to ride a couple of floors in an elevator? Some advisors are good at saying the right thing and saying it quickly.

You write that he works in an area that you are interested in. That is important. Maybe very important. What are your other options? Either for advisors or for topics.

Ultimately, though, it is is a tradeoff of many factors that only you can judge. You might make the right decision or not. Try to not make the worst decision.


Conference proceeding in a regular issue of a journal (pros and cons)

After the passage you quote it says

  ISMB 2018 provides authors of accepted papers an oral presentation to provide an oral summary of their work. All presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes including 3-4 minutes for discussion.

It seems like this organization has both a regular journal and a conference. If you submit as a journal article it would be a peer-reviewed journal article. If you submit as a conference paper it would be a peer-reviewed conference presentation.

In my field (computer science) these would likely be viewed as being the same in terms of prestige, but this is not true in most fields. Your advisor would be a good resource for feeling out how people in your field view conference papers vs journal papers.


Supervisor offered work in lab, I accepted. What are the next steps?

If somebody has invited you to join their lab but the next steps for doing that are not clear, it is absolutely appropriate to email them to ask them what the next steps are and what you can do to help the process.


Contacting professors about research: if they don't respond to my emails, how long should I wait to follow up?

I agree with badroit's answer. I would also like to add the following:

I don't know what was in your original email, so this may not apply.

However, if your email requires some thought or effort on the part of the professor to respond to, then it will sit in his inbox until he has a chance to sit down and compose a proper response. Since you are an unknown student and he is very busy, this is low on his list of priorities and he may never get to it.

On the other hand, if you politely follow up a week or two later with an email in which you ask to meet:

  Dear Professor Y,

  I am going to be a student in your department next semester.

  I have been reading about your paper on Y and I am very interested in talking to you about it; do you think we could schedule a time to meet next week?

This email is easy and quick to respond to ("Yes, how about Tuesday at 10?"), so you may be more likely to get a response.

(I know this doesn't make sense, since the professor would still have to expend time and effort to meet with you. But spending a half hour on a meeting on some future date seems much less of a burden than spending ten minutes right now to send an email to an unknown student.)


Earning post-graduate math hours after your master's

Many graduate programs have an option for "special graduate students" to enroll on a part time basis.  You could check with universities in your area to see whether or not this is possible. Realize that you'll have to pay tuition and won't be eligible for financial support if you go this route.


How much does "having publications" mean to a undergraduate direct-PhD applicant?

While I can't comment about microelectronics or EE specifically, I should point out that many US graduate schools admit external candidates only to a Ph.D. program; there is no option available for admission to a master's program en route to a doctoral program. Consequently, the students met the requirements for admission to the school, period.

Research experience is always helpful, particularly because it gives you a potential letter of reference from someone who can directly comment on your skills as a researcher, which is the biggest thing that graduate departments are looking for. They want candidates who are capable of doing high-quality research, and having confirmation of that—whether or not there are papers already written—is a vital component of that process.

I would also suggest it's probably not worth it to try to compete with faceless peers whose credentials you can't guess. That's a hopeless endeavor that will just make you frustrated and dispirited. Just do the best job that you can with the resources available to you, rather than worrying about "keeping up with the Joneses."


With regards to PhD theses, what level of knowledge should one assume the reader to have? And, if needed, where should basic information be placed?

Generally, the target audience of your doctoral dissertation is your doctoral dissertation committee. Write to their level.

In disciplines where your dissertation gets turned into a book (or series of articles), then you may consider writing at a lower level or with explanation for people outside of your specific subfield. You can certainly do this if you have the time or luxury to do so, but if you are short on time or funds, then it is perfectly acceptable to do what is noted in paragraph #1.


Pros and Cons of Enrolling in coursework units during a PhD

I don't know how lecturers are paid in your education system.  In most cases, pay does not depend on number of students.  You are probably right that the lecturer doesn't have a direct financial interest in whether you attend or not.

However, it sounds like your institution has an interest - they get paid more if you enroll in the class.  There is a good chance that the institution's rules require that you enroll in order to take it, and if so it is probably the lecturer's job to enforce it.

If you are not sure of the rules, you could ask a lecturer whether it is allowed to sit in on the class without enrolling.  If you know it is not allowed, you should not ask to do it - you put the lecturer in an uncomfortable position, and they can get in trouble if the administration finds out they gave permission.

Many universities allow an "audit" status which allows you to attend the lectures, but does not require you to do any of the assigned work.  If that's what you're looking for, you might try to find out whether that is an option for you.


Finding a Professor for my Honors Project

For what it is worth, I successfully 'applied' for a similar program as an undergrad simply by sending emails to the potential mentors. I used a one or two paragraph pitch, then asked if they would be willing to explore the possibilities. This meant that the professors could have agreed to meet me to discuss the project without committing themselves to anything. It also meant that if I had decided that I didn't want to work with a particular professor after meeting them in person, I had left myself an option to gracefully decline.

(I ended up with a very successful honors project in this way. Good luck with your endeavors!)


Organizing time in a flipped classroom course

This may take several iterations to get complete and correct.
There are two aspects: What happens when you are face to face with students. What happens when students study/learn on their own.
What happens when you are face to face with students.
First, I suggest that when you have students together with you (and staff) that you do only those things that can't be done otherwise. Even some discussion can be done otherwise if you use a chatroom or similar tool.
The typical flipped classroom uses the Face Time (FT) for student practice under observation. One way is to hand out worksheets at the start and have students work on them as you (and staff) wander around looking for blocked students. In CS you can have programming exercises, in mathematics you can have a variety of problems of differing difficulty. In a writing class you can give a writing exercise, in a history class some online research problems (caveat: not my field).
One effective way to manage such a "learning lab" is to have students work in pairs (and rotate the pairs). This results in fewer blockages. If students work alone then when they get blocked they stay blocked until someone on staff gets released from another conversation to help them. Pairs can help one another since two students seldom get blocked at the same point. You can even permit a pair to turn to an adjacent pair for help if no staff is available at that moment.
But I wouldn't "waste" such time on lecture - broadcasting. An exception might be made for a short "hints" lecture if a lot of students are seemingly blocked. Nearly everything you want to say (and write on a whiteboard) during a lecture is available from other sources except in very advanced or specialized courses. Students need practice and feedback. The FT is used to provide both of these.
It is possible, though sometimes difficult to arrange, to encourage the stronger students to serve as tutors for their weaker classmates in a pair. This works well enough as small scale when you know the students, including something of their skills and personalities, but becomes riskier at large scale. Watching someone work isn't the same as working, of course and it is useful for students to struggle with hard problems, perhaps especially in math. This is one reason to rotate pairs. And you have to observe interactions and possibly intervene. But at least you have the opportunity for this when they work under your view rather than when they work alone or in groups you aren't aware of.
What happens when students study/learn on their own.
The other aspect of learning is the delivery of the material for the course. In a flipped classroom much/most/all of this is done when the instructor isn't co-located with the students. There are a variety of ways to provide this and I strongly suggest that you use many of them, not just video. Textbooks are still useful, even if you also use lecture or video or whatever.
But the purpose of this "between FT sessions" work is to prepare them to be effective later during FT.
You can expand and refine your lecture notes and give them to students directly. You will get feedback from them on the quality when they ask questions. You will eventually have your own textbook for the course if you do this consistently and intelligently, avoiding plagiarizing the works of others. You can provide simple exercises that will be expanded on and deepened later during FT.
You can provide lists of internet resources for many courses. In math and CS, for example, wikipedia is very reliable nearly always. The errors that appear there tend to disappear quickly, especially for non-controversial subjects.
If you make videos, I suggest that you make a lot of very short ones. They should be about 10 minutes (ideal) but not more than 15. The should be subtitled if at all possible and should come with a transcript. The latter is easy as you need the transcript (notes) to create it in the first place. A longer topic is covered by a series of short videos. Make an index available.
Short videos have two advantages. For the student, they are less likely to become disinterested or lose their train of thought. You can also provide a few solidifying exercises with each such video segment to firm up the main idea. Students should still be encouraged (required) to take their own notes as this is an important element of active learning. The advantage for the instructor is that a poor segment or one with errors is easier to replace than part of a longer one.
The transcript of a video can be annotated with time marks for important points so that students can "rewind" to something important easily. It can also be annotated with "links" to text or online resources that expand on the current idea.
Scheduling
Traditionally a course is a certain mixture of time spent with an instructor (presentation) and time spent elsewhere but working effectively. In the US the tradition has been a 1:2 ratio. If a course meets for an hour then the student is expected to work an additional two hours. The ratio and the total don't need to change, though you have a bit more flexibility in a flipped classroom.
Say you have an hour for FT. You can then require two hours outside. About an hour of that can be things like video or book/notes study and about another hour can be spent on traditional homework. The ratio of presentation to study needn't change, not the ratio of in class to out of class time.
But it is probably a mistake to try to compress too much presentation into too short a time, even with 10 minute videos. The course is spread out over many weeks traditionally for an educational reason. Presentation needs to be interspersed with practice and feedback. It is just that you are personally present for part of the practice and less (or none) of the presentation.
Making it work.
You ask for ideas about guaranteeing that the students do the non FT work required. One way (they will hate this) is to require them to keep a notebook and to bring it to class. The notebook is subject to inspection by staff. Since you observe the students, and assuming the scale isn't impossible, you get a sense of who is learning and who isn't. For the latter group, a look at their notebook might tell you a lot, not only about their dedication, but also about their misconceptions as they occur. The notebook is the "ticket" to the FT session.
In a traditional classroom lecture, looking over your shoulder makes it easy to see who is taking notes and who isn't. But in that scenario you also don't know if they are putting required time in outside class, so you require things to be handed in. In a flipped classroom that is also flipped. It is easy to see them getting the exercise but hard to observe them following the material. So you need procedures to check on what you can't observe - hence a notebook open to inspection or some similar thing.
Another check on students doing the out of class work is a very short "pop" quiz at the beginning of each FT session.
And it is also useful to have students hand in index cards at the start and/or the end of such a session that contain questions for you.
Beyond the flipped classroom
It is possible to make learning continuous without breaks. Every day, any time of day. One way to do this is with a simple two way asynchronous communication tool. Students can ask questions whenever they arise. You, the staff, and every student see the questions. Anyone, including students can answer the questions. You will find this reduces staff time somewhat, though you have to read the whole stream. You only need to reply when no one else does or someone replies incorrectly.
You need some rules for this of course. No personal questions (grades,...) are asked on such a list and in some classes you don't want to permit solutions to be posted other than by staff.


I've been living in Bonn for about two years now and have a monthly budget that is lower than yours (750€), but I find that this is more than enough for a relatively normal life. You should be fine as long as you live in a Studentenwerk dorm; I myself live in such a dorm and have to pay about 300€ monthly (a fee that includes both rent and utilities).

You also have to pay semester fees to your university, but that's just once a semester and it's not such a big deal (~250€ in general).

By the way, I am a scholarship holder, so I didn't mention health insurance as part of my costs; the DAAD is paying this for me. You should count on about 80€ for that as well.


Question regarding recommendation letters for statistics graduate applications

It is more important that the letter writer can speak positively about your abilities and future prospects than it is what specific field they represent. Getting a letter from a statistics prof who doesn't know you wouldn't help much no matter their reputation. Go with letters from people who know and respect you and want to see you succeed.


My advisor demands second authorship, but my collaborator contributed much more than him. I don't want to be unethical, what should I do?

Your supervisor sounds most unreasonable.  "The reason he claims for the second position is that my university pays my scholarship not my colloborators's school." Perhaps you should add the president of your university as the second author.  (Of course, don't actually do that: it would expose your supervisor's immature behavior in a very passive-aggressive way.)

My feeling is that given the callowness of your supervisor, you should consider yourself fortunate that you are first author. Isn't that what really matters?  That's not a rhetorical question, because in my field ordering of authors is strictly alphabetical, but I don't know of a field in which being second author means much.  So it may well be that your supervisor is just being petty without really harming any of your collaborators.  Anyway, it seems to me that you have already discharged your ethical responsibilities by suggesting what you think is a good ordering of the coauthors.  If the coauthors other than you disagree with the ordering among non-first-authors, isn't it really up to them?  If your other coauthors are among the ones who are advising you to put Professor Immature as second author: under the circumstances, I would go with that.  If on the other hand they object: well, of course they have that right, and they should hash it out with your supervisor.


For articles with more than 7 authors, is it compulsory to shorten it or just suggested?

This depends entirely on the style sheet you are using. For example, MLA demands "et al." for three or more authors; APA for six or more. The right thing would be to familiarize yourself with the house style of the publication you are targeting.


How to stay on top of recent literature?

During my PhD, I subscribed to the RSS feeds of the journals I would regularly read (started with 6 of them, ended up with a dozen). I would skim through titles of all new articles, and read abstracts of those whose title drew my eye. I then found out that some journals (J. Chem. Phys. in that particular case) offer specific RSS feeds for each of their sections, in addition to the “whole journal” feed. That helped reducing the number of journals I was skimming through.
Now, after the end of my PhD, my research interest are broader, the number of journals I like to watch is larger but my time is more limited. This system didn't work anymore, and I set up a new system, which has worked well for a few years. I use bibliographic databases (SciFinder and Web of Science; but I'm sure Google Scholar and PubMed have the same features) to create publication and citation alerts. Here's what I have set:

Citation alerts for all my own papers: if someöne cites my work, there's a good chance I'll be interested in their paper. This one has two additional “strategic” bonuses: you get to keep an eye on your competition, and you can suggest newer work to other authors when relevant (“hi there, I saw your recent paper citing my 2008 article on X, I thought you might be interested on a new extension of this algorithm that we published this year”).

Publication alerts for major players in the field of interest: I have 10 to 20 of those, watching all papers these people publish.

Citation alerts for some seminal or high-impact papers by others in the field: a good way to see how a new idea is adopted/improved by the community. Those tend to trigger a massive number of cites, so you may want to get rid of them after some time. I have between 5 and 10 of those alerts at a given time.

The only drawback to this method: database updates tend to lag somewhat behind the RSS feeds of the journals themselves, so you get papers that are 2 to 8 weeks old.

In addition, use conferences to stay on top/catch up with the literature:

Look at contributions made, see what's new and go check the relevant recent publications.

Even if you're not at the conference, look at the online program and see what looks new.

If you're attending, talk with people… you can also use that opportunity to ask some people (whom you do know well enough):

Have you seen that new technique by the team at MIT? it seems to work really well… I was wondering: what has caught your eye in the recent literature?


Early career advice for Jr. Researcher on selectivity of authorship credit for collaboration in areas outside one's specialization

I don't think that you're too picky or that you should relax your standards.

If you are responsible for creating a statistical model to test the data, then you should know everything there is to know about the process that generated the data that you are modeling. If you do not know everything and if you don't have access to all the data and any material relevant to how the data was generated (e.g. protocols), then you cannot in good conscience model the data. The reason for this is that you don't know where to look for problems that might invalidate your model. You might, therefore, overlook something. And if the wrong statistical model is used, then the sampling distribution of the parameters and your test statistics will be wrong. They will be wrong because the premises of your argument will be false.

Ideally, as the person conducting the statistical analysis, you will be involved in collecting the data. This means that you should be involved in designing the experiment. Fisher once said the following about involving a statistician after the fact:

  "To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of."

In the case of an observational study this might not be as bad as you could collect other data after you're involved. But it is not ideal.

What I would recommend you to do is to use the argument that you cannot possibly model the data if you don't have access to all the materials and know how the data were generated. You can use this argument to justify yourself to your co-workers. And you can use this argument to justify yourself towards yourself for not working on certain projects. You're the expert here and you need to tell yourself and others what you need to be able to do your work. And if what you need isn't there, then you can't do your work. Period. This way you avoid re-thinking, worrying, and arguing about what you should work on and what not.

In addition, I would recommend you to document everything for each paper to make it clear what your responsibilities were and what the responsibilities of other people were. In particular, in those cases where you did not have access to the raw data.

As for the consequences of being part of a poorly conducted research. It will tarnish your reputation. By how much depends on what the norm is in your field and in your peer group. Your reputation is how you are judged by the standards of other people. As I am not in your field or know you (or what research you were involved in or would be), I cannot say how much of an impact this will have. But it will definitely be bad for your reputation. It might be worth it though. Although this depends on what your goals in life are.


What should a student do about a professor who uses class time poorly?

I would encourage you to view this not as poor teaching style, necessarily, but as a particular teaching style which may not suit you.
You should not take for granted the fact that this teacher actually seems to care about the material and be excited about it. That is a great opportunity for you to learn and you should take advantage of it if you can. Ask questions, try to gain some of this person's intuition and insight into the topic - you are probably paying for access to this professor, and this is a way to learn things you cannot learn from the book.
You should describe the teaching style in any reviews you submit about the course or professor. Some students would love the type of course you describe, and some (such as yourself) will not find that it meets their needs. This is the proper way to give feedback. Complaining to the administration will probably not be effective because the professor is not doing anything wrong (except perhaps running classes too long), just adopting a particular teaching style.


Should I explain that I cannot finish my current master due to religious discrimination when applying for another graduate program?

My advice is to state facts not conclusions.

For example, you should not say:

  It's impossible to finish my degree here because they discriminate against Christians.

Instead, you could say:

  I finished all my coursework, but I have been unable to get a spot in a lab -- there are only 10 lab spots for 40 students. Further, two different professors told me they would give priority to Muslim students (I am not Muslim). Given this, my best option seems to be to restart at a different university.

By the way, I also wanted to comment on this line:

  asking for my motivation to restart the Master's and not run for a PhD

In some fields and some countries, it is common to go straight from undergraduate to the PhD without getting a master's. This professor may be asking specifically why you want to try again to get a master's, as opposed to enrolling directly in a PhD program.

Edit: inspired by @arp's answer, I'll expand my script to address the possible confusion about master's vs. PhD

  I applied for a master's degree because I will be leaving [current univ] without a master's. I finished all my coursework, but I have been unable to get a spot in a lab -- there are only 10 lab spots for 40 students. Further, two different professors told me they would give priority to Muslim students (I am not Muslim). Given this, my best option seems to be to restart at a different university. I would certainly be open to pursuing a PhD at [new univ] if that is an option, but my understanding is that I will need to complete my master's first.


I know a number of independent or semi-independent researchers who have set up a small company for themselves to affiliate with (e.g., the whimsically named Turing Ate My Hamster, Ltd.), for various different reasons.

This is pretty easy to do and, I believe, achieves everything that you are looking for from a virtual institute.  It also has the advantage of not being fake in any way---just very small.


Do authors usually receive a copy of the whole journal issue when they publish a paper?

Some journals do, and some journals don't.  In my experience, it seems pretty random which do and don't. Off the top of my head, I am not certain whether Science does.


Is it acceptable to request information from US math departments about the job placement of recent PhD graduates?

You could email either the departmental graduate advisor, chair, or POI but be prepared to be disappointed -- either because they don't respond or they don't have the data you want:

Until you've been offered a position, you are just one of a hundred plus applicants. Your likelihood of getting a response improves when they are courting you not when you're an unknown student emailing out of the blue
Running this type of stats takes time and energy as many departments don't have a mechanism for tracking former students. We often only do this on a departmental level during an external review (if even then) and so the data can be several years old and not very granular
individual labs or professors may track this but their n can be so small as to be meaningless (is a prof who places 2/5 really better than a prof who is placing 3/8).


Bioinformatics pipeline flow chart guidelines?

This sadly doesnt seem to be stated as a question proper for the site as noted in the comments. Perhaps you can rephrase it and add some examples.

From personal experience, UML is widely accepted for the symbols and flow of charts on various charts. There are software to so it easily like DIA (openware), flowchart (online) or Microsoft Visio. But there are plenty of sowftwares to do it. What you must abide to, however, is to be consistent.


Will a low grade in my final year of an undergraduate program affect my chances of being accepted into graduate school?

This is March.  Isn't a little late to start applying for fall?

If you get a conditional acceptance somewhere, you should be able to satisfy the conditions with summer study.

For a PhD, grades are not the be-all end-all -- as long as you are not falling out of good standing.

As a PhD student, you'll need to take responsibility for your progress.

You could start preparing for your new role as a student by pretending that you are already a PhD student, and focusing on things that matter more than a letter grade.

Think: what other criteria can help you decide whether to drop a particular course?


At what stage of research career one can write a 'tutorial article'?

Actually, I find that a relatively inexperienced (but not naive) person can write a valuable tutorial for novices. The reason is that they may remember how hard it was to get started and, especially, to gain insight. More experienced people, especially experts, often lose the sense of how difficult it once was.
I once specifically wrote a treatise on a topic I was learning in order to capture the wonder of it all along with the difficulty and what to look out for. It turned out pretty well.


Can this be counted as a research experience for Grad school?

Sure it counts as research experience!

"Research experience" is different than asking for a completed research project or a publication. It just means you have some experience with some aspect(s) of the research process.

When speaking/writing about the experience, just be clear and honest about what parts you were involved with, and show your understanding of how what you did fit into the overall picture of the project(s) you participated in. The general format is roughly: "I worked on a project to improve multiple crop yields using modern furniture design. After reviewing the literature in the area of agricultural design and art deco stylization of farm equipment, I designed and analyzed the effectiveness of apple hammocks on crop yield, which led to blah blah blah. I also assisted with other projects, designing pineapple cradles, a hollow wine cork, and system for drying finger towels more efficiently."

The people evaluating your application want to know what you did and what parts of the research process you have experience with, so don't worry if your experience wasn't completely end-to-end from concept to publication, that's the norm.


Is there a special name for a contributed talk given longer time slot?

This sounds like a fairly unusual format; I don't think there is a standard name for it that would be recognizable.

If you want to highlight your contribution you could always add some extra description of the content of some sort.

In this case the length of your talk might set it apart, as it implies a bigger contribution to the conference and shows you have experience in doing more than just the typical brief talk:

  "Sproingity Sproing", International Symposium on Blahdy Blah, March 2017. (40 minute oral presentation).


I'd recommend your second option. As for being embarrassed by your old paper, you could alleviate the problem by adding, either to the arXiv's comment field  or to the paper itself, something like "This paper is a report on an undergraduate research project and there is no plan to publish it."  (You might also point out explicitly the  change in the spelling of your name, so that people aren't confused by it.)


Should I (an undergrad) call potential industry research intern supervisor by first name?

Since he is academically your superior and you are trying to get a research position, I'd continue addressing him as Dr. X. I'd continue doing this until he directs you otherwise.

Now, if you get the internship I would continue addressing him as Dr. In person, at least initially. Eventually you may notice other people who work under him that call him by Bill. That would be a good time to say "I notice everyone else addresses you as Bill, would you prefer I address you as Bill or Dr. X.?"

Either way, don't get in a hurry to be on a first name basis.


Is there any advantage of putting source tex file on arXiv?

Arxiv mandates uploading the source of any PDF file generated from Latex code. You will not be able to upload only the PDF version in this case (unless you succeed to game the system).

Why do the require the source? This saves quite a lot of space (50k-100k source vs. 500-900k PDF) and there are some additional reasons. As the other comments mention - the full explanations are in http://arxiv.org/help/faq/whytex


What is the difference between the MBA and EMBA?

Both MBA and EMBA are Master's of Business Administration programs whose learning objectives are identical.

MBA usually means full-time MBA, and EMBA is normally taught part-time (could be modular, evenings, weekends, etc).

However, there is a twist! There are two kinds of EMBA programs - just part-time versions of full-time MBA programs, which are geared for working professionals, and truly "executive" MBA programs, which seek to recruit senior executives and deliver their teaching globally, often in partnership with other leading business schools.

What's "better" depends on where you are in your career, what reasons you have for doing an MBA, and what mode of delivery works best for you in your current circumstances.


How do you enforce handwriting standards for homework assignments as a TA?

My approach is simple- homework is submitted as a typed .pdf file, no exceptions.  Homework is submitted online through the course management system (Instructure's Canvas in our case), which enforces the required file extension.

Yes, this means that my students need to learn how to produce typed mathematical equations.  They're welcome to use LaTeX (probably the best choice in the long term), Google Docs (which has a pretty intuitive system for math formulas that's adequate for most purposes), MS Word (which has an awfully complicated and hard to use equation editor), Apple Pages, or whatever software they like, but they have to convert the output to pdf so that I don't have to deal with all of these different word processing software packages.


Good source for pre PhD level papers/dissertations in Mathematics

Your best source of such information would be to look for electronic repositories that are at least partially "open." The openThesis repository offers one such source, and you might find some information on sites like academia.edu.

An alternate source would be to look at individual school's repositories. For instance, MIT's DSpace offers copies of many recent MIT thesis and dissertations, which can be previewed by anyone, although you need to be a member of the MIT community in order to be able to download and print documents from the site.


Submit manuscript to tier A conference or wait and submit to A* conference?

Suppose you have a manuscript and you have just missed the deadline for an A* conference. Should I submit to the next tier A conference or wait until for the A* conference to come around again?

This depends on a number of factors:

How likely do you think your paper is to be accepted in the A* conference? If this is your absolute best, cream-of-the-crop paper and you are confident it will go through, then submitting to a weaker conference just because you did not want to wait will feel like waste down the road. If the A* conference felt like a long shot anyway, go ahead and submit now.
How likely are you to get scooped? If you are doing cutting-edge research in a trending topic, you may want to go for the A conference simply because you are afraid that somebody else may publish before you if you don't.
How important is timely publishing for your content? Many great research papers are in essence timeless, but occasionally one has produced a paper that is of value to the community right now, but which may be much less interesting in a year (e.g., some empirical studies in fast-moving fields are like that). In that case you should submit to the A conference now, because there is a very real danger that the paper will not be good enough for the A* paper in a year anyway.
How important is having the paper out soon for your career progression? E.g., if you are handing in your PhD in a year, or plan to be on the job market in a year, or plan to hand in this selective personal grant in the next year, then having another published A paper may be better than a potential A* paper that comes "too late".
How much value is (in your field and your circles) placed on the "esteem" of the venue? That is, what do you estimate how much more valuable the same paper will be for your career if published in an A* venue rather than an A venue? In a perfect world, it would not matter. In the real world, as for instance in my field, the venue a publication appeared in is ultimately more important in career decisions on all levels than the actual content.


Letter of recommendation from a deceased advisor

I can't think of a reason why it should not be sent. The professor wrote it, his (untimely) passing shouldn't affect its being sent out. It may be a good idea to have the secretary include a note that this was written prior to the professor's passing, simply to avoid any questions of someone else writing it.

If you have specific requirements for the job process (I'm not familiar with MathJobs), contact the site and/or the places where you're applying. While unusual, this isn't that uncommon, and any respectable program should be willing to work with you on this.


Should I just move on if a professor doesn't answer my emails requesting a letter of recommendation?

Stop by his office (if in town) or pick up the blower.  Just ask him directly if he'll do it or not.  A lot of people are not so email/text centric.  He'll either say yes or no, but at least you'll know the answer.  (And if he says no, just drop it and move on--don't argue.)

Personally, I wouldn't cross off and move on, just because of not responding to email.  Especially if he's the best one.  He is probably just busy.  Or a procrastinator.

Voice or face to face are direct.  An email is like a letter.  Easy to ignore, to get to it later (which becomes never), etc.

When you do confront him if he says, he's unsure of what you did, offer to give him some bullet points and a BRIEF explanation of what you're going after and key features to emphasize.  (In the nature of making his job easier.)


At my university we use Zoom.

It allows you to host a room, share screens, create "breakout rooms" for group work, etc. Don't know what the limitations are as far as how much the free version gets you, but it would be worth poking around with.


Promoting research papers with targeted ads

Actually the practice is old, though using Facebook may be new. My old alma mater regularly sends out publications and news items "promoting" research at the university. I think the intent is more to promote the university itself, however, though some of the news items are worth a look if the research suggests new breakthroughs in, say, medicine. And, I suspect that the practice has always included a certain amount of "targeting", though using older technologies. A special newsletter for billionaire donors, for example.

But, yes, there are ethical issues, and the university needs to consider the impacts of such things. I have doubts about "using a project's money". I don't know if that was the case or whether it was just the normal PR practice from funds allocated for that. And promoting dodgy research would have serious ethical implications, of course.

Note that my alma mater is a large US State funded place (an R1). In a sense, what they are doing is saying to the general public: Look at us, we do great things here.

And that same general public actually provides serious funding for the place via taxes and grants. So, pretty natural, so far as that goes. In fact, not reporting back to the public in some way about how the money gets spent would have its own ethical issues.


Can I apply for a post-doc in global studies in North America?

I can only speak for the US.

Yes!  US universities routinely hire postdocs from all over the world.  A few positions may be reserved for US citizens, due to funding requirements, but those will be indicated in the postings.

As one way to check, go to the web site of a department that interests you, find the web pages of some of the postdocs, and read their CVs.


Is an engineering PhD enough to publish math stats research?

No formal credential is required for scientific publication in any discipline.

What is required is good work, presented well in a context in which the reviewers can understand your results and their significance to the community with which you are communicating.

That often strongly correlates with having a Ph.D. in the discipline in which you are publishing, since that is the most straight-forward manner in which to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for effectively engaging with such a community.  There are many other ways to get engaged with a scientific discipline, however.

For example, you're coming up on another good opportunity for shifting between communities, however, which is getting a postdoc in the area in which you work.  Given what you have described of your situation, I would suggest following through to completion with your Ph.D. work, while simultaneously continuing to explore your alternate interests and looking for a good postdoc to help you shift.


Publishing journal articles based on dissertation

It is often possible to republish your dissertation as articles but it depends on the publishers and it sometimes requires permission.

Journal publishers will generally not publish work that is published elsewhere but dissertations are a common exception. This page run by the MIT libraries lists many science and engineering publishers and their rules about publishing articles that first appeared in dissertations. For other publishers, you'll need to check websites or ask journal staff or editor.


I suggest some ways of becoming up to date:

Following the related top scientists and authors on that field on Google Scholar
Following the related top researchers and professors web sites and their research lab and groups publications.
Ask to contribute to work for or work with them.
Check related Linked-In groups to know more about academia and industry.
Visit their labs and talk with them.
Take part in the related conferences.
Check the related conference proceedings. For example, the IEEE web site has lots options to help you.


How can I improve the effectiveness of my literature searches?

Literature search, to me, is like the recipe of potato salad: everyone has at least one, and they always claim that theirs is the best. In fact, we just use what we feel comfortable and, so far, has not caused any major meltdown. So, bear in mind that these are just what work for me, and you should modify them along the way.

Schedule a meeting with a librarian, now

Talk to a librarian at your institute. In our school we have a medical librarian and perhaps you may find one specialized in your field as well. They are trained to locate useful information and are up to date with related technology. Give them a clear field of study and even a gist of your research, and ask for a good list of databases. I may go so far to say that a good database list is half of the game. Apart from the list, learn Boolean and learn them well, pick up a good electronic reference manager software. Your library should have these resources.

Also, ask your library if they have any library consortium. Some major institutes have large amount of subscriptions which open the gateway to many full articles. If your institute is tight on budget, a lot of the time you can just find abstracts sans full text. Having a consortium library card may grant you access to other bigger institutes' library, in which you can print or photocopy their articles. On the same note, ask for an introduction on doing inter-library loan and how much you're supposed to pay.

Learn systematic review

Systematic review, simply put, is performing literature review as a scientific research. It's problem-based, protocol-focused, and the process is meticulously documented and hence readily replicable. There are plenty of publications about this skill. I have been using Booth's Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review and so far it serves me well.

Focus on the chapters about question formulation and ways of collecting data. I think even we are not heading for a formal systematic review, learning how to keep a clear search records, draft a conceptual framework, and maintain a paper trail would still be very beneficial.

Understand the cataloging system

In biomedical field (where I work) we have MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) which shows the hierarchy and grouping of keywords. Consult the librarian and see if such thing exists in your field.

Read a few systematic reviews or literature reviews in your own field

To get the general picture, I actually first start from Wikipedia and encyclopedia. If you already have some background knowledge, you can probably skip the first phase. After meeting with the librarian, use the new-learned technique to find a few literature reviews or systematic reviews (hereafter "review") in your field. Review articles provide general scopes and a rich pool of keywords for your later use. You can also perform a reference tracing technique on these articles because they usually have unreasonably nice and comprehensive bibliography.

Spend some time with the online search engine and really read the "read me first" and "how to use this site" links. Learn how to massively download cited articles from a hosted article and export them to your manager software of choice.

Another good reason to start with these articles is that they are all required to report the information retrieval in details. Which engines were used, how articles were screened, what were the criteria, etc. You can get a good sense of how researchers do it (or appear to want to be seen doing in order to look trustworthy.)

Start casual

Through this snowballing technique, a small body of articles should start to form. Pay attention to their use of words, keywords, etc. It's still somewhat a toying phase but you should start using your tools seriously. The only recommendation from me is at least one electronic storage/manager software should be used. Make sure you can integrate this software into the word processing software in a harmonious manner, and be able to export a formatted document on the fly. For the rest, it's personal choice: index cards, Post-it notes on the wall, writing on a poster size paper, etc.

Now, many fun tools are available... mind map allows you to cluster the ideas and words, citation map allows you to trace the ancestors (cited) and offspring (citing) articles of any indexed articles, word cloud allows you to identify the most frequently used words, some of these functions are also embedded in manager software such as Qiqqa, which is largely free and powerful.

Then get serious

After a week or so, you should have a good command of the tools, the software, the databases, and the keywords. Now you just need a question. Personally, all literature review should be problem-based. If someone asked you to "go and understand the field," that is just simply absurd. It's like searching an encyclopedia without anything to search; while there may be people who enjoy randomly reading wikipedia entries (I do, to confess), but that's not the best use of PhD time. Isolate the questions from your study before doing any literature search.

Now, what to search? I work in biomedical field so your and my paradigms may differ. For me, I usually go by this sequence as a starter:

Definitions: How does my field define XYZ? What are the controversy of the definitions?

Operationalization: How does my field capture/measure different contexts? How do we approximate "poverty"? How do we call a good "user experience"? etc.

Data source/Research design: What does my field do when they study the phenomenon of XYZ?

Analysis: What is some specific analysis for a certain type of design?

In a way, use the first literature review to solidify and fortify the understanding of every single phrase in your research questions and specific aims. Then expand to other questions (you WILL have branching questions along the way, trust me. It'd be hard to suppress them). Stop when you feel you have somehow exhausted the answers, and/or you're happy with the results.

Never start a literature review without a question, or you'll find yourself still only reading paper 18 months into the PhD, and that is probably not good.

PhD is not a between-people competition

You mentioned that sometime you saw others finding stuff that you did not. I'd suggest just ask them how they did it. Just because you asked them doesn't mean you're worse than they are. If they found something you didn't, get the references, read them and incorporate them into your manager, and instantly you're as well informed, if not better informed.

Talk to experts

Find some prolific faculty members and researchers, and ask them for tips. Collectively you should be able to get something more out of just talking to the librarian. Experienced researchers also tend to know more about the seminal work. And if you can get that list, compounded with the ability to trace the work's offspring, you can pretty much recreate the family tree of a particular key research theme.

Use crowd-sourcing

Websites like Mendeley and Research Gate utilize social bookmark approach and you can refer to other people's collections of articles/citations. If you have a good peer in your team, you may also divvy up the work and then evaluate the findings together, exchanging references, etc. Also some young researchers may be on other social sites such as Reddit (but refrain from checking funny videos) or crowd sourcing sites such as GitHub... you may consider setting up an account and set up a chat thread or a project for others to contribute.

Exploit all services of journals

There are at least a few services that you should see if your field's prime journals provide:

1. Mail alert: Some journals or search engines will send you e-mail when an article containing any of your preset keywords is available. Get like a weekly notice from them, and you can keep yourself somewhat up to date.

2. Twitter: Same as above, but through Twitter.

3. Digest: Some journals may boil down their published works into short pieces then feature them in the form of an online billboard. Occasionally a third party may do that as well for a nominal fee. For example, MDLinx summarizes key medical journal findings and e-mail them to subscribers as a 5-minute digest every day.

Pay attention to "grey literature"

Notice that in some fields there is a tendency to favor publishing results that are statistically significant. Relying solely on literature database is only unbiased in the domain of the published literature. Sometimes, grey literature such as conference abstracts, documentaries, unpublished papers, white papers, proof-of-concepts, blog posts, grant proposal archives, trial registries, patents, personal communications, and general mass media may needed to be explored as well. Each field has their own literature graveyard and atypical channels of documentation, you'll need to talk to some specialists in your field.

Be always on

To me, literature search is really more of a lifestyle change rather than an activity. Now I have camera to take snapshots of posters, take verbal and written notes. I bring index cards for writing. Etc. When talking to people I often drive the topic to what cool papers they recently found. That's my best way to deal with potentially tricky water cooler conversation; either I'll learn something or they'll leave me alone.


Is it plagiarism to paraphrase multiple sections?

It is often remarkable to me just how much work a person will put in just to avoid doing a different piece of work.  In this case, it sounds to me like the committee made exactly the right call: it sounds like rubbish work deserving a terrible grade, but certainly not plagiarism.


Definitely, having more recommendation letters can prove the popularity of applicant among his/her colleagues in workplace, but just a  negative (or even less positive) recommendation letter can destroy a possible recruitment, as it can strongly affect the impression and judgment of search committees.

A negative (or not-positive) recommendation letter can attract the attention of review committee to weak points (even if they are imaginary induced by the recommendation letter).

It is not bad that a recommendation letter emphasizes on teaching or research only. This is somehow the reason that several recommendation letters are needed (by people who knows the applicant from different perspectives).

Just keep in mind that a search committee always try to foresee any drawback in prospective recruitment. If a recommendation letter states negative points, then, the search committee must consider this risk (for bad recruitment), as there is an evidence for that in the application under review.

NOTE that recommendation letters normally should assist search committee to discover what they have NOT already found in resume. A tiny negative point has more effect on search committee rather than many recommendation letters stating an evident point, they already knew from resume.


Faculty interview: how to develop yourself into a national or international research leader

Both my wife and I (in different very fields) have both bumbled around doing our best to achieve this, as well as been guilty in posing the question during recruiting.

The question operates on 2 levels.

First, how do you actually do it. This involves multiple elements:

Tailoring your research area(s)/question(s) to have national/international interest. There are many ways to do this, and the goal is not to trade off your research independence for reputational accolades. However, you do need to be focused in the right areas at the right time, and adjust the messaging of your research (at least) for what are topics of live interest. You can cynically call this "fads in academia", but it is real.
Actively collaborating. Too many junior academics treat others as either immediate-term team members/collaborators, or otherwise as competitors. You need to form a looser circle of collaborative relationships with others who work in your and related fields, where you can spark ideas, not just co-write papers. These then become the people who invite you to give talks, to write chapters for their edited books, refer students to you, etc., and thus your national/international research reputation follows.
Publish and present tactically. Too many of us choose where to submit papers based only on prestige/impact factor (or likelihood of acceptance, hassle factor, and peer review delays...) and attractiveness of the conference location. While these are important, as you mature as an academic, you need to begin to have a portfolio of publications/presentations, which cover top-level research prestige, broader dissemination, outreach to related fields, and (in some fields) public engagement. There are many ways of doing this, but don't just stumble through one paper at a time.
Get grants. Enough said -- though worth mentioning that while the process to apply is often byzantine, random, and can be demoralizing, getting funding liberates your time to be able to do more of the above, and is a good litmus test/forcing device to keep on top of the above -- as enabler -- too. In particular, any time I've reframed my research (item 1 above), it's generally been under the pressure of having to submit a grant proposal!

Second, during recruiting, the posing of this question to you is a bit of a signal and litmus test. It's a signal that we the hiring committee want applicants who will do more than publish x papers per year and fulfill departmental teaching and service requirements. And it's a test not as much of are you there yet -- your CV and letters will indicate that -- but have you started thinking about these issues in a way in line or ahead of your academic cohort.

Therefore, when faced with the question, a good answer would include:

a) A positioning of your research within your field, nationally and globally. Can you articulate how this relates to topics of interest by others? (viz 1)

b) Some evidence of having a research plan for the future. What would you like to do and why? Why is it exciting to other people than just you?

c) Especially if you're too academically young to "have a lab" or equivalent, can you show how networked you are with national and international leaders in your field? Can you show any evidence of developing a followership of juniors (and/or peers)?

And, of course, artfully point to badges of excellence in your research, and of awards/achievements/leading publications you have scored. Not as boasting of your accomplishments, but as demonstrating that you have the platform/runway on which to build -- if you're hired.

Good luck!


Search for a WYSIWYG, non-latex Online collaborative paper writing Tool

Considering all of your requirements, I would suggest the following solutions, all of which essentially are either based, or focused on (compatible with) using Microsoft Office 365 software:

Microsoft Office Equation Editor (see this, this and this);
Microsoft Mathematics Add-in (in the context of this question, Microsoft Mathematics software provides an extended collection of symbols and structures for mathematical expressions; see this page for more details);
MathType by Design Science (this is the most comprehensive solution, which is compatible with Office 365 environment, among many others; in fact, Microsoft Office Equation Editor is a simplified version of MathType).