Double-blind review with four references in a row?

Describe those works in the third person but do not anonymise the references. For example, "Doe et al in their work show that..." Even if you are Doe. Very often I review papers (in CS/HCI) whose authors have blanked their past work that they reference. This makes it very hard to judge the quality of the new contribution if compared to the previous work, and it is bad practice in my opinion.

The side effect is that it is conceivable that they could guess who you are, but it is less of a problem than not being able to judge the quality of the contribution, IMHO. If the venue allows it, after acceptance you can change your "Doe et al" with "In our previous work.."


Should I send my AP scores from highschool to a graduate school I am applying to?

I doubt that it would have any effect at all. You might be better to stress other, more recent things. Presumably your transcripts show proficiency in statistics sufficient for entry.

I doubt it would do harm other than to have someone, possibly, question why you did that. And a 3 isn't a huge benefit, as your undergrad experience showed.

However, if that is your only CV possibility pointing to knowing statistics, it would be a different matter.


What do I need to do to get a master's degree in neuroscience?

I used to have some interactions in department of neuroscience at my university and I can definitely say that this field is filled with opportunities for people with strong natural science or engineering background but is very forbidding for everybody else. Neuroscience is applied science and to do applied science you need a lot of experience in science in the first place and I am not sure whether architecture has given you the exposure required, perhaps you should tell us why you are interested in neuroscience in the first place and what you are planning to do.

From my observation, to do research in neuroscience you either have to have:

option A) a strong biochemical background or
option B) a strong engineering background particularly in statistical signal processing, computer science or electronic devices

And this illustrates the research direction of neuroscience departments in general, which is really to understand the brain and its connections from an input-output perspective (hence signal processing, computer graphics, machine learning, devices) and find ways to control it using drug or other stimuli (hence biochemistry background). Of course the type of research being performed varies widely and have many softer areas such as psychology, emotions, learning styles, etc. but these are experiments backed up by theoretical hypothesis and scientific methods which translate into hardcore math and science. Even if it doesn't actually involve that much theoretical calculation, the course work will definitely involved detailed knowledge of mathematics, physics, electronics and biology.

There are many top neuroscience faculties around the world, and in the US, John Hopkins and Duke University comes to mind but these faculties are specialized in the sense that they are sub-disciplines of sub-disciplines i.e. a special branch of psychology, a special branch of electrical engineering. Therefore I am not sure whether GRE subject tests in physics, biology, etc. would impress such a specialized faculty. Most importantly you should show aptitude in doing research in this area by demonstrating the reason behind why you are interested in neuroscience and back it up by some form of outside experience that deals with aspects of neuroscience but again these opportunities are very hard to come by outside of formal university setting.

Some strategies:

Look at some of the programs offered and their research direction, do you want to go into a biology based stream or engineering based stream? Which appears to be most feasible?
Look at some of the courses in neuroscience (enroll in a college program or find online courses such as Coursera's Bioelectricity course) and see whether you have the prerequisite to engage in this field, if not, work on those preliminaries by enrolling in some form of college program
If you have the prerequisite and you ace the course with flying colors, then apply what you learned in some special project, look at some of the project involving neuroscience or bioengineering in general such as EEG/EMG/EKG control, etc. and produce a product that is interesting, maybe even marketable
Look at the companies currently doing applied neuroscience related work and see if you have the credential to work for these companies. They maybe related to software for some sort of real time image processing of the brain, psychological tests with fMRI data to backup hypothesis, neuro-interface devices

Architecture to neuroscience is a big leap but then again it all depends on what kind of architecture degree it is, if it is some sort of engineering physics program with architecture specialization you might just have a better shot. While GRE is necessary and good and all, it will not likely to satisfy such a specialized group and reveal your aptitude to produce work in this field


Failed my BEng dissertation in a computer/electronics related field twice, how do I move forward?

Your first and main source for help and advice on this should be your supervisor.
Working in industry I went through a high stress phase when I tended to cry during meetings with my boss. He was a very courteous person, and ignored my crying except for moving a box of tissues next to where I was sitting. Depending on your supervisor, you may need to bring your own tissues, but that is no reason to cut yourself off from essential help and advice.
Your supervisor knows what is expected for your dissertation. It is not something you should go off and study by yourself. Your supervisor should also be able to help you with where to go from here in terms of getting an extension and modifying your project if that is the best thing to do.
As for not having anything to say to him, "I am stuck, and will not be able to hand anything in on the current schedule" is something you should tell him as soon as possible - a few weeks ago would have been better than today, but today is much better than tomorrow.
In addition to a PhD in computer science I have over 30 years computer industry experience. I would plan and expect to spend a week or so learning my way round OpenGL if I needed it. Needing a few days to understand a tutorial, especially as you probably have less experience learning programming languages and libraries, does not seem like a very serious problem to me.
If you are using a current version of OpenGL with a ten-year-old tutorial that may be part of the problem. The tutorial and the OpenGL version you are using may not be compatible. In general, if a tutorial or book is not working for you, try a different one - there are plenty to choose from. Also, once the tutorial tells you what features you need to use, read the reference documentation on those features.
Given that you have medication for panic attacks, you may be able to use that issue to get extra time and help from your university's disability services. If you have not already done so, discuss your project difficulties with whoever is treating you for the panic attacks.


On obtaining references from people who don't know me in person but have cited my work

Personally, I'd worry about this strategy for use for a permanent position. A bit less for another postdoc. Your papers speak for themselves without reinforcement by a letter writer except in, perhaps, exceptional cases.
I think the purpose of a letter of recommendation is to go beyond the product you produce and speak about your total fitness for a position. Someone who doesn't know you at all can hardly help you with that.
I'd guess that letters from postdoc PIs, for example, would be better, since you have worked with them.
Someone you know from conference contacts and who has used your work might also be (just) ok, since they can say something about you as a person. Even letters from someone like your old advisor who doesn't know your current work can fill in some blanks about what it would be like to work with you and how diligent you are in various necessary things.
Use the whole application to fill out a whole picture. If you overemphasize one part you will be neglecting other important parts.
If it were just your advisor and, say, two others who don't know you personally and haven't worked with you, then I'd really advise against it. One such letter might be ok if, for example, you've actually communicated with them in the past.


I am conflicted between getting a second master's and moving on to a PhD?

If it is possible to start your dream PhD without further prerequisites: do it. Also take notice that it'll be hard, but doable. In my opinion a second Master's has no benefit, taking the possible admission to the PhD program aside.

I know someone, who got a PhD in physics after a Master's in biology. I went to a PhD in CS after a Master's in mathematics.

(This is also a bit dependent on the field and on the social component, so please tag with a country for further answers. My experience references German system, but it should be generic enough for US too.)


What's the best way to ask a professor for their syllabus before the term starts?

LGTM.  I think it's very fair to ask a professor if you can see the syllabus for their class before you sign up.  How else would decide if it's something you'd like to do?


When I was 16 I took 30 credits a quarter and my math GPA suffered will this effect my ability to go to grad school?

If you were officially a high school student at the time, then you may not need to submit those grades to the universities to which you apply for graduate admissions at all. In general, anything that is done before undergraduate is ignored in graduate admissions.

On the other hand, if the grades appear on your undergraduate transcript (because you applied to have the credits accepted towards graduation), then you will need to explain the situation, as keshlam suggests. Again, though, the fact that you were so young is a reasonable justification for your performance, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.


Does PowerPoint presentation require in-text referencing if there is a written script?

The answer depends significantly on what your professor wants. The straightforward answer is to simply ask your professor. However, erring on the side of caution should not hurt.
You could simply add in-text citations on each slide. If you have text on your slides making claims, you can add citations right there. Then, you can have your final slide be a works cited page.
Another way to cite is to say "according to source, claim". By specifically mentioning sources when you speak, you can cite them verbally and fix this issue. This would be easier, as the audience is more likely to pick up on your sources, and you can cite claims even if they are not written on your slides.
Even if you did not need to cite sources, there would presumably be no harm in doing so.


How much does TA experience impact acceptance into PhD programs?

From my perspective admitting students to CS PhD programs:

TAing for CS classes will be a small positive signal that you did well in those classes and were well thought of by the instructor (who presumably asked you to be his TA, or at least accepted your application). It might also let you get to know the professor teaching the class better, which will be helpful for your application if he/she can write you a letter of recommendation. But beyond that, it won't be a huge bonus in and of itself -- its mostly a signal correlated with other good things.


What is an effective way to copyright my teaching material?

To be clear, I am developing the materials while not teaching any courses or being paid by the school in any manner. It is currently the summer semester and I am not being paid to teach, develop course work or anything. I will have to try and find my contract.

The shows a misunderstanding about the nature of a teaching job. When you're paid to teach a course, you're not being paid to do work only while the course runs. You're also being paid to prepare the course, and you're going to need to do that before the first meeting.

  I have finished all of my course materials (.pdfs, lab sheets, power points, etc etc). When I was first hired and told to create the new course, I was informed by some of my colleagues (former adjuncts at the same institution) that I would be paid for my course content. However, in speaking with my directory I was informed that I would not be paid for my course content as it is part of running the class.

Your colleagues were probably confused. Nobody pays instructors extra money to produce powerpoints and handouts. It goes with the job.

If you don't want others in your department to use your lab handouts without paying, don't give them your lab handouts. If you don't want others in your department to use your powerpoints without paying, don't give them your powerpoints.

As Bill Barth and JeffE have pointed out, copyright protection is automatic in most jurisdictions. It can be wise to put a copyright notice on your work, since a possible defense against a copyright-violation lawsuit is that the defendant didn't know it was copyrighted. A formal copyright registration is necessary in the US if you want to be able to recover more than actual damages, i.e., if you want punitive damages.

In general, the question shows an unrealistic set of assumptions about what teachers do; what they're paid to do; and what the normal contractual arrangements are. Furthermore, many people who write have an unrealistic belief in the quality and market value of their writing. There is no particular reason to expect that anyone else in the department will like these materials so much that they would want to use them. Most people prefer to do things their own way.


How can I fix a relationship with a professor that has recently cooled?

My general impression is that professors quite like giving advice (it's almost a job requirement...) but are incredibly busy. I would thus suggest you do not try to change 'your relationship' but focus on the task at hand, i.e. directly but politely ask whether your professor would be available to give you some advice.

Of course there is the possibility that your relationship is so bad that your professor will not even consider meeting with you. In that case I would not try to change his/her mind. Just treat it as a lost cause and move on.

In the more likely scenario of you managing to schedule a meeting it's important you are prepared and respectful of his/her time clearly signaling to your professor that his/her advice will be not be wasted. If you are clueless about your questions that will quickly signal to your professor that s/he is wasting her time. If however you seem genuinely interested and it looks like you are indeed benefiting from the advice I wouldn't be surprised if your relationship improves significantly and could even develop into something more formal like that of a co-advisor.

Either way: simply ask that you would like some advice, ideally explaining what makes his/her advice valuable to you. You'll find out how to proceed after that. Good luck!


How long should it take a potential PhD supervisor to evaluate proposal?

Many academics are flooded with email from students (undergraduate and graduate), administrators, coworkers, colleagues, editors, etc.  What you've asked him to do for you takes more than two minutes and he may not have available time to do it, or the energy to set aside the available time in the near future.  There are enough small things to deal with that they can can easily bury the larger things.

If one method of communication is not effective you can, after a suitable delay, try another.  A phone call or visit to office hours might bump your earlier email to the top of his mind.  He may already have some preliminary feedback, or he may apologetically say that he still hasn't gotten to it, but he does plan to do it soon.  Either way this can move the process towards resolution.

On the other hand, you're considering this person for one of the most important roles of your academic career.  If he does not show enthusiasm about working with you, you may want to consider other options.


Is it OK to update code on repository after publication?

Absolutely yes!  There is no reason to stop a project from evolving just because you've published about it.

What would be good to do, however, is to identify the version current at the time of publication with a release version or other similar sort of tag. You can point to the specific tag in the publication and also have the repository tag point to the publication through its associated comment text.

This will allow a reader to have the best of both worlds: access to both the most updated information and also to the precise version associated with the publication if they need it.


Must meta-analyses or systematic reviews have more than one author?

There is no such requirement. It is frequently helpful to have multiple authors to help sort through the vast amounts of literature being covered, but is by no means a necessity. For instance, a colleague of mine recently published a fairly substantial review article on his own.

However, in medical research, a meta-review serves a rather different purpose than the usual review article in other fields: it is collecting the results of a bunch of different experimental studies, and trying to reach an overarching medical recommendation. That's a rather different research function than a review article in other fields. In medicine, you would want to have multiple people reviewing the data to make sure that it's not one person unilaterally deciding everything independently.


Letter of recommendation from a professor with whom I took a class

Yes, it is appropriate to ask. There is never any issue about that. He may automatically remember you if you stood out as two years isn't that long. But you may need to remind him of the course and say some things about what you've been doing since.

The best way to manage this is face to face. I mention this even though it may now be impossible with the pandemic, and may be hard in any case due to distance. But actually seeing you would help jog his memory. But perhaps you have photos online somewhere to help refresh his memory.

You can also ask him whether he thinks a letter from him would be helpful or not. He might be able to say more than you think. The main reason for a letter is so that an independent person makes a prediction about your suitability for a program and your likelihood of success. Perhaps he can do that easily. If he has any hesitation, then you'd be better off asking someone else.

I had a few standout students in my teaching career. It would be easy to write recommendations for them even though our interactions were brief. If you made an impact it can work out.


Grad Application: Research Experience without Letter of Recommendation

First, note that it is only a red flag if you are omitting the most recent or only research experience.  You are generally only required to get a few letters of recommendation. If you need N recommendations, and have a sufficient set of strong and recent recommenders, then there is simply no reason to get additional weak recommendations beyond your N strongest.

Omitting from your CV, however, is probably a bad idea, because it can be considered dishonest.  In my experience, a full CV should include both your triumphs and your sins, and hiding your sins will only increase your trouble when they come out at a later time.

If you don't have other more recent research experience, but you didn't completely burn your bridges, you might approach this by having a very blunt conversation with your former advisor.  Lay out your concerns like you have here and ask what the professor would suggest is the best path forward.  They may be willing to write you a very neutral letter, e.g.:

  X was a member of my group for a brief time.  It was not a good fit, but I believe they have the potential to do well elsewhere.

Then you can lean on the strength of your other letters be essentially evaluated as having not done research.

If you've really angered the professor, though, and have no other research experience, then it may be the case that the only good way to address this is to get some more research experience.


A couple questions regarding graduate studies

In addition to ensuring that you get high grades on your retake (as stated by scaaahu), I would recommend that you get involved with research projects early on and try to get publications out of them-this might compensate for any poor performances in your undergraduate studies. Since you've mentioned this is impossible in your country, perhaps you might want to try and do this abroad during your holidays. Also it might still be possible for you to attend conferences and submit abstracts or posters. It is not the end of the world if you've failed some courses in your first year. In some universities, the first year doesn't count towards your overall GPA. I would advise that you check this with your university.

Generally speaking, the higher the ranking of the university is, the better your career prospects. Of course, if you work with "important people" or highly respected research groups in your field, it might not matter so much.


How to cite conference contribution that appears later in a Journal Supplement

They are not usually listed on the same list as “regular papers” in a CV. The reason for that is that they are not peer-reviewed. In the fields of physics, chemistry and biology, it is most common to list your scientific production in a CV by breaking it down into the following categories:

Peer-reviewed articles
Book chapters
Conference proceedings
Invited conference talks
Conference talks
Conference posters

I looked at examples from the Biophysical journal supplements, and the abstracts are quite short (one paragraph or two). Even though it is published in print, it is too short to be considered proceedings. Thus, I would list it as either a talk or a poster. That is was published as part of a supplement to one journal does not make it very different from any other conference.

In some countries and in some fields, it may also be typical to further break down between national and international venues (journals, conferences, etc.).

As a side note, the journal webpage has some information on how to format such citations:

  Smith, R., S.E. Jones, T.J. Smith, (2006) Histone phosphorylation in DNA damage. 2006 Biophysical Society Meeting Abstracts. Biophysical Journal, Supplement, Abstract.


Do graduate schools care more about my grades in math courses or my general GPA?

(I am a tenured professor in the math department at UGA who was on the committee that did graduate admissions for four years.)

If we have to make a choice, then math graduate programs definitely care more about your math GPA than your undergraduate GPA.  We also care, equally, that you take the most challenging and graduate-preparatory math courses that can.  So a math GPA which is close to 4.0 including year long courses in analysis and algebra, some exposure to geometry and/or topology and at least one graduate course would make you a strong candidate for most graduate programs in mathematics.  Certainly one or two subpar grades in other courses are easy to ignore.

Having said that, it would still be better if you got good grades in all your courses, and admissions programs do care about that to an extent.  [Added: Wait, I didn't say exactly what I meant here.  Not good grades in all your courses, but good grades in most of your courses, as reflected by a good GPA.  We will almost never look at individual course grades outside of mathematics and very closely related fields.]  Here are some reasons:

1) If you have across the board difficulty with courses in the humanities and social sciences, then that signifies either a lack of linguistic or writing skills or an inability to focus on a single topic (generally you spend longer writing a paper than doing a single problem set, and the paper itself is one big task whereas the problem set is a collection of largely independent smaller tasks).  But skills in language and writing and the ability to focus on a single topic both play a larger role in the study of mathematics at the graduate level (and beyond) than the undergraduate level.  This kind of poor performance would be exacerbated by a subpar GRE verbal score, and conversely a high GRE verbal score would partially offset it.

2) Some academic scholarships take your overall GPA into account.  At my university eligibility for the highest class of internal graduate scholarship is determined by the student's "academic index", which is calculated using their GRE scores and overall GPA.  This may be a more extreme situation than the norm, but in my experience many if not most scholarship winners are students of the bulletproof credentials variety.

3) In line with the above, you have to remember that the graduate admissions process is highly competitive.  Most math PhD programs in the US only admit students who are fully funded, and therefore by no means could we admit all fully qualified applicants.  (Even without funding it is clear that finiteness conditions on the faculty, the course offerings, the facilities and so forth must impose an upper limit.)  So if for instance you have a 3.8 math GPA and 3.0 general GPA, you will almost certainly be ranked ahead of candidates with a 3.0 math GPA and a 3.8 general GPA (assuming other factors, mainly the difficulty of courses and the quality of recommendation letters) are equal.  But you will be ranked behind some students with a 3.8 math GPA and a 3.8 general GPA.  Such students exist, and it only makes sense to take this information into account.

My best advice to you is to realize that your overall GPA counts for something and therefore do whatever you can to get strong grades in all your courses without sacrificing your efforts in your mathematics courses.  Something that you might want to think about: why are you not doing as well in your non-math courses as you are in your math courses?  I can't think of an answer that wouldn't point the way to room for improvement.  Some possible answers:

English is not your first language, and your reading / writing skills place you at a serious disadvantage in certain courses.

This is a very particular situation.  If you're in it, you should take pains to demonstrate that your English skills are good enough.  Probably you should take and do well on the TOEFL or similar exams.  You should also mention in your personal statement that English is not your first language but have the English in your personal statement be flawless.  The point is that if you're a foreigner and you're English is okay but not as good as the natives, then as time passes it will get better and be less of an issue.  Also a C grade in, say, a Shakespeare class by a non-native speaker has a totally different meaning from the same grade by a native speaker.  The admissions panel will cut you some slack for that provided they believe that your English skills are good enough for you to be successful in the program.

You think it is not possible to give the attention you need to your math coursework as well as your general education requirements.

It certainly is possible.  The students who are winning the Putnam, taking graduate courses in their sophomore year, publishing solo papers in serious journals...are usually also excelling at all their courses.  My own view, which I think is probably shared by many math admissions committee members, is that advanced math courses are much harder than general education requirements.  If you read the assigned materials, can think and write clearly, and give yourself enough time to write suitably and according to the requirements of the assignment, you'll get good grades in these courses.  It does not even necessarily take more time to get an A- in a humanities class than a B-: it's more a matter of having your act together.  (In math courses I have seen students stretch themselves to their limit to get a C and actually been quite proud of their achievement.)

You haven't mastered the skills necessary to succeed in writing-intensive courses.

As above: you should work on this before you get to grad school.

You don't take these courses seriously and didn't realize that graduate schools do.

Well, we do.  Most academics take all academics seriously: generically speaking we are "overachiever types" across the board.  If you look through the profiles of award-winning undergraduates, you will usually see that they graduated summa cum laude, at the top of their class, as a student marshall...whatever is the local form of highest honors.  Success in one academic discipline is undeniably positively correlated with success in another academic discipline.  This is far from logical necessity, but it's out there and we do take it into account.

Added: Since I wrote this answer, I became the Graduate Coordinator for the math department at UGA.  So this topic is much more vivid in my mind now.  Here's what I can report: most applicants have very good GPAs.  The median undergraduate GPA (all classes) of all our applicants this year is around 3.7.  I dug a little deeper, and among American students there is a high correlation between undergraduate GPA and other metrics (including various GRE scores).  Let me also say that we looked specifically for candidates with very low GPAs but did not reject any for this reason alone. Interestingly, many of the (not many) applicants with very low undergraduate GPAs also had not great undergrad performances in math but had nevertheless gone on to a master's program (not at Princeton...) and put up a much more respectable graduate performance.  The brilliant math student who blows off all their other classes is indeed not much seen by us.


Why do researchers sometimes use extremely complicated English sentences to convey their meaning?

I've run into variations of this a lot in economics, and have a few observations.

Being good at research in your field is an entirely separate skill from being able to communicate ideas clearly.  Two Nobel laureates really embody the extremes here for me, both with brilliant research.  One the one side is Paul Krugman, who, regardless of what you think of his public persona, is an excellent writer.  His skill comes across even in his research papers, and even in his work from the '70s.  On the other hand is Amartya Sen, who it often seems to me can't express an idea clearly in one sentence if it could equally well be conveyed in fifteen.  Granted, Sen wasn't born in an English speaking country, but he left for school in England in 1953, so he's hardly new at this.
There appears to be some institutional momentum.  That is, you learn to be a researcher in your field by reading the work of past researchers.  That frames your concept of what quality writing in your field looks like, which you then adopt to some degree.
It can be a signaling method. This is related to the previous point.  For professionals used to reading papers written with heavy use of jargon or unnecessarily-big words, writing this way can make your work seem like it belongs.  I often feel like the use of latin phrases really falls into this category.  I myself enjoy the occasional ceteris paribus, for example, but it really isn't a very defensible practice over writing all else equal.  It isn't even shorter!

I think many of us could benefit from thinking about writing more clearly, but it also makes sense to know your audience and write for them.


How do you properly cite an advertisement from a website online in APA formatting?

On top of the links shared by @nsinghs, you can also check University of Lincoln. Also, you can refer to this link that will create APA style citations for you based on the information you fill for an ad (the ad can be in a newspaper, in a magazine, online, or on TV/radio).


Echoing the comments and other answers, citing a website is no different to citing any other resource, such as a book, or a paper. Depending on your favorite text editor and reference manager, you would like to produce bibliographic entries, such as

  ... for the implementation of the prototype, we used the Ruby programming language [23] and ...
  ...
  ...
  Bibliography
  ...
  23. Matsumoto, Yukihiro. Ruby Programming Language. http://www.ruby-lang.org/, 2009.

In BibTeX, there's @misc entry for that. You would use it as follows:

@misc{links/Java,
        author = {{Sun Microsystems Inc.}},
        title = {{J}ava{\texttrademark} {P}latform, {S}tandard {E}dition 6},
        howpublished={\url{http://java.sun.com/}},
        month{jun},
        year = {2006}
}

 @misc{links/xml,
        author = {{W3C}},
        title = {{Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0}},
        howpublished = {\url{http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/}},
        publisher = {World Wide Web Consortium},
        year = {2008},
        month = {November}
}

Since websites are a dynamic resource, you should always include the date (year/month) of the last retrieval.

For the url, the code above would assume \usepackage{url}.

Another technical issue with this is whether your chosen bibliography style would include the URL in the reference, or not. You might want to consult this questions at tex.SE


Not ALL professors' websites are terrible. As referenced in this nature commentary, many academics acknowledge the potential benefits of having a good website. This article also links to a contest where submissions for the 'best lab websites' were solicited. Many of the links there are great examples of lab websites with elegant aesthetics and intuitive navigation.

I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that many faculty are older or too busy; making a good website takes time and skills that most academics simply don't have. Some labs will hire web designers to help with design, but today's funding climate makes that impractical for most PIs.

Having a good website for your own interests and professional development can only help you. I can't see any downside to this...


Are there known issues with Black / glass dry erase boards?

One issue is likely to be the need for carefully chosen dry-erase markers.

As most dry-erase boards are white, most of the dry-erase markers you'll find will be black, blue, red, etc. That is, dark colors. That's great for contrast on a whiteboard, but there's going to be very little contrast between a regular dark dry-erase marker and your black dry-erase board. As such, you'll have to purchase special (likely more expensive) markers for use on the black dry-erase board.

If using for instruction, you'll definitely want to test the markers you've chosen, to make sure that they're contrasting enough such that they stand out for the students in the back of the room. If you ever teach someone with visual impairments, you might need to adjust which markers you use to accommodate for them. (That's not really specific to black dry-erase boards, though. You can get issues with marker choices on whiteboards too. But if your marker choices are marginally visible to begin with, it can exacerbate the issue.)

Also, as your department's supply cupboard/the campus bookstore is unlikely to keep such markers in-stock, you'll probably want to make sure you have a reserve of these markers. So when the ones you are using inevitably dry up or wander off, you're not stuck with nothing to write with. (Also keep in mind that the need for special markers likely rules out sneaking in next door and grabbing one of theirs.)


How to approach research on an unproven theory for academic submission?

Lots of interesting things in science are not proven, so I don't think there's any special privilege for unproven theories vs. other types of subject.  The real question is this: what do you have to contribute to the intellectual discussion? It doesn't really matter whether you start from a perspective of aiming to prove, aiming to disprove, or just aiming to clarify (in fact, you might well change your perspective multiple times during your investigations). What really matters is that you will need to gather novel evidence that advances the state of knowledge with regards to the subject.


Academics sure do drink a lot of coffee---but do they drink any more coffee than other professionals?

According to Wikipedia, 150 million Americans adults drink coffee daily (out of about 240 million total), a rate of more than 60%.  So if most adults drink coffee in America, it's entirely unsurprising that academics are like most other adults and that departments might happily supply this cheap perk---just like many, many other offices do.  Similarly high rates of consumption appear to pertain in most other developed Western countries, which are also where the majority of high-impact scientific research is still conducted.

In short: many academics appear to drink a lot of coffee simply because they are typical adults in societies where most people drink a lot of coffee.


Is it possible for a student in first year of Ph.D to secure funding for attending conferences?

As Willie Wong says, it depends on your school and your advisor.  As an obvious general rule, departments and advisors with more research funding are more willing to spend it.  (As a reference point, my department does not offer such funding, because individual faculty generally have enough money to support their students' travel.)

A significant number of CS theory conferences have external support for student travel; see, for example, SODA 2012 and STOC 2012.  These grants usually require a letter of support from your advisor, so you at least need an advisor.  (In many PhD programs, including mine, PhD students do not necessarily have formal advisors for the first year; students are admitted to the PhD program, not to any particular research group.)


If you no longer have your university email address does your Google Scholar Profile become invalid?

I have a google scholar profile for more than 5 years now and was never asked again to verify my account after the initial verification was completed. I can still edit and update my profile as usual.


Make an in depth analysis of your needs and wants and also look at your attitude, motivation and passion. If you are motivated and you like doing research then go for it without taking care of any job opportunity. When you will be doing PhD with a passion there is likely possibility you can come up with some interesting findings which will open many new horizons for you and new opportunities. In case you want to do PhD just to kill time then it is better to be unemployed and job seeking


Can I successfully adapt to an advisor who will not push me to work?

To be sure, chooosing your advisor is one of the most important decisions in your academic career.  That is not to say that people don't switch advisors for one or more reasons (they do), but it's probably best to take the time to figure it out now (which it sounds like you are doing by asking the question in the first place!) so you aren't faced with that decision later.

It seems to me that you may be asking the wrong question, to some extent.  Relying on your advisor to push you is more or less the opposite of a good way of growing into being an independent researcher -- who is going to push you when you become that assistant professor and you're on your own?  Furthermore, the last thing you want your advisor writing in his/her recommendation letter is, "Great researcher when pushed to complete the work!"  You also don't want your advisor to think that he/she has to push you -- this may just lead to a poor working relationship between the two of you.

My advice is to ask Professor Nice Guy to be your advisor, but also start working now towards limiting the procrastination on your own.  That advice is predicated on your comment that your research matches his the best; that should be the driving factor and not some grand idea that you'll get pushed harder by one prospective advisor or another.  Tips for how to get a good plan together are outside the scope of this topic, but at the very least you could start by fixing a date you'd like to graduate and working back from there.

As for meeting with the other professor regularly, by all means do that if he is amenable to the idea.  I met regularly with my advisor and another professor and all parties were happy with the arrangement.


Can I use figures from my article on my website after it is accepted but before being published, if I publish open access and retain the copyright?

(b) reuse figures [...] created by the Author(s) and contained in the Contribution in [...] other works created by them.

does IMHO cover your pictures.

However, depending on you legislation you may need to get approval (legally speaking: a license) by your coauthors.

IIRC in the US each coauthor can excercise the copyright independent of the other coauthors (please correct me if I'm wrong)
but e.g. in Germany all coauthors hold the copyright together, and must act together.

I guess that already single figures are works of their own and thus may only have a subset of the paper's coauthors as authors (but IANAL). But IMHO figures in scientific papers still frequently have multiple coauthors: in analogy to what constitutes authorship for a paper, I'd say that everyone who had an important contribution to the figure is coauthor of the figure.

Examples:

A suggests that a hexbinplot is more appropriate than the current pseudo-3d scatter plot. B accordingly changes the figure => I'd say both A and B are coauthors of the final figure.
A result plot showing a model and the experimental data: experimental design & measurements by A, theoretical bounds for models by B, and modeling of the experimental data & plotting of all into one figure by C => IMHO makes 3 coauthors.

Note: things may be even more complicated as e.g. in Germany the right for secondary publication according to §38 UrhG refers to the authors, while the commercial rights are typically with the employer.

Practically speaking I guess it is easiest to ask all coauthors of the paper (and if relevant your employer) for permission to re-use the paper or parts of it on the web site. I'd anyways consider piecemeal asking of some coauthors every time you want to put another figure on your blog as impolite.


Found reply for a research application from 2 months ago in my junk mail

Suppose you do nothing. Then you remain at your current position, yourwork carries on, and whatever may come of that will happen.

Suppose you respond to this professor's request. You may write something that apologises for the late response, asks whether the position is still available, and provides your most recent transcript.

Then at worst, they reply with rudeness and aggression, and you thank them for their time, then move on. They may tell you the opportunity is closed, but invite you to keep in touch or to apply again when you graduate/advance in qualification.

They may also say the opportunity remains. At that point you must decide whether it is better to

thank the professor and remain where you are (flakey, might be seen as rude),
open a dialogue that allows you to transition once current projects are complete (reasonable, but may not work for the professor or their lab),
try to develop a sideline partnership working in or with both labs (could be a huge job, but also huge rewards if it works), or
jump ship totally (also flakey, reflects poorly on your commitment).


How to start a talk about a topic that cannot be explained without some background information?

I have read that it is best to begin a presentation with the 'thesis': i.e. a brief explanation of the topic of my research.

I would not consider this piece of advice generally applicable. For example, in my field many people are applying the field’s techniques to some application from another field. As most of the audience is not familiar with this application (at least beyond what is generally known), there is no point in telling it anything about your detailed approach, before making it familiar with the application. And this is what good talks do: They first introduce the application and then they explain how they approached some specific problem.

More generally, one fundamental rule for a good talk (and in fact, any communication) is:

  Do not talk about something that you do not expect your audience to understand.


How can I cope with withdrawal symptoms from addiction while pursuing my PhD?

Let me say first that we battled my son's addictions to opiates and heroin for over 10 years, so while I have little technical knowledge of addiction and withdrawal, I have a lot of first hand experience.  He went through rehab 3 times before it took, so I've nursed him through horrible withdrawal 3 times.  I say this so that I won't sound so ignorant in the next paragraph.  I know that each drug has its own peculiarities.

On March 3rd this year, I celebrated 30 years since my last cigarette.  I quit smoking just a few months before my Ph.D. qualifying exams.  So I was in the throes of withdrawal during the crucial study time.  (My joke is that I started raising hamsters, so I could kill something once a day.)  My main way of coping was to walk.  Study for a while and then walk.  Then Study.  Then walk.  I also took up yo-yo, so I had something for my hands to do when I got fidgety.  Tommy Smothers had just resurrected the fad and I got quite good.

The good news is that the physical withdrawal is relatively short.  So each week you should notice that things are a bit better.  Now is the time to develop good habits.  I wouldn't push hard, but I'd push medium.  Force yourself to do just a bit more than is comfortable, so that you learn that it's possible to concentrate, at least a bit, even with withdrawal distractions.

As someone said in the comments, seeking medical help might be useful.  Unless things have changed, the medicos first attempt is to give you Prozac or something similar to calm you down a bit.  This didn't work for my son, but everyone responds differently.

Hang in there.  As John Belushi said, "When things get tough, the tough get things."

Edit:  Another trick is to clear off the top of a 4-drawer filing cabinet and use that for your work surface.  When I just couldn't "sit down and study", then I stood up to study.


Is it the norm to allow professors from different departments on a PhD committee?

At many (most? all?) universities, a committee is required to have at least one professor from outside the department (other than the chair, if the chair holds a joint position).

Other requirements are to have at least one professor at rank higher or equal to the rank of the chair (the advisor).


Can I modify my name on my Scopus profile page?

You can simply publish your paper with your new name on it. It will appear in Scopus within your new author profile (with a newly created Scopus Author ID). Finaly, you can send a request to merge authors to Scopus (http://www.scopus.com/feedback/author/home.uri#/). All your Scopus records (with the former and new name) will be collected in a unique author profile. When merging profiles, you should set your newly created profile (with your new name) as preferred.


How to compose a great recommendation letter?

There was a good link that I'd found on this topic, while applying to graduate school:

Advice to Graduate School Recommendation Letter Writers

The above link is a pithy list of points to be kept in mind by new letter writers. As a summary, I'd like to highlight some sections of it that I've found repeated in other such articles as well:

  Be Concrete

  If you take away just one piece of concrete advice, let it be this.

  The single biggest problem with most letters is that they are filled
  with abstract generalities and infinitives. If we don't know you or
  your institution, we can't judge what any of these statements mean
  relative to our standards. Always consider the illustrative anecdote:

Due to deadline pressure, I asked him to grow a pumpkin in just one month. As you know it takes over 100 days to grow a pumpkin, but over the weekend he devised a new method to accelerate their growth. On Monday morning I arrived to find not just a pumpkin but a steaming, flavorful pie.

  Anecdote about acts of raw coding are only so helpful in understanding
  research potential, but they're better than nothing (see the section
  on Corporate Letters, below). An extra book or paper they read, and
  demonstrated understanding of (again, be concrete about why you
  believe this), goes a long way.

  Corporate Letters

  An important special case is the corporate letter: when you, the
  letter-writer, work in industry and have no academic affiliation. Many
  corporate letters (like many academic letters, but more so) tend to be
  vapid, clearly written in a different culture and for a different
  audience. Unless they actually did academic research with you, here
  are some suggestions for improving them.

  A common mistake is to focus on teamwork. This is important even in
  academia, but often this is the primary focus of the letter, which
  makes it less valuable. Of course we care about it, but it's secondary
  to their technical skills.

  Tell us if they learned something particularly quickly, mastered a
  complex technology, or solved a problem others were stuck on. Give
  us a paragraph of details.
  If you have a concrete reason to evaluate research potential, do so concretely. Otherwise, don't bother.
  Give us a brief bio-sketch, including educational qualifications.
  4.Put the applicant in context, and tell us the context. It's fine to relate it to your own student days, or to your experience hiring students.
  E.g.

  Compared to the students I studied with at Cucumber and Melon University, and the ones I now recruit from there, I would put him in
  the top 10%.


Saving handwritten notes for future reference

It's not an answer, but it's too long for a comment…

I have one word for you in the future: Moleskine. Good quality notebooks, organized either thematically or chronologically, is a great way to store that sort of information. For notes, long term conservation is a big issue, and you have little guarantee that bells-and-whistles software X will still be working on your computer in 10 to 20 years. Simple solutions (both electronic and not) are the best for that purpose.

Finally, I have managed my notes electronically for some time (I tried many combinations, including iPad/Evernote/Dropbox, text files, LaTeX), but wasn't satisfied for the reasons above. I went back to dead wood storage (aka paper) with delight!


Asking an editor about supplementary files to avoid journal overlength?

Some journals allow supplementary material, while others do not.  The first thing to do is to check whether supplementary material is routine for the journal that you are submitting to.  If so, then you may not even need to write to the editor, if your planned use of supplementary material will be like many other papers in the journal.

If supplementary material does not appear to be routine, then it's entirely reasonable to write to the editor handling your paper and ask.  A short and simple query is fine, much along the lines of the question here.  Do this as quickly as possible, however (so that you don't end up in a last-minute panic) and be prepared that you may be told no.


How Does Statement of Purpose Play a Role in Graduate Admission?

I doubt that "competitiveness of research area" is much of a factor, even for doctoral admission. They are looking for candidates who have an appropriate background (mostly from the CV) and a good probability of success in the program (mostly from LoR). The first bullet in your list is always the critical part. But the second point should simply point to how your background situates you to achieve your goals. Naming a faculty member is important in some, but not all cases. More so in the EU (and UK) than in the US.

But, the research area is important as a decision making issue in so much as there are faculty resources (including any named advisor) to support that area. If there are more resources in one area than in another, then candidates in the one with more is likely to be favored, at least a bit. So a school that doesn't do much serious work in AI, say, will probably look for candidates in other areas. This is especially true at the MS level, but also at the doctoral level.

For faculty hiring, on the other hand, different rules may certainly apply.


What type of workplace accommodations are departments required to make for a mentally unhealthy faculty member?

I am only even vaguely qualified to speak on how this is ideally handled in the USA, so hopefully this will be of use at least as a starting point. I am not qualified to say anything about similarities between UK and US law on matters such as this - and I'm not a lawyer! I think this is a very important question though, and I hate to see it going without any kind of answer at all.
In the US, there are a few related but separate pieces of landmark legislation that guide workplace accommodations for "serious medical conditions" and "disabilities" (quoted because these have specific legal definitions).
First of all, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA):

The Family and Medical Leave Act ("FMLA") provides certain employees
with up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave a year, and
requires group health benefits to be maintained during the leave as if
employees continued to work instead of taking leave
[...]
Leave Entitlement
A covered employer must grant an eligible employee up to a total of 12
workweeks of unpaid leave in a 12 month period for one or more of the
following reasons:
[...]

when the employee is unable to work because of a serious health condition.

There are lots of qualifying statements, but in US academia generally the FMLA applies.
FMLA TLDR;
Specifically, this means that having to take 4 weeks off a year due to any condition legally defined as a "serious medical condition" (related to a disability, chronic physical or mental illness - see the law specifically for the definition of these terms) is not a "reasonably accommodation" at all, but a legally mandated requirement. A person who takes up to 12-weeks a year of such leave has their job protected, end of story. If this is inconvenient, the legal response is: too bad - you are a big institution, you'll figure out how to make due.
In the USA, this is really a sufficient and complete answer without considering reasonable accommodations, because taking medically necessary time off isn't considered as such.
But let's go further, because more is morally and often legally required.
Get Proactive: Reasonable Accommodations, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the Americans With Disability Act (ADA)
In the US, a qualifying employee has the the right to "reasonable accommodations". OK - what the heck is reasonable? I'm a big fan of the Job Accommodations Network (JAN) materials, as they are much easier to read and understand than most other materials.

III.THE REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION OBLIGATION
3.1 Overview of Legal Obligations

An employer must provide a reasonable accommodation to the known physical or mental limitations of a qualified applicant or employee
with a disability unless it can show that the accommodation would
impose an undue hardship on the business.
Reasonable accommodation is any modification or adjustment to a job, an employment practice, or the work environment that makes it possible
for an individual with a disability to enjoy an equal employment
opportunity.
The obligation to provide a reasonable accommodation applies to all aspects of employment. This duty is ongoing and may arise any time
that a person's disability or job changes.
An employer cannot deny an employment opportunity to a qualified applicant or employee because of the need to provide reasonable
accommodation, unless it would cause an undue hardship.
An employer does not have to make an accommodation for an individual who is not otherwise qualified for a position.
Generally, it is the obligation of an individual with a disability to request a reasonable accommodation.
A qualified individual with a disability has the right to refuse an accommodation. However, if the individual cannot perform the essential
functions of the job without the accommodation, s/he may not be
qualified for the job.
If the cost of an accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer, the individual with a disability should be given the
option of providing the accommodation or paying that portion of the
cost which would constitute an undue hardship.

So, what is and isn't reasonable? According to JAN:

What accommodations are not considered reasonable?

Reasonable accommodation does not include removing essential job
functions, creating new jobs, and providing personal need items such
as eye glasses and mobility aids. Nothing in the ADA prohibits
employers from providing these types of accommodations; they simply
are not required accommodations.

What is an essential job function? There is no easy answer, but that same page quoted above provides an in-depth discussion, however I posit this reasonable rule of thumb: something is reasonable if it is not disproportionately costly, and especially if other people in a similar position have such an arrangement. If you aren't sure, get a proper Job Evaluation performed by a competent professional (your institution had better already have one on hand!).
Many professors have grad students perform a large amount of grading (with oversight and some supervision) and often use a proctor to deliver tests, for instance - so to insist that a standard way of working for other professors is not reasonable would strain the credulity of the average person (and likely any judges or review boards, should a complaint arise). On the other hand, utterly exempting a person from duties that fill a large portion of an employees work load is probably going too far.
The law in the US is often intentionally vague in this regard, for a very good reason! The goal is actively to encourage people to think of ways to craft jobs and requirements that allow anyone with a disability or chronic condition to be gainfully employed and contribute to their communities in the greatest way possible. If this means a little re-arranging or change, great - that is way cheaper than someone getting fired or having to take legal actions against an institution. With some vagueness and a "reasonable person" standard that is common in American law, this is hoped to actively encourage people to reach out a bit farther than they usually might to find a solution that works for everyone involved.
Proscriptive Moral Advice
As an institution/department, it is generally wise to recognize a pattern and reach out to solve an underlying problem. If a build-up of stress causes incapacitation and certain reliable intervals, maybe something can be arranged to reduce the stress during these times and avoid the worst flare ups entirely? When not possible, planning proactively can wonderfully mitigate the pain in the future; implicitly relying on no one getting ill or sick during high-stress times of the year is a masochistic assumption!
It is reasonable (and often advised) to seek out if a reasonable accommodation could be helpful and welcomed by someone with a serious condition or disability. A willingness to think creatively and to find a solution that everyone can be happy about is ideal.
If a huge glut of work at certain times of the years causes anxiety, can this workload be made more manageable and less all-at-once? Are department requirements/demands worsening things and creating a more difficult environment than necessary? Electronic grading systems/options, automated fill-in-the-bubble grading, Teaching Assistants to do some of the grading (when appropriate to the work), Proctors (such as by giving the tests in some classes so the professor can use that time for grading other tests/assignments instead), and staggered test schedules are widely used to varying degrees throughout the world and can be potentially helpful. Can other duties be rescheduled, such as certain evaluations, meetings, etc, to better even out the work flow?
It is possible that one person's illness can be used as a tool to improve everyone's work conditions and satisfaction, by allowing a "suck it up and deal with it" approach that was begrudgingly accepted to be challenged and overhauled. Empathy and compassion - understanding that someone would almost invariably be happy to not be ill - and realizing that the problems of having more work foisted on everyone when someone is ill is often the fault of the work system rather than on one well-intentioned individual, can make some amazing progress possible.


As a TA, how to react if I come across a Facebook group in which students insult me?

Sometimes students behave childishly. They've only been adults for a few years, and some of them are still transitioning. In groups in particular, and with the anonymizing effect of the internet, immaturity can be amplified.

The first thing to do, when faced with childish behavior, is increase the maturity of your own. Show them how childish they are by contrast. In this case, the most mature thing to do would probably be to take the valid parts of their criticism on board, and ignore the rest. If you feel you must mention it, reduce your comments to the absolute most reasonable and objective part of what you feel needs to be said: you didn't enjoy reading this about yourself, they should come to you directly (or go to your supervisor) with valid criticism, and they should consider the nature of internet posts for the sake of their own professional career.

Don't put the comments on the projector, don't single people out and don't open up a discussion. Just mention it as briefly as you can, and move on.

If it helps, consider that you are in a position of authority, and this is what happens to people in authority. Any boss or manager in any company will have to deal with the fact that people will have little bitching sessions behind their back, and usually not very mature ones. The higher up you get, the more people will gossip about you. There's no way to escape it: no matter how cool or normal you are, the tiniest idiosyncrasies will be magnified.

It's usually not meant in a bad spirit, just a way to blow off steam about forced circumstances. The problem here is that they did it on the internet, instead of in the coffee room.


How much do patents impact an academic career?

The answer will clearly vary by institution, and in particular by field (Your average English prof wouldn't be expected to hold any patents but a materials scientist might) but yes, it certainly can.  Patents and publications are measures of productivity and it would be silly not to note them.  It should be pointed out, however, that patents correlate to jobs closer to industry, so a particularly high rate might be indicative of someone not in academia.


Receiving recommendation letters after graduation

Are professors more likely to ignore students who are no longer
  affiliated with the school?

They often show the tendency for presenting the recommendation for the students, who had a live impact in their minds in view of academic performance, personality and so on. You can't expect from a professor to write anything useful about you, when he/she even can't recall you, deservedly.

On the other hand, leaving the academia and the school, within which the professor is affiliated, would not lead to his/her certain ignorance. In my own explicit experience, one my professors did present an awesome LoR for me, even though I'd left the department for more than 3 years. He did that with due attention to our constant communication and collaborating on some research stuffs.

  is it fine to accept recommendation letters from professors who taught
  courses that I received my minor in?

Yes. The recommendation should come from the person, who can depict you, as well as possible. The lecturer of a minor course, could who be able to hit this mark, would be a right choice.


Should I cite author names as they appear in the journal or as I know them to be complete?

I disagree with the statement of "a publication must be referenced exactly the way it is published."

From Knuth's Mathematical Writing

  In his bibliography Knuth has tried to keep his citations true to the original sources. The bibliography contains mathematical formulas, full name spellings (even alternative spellings when common), and completely spelled-out source journal names. (This last may be unusual enough that some members of a field may be surprised to see the full journal name written out, but it’s a big help to novices who want to find it in the library.)

This means that you can change reference, give full name of authors, give full name of journals. It may be unusual but it can be done and it is DONE. It is done by one of the most respected authors in the academy.

To answer your question:

  So my question is: am I incorrectly citing the article when I include more complete information about the author's name than is given by the journal article itself?

When you include more complete information, you are not doing anything wrong. Actually according to Knuth, you are doing very good job.

Therefore if your target journal does not have any rule about same reference rule, you should be perfectly alright.


Do the editors of journals really know about expertise of reviewers?

I am an Elsevier editor. When I am looking for reviewers, I try the following:

People who I know personally who are doing work relevant to the paper, if I haven't asked them to review another too recently. Occasionally they disagree about its relevance: for example, I asked a colleague who wrote a paper on thermodynamics of coastal ocean sediments to review a paper on thermodynamics of lake sediments. I thought there couldn't be a better match, but he declined because he thought it was too far from his expertise.
People who come up on a Scopus search as having recently published several papers on similar topics. There's a tool built into the editing software to help find them. I usually only check the titles and journals of publication of the listed papers by matched authors to see whether they are in fact a good match, and try to make sure they are first author of the relevant papers.
The author's suggestions. Sometimes these are way off base -- last time I declined a review request that was well outside my field, the editor commented that I had been the author's suggestion (and it was an author I'd never heard of).
Keyword matches in my journal's reviewer database. I use these only if it isn't a highly specialised paper so the matches to fairly generic keywords are likely to be relevant.
Suggestions made by other potential reviewers who have declined review invitations. These can be very helpful.
If I am desperate, I will ask people whose work is relevant to only one aspect of the paper and find other reviewers for other aspects to fill the gaps. For example, I might ask a marine chemist to review a specialised marine biochemistry modelling paper, but also ask a marine modeller to review the modelling aspects.

Your supervisor might have come up in a search if he has co-authored papers with you on the subject. He might also be perfectly well qualified to review it, but think you are even better qualified. If you are a PhD student and he is qualified to supervise you, then I'd suggest he is certainly qualified to review a paper on your topic. If you are a postdoc or higher, this may not be the case.


How to establish inter-rater reliability as a sole PhD researcher

The measurement of an inter-rater reliability premises multiple raters.
I therefore see three possible solutions for you to thematize this issue:

First, aim to get another rater. The best approach for you would be to apply for and obtain funding in order to hire one. I say that this is the 'best' approach because it would demonstrate (a) your ability to get grants for research purposes and (b) your accuracy and honesty with regards to this methodical task. But if that does not work, there are other options; perhaps you can ask among your friends and colleagues to volunteer their time for you (this is what I once did, and my wife volunteered for a small rating task). Or perhaps your supervisor can arrange a student or research assistant for this task.

Second, you can disclose that you were unable to obtain a second rater (due to resource constraints). Your paper's discussion section would highlight this as a limitation of your research, and it would identify the measurement of your approach's reliability as a gap to be closed through 'future research'. This is not shameful; in every scientific publication there should be a discussion section that identifies limitations and further research paths anyway.

Third, you could split yourself into two 'raters' by assuming that you were rater number one at time t1 and rater number two at time t2. However, I have never seen this approach, and it is merely a bold speculation from my side; I am sure that this would be accompanied with grave methodical concerns. Thus, I should also add: Don't follow this advice, just to be sure.


How do I get feedback after a failed tenure-track job search?

I think I have basically three advices (and I feel like you already know them):

Don't overthink it. There are millions of reasons why you may not have been a good fit for the position you applied to, and only a small fraction of them depends on you. Internal politics and unspoken needs play sometimes more than the content of your application. Don't blame yourself, that's the best way to get discouraged without being able to take action.
If possible, get inside feedback. If you knew someone in the department where you applied before applying, you may ask them (preferably in a clever way, i.e., not "Why didn't you hire me?" but "Do you have any suggestions for how I could be a stronger candidate in the future?", as pointed by Kimball). You may not get a honest feedback, you may get a disappointing answer ("Well, actually, the chair wanted to hire the lecturer from the beginning"), but it doesn't hurt to ask.
Look for fresh eyes. If you have a friend or a close colleague in the field, ask him / her to review your application (resume, cover letter, statements), your job talk, your teaching presentation (if there was one), and the list of places where you applied. That's the best kind of feedback you can obtain.

If the search committee answered your cold email with a "generic answer", don't insist. You'll never get more details, except, maybe, in a decade or two, at a conference, in a negligent way, by someone who work there.

Also, you may want to look in a couple of months at the listing of the department: you may spot who actually got the job, and compare your profiles. This information may or may not be useful, but it may to some extend satisfy your curiosity


Should startup-company founder accept peer-review requests?

I think you should not take up this review, based on three reasons:

(1) No longer 'peer' : As an entrepreneur, you engage with technology, products and marketability more than academic research, thus defeating the purpose of peer-review, where researchers review papers in their field of work, and ideally get reviewed equally when they publish. The exception to this is if the journal is a technology journal focusing on product development and you have been asked to review from that perspective.

(2) Resource availability : To review a paper well, you will need access to related work in the field for judging correctness/suitability, possibly you will need to follow up some references, and more importantly, you will need to have time and current knowledge of published literature in the field. Unless the start-up is research-oriented, I think these resources may not be very accessible.

(3) Potential conflict of interest : This may not apply to the present case, but if this repeats, you may find yourself in situations where your review could be biased (eg. the paper reports flaws in a competitor's technology), and this would be an avoidable ethical burden.

Finally, the overbearing message I get from the question is that you are considering review because it could potentially benefit your product (through professional network etc). IMO, this is neither good (review should have a share-and-grow ethos) nor particularly effective- your network can be built better through more conventional routes, and also publishing a paper may not reach a big chunk of your target consumers (unless you are targeting the research community, in which case many of these points are invalid.).


The full stop indicates that etc. is a contraction of et cetera. This means that the citation should come after the dot:

  etc. [1]

If this is the end of the sentence, put a second full stop after the citation:

  etc. [1].

As an aside, my old English teacher told me that using etc. is bad form; if you have other things to list, be explicit and list them. If not, don't waste space with the pointless filler. (However, I myself have often broken this rule.)


Time taken by department to offer the admission decision

The waiting time for a decision depends on the admission process. The admission process itself can vary broadly depending on type and size of the institution.

I can point out two different examples from the German higher education system. I graduated at a public state university of applied sciences where I was member of several committees. Now I work at a private state-recognized higher education institution. The admission processes and concerns, may also apply for US universities.

For public state universities dealing with 10.000+ applications, all of them have to be checked for formal correctness (documents complete and valid etc.). After checking a local numerus clausus have to be calculated to find the limiting grade needed for admission. Especially in Germany some laws and regulations enforce to fulfill target percentages of e.g. women or handicapped persons. These tasks performed by a handful of staff members can last more than a month. Sometimes German universities publish target dates of submitting the admission mail in the same way they publish application dead lines.
For private universities, business-, management- or law-schools the application process often is more selective. Admission committees decide not only on base of grades and formal criteria. Some require letters of recommendation, motivation letters, CVs pointing out working experience or social engagement. All these documents must be read and for everyone the committees have to give a recommendation. Depending on the number of staff members concerned with this, the period until one receives the final decision can last weeks up to months.


I think you're asking the wrong question here.  Instead of asking whether this is "citation stuffing", I would suggest you simply ask yourself whether this makes the paper better or worse (or no different) for your reader.  That is always the ultimate question that should inform all other choices.

Given that you are only proposing to add a single sentence to the paper, citing some purportedly related works, it is not onerous to read that additional sentence.  If the papers are indeed related enough to be of interest to some readers, then it is probably not going to make your paper any worse to mention them.  Bear in mind that when you read an academic paper about a particular problem, you are often interested in related problems, even if they are variations that are different to the immediate problem.  On the other hand, if the papers you propose to cite are not really related to the topic at hand, or are too far removed to be of interest, it will be annoying if you lead the reader to them on the basis of a false promise.

As to the fact that you have only "skim-read" the papers you propose to cite, that is not necessarily disqualifying, but you need to be careful.  If you're going to say that these works are "addressing this problem, as well as its variations", then you have to make sure that you read enough to be absolutely sure that this claim is true.  It is also important to have read enough of them to be satisfied that these are good papers ---i.e., you want to direct your reader to papers that are valuable for them to read.  You don't necessarily need to read an entire paper to know that it relates to a variation of the problem you are working on, but you have to make sure you read enough that you are not just guessing or taking someone else's word for it.


Asking to visit a university, and be given workspace for a week

I disagree with the existing answers. I don't see this as a "big ask" at all, as long as your expectations are reasonable. You should not expect to get a nice individual office, but if I know you at all I would definitely be able to find you a space somewhere in my or my division's labs. My students have also done similar visits in the past, sometimes in labs that we did not have extensive connections to, so I guess other people also don't see this as a huge deal.

Of course you should have some idea what you and the host will get out of the visit - people may not be thrilled to host you if this is really just a cover-up for a private visit. Conversely, for a week-long visit, you should also not expect to be "entertained" for the entire week. People will not be able to cancel everything for an entire week.


Didn't pay attention to rules and created an illegal note card for exam?

Often a professor is no more eager than you to invoke formal disciplinary mechanisms, as they are often complex and time-consuming.  From what you describe, it sounds like you've been given your punishment and find it fair.  If the professor was interested in taking it further, you would likely (but not necessarily) have been informed in the same email.

To find out, you can simply email the professor back.  Say pretty much what you said here: you made a mistake, you find the punishment fair and even generous, and you just want to check whether the matter is now settled, or if you need to anticipate further disciplinary action.

If the professor feels that the matter is settled, and that the grade reduction is all the consequence that you need to face, then you can safely put it behind you; if not, it may become part of your record and may require explanation, depending on how things proceed.


Is it common for universities to have scientific development plans?

In the United States, at least, this does not generally happen except at a very coarse level.  Thus, for example, many universities engage in "cluster hiring" in which a number of positions are hired together as a strategic investment in making something interesting happen in a particular area, often coupled with some internal monies being set aside to support collaboration between those hires.  Likewise, a department may often decide to hire in a particular area where they wish to grow or to shore up weakness, or a university may set up an internal funding program for something that it is interested in.

Once faculty have been hired, however, the traditions of scientific freedom of inquiry mean that it would be looked on very askance for any person or group to try to assign faculty to work on specific research projects as part of their job.


Is it acceptable to ask a question concerning a proof in a thesis?

Definitely appropriate.

A thesis is not a homework submission. You need to be the one writing the thesis (i.e., no ghostwriting or copypasting), but there is no requirement to work entirely on your own, as long as you cite the contributions of others.

A thesis may even contain no new results or ideas whatsoever, but just be a textbook-like treatise of a subject. In most cases (i.e., unless the treatise is really a lot more readable than existing literature and thus forwards science by making the subject significantly more accessible), such a thesis will probably be declined for lack of novelty if it's a PhD thesis (for a master's thesis, it's fine), but it does not constitute research misconduct.


Why do graduate school application forms ask applicants to name the other schools to which he/she is applying?

One thing that some programs look at is whether you are likely to come if they accept you. Say you have a 4.0 gpa, perfect GREs, great letters of recommendation, and publications in respected journals from your undergrad research, and you apply to a bunch of the top schools and some mediocre schools. If there isn't something in your personal statement explaining why you are applying to the mediocre school, and that school sees all the other great schools you applied to, that school may not accept you because they assume even if they did, you would surely go elsewhere. Why would a university do this? Well its a waste of money to fly you out, but more importantly when someone gets put on the wait-list awaiting your decline of the offer, that person may accept other offers from schools that did not wait-list them. I have been told first hand by members of admission committees that the "where else did you apply to" question is used at least partially for this purpose.

Additionally, at the university administration level, they like to keep track of which universities they compete with for students. I have seen Universities present statistics on how many students reject their offers, and which universities they end up in. So the question is also probably there for statistics tracking purposes unrelated to the admission process. This is a potential reason why even the top schools will ask this question.


Unsure whether to continue maintaining research account on Facebook re Cambridge Analytica

You are facing a moral dilemma that only you can answer. We all are facing a similar dilemma:

  Do my professional activities contribute to the wealth of un-ethical companies?

That company may be Facebook, a publisher, a software company, a private group, etc.
Most of the people I know will think

  If I don't have the choice, I will go with it but keep an eye open for the alternatives, and make sure the people I work with are aware of that dilemma.

I use C# and Visual Studio in my teaching, despite not really liking Microsoft: I roll with it, but make sure my students know of the alternatives, and bring up the topic regularly with my colleagues, in the hope that we will collectively chose an alternative.

Arguably you can't make that switch on your own: you can't make all the virtual communities in Iraq and Syria switch to Diaspora overnight, but you can create an account on that website as well, encourage people to switch, and keep an eye on both platforms.

As you stated, that recent "scandal" with Facebook didn't create that dilemma: you already knew that your data was used in all sorts of ways. But maybe you can use it to encourage some of your contacts to move to a different platform?

Some people have the opposite approach and put their morals before their career: Alexander Grothendieck is such an example. Quoting Wikipedia:

  Grothendieck's political views were radical and pacifist […]. He retired from scientific life around 1970, after having discovered that the IHÉS was partly funded by the military.


In general, it is always easier if your cross-reference is relatively nearby—flipping between multiple parts of a text makes the whole thing harder to understand.

So I'd lean towards referencing the version in the appendix, all other things being equal. However, if you are referencing a whole series of equations in the main text, including one duplicated in the Appendix, then it would be OK to preserve the main-text reference.


Should I wait to upskill myself or contact professor about the PhD opening asap?

I don't think you stand to gain much by waiting. Especially if, as you state in your question, the position might no longer be available within two months.

Either the supervisor is open to working with you and you'll have the opportunity to get to know him a bit and to demonstrate your ability to find your way in his field of research, or he's looking for a PhD student with a prior skillset you're unlikely to acquire in 1-2 months time anyway.

If he's up for it, I'd say it's always a good idea to have a general talk with him to get to know your prospective field better, show your interest and to get targeted feedback on whether your Masters might simply be good enough in the first place. That doesn't exempt you from reading up a bit about his current research and it's background though.


Is it bad manners to mark your territory?

This is a great question, but I think it's slightly misformulated. What you are thinking of doing is neither "bad manners", nor can it really be considered "marking your territory" in all but an extremely weak (so weak as to be essentially meaningless in my opinion) sense. The correct question is the one you ask in the body of the question: is it a good idea? And specifically, is it a good way to build a solid reputation for yourself and to maximize the impact of your work?

The principle at work here is that in general it's a bad idea to brag about achievements you haven't yet attained. You might think that by doing so you are "marking your territory", but that's simply not the case: in reality it is fair game for anyone to publish a proof to a claim that you say you plan to prove in a future paper (and if they publish a proof using a different technique than the one you use, as you suggested, then that is even more legitimate and there is even less concern that they will be deterred by your "territory-marking", to the extent that such a concern exists at all). On the other hand, by trying to lay claim to results of which you do not currently have a written proof you undermine your own credibility: no one knows whether you will follow through on your promises, and everyone has seen cases of people making such claims and never following through, and would therefore be quite likely to be very skeptical of your claims (both the present claims and any claims by you they will encounter in future papers). So, by and large, bragging about as-of-yet-unattained achievements is not a winning strategy, and I'd advise against it in all but a handful of circumstances.

So when is it appropriate to advertise planned future follow-up work at the end of a math paper? I can think of two situations where it may not be a bad idea:

You have a 90%-complete manuscript of the future work and have a very high degree of confidence that you can complete it in a very short period of time, and you believe that advertising the future work helps make your current paper seem more attractive. (But be very careful: predictions of this sort tend to be wildly optimistic. I am speaking from personal experience, which I'm guessing is shared by almost everyone who has been publishing in pure math for more than a few years...)
Your intent is not to advertise the future work in a selfish, territory-marking sort of way, but rather to advertise directions for follow-up work that you believe are of interest to the community in an altruistic sort of way that makes it clear that anyone is free to pursue those directions. It's still perfectly fine to imply that you plan to do so yourself, just don't expect that this gives you any special rights that prevent others from beating you to the punch. For example, you can write something like:

  To conclude, an interesting open problem is whether a non-Riemannian hypersquare exists. We believe the techniques of the current paper can be used to show that the answer is positive, and plan to address this in future work.


Drawbacks of participating in a conference boycott

Yes, participating in such a boycott can come at a personal cost.  That is true for any boycott; the existence of this cost is what makes the boycott worthwhile in the first place.  If there was no cost at signing such a pledge, it would be much less impressive if many people sign.

However, again as with any boycott, as O. R. Mapper says, the marginal cost of participating drops if more academics participate.  Indeed, if a very large number of academics participate in a boycott, organisers may relocate or cancel the event, which brings your cost of boycotting, compared to people who chose not to boycott, to zero.


Etiquette for undergraduate research and job search

Yes, it's okay to seek industry internships while you are conducting undergraduate research.

Discuss this with your supervisor.  They should help you.


I'll give a specific example of a fairly high-ranking robotics journal (no affiliation). Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) is a recently-started journal of the Robotics and Automation Society, which is coupled with flagship robotics conferences (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), and the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)).
Since it has only started in 2016, the impact factor (JCR Impact Factor of 3.6 for 2019) is so-so amongst established journals, but in my opinion really high for a relatively young journal.
Publication in RA-L when coupled with the above three conferences (IROS, ICRA, CASE) works like this:

When submitting to a conference, you have an option to submit the paper for RA-L special issue in addition
RA-L special issue deadline tends to be 2-3 weeks prior the conference submission deadline
Technically, the journal submission could be rejected while the paper is still accepted for conference presentation and publication in conference proceedings (but I haven't heard of that actually happening)
If accepted to RA-L, the paper will still be presented in conference sessions, but will be indexed as part of RA-L special issue associated to that conference.


How feasible would it be to transition from a Master in Finance to a phd in Pure Maths?

Bottom line is that it will be very hard since you lack a bachelors in math (or even the math training of a physicist).

My advice would be instead to go work for a while.  It seems like we get a lot of degree change requests which are prompted from not wanting to leave the nest.

If you don't follow the go work advice, I would at least look for something a little closer to your training.  Something in quantitative finance or econ or at least applied math or statistics.  Not pure math.


Classifying talk at fellowship research conferece

Put it under invited talks, as the conference was invitation only. (the fellowship itself will count for more honor, I think). Include some information in the talk listing that concisely describes the context of the conference. ("Title", conference name if it had some fancy name [Invitation to XXX fellowship winners to present results], location, date.)

As you already noted, and this is actually more important point for this situation, you are 'senior' enough in your field to understand that some point-counting occurs and that some invited talks carry more cachet than others.

It will be clear to a research/academic setting reading between the lines of your application that this wasn't an invitation to a  major conference in your field. And there may be other young applicants who do have such an invitation.

But being fairly transparent in description but not apologetic basically shows that you understand what information your reader is looking for. (And that you are confident and scrupulous enough to give it to them)

You may have fewer high-profile invited talks than another applicant, but you will keep yourself from getting classed with the applicants who raise the red flags either because they appear to not know any better, (e.g., list an invited talk of their PhD advisor or colleague as being one of their 'invited' talks) or who appear to think that no one will check if they leave out some important details (e.g., list an invited talk of their advisor or colleague as if it was their own and leave out any author list that shows who actually  gave the talk). (true stories)


Who should I tell about switching a group-based course to pass/no credit?

First of all, saving this group project should be your top-priority. This is still in your personal interest since failing projects tend to get people failed in the class entirely. Also: later in life you are going to have to work with other people and things might get very difficult. Turning this around now is valuable experience for later in life when there is really something at stake.
My advice would be to talk to your group members and make a plan to get things going. If the problem is other group members refusing to work or handing in significantly sub-standard work, talk to your professor about it now. 4 Weeks is enough time to get a lot done, that gets a lot harder with 3 or even 2 weeks left.
The issue isn't that you might appear to abandon them. You yourself are now planning to put less work into it than what you yourself think the project needs to succeed. So the problem is that to a degree you are abandoning the project.


Listing inner-department seminars/presentations that focused on presenting current research by other authors?

I don't think it's improper per se, but I would not include them.

These sorts of presentations are more akin to assignments for a class: they can improve your skills in terms of public speaking and also getting deeper into the material.

However, you wouldn't put your course assignments on a CV, and I wouldn't put these presentations on a CV either.

I wouldn't even include them if they were based on original work, unless they are in a format that indicates some level of acceptance or prestige: conference presentations, invited talks at other institutions, etc. Instead, you reference that original work where it appears in public: in publications, for example.

They might be appropriate in a more generic form in a non-academic CV, when the point is to emphasize your experience presenting these sorts of things to a public audience, rather than your academic credentials.


Editor invites many reviewers simultaneously

It's quite common to invite multiple reviewers simultaneously, though 4-7 is on the high side in my experience (yet sometimes, even 4-7 is not enough!). The numbers quoted in the details below are for physics, and might differ for other fields.

Regarding whether or not it's ethical, it really depends on tradeoffs. The tradeoff for not inviting multiple reviewers at the same time is that your paper will take longer to handle. It's not just submitting reviews on time. Not every reviewer invited will agree to review it! My personal guideline when I was an editor was that, each time I invited reviewers (3-5 at a time), I would budget one month till I receive reviews. That itself is an optimistic budget - 6 weeks is closer to the average, since there's a long tail in the distribution.

The alternative to inviting multiple reviewers at the same time is to invite one at a time, and wait till you hear back from the reviewer if (s)he is willing to review. This leads to the following problems:

How long are you willing to wait to hear back from the reviewer? Let's say a week (which was also my personal guideline). Since you might have to invite 6+ reviewers before someone actually agrees to do it, you could easily be waiting 6 weeks before the paper starts being reviewed. If the reviewer takes one month to complete, that's at least 2.5 months before you can make a decision, not including any administrative time (i.e. you and the editor-in-chief both make decisions immediately).
What if your journal requires two reviewers? You can invite two at a time, but there's no guarantee that both of them will agree to review. Maybe one will, the other won't. You could end up with one review submitted with the next one due in another month.
What if the reviewer you invited writes a poor review (happens more often than one might think)? Sure you can blacklist the reviewer, but you still need to make a decision for the paper. If you invite more reviewers, again, that's another 1+ month till you receive the reviews.
Nightmare scenario: what if your reviewer agrees to review but then does not actually submit a review, in spite of multiple chasers? If we take the worst case, you've already waited 2.5 months and then discover that you have to start from scratch, which can lead to another 2.5 months before you can make a decision. Ouch!

In the end it comes down to how long authors are willing to wait for their papers to be reviewed. If authors are willing to wait 6 months, then yes, editors can invite one reviewer at a time and waste fewer reviewer-hours. On the other hand it's common for authors to start worrying if they don't hear back in two months, in which case the editor really cannot invite one reviewer at a time.


Is it better to do an MBA with some work experience?

Usually, MBA is something that you do when you have significant work experience. There is a good reason for that. If you go straight from your graduation into the program, you will learn a few thing on the theoretical side of business administration. But if you already have encountered troubles in management, you will learn a lot from the numerous case studies (because most of the learning in a MBA is through case studies) and exchanges with other "students".
Moreover, the main advantage of a MBA, besides the few things you learn, is the network that you will acquire, and only a few fellow students will be ready to network with somebody without experience.