How do I publish papers taking a middle ground on a controversial topic, when reviewers with strong opinions on either side keep rejecting them?

A principle in rhetorics and the art of persuasion states that it is useful to preemptively address any criticism that you expect will be leveled at you after you make your argument, by raising the objection yourself and then explaining why it’s not valid while you are making the argument in the first place. * If you do this in a thoughtful way, a potential critic might be converted into a supporter.
Thus, instead of laying out your case following the rough template of

[make a claim/hypothesis/etc]
[present first supporting argument]
[present second supporting argument]
[etc]

you could instead use a structure such as

[make a claim/hypothesis/etc]
[present first supporting argument]
[present second supporting argument]
[etc]
[raise first possible objection, then address it]
[raise second possible objection, then address it]
[etc]

Now, it is not always possible to foresee all objections that could be raised by someone. (This is especially true since we are mainly thinking here about objections that are invalid, and can therefore be successfully defended against!) However, in your case you have already heard the main invalid objections raised several times, and can therefore preemptively defend against them according to this recipe.
Here’s how this can work in practice. The way to defend against the objection

"Oh no, another paper on A"

Is by making it very very clear in the first place that your paper is not “another paper on A”. That is, suppose that in the introduction to a rejected paper you wrote

In this paper we show that A can work in a scenario in which [some extra assumptions].
[proceeding to describe your solution]

While accurate, this may not provide enough context to differentiate what you’re doing from the typical “paper on A”, which can lead to the sort of knee-jerk reaction from the reviewer that you quoted. Instead, maybe write something like

Many papers have been written claiming to show that A can work. We do not make such a claim, and indeed believe the earlier attempts to show this are incomplete and that the problem may continue to resist attempts at a rigorous solution because of the inherent difficulty of either formally proving or experimentally verifying A.
Instead, our goal is more modest, and therefore more achievable. We show that, if one is willing to assume [extra assumptions], the problem becomes tractable. In that case, a version of A can indeed be made to work through a reasonably straightforward application of [technique].

It seems to me that someone from the anti-A faction is likely to treat your claims with a bit more respect after a paragraph like this.
Similarly, the second objection

We already proved A, why we need this work?

can also be preemptively addressed by carefully considering what the reviewers’ misconception is about what your paper is doing, what the other papers about A are doing, and how those two things differ, and making sure to explicitly point out that possible source of confusion and clarify it. For example, you can insert somewhere a paragraph along the following lines:

It should be emphasized that the earlier papers [X, Y, Z] have proposed interesting ways to make A work, as well as reasonable arguments to support those proposals. Thus, it might appear that the current work, which shows that A works under additional assumptions, is superseded by these earlier results. That is not the case; the reason is that the current solution is in fact completely rigorous, and thus demonstrates A under the extra assumptions in a more satisfactory and complete manner than the previous works. Moreover, our formal verification gives further insight into the nature of A that may turn out to be applicable to additional situations, perhaps leading to future results, or even to an eventual completely rigorous demonstration that A can work in full generality.

Summary: at the end of the day, there is always the possibility of getting unfair and invalid criticism, either of a kind that you didn’t expect, or of a kind that you did expect and tried to address preemptively but where the critic simply isn’t receptive to your reasoning. However, the method of preemptively addressing criticism will be able to successfully shoot down at least some of the objections, with some probability. It gives you the best shot at convincing people that your arguments are valid and “interesting for the community”. That seems like the best that one can hope for in this situation. Good luck!
* Source: this is a “principle” that I invented. However, I’m pretty sure I’m far from the first person to discover the usefulness of this technique, so maybe it actually is a principle that was explicitly formulated by someone at some point.


What are the main goals of administering preliminary / qualifying exams to graduate students?

There are two types of qualifying/preliminary exams, those that cover graduate or undergraduate topics.  I assume you are just talking about the latter (while in my experience the former is a little more common).

As I see it, the big reason for preliminary exams on undergraduate material is that many students haven't actually mastered this material to a professional standard.  At less prestigious schools, many students won't have received straight A's (or the equivalent in other grading systems), so they had gaps or weaknesses in their understanding, and unless they took more advanced courses in the same area they may never have filled those gaps.  Furthermore, it's possible to get excellent grades without true mastery, and students sometimes forget things they knew while taking a course.

The preliminary exam sends a message of "OK, you're in grad school now, and as a professional you're expected to know this material cold.  If you have any doubts about your mastery of it, now is the time to study carefully."  The few students who don't need to study suffer little harm from the exams, and the students who do need to study benefit from the studying.


What to remember when supervising female PhD students?

My view is that her gender does not/should not change anything in how I supervise her or what I expect from her, the rationale being that doing so might ultimately hurt her in her post-PhD career. For this reason, I have not brought up her gender in any of our discussions. I briefly contemplated telling her that I will treat her the same way as her male peers, but did not do so because it seemed wrong (as in "of course, why is he telling me this?").

That is exactly the advice I would give in this situation, so congrats, you've already figured it out.

  The agency that finances her project offers a special stipend to attend workshops/meetings for female students; I have encouraged her to attend.

Try not to overdo the encouragement. I get so much spam inviting me to assorted "women in engineering" events.

On a related note, you might want to watch out for the possibility that you (or your department) might have a tendency to overuse the students who are "visible" minorities (race, gender) in publicity materials and outreach events.  Some people don't mind (some even appreciate this), but some dislike being used as "poster children" to show how diverse the department is. (There's a joke in this TV episode, where the African-American doctor calls out his college for overusing him in their brochure by photoshopping him into the same picture twice.)

I'm sure people must have published studies about how female PhD students are statistically more likely to have families and be concerned about work-life balance issues, and how you have to be more supportive, etc.  But all that really just comes down to being communicative and supportive of your students, whatever their individual needs might be. For large numbers I'm sure there's a gender dimension there, but at the individual level it's just about being a good supervisor to an individual student.


How do I talk to my professor about my anxiety/depression?

First, everyone feels overwhelmed in grad school, and nearly everyone suffers from imposter syndrome.  It isn't just you who feels like everyone around you is better.  This isn't likely to help with your illness, obviously, but I think every grad student is better off once they internalize that idea.

As @ff524 pointed out in the comments, the first thing you need to do is go talk to your school's disabilities office.  You don't need to go in with a clear picture of how it goes or what you want out of it - you just need to go in and explain the situation to them just as you did to us.  It's their job to help you, and very often that includes facilitating conversations with your professors as well.

You don't have to go to your professor and throw yourself on their mercy.  I understand why you would be traumatized from the awful experience you described, but understand that what that professor did wasn't just wrong, it was likely illegal. Faculty have clear obligations that the disabilities office will help them understand and work through, just like they help you.

You should also get in touch with a mental health professional.  If you're in a new town away from your old one, go to your school's health center and I'm certain they can refer you.

Basically the only "wrong" thing you could do is to continue doing nothing.  Get in and get help right away, and don't feel even remotely bad about doing so.  This is exactly what those resources are there for.


If the Professor who recommends me somewhere has coauthored papers with professors there, would the LORs hold tremendous value?

In my view (and I was MSc admissions officer at some point) recommendation letters at MSc level are largely a tick box exercise. I have admitted more than hundred MSc students and a recommendation letter hasn't made a difference even once. It is fine from my point of view that the student shows they can find somebody professional to recommend them, but as long as such a letter is not actively damaging, the box is then ticked and it doesn't make much more of a difference. Obviously I can't speak for all places.
This makes sense as well; applicants shouldn't have an advantage if they know somebody who published with me or XXX from our institution. Generally admitting students is not about whom they know but how good they are, and because 99% of recommendation letters are positive, I have to assume that there's very little information in them about the quality of the student. Even if some read a little bit less positive, this may be because the writer has a more critical attitude to recommendation letters, rather than the student being bad. People who write glowing recommendation letters for everyone who asks are around all over the place. Also recommendation letters at this level are quite regularly written by people who don't know more about the student than their set of results and maybe that they asked a few questions in class, but maybe not even that (at PhD level this is a bit different). Previous marks and course choices should totally dominate what's in recommendation letters. I'd go so far and say I'd be wary of institutions where this is different.


How to organize email recipients in professional group email?

It doesn't matter.

Certainly, in Sweden it doesn't matter.

Nor does it matter anywhere else.

The only things you might want to consider:

To: or Cc: header: some e-mail clients show e-mail differently if the recipient is in the To:-header as opposed to the Cc:-header.  Gmail is one such client.  I tend to prioritise e-mails where I'm in the To:-header over those where I'm in the Cc:-header.  If you expect the professor to answer your question, make sure he or she is in the To:-header.  If you just wish to “keep him/her in the loop” (perhaps for future reference), Cc: is fine.
Avoid bcc, as most e-mail clients and servers ignore the rule that the recipient in the bcc should still see their own name there (but no-one else should), and therefore it will look like an e-mail not addressed to them at all.  That makes it downprioritised at best, or marked as spam at worst.

But really.  Within that, nobody cares about the order of the recipients.


My BS was in Math, and I'm almost finished with my Master's in CS. At the time of my application, I had finished all the lower division CS courses, but no upper division.

You will find that Math is excellent prep for CS, and that CS departments recognize this. To do well in upper division math, you need to be able to think logically and abstractly, which are both valuable in CS. In many ways, math and programming are the same -- you have a starting condition, you have a set of rules you can use, and you have a desired end point. You would like to get there in an elegant manner, without too many missteps, and in a manner that others can understand.

In the US at least, most schools that I looked at assume that their MS students will be lacking one or more required upper division CS classes, and have provisions for those students to take those classes. The year I entered, out of 80 students only one had all the required upper division classes. I don't think you'll find this is a problem. However, the more you have, the better you will look compared to others.

Your best bet is to call up the graduate coordinator for CS at the schools you are considering, and discuss things with them. They won't make any guarantees, but the can give you a good sense of whether you are wasting your time applying at that school, and often will give you hints on things you can do to make yourself a stronger applicant.


Appropriate to meet with prof. to discuss low quality exam

Yes. If you would like to discuss the exam, schedule a meeting and talk with your professor about it. It seems that you have already discovered the core issues impacting your performance here - a lack of sufficient planning and the resulting lack of time - so it may be helpful to consider what you hope to learn from such a meeting. Are you hoping your professor knows some way to accomplish more work in less time? Are you looking for some confirmation that you really couldn't have done better? Your professor may have useful feedback but will likely agree with your assessments about planning.


How to determine if a topic warrants a research paper?

You've chosen a journal that looks like it is well suited to your background and topics.

By itself, the length of your paper is not related to whether it is important or publishable.

There are three things you can do to test whether your potential topics/papers are worth writing and submitting.  First, read many articles in this journal,  similar journals, and also conferences.  You aren't just looking for articles on the same topic or technique as yours.  Instead, you are learning about what constitutes a good research paper in your field.  Based on your reading, write a detailed outline of your proposed paper(s), and also an abstract.

The second thing you can do is to write a version of your paper(s) as a "Working Paper" and then circulate them to peers or colleagues for feedback.  You can post this to Arxiv and post links on social media or mailing lists to get broader feedback.  This approach has two advantages.  You sometimes only know the value of a research paper after you finish writing it.  And you'll get the most useful feedback from people when they have a finished paper in their hands, as opposed to reacting to a concept.

The third thing you can do, building on the previous, is to submit a paper or two (each revised based on earlier feedback) to a journal or conference, and then learn from reviewer comments if they reject you.


Applying to PhD programs while pursuing a PhD

In most fields in the US this would be acceptable. An exception might be if you have accepted a grant that has some sort of termination clause that prevents it or makes it difficult. If you wind up leaving your current position you might have some ethical obligation to finish up some tasks if they affect others, but that is a separate question.

In general, though, you can seek a better position for yourself.

But you will also need to be able to explain to the new institution why you are leaving and why you are a good prospect for their program. Self awareness and learning are usually a good reason that (most) people will accept.


Publishing data under Creative Commons license: CC0 or CC-BY?

CC-0 is considered the best choice for scientific progress because it lowers barriers to reuse.

Dryad has a nice and compelling explanation of why they require CC-0 in their FAQ https://datadryad.org/pages/faq#info-cc0

Here is one excerpt:

  CC0 does not exempt those who reuse the data from following community norms for scholarly communication, in particular from citation of the original data authors. On the contrary, by removing unenforceable legal barriers, CC0 facilitates the discovery, reuse, and citation of that data.


What do I put for my affiliation on a paper when I have none

It depends upon your specific company. At one extreme, your company might not want you publishing anything, even if your research has nothing to do with their work (as an example, read about the story of Gosset who used the pseudonym "student"). At the other extreme, your company might be happy with you publishing and listing their company as your affiliation. Or, your company might be somewhere in between and be okay with you publishing, but not listing them as your affiliation. I would ask around or see what other people do at your company in a similar situation.

Also, you say you did the research on your own time, however, your company may still be able to prohibit you from doing any research, even on your own time. You would need to read the fine print on your contract or employee handbook to answer the specific question: "May I publish while working for company X?".

Last, I have seen authors that simply list their home address either because they are retired, unemployed, or in a situation similar to yours. See these similar posts:

Author without institutional or professional affiliation
What to put in "affiliation" field when submitting paper without affiliation?


Modern replacement for slides in presentations?

The best replacement for "old-school slides," I've found, is the more old-school approach of writing things by hand, either with markers on paper captured with a document camera, or writing with a stylus on a screen. (I prefer the former.) Even in formal seminars, I've taken to writing more in "real time," which many people have commented positively on. We're not machines; we react with remarkable sympathy to the cadence of human-delivered speech and spontaneous writing that appears at the speed of human processing.


The third letter of recommendation. Which one could strengthen my PhD application?

I think both options are good. Personally, I'd slightly prefer the recommendation from your current employer, as they should be in a position to comment on a few things relevant to academia: that you write well, work independently, have initiative in solving problems, and good interpersonal skills.


Should I apply for a position that I am interested but not competitive enough?

Let the hiring committee decide whether you are competitive, rather than assuming you are not. Apply and make your best case that you are the best person for this job. The decision will be made on a variety of factors, not just a count of papers. A person needs to be "fit" for the position and that will mean different things to different people.

And as for 2), don't do that at all.

Part of your application will show works in progress, of course. Especially if you have submitted papers that are not yet published. If the job includes teaching, show that you are good at that. Don't leave anything out. Don't assume that anything is unimportant.


Beginning PhD in related field without subject area expertise, will that be a problem?

While shan23's answer is good, it is also somewhat incomplete. There are a few things to watch out for when you're coming in to a field from another department:

You will need to keep in mind the qualifying procedures for your new department. Will they expect you to pass exams in undergraduate coursework in the new discipline? If so, then you'll need to do a lot more "catch-up" work early on to make up for the potential shortfall.
Unless the new area is an interdisciplinary one—such as biomedical engineering—they're probably going to want to see some track record in the area. You're going to find it a lot easier to move into biomedical engineering from mechanical engineering than from economics.
You may find it helpful to try to find a position as a lab assistant or something similar to this in the new field before you try to start the graduate coursework. However, this is by no means required. (But it would help to prove the "dedication" aspect, which is what you'd need to convince a graduate school admissions committee about in order to have a successful application).


As a reviewer, how much raw data or code should you request?

If there are other reasons to reject the paper, then it's certainly unnecessary to request code/data.  If the paper looks like something that might be accepted, then you should ask yourself:

  Can I certify the correctness and significance of this work, to the necessary degree, with the information that is available?

Of course, the key is the phrase to the necessary degree.  To make things more concrete, you might consider:

  Would I feel comfortable if the whole world knew that I refereed and recommended acceptance of this paper?

If the answer is no, I don't have enough confidence in the results without seeing the raw data/code, then you should ask for it.  You're really doing the authors a favor here -- giving them the chance to convince you by providing additional evidence.

I would be very polite and make the request through the editor.  If the code and data are not forthcoming, you should probably say in your recommendation something like

  I find the results in this paper compelling if they are correct, but I cannot recommend it for publication without verifying the data/code that underlies those results.

Of course, the degree to which a referee is expected to verify the correctness of results varies greatly between fields.  But you can always choose a personal standard higher than what's usual in your field.  Just realize that good refereeing takes a significant time investment.


What to do if asked to write a letter of recommendation for a weak candidate?

Although it may be quite awkward, it is certainly acceptable to tell the student/colleague that you do not feel you can write a strong LoR for them, and to suggest that they ask someone else. This may seem rude or even unkind, but it's much better for the student/colleague in the long run than a lukewarm or poor letter.


Tips for purchasing food and drink for a talk

While cookies, donuts and chocolate are always a safe bet, I have seen that fruits and vegetables are highly appreciated as well. They are really cheap, but require some work, as apples, stem cabbages, peppers ... have to be cut into pieces of finger food size. Cutting and preparing plates for 50 people takes something between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on whether you just want to serve food or have a nice presentation as well.


Mixed use of titles in dissertation acknowledgment

I'd suggest that if a person has a doctorate that you should give the title, even if they are your friends. It honors their achievement.
Your dissertation will be read by others, possibly many others if it is published.


Is it considered cheating to ask a friend or tutor to proofread your thesis before submission?

I can't imagine why it would be cheating: So long as you're producing the majority of the content, it wouldn't be cheating to have someone check for the problems that are now invisible to you!


Typographical emphasis on text is ambiguous

Perhaps you don't need to italicise the word learn: you could just say "a training set is used to train the system to model the particular phenomenon".

This means that the italics are reserved for the words or phrases that you are setting the precise meaning of.


Determining the scope of a Master's Thesis

I'm not sure if this applies to all subject domains, but in computer science, most of the Master's Theses that I have seen were quite broad.  They gave an overview of the subject and a more detailed analysis of whatever subtopic the author chose to cover.

Most of them had little empirical content.  From what I can tell, the goal is to analyze a few works related to one's topic and formulate several salient questions that could be addressed in the future.

To reiterate, a master's thesis differs from a PhD dissertation in that the goal is not to provide novel content, but to show that one has a good understanding of the material, is comfortable with analyzing current or previous research, and that one has the ability to come up with new, exciting ideas to build upon said research.

To determine what is reasonable, you should consult with an advisor, I do not think that you can answer this question without already having some sort of topic in mind.  On that note, if possible, I think that providing insights is far more important than reviewing topics that most people in the field are already familiar with.  So, if you have enough content, you could easily cut some of the overview and concentrate more on your ideas, which if good, would look more impressive.

With respect to "selected theory" vs "empirical content," I think that's entirely up to you.  Whatever serves your thesis better is what I would incorporate into it.  This probably seems like a very hand-wavy answer, but it really does depend on exactly what questions/issues that you're attempting to address.  I may be wrong, but I doubt that there's any sort of formula that dictates how much of either you should use.


Can a successful grant application be considered a publication in academia?

No.  Count them as part of your funding record.

Based on what you have said of your record, people will expect you to look for a job in research administration.  E.G. Vice President of Research, or Director of Research Facilities.

If you want to go back to teaching, the usual strategy I hear about in the news is to get an admin/leadership job and then demote yourself after a few years.


Choosing Artificial Intelligence after MS in Theory

As always, it's going to come down to your application and your history.

From the sounds of it, you'll be a very strong candidate based on your theory background -- You just need to find the right school / supervisor that will see how to help you pursue those interests. Look for schools with good AI programs.

Knowing the research focuses at the CS Department in the University of Alberta, I think you'd have a good shot there with a number of supervisors, both in reinforcement learning and in machine learning.

Really though, it's going to come down to a demonstration that you can do the research, via your reference letters, CV, etc.


Should I accept this invitation to conference PC?

If your alarm bells are ringing, but the offered position is attractive, then there are ways to check it out without causing problems.

Example: The person who's name is on this invite will have contact information outside this particular email. A phone number or email that you don't get from this email, for example, but from their institution or some such. That way, if the email is not legit you are not going through the channel it has provided. Contact that person using that independent contact info. The approach could be something like so:

  Hello well-known-person-running-a-conference. I have received this email inviting me to join the PC for well-known-conference. What would be involved? How much time and effort is expected to be required? What other requirements are there?

Then if the person responds with ready information you can simply decide if the amount of work is acceptable. If they respond with "who are you and how did you get my name?" then possibly the original email is not so legit.


I submitted an LOR online for a student to a US school. Student claims they want a physical copy. How should I respond?

It's completely possible a school might ask for an original letter on paper sent direct to them.

It's been identified as a US school but not which one.  There are perhaps 600 graduate institutions in the US.  Multiply that times the number of programs.  There simply has to be some variance in admissions policies.  At any particular school, it's completely possible they have an admissions policy of auditing LORs by asking for paper copies of all or some subsets of those submitted electronically.  There's no national standard on this kind of thing.

(I was surprised when University of Washington wanted paper originals of my own LORs for my first faculty appointment a few years ago.  So I figure there have to be schools that might want paper originals for student LORs.)

If you're unsure of the authenticity of the request, you might ask to see the communications the student received.  But once satisfied, I'd try to comply.  (I keep copies of the LORs I write so I can resend them with a new inside address when a student applies elsewhere; I assume you do, too.)

I would, of course, only accept a request for an original sent direct to the school. A request that the original be given to the student for delivery to the school would ring bells as bogus and likely end the need for any new LORs for that individual.


How do ects grades compare to American grades?

They don't compare at all.

With ECTS, grades correspond to relative position of the student for a given course. For example, A is for the top 10%, B for the next 25%, and so on. These percentages are out of passing students – even E is a passing grade, by definition. Students who fail get F or FX depending on the severity of failure. This is based on statistical data for that year and previous years, so that if in some year many students perform exceptionally well (or bad), then that should be taken into account, in theory.
(Converting grades is not an easy task. In my understanding the letter grades are not used anymore, rather the administration will actually convert the local grade into a foreign grade. There is an example in Annex B of the ECTS guide from 2015.)
See this page for more information: http://ec.europa.eu/education/ects/users-guide/grade-distribution_en.htm

Grades in the US are completely different. First, the passing grade is often C, not E, therefore the distribution of grades will obviously be different. From what I understand (correct me if I am wrong), anything lower than a B+ is quite bad for undergrad courses.
Moreover grades are not necessarily correlated with the student's standing relative to other students, unless the grading is done on a curve (which an outsider does not know) – it's possible for everyone to get an A, which is by definition impossible with ECTS grading.


I attended an Olympiad for student and failed. How should I write this down on my CV?

Firstly, you did not 'fail' - you were part of a team and competed - so congratulations on that.

Secondly, it can't hurt to include an entry in you CV under a heading like 'Other Achievements', something along the lines of:

  (Year), Competed as part of (Team) for the Student Physics Olympiad.

If you have space, briefly describe positive aspects of your participation.


Does publishing research in physics during bachelor degree help in applying for master’s in mathematics?

The answer to both of your questions is "yes".  Indeed, publishing original research in any STEM field has at least some (and usually quite a substantial) positive impact on graduate school applications for programs in other STEM fields.


Do the jobs after a PhD in Statistics require a minimum of 3-4 years previous work experiences in the industries?

Prior experience is a two edged sword. On the one hand, you probably learn to do some things useful for a particular industry. On the other hand, you may be saddled with non-disclosure and non-compete agreements.

If you want a life of research (as opposed to application) then you probably want a PhD and an academic career. But a doctorate may not be well suited to a life in the commercial world other than in a few places. But those places also probably require quite a lot of knowledge about some application area (finance, say).

But, the question may be moot for you. If you don't have the experience, then you just don't. Full stop. You can try to get it, of course, but before you do anything like taking time off or going for the doctorate, first look at what life would be like under various scenarios.

I would guess that some companies want a lot of experience. I would guess that others want none at all. If you are asking about the situation in a particular place, then explore it there, by talking with companies that you might want to work at.

You have to get on some path now, but you don't need to make immediate life changing decisions immediately. Keep flexible and look at the options as they open.


"With editor" status for 2 months: is it normal?

Times vary a lot between journals and, I believe, disciplines. Two months seems like a relatively long period to me but not unheard of. Out of your three reasons I would not opt for 2 or three depending, of course on the form for submitting manuscripts. If it is digital I am sure 2 and 3 would not be high on the list, if it is manual, by post or e-mail, then the likelihood is higher.

I think a busy editor is one possibility. It is not clear from your question if this is "with the editor" after submission or "with the editor" after review. If we consider the former, the most likely reason, in my experience, is that it has proven hard for the editor to get reviewers to accept to review. This occasionally happens to me and I can say that it has no clear relationship to the possible quality of the paper. In the case of the former (after review), the busy editor becomes a more likely candidate since the editor should study the reviews, decide on the faith of the paper, and possibly provide guidelines for your revisions.

If you have any indication, from for example peers, what typical handling periods are in the journal where you submitted your manuscript, you should definitely contact the journal to ask about the status of your submission. Such requests are commonplace (too common in fact) so try to assess if the two months is long or normal in the case of this particular journal before contact.


How to ask for another university prof for course materials?

It is definitely not a mistake to ask the instructor for his course notes. From what I know it is common practice to do this and many professors and grad students do this on a regular basis even if you are not a student taking that course.
I would recommend you take a straightforward approach, there's no need to beat around the bush. Introduce yourself to the instructor being clear about your intentions with his course notes. If there are some certain parts of the course you are more interested in, remember to mention them as they might be more comfortable sharing some parts of the content rather than the whole thing.
An EDU email could be better but it depends on the circumstances. If you are a professor teaching  a similar course at some other university, the instructor might have his concerns regarding sharing content but if you work in industry and there's no chance of stealing their work they might be okay with sharing it.
If they don't answer you can drop another email after some time (I usually give people a week before sending a polite reminder email). However if you don't get a reply for your second email, I personally wouldn't keep sending them emails.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions.


What is the equivalent of the laboratory notebook in the humanities?

I asked my wife, which works in art history/egyptology. So first, "it depends of how the person works" ;).

However, it seems that many people are making a large number of thematic reading synthesis, research notes (as we do) and she also pointed out the importance of her personal database, where she stores archaeological artefacts, their descriptions, the related bibliography, personal notes about them, their relations, etc. According to her, this is THE most important thing for her work.


Postdoctoral fellowship -- what is it about?

The typical perspective for U.S. people in this situation is to try to balance the following three items:

The desire for a permanent, tenure-track job, and its associated stability.
The desire to do as much research as possible in one's life.
The desire to not starve to death.

Generally those just completing their PhD's are not eligible for tenure-track jobs that have a large research component, because their track record is insufficient.  Therefore it is common to take a postdoc (or two, or five) to bolster the research record.  This has the immediate effect of meeting the second and third goals, and has the potential to open up more research-oriented tenure-track jobs.  However too many postdocs and it becomes more difficult to get tenure-track jobs (and further postdocs).  The implication is indeed as you suggest, that these positions have been taken because the individual could not get a suitable tenure-track job.

Very few people consider "assistant professor" negatively because of being "stuck at one place for several years"; the only reason to turn down such a position is because it may be a bad fit, as compared to the sort of place one wants to be.


How should I express theorems without a proof in a research paper?

In mathematics and TCS (which is really a branch of mathematics), if you don't have a proof, you don't have a theorem.  (You write "experiments", which I will assume means "computer calculations".  Please let me know if this is not the case.)  Doing some computer calculations can be interesting and even sometimes publishable, but it does not constitute any kind of proof, formal or otherwise.  (Added: Well, unless it does, of course.  You can prove a theorem by reducing it to a finite calculation and doing that calculation by hand or by computer or some of both.  You can't prove a theorem which pertains to infinitely many cases by doing finitely many of them and claiming "and so on".) Also, although the word "confirm" is often used in this way in empirical science, in mathematics to "confirm a conjecture" means to prove it.

I see two possible questions here:

How do I write up computational evidence for a result that I cannot prove in a paper?
Can I publish a paper in which I do not prove my conjecture but only have computational evidence towards it?

The first question is more straightforward.  You state the conjecture -- i.e., the statement that you think is a theorem but can't yet prove.  Some discussion of the provenance of the conjecture is probably a good idea but is not strictly necessary.  However, if you got the conjecture from somewhere else you must indicate that.  Then you document the calculations you made.  Finally, you probably want to make some remarks about why the calculations make you confident in your conjecture (if that is the case).  Here sometimes informal reasoning can be helpful: e.g. if your conjecture is that for two sequences of integers a_n and b_n that a_n and b_n are always congruent modulo 691, then if you check this for the first 100,000 terms then in some naive sense the probability that this happened by accident is (1/691)^{100,000}, which is vanishingly small.

The second question is much more complicated.  It can be hard to publish papers in which you do not prove a theorem but "only" give computer evidence...but not as hard as it used to be.  Mathematics is slowly becoming more enlightened about the merits of computer calculations.  I would say though that you need to understand the field much better to be able to predict whether a paper primarily containing computations would be publishable than to publish a more "theoretical" paper: many, many referees and journals will say "no theorem, no proof, no paper", so you should expect to work much harder to sell your work.


How to get (a payed?) feedback with discussion?

It is extremely country specific and strongly cultural.

I can explain how I would do in your shoes in France. You need to adapt my hints to your country.

I would first attend several university  PhD level seminars (or at research institutions like CNRS, CEA - I am employed at CEA, LIST but soon retiring - , INRIA, INSERM or Grandes Écoles like Polytechnique or ENS Ulm or ENS Paris Saclay -from which I graduated-). Or even Collège de France ones. BTW, Grandes Écoles and Collège de France are very French, you are unlikely to find equivalents in other countries.

At seminars with a small audience of less than 30 persons, you are allowed (at least in France) to attend them freely (no need to pay) and to ask clever (and politely) questions. You'll use Google or the Web to find such seminars.

Any scientific researcher is very happy to get oral feedback, as long as you respect his work (even if your opinions are different). That is part of the science game since at least Newton.

Then you have established some direct contact. Discuss with them your ideas. They might be interested. If they are, send them by email your draft and ask for feedback.

BTW, you should attend peer-reviewed conferences in your field of expertise. If in Europe, consider being part of some H2020 or HorizonEurope submission. Being inside a putative consortium submitting some research grant proposals will teach you many related skills. But you need to accept and contribute to your part (or even a bit more) of the submission efforts, and research grant submissions are generally highly selective (less than 10% of proposals get funded).

Read hundreds of scientific papers (in journals or peer-reviewed conferences) related to your field and scientific interests. Be sure to have a good bibliography of citations in your own text. A priori, several dozens of references (e.g. using BibTeX for your LaTeX paper).

At last, if you can afford that, consider starting some PhD. Your advisor will teach you most of these soft skills, including scientific writing skills, because that is part of his/her job.

My answer to another question on this forum also contain some useful hints.

PS. A poorly known fact is that on the average, every scientific publication has less than 2 or 3 readers. As Higgs explained in his Nobel prize talk, the "publish or perish" mindset of current academia is globally counter-productive: most of the research papers I am reading these years give a sense of déjà vu.


What research shows how assessment design can minimize plagiarism?

According to your profile, you teach management. So we are looking at writing, rather than equations?

This review article discusses steps taken at a university in Australia, and provides some lit review. It is open-source. In regards to research on assessment design, it recommends:

Regularly change the questions/prompts
Projects should require original analysis rather than be summaries or definitions.
More marks should be associated with the process of project creation, rather than the final draft. Examples of intermediate assignments are research journals, annotated bibliographies, and first drafts.
Change product from text-only to something else - a poster, an oral presentation.

Above is the "answer" to your question. You may also want to consider why your plagiarism is suddenly increasing. The linked article points out that many students plagiarize because of lack of training in how to effectively write without copying a source. If you have a cohort of students from a background of poorer preparation, I would recommend a module on how to write without plagiarism.

Best of luck.


Would it be appropriate to ask depressed brother's professor to reach out to brother?

"I plan on contacting the prof, either via email or phone. What I ask you is for advice on how to tactfully and effectively make this ask."

If you can wait until January, I would.  Your email would seem less intrusive after the break, I think.
I suggest you make a connection with the professor, and have a rather open-ended call, rather than making a particular request.  Trust the professor's empathy and interest in your brother to (a) perhaps ask if there's anything he can do, and (b) think creatively about what he could do.

The professor is a different person from you, and his relationship with your brother is different from yours.  He may have a different way of interacting or influencing your brother, that might not be exactly what you are imagining.  But if the professor is interested in getting in touch with your brother, I imagine you'll feel relieved and grateful, and won't mind if he doesn't take a precise Jazzie3-clone approach.
I don't know what the professor's reaction would be, but if I were in his shoes, I would go into a conversation with my troubled student with, again, an open-ended approach.
Sometimes it's helpful to go with a loved one to a regular medical doctor.  See this other answer.
Sometimes it's helpful for the frustrated person (you) to talk things over with a therapist.  This can be hard to accept, but surprisingly, it can be helpful.
Possible starting point for an email:

  Dear Prof. X,

  I'm Zak's brother.  He was really touched when you nominated him for a
  prize, and I was impressed at how engaged he was in your class.

  Zak isn't doing so well this year.

  I can imagine that with confidentiality rules, there's not much you
  can say, but it would still be helpful for me to talk with the one professor Zak made a good connection with.  May I make an appointment to come and see you?


Can you get a Mathematics PhD if you're an engineer?

The title of your degree does not matter as much as the courses you have taken. If you have taken several upper-level courses, have convincing letters from mathematics faculty, and demonstrate your interest in mathematics in general, you have every chance of getting into a doctoral program in mathematics.

However, if you finish undergrad with only the minimum of math courses required for your engineering degree, and then apply for a math doctoral program, admissions committees will not look fondly on that. Then you might have to supplement your math background in some other way.

This also applies to people with math degrees that are not particularly deep. In the end it's the experience you have had with mathematics that counts, not the particular title of your major/degree.


Opinion, of course, but I think it is fine. It is often quoted in fact. While your students probably still think of themselves as immortal, they almost certainly aren't. No one should really take offense at basic biological certainties.

It is, in fact, a corrective on much illogical thinking, which is why it has lasted.


Experiences with Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP) journals

This recent Nature news item would seem to suggest rather strongly that SCIRP is not a serious outfit. Given the ethical improprieties mentioned in that article, staying away from such journals with a ten-foot pole (or longer) seems advisable.


I've just taken to returning two documents when reviewing papers:

One is my annotated PDF (created on a tablet) where I can use both margin notes if I want to comment on things, and handwritten notes if I want to draw into a figure or mark up typos. The notes in this document are the smaller comments specific to individual places in the document.
A text file in which I collect the more general, less location-specific comments such as when I discuss the paper's overall structure, how it fits into the existing literature, etc.

This has worked pretty well for me because it allows me to annotate the manuscript right away, and getting back to the bigger items when I've read it all. The only tricky part is that your PDF reader may leave your name in the PDF for all annotations (depending on whether or not you've set it up that way). If you care about your anonymity, you can always edit it out: My PDF reader puts my name in clear text in the .pdf document, and I can just search-replace it by some other string.


Should I tell about my inexperience in my cover letter?

No, you should not mention your inexperience. It's simply not going to factor into the editor's decision as to whether to publish your paper. Papers are (at least in theory) published purely on their own merits. It doesn't matter whether your paper is a good paper for a 16-year-old, it matters whether it is a good paper, full stop. So it won't get any special consideration.

When you use the term "apologize", it makes it sound as if you are thinking: "I'm sorry for wasting the editor's time". If that's the case, just don't submit it. If you submit the paper, you think it's worthy of their consideration. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Note that a number of journals have special awards reserved for excellent papers from young/early-career scientists. If this journal is one of them, you may want to advise them of your age if/when your paper is accepted, but not before, so that they are aware of your eligibility.


Is it possible for a PhD applicant to be rejected against the potential supervisor's will?

Yes, it's possible.

Practices vary, but in most US universities, graduate admissions are not decided by individual professors, but rather by a committee of faculty.  Their decisions often must also be approved by a graduate dean or another higher-level committee.

There are many possible reasons why an applicant could be rejected, even if they have the support of a potential supervisor:

The committee might disagree with the supervisor's assessment of your qualifications.
The professor might have a record of questionable judgment in recommending PhD students.
Many PhD programs include coursework and exam components before beginning to work on dissertation research with an advisor.  It could be that the committee isn't confident that you would pass those components.
The program, or the university, might have strict minimum GPA or GRE score requirements, that you might not have met.
The committee might not feel that the professor would be a good supervisor.  This could happen if he does not have a successful record with previous students, or if they feel he already has too many students to advise well.
The program might have a limited capacity for students, or a limited amount of funding.  Even if the committee agrees with the professor that you are well qualified, there might still be more qualified candidates than they can accept.  Maybe there are even too many candidates who have the support of particular professors. If so, some good candidates have to be rejected.  This is probably the most likely reason.
It could be, as the professor seems to think, that a mistake has been made, and his recommendation has been unintentionally overlooked.  If that is so, it is possible, though not certain, that the decision could be changed.


The answer will depend on many individual factors. Some positive aspects are:

The university gets to know you. I know of several interim professors who got a full professorship later on because everyone was satisfied with the person.
You are gaining teaching experience. This is an important factor if you want to apply for a professorship.
Related, but slightly different: You build up a teaching portfolio. If you are becoming a professor later, you are already having some material at hand.
You are getting in contact with motivated students which you can involve in your research activities.
Last but not least: Teaching can be fun :-).


What to do after receiving poor academic recommendation(s)

Your professor either wrote the good recommendation they promised, in which case they are probably as shocked as you are, and happy to discuss what might have happened, and what to do now; or they lied to your face, in which case I wouldn't worry if talking to them is "socially acceptable." I don't know what would be the best course of action if the second is the case, but my first step would be to talk to them in person - just don't assume beforehand that it's one or the other, to make the meeting productive.

As two comments pointed out, there's also a (small?) chance that the professor meant to write a good recommendation, but failed at it. If that's even remotely a possibility, as well as probably in the first case above, it might help if they contact friendly faculty (should there be some) at one of the universities applied to, to better understand where the bottleneck is (within what is possible, considering the confidentiality of the process). Given that a letter-writer usually has some interest in the student they write a letter for succeeding, I wouldn't dismiss the idea before bringing it up with them, if appropriate.


Should each chapter in an extensive paper start with an overview of the chapter's contents?

The last time I wrote a long paper with a multistep argument, I endowed each section (there were 15 or 16 of those and the total article length was 87 pages in the 12pt font) with the "objective statement" (In this section we show that there exists a partition of the set $E$ into "cells" with the following properties ..., etc.). Moreover, I italicized these objectives. The reasons I did it were

a) some of the sections were devoted to things that are known to experts but hardly to the "general audience", so which sections to read and which to skip would heavily depend on the reader's general background

b) If you read the italic font alone, you can see the general flow of the proof without computations or technical details. You may then concentrate on "most suspicious" or "least known" places first.

I had mixed feelings about doing so too, but it looks like the readers have liked it so far. In general, the main question you should ask yourself is whether what you do will facilitate the reading. Everything else (paper economy, stylistic beauty, etc.) is secondary. If you expect 20-50 people to read what you wrote and if you can spare each of them mere 20 minutes (the minimal time needed to verify the ubiquitous phrase "direct computations yield"), you advance the general human progress by 7-14 hours already.

Note that what I did was different from the "Chapter" approach because I put only one complete logical step into each section. Also it was not about the Lemma/Sublemma/... division, which more often than not reflects the technical convenience rather than the logical structure. Some sections contained several lemmata needed to carry out the corresponding logical step and some lemmas were done in two steps.

The last thing I want to say is that, when reading, most people, including myself, prefer a repetition to an omission, and being over-informed to being under-informed, so few people, if any, will criticize you for being too clear or too slow.


What are the pros and cons of teaching multiple sessions of the same course?

I've done this.  The big con is it can be incredibly boring, but maybe that's just me.  And agreed, what did I say to the one class and not the other?!  The big pro is it can help you refine your materials and teaching methods.  I've had two of the exact same classes taught in the exact same way produce very different results.

Write some things down before you start.  If nothing else this becomes a checklist to get you through the semester.  Goes a long way to keep from getting confused about what you did or didn't cover.


Can I write a paper on software that I published a year ago?

Yes, you can publish a paper, if

you have new ideas in your software that you developed yourself.
the ideas have not been published by you before.

If other people who have used your software also documented your ideas, cite them.


Tips on answering "What can you do to enhance our department?" and "Why are you a good fit?" type of questions in job interview

This is an update for those who are planning to go down this route:
I had my interview. I was asked a lot of questions regarding my teaching philosophy and experience.

I was asked why I like to teach at their university?(to protect my privacy name of university will remain anonymous-but lets say it's a prestigous research university).
One particular question I was asked was that what was the most difficult part of teaching I ever faced and how I dealt with that.
Also they named a few courses and asked if I've taught them before.
They asked if I have ever taught classes as instructor and not a TA.
They asked a follow up question asking if I did  A to Z of the course preparation myself, e.g. writing syllabus, making exams etc.

At any rate, while I didn't get the cliche of why-are-you-a-good-fit? the committee aimed to get to know me and investigate my teaching skills in detail by asking straightforward  questions.


How to ask for a recommendation letter from a professor after long time?

Shouldn't be a big deal.  He will likely just send the same one he has on file.  Send him an email and politely ask for the help.

Dear Professor Y,

Thanks for your kind letters twice before. I am now a second year Ph.D. student at Fantasy University, working on a thesis in widget design.  It is going well--my training from you and the rest of the ESU staff is being put to use.

I have another request, this time for the SooperDuper Fellowship, which will support me financially at FU.  Actually I have already been shortlisted, so chances are good.

Could you please send copy of your earlier letter to support me with SooperDuper?  Submission details:

how/where to send
due date

Once again, thanks for your kind help.  Would love to stay in contact.

Sincerely,

Dukhia


Concerns about the value of the research domain

I cannot possibly agree with the currently most upvoted answer by Pete L. Clark. I clearly cannot comment on the particular subfield that OP is asking about since I know nothing about it.

However, daily I see stillborn research papers --- they were conceived not to dispel the ignorance, but to be added to a CV. There are definitely research communities that are mired in posturing, complexity and obscurantism.

On a personal level, it does not matter whether the field in question is one such area, or whether the OP lacks the background to see how this field adds to our knowledge. It is impossible to do good research without seeing the goal. So, action is necessary.

I suggest talking to the advisor, and gently asking these questions. If the answers are not enlightening, change field/advisor. Doing otherwise is a waste of OP's time.


For a numerical simulation paper, is it necessary to include boundary conditions and initial conditions in the paper?

Is it necessary to always include experimental validation for a numerical model?

Typically, yes, this is necessary. When you are going to publish an altered model (e.g., a more complex one), you need to demonstrate how the modifications play out in an experimental setup.

  Is it necessary to include the boundary condition and initial condition in the paper as well, or can I just refer to the previous paper/include in the appendix?

You may choose to either refer to your previous paper, or include them in your new paper (or do both). It is perfectly fine to refer to your previous publication, e.g., when you are trying to reduce the paper length, as long as the conditions are identical. However, when you want your new paper to be self-contained, or your previous paper was at a more obscure venue, it might be wise to include them in the new paper.

  Does it help if I include the simulation methodology in the paper? Or should I just put it in the appendix?

It is impossible to decide that without knowing the specifics, the journal's policy, and what is usual within your field.


When to take military service when applying for graduate school?

I come from a country with compulsory service, and I saw a few cases like this when serving. The recruitment officers would try to match your skills with your service -- so if you had a higher engineering degree you would be set to tutor army engineering officer students etc. Without a degree, you would more likely serve as an infantryman or sailor. I would say it depends on what you want out of your service. If you want the experience of a common soldier, enter now, if you want to do something more relevant to your education, enter after you graduate. You will likely be able to use your skills, and it will not be a wasted gap of two years, especially if you work with your recruitment officers to find a suitable service. If you decide to enter now, you might also benefit from extra credit when applying for a university program later.


Can I put into Acknowledgments someone who is no longer living?

I would reserve the acknowledgments section for people or organizations that directly contributed to the paper.  For example, if you talked with Erikson while he was still alive and he offered advice or suggestions, then it would be appropriate to thank him in the acknowledgments.  If you were just inspired by his papers, then it is better to discuss that elsewhere in the paper.  For example, you could note in the introduction that your approach is inspired by Erikson's work on psychological development, or you could mention this background when you define the terms based on his theory.  But if you thank him in the acknowledgments section, then people will assume there was a more personal connection unless you clearly specify otherwise ("Although I was never lucky enough to discuss this work with him in person, I owe Erik Erikson a great debt for...").

The main thing you should not do when thanking a deceased person is to attribute opinions to them, because they are not around to contradict you.  For example, you should not thank them in a way that suggests they supported your work, even if it's true, unless you have some documented proof.  For example, it's awkward to write "I am deeply grateful to Erik Erikson for his steadfast belief in my theory."


Is it possible to get a PhD Degree in from USA or Europe after doing Masters from India

You can certainly pursue a Ph.D. in the U.S. after getting a Masters degree in India.  You can even go straight in from a Bachelor's degree.  I know a number of people who have done it in other fields---I expect chemical engineering should be the same, I just don't know as many chemical engineers.

Note, however, that the first stage of many American Ph.D. programs is either explicitly or implicitly a Masters, and you probably will not be allowed to skip that stage of the program, though you might be able to pass out of some early requirements, depending on particulars of your background and the requirements of the university.


1 PhD student, 2 institutions...1 of them completely closed to talking

I find your question a bit negative. It appears that you are blaming your current university for not giving you more support as you leave for your new university. Further, and potentially more problematic, is that you appear to be treating the student like a pawn. Have you asked the student what they want? Comments like

  after 1,5 years of work, which is half of the PhD this is unfair from their part towards me...

it is also extremely unfair of you to leave a student hanging out to dry halfway through a PhD. This is a student's worst nightmare.
I think it is important to realize that first and foremost, you screwed up. You did not adequately negotiate, prior to signing a contract, appropriate support for your current student. It surprises me that you are switching from one permanent position to another, yet you did not manage to secure enough startup funds to support a PhD student for 1.5 years.

To an extent, your new department is not being supportive. While you screwed up and did not realize that some of your grant money could not come with you, they are not willing to cover a student for 1.5 years. This is potentially problematic. Do you really want to work for a department that will not cover for you when you make mistakes?

Your current department has done nothing wrong as far as I can tell. Potentially, they were not as clear as they could have been about the grant funding, but you do not tell us much about that. Your current department needs to look out for its faculty and students. Paying for a student to work at another university is generally not in the best interest of the department. This is especially true if there are adequate supervisors in the current department.

Moving forward, I would suggest you talk to the student. Find out what the student wants. They might want to move completely to the new department. Similarly, they might want to cut ties with you. Maybe they want you as a co-supervisor. Once you know what the student wants, you, and to an extent you and the student, can ask for it. As for you, expecting to get anything "back" from the student and the time spent supervising the student, is a little unrealistic in this situation.


Is it more difficult to score a Tenure Track position in the US when applying from outside?

While the "I don't know your university" element can have an influence on whether your application gets summarily dismissed to the reject pile, it's less of an issue than one might think. We all travel to Europe and Asia for conferences now, and meet colleagues who come from different countries. I can probably name the top few universities in my field in many European countries, as well as personally know people in each of them.

But there's a more mundane logistical reason for potentially avoiding applicants from other countries: expenses. There's always a risk in getting someone to come for an on-site interview, but with a foreign candidate the expense and logistical work (visa processing, payment methods and so on) are more onerous. We always want to find strong candidates, but when there's a large pool of highly qualified candidates in the US, it can be convenient to focus on those that we expect have a chance of actually making it through the interview process and coming.

There's also the question of whether someone from Europe (as opposed to someone working there) really does want to come to the US, or is just casting a wide net. But that can be addressed in candidate statements or even conversations.

None of this means that foreign candidates are disqualified. Far from it. But it creates a moment of doubt.


How do I talk about my abusive former advisor if people ask?

First, let me say that I'm sorry to hear that your relationship with your original advisor has deteriorated to such a state that you have been emotionally scarred by the relationship. That is certainly not the desired outcome.
That said, you have a very important cautionary story to tell. Unlike cactus_pardner's answer, I don't think you should "jokingly defer," but instead take a very serious tone about the situation:

I wish I could be more positive about my relationship with Prof. X.
If you are serious about working with Prof. X, then there are some things that you should be aware of.
This may not happen to you, but I had some significant issues during my time working in that lab.

You can then offer to talk with the asker in more detail, if she so wishes, and leave the choice up to the asker. But do not blow off the discussion. Hiding the situation will just allow it  to continue unchecked, which is exactly what you do not want to see happen in the long run.


Are faculty hiring committees overly polite on "denial" answers

This sounds like a standard US rejection - they may be sending this exact same text to all other candidates that were rejected. I do not believe you can learn anything from it and it does not reflect on you specifically in any way.

You can, however, try to get feedback, but it can be quite difficult - you must realize that the chances of getting good sincere feedback are not high. It is probably best to try getting this from someone with whom you felt there was a good connection or that this person was relatively open. Probably this person would prefer to do this over phone rather than by mail. You may also want to look at this question.


First thing: the exact format will depend on the styleguide your are following. However, apart from variations in the exact formatting, just refer to it exactly as you do. The US constitution, for example, would be cited in APA style as one of the following:

  U.S. Const. art. I, § 3.
  U.S. Const. amend. XIX.
  U.S. Const. amend. XVIII (repealed 1933).

depending on whether you cite an article from the original constitution, or a (possibly since-repealed) amendment.

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek edit: I could not find a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for the constitution of Montenegro (nor for the US constitution, for that matter). If you find one, you might want to include it in your citation (in the form of a hyperlink). If it does not exist, you may petition the Montenegrin government to create one.


Is there an accredited doctorate in gastronomy?

Aside from the programs/universities mentioned in the link which Zenon gave in a comment, it appears that you may need to tweak a molecular gastronomy program to fit your interests. The Italian University of Gastronomic Sciences looks to have several programs that might fit your desired focus.


How to find PhD students interested in 6-months paid exchange visits to work on a supervised project?

Your post has hit on the problem: you want some PhD students to come work with you for six months. This is a bit too long for a summer internship-like posting, but not really long enough to justify the work required for what would amount to a relocation. It's like a long temp assignment.

Perhaps you should be looking at trying to support some students who are just finished with their PhD's—or have just handed in their theses and are figuring out what to do next—at nearby universities. Or trying to arrange the funding to support a postdoc for a year.


Internship research is too complex for me to understand

You should definitely talk with your adviser about your concerns. Perhaps asking them to point you to the relevant material you should read before you start reading the papers, which in many cases are written for the experts in the field. Your adviser can estimate the level of knowledge you have according to your resume, so I doubt they will be surprised if you ask to help with finding out the right literature for you.


When is the best time to get permission for putting others figures in the paper? (Conference vs. Journal)

It is good to ask permission from the publisher before submitting, even if the figure is from your own paper that was published in the past.


The hiring process for a postdoc position in the US

The academic decision clock can run very slowly. If you don't have other options then I'd suggest some patience. There may be a number of interviews they need to have with others and there may be issues about scheduling decision meetings. Lots of things can slow it down.
If you have a specific need to know about the decision then you can be a bit more aggressive in asking, but otherwise, a request for an update after a couple of weeks is probably acceptable. The most information you are likely to get, however, is that you are or are not, still in the running. You can ask whether they can give you an "estimated decision date" and they might answer, but  don't expect it to be especially accurate.
But don't pass up other opportunities as you wait.
I doubt that very many places will tell you that you aren't the first choice and if others are ahead of you they will wait for a decision from one of those before telling others they won't get the position. But don't read too much into a delay, and don't panic. There are too many possibilities.


How to improve profile for graduate admissions in mathematics, when coming from a country where quality of math education is poor?

You seem to be asking how to get admitted to a much better graduate program than your undergraduate program and record merits.  I'm sorry to say that unless you did something during your undergraduate program to make you stand out on a worldwide scale beyond what virtually any undergraduate ever does (in other words, a very low probability event), this is not going to be possible.

Why don't you set more reasonable goals?  If your education has suffered from coming through a systemically poor institution, I would suggest trying to get into a not-top-but-reputable program in a country with high academic standards (which gives you a lot of choices: US, Canada, Australia, the majority of Europe, Japan, some other parts of Asia...).  E.g. in the US even the 200th best university has a curriculum which is largely modelled on that of much better universities, some very serious faculty members, quite solid library / computer resources, and so on.  A student can "launder herself" by doing a master's degree at such a place.  By doing excellently on the coursework and exams, she would show that she has the same skills, knowledge and potential of a strong undergraduate major, and could probably get into a top 50 PhD program.


My adviser wants to use bad statistics. Help!

Do not "change the numbers to the right ones right before I submit the paper" - this would be submitting without your co-authors approval.

If you are sure that "your" statistics are the correct ones - which sounds likely in this case - get back to your advisor with your other co-authors and the stats prof, try to convince him once more. Support your opinion with papers and/or textbooks.

Depending on how wrong your advisor's suggestion is, insist on not using it, or let it over to reviewers.


How to negotiate the salary for a UK faculty position?

Salary is generally not very negotiable in a UK university. Further, the benefits of a higher salary are less pronounced in the UK than in the US. Pay in the UK is defined by a universal salary scale/spine. There is a maximum point on the spine you can achieve through normal progression. Progressing pass the standard maximum is extremely rare.

I have never heard of a department hiring beyond the standard maximum. What this means is that if you start at the standard maximum (the highest point on the scale obtainable through standard progression), you will make 10k more  then a colleague who starts at the bottom. After 3 years, the pay gap will be only 5k (still a 10% raise) since the person who started at the bottom progressed and you did not. If you both get promoted at that point, you will both start at the bottom of the next tier. In other words your negotiation to move from the bottom to the top was worth 20k over the course of your entire career. If promotion takes longer, the difference maxes out at around 36 k (depending on the specific spine points).

Many department offer the lowest spine point. It is often, but not always, possible to negotiate up a few steps based on years of experience. In my experience as an American who worked in the UK, Brits find it insulting to negotiate a startup package and salary. It seemed most Brits took what they were offered (or maybe an extra step or two) while international candidates asked for the top of the range since the salaries are much lower then they expected. The international candidates are then internally laughed at for being cheeky yanks, but often paid more then their British counterparts.


Is there a difference between writing a recommendation letter for MPhil programs & PhD programs?

There may be a distinction between how letters are written for a primarily course-based graduate program and a (presumably more advanced) primarily research-based one.  However, in most cases, it would not be a great difference.  Qualifications such as intelligence, knowledge of the subject area, and reliability/maturity are important for both types of graduate programs.  Most letter writers would probably discuss these issues in similar terms whether the applicant wants to get into a course-based or research-based program.

On the other hand, there are differences between what a letter writer will emphasize when a student is applying to different kinds of programs.  When a student is applying for a research-based program, it will help to have letters from mentors who have worked with the applicant in a research environment, and such letters will carry a great deal of weight.  However, there are almost always going to be several faculty members who can write letters about a student's classroom performance, while far fewer (and often none) who can have worked with a student on research.

There are, moreover, some situations where a faculty member might have no problem recommend a  student for one type of program, but be more hesitant to recommend a student for other programs.  If the student has actually demonstrated that they are good in the classroom but have also demonstrated problems working in a research environment, a recommender might not feel that the student is not ready for a research-based program (like a British Ph.D. program) yet; however, this very seldom happens.


Should I use double quotes throughout the paper even after defining the terms in the introductory section?

The usual convention in CS:

Use italics when you first mention the term and define it.
After that, you will use it just like any other word. No italics, no boldface, no quotation marks.


I think I have discovered an interesting result as an independent researcher in mathematics, can I use this to gain admission to a PhD program?

There are some problematical implicit assumptions in the question. First, PhD admission committees do not conduct interviews of the sort you imagine. They might look at a manuscript accompanying an application, but there's much more substance to an application for graduate-program admission than showing one item. (For that matter, professional mathematicians' perception of your work may be different than your own, so it might be unwise to put so much stock in the anticipated saving grace of your research work.)

You'll want letters of recommendation attesting to your future potential, based on your current and past performance, whether in literal math classes or in informal situations. If you've done a nice piece of work, this would contribute a bit, but it's by no means enough on its own.

Although it's of dubious serious value, the GRE Math Subject Test is something you'd want to sign up for and take it the Autumn before applying to grad schools (which needs to be done by early December for entrance the following Fall).

Publication is nice, but is an enterprise in itself, and not strictly necessary. For one thing, conventional peer-reviewed publication takes about a year or more in the best of times, so it wouldn't help you in the immediate future.

As in @PerAlexandersson's answer, you'd definitely want to type up your work in LaTeX or TeX, and make it conform to the general style of papers you can see, for example, on http://arxiv.org/archive/math  There is nothing truly sacred about the formatting and such, but for someone trying to enter, it is often best to be generally conforming in superficial regards, to avoid too loudly announcing that you're an outsider.

Not all "publishers" are serious or honest, no. One way to form a list of plausible submission venues is to look at papers on arXiv, submitted by people with .edu emails, and see what journals their bibliographic entries have appeared in. Some of these will be very-high-status, so possibly inappropriate, but if you sift through you will have a good inclusive list of the most legitimate journals. Still, no compulsion to try to publish in this sense before applying to grad school. If anything, it'd be more important to simply have your result typed up in LaTeX and to create a fairly conformist appearance (for example, matching the arXiv papers). You can even get TeX templates from those papers, to see how the effects are achieved, since the TeX source is available at arXiv.

The traditional journals' editors and referees can generally be trusted, because they have much to lose by bad behavior. Still, there are no guarantees, so pre-publication [sic] on arXiv would establish your priority.

But, in any case, there are more parts to grad school application than just one or two or... pieces of work. Most math depts' graduate programs have web pages that elaborate on what documentation is required.


A term similar to "ABD" for PhD student who's completed all coursework but neither comprehensive exams nor dissertation?

In the US, you'd have completed the coursework master's portion of a typical PhD program. There's no shorthand for this. Some people take a master's degree at this point and go on to something else. It's reasonably common to do so. I don't know if typical corporate recruiters know about all of this, but academic-ish labs, government labs, and similar organizations that employ a lot of folks with advanced degrees will understand what happened. So much so that you probably want to have a good stock answer for what happened to your PhD aspirations that isn't a complaint of some sort.


Are there universities that consider it academic misconduct for students to publish material created by faculty?

Since you asked for norms at other schools, here is one data point: UC Berkeley has an explicit policy on this subject.  At UC Berkeley, instructors own the copyright on their course materials and are allowed to specify the policy on dissemination.  In additional, dissemination for a commercial purpose is prohibited without express consent of the instructor.  If instructors specify a policy, students who violate this policy can be punished for academic misconduct -- and this is stated explicitly in the UC Berkeley policies.

In more detail, UC Berkeley's policy on Course Note-Taking and Materials states:

  Individual instructors retain copyrights to [...] class materials they create.  Instructors may permit, limit, or prohibit the [..] further distribution of class materials created by an instructor (class notes, recordings, exams, and class materials, collectively referred to as “Class
  Materials”).  Instructors are encouraged to clearly communicate their preferences on recording and sharing Class Materials in their syllabi. [...]

  Unauthorized use of Class Materials may subject an individual to legal proceedings brought by the instructor as well as disciplinary and legal proceedings by the University. [...]

Thus, if an instructor states in the syllabus that dissemination of exams is not allowed, then a student who violates that restriction may be disciplined by the University for academic misconduct.  On the other hand, if the instructor does not state any policy, and the students shares the exam with others (for non-commercial purposes), there is no violation of University academic misconduct rules, though there might well be a violation of copyright law.

Also, UC Berkeley's Code of Student Conduct has a section that deals specifically with this subject.  It states:

  102.23 Course Materials

  Selling, preparing, or distributing for any commercial purpose course lecture notes or video or audio recordings of any course unless authorized by the University in advance and explicitly permitted by the course instructor in writing. The unauthorized sale or commercial distribution of course notes or
  recordings by a student is a violation of these Policies whether or not it was the student or someone else who prepared the notes or recordings.

  Copying for any commercial purpose handouts, readers or other course materials provided by an instructor as part of a University of California course unless authorized by the University in advance and explicitly permitted by the course instructor or the copyright holder in writing (if the instructor is not the copyright holder).

Exams count as course materials and thus are covered by this policy.

Personal opinion: I think sites like CourseHero are scummy, sleazy sites: the worst of the worst.  They require students to submit additional course materials to view the ones that are on record there, and they make no attempt to validate that students have permission to share those course materials; indeed, they have every incentive not to validate whether the student has authorization, and every incentive to encourage unauthorized uploading.  Thus, their business model is based upon encouraging students to share stuff they might not have permission to -- and they profit off of this.  I find this business practice reprehensible and worth of condemnation.

However... it is a separate question whether student use of those sites constitutes academic misconduct.  Personally, I would say that students have a due process right to be informed of their responsibilities, and to only be published for actions that are a clear violation of published policies.  Therefore, I believe it is the instructors' responsibility to establish clear policies -- either on a course-by-course basis, on course syllabi, or else by adopting clear policies at the campus level.  In the absence of such policies, I would be very hesitant to punish students who shared exams with others.  That does not feel fair to me.


What are your recommendations to organizing online streams of lectures?

This kind of questions are often closed due to being a "shopping question." And yet, I do feel it's important in faculty's life. Perhaps you can reword your question so that it's asking for "What to consider" rather than "Which software to use."

Now onto the question. The answer is "I don't know." It's because the choice of platform can depend on a lot of criteria and not many were presented in the question. What I'd suggest is to identify the education media person and the instruction designer in your institute and schedule a meeting with him/her.

Prior to the meeting, prepare the followings. These are the general information the specialist will need to know:

Is it synchronous (live with real time interaction) or asynchronous (not live or only partially live, with more lag time interaction.) For example, a live lecture that allows people to raise question at the same duration of time is closer to synchronous; an uploaded video of a past lecture with a discussion board for Q&A is more of an asynchronous design. The more details you can provide to the specialist, the more fitting the solution.
Is it closed or open? Do people need to RSVP and log in with user name or password? Or is it just a link that anyone can access?
How many participants are you expecting? Just a ballpark is fine.
Do you need onsite AV and technical support? This has impact on your pricing. But if none of the speakers has experience with technical troubleshooting, I'd suggest get one at least for the first couple sessions.

These are just the works you need to do with the education media person. On your side, there are a lot to think about as well:

Online course has very different design concepts. While some of us may think that it's just an extra camera in the lecture hall but it's a lot more complicated than that. You'd have to consider the pacing, consider if micro-lecture is a better alternative, figure out when to let participation or Q&A happen, and design online assessment and evaluation, etc. Resources are readily available on the Internet and in books. Consult the education media person for details.
The management of the class is also different. For synchronous, I'd suggest have one person do the teaching and one extra person (could be a TA) to manage the chat, collect and curate questions for you. It's often disastrous for the speaker to try jumping between chatting and teaching.
Test run, test run, test run, and test run more. If anything, this is the most important key to success. Find some friends and colleagues to join some test sessions. Collect information on their device and make sure there is a good diversity in operation systems, browsers used, microphone and camera models, desktops or tablets, etc. and make sure the system is as versatile and bullet proof as possible.
Develop an etiquette/technical support guide and circulate it among the participants or make it available as a download prior to the event. The guide should contain i) time and date of the event and details on how to log in. Screenshots with captions are great; ii) explain how to raise question (through chat, e-mail, or bulletin board); iii) explain common etiquette such as mute your microphone when you're not speaking to avoid audio feedback, etc.


Frustration in getting admission into PhD Computer Science, with background MSc Geospatial Science & BTech Computer Science

At all decent universities. Ph.D. admission is competitive. Apply following the official procedures to a dozen universities. Make sure your application file really is complete and on time at each. You will not be admitted based on contacting faculty informally.


Differences between SSRN, arXiv, academia.edu, NBER working papers, et al

As a general rule, you should write in some medium if you read that medium. So you should send your work to a depository if you follow that depository. (See this advice on cross-listing in arXiv.)
If you do not follow any, start following them. If you follow several, choose the one that you prefer as a reader.


Can non-peer-reviewed work be recognized by the community?

It sounds like there are several questions going on here, so I'm going to try and break them down one at a time.

  As such, my question is, can research be accepted "in any form" by the
  scientific community?

Yes. While the scientific community at large is much more likely to accept research that has been peer-reviewed and published, within a community of researchers things are a bit more loose. Some ideas get passed around on list servers and through emails via pre-prints long before they are published.

  Does anybody know of cases within the past two decades when such a
  thing (research first published "free on the internet" being
  eventually accepted as mainstream) has happened ?

As noted by zibadawa timmy in the comments to the question, the work of Grigori Perelman appeared on arXiv, was well received and is highly cited. However, as the commenter also pointed out, Perelman is a well established mathematician so their work gets much more notice when something is published to arXiv.

  I just want to know is this even possible in modern science or would
  it just "disappear" in the huge noise of the net.

There is no guarantee that this will happen, nor is this a modern phenomenon due to the internet. Always remember the history of science. Gregor Mendel's "Experiments on Plant Hybridization" is considered to be a seminal paper, but was published in the fairly obscure Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn and it wasn't until after his death that his work was rediscovered and he was properly credited.

To address your work directly based upon the comments to your answer. I would suggest that your best approach would be to get back into university for your PhD so you can receive mentorship and guidance. If that is not possible, your second best bet might be put together a manuscript and send it off for peer review in various journals. If it get bench rejected by the editor then they may provide feedback on better venues for publication. Likewise, reviewers who think the work is worthy of publication in a different venue will also do the same. This could help to find a home for your work.

Also, based upon some of the things you have mentioned with regards to complexity, I would highly recommend looking into the work of Stuart Kauffman and their book "The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution" in particular. Some of what you are describing sounds like work that is actively being done and published by scholars that investigate complexity in the context of complex adaptive systems. If that work is indeed similar to what you are doing, then that may point you in the direction of venues for your own publications.


How to do research after Ph.D when you have less time?

There are a few ideas. The first is to set aside some time each week for your own research. A few hours in a block, perhaps.

The next is to keep a research notebook (or a small pack of index cards) with you at all times so that you can (a) review existing cards and (b) jot down any ideas that occur. Especially keep ideas for things that might be explored when you have he time.

Third, and very important, is to develop a circle of collaborators wherever you can find them. If not possible at your own university, perhaps at a nearby one. But there are also conferences that you can probably attend and meet people with similar interests. Follow up with authors of papers you find interesting. Modern communication makes even international collaboration quite easy if you all write a common language.

Doctoral study is very intense and most people have few obligations other than the research. That changes for many upon graduation, especially if teaching is a big part of the job. But you can also interest a few advanced undergraduates in your research, perhaps.


Australian Honours degree for admission into European PhD programs

I can say some things about the situation in Germany, I know nothing about how it works in Belgium (Europe is diverse, and for this case, even Germany is diverse...).

The short, but not immediately helpful answer is: It depends on many factors. I would expect that most of the time you will have difficulties going for a PhD with a Bachelor´s degree in Germany. But a general answer if this will be the case is not possible. Every university and to some extent every faculty can make their own rules, and a supervisor who really wants you in her/his group can fight for your case. If you do not have such support, your case might be doomed to fail, or you will have to take so many extra courses that it would be easier to take a Master´s degree. Because the outcome of such a discussion (usually on faculty level) is hard to be predicted the people you contacted cannot say much more than what you found online. So you should find a potential supervisor who is convinced of you as a PhD student.

One of the reasons is that the Bachelor/Master system has no long tradition in Germany. Bachelor´s and Master´s degrees first appeared around 10-15 years ago within the Bologna process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process). In most cases, there was a hard transition from a diploma degree (without any 'intermediate' degree comparable to a Bachelor´s degree) taking 4-5 years to finish to a Bachelor/Master program taking 5 years in total. The old diploma programs were more or less copied to the new program. Therefore, it is still rather unusual to finish with a Bachelor´s degree only, and practically everybody going for a PhD has a Master´s degree. You come from another part of the world with another tradition, but this is what you have to understand for Germany.

You can be very happy that the Bologna process exists, otherwise it would be much harder for you. My father came to Germany in the 1970s with a B.A. which was unheard of, so faced difficulties more or less throughout his career. And to be honest: I, as an example for somebody rooted in German academia, do not know what an Australian Honours degree is and how it compares to a Bachelor's or Master's degree.


How much does the academic family tree matter for a PhD?

I have traced mine, using the Academic Tree website. Honestly, it's one of those things that doesn't really matter, but can be quite entertaining. It can be good for a story or two, or to better understand the history of the field, but I'd doubt it'd do much career-wise - whether it's academic or not. However, referring to academic relatives can be an interesting tool when teaching - it can give a more personal touch to an otherwise dry subject, for example.


How do I determine if a paper has undergone anonymous peer review of its statistical analysis?

Let's tease apart two issues here:

Has a paper undergone peer review of its technical content (which will include the statistical content)?
Should you believe the statistics in the paper?

If it's in a well-respected peer-reviewed journal, then you can assume that it's undergone reasonable peer review.  That means it's unlikely that the content is blatantly and obviously crazy, and that in fact it's likely to be fairly solid.  It does not mean, however, that it is correct, particularly when it comes to something as subtle and frequently mis-applied as statistical analysis.

Bad statistical analysis is extremely common in every field of science, for a number of different reasons. Ignorance is a really big one, though, and one that's likely to be shared by the peer reviewers.  Thus, if you want to know whether to trust statistical analysis, you need to look at it yourself.


Format of In-Text Citations for Military Publications?

Apart from the guns and stuff, the United States Army is an organization just like the American Psychological Association. The United States should be abbreviated when it is used as an adjective and not when it is used as a now. When it is abbreviated, it should be abbreviated with periods but no spaces. Further, it does not need to be defined prior to using.

One then needs to ask who/what is the author and who/what is the publisher. If available, I prefer to use an Administrative (e.g., Headquarters Department of the U.S. Army) or Operational (e.g., U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) unit as both the author and publisher (unless the document has something more informative). See wikipedia for some possible units to look for.

This means in text citations might look like Headquarters Department of the U.S. Army (2016a), Headquarters Department of the U.S. Army (2016b) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2016). Not that APA style is pedantic about making sure in-text citations are not ambiguous and has rules about how to handle "twin" (use a, b, c, ...) and "not-quite twin" citations (expand the authors until the ambiguity goes away while being careful with et al.).