Co-authorship just because a Professor provides me the employment?

This is a form of gift authorship. The worst form, if he imposes it on you. I know some people would think otherwise, but my last supervisor, who was a big name in his field never signed papers he had no contribution on. And this was despite of the fact that he was the big grant writer and winner of the group.

It's hard to tell what to do. In my case, I used to simply do what I was told by the boss. Only I never had such dilemmas. But, I had a few friends who were in the same situation as you. When they refused co-authorship, their supervisors got angry. I work with one of these supervisors at this time. The guy went around and told everyone my friend "stole" his idea. Nevermind that dude had no ideas to begin with. The other guy, wrote a negative recommendation letter for my other friend who lost a very tempting postdoc offer over it.

My recommendation is to stall until you leave the group. Until then you fix all the details you need to fix for the paper and find out if your boss plans to contribute anything else to it. If it wasn't his idea and had so little involvement in it, once you are gone, you can publish without permission. As a courtesy, you can tell your superviser, after you're gone, that you are thinking of including him in the paper if he has time to make a contribution you think would be useful and within his capabilities. If not, include him in your Acknowledgements  section.

Edit: backup your correspondence with him (emails). You may need them if he's the kind of guy who gets upset and writes your editor that you "stole" ideas from him. Hopefully, it won't be the case.


Applying for a graduate-level Research Assistantship as an undergrad

Why would a professor ask for research assistant applicants for an incredibly complex project worthy of a PhD at an institution that does not offer one?

I think you’re answering your own question. The professor really wants to work on project X; no PhD programs are available, so he’s taking in research assistants.

  As an undergraduate student, would it be a worthwhile investment of my time to develop the proof-of-concept for essentially an interview boost if the advising professor is certain that the project would be far too complex for an undergraduate student?

I’m fairly certain nothing magical happens to students once they start their graduate studies that makes them suddenly capable of working on complex problems. If you’ve done well in your undergraduate studies and are curious/handle failure well, you can do graduate work. What would raise red flags for me is that other RAs worked on this problem and failed. I would ask the professor for more details and perhaps see if the problem can be broken down a bit so you can successfully manage it.

Showing good results in an RAship is much more than an interview boost. It’s an excellent way of checking whether you like research work, getting a very warm reference letter and maybe even a decent publication or two! Good RAships can get you into top grad school even if your undergraduate degree wasn’t amazing.

Good luck!


Is paraphrasing Jack's sentence considered plagiarism, given I cite the original author Z?

Plagiarism is the act of passing off another work/writing as your own.

If I read the question right, you are saying something like the following:  you wrote a background section about about works [1], [2] and [3].  Jack also independently and prior to you wrote a summary about works [1], [2] and [3].  And some of your sentences happen to be similar.  This is not plagiarism.  This is normal, because you're talking about the same things, and because both of your descriptions are influenced by the original sources [1], [2] and [3].

What would be plagiarism is if you were to copy large chunks of text into your paper without marking it off as a quotation.  In my field (pure math) it's common that different papers have whole sentences which are virtually identical.  (There must be hundreds of papers with the sentence "Let G be a group.")

I also don't think it's necessarily necessary to cite Jack's work just to say they summarize [1], [2] and [3] also.  If you think looking at Jack's presentation also will help the reader, or you used aspects of Jack's presentation, then you should cite Jack.


How to work with an article in a foreign language?

Read it

Get the article machine translated. If you can not copy-paste from the PDF, it would be convenient to do some sort of OCR on it. An alternative that requires work is to retype the (relevant parts of) the article with a Cyrillic keyboard. There almost certainly exists software or internet applications for typing Cyrillic letters. I understand there also exist applications that recognize text from a picture and translate them on the fly.

Have, side-by-side, the machine translated article and the original article. Since you hopefully have domain knowledge, you can read the translation, figure out what the funny and strange parts mean, and get the gist of the meaning. When this does not work, check the relevant passage in the original article and use a dictionary to check individual words. If this is not enough, search for translations of sequences of words. Some of them might be fixed phrases or idioms.

Tatoeba is a fine website for seeing phrases in context and possibly their translations. It also has a non-trivial amount of mathematics sentences in many languages.

Knowing a bit of the language helps

You might want to get familiar with the Russian alphabet and rough pronunciation rules. Get a flashcard program, such as Ankidroid/Anki, and a suitable deck for it, and learn them. It should not take that long. The painful alternative is to have e.g. the Wikipedia page for Russian alphabet open on the side and checking the letters there until you remember them.

For a slightly larger investment, use something like Duolingo to learn the very basics of the language. This, combined with your domain knowledge of mathematics, will make it possible to read mathematical text with reasonable fluency surprisingly fast.

I know a bit of French and can read mathematics in French, Spanish and Portuguese so that I get the main points of the text, and in fact, have a read a couple of French articles in detail. I know Scandinavic languages and can figure out mathematical German, most of the time, without having studied it.

Workload of learning the alphabet

You can spend as much or as little initial time as you want. After the initial rush, this will require an upkeep of couple of minutes per day, and any other activity with the language reduces this to essentially nothing. Source: I have learned hirakana and katakana and upkeep them without learning further Japanese.

Workload of learning the basics of a language

Note that you are mainly interested in passive understanding of written text, which is one of the easier parts. Basics of pronunciation help, because you typically want to read text by pronouncing it mentally at the same time.

Doing as little as a single lesson of Duolingo, little bit of Clozemaster (more advanced) or taking on a relevant Anki deck slowly leads to progress, as long as you have a plan that ensures you learn what you learn fluently and move further every now and then. The daily amount does not matter that much; you want constant exposure to aspects of the language you have not mastered yet and some repetition of the (possibly very limited) aspects you have mastered.

Your objectives are to:

Get a feel for words in the language. This allows you to identify loan words and compound words or equivalent structures. Loan words are frequent and important in technical texts.
Learn a bit of grammar. Where is the verb in the sentence located? What about object and subject? How to recognise a question?
Frequent words like 'and' and 'or'. Prepositions, even though their precise meaning can be challenging; but at least you will know something is a preposition when you see it, and this already helps a lot.
Along the way, you will learn some vocabulary. Some of it helps (basic verbs, numbers), some not so much (animals, restaurants, etc.). But think of it as a bonus, not the substance.

Something like ten minutes per day, more or less every day, will already lead to slow progress, and every little bit helps much more than it should. This is due to your domain knowledge and knowing a related language (English) or maybe several; most people in world already know at least two languages.

It is a marathon, not a sprint; binging on the language is unlikely to give lasting results. Instead, the aim is to form a lightweight habit.

Verify

If you are relying on a particular lemma from the paper, for example, then it is worthwhile to verify you have understood it precisely correctly. Confusing, for example, "if" and "only if" is not nice in mathematics. But probably your domain knowledge helps you here, so that you will already see if the translation is wrong.


Are there any guidelines regarding the choice of the markers in a graph?

The Grammar of Graphics (2nd ed) by Wilkinson has a very little description about shape in Chapter 10, which discusses the following few concepts:

Morphing (technique used to vary shapes along continuous dimension). Here is the example taken from the book:

Another variant was also displayed:

However, Wilkinson comments such format as

  "problematic [...] because it is not rotationally invariant. Shape
  must vary without affecting size, rotation, and other attributes. The
  graphics [above] could be used for representing negative and positive
  variation, but it is not clear that they would work as well as sized
  plus and minus signs."

Lastly, the following one shows categorical shape variation:

Which also agrees with many commonly used symbol scheme.

The biggest help of this section in the book, however, are two citations on relevant works:

Discriminating Strata in Scatterplots by Lewandowsky & Spence (PDF) actually carried out some experiment, showing scatterplots with different symbols to novice and expert. While the work does not recommend any scheme, it does suggest that "variations in shapes, amounts of fill, or use of discriminable letters can be used without great loss in accuracy."

Another one is A Model for Studying Dsiplay Methods of Statistical Graphics by Cleveland (URL), which investigates a lot more than just symbols, and should be able to provide a good foundation in this topic.


What is "fair game" for a Master's thesis in Economics?

How your department looks on any given topic is up to them and no one here can tell you what that would be without knowing (a lot) more. In the US and many other places you need an advisor to bounce such questions off of. If you don't have one yet, find someone who is amenable to your ideas or has ideas of her/his own that you would want to explore.

Ultimately, your advisor must sign off on your work. Both at the beginning stage when you make the proposal and at the end when you submit results. Others (a committee) may also be involved, but it is the advisor's job to be your guide and your advocate.

Some places (and advisors) will welcome multi-disciplinary work. Others would not. Remember that this thesis is only your first major work. Hopefully it isn't your last. You don't need to try to make an international reputation at this point, but only get yourself in harness to pull for the long term, either in academia or industry.

Advisor: good. Winging it: bad.

A different answer may be valid in other places, of course, though I'd still recommend an advisor to work with even if it isn't required under the rules.


What are some metrics to rank conferences?

There are multiple rankings for Conferences:

H5-index:
H5-index is the h-index for articles published in the last 5 complete years. It is the largest number h such that h articles published in 2010-2014 have at least h citations each.
(Available at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=eng).

ERA (2010):
This conference ranking has been created as part of the Excellence in Research in Australia (ERA). The ranking was created by Australian deans and the Australian Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE). The rankings range from A (=best) to C (=worst).
(Available at: http://www.conferenceranks.com/).

Qualis (2012):
This conference ranking has been published by the Brazilian ministry of education and uses the H-index as performance measure for conferences (Computer Science). Based on the H-index percentiles, the conferences are grouped into performance classes that range from A1 (=best), A2, B1... B5 (=worst).
(Available at: http://www.conferenceranks.com/).

CORE (2014):
The CORE Conference Ranking is an ongoing activity that provides assessments of major conferences in the computing disciplines. The rankings are managed by the CORE Executive Committee, with updates processed from time to time by a subcommittee established as needed. CORA metric for each conference and workshop is calculated by a mix of indicators, including citation rates, paper submission and acceptance rates, and the visibility and research track record of the key people hosting the conference and managing its technical program. Based on the CORA percentiles, the conferences are grouped into performance classes that range from A* (=best), A, B, C, Australasian, and Unranked (=worst).
(Available at: http://portal.core.edu.au/conf-ranks/).

Update: CORE 2017 is recently available


To what extent should I mention unpleasant undergraduate experience in a graduate school statement of purpose? (pure math)

I think you'd disserve yourself by making such a "complaint". Colleges have limited resources, and especially these days tend to be squeezed by administration... to offer ever-fewer courses, as ridiculous as that sounds. (Our graduate program at an R1 in the U.S. currently is under even-more-extreme pressure in this direction, for financial reasons that are themselves fairly non-sensical, but nevermind. It's essentially impossible to "argue" with higher administration...)
Read books (or notes, from on-line). Get advice from faculty on books/notes.
Do not be passive. Be eager. Even if the environment wasn't what you'd have wished, that's not really an obstacle, just "less help".
And, as in comments, it would be unwise to give the impression that you "need to be pushed" to do anything. I am aware that there is some notion that this is ok, but it is corruptive to one's thinking to sit and wait... Do not be passive.
EDIT: in response to your comment appended to the original question... I'd recommend that you not feel disappointed that your were "not challenged in class". Things don't have to work as challenge-and-response. Can be opportunities...
I'd agree that a sluggish environment can drag a person down... but, well, don't let your environment determine you, even if it has an effect.
If anything, a person could argue that a not-too-stimulating environment is a nice quiet environment, so that a person is not coerced...


The strict meaning of "guinea pig" is a certain rather cute rodent; see Guinea pig at Wikipedia. The metaphorical meaning in the context of research is an animal or person on which or whom experiments are performed.


What you state here is something that many do indeed feel coming into academia. The image of research as being something greatly impactful on an individual level is a bit of an illusion. We only hear of the famous researchers, and not of any of the hundreds of thousands overshadowed in every field. Further, the process of research can actually alienate you from the fruits of your labor. Even if you do impactful work, you likely won't feel it or see it in a favorable amount of time. Those that seem to fare well in academia are those that are content with the reality of the dynamics involved, and enjoy what they really do.

I will say that from what you describe, however, your mentality towards work and life in general seem to be quite unhealthy. Indeed you have tragic circumstances that led to this, but its something you should work on with a therapist. The will and need to change the world for the better is definitely a common motivation, but not one that should be above all other reasons for a persuit, because its a goal that is almost by definition impossible to achieve to one's degree of personal satisfaction.

I doubly recommend therapy to help with loneliness, and making steps towards reaching out to friends and forming support groups, because the work load involved in grad school can be isolating. As a second year PhD student, I really recommend going out of your way to find people.


Cum means combined with.  It is a Latin word, but used in English occasionally.  In addition to knowing this definition, I think if you look at the specific example (if there is one in front of you), you should be able to tell what the writer of the phrase meant.  I don't think there is some general meaning (like it is a common phrase) beyond that, so you need to look at the context to see the writer's meaning.


Should I include all relative publications in my manuscript?

For a thesis it is normal to include a much more complete bibliography that results from a literature search. This seems to be what you are describing.
However, for a paper, it is much more normal, and useful, to include only those you need to cite in the work itself; those from which the current work derives. Don't send the reader astray from the advances you present in your paper.
There are a few exceptions, such a the inclusion of an especially seminal background paper on which the whole (sub) field relies, and certain review papers whose intention is to give a broad overview of a topic, rather than, necessarily, to advance it.
It is good, of course, to keep an annotated bibliography for your own future use.


Can I ask the author of the research paper to use his program in my research?

I am a researcher in the computer science field, and I'd say it's not unusual to ask authors of published papers for their code/applications. Sometimes, however, people might be reluctant to give you the software, because research code is often unstable and badly documented, and they might be ashamed (or worried that you will find bugs that could invalidate their previous publications!).

You should surely contact the authors, explain the situation, and stress that you are (of course) going to cite their paper. There's no harm in asking. In my experience, the worst-case scenarios are:
a) they will not reply;
b) they will reply, and ask you to be included among the authors of your future paper, in exchange for the software.

You could try to prepare for these two outcomes, while hoping for a positive answer :-)


Minor contribution to software publication: To coauthor or not to coauthor?

Imagine the following scenario from the point of view of the main authors. They have been working on a piece of software of which they're proud, and they're writing a paper about it. They were happy with contributions from all kinds of others. It costs them literally nothing to add those others as co-authors to the paper. The resulting goodwill might strengthen the collaborative ties with those others: maybe the contributors might contribute more later. But even if they don't, and this is where the collaboration ends, the main authors have lost nothing by adding more co-authors.

Wolfgang's comment may be spot on: they may be trying to convince you to be part of a larger, longer collaboration. If you would like to be part of that, and if you are confident about the quality of the paper as a whole, I would accept. After all, they are happy to have you in the author list.


Where to publish supplementary math intensive material for magazine article

If the main idea of the mathematical evaluation can be explained in words, then the details may not be necessary to make public, as the motivated reader can certainly rederive them.

If on the other hand the math is non-trivial, then it should be explained in a high level way, with appropriate references to the more advanced techniques used.

If the math is highly non-trivial, then that would be sufficient material for a publication in mathematics, and the full paper on the math may be posted on the arxiv.

And no, personally I wouldn't use researchgate. Researchgate is not a journal, and submissions there do not count as publications. The same applies to arxiv too, and if you have a paper-worthy mathematical result, it ought to be eventually submitted for publication.


Like any other external resources you mention in your paper, in my opinion, the sources for the examples should be listed as regular references. This can happen in various forms:

If there is a scientific paper that in some way presents the external resource, cite that paper.
If the resource is only presented on a website, cite that website like you would cite other web sources. This can take various forms, though you should be consistent within any one paper you write. The author, unless a single person, should probably be the name of the entity that published the resource. The title can either be the website title, or the name of the resource (e.g. software name).

This has various benefits:

All external works are collected in your references section.
If you refer to the same source several times (especially on several pages), you can use the usual mechanisms by placing cite references.
Readers will not get confused by different formats and places for finding external works you refer to.

In an afterthought, I would find it extremely hard to consistently distinguish "examples" from "normal references". By "normal reference", I imagine a paper that confirms a statement you make. Now, imagine a simple statement like

  In past works, users have been provided with feature X.

for which you want to supply a paper that describes a commercial software that does provide feature X. Now, is this paper an "example" or a "normal reference" that serves to confirm your statement? Clearly, it can be seen as both ... which is why I generally advise against trying to distinguish between any such "categories" of cited works.


Anonymous reviewer disclosed his identity. Should I thank him by name?

You can thank him by name for making helpful suggestions for improvement. You don't need to say that the comments were during a formal review.

Alternatively, he should be thanked as an anonymous reviewer.

I would, personally, prefer the first alternative. The publisher might also prefer it if you are using the name.


When asking for an extension to submit revisions, should I mention that I am no longer in academia?

Politely ask for an extension, keep it short, don't give reasons. Editors appreciate how hectic life can be and regularly grant extensions (without needing to know author-specific circumstances).


when sharing source code to more than one party, should I notify them that others also were interested

One possible course of action could be to make the code publicly available on your website, or some public repository system, e.g. github. That gives you no control over the distribution, but provides other important things like public appreciation and (in case of github) widely recognised timestamp.

Since this is your code, you have the right to promote yourself by mentioning that it is widely used. However, it may be not a good idea to share the information about someone else's current research interests, without asking them first. Some areas can be very competitive, and it is better to be safe than sorry. You could ask your "users" if they agree to be mentioned as such.


can an unemployed person publish an article

Anyone can publish an article if it is accepted by the editors. There are no restrictions in any reasonable circumstances. Of course, there are places where publishing anti-governmental articles is dangerous but that is a different question.

Editors want to see some "affiliation" for authors, but that is mostly for identification purposes. Others have been named Schopenhauer, of course.

Science and academia generally are driven for the most part by ideas, not by prestige, though the latter gets in the way on occasion. But the ideas of luminaries are questioned as well as those of unknowns.


Is it ethical (or legal, if applicable) to say you have a degree in X if your degree was in "X and Y" (single major)?

My degrees are mostly in the joint subject of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Past undergraduate, however, I pretty much exclusively studied in the computer science side of the department. Thus, I find it appropriate and accurate to describe myself either as having EECS degrees or CS degrees, but would not claim to have EE education past undergraduate. Likewise, my CS education included enough hardware and systems education that I am comfortable saying I received CE education.

I think a similar analysis can be applied to any composite major. Most people and institutions understand that department names vary across institutions, so as long as you do not attempt to deceive about the skills you gave, it should be OK.


Getting Letters of recommedation with no professor suport

I haven't known my professor in the biotechnology program forever (just 2 months). How long do you have to know a professor before asking?

There is no stipulated time duration. It is just that the person writing that recommendation letter has to well acquainted with your work, to feel confident while endorsing you. In your case, the relevant points would be how well you fared in any self-learning modules of his course, or otherwise, in his course in general. (I'm assuming there's no "project" type thing involved. If there is, even better!, because that gives him a better opportunity to judge your potential.)

So, if you feel he has had ample exposure to your work to be in a position to write a favorable recommendation letter for you, you should absolutely go ahead!

  How does one obtain letters of rec after he/she graduated from university?

Provided the above stipulation is satisfied, you can go and meet him personally, or even write an email if the former is not possible. You haven't mentioned for how long have you haven't been in touch with him in the question. If it is 1-2 years, it is likely that he wouldn't have completely forgotten you, or at least, you can ring up old memories in any case. Also, you must absolutely enclose your CV in the email.

Please bear in mind that if he doesn't feel confident enough, or has his doubts, he is most likely not going to respond to your email, and obviously, no recommendation also. If your entire correspondence is via email only, you could send him one, or at most, two gentle reminders, but DO NOT press it beyond that! Also, space the reminders by about a week or so. If he doesn't reply, accept it calmly that this avenue is gone. If it is gone, you will have to look for another guy, but all this is definitely worth a shot. I mean, you have nothing to lose.

Hope that helps :)


Does an internal report count as a publication?

Does this count as a "publication" that I could put on my graduate school applications? It is not peer-reviewed except for having been read over by the lab PI and other lab members.

Normally CVs have areas for journal articles, conferences, and "unrefereed publications".  I would think the same would be true of an application.  Certainly worth listing.

  Is this type of document commonly considered a 'technical report', 'internal report', 'scientific report', or by some other name?

Usually this depends on the institution.  If you called it a technical report, it's a technical report.  If you didn't call it anything, I'd say "internal report, XYZ lab" sounds about right.

  I authored the report by myself but other members of the lab helped extensively with the project. If I list it under "publications", should I put only my name or the names of all those who contributed to the project?

If you were the sole author listed in the report, you should list yourself as the sole author when putting it on the CV/application.  Perhaps you should have included coauthors; if so, if it's not too late, maybe you can amend & reissue it appropriately.


How can I do research mathematics without enrolling at a university?

If I understand you correctly, then you long for the access to journals and fellow researchers coming with a university affiliation, but the intensity and committment of being a graduate student has turned out to be bad for you.

It is uncommon, but not entirely unusual, for individuals to be associated with a research group at a university on such level. This might come in some formalized arrangement, eg with a title like "Honorary Research Fellow", or just be handeled by some informal arrangements. Common perks would include access to mathematical journals via the university and being on the mailing list for the local seminars. You may or may not be permitted to claim the university as affiliation when submitting papers, but I believe that this is a very minor aspect anyway.

If you can find a research group, ideally in your geographical area, that is interested in your kind of questions, then it would not be unreasonable to contact them and ask whether this is a possibility. Do brace for the potential of rejection (or being ignored) though.

Whether you personally have a change to produce publishable research in such an environment, or whether this would be benificial or detrimental to your mental health is something we cannot judge here.


Should ongoing business experience be mentioned in faculty job applications?

The first time I taught I was hired solely on the basis of my work experience.  This was in a field that trains students for careers in a specific industry, but I doubt I was the first person to who this has ever happened.  Academics are not necessarily going to have a bias against you for having industry experience.  If you can teach and are an asset to the department that's what they'll judge you on.  Not abstract ideas of being the "wrong" kind of person.


Restriction on working hours for full-time students

The extract you have linked is specifically for a program that exempts employers from paying the full minimum wage. There is, in principle, no law stating that students can only work 20 hours per week when school is in session. In fact, it's quite the opposite—students can work as many hours as they would like.

On the other hand, it is possible for universities to place conditions on financial aid recipients that they not work more than some number of hours per week, and in general it's not really that smart of an idea to be studying full-time and working full-time on top of that. And the university may also have limits on what students can do with on-campus student aide positions, whether or not they are on financial aid.

But as far as the US government is concerned? I don't think they really care.


Register in IEEE A ranked conferences - Student or full registration?

That seems clearly written to me. You aren't allowed to present a paper unless at least one of its authors has paid full registration. Maybe ethically questionable, but clear. What is your doubt? Have you read the instructions to which you were referred? Do they confirm it?

EDIT after your comment: "full registration" very likely means "IEEE member" or "non-IEEE member" (whichever applies).


Should I host my academic website under my institution domain or under a domain of my own ?

Why don't you just do both? By both, I mean use both URLs. I "do both", so when I graduate, I'll still have my site for others to see. You can do this in many ways, but I had my university student page auto-redirect to my personal home page. The code for that is like a one-liner.

This grants me the opportunity to refer people to different sites depending on the situation. I think myname.com is undoubtedly easier to remember than the nuances in my university student site URL: people.school.org/first.last ... On the other hand, if the situation is more institution-based, perhaps it's better to stick with my college's name. You've got options this way.


I suggest you look at the other reviews where your review will appear. Then you can write yours using a similar style and level of technicality.

You can also ask for guidance from the person who asked you to write the review. That might be best done by offering particular paragraphs as examples of what you might say.

I doubt that there is a "guide" anywhere to help you with this, other than general guides to good writing.


How to cite USGS website refereing Landsat accuracy?

Personally, I would try to cite the project documentation, which has its own official page, rather than the webpage documentation.

Alternatively, if you cannot find those details in a tech report, I would cite the webpage as a user manual with a URL.

Last, for your specific style questions are unanswerable without knowing your target venue (e.g, journal, report, thesis, etc.).


Habilitation in Germany as a nonresident

I think you have a few misconceptions about what a habilitation is.

To answer your first question: Yes, you can apply for a habilitation as an external candidate; just like a doctorate, this procedure is formally totally independent from your employment status. (But just like for a doctorate, it is much harder to get them to take you on if you are an external candidate.)

For your second and third question: This is very much field (and university) dependent; some will accept a stapled thesis (i.e., just submitting a list of published papers written after your doctorate), others require you to actually write a book. In any case, it is irrelevant where you wrote these.

However, the main part of the habilitation is to obtain the venia docendi -- the right to teach at this specific university. This means:

You must demonstrate to the committee your ability to teach at university level; again, it wildly differs how you need to do so -- some places will accept student evaluations of classes you taught elsewhere, others require you to give an example lecture in front of the full faculty (which, needless to say, can be rather a tough gauntlet). The easiest way is to already have a habilitation at a different university. (This is called Umhabilitieren.)
More importantly, if you are not interested to teach at this university (and even more importantly, they are not interested to have you teach), the university will not confer a habilitation on you. (To put it bluntly, universities take a dim view of "degree collectors" who are only in it for the title.)

So, no, a crucial part of the habilitation can not be done remotely.

Since you wrote you are also interested in a full professor position in Germany: You are correct that a habilitation is a formal requirement for obtaining a full professor position is Germany, but the hiring committee can consider other accomplishments as equivalent. The most frequent one now is a positive evaluation as a junior professor, but another possibility is a tenured position at a university in your home country. In any case, your accomplishments in research (and getting grants) will be a much more critical part of getting a position.


What does GE stand for in community colleges and education?

Presumably, "general education [credits]."
In the US, major requirements are broader than elsewhere. For example, students of any major may be required to take a year of a language, or two or three arts classes (for the sciences) or two or three science classes (for the arts).
So, "general education" often refers to these, or entry-level courses like Chemistry 101 that students will often take at community colleges  where they are cheaper, and sometimes easier (i.e. not weed-out classes). Often class sizes are smaller, too.
Suggested in the comments was "general electives," which would be similar.
You might need 200 credits to graduate, but your major only prescribes 150. So your last 50 credits would be "general electives." Popular ones at my alma mater were drawing classes, Earth Science 101 (space!), or stuff like "Human Sexuality" or "Taboo Language."
They are slightly different in that "general education" credits are required to be those classes, where as electives are class you take just to reach a number of credits.


How should I state my peer review experience in the CV?

This is the sort of thing which will vary more from field to field, and you may want to talk to other people in your field, but my general inclination is not to do so. Unless you have been specifically told that there is some review board you are on, or been invited to be on, this may not even exist. Aside from the ethics, if this is a prominent journal, and one of the editors sees your CV, they could react extremely negatively. A better solution might be that if you are going to list what journals you have reviewed for is to list how many articles you have reviewed for a journal if you have reviewed more than one.


Advice on study plan for Applied Math/Machine learning courses, for PhD degree not in either subject

Concepts

First, you should know that machine learning is nothing special. For the most part, the term is only one of a series of buzzwords exchanged in order to maintain linguistic novelty in popular reporting, grant applications, and so on. Machine learning refers mainly to a class of adaptive algorithms that are amenable to, or at least worth applying learning theory to analyze. (And since you're interested in the applications, there's no need to look into that rarefied area.)

Now, that being the case, what does the field stem from? Three more basic mathematical areas:

Probability (used to define basic intuitions, thinking, and formal notions)
Linear algebra (used to describe processed information and algorithmic steps, such as feature selection and regularization)
Calculus (used for optimization formulations, proofs, and continuous distributions)

If you have a good grip on these three things, you can handle more or less any machine learning paper or topic. Some challenges you might face, judging from your stated style:

Probability: You don't have to be able to recite everything about sigma-algebras or Borel fields, but you need to have the axioms and their implications down. You also need to understand why something will (or will not) converge. If you're doing Bayesian statistics, you need to grasp parameter estimation and be able to understand what the different formulas are expressing. This is just a lot of math, as much as it is eventually codeable.
Linear algebra: Notation can be quite complicated. For example, MRI or EEG data typically come in tensors, which you can think of as N-dimensional matrices. Machine learning papers often throw around such linear algebra forms as easily as they were scalar forms, because they assume the audience can handle it. You should try to make sure you don't become disoriented, and can visualize what is happening spatially.
Calculus: The main thing that you need to be able to grasp is optimization. Ultimately it boils down to proving that something is a maximum or minimum (a cost function in the case of most machine learning algorithms), often expressed in terms of a Lagrangian. SVM is a classic case of this, expressed as a quadratic optimization problem with vectors.

Resources

Trevor Hastie has a couple of good books that may suit your approach, one with applications in R, and one called Elements of Statistical Learning that my advisor recommended to me. He makes them available for free at https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/pub.htm.
I personally find Andrew Ng's teaching approach overly intricate and unmotivating, but Abu-Mostafa is a gem to watch: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD63A284B7615313A
For probability, I highly recommend this Oxford book. It's well-formatted and you can flip to sections quickly to refresh yourself.

Strategies

Be willing to compromise. I myself learned R and machine learning basics at the same time, and I was more or less free to work out both the code and implementation in practice however I liked. However, for actual use, I typically (with few exceptions) trust the published authors of R packages to have covered more bases than I.

Figure out what you want to know. For example, I'm not interested in learning the innards of the latest way to efficiently update a neural network too big to fit in RAM; I just want to be able to phrase my questions in a rigorous way that allows me to judge whether or not such an approach is warranted or helpful.


Can I include other students' master thesis in the literature review of my master thesis?

Actually, it might be essential to do so. Especially if you draw on or extend their work. You need to cite anything you use, of course.
Moreover, a literature review, if it is to be complete may need to draw on things that are "visible" even if not formally published. You may, however, need to make it clear that some such things haven't been peer reviewed so the reader needs to take some caution in accepting their results.


Where to buy non-kindle-format (epub,azw) e-books which look like the printed books?

I have the same problem. For Springer, I usually buy at its website, where you can find the PDF version. For Oxford and Cambridge, when I cannot find a decent Kindle version, I usually buy at ebooks.
However, for ebooks.com:

The number of available titles is limited, and I couldn't find titles that according to the publishers should be available as e-books.
The PDF is DRM-protected, which is an annoyance.


Getting stuck with grunt work in first year undergraduate research internships

You need to talk to your advisers/supervisors/group leader about whether or not you can actually be involved in some research. The work you're describing is more aligned with a technician or lab assistant, which if you're not being paid for could be seen as a waste of your time depending on how you view it.

Be realistic though. You are a first year undergraduate and highly inexperienced working in a lab. They may have assumed that you've never held a pipette before in your life so trusting you to doing research may come with some hesitancy, especially since there will be an inevitable cost to you working there.

You essentially have three options.

1. Talk to the people you're working with to see if you can do more than you're currently doing.

2. Look elsewhere to find a position that more closely aligns with what you're looking to get out of research experience.

3. Wait until you're further down your undergraduate to find a more suitable role.

You're not a full time employee or even a part-time employee. You have no obligation to stay with them if it's not what you're looking for. Communicate with them in a polite manner and say that if they cannot provide what you're looking for then you don't want to continue.


Why do errors exist in peer reviewed publications?

People make mistakes.
Manuscript authors, reviewers, and editors are people, and people are not perfect. Even if every person involved in the publication of a manuscript catches 99% of all errors, it's still possible that some errors will go unnoticed. This likelihood of course goes up  when authors/reviewers are careless, but it can never be eliminated entirely even with very meticulous review.


Paper rejection probability after two round of major revision.

In general, few editors would allow for several rounds of resubmission unless they would like to publish the paper. Therefore, the probability of eventual acceptance should be much higher than the base acceptance rate at the journal.

With regards to the status updates: "with editor" means that the editor is about to look at your resubmission and make a decision on whether to send it out to referees. "Under review" means that reviewers have been assigned. In some cases, it does not mean that the reviewers have actually agreed to reviewing. The switch back to "with editor" suggests that the reviewer has either declined to review the paper again or has completed the review. In the former case, expect the paper to switch back to "under review", in the latter case expect to hear from the editor soon.


How to know if my work is worth a paper?

Talk to somebody in Field B! That's the best way.

Make a contact. To find "the right somebody" to talk to, start by describing your idea very vaguely (so nobody steals your idea) to somebody you know and trust in that field, or who has an interest or connection to it. Tell them you're hoping to publish, and ask if they know anyone in Field B who knows more about the topic or might be willing to talk with you. Invariably, your friend will give you a name or two, and you can do the same with those contacts. Repeat until you find the right person. I've had great success in my university with this approach.

Perhaps you could find somebody in Field B who would be willing to coauthor with you. They might even have funding to publish in a peer-reviewed journal, though that's a long shot. Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal would probably improve your visibility.

Good luck! If you do get it published, cone back here and link to it. I'd love to see your idea.


Should I put the papers that I contributed only a little to on my CV

Your list of publications has to be complete. You should not omit any papers for which you are an author.

If you are uncomfortable with some items on your list, you may add a note on why you happen to be a co-author, but dropping some work is not a good practice.

In your case, I'd say that there is nothing wrong with these publications: The other authors agreed that your contribution was worth co-authorship and that's usually ok (assuming that the other authors know their field and acted appropriately). If somebody asks about that paper, you can frankly say that you did the calculations but that you can not answer questions about background/other parts or such.


Wife: advantage or drawback when asking for visiting student position?

Be honest. Present it as a happy coincidence. That's what it is, after all. For example,

  I've always been interested in different research communities and paradigms, given how this knowledge can help me to work more effectively with others and to introspect my own methodology. My wife has been offered a place in [state] also, so this is a ideal opportunity in my academic career to gain the experience I've sought.


(Relatively) stable research careers other than tenure track?

I'm an Epidemiologist, so I'll answer things from that perspective:

  "How do jobs at "research institutes" work? Or jobs at major hospitals
  that have research programs?"

Assuming it's not, as mentioned a 100% soft-money faculty position, you're essentially working as part of a larger research group. This does mean that you get to spend lots of time doing research, but it also means you're still both beholden and dependent on grant money. It's just someone else's job to get it. So you have as much job security as said grant money can provide, which can range from a huge amount to almost none at all. This is also true for hospitals - you're essentially a staff scientist, but that money needs to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is grants.

It might not be as stressful if you don't have to get them yourself, but there's also no promise of any sort of academic freedom. There may not be the time and resources to do any of that.

  Are there any positions where you have relatively good job security
  because you are there to help/consult/collaborate on multiple other
  peoples' projects, but still get a chance to have a little research of
  your own too?

This is a very hard path to climb. I'm a modeler, so much of my work is essentially doing this - shoring up my own research agenda while spending a lot of time as "Specific Aim 3" on someone's grant. I'd suggest that doesn't actually have a lot of job security behind it because it means there's lots of points of failure and a perpetual need to keep things going so that you're 100% covered. There are research organizations which hire epidemiologists, and where you're essentially paid through contracts with other companies, which may be what you're looking for, but again, the chance to have a "little research on your own" might not exist. You're working on someone else's dime, so your own passion projects are essentially an indulgence on their part.

If you're genuinely interested in research without grantwriting and a stable career, I'd suggest looking at research positions in the federal government. What agencies will depend on what aspect of epidemiology you work in.


What lessons did you learn while doing your PhD?

My background: I completed an engineering degree, and worked for a few years before I started a PhD in Telecommunication Systems in Sweden. I wrote my thesis on the subject of performance measurements in complex networks. The thesis is an extremely unwieldy thing, trying to sum up experiences from three different projects.

My lessons learned

Planing your work:

Try to keep your office hours. I started off working from 7 am to around
11 pm most days, eating all three meals on campus. This was not good
for my productivity (so much time wasted!), relationships (with
friends, family or SO), or mental health. Things got a lot better
when I started working "normal" office hours, only working evenings
when close to deadlines.
Have a 5 year plan (how are you going to get your PhD done?), a 5 month plan (What's the current research objective?), a 5 week plan (How are you moving towards the objective?) and a 5 day plan (What's the plan for the week?). These should be in writing. They help you structure your work, and makes it a lot easier to say no to things that did not help you towards your PhD.
Keep track of the learning objectives in your PhD program, and the requirements for your PhD. If you are writing an article thesis you need to have a publication when you are halfway in. If you are writing a monograph, you should have started writing about halfway.
Many universities will happily use PhD students as cheap teachers on full time. Be careful to monitor how much time you spend as a TA.

Coursework:

If you have coursework requirements make sure that you have them fulfilled with time to spare. It's not fun to wrap up the PhD and then return to take additional courses to get your degree (I have a friend who had to do this, being a few points off, just because a mandatory course that wasn't offered that last year...)
Three subjects are useful for almost every PhD: Scientific methods, Scientific Writing and Statistics. Take courses in these three subjects as early as possible.
Avoid undergraduate courses, they are often a waste of time.
Specialised courses in your field of study are often fun and inspiring, but try not to overspecialise too early.
There are a lot of summer schools offered, which is a great if you want to meet new people and learn from some very good teachers at other universities.

Publishing:

Learn to structure your writing. Use CARS or some other model!
Rejections happen, and waste a lot of time. Aim low with early papers, learn the skills of the trade, and save your opus for later.
Don't start your PhD with a methodology paper aimed for high profile publications (I had my first paper rejected 5 times, which was not very fun).
Publishing in small, national, conferences and publications is a good way to meet people, share ideas and get inspiration how to move forward. You can usually reuse much of the ideas in international publications.
In most cases you will need internationally recognised journal or conference publications. About half way you should start aiming for these.
If your advisor wants you to publish in Nature/Science/Cell/Proceedings of the IEEE etc, FYL.
If you are working with companies or other external entities, make sure you know what you can actually publish. It hurts to do a lot of work, and then later learn that it is all under an NDA and you can't publish it.

Sanity:

Advisors rarely have as much time as you want. Make sure you have some co-advisors which can help you when your primary advisor can't help you. Make sure you credit your co-advisors. I got one that saved my PhD.
Work-life balance is important. Make sure you go home, take care of yourself, sleep properly. 8 hours of productive work is much better than 16 hours of lacking productivity
The feeling of "wasting time" is very common when doing a PhD. If you find yourself at 10 pm, still at work, reading PhD Comics... Just give up and go home. We all do it.
In the end, a PhD is a Marathon, not a sprint. Slow, methodical work without giving up will get you there eventually.
Homeland support is important. Nurture it. Pets, family, friends... Anything that forces you to focus on what's really important in life (and that is not the PhD, even if it feels like that)
PhD comics helped me deal with some of the trauma.


Is there any referencing style analyzer?

Each journal will have a guide for authors that will specify the required reference style. That's the fastest, easiest and most reliable method.


Changing University in First year of Phd

One key point: you don't mention anywhere in your question why you want to transfer.  Because you say "some PhD programs", I gather you don't have a specific other program in mind, and I can only assume that you don't have some compelling personal reason to do so (e.g. living in a certain city so as to care for a family member) but rather are simply trying to trade up.

Most students who enroll at programs which are not the top ones in their field would like to (or should like to!) move to better ones if they could, but because transferring programs is a fair amount of inconvenience for everyone, the threshold for doing so is rather high.  If you want to get into a better PhD program in year N+1 than you did in year N, then it would be reasonable to have a better application.

Trying to improve your application while newly enrolled in a PhD program is a bad idea.  First of all, as everyone else has said, of course you must disclose the fact that you are currently enrolled in a PhD program if you are applying to a different one.  The idea that you think otherwise is a bit alarming, not because this is such an evil thing to do but it shows how far away you are from understanding academic culture.  Do you think that no one will find out that you are currently in a PhD program?!?  Think again: likely all of your recommendation letters will mention this, for instance.

Moreover, the first semester of being a PhD student is a tough time to build your application: no one at your new program knows you very well (or at all), you haven't done anything much, and more than likely you are just absorbing the culture shock of a new environment and are not in a position to show superiority (and in fact most first year PhD students are fairly inept compared to other PhD students in the program: I know I was).  This phenomenon comes up when first year PhD students try to reapply for certain graduate fellowships (like an NSF fellowship) that they were also eligible for as a graduating undergraduate: they have to get a mix of recommendation letters from faculty at their old university who probably have nothing new or better to say about them than the previous time around and from faculty at their new university who have trouble saying more than "Mr. X is a student in our PhD program -- isn't he?  I'm pretty sure."

My advice is to do one of the following things.

Ask the university who accepted you whether you can defer for a year.  It is much better to ask this question up front than for them to find out later from someone else that you are trying to trade up.  It is a fairly good bet that you will be able to do it: I would much rather enroll a student a year later if in that intervening year they figured out that they really want to come.
Enroll in a non-PhD program either there or somewhere else: a non-degree program or a master's program.  In the American system, getting a non-terminal master's degree is essentially the culturally accepted version of the kind of academic laundering that you seek to do.  This is probably two years rather than just one year, and if you play your cards right you can actually improve your application and profile in that time.


Difficult to finish work started at a previous lab

Working on projects when you are away is difficult in most situations, especially yours. Two possible options to finish them include:

Adjusting to your PhD workload until you are no longer overwhelmed. When you're at that stage, you can try spending several hours a week on those old projects of yours. This may require saying "no" to some additional projects or opportunities at your new place - at least for the time being.
If possible, taking some time off to go back to your former university. Physical presence will greatly accelerate things, and you won't have to rely on the email so much. Plus, you won't be distracted by all the other things you need to do.

Finally, you can try talking to your old advisor and admitting these difficulties. The two of you may then decide to let it go or figure out a solution together.

Remember, though: right now, it is essential that your PhD work goes well, since it is key to your future career. Everything else can wait. It's annoying when things don't get finished, but this might be a sacrifice you have to make - at least for the time being.


Should I ask professor for recommendation letter for graduate school if a month earlier he declined to give me recommendation for some internship?

Ask someone else
It sounds like the professor has already told you no.


How to modify a final draft to reflect that a conjecture in its preprint was refuted?

If you can prove or at least make a convincing case for the conjecture in the special case you need, I'd do the following:

Describe the conjecture in the special case
Prove or make the convincing case in the special case
Write "in a previous draft, we expected this conjecture to hold generally. However, it has subsequently been shown ..."

If you can't or don't want to argue for the conjecture in your special case, then your formulation works as well.


If I write is supported by, I give the impression that I am currently being paid

"Work by this author was partially supported by the Hitchcock Institute and by the Norman and Norma Bates Foundation."

  if I write partially supported I give the impression that I just got a smaller grant

Nonsense.  Unless the institute was your sole source of income and equipment during the entire research and writing process, "partially supported" is correct.  Also, it's standard idiomatic language; nobody will think twice about it.


To senior researchers, how would you view a student you wanted to work with, but who could not?

Personally, I am much happier when somebody tells me "I can't do this because XXX" than when they disappear on me.  If they tell me they can't, then I can adjust my plans and act accordingly; if they don't tell me, then they leave me hanging and I find it quite frustrating.

I strongly advise you to make a clear decision about whether you are going to work on the project right now, and then go and clearly tell the person, through a direct video/phone link rather via email if possible.  If the decision is no, because your current supervisor is pushing you to focus on something else, then that will be quite understandable and will make no prejudice against you for most people---it is a quite typical difficulty for many people in graduate school.

As for whether they will be willing to recommend you as a postdoc: personally, if I like and respect a student, that's not going to be changed if external circumstances disrupt our work together.  If would not be as strong, of course, as if we had done more good work together that I could talk about more, but it would still be positive.  Others, of course, may vary in their opinions, and you can only find out from your associate by asking.


What is the optimal way for poster presentation in conference?

I strongly suggest that you don't treat it as a sequence of presentations, but more as an opportunity to meet people, exchange business cards, listen to their questions and comments and just interact with them in a normal way.

Usually the venue is a bit chaotic so you aren't likely to be very successful with a presentation. Have several copies of your paper, or at least an abstract. Make sure you include contact information. Have an actual poster that gives a bit of an outline of what you do, but not too dense.

Some of the people wandering by will be truly interested, others not as much. Some will be students looking for ideas and some will be professors looking for future employees if you are a student yourself.

Keep it informal. Make a good personal impression. Let the formal presentation and the paper stand on its own. You don't really need to sell it. Of course, a few questions might be detailed and you can deal with that.

I've been to a lot of these, both as a "presenter" and a viewer. What I want as a visitor is a quick overview from the poster and the opportunity to ask a question.


Moving from chemistry to oceanography as a current chemistry PhD student?

Chemistry and oceanography are quite closely related, with a lot of people who explicitly overlap the two.  A nice example that I happen to be familiar with is Chris Reddy at Woods Hole, who works on marine chemistry, especially in the area of oil spills.  There are lots more like him, so I think that a transition via postdoc is entirely feasible to attempt.

Whether you stay in biochemistry or shift to oceanography, however, I think that you may wish to consider the broader scientific ecosystem of research opportunities.  Your view of the biochemistry world is probably somewhat distorted by an environment dominated by highly competitive "big PIs" with large labs.  There's a lot more to the research world than that, even in medical biochemistry.


What actions can I take about an I-do-your-homework website offering academic fraud services for money?

This is called contract cheating.  It is an old and very well known problem.
Students cannot do anything about advertisements for contract cheating.  Since the sellers are usually unaffiliated with universities, universities cannot punish them either.
If you have evidence that someone is purchasing contract cheating services, turn that evidence in to the person responsible for academic integrity at your university.


Breadth or depth in math graduate school?

This isn't a question with a correct answer.  I think most people who've been around math departments for a while have seen students go way too far to one side of this or another: students who think they know the first week of their Ph.D. the only field of math in which they want to work, and students who seem to constantly be learning new things, but never seem to settle down and concentrate on something.  Lots of different strategies can work, and there's a lot of luck in how these things work out.

If you plan to do a Ph.D. in the US, then I would think about things this way: while you're doing your masters, you should be figuring out where you want to do your Ph.D. and preparing yourself for that.  If you plan on going to another school, there's not too much point in specializing before you get there, since don't know what advisors will be available there.  Taking some advanced courses, and choosing a brand area is fine, but you can feel comfortable trying to get a broad base.

You can reasonably expect to have 5 years to finish your Ph.D. after you arrive at the school where you will do so (so after you finish your master's degree, if you plan on moving).  If this is the case, then, I would worry if:

at the end of your first year, you don't know what broad area of math you'd like to work in (number theory, PDE's, etc.).
at the end of your second year, you don't know who your advisor will be.
at the end of your third year, you don't know what the underlying objects in your thesis will be and how to work with them
at the end of your fourth year, you don't know the statement of the main theorem of your thesis

You shouldn't take this as gospel (at some schools expect students to finish in 6 year, so you can sneak an extra year in there somewhere), and of course, being worried doesn't mean that things can't be fixed, but what you can relax if you haven't done yet.


What is considered a good GPA for studies in Germany

Given that "grade inflation" is often much less rampant in Germany than in other nations (it is not unusual, for instance, for the majority of students to fail an exam in a core subject), the standards inside of Germany tend not to be as stringent as in other places I've seen. For instance, anything better than 2.0 (on a 5.0 scale, not a 4.0 scale!) would generally be considered "competitive."

Obviously, there are limitations—if you get a 2.0 because you've gotten 1.0's in the general courses and 3.0 in the courses in your subdiscipline, you're not likely going to be an attractive candidate to an outside group.

However, I think much more important than the exact GPA is the quality of the master's thesis. If you have a very strong master's thesis, you will likely get some interest from the group in which you did the thesis work to continue on for a PhD, if there is an open position available. A weak grade on the thesis (anything below a 1.3) usually is a sign of substandard performance, which is likely to result in not being considered for a position, even if your GPA is a 1.1 or 1.2 (it's unlikely to be a 1.0 under such circumstances).


Can a advance stage PhD student (without thesis subission) apply for post docs, or have to wait until the completion of final defence?

For postdocs that are publicly advertised, read the advertisement.  Typically it will say something like "Candidate must have completed PhD before starting date MM-DD-YYYY."  That means you can apply before you are finished, but your application will have to convince them that you will be done before MM-DD-YYYY. If you're offered the job but then don't finish your degree on time, you may lose the job.  (It is possible, but not guaranteed, that you could be given the option to delay your start until after you defend; or to be hired under a different title, usually with lower pay, until you defend.)

For postdocs that are not publicly advertised, where you have to contact the PI to express interest, your initial contact message can say something like "I am finishing my PhD at (name of school), working with (name of advisor), and I expect to defend in MM-YYYY."  If they respond positively, you'll know that's acceptable, and can go on with a full application if needed.


Standard protocol for withdrawing published paper that has wrong (or erroneous) data (published without wrong intentions)

Not every published paper is right.  Publications are a snapshot of authors' understanding at a given time.  If they don't stand up to history, the literature corrects itself.    Descartes's publications on the pineal gland as the generator of motor actions have never been retracted!

If a paper is wrong because new data or new understanding has changed the authors' outlook, perhaps the best course of action is to publish a new paper, specifically discussing the previous paper.

If there is a real MISTAKE or MISREPRESENTATION in the original paper, the editor should probably be contacted about the possibility of publishing an ERRATUM.  Retraction should be reserved for the most severe of cases.


Should I provide specific acknowledgments in addition to a general acknowledgment?

I've often seen specific points included along with general thanks in a single footnote, something like "I thank my supervisor, John Doe, for numerous helpful discussions and, in particular, for calling my attention to reference [7] and for simplifying the proof of Lemma 2."


The only problematic situtation seems to me to agree to review the paper, give it a deliberately bad review so it is rejected and then publish the own results. I personally would not review the paper in question at all because it might turn out that it is legitimate to reject it, and then it would be difficult to continue working independently.

Whether you should stop working on the problem is a more difficult question. In general I would say no unless it's something very specific with limited scope for further work. If you are reasonably sure that your work would go beyond what the other authors have done, there's no reason not to do it. You could always wait to see if the paper is published and if it is contact the authors and propose to work together.


When meeting a professor for the first time, is it always a good idea to ask about their research interests?

Two points from experience (as a student):

Don't ask/talk about something that can be googled

If you want to talk about the professor's research interest, that's great but the key point is not to talk/ask things that can be answered in a Google search. Asking a professor about his research interest might qualify as one of these cases. Checking his webpage (if updated) might answer the question. "Why did you use X instead of Y in your paper titled Z" might probably be a good question to ask (depending upon the occasion).
Now that I reread my answer, I feel professors are like SE sites. Ask closed non-google-able questions while showing interest and initiative and you will have a good time.

Gauge the occasion

Needless to say, meeting a professor for the first time in an orientation party, conference or a course orientation might call for different "first conversations". Don't force what you want to talk about on the professor. (But then, this is true for all people not just professors.)


May a PhD be more practical than theoretical?

To be awarded a Phd, you can't just build something: there has to be some sort of novel research component. PhD's are all about asking (and answering!) questions, not just engineering solutions to a problem.

However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with creating something new as a part of your PhD, so long as it helps you answer a research question. For example:

Does this algorithm improve the speed/reliability/accuracy with which this data can be proccessed compared to existing techniques?
Does this new collaborative learning tool improve a student's ability to learn a language compared to working individually?
Does this new system for visualising a data structure affect the way in which users perceive/engage with it?

Note that these are far too broad to be used in practice, but they might give you an idea of the types of questions that can be asked.


Assuming the license on the code permits it there's nothing wrong with using open source code in your thesis. If the license is an open-source style license which allows derivative works you don't even need to contact the author for permission though it may be polite to do so.

How it should be cited depends on the citations style your thesis is to be written with but has come up before on the site.

How do you cite a Github repository?

In general you're golden as long as you make it extremely clear that your work is an extension of existing code and make it extremely clear what the source is. If this is central to your thesis then I'd mention it prominently in the text rather than simply listing it as a citation.

If it's academic/scientific code there may be documentation on the authors site specifying what publication should be cited in relation to the code .

If you want to show exactly what you've done yourself you can generate a file listing all the changed/added/removed lines which you can attach as an appendix.

I did almost exactly this as part of my MSc: taking an open source tool and adding extra functionality to it then publishing it with changes.

Edit: if there's no license then you'll need to get in contact with the author somehow. This may help.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/12687679/3535153


Why do "Author's Rights" in "Consent to Publish" agreements allow pre-print publications?

Short answer: Pre-prints are not a big threat to the business models of journals and there are scientific norms that mean that journals are expected to permit pre-prints.
Longer Answer:
Why do universities and others pay for journals when some of the articles in these journal subscriptions are available via pre-print servers and other means?

Readers want access to the copy of record supplied by the journal.
Readers want access to every single article, not just the subset that are available as pre-prints.
Readers want efficient and consistent access.
Readers want an attractively formatted PDF or HTML copy.
Although not a pre-print server, it's also worth noting that universities respect copyright and therefore do not see services like scihub that provide more comprehensive free access as legitimate.

Why do many journals allow authors to share pre-prints?

They don't see it as a big impost on their business model given the points above.
Many journals have an embargo period on post-prints (i.e., pre-prints that have been updated based on the feedback provided by journal peer-review). These are presumably designed to encourage purchase of journal subscriptions.
Some journals may appreciate the importance of academic dissemination even where the potential readers do not have a subscription.
In some fields, pre-prints are very entrenched to the point that if a journal did not allow pre-prints, they might be seen poorly by that field and receive fewer high quality submissions.
More generally, there is competition amongst journals, and allowing pre-prints is one small way that journals can compete for submissions.
There has also been an ongoing debate about the business models of journals. Journals are receiving pressure from various parties to permit these forms of distribution.
Also, pre-print servers are generally non-commercial. I have seen some publishers ban positing on ResearchGate because they are for-profit and serve Ads alongside pre-prints.


You are approaching the question from the wrong angle. In essence, you assume that there are canonical ways to show particular data. But that's not true. In the beginning, there is just data, i.e., raw numbers. Then, as the author of an article/thesis/book, you want to use this data as a way to illustrate a point you're making, and the way you show the data is chosen in such a way to make this point in a way that makes it easiest for a reader to understand what it is you're trying to explain. What this way to show the data is depends crucially on what you're trying to explain.

To give an example:

If you have rainfall data from each month (January to December) from 2000 to 2019 with two months every year missing (meteorologist is on vacation every year in July and August), and you want to illustrate which months form the rainy season, then maybe a bar chart would be appropriate where each bar indicates the average for that month over the years. In that case, there would simply be no bars at all for the missing months. If your bars start at 0 mm rain per month, then missing bars can be obtained by just using zero data, though it's still useful to indicate the missing data in the text or the caption.
If, on the other hand, you have the same data set and your goal is to illustrate inter-annual variability, then you can't show averages and it's also not useful to show a plot with 12x20=240 bars because you want people to see how different the 20 years' January rainfall is. In that case, you probably want to again show a plot with 12 x-values (one for each month), and each year's data would result in one point that you might want to connect to the previous and following month's data point by a thin line. This way, you'd overlay 20 curves in the same graph. Again, the missing months would not have any data points, and I'd probably also not plot any lines between the June data point and the September data point to make clear that there really is no information.

The point I'm trying to make here is that one can not answer the question of what the best way to show data is, unless we know what it is you're trying to say with your graphics.


Is it easier to get funding for a master's degree in North America or in Europe?

In many European countries you won't be able to get a scholarship for a master's degree directly from a university. Also local students don't usually get that. The research funding is mostly aimed at PhD students, because master's degree students aren't expected to do research at the level these funds are targeting. Also, the general perception is that if you're a master's degree student, the university is providing a service to you, not vice versa, so why should they pay for that in addition?

Depending on national / local regulations, you may have to pay a tuition fee or not. If there is a tuition fee, there may be programs to waive or reduce these. There may be opportunities to work as a salaried student assistant at the university, but you'd first have to start a study program before even being considered for that.

What you're looking for are usually national funding organizations or foundations that support students coming from abroad to do a master's degree in that country. These are very rare and come with specific conditions. One such example is the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service.

For these countries, it'll be a waste of time writing to individual professors about scholarships for a master's degree. Instead it might be helpful to contact the offices for international exchange at your target universities to ask whether they know any scholarship programs for their place that apply to you. Or maybe you have such an office at your home university that has a list of programs for their students who are interested in international exchange.


Risk register for 'office-based' research

I guess there could be many, but:

The existing data might not be good quality or sufficient quantity.
Reliance on a single person may lead to failure if they have health problems, or get a new job.


What education does one need to be called "Professor" in the United States of America?

I completely agree with the answers by ff524 and Pete L. Clark, but I'd like to highlight one issue that's in the background here, regarding whether this behavior is normal.  When someone makes a point of emphasizing a professional title, it might be because they are pompous, but they might actually have a good reason for it.  It's difficult to do your job well if the people you are interacting with don't maintain an adequate level of respect and professionalism, and insisting on titles can be an effective way to control the tone of your interactions.

Whether this is helpful is often correlated with gender or race: many white men are treated respectfully by default, while women or minorities sometimes find that students or colleagues interact with them in troubling ways that don't arise nearly as often for their white male coworkers.  For example, students sometimes expect unreasonably forgiving and nurturing behavior from women and react harshly if they don't get it, students sometimes disrespect women in class and try to challenge or undermine their authority (for no intellectually compelling reason), etc.  Of course this doesn't always happen, but it's a real problem for some people.

Insisting on the use of a formal title is one way to address this issue.  You run the risk of looking pompous or uppity, but you are willing to take that risk in exchange for reminding everyone of your position and your desire to maintain a formal and respectful tone.  This may not be the best solution in any given circumstances, but it works well enough that it's reasonably common.

So my recommendation is to approach this issue with some charity.  If you hear complaints about someone insisting on a title that nobody else cares as much about, especially a woman or minority, you should keep in mind that it may be their way of dealing with a difficult situation.


Is it ethical for professors to require that students maintain a balanced and disinterested tone in their papers and presentations?

At least based on the examples you gave, the rule you mention is clearly directed at teaching students to argue better and without resorting to various straw men, ad hominem attacks and other such rhetorical fallacies. Sure, there is some room for error or unfairness as with any policy, and depending on the precise way it is applied one can argue about whether this approach is effective in instilling good thinking habits among the students; but unethical it certainly isn't, as long as it is applied by the professor in good faith and out of a sincere belief that this serves the educational goals of the course.


Which kind of undergraduate course is better for a student wishing to do research in physics?

The most important thing is to follow a course where you'll be stimulated, have access to good people and good resources, and be happy (personally, not just academically). If satisfying these conditions also determines which style of course you follow, then that's the best answer.

Otherwise... there's probably no definitive answer. Personally, I'm in favour of a broad scientific education. A lot of interesting developments these days are at the interface between two or more of the "traditional" sciences, and being able to bring in ideas from multiple fields is often useful in research. There's also the fact that you may find your interests don't (only) lie where you thought. My career has ended up being in a branch of science I never even considered when I was at school (I, too, wanted to do theoretical physics).

Choose a course that will give you a strong grounding in mathematics: it is probably the only part of a course that's guaranteed to be useful wherever your career goes. (I took advanced courses in particle physics... but I haven't used that knowledge since leaving the exam. Introductory linear algebra? Almost every day...)

In support of my position: note that some of the world's leading universities (eg CalTech, Cambridge) insist their students study multiple traditional sciences.


Emailing professor about unexpected questions on exam

I'm taking a class where the professor has only provided power point slides, which are not even based off of the textbooks listed in the syllabus.

Power-points slides are just a medium; there is wide variation in the quality of power-point slides, so this does not really tell us much about the quality of the material you were given.  Your concern here also depends on whether the syllabus sets the textbook as the primary material, or if this was just intended as a supplement.  Ideally the course slides and textbook should be of high quality, and should "mesh" well.  If you found that the material provided by the lecturer was not useful to you, that is something you should feel free to raise.  I would recommend being more specific about your concerns here.

  For our final exam, he just provided a generic list of topics. The final turned out to be a different format from our only other exam and some topics required calculations we had never given practice on.

Academics have wide discretion in writing exams, including how to structure/format these exams, and how much detailed pre-exam guidance is given as to its contents.  It is not necessarily wrong for a professor to give you a final exam that is of a different format to past exams.  Material on the exam should be within the scope of what was taught in the course, but it might involve some new wrinkle on material, and might sometimes include questions or calculations that are in-scope, but sufficiently different from past questions that you have not had previous direct practice.  There is certainly no requirement that questions should involve repetition of calculations done in class.  Having said this, if you have concerns about the format/content of the exam, you should feel free to raise this and give your views on it.  Academics are human, and we sometimes write exams that miss the mark a bit, so it is useful to have student feedback to know what students found jarring.

  Would it be appropriate to email the professor and voice these concerns?  I want to but I'm afraid it might affect how he grades my exam.

It is perfectly acceptable to give a (professional and polite) email raising concerns about an exam.  Most universities have systems in place to solicit formal anonymous course evaluations at the end of the session, and they usually also have "course reps" that can deliver anonymous feedback directly to the lecturer during the session.  You can also give feedback directly to your professor by email during the session if you wish.  Your professor should be sufficiently professional to grade all the exams fairly regardless of any concerns you raise.  No-one here can guarantee that your professor is not a vengeful and unprofessional person, but the odds are against it.  Just make sure your email is polite and reasonable (maybe have a friend read it before you send) and make sure you are clear about the things that are of concern to you.


Anywhere in Europe, you are entitled to paid vacation. How much vacation you get depends on the country and job, but if online resources are to be trusted employers in France should be fairly generous with about 5 weeks of paid vacation per year (note that this is not outrageously high - most countries in central Europe give you between 4 and 5, sometimes up to 6 weeks of paid vacation).

That you are there "only one year" does not matter. Even if you were employed only for three months you would be entitled to paid vacation time pro rata (e.g., about 1.25 weeks of paid time off for a 3-month internship), although for such short employments it is common to not take all vacation and instead get monetary compensation.

One thing to consider is that there is no general right to take all of this vacation in one piece, or at any time that is convenient to you. That is, you should still plan that your mentor may request you to take your vacation primarily during the summer or winter holidays.


How can a researcher improve his contribution to society?

On a different note from some of the other answers, try to take to heart that basic research is directly useful to society. Almost all modern pharmacology is based on decades of fundamental biochemistry and biology research. Materials science is based on years of basic chemistry and physics research. Basic math research fuels advances in all types of engineering, from signal processing to computational work to structural engineering. There are many other examples for other fields of research; please edit this answer or put them in the comments.

In short, don't underestimate your current value to society.


Oral vs Poster vs Workshop. Which is the most prestigious in the context of Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence?

0. Invited/plenary talk at the main conference

1. Paper in the main proceedings with an oral presentation

2. Paper in the main proceedings with a poster presentation

3. Everything else

Having a paper in the primary conference proceedings is more prestigious than not having a paper in the primary conference proceedings.  If I understand how CVPR, ICML, and the like work, that means (oral presentations and posters) are more prestigious than (workshop, tutorial, or other).

Only a small number of CVPR/ICML/etc papers are accepted for oral presentation, so having a paper with an oral presentation is more prestigious than having a paper with a poster presentation.

Workshops and tutorials are apples and oranges.  A workshop presentation is more likely to be associated with your own original research (if only in preliminary form).  On the other hand, a tutorial presentation is a significant community service, and being invited to give a tutorial is a mark of community standing.  I would rank tutorials slightly ahead of workshop papers, but I'm sure not everyone would agree with me.


In most places a citation (ack) would be enough. For a citation, list it as a "private communication". That is normally enough. You avoid plagiarism because you properly credit the idea.

There may be a few places, though I can't name them, where it requires specific permission to do this. It isn't needed in the US, but seek local guidance elsewhere.

Most likely you will be paraphrasing the communication rather than quoting it. Quoting a communication in full may have different rules, even if it is only a few sentences. To do more, you need permission.

One way to get permission, or at least acceptance, is to send the person a copy of your finished paper, saying that it is about to be submitted and asking for any advice on it. If they have issues with how you have presented their ideas they have a chance to correct them.


Is it okay to put up a submitted paper and a paper which is about to be submitted on Academia.edu?

For your submitted paper: Check the copyright and "prior publication" policies of the conference you've submitted to.  It's very likely that they allow you to post a "preprint" of your paper on your web page.  This is a very common practice in Computer Science, since it allows researchers to share their work without being delayed by the peer review process.  You might also consider posting on a preprint server such as arXiv.org as this will further increase your audience (this is also usually allowed).  And it would also be a good idea to include a copy of the paper with your applications, or at least a link; don't expect the admissions committee to find it by themselves.

For your not-yet-submitted paper: Again, there shouldn't be a problem with the journal/conference, but it's probably best to wait to make it public until it is completely finished and ready to submit.  However, you could certainly include a copy with your applications.


I'm afraid that quoting external regulations and grading guidelines here won't do you any good. The question is what are your university's internal grading policies. Do they have a recommended grade distribution? Are there rules governing repeat examinations for students who had to miss the first one? Are there policies on what is allowed to be covered on such examinations?

Whether good or bad (and it's a bit of both), grading standards differ between institutions, and even within different departments at the same school, and sometimes even course to course. That means you can't rely on what others do to help, and you can't really claim "discrimination" here, either. Such policies are clearly unfair and unethical—it's not right to force a fixed percentage of students to fail, regardless of their actual performance. However, unless your university's regulations specifically forbid such behavior, there's not much you can do to fix this.


What is actually the difference in student experience between a world famous university and others?

Even if you could learn exactly the same thing in both places (you can't), another difference is your peers. If you are surrounded by people who are smarter and more driven you'll be more likely to raise your own standards. The best project in the class at Leading University will be different from the best project at Third Tier U.

Also, if you attend school with people who are likely to get great jobs, you'll have contacts with people who have great jobs, increasing your own opportunities.


Are there any examples of popular self published textbooks?

Michael Spivak's "Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry" was published through the Publish-or-Perish Press he founded, probably for just that reason.


How do withdrawn courses in my transcripts affect my PhD admissions application?

I've been heavily involved in graduate admissions at a top-20 program for many years. A single withdrawal never bothers me; I realize that life happens. It's when they start to become common across a transcript that I start to worry.


Discussing work with supervisor in an invited dinner with his family

Welcome to academia.SE :-)

See, many things that we do in our life are most of the time unplanned and spontaneous. The thing that you did is not a big deal for good people. Just say sorry sometime during tea time and get on with it. Don't keep it scratching.

Further, one positive to that is: He would have felt so happy that he has got a very dedicated (and weird) student who shows results during family dinner.

I have done it quite few times and I am not sorry about it. It feels weird initially, but not so apologetic.

Good luck!


How will the graduate committee regard two different TOEFL or GRE scores sent to them?

This mainly depend on what department you want to send application, for match,cs etc the quantitative reasoning is main interest for english, literature history the verbal and writing skills matter. Also if they are asking score as total and also for each module then its easy however some universities doesnot say about how they weight GRE score

As for toefl it also depends on the criteria set by the university e.g they can ask a total score of x with no less then y in each module. As when i was applying it was actually ielts and mentiones that ielts band 7 is required with no module less then 6.5, so if your score is crossing in any results the minimum criteria you can apply using that


Is it possible to confirm if someone is enrolled at a particular school?

In the US, under FERPA, institutions of higher education (rules are different for K12 education) are required to define what pieces of information about a student are "directory information."  This typically includes the name, address, and phone number of a student and may include other information such as the student's dates of attendance, major, and any degrees that the student has been awarded.  The list of what items constitute directory information has to be made available to students, and students have the option of to keep this directory information confidential.  Other more detailed information (such as courses taken, grades, class rank, etc.) is automatically confidential and can only be released after an explicit waiver from the student.

If a student has chosen to make their directory information confidential, then the university won't confirm or deny that the student has any connection to the institution.  if the student hasn't opted for confidentiality, then the registrar's office will typically provide the directory information when asked.

There are good reasons for this protection.  For example, consider the situation of a student who has been the victim of domestic violence and is hiding from an abusive family member.  The abuser could call the university, talk them into providing the student's contact information and then use it to track down the student and harm the student in some way.

On the flip side, this confidentiality provision can cause problems with reference checks for former students.  If a student chose confidentiality and years later an employer calls the university and asks "Did John Doe complete a BS degree at your institution?"  The institution would have to say "We can neither confirm nor deny this."

In my experience, a fairly significant percentage of students (maybe 10 to 20%) at my institution opt for confidentiality of their directory information.  Given the problems that this can cause with reference checking, I'm somewhat surprised by how many students opt for confidentiality.

In general, the office to ask would be the registrar's office.  They regularly handle requests from people who are conducting reference checks and background investigations.


Is it counterproductive to read very long text books during an MSc program?

I haven't heard of such a thing, but can understand where it comes from. But my advice would be that doing teaches you much more than reading. In CS we often build things to reinforce learning. Textbooks can provide useful exercises. And one learns, primarily, through repetition (reinforcement) and feedback. Only a few people have a "photographic memory" and even then, being able to recall some text doesn't mean that you have gained insight from it.
Seek insight. Reinforcement and feedback. Hopefully the professor provides feedback, but programs (when they fail) can also do that.
I don't think the professor means to ignore textbooks, however. Use them "just enough" to gain insight.


Small mistakes in research or personal statement

No one can really say except the one that reads your application materials. Likely it will have little effect, unless the field depends on correct use of language in an essential way. Even there, however, people make mistakes and other people recognize that they do.

But a good plan for the future is to have a colleague or friend read your materials before you send them to comment on things they find confusing or incorrect.

You can, of course, send a note of correction if it is in any way important. "I am the king of the world" is a bit different from "I was the king of the world."


In a 3-year PhD programme, what are the tasks of the first year?

Look at what the requirements for the confirmation review are. Ask others in the department who will be assessing the report what it is they look for. Ask to see some examples of previous reports that passed, and ideally, some that didn't.

In our place student must demonstrate:

1) They have defined a project with well articulated aims and at least an idea of how to meet these aims. The student is not just pottering around the area. Nor are they acting as a technician on various things going on in their supervisors lab.

2) They can explain what the importance of their project is and where it fits in to the larger field (that is their project has not just been dictated by their supervisor without them having any idea about its purpose).

3) Have have a working knowlegde of the general background in the field, and of recent literature directly relevant to their project. They know if others have worked on the same question and what they have found.

4) They can demonstrate an understanding of what the key techniques in their project are, how they work, and what are likely to be the bottlenecks.

5) Usually students have SOMETHING in the way of experimental results, but often not very much. They might have a graph or two on optimizing their system, they may have shown that the system works with some positive controls or have reproduced some of the key results from the literature. We don't usually expect concrete progress on new knowledge at this point.