texts: Is it common for professors to ask a postdoc to start working without compensation while waiting for paperwork to be completed?

texts:
I was wondering if it is common for professors to ask a new international postdoc to work without compensation while waiting for paperwork to be completed.
I was in an interview and the professor hinted at something along this line, when I brought up the topic of the lengthy visa process to be expected.
A few notes:

The professor is not my PhD advisor. He's at a different university in a different country. So, my question is not similar to this one.
The whole visa process could take 3 months.
The work contract may include a start date that is earlier than the visa issuing date (in this case ≈ 3 months earlier) but the university cannot pay me for that period without a valid document/visa. That's why I mentioned 'without compensation'. Correct me if you think I am misunderstanding this aspect.
I understand that the scope of the postdoc's work is related to a project that has tight deadlines, which is why the professor wants work done as soon as possible. But, I find that the duration in which this situation would last is long. A maximum of 1 month may seem tolerable but not longer.

Is this common in academia for international hires? And would it be ethical?


texts: Is there a list of research funding agencies worldwide, ordered by money spent?

texts:
I have found a Wikipedia page ranking countries based on amount of funding and GDP.  Is there a list that breaks this down further by funding agencies?

For example, the wiki list says US funding, but I imagine it's not so simple or clear where it comes from.  For example, it's not clear how much comes from NSF, NIH, and DARPA.

How can I find out the largest funding agnecies in the world?


texts: Doing a MA / MSc in your hometown despite the fact that it's not challenging?

texts:
Couple of years ago, I have been in a situation where I almost had to make a decision whether to wait for an opportunity to come in the future, or to do a MSc in my home city which was average (if not below average) in quality. Luckily, I managed to win a scholarship and did my degree abroad, on a well equipped and well-known university.

However, if a candidate keeps being rejected the necessary scholarships for him to do MSc abroad, is the MSc program really worth it despite the fact that you know you won't get a good knowledge at your homecity University? Should a student that wants to do a MSc or MA degree in a chosen field do the MSc at home despite the fact that his home institution is not 'scientifically well-situated'*?

*In lack of better words, here I mean that the department at the home University has lecturers that aren't really knowledgeable. Also there are not (m)any international collaborations and there is no possibility for you to be challenged because nobody knows the new methodologies you are planning to use.


texts: What should you do if you don't hear anything back from editor after a whole year from first submission?

texts: I have submitted a paper more than a year ago, but still I haven't heard anything back from the editor. As of today I have no idea whether my paper has been accepted/rejected or is in a review stage. Only thing I know is that it has been received, for a got a confirmation of this soon after the submission. Needless to say that I've tried several times to get in contact with the editor to find out about my paper's fate, but I got not a single reply to my status update requests. What should you do in a case like this? I was thinking of writing to the editor again to let him know that I'm withdrawing the paper from him and submitting to someone else? Is this a good idea? Are there other paths one might walk down to?


texts: What academic discipline does "Productivity Science" come under?

texts:
I wish to categorise my large collection of electronic documents. I need a foolproof set of categories to put each document in. I want to use a classification system similar to how university schools are organized:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_disciplines

Some of my documents are productivity tips (similar to Dave Allen's "Getting Things Done" book). I can't find an academic category under which productivity comes. The term "productivity science" doesn't seem to be a widely accepted term.

What is the most natural category to put the study of "Productivity" in? Psychological Sciences (or other Social Sciences)? Applied Sciences/Professions? I'm tempted to put it in Psychology because I have other documents based on Learning, Memory and Performance. The four of those seem best suited to Psychological Sciences.


texts: Asking the Editor-in-Chief about the reason of the review delay

texts:
I have submitted a manuscript to one of the top-tier journal of my field at six month ago. The recent status of the paper is "under review" which status is there for last four months.

My question is:  In that situation is it ok to ask the Editor-in -Chief of that journal about the reason of the review delay?

Also could anyone please help me by giving a useful reference to a template of such mail (to the Editor-in-Chief), which ask the above question to the editor in a polite and effective manner.


texts: How to inform the editorial office that a special discount has been received?

texts:
I just submitted an article in a special issue. This article is based on a talk given in a conference, and we received a discount. So after I submitted the article, the website told me to contact the editorial office about the discount. How shall I write the letter? It is the first time for me to do this kind of thing, please suggest some sample letters.

I also want to point it out that in the website of the special issue, it is clearly stated that all papers in the issue will be published free of charge. Does this mean that it is not necessary to contact the editorial office? If so, why is it that after the submission, I still got the suggestion to contact the office?

Thank you!


texts: Academic Journal Article Peer-Review Feedback Tips

texts:
I've always been dissapointed in the feedback I receive when submitting articles for publication. Even when my work is accepted the suggest given are often vague and unclear.

I know that most journals have some sort of form that reviewers complete but it seems that the form is not followed very carefully.

Therefore,  I was wondering what kinds of expectations others have in regards to peer-review feedback for an academic article.


texts: Is it common / advisable to add my personal web site to my curriculum vitae?

texts:
Generally one puts more things about itself than s/he puts in his/her CV, and I think a CV should standalone and be a guide for someone who is trying to learn about me, so

  Is it common / advisable to add my personal web site to my curriculum
  vitae ?


texts: Introductory Structure of a Report Reviewing Established Knowledge

texts:
My question is set in the context of engineering and science. I wish to understand the contrast between the introductory structure for a report investigating developing/unproven research with the introductory structure of a report reviewing previously developed knowledge.

For example how the introduction would be structured for a report titled 'A New Method to Measure the Affect of Variable X on Response Y' in contrast with a report titled 'A Review of the Function and Application of the Transistor'.

My old university structures the introductory section to a generic scientific research report as follows:

Coverage of background, history and state of current events. Description of what is known already.
Description of the current state of events from where this report is
to be launched.
Clear indication of the scope of the report, what will and will not be included, such that it is possible to estimate its completeness at any given time.
Presentation of a 'roadmap' indicating how the report will approach the topic.
Written in the future tense.

Source: HAUC Guide to Report Writing.

There is understandably a clear theme of addressing a problem or gap in current knowledge. This focus is also present here in an informal guide to writing a research report from the Cambridge University Engineering Department.

However this structure seems awkward when applied to a report intended to collect and review knowledge already in existence, where the author is not trying to formulate knowledge but simply organise and clarify existing knowledge.

I would be grateful for suggestions of how the introductory structure would change for this more review based report style. Are there formal names for these two different types of report? Is there an accepted 'proper' structure for the introductory parts of a report reviewing existing knowledge.


texts:
I am a Front-End Developer with several years of experience as well as I have my B.S. in Computer Science. I am doing research and pursuing my MS in Computer Science. However, I am somewhat struggling to word my career objective correctly and in a fashion in which I could be considered for admittance into Grad School. How could this snippet be modified to accomplish the goal while remaining under 150 characters

  I've been interested in computers from a young age. Xxxxxxx Xxxx offers a great program to further pursue my education and passion for computing.


texts: Applying to grad school for mathematics with low GPA, but reluctant to bring up the health issues that caused it

texts:
I'm currently a 3rd year undergrad majoring in math/physics. I was admitted to my university through an honors program due to outstanding high school achievement (my university is a large public one, moderately well known in the US) with several scholarships.

But after my first semester, I fell back into a recurring bout of severe depression, and did not get help. My grades ended up tanking that next semester (C average). I thought I had overcome it by my second year, but soon developed psychosis and could no longer focus on studying; I neglected my health and hygiene, and I couldn't even get up some mornings to get to class. None of my professors are aware of my situation.

I finally sought help last spring and I've been doing better (keeping up with work, getting better grades, etc), but I feel like nothing will ever make up for those two years of mediocre grades. My overall GPA right now is sitting around a 2.5. I feel like while this is possible to explain away, I'm reluctant to divulge information about my severe mental illness to admissions because there is still a lot of stigma associated with it. I've seen mixed answers as to whether or not it's a good idea to do.

My question is, is there still a way for me to pursue applied mathematics in graduate school? Is graduate school aiming too high? And if so, do I talk about my limitations as far as my health is concerned?

I love math, and love learning. I've done a few practice Math Subject GRE exams, and they were fairly easy (as long as I study for the parts I'm not 100% on, of course). I've also done a few small math projects with grad students and I've worked in a lab since I was a freshman; I feel like I'm passionate enough about the subject to succeed but I'm afraid admission committees will not look past my GPA to see that and wouldn't risk having someone like me in their program.


texts: Publishing a high-quality indexed book retaining copyright

texts:
Two colleagues and I would like to publish a book, and we're surveying our options for the publishing company. Throughout discussions, it became clear that all these items are important to us:

Retain the copyright so we can use our work for whatever we want (for publishing new papers, create a revision of the book, share some of the material with students);
We will produce a print-ready document using LaTeX, and although the resulting pdf would be ready, it would also be nice to have digital ebook versions (.mobi, .epub) so that people can also read the book in iPad and the like;
We would like to have the book indexed by Scopus and similar databases so at least we get citations for the book (we're not interested in royalties. This means that the book has to be associated with a DOI;
The quality of the final print should be good, so that our hard work doesn't get obfuscated by poor choice of paper quality, lack of color images, an ugly cover, etc.

We have had some interactions with major publishers, and although they can accommodate to a large extent our demands, it seems their contracts are crafted in such a way that we don't really get what we want. In addition, it's very unlikely to get some of our demands with them (for instance, color images in the printed book). I would appreciate any suggestions on selecting a publisher with those points above as paramount.


texts: How to write a Cover Letter for applying to a PhD programme

texts: I am applying for a PhD programme in Europe. For that I need to write a cover letter. It will be more like a SOP (technical but shorter version, as it's one page) or it can be more general stuff, as in why I want to do a PhD, what I like about this particular field, what background I have. Any suggestions welcome.


texts: When has an unemployed post-doc refereed enough papers to decline another?

texts:
I am a post-doc and I get regular requests to referee papers, largely because of a review paper I published as a grad student.

I am yet to turn down a review request--It is rewarding, an opportunity to immerse oneself in another topic, and it feels good to give back to the community.

Unfortunately, I am peri-employed, and the rational decision maker with non-infinite time resources is regrettably obliged to consider her CV.

At what point will listing another journal (or another instance of refereeing for a given journal) on your CV generate negligible returns for an early-career researcher?

At what point does the rational actor say no?


texts:
So, I've edited the question to hopefully give more clarity on the situation:

I've recently learned that my friend ( A ) assisted in plagiarism for another student ( B ) by completing the vast majority of a final-project in a class I also take with student B. I know B doesn't deserve the almost-perfect grade he will receive because of A's work. I feel terrible because I know how much effort I and others personally contributed to our own projects and it makes me feel like everyone else's work has just been invalidated.

I know, beyond any doubts, that this is what occurred:

B has struggled in this class. A is experienced with the class, the professor, and the subject matter. A has been helping B with other assignments, sometimes assisting more than he should, but otherwise not at any level I would deem "plagiarism."

B asked for help with the final project in this class. A, of course, obliged. After helping for a little bit, the due date was imminant and B's project was still in the beginning stages. At this point A realizes that he has basically been completing the project himself, but feels morally obligated to not "leave him stranded," so A fully completes B's project out of a personal, moral obligation to himself. Personally being friends with A, I know that this was a momentary lack of judgement, and I know he knows much better than to cheat.

A has done all of the work on the project and B is going to pass it off as his own work.

Looking at the College's plagiarism policy, the worst that will happen to the student B is:
 Failure in the course in which plagiarism or dishonesty occurs.

For my friend ( A ) that knowingly plagiarized: Loss of all credit for that semester and suspension for the remainder of that semester.

My friend A has struggled this whole semester, academically and financially, to attend the College and it would be horrific if he had to leave and all of his work be for naught. I find it also unfair that, for what A found as a moral crossroads (helping his friend), and a momentary lack in judgement, will cost him so much more than the punishment B will receive.

I want to report it, but if I do (even anonymously), B will only tell the administration that my friend helped him. I can't be responsible for that.

What can I do in this situation? Report it? Keep it to myself and hope the professor knows? Meet with the professor and have an honest discussion about how I feel and how I know my friend knows the ethics of cheating but became morally confused in this instance?

I guess the overarching question here would be: what outcome provides the best result for A while simultaneously reporting B for plagiarism?


texts: Most efficient way of developing a comprehensive understanding of a field

texts: Are handbooks on a particular field you are interested in, the fastest and most comprehensive way of learning about that field. For instance, if I were interested in cognitive science would a book like "Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science" be the best way to go. Also, if there are multiple handbooks from different publishers which one should I pick?


texts: MLA convention for words and phrases used as words?

texts:
I am using MLA format and am lost for an equivalent to what the Chicago Manual of Style describes as "words and phrases used as words".

In my entire paper, I have chosen to put quotation marks in the following cases:

  The term "power" is very important here because...

Whenever there is the signal term or phrase and then the word I use quotation marks.

Is there any MLA rule to back me up on this?

I have problems now with the following examples.

  Theorist xyz introduces the concept of power in his volume ABC. By power, he means ...

Should I have quotation marks in this case as well to stick to my style:

  By 'power', he means ...

or is it not necessary?

Any hint would be greatly appreciated.

This is what the CMOS has to say about this:

  When is it appropriate to use quotation marks to set off a term that is being defined or described in academic writing? I edit casebooks and journal articles for law professors, and authors will often write sentences such as:

  It will be helpful first to explore the meaning of the concepts of
  “public health” and the “common good.”

  I find quotation marks unnecessary unless they are used to set off
  words coined by the author or if their usage is not standard. What do
  you think?

  A. I agree that the quotation marks aren’t needed in the sentence you
  cite, but the difference between that sentence and one like the
  following, where the quotation marks would be standard, is subtle:

  It will be helpful first to explore the meaning of the phrases “public
  health” and the “common good.”

  Although those phrases aren’t coined by the author or used in a
  nonstandard way, it’s conventional to quote or use italics for words
  or phrases being introduced or defined (CMOS 7.58). For that reason, I
  wouldn’t fuss if an author wanted to keep the quotation marks in
  sentences like the one you quote.


texts:
I have recently discovered that several of my papers have been plagiarized in order to create one paper, and that this paper has been published at a conference. I informed the organizers of the conference and the editor, and there is now notice of violation attached to the online version of this paper, so this problem has been solved.

However, I came to know this paper only by accident (someone contacted my co-author, and told him that this paper looked a lot like ours), and potentially, we could have missed it. So my question is: are there some techniques I could use to detect such cases?

I don't think that it's possible to detect all cases in general (because sometimes, it can be hard to distinguish between inspiration and plagiarism, and I would actually be quite glad with being a source of inspiration) but can I at least detect the most blatant ones? (in this particular example, 3/4 of the paper was actually a copy/paste from ours, and they were citing some of our other papers).

Note that as a completely childish and probably useless reaction, I've actually stopped putting my papers on my webpage. I doubt it can solve the problem though, but at least I felt like doing something :)


texts: Referencing next section to avoid confusion

texts:
I am writing one research article in the field of biology. I want to refer some concept which I am going to describe in next sections but have not described in current sentence (or previous sections) to avoid confusion. I felt it will break the flow of the article if I explained that concept in previous sections. For example,

Section 1: Some Title
... We extended this task by performing XYZ (explained in section 2.3) which will help in better understanding of this issue...
...
...
Section 2.3: XYZ
This method performs ...

I have seen few papers with such referencing. I was just wondering if it is logically fine or there is some alternative style.
This is not similar to the content which we put in supplementary data. And also this is NOT a problem of keeping it in Materials and Methods. It is just complex concept which will need separate section for its clarification.
I have found one similar post but answer was not satisfactory and slightly unrelated to above situation.


texts: co-supervisor from a different university?

texts: I am from a maths/physics background currently doing a PhD in fluid mechanics within the engineering department. I am not enjoying it as much as I'd liked and have raised this with my supervisor (only just, I am not sure what the outcome will be yet), and having done a little research into possible connected directions I can take it, I feel as though one of them would involve co-supervising with someone in the mathematic department, and one, if possible, by someone who is at a different university- but was at my university for around ten years, leaving around five years ago, and seems to be the only person who has worked in this area (it seems pretty niche worldwide relative to other areas) with connections to my university. Is the latter heard of for co-supervision or is it a very long-shot? many thanks in advance


texts:
ACM now offers authors of published papers a choice of two copyright licenses: the "traditional" ACM Copyright Transfer Agreement or the ACM Publishing License.

How should I choose between these two licenses?  What are the advantages and disadvantages to the authors of each license?

I care a lot about maximizing the ability of others to read the paper (e.g., maximizing my ability to make my paper available on my web page, institutional repository, etc.); are there any relevant differences between the two licenses that affects this consideration?  Are there any other important differences between the licenses that authors might care about?


texts: Co-author conflict after paper got accepted

texts:
I am a PhD student.

My paper got accepted with minor changes and then re-submitted again and accepted by the journal. In the meantime, I had conflicts with my supervisor who is a co-author of my paper and I decided to change the lab. Now, he sent an email to the editor stating that the paper was not confirmed by him and now the paper is blocked till he confirms. He will never allow the paper because of the personal conflict. Can someone tell me what can be done?


texts: How Can I Get a full scholarship to a University by my Skills | as an International Student?

texts:
I'm a student in my last year of high school, I'm from Europe but I'm looking for studying Computer Science in USA for the next year. My grades aren't great (around B/B+) and my family can't afford paying the tuition fees (neither it seems they are going help to find a solution) so I need to find a way of getting a full scolarship.
Parallel to my studies, I have been doing my own research on the area of AI for the last two years and I think I have reached a level in which I feel comfortable reading papers and coding by my own. I thought maybe I can use this to get the attention of some professors that can recommend me for the admision process.
I don't know anyone in this situation or that has done something similar so I'm kind of lost (I don't even know about anyone who has studied in USA). I think I could email some to some professors with doubts and questions about their work and start a conversation from there. But I can't think of a way of asking them for their help without looking like a beggar. How would you do this?
I know that maybe the proffesor not even has the chance to admite me nor doing anything about, this is just an idea I had and I don't know if there are other things I can do in this situation.
Any suggestions will be much appreciated, I'm decided to find a way of making this work and study in the USA.


texts: What it takes for a Math department to develop a minor program in Statistics?

texts:
What it minimally takes for a Math department to develop a minor program in Statistics? Do the department require to have a major in area X to have a X minor?

Edit: How many courses at minimum does the department need to have a minor in Stats.  I see many departments requires students to take 5-6 Stats class to have a minor in Stats, so I thought if a department offers 5-6 Stats classes, can they develop a minor in Stats in general?  Are there any common rules one needs to follow to create a Stats minor, or any minor in general?


texts: On answering a question that no one has asked

texts:
In historical research I came across a novel question and, after investing time in it, I have an answer. This helps my original project, but the explanation to the novel question is so substantial that I would like to  publish it separately.

It is well known that X did Y. The thesis of the proposed article is that Z explains X's decision. Unfortunately, I can't point to any publication that asks why X did Y, and Z has no obvious relevance to present day issues.

Why should reviewers want to see an article addressing an unknown problem? What can I do to justify the project?


texts:
I received an email from a journal to confirm my contribution to a manuscript that was submitted by my colleague, and I am the first author in that paper. In this email, there were two links; one for (yes, I am affiliated) and the other for (No, I am not affiliated), and I clicked by mistake on the second link, and my contribution to the manuscript was removed. What can I do to be affiliated to the manuscipt?

Thank you in advance.


texts: Is it immoral to advise PhD students in non-industry-relevant topics in middle-lower ranked universities?

texts:
Currently, the situation in academia is that graduating from a top PhD program is almost a requirement for landing an R1 tenure-track job. However, many of these graduates will not end up at similarly top-ranked schools for their job, and as such are at middle to lower ranked schools.
At these schools, their research is generally still along the lines of what they did in their PhD/postdoc, and PhD students as such follow them, doing this sort of research. But some research fields have little to no industry relevance— a PhD student working in such a field at a middle to lower ranked school would have bleak prospects for academia, and also related industry jobs.
These PhD students as such often have to switch fields to stuff like data science etc. (often through self-learning in online courses) which are unrelated to their original field of research, or end up on a string of postdocs endlessly searching for a job. Many may have been better off getting a job right after undergrad and slowly working their way up.
In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?


texts: How to ask for reference from a non-academic acquaintance?

texts:
I have a non-academic acquaintance who is at a senior position in the telecom industry. He might have good links in academia. I am thinking to ask him for suggesting or referring me to his contacts in academia for a post-doctoral position. I do not want any favor based on nepotism or anything like that, just a chance of getting my CV noticed.

I am confused about it being ethical or not. Maybe I am being too eager.

How can I approach my acquaintance about this without giving 'him' the feeling that I want his favor or that I want to use his name?

PS. It is about North American institutes.


texts: How can I export my Google Scholar Library as a BibTeX format?

texts: In the My Library of Google Scholar, is there a way to export all of the citations, whether to BibTex or something similar?


texts: Imaginative Student Has Trouble Adjusting to Workbook-based Curriculum

texts:
I am a freshman at Alfred University. I've been out of school for 6 years and am returning as a non-traditional student.

I'm having some trouble that I hope someone may have insight for me. I love and adore mathematics and am endlessly intrigued and interested. Usually, back at home, I would work on little projects, like building toys or games or web apps and would explore the mathematics of the problems I was solving and generally have a wonderful time. Now that I'm in college I'm in a structured environment where we work in groups to solve problems in a workbook, and I'm assigned specific problem sets to work on in a specific topic every night.

I am having difficulty adjusting to this format of exploration and study.

I have a very free-wheeling approach to learning and it follows a spiritual bent; as I develop as an individual I also develop my skills and soak up more knowledge. The spirit isn't exactly something that you direct to sit down and do work and I'm not sure how to bridge the two worlds. No level of understanding that I've achieved will galvanize me to the discipline necessary to complete homework every day of the week, or even to set a goal of completing homework three times a week. Although now that I'm writing that, making a small goal like that seems much more reasonable.

I know I have to shed the habit of project-based learning however it's dying a hard death. I don't really know what to do about this.

Is this enough information for someone to possibly give me advice?

Thank you,

Khari


texts: The benefits of the social connections made in attending a conference?

texts:
So I wanted to ask a question about the benefits of attending a conference and then found this: Advantages of attending a conference

I realized from the answers that there are two advantages of attending a conference:

Making connections.
Learning.

While I believe that for the second point, by not attending one can just grab a copy of the proceedings and then he will have a pretty good idea of what happened and learn better (because you really can't learn much from presentations), the first point was harder to compensate for.

Suppose one made connections from a conference, then what are the potential benefits of making those connections? i.e. how to make value out of them?! Because I personally believe that a lot of people make connections but they just end up knowing each other without any collaborations or a value that I can see. Also the majority of the connections would be with researchers and students, not hiring managers so I wonder if there are any value for job search after graduating 4 years from the PhD.

Edit: I've never been to a conference, but I hear what my friends say and also I see couple online videos.


texts:
I am working on a manuscript and need some collaborations in the part which is out of my expertise. I personally don't know anyone in this field.

It will be a good paper to be published in a top journal. How can I find a co-author to help with this?

Is it OK if I send my manuscript to some academics in the field and invite them to collaborate, or it is an odd invitation?


texts: Is it right to have students bring cake and cold drinks for classes?

texts:
Where I study, it is normal even for advanced courses that the instructor for a class makes a "cake list" consisting of student names who each bring a cake (it could be other stuff, like cold drinks, but usually it's cake) to share with the rest of the class.

Is this acceptable behavior? I can think of many drawbacks of such an initiative (not all of them apply to me personally, but some do)

While not obligatory, it requires students to pronounce, in front of all other students, that they do not wish to participate. This is an awkward position to put somebody else in, especially during the first day of class, and it gets worse when somebody actually brings a cake: does the person who refused to be on the list get to eat the cake? Even if they do, I am sure they'll feel a bit uncomfortable doing so.
Classes should be focused on study, not on eating stuff.
Some students will find it annoying that while they're trying to do a hard problem or read a difficult section in a book, everybody else is eating and enjoying a cake which is also being passed back and forward, adding to the distruption.
Some students will be on diets or other health plans. They could refuse the cake, but why force them to make that choice in the first place? For many, this is a known problem.
Cakes and cold drinks can dirty the place up, with crumbs, wet marks, and so on. Somebody else will use the classroom after us, and at the end of the day, the cleaning people will have to do some work in there too. It should be left as clean as possible for them.


texts: Should graduate study be done when you are not fully interested in the subject matter?

texts:
This question is somewhat broad, but this place seems like the best place to ask. I have been accepted for an information assurance program, but I am a computer science major and my main interest lies in software development. Should that deter me from deciding to study information assurance?

Another factor in the decision is that the program is through scholarships for service, so it is a 2 year program with 2 years of work in a government position for information assurance. Ultimately, I recognize it is a subjective decision. The core question I am trying to ask is, should you do graduate study even if you are only partially interested in the subject matter? In other words: how committed do you need to be to the subject matter for graduate study to be worthwhile?

On another note, we continually see news about huge networks with cybersecurity issues. Sony's Playstation network, LinkedIn, and I think I read today that Yahoo! accounts may have been compromised. With the growth of businesses and services online, it seems only natural that an adept skill-set in information assurance would be beneficial.


texts: How can I deal with claims of technical difficulties for an online exam?

texts:
I was talking with some instructors, and we noticed that there is a pattern of claims about technical difficulties. I wonder if there are any rules to follow of whether to allow or don't allow students to retake exams. My university and department have not set any such rules.
For example, don't allow to retake the exam unless the server is down for all students. Or allow to retake a new and different exam, but students should share their screens with the TA or instructors.


texts: Can I read from notes during an online PhD interview?

texts:
I am preparing for an online PhD interview soon.
I took notes about every possible question that the board would ask me during the interview.
My question is : is it totally fine if i had to read from those notes (to provide a detailed answer) during  the interview in order to answer their questions ?


texts: Taking a break from industry and becoming an unpaid research assistant (or atleast getting involved in reserach at a school)

texts:
I am planning to take a break from industry (software) and want to work under a professor/lab on a research project for 3-6 months, computer science/computing related. I was wondering if people could give me some advice on how to go about achieving this arrangement - success tips, what not to do and the feasibility of this whole endeavour.

I'm in my late 20s. Went to a good UK school and got a decent GPA. I got what is known as an undergraduate masters (MEng), which for all intents and purposes is a BSc + MSc. I regret never undertaking a summer UROP placement while doing my undergrad. I've often wondered about doing a PhD (I kinda always thought I would) and this would be one way to get some kind of feel of what it might be like. Who knows maybe I will change my career and move into research.

I have some potential projects (though still a little vague) that I would like to work on, but I am also looking for existing projects that sound interesting to contribute to. My current plan is to reach out to professors that seem like a good fit with my research interests (by scouring their academic pages and published work). I'm yet to reach out to anyone. Actually that's a good question - would I have more luck joining an existing research project or proposing my own?

This potential opportunity is unlikely to happen again - I currently do not have too many responsibilities e.g. kids, a mortgage, etc. That and the window for me doing something like this is shrinking all the time. I want to make the most of it by going to go to what is considered a competitive school (not that I'm applying for a programme per se).

I also want to sample US university life (I have a degree from the UK), go to a new city and meet some new people.

What I hope works in my favour is I have the money to entirely fund myself - I've been working in the tech indusry for the last half decade. Hopefully this means I don't have to work within the confines of the academic calendar nor compete for funding. I am concerned about the legality of working for free - I have seen Nonpaid, volunteering position in a lab.

I understand what I am trying to do may be a little unorthodox, but if I was a professor, and there was an enthusiastic individual who has a decent academics and willing to give up 6 figures for a chance to work on something interesting to us both, then I'd like to meet them. Of course I'm nothing special and I could be a hindrance, but hopefully my work experience, previous academics and genuine interest abate these concerns. To academics reading this, imagine if it was you I contacted asking for this opportunity, what would make you consider me?

Anyway, if people could give me some kind of assurance if what I want to do is not out of the question (or let me know it is), along with some pointers on how to be successful in finding a position.

Really appreciate it,
Thomas


texts: What can I do about a lecturer who isn't clear enough to understand?

texts:
I'm a Maths university student and I just can't seem to learn anything from one of my lecturers.

I understand we, as students, should do personal research on our subject. But he just doesn't make any sense.
He'll teach one thing, then during that, he'll RANDOMLY pull out something out of the blue WITH NO EXPLANATION.
Not even a "Well we do this because...".

He explains new concepts, like he's talking to PhD graduates.

I've spoken to him about it and all he says is "He loves teaching".

I've already failed 2 of his module exams because of this and am having to resit them.

What can I do?


texts: How to translate French "colleur"/"khôlleur" position into english?

texts:
French higher education system is quite singular: besides traditional universities (following Bologna Process scheme with Bachelor (3 years), Master (2 years) and PhD (3 years)), there are so-called grandes écoles – mostly in the business and engineering fields. To enter a grande école, one must traditionally attend classes préparatoires.

One distinctive feature of these classes prépa is the significance of frequent colles (1 every two weeks per student and discipline – sometimes also written khôlles), which generally consist of  1 hour oral examination, where a couple of undergrads solve a problem in front of an examiner – the so-colled colleur.

Colleurs are mostly professors teaching in classe prépa. However they can also be university assistant professors, high-school teachers, PhD-candidates, or post-doc lecturing on their part time.

Question: What is the most appropriate translation of "colleur" into English?

("TA" or "tutor" both seem too broad in my opinion.)


texts: How should a non-native English presenter respond to a question they did not understand?

texts:
I'm not an English native speaker, and my question is, probably, only relevant for non-native speakers.

Sometimes, native speakers just don't care how easily the presenter can understand the question. Such a carelessness usually embarrasses the presenter enormously and makes him appear incompetent.

What is the proper way to behave for the non-native speaking presenter? Is it OK to ask for a repetition?

NOTE: I know, being a part of academic world requests some proper English knowledge. But you can hardly become as good as native speakers. And some native speakers have unusual dialects and use difficult expressions (sometimes, I bet, on purpose). I remember one speaker from Wales at a British conference. My God, that was Greek to me.


texts: Should I leave my PhD in year 6 or just take a bit of a leave and try to regroup?/ What is an "appropriate" level of angst to go through with a PhD?

texts:
So, to start with my question... PhDs/research are undoubtedly hard/stressful, but how much is too much? Should I leave my PhD in my 6th year or just take a bit of a leave to try and regroup? (I'm 31 if that makes any difference.)

As with most, my path through grad school has not been straightforward and I apologize in advance for the lengthy background/question.

I received my MS and was planning to continue for a PhD at University A (contingent upon me getting funding + suitable project). Got both of those figured out, but my advisor was told my project would not help her tenure case and had an awkward advisor switch. Got fed up with politics at A then transferred to University B (in year 4) where I have a fantastic and super supportive advisor.

I just started my 6th year, but have not yet taken my qualifying exam. Many reasons for this, but mostly the program at Univ A was more interdisciplinary (better matched to my research) while the program at Univ B is much more traditional/focused on fundamentals. I  need to relearn a lot of material which is not really relevant to my research and have been at a complete loss of motivation for months now. Being daunted by oral exams certainly plays a role, but also feel that a PhD is no longer required as my career goals have also shifted.

All of this, switching schools, etc. etc. has taken its toll on my emotionally/mentally to the point where my research progress is practically non-existent. This has all triggered pretty severe anxiety/depression (yes, I am getting help elsewhere too), but even so, I am seriously questioning whether it is really worth putting myself through this any more.

I love my research topic (on good days), but at what point is the stress of a PhD not worth it anymore?


texts: What if I may not have research experience for math PhD application?

texts:
I am a master student of some engineering (other than EE/CS) in a decent US institution who will apply for a PhD in mathematics in Fall 2014 (possibly in PDE / applied analysis, but not sure). I finished with three A's and five A+'s in eight upper-undergrad / grad math courses, along with four more to come this fall. Since my intention for a math PhD came pretty late, I am only able to look for supervisor this semester. The sad thing, as expected, is that all three potential supervisors declined my request softly. My previous engineering research experiences are mostly experimental, with little to do with math.

So I have roughly one full semester left, and my questions are:

Is it possible to gain any sort of research experience in this semester without a supervisor?
If not, then how can I show my research potential by other ways?
Will the three LORs solely from course lecturers be convincing, even if the lecturers are well-known, and I did pretty well in their courses?
In addition, is abstract algebra a must or at least very important in math PhD application? Since I have to make a choice between Algebra II and Dynamical systems, and I don't have Algebra I.

Thank you for your responses and criticisms.


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

texts:
A number of years ago I was enrolled in a university as a PhD student and was working on a specific thesis topic. My intent was to earn my PhD with this work. Due to lack of funding, I was unable to continue, but I have continued this work independently for a number of years.

I have managed to complete this work now but finding the right place to publish it seems ever more causa perduta for me. I am thinking about simply publishing it for free and trying to distribute it on the Internet. I am also thinking of making translations into several languages myself. Besides publishing in my mother tongue I am thinking to translate it into English and Russian and possibly German, too. I hope this can make it available for as wide range of specialists as possible. But yet the problem of peer review remains. Even if accessible to everyone on the Internet it isn't going to be something gone through the peer review process and it is likely my thesis itself would cause controversy.

As such, my question is, can research be accepted "in any form" by the scientific community? Does anybody know of cases within the past two decades when such a thing (research first published "free on the internet" being eventually accepted as mainstream) has happened ? I just want to know is this even possible in modern science or would it just "disappear" in the huge noise of the net.


texts: Are there available corpora of academic works?

texts:
There are many different corpora[1] for the English language:

Google Books ngram database is freely accessible and covers publications indexed in Google Books from the 16th century; words are tagged by part-of-speech (more info here).
The Corpus of Contemporary American English is a large and balanced corpus of American English, including not only books but also magazines, newspapers and spoken English.
The British National Corpus is a similar enterprise for British English, both spoken and written.

However, one may want to do an analysis of the evolution of English as used in written academic works (theses, journal articles, etc.). This came apparent to me while I was trying to research usage of passive vs. active voice for this question.

So, are there any available corpora of academic works in English language?

corpus: collections of written or spoken material in machine-readable form, assembled for the purpose of studying linguistic structures, frequencies, etc. [New Oxford American Dictionary]


texts: Are Online First articles considered "In Press"?

texts:
I'm a little bit confused about this point. If an article has appeared as an Online First article for a print journal, is it still considered "In Press" or is it considered published, and so no longer "In Press"? Or is it only articles that have not cleared the Production Stage yet that are considered "In Press"?

I'm thinking some journals take ages to assign an issue number to accepted articles, so they might stay on the journal website for quite a while until they have one. Some funders want you to attach publications to the grant application that are "In Press", but not "fully" published publications.

Thanks a lot for your help!


texts: Enrolling in an Online Masters Degree in Math

texts:
I am currently an American undergraduate student who is pursuing a B.S. in Mathematics. Upon graduation, I want to work in industry and pursue a masters degree at Indiana State University online. The degree is simply: M.S. in Mathematics.

The link is to that program is here.

I eventually would like to pursue a Ph.D in Mathematics (hopefully from Stevens Institute of Technology or Rutgers).

Since there is an in person version of this degree, my question is, wold a university be able to tell that I received my degree from doing the work online? The classes are the same I believe,  and seemingly up to par with other masters programs in terms of courses.

  Would there be any indication that the degree was completed online, or would I receive the same diploma? Accordingly, would an institution like Rutgers or Stevens Institute of Technology know that I pursued my degree online? Is there a marking on transcripts or diplomas that makes note of this? Are programs less likely to admit students who received degrees online (regionally accredited, of course) than traditional residential programs?

I would appreciate different insights from all, but am especially interested in responses from those who have received degrees from completing work online from regionally accredited universities with decent rapport within the academic community.


texts: Grad school admission after bad grade in research class for different discipline

texts:
I have a predicament. I am about 4 weeks shy of graduating from a small Virginia (USA) school with a BA in English literature and I received a D in an upper-level research class in linguistics, which I do not intend to study in the future. I want to apply to a graduate program for English lit in the future, and I am otherwise qualified (otherwise great grades/GPA, great test scores and letters of recommendation, four conference presentations, and a highly prestigious award for an undergraduate research paper in literature). I am very nervous that this class will kill my chances of getting into a good masters/PhD program. I plan to explain that the class was in linguistics, which was very far out of my comfort zone and I had very little prior knowledge of the subject or research methods required to succeed in this class. I felt like my professor expected more from me than I was capable of because I won awards for my research in literature, and she assured me that I would be qualified to perform this research without realizing that my research had been exclusively literary until that point and that I would need extra help to succeed (which she was never willing to provide despite me practically begging for help). Do you think this situation would kill my chances of getting into a good school? Or do you think they would be willing to overlook the abnormal grade since it was not part of my area of study?

It might also be important to note that I failed a literature class and retook it and earned a B+. The "F" is still visible on my transcript but doesn't factor into my GPA. I received the grade because I could not turn in my final paper due to a one-time extenuating circumstance, but my performance was excellent in that course until that point.

This is a super long and complicated question, but I'm taking a gap year to figure myself out and gain professional experience, so I'm not looking at any urgent upcoming deadlines. I just don't want to set myself up for failure by applying to schools that wouldn't give me a chance. I'm more than willing to go into an MA program at a smaller school to work hard and prove myself to a big shot university. I just don't really know what to do and professors at my school are not being up front with me about my situation because they don't have the full story. Everyone I work with says I have a great chance, but I am having doubts.


texts:
Some journals have their own bibliography styles (bst) for BibTeX.

  If a journal does not have its own bibliography style, am I supposed to include the content of the bbl-file into the tex-file I am sending? Or can I send the bib-file instead?

Many journals offer LaTeX-templates showing the style of the article. (This is almost always true if a journal recommends using its own document class.) In some case I have seen that this template contains BibTeX style (.bst file). But in other cases BibTeX was not used in the template, instead it was shown what the preferred formatting of references looks like.

I know that if I were the person who has to do the final typesetting from the sources submitted by an author to conform the style of the journal, I would prefer to have the BibTeX-file. (It is easier to simply change the formatting of references by changing the choice of BibTeX style than changing each separate entry manually.)

  If a journal does not explicitly mention the recommended BibTeX style, what would be preferable way to submit the paper? Should I send both, TeX source and BibTeX file, so that editor can change the references using BibTeX style of their choice, or should I simply send the TeX-file, where I include also the bibliography generated by BibTeX. (And, if necessary, I modify it manually to be in the style required by the journal.)

(So far I have done the latter, but I am not sure whether it was the correct choice.)


texts: Leaving academia for financial reasons - how to communicate the reason of departure in a professional manner?

texts:
I recently finished my PhD and continued to work at the same department as assistant professor. Amid lack of funding, and other academic joys, the department went an extra mile to procure my contract and I was assigned to interesting longterm projects. So from the academic perspective I should consider myself very lucky (most people fight for an uncertain short postdoc position), and the conditions for work are quite good in comparison to other departments in the field.

However, just a few months into the position, I decided to leave academia altogether, exclusively for financial reasons. I always accepted some pay gap in comparison to the industry, but recently I run into a few former classmates from undergrad, visited their companies to discuss collaborations, but suddenly ended up in getting a few job offers in comparison to which my current position looks quite inferior. The difference in the salary leaves me no option but to accept one of the offers. Also, since this happened I became quite demotivated to work.

I am expected to start in a few months. What would be the best communication strategy to my department? Considering that they did quite a lot, and I am in a position which looks perfect to them.

Unfortunately stating upfront the financial reason would be awkward and probably not understood, as talking about personal finances in most academic settings is frowned upon, and there is a culture which expects people to be happy with the academic salaries.


texts: How do you validate a scientific paper that uses a non-public cell/animal line?

texts:
Recently my lab published a paper that uses a mouse line from another lab.

Without going into too much detail since not everyone here is a Biologist, this other lab has a mouse with a reporter gene in it for hetero/euchromatin formation (DNA "openness"). This took them a long time (and a lot of work) to create. Basically, if the chromatin structure changes significantly in the mouse, this reporter gene is activated. Tens of thousands of these mice are then randomly mutated, and if a mutation happens to cause a big change in the chromatin openness, their reporter gene flashes up, and the mouse is given an ID and becomes it's own little mouse line to study why/how the DNA openness changed.

My lab was given a few individuals from one of these mutated mice lines - enough to start our own breeding colonies. However, there were some restrictions on what we could do - we can't reverse-engineer the reporter construct, we can't use the reporter construct ourselves for anything, and we obviously can't give the mice to any other labs. We can only examine the phenotype (and find the causative mutation).

Now our work on the phenotype has been published (quite highly in a major journal), and i'm interested to know how Science is supposed to validate such experiments?

I presume my lab still cannot give out the mice we used to generate our data to other labs.
I presume that the lab we got our mice from is under no obligation to give out their mice either - and they may not want to since it would contain their reporter.

So I presume this means the results cannot be validated by anyone else without them going through the whole process of creating a new mutant mouse line first (and even then, it doesn't speak to the validity of the data on our mice).


texts: Interpretation of a PhD degree in a very broad, interdisciplinary field

texts:
Back when my older brother started his PhD degree I asked him what it meant to be a doctor in something other than medicine. I don't recall the exact wording he used, but the idea he portrayed was that you take a field, a narrow and specific field, and you specialise in it to a level at which when you are done, you have become one of the ultimate experts in that very specific field.

For instance if you are working with combustion physics, you might be one of the leading experts in efficient 2 cylinder, ultra-light engines made out of refined aluminium... Alternatively if you are into neuroscience you might be an expert on a particular neurotransmitter re-absorption in a particular zone of the brain following heavy exercise (or whatever, hopefully you get the point). It might be an opinionated view of a PhD but I feel it's a common way to look at a PhD degree; a certification of expertise.

Fast-forward 15 years... I am about half-way in my PhD studies in the highly interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics, where statistics, mathematical modeling, physics, molecular chemistry and programming boil together with cell biology, to top it all you typically have a theme spice, which in my case is cancer biology. I have a growing feeling that I am getting stretched thinner and thinner by the day, instead of becoming increasingly competent in a specific field, I become semi-competent in increasingly many fields.

That being the case I am not sure I (or others like myself) will fit the "definition" above. I would appreciate some perspective as to how one should be seeing highly interdisciplinary PhD studies and the development (as a scientist and a professional) that graduate studies entitles. Subsequently, how should one go about to profile him/her-self to future employers, seeing as there is no one natural field to pursue, but rather many different ones.


texts: Should I put in a job application email that I am interested in doing a PhD?

texts:
I will be finishing my master's degree soon and am sending out emails to companies in my field. I have been recommended by many of my peers (co-workers, supervisors and academic acquaintances) to (at least eventually) also apply for a PhD, because I apparently strike them as someone, whom a PhD would suit. I do enjoy the relative autonomy of research and I am curious and interested in expanding the knowledge of my field. My field is highly technical (geomatics) and from what understand almost all PhDs are done in tight cooperation with a company. So yes, I would like to do a PhD, but it does not necessarily need to happen immediately.

So I am wondering if I should put in my job application emails that I am interested in doing a PhD. On the one hand, I want to show my interest in performing research and producing publications on behalf of the company, but on the other, I am worried that they may not be so interested in the academic merit of their work and may interpret it as a desire to jump ship entirely to pursue a PhD.

Either way, I do need to either find work or get registered in a PhD program because I am a foreign student who has to find something to do within 18 months of graduation.

I am interested in hearing other people's experiences in working while simultaneously pursuing a PhD, since I do not know much about it yet. is there a better way to approach potential employers with this intent?

I am currently living in Germany, if that matters.


texts: Should I ask my students to contribute in preparation of the manuscripts?

texts: As a part of my PhD. I supervise master and bachelor thesis. Even though, I get extremely smart students I find that they are having troubles in writing up their research as articles. Often I end up writing it for them. What is the best way to motivate the students to make their own first draft?


texts: MS program in Canada with bad undergraduate result

texts: I am not sure if this the appropriate place to ask such question. I have very bad undergraduate record with a CGPA of 2.40 which took nearly 6 years to complete. I have never thought to study again after my bachelor. But recently I am kind of desperate to do higher study. I attended for GRE, and  my score was 305 and my IELTS score is 7. I have 5 years of job experience as a software engineer. Is there any chance that I can get admission for MS in any Canadian university? I am kind of desperate to change my career path, I want to be an AI researcher. Is there any hope for me to pursue a masters degree in Canada or any north American country?


texts: Does partnering with institutions that don’t offer graduate degrees meet NSF's broader impact criteria to work with “underrepresented groups”?

texts:
A way to fulfill the broader impacts requirement of the NSF merit criteria is to integrate groups that are historically underrepresented in STEM fields into your research and outreach.  (I’ve listed the most frequently referenced groups below).  NSF indicates that one way to practically achieve this goal is to partner with academic and other organizations that serve these groups, i.e., by  “reaching out to Institutions with diverse research and instructional goals and practices, including community colleges, minority serving institutions, women’s colleges, and institutions for people with disabilities. “

In older literature circa 2008 there are also references to a role for partnering with “non-Ph.D.-granting institutions”, likely b/c schools that don’t offer advanced degrees give their students less exposure to advanced STEM research, and also can't expose students to the dynamics of graduate study.

I’m wondering if NSF has phased out this emphasis on collaboration with teaching-focused college or if it still exists.

Specific Underrepresented groups mentioned in NSF literature

Alaska Natives, Native Americans
Blacks or African Americans
Hispanics
Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders
Persons with Disabilities

Misc Notes:

There is evidence that Broader impacts related to underrepresented groups are one of the least common types of activities proposed: [How broad are our broader impacts? An analysis of the National Science Foundation's Ecosystem Studies Program and the Broader Impacts requirement].  (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/110106/abstract).
Blog commentary on the above paper:Broader impacts ≠ reaching underrepresented groups
An interesting blog post on how students from smaller college might be disadvantaged when competing for NSF pre-doctoral fellowships: "NSF Graduate Fellowships are a part of the problem"


texts: Is it a bad idea to use other professors' Youtube videos as lectures?

texts:
I am a graduate student at an American university, and I have been assigned to teach an online math class. I have noticed that there are many lecture videos available on Youtube made by actual professors, and since I am a first-time lecturer, their videos are superior to anything I could make.
I am wondering if it would be appropriate for me to assign Youtube videos as lectures? Or would this be considered unprofessional/frowned upon/likely not allowed?
Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?


texts: How to structure the Introduction of my Master's thesis?

texts:
My question is not about the structure of an entire thesis, but just about the Introduction chapter. At the moment, it consists of the following sections:

Objective [where I briefly introduce the aim of my thesis]
Area of Research [where my thesis collocates in a more general pipeline]
Conclusion [where I very briefly summarize the content of each chapter].

It's very short (I'm trying to keep the complete thesis below ~50 pages), but there is more or less everything I wanted to say.

My supervisor suggested me to:

Expand it by adding more details, which is fine I can do it
Remove the sections in order to have just one big chunk of text and remove eventual images because the introduction should not contain any.

I disagree on the second point. Since I'm introducing different stuff, it's nice to be able to quickly understand what I'm talking about. Second, I never read that you should not put images or tables in the Introduction. So my questions are: (1) should I remove the Sections? and (2) should I remove the only image I have in the Introduction (it's more of a diagram that I describe in the main text)?

P.S. My supervisor does not work in academia and I'm not sure how many theses he has supervised. Moreover, my Department does not have any sort of guidelines for writing a thesis.


texts: Do research-only postdocs harm chances for tenure-track opportunities?

texts:
Suppose a person spends their PhD at an institute with a high ratio of PhD students to other students, resulting in a very low teaching load for PhD students, resulting in no or almost no teaching/tutoring.  Suppose he/she spends years in postdocs, where each postdoc is funded by supervisor grants, and involves no teaching.  She/he does great science but does not acquire other skills or experience.

Consider that tenure-track positions always require stellar experience in research, teaching and getting proposals funded — all of the above.

Is it harmful to an academic career if research is great, but all done on other people's grants and with no teaching experience to speak of?  If yes, how could one prevent or overcome this?


texts: How to go about obtaining large amounts of obscure data?

texts:
I apologize if this is the wrong stack forum.

I want to obtain a large amount of surveillance data for a computer vision project I am working on but I am having a difficult time doing so. I specifically am creating a project that would more so work with a governmental surveillance system that monitors public places (like people walking along the sidewalk, cars driving by, etc.) so I'm thinking like the CCTV type of footage.

Youtube has failed me, and my professors aren't sure either. I was wondering how someone might go about this, and more broadly, how other people have coped with obtaining a large amount of obscure data for their own projects.


texts: Generating a connection of researchers graph out of DBLP

texts: I'd like to know the connection of researchers. Similar to the connection of LinkedIn. In the field of computer science, the DBLP database seems to be useful. Does anyone know a tool to generate a FoaF graph out of DBLP data and a FoaF (Friend of a Friend) graph rendering tool?


texts: I'm writing a book and refer to quick references to spark creativity but also learn other words to improve my vocabulary. Is this plagiarism?

texts: If you're a writer and you pull other words from an author's work to apply to your own vocabulary and work, just words, not full on sentences, is that considered plagiarism? I'm trying to learn and improve as a writer so when I'm reading other books from other authors and come across words I've never used, and from there, begin to use and apply them to my own vocabulary, is that plagiarism? I just want to ensure I'm not violating any rights or incidentally plagiarizing. I'm very torn on this. Can someone help?


texts: Approaching unresponsive high level research professor as an undergraduate without any program

texts:
I am currently a freshman at an American university double majoring in CS and Econ. There is one professor in my university that I am looking to work with, as his main research focus is algorithmic game theory, something that for obvious reasons holds great interest to me.

However, I do recognize that it would be difficult for me to keep pace with his research, being highly theoretical in nature. However, I have written to him multiple time about meeting with me for a few minutes to talk about his research or to advise me about what next steps I may take to best prepare myself for that kind of research with no response. I even tracked him down once, after the 1st email, and asked him about this, where he told me to email him as he is busy. However, it has been months without any reply.

I'm at a loss for what to do; what further steps can I take?


texts: Are special degrees just an advertisement?

texts:
My university offers some special degrees; for example

Bachelor of Engineering (Scholar) (Honors)
Bachelor of Mathematics Advanced

If you want to get into any of these degrees, you will need to have an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of 95 or above.

The normal version of these degrees are

Bachelor of Engineering (Honors)
Bachelor of Mathematics

If you want to get into any of these normal degrees, you will need to have an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of 80 or above.

From my comparison both the special and normal degrees are the same with the exception that the special degrees have one or two subjects where students have chances of doing undergraduate research and other benefits:

Access to a wider range of subjects
$500 study grants to buy textbooks each year for the minimum duration of the degree
Being paid as research assistants in summer

Are the special degrees just an advertisement? What difference would doing a Bachelor of Engineering (Scholar) (Honors) make when you apply for PhD in USA? Will the admission committee really care if you did this degree or just a normal degree?


texts: How does a graduate admissions committee consider junior/senior grades that are not yet available?

texts: When transcripts are submitted as part of your graduate admission's package, how can the graduate admissions staff consider your junior/senior grades, when your applying to the program a year in advance? Basically, when you submit your transcript, you will only have your freshmen, sophomore, and junior grades listed. How do the committee estimate your senior grades when they have not been completed?


texts: Having a hard time understanding reviewer's comment

texts:
I received a major revision decision from IEEE Transactions and one of the reviewer comments is as follows:
"With the defined optimization problem and optimization method, wouldn't this yield a closed-form solution to the problem? How is this described?"
I do not understand the question which prevents me to write the appropriate response. Can anyone please explain what does the reviewer want out of this comment and how should I respond to it.
Thanks


texts: How common are PhD interviews in the U.S.?

texts:
Q: How common is it for a faculty/school to request/demand the good PhD applicants to come in for an interview?

For someone that lives outside of the U.S. and wants to apply to do a doctorate in the U.S., should that person temporarily relocate to the U.S. (at the correct time and for the correct duration of course) with the expectation that they'll have to interview in order to get in?

Do top schools vary from mid-ranked schools when it comes to interview frequency? Does it vary by faculty?


texts: Course on Moodle - how to download all student interactions?

texts: My institution uses Moodle as online learning platform. I am enthusiastic at Moodle capabilities, and suspect this had a positive effect on my class. Would like to prove it (or disprove it) by looking at all possible ways students interact with the platform. My understanding is that Moodle stores internally its data through a database powered by MongoDB. Anybody knows how to access that database directly? Would like to avoid having to gather all independent data piecs from separate GUI clicks.


texts: How can a double major in Physics and Math help outside Academia?

texts:
I am a freshman at Stony Brook right now and intend to pursue Theoretical physics in the future. I will likely apply to graduate school immediately after graduation and have no plans of working in the industry for too long. So, I chose to double major in Physics and Mathematics as I think they complement each other quite  well and will prepare me adequately for Academia and Research. But I am slightly concerned about the kind of jobs I'll get if I can't go to Grad school immediately.

What sort of jobs are physics majors usually offered? And what courses should I take for them?

I've been told time and time again, to the point of exhaustion, that physics majors make good Data analysts, Software engineers etc, but I would like to work in something that is a little closer to physics.
And how much of a role can independent study play when applying for a job? Is it treated equal to courses or less?

I ask this since I do not have a lot of space for courses that aren't Mathematics or Physics. So anything else that I am interested in or that is required for a job, I will have to independently study during the summer (e.g- Fluid Dynamics, Stress Analysis etc).

I am not sure whether Stack Exchange Academia is the appropriate site to ask this question but any help is much appreciated.

Edit: What I want to become, first and foremost, is a theoretical physicist. Not entirely sure where this will lead me, but I am not bothered about the pay of a physicist. The reason I talk of getting a job is because I am International student on a loan and need a way to keep paying after graduation if I cannot immediately make it into grad school.


texts: Choosing between letter of recommendation writers for grad school

texts:
A little background... I attended a community college for 2 years, then transferred to Northwestern University where I studied mathematics.  After spending seven years in the workforce, I am now planning to apply to graduate programs to study machine learning, and am looking back to see who I could ask for letters of recommendation.

During my years at Northwestern I lacked the foresight to forge any kind of relationships with my professors.  However, while at the community college I made a strong connection with one of my math professors - in fact, taking the calculus course with him was the reason I decided to major in mathematics.  I believe the community college professor would write me a strong, personalized letter of recommendation.

Which would I be better off with - an average letter of recommendation from one of my professors from Northwestern, or a strong letter from my community college professor?


texts: Choice between A13 Z and E13 for a post-doc position in Germany

texts:
I received a post-doc offer in physics from a German University. The position has a fixed three-year term, which might be extended up to three more years. The original position description says that this is the A13 Z position, Akademischer Rat auf Zeit. It corresponds to a Beamter, or civil servant position. Since I am a foreigner, the inviting professor is asking, whether it would be OK for me to switch it to E13 instead (researcher), since my profile for the position in this case is not needed to be checked by the federal government and the documents would be prepared much faster and easier for the inviting University. The salary would then be increased, to match those of A13 (let's assume the same net amount).

What are disadvantages and benefits of E13 compared A13 if one ignores the difference in the salary scale?

Which one is considered better in a long term?

Some more information on the personal situation:

Let's assume I'd like to stay in Germany afterwards.
I'm going to marry before starting the position. My partner has two children from the previous marriage.
I am not a citizen of the EU or the Schengen group.


texts: Can a graduate student with deficiencies get an assistantship for the needed undergraduate courses?

texts:
I see many graduate program informational pages listed by various schools.

Many of them require specific undergraduate degrees, but also have discretionary exceptions for those without them. Most of them say something like:

  "An applicant without satisfactory undergraduate training may be
  admitted to the program, but will be required to remove deficiencies
  by completing the necessary undergraduate courses without receiving
  graduate credit for them." - UND Physics & Astrophysics M.S.

I understand that the answer to this question is probably not all or nothing.  Has anyone reading this had experience in such a situation or have any suggestions for a person seeking a graduate degree in any program with similar deficiencies who is strongly against debt and aims to make it through a program with an assistantship?

Is it typical for one who begins a degree with an assistantship to maintain it until program completion provided that they maintain satisfactory performance in all facets of the assistantship ie. academic and duty performance?


texts:
Authorship order in life sciences is intricate and has many problems. By convention, order is by the amount of contribution (decreasing). Also by convention, the PI/supervisor/"senior author" appears last. Things start getting complicated when you have many contributors.

I would like to focus on the end of the author list. When there are several PIs, they all appear at the end. However, if you consider the before-last author, a reader would not be able to know whether this is the author with the least contribution or alternatively a co-PI. I have seen different "solutions" to this problem (e.g. marking all senior authors as corresponding authors).

I would like to know what kind of solutions you have seen for this problem, and whether these solutions are recognized by institutions and funding agencies.

For those of you wondering why these intricacies matter - authorship order can play an important role in getting a faculty position, awards, grants and tenure. For example, for some fellowships you may only list publications for which you are the first author.


texts: Are there particular areas of mathematical research that attract universities to consider someone over another?

texts:
I thought of my question when considering if I wanted to be a math professor.
Background: Currently I’m an undergraduate studying math with a concentration in computer science, and I am interested in subjects like algebraic geometry, specifically derived geometry and stuff like combinatorial algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory, and complex algebraic geometry, more specifically with complex manifolds.
I’m an undergraduate so I have a way to go, and I definitely want to earn my PhD and do research. Of course that does include the possibility of a job in academia.
But then I wondered when postdocs/ post phds apply to assistant professorships, especially major research universities:-
Question: does an applicant with a specific area of research give them an edge over others?
For example, would someone who does research in Ergodic Analysis have preference than those who do research in General Topology?


texts: Is it possible to cite from an abstract in a scientific paper

texts:
I was wondering whether it is possible to cite information from the abstract part of another scientific paper.

Let's say that you read something interesting in the abstract of a scientific paper and that you want to cite that information.

Is it normal to use that specific research paper as a reference source?

The question arises because normally the abstracts of scientific papers don't contain references, but still the abstract would reflect what the authors of that paper conclude/claim.

EDIT

To further ellaborate:

My question is relating to scientific papers in general.

I know that the abstract normally does not contain any citations like: [1].

The abstract is like a summary of the scientific paper.

When I quote or cite from the abstract of a certain scientific paper, I would be citing as if that scientific paper is the source.

As a result if assuming that the abstract of a scientific paper contains the conclusions of authors that wrote the abstract. Even though these authors partly or not partly based those conclusions on external sources.
So my question is whether that specific abstract/conclusion would be a valid source to cite from, making the scientific paper containing the abstract the source of citation.


texts: First time opportunity to give a seminar

texts:
Recently I had a talk about the topic of my master thesis with the professor I currently work for (he wasn't involved in the thesis). I mentioned that there are interesting results and that I would like to present them, if he'd agree. He proposed to not only give a presentation but a seminar.

I've just graduated from my Master's and never given any lecture, course or seminar before. I would be happy to take this opportunity as I enjoy teaching and I expect a good experience.

If I'm willing to do it the professor expects a scheme of the seminar and that's the point where I am stuck. For how long of a seminar time should I aim for? Introductory or deep into the matter? What exactly is the difference between a seminar and merely presenting my thesis again? In my understanding seminars include practical approaches. Should I focus more on practical issues or my own work?

The subject is quite technical in detail but this is not very obvious from the topic alone. I expect students to may have heard of the methodology but never employed it themselves.

I'm quite lost on how to tackle this task though excited to have this opportunity. I realise that my question isn't really well fleshed out but I'm happy to hear opinions nevertheless.


texts: Is it acceptable to look up a student on the Internet to find out whether I have a conflict of interest?

texts:
This is a follow-up to this question, which I ask due to debates arising in the comments. While I ask it in the first person to keep things simple, it is not based on a real experience of mine.

One of the students in my course shares a last name with another person, I depend on (say a supervisor or teacher of my own courses). This name is not very common, so I suspect that they are related and I have a conflict of interest.

It is acceptable that I look up the student’s name on the Internet to find out whether they are actually related? I am not talking about an intensive search here, just what is publicly and directly available on social media and similar.

My current thought about this is:

If I do not investigate or find out that they are related, I would report a conflict of interest.
If I find out that there is no connection, there is no conflict of interest and I save all the time of the above step.
If I do nothing, I may be accused of knowing (or suspecting) the connection and having a conflict of interest afterwards. So this is not an option for me.

I am mainly interested in the ethics of the situation. Assume that there are no official rules covering the situation. Some commenters on the question linked above considered this stalking.


texts: How should a university deal with outsourced essay writing?

texts:
My campus is full of flyers, typically attached to lightposts and so, advertising to write essays for money.  There's plenty of such services offered on the internet as well.  Presumably, many students make use of such service.

Clearly, it is unwise for students to make use of such services, and I suppose it violates regulations.  How can a university deal with the issue of ghostwriting?  That means: how to identify probable cases of ghostwriting; how to proof that ghostwriting took place; and how to sanction it?  It seems considerably harder to tackle than plagiarism.


texts: 3 - 4 years since I graduated, how should I time asking for recommendations?

texts:
Since I graduated as an undergrad three years ago, I've been planning to go back into graduate school, so I saved all my assignments and heavily kept up on studying and research. My transcript looks good and I've had a lot of time to focus on GREs.

The most uncertain and anxious part is getting letter of recommendations from my former professors. Due to my nature, I haven't maintained contact with the three professors I have in mind, especially given the job I have. I'm confident that they'll remember me if I send them a quick e-mail, but I'm hesitant about the timing. It seems a bit awkward to re-establish contact out of nowhere without letting them know my intention, but at the same time, I feel it's a bit too early to let them know I would like to start looking into graduate school.

I was thinking of sending them e-mails stating my intention to apply to graduate schools, be able to provide documents/statements so they have something to remember and write about me, and ask if they were interested on writing the recommendation. If so, I would follow up and provide them the application details several months ahead.

Is this better than asking them out of the blue when graduate application crunch time starts?

Also, for professors and those who wrote letter of recommendations, what are your experiences of writing recommendations for former students reaching back 3 - 4 years later?

Edit: Update on this below


texts: Who is typically in charge of a typical US graduate school?

texts:
I was studying the website of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences ...

Obviously an impressive institution with a broad scope. But I wonder who is in charge of the operation. For example, on the ABOUT page, I see that there is an interim Dean of the GSAS. Does this individual manage at the highest level or is there someone between her and the professors, e.g. a  kind of middle management (for lack of a better term)?

Id like to learn how US universities structure their institutions, scientifically and bureaucratically. Obviously there are differences between universities, but I’m curious what you know about your university or a university with which you are familiar


texts: When Applying for Postdocs Should GPA be on your CV?

texts:
Lets assume your GPA is very high, say 3.95 or higher, at both your undergrad and graduate school institutions. I have always included it while applying to summer research programs and internships while still in my PhD program. But this is probably inappropriate on the postdoc market right?

Perhaps this question is somewhat subjective, but, after checking out some other questions on this exchange, I didn't think it was overly subjective.


texts: Failed undergraduate research project: does it belong in my CV?

texts:
I'm an undergraduate who is going to apply for scholarships and to graduate school in physics in the coming months. At the start of last semester in August, I tried to join a group of a respected professor, where I was assigned a theoretical project. I've met with him maybe three times during the few coming weeks, before we mutually agreed that the assigned problem is pretty much a dead end. The professor had no idea for another suitable project, so I decided to join a different group, with which I stayed until very recently, when an analogous issue occured (but in this case I have actually done some work until that happened).

I was debating whether this "project" deserves being mentioned in my resume, at least for the sake of continuity, and so far have received contrary pieces of advice. Currently, that project is listed on my resume as follows:

  Worked with […] at […] on a project attempting to reformulate the
  definition of quantum-mechanical work for autonomous Hamiltonians.

I am certainly not going to ask for a letter of recommendation from that professor since there are others who know me much better. I only want to know whether the inclusion of the above description in my resume would have a positive or negative influence on my application.


texts: What's the reasoning behind phrase "dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements"?

texts: Phrase "dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements" seems strange. Can one submit dissertation in full fulfillment of the requirements?


texts: Will I destroy my career if I published a paper with a serious mistake?

texts:
I'm an undergrad and kind of new to this whole research thing. I've been doing research for the past ~9 months as a requirement to graduate with my bachelor's (there's the research track and software development track, I chose research).

I was told to try and submit my paper to conferences/journals (depends on their deadlines) to see if it gets accepted. But, one thing my professor said really stressed me out. If my paper gets accepted, and people find a serious mistake in it (ones that could cause your conclusion to be wrong, etc), it would destroy my whole career before it even began.

Can anyone with more experience go into detail about what could really happen? Assume, that the paper really gets accepted. On one hand, I'm not entirely confident of myself, and on the other, I have found a passion in research and would love to continue on for a PhD in future and this might help boost my resume a little given it is my only research experience.


texts: How should I proceed when a (famous) professor says I'm not good enough for research?

texts:
I am a PhD student in a Computer Science department, doing research of a mathematical nature. Some of my research problems drifted from my advisor's area of expertise, so I reached out to a researcher from my department about it (who is a world expert in this field). This professor is well-known with many achievements in this field.
The first meetings went well, I learnt a lot, got valuable feedback and I was so happy I had the opportunity to talk to this guy. However, after a few meetings he started with "let's have a meta-talk about you". Then, he brutally attacked me: he said I am not good enough for research, that I can get better but it would never be good enough for research career, that "people are born with the ability to know if their proofs are correct" and since I made some gross mistakes in what I sent, it is clear I "don't have it" and basically I shouldn’t  expect to get as good as people with a research career.
Since then, he mentions it in every talk we have. It can be in "minor" comments (e.g. "you have to be realistic and understand you can't really do it", "if you do it alone it will be difficult for you", "it is like chess, and you just don't have it") or in bigger conversations.
As you may understand, I felt horrible after the first time (and I still do, after each of these meetings). I really appreciate him and his opinion, so I took it really bad.
How can I know if he is right? How should I proceed? His words really made me think that maybe he is right.
RE the exact words used: I actually recorded the meetings, so my quotes are accurate.


texts: Can a student expect their completed thesis – undergraduate or master’s – to be used by the supervisor once in a while after its completion? Or are they mostly just stored on some thesis shelf?


texts: How can I convince my department that I have the academic freedom to select textbooks and use multiple-choice tests in my courses?

texts:
I am a professor of Mathematics at a Community College.  My department has adopted policies through a majority vote.  The two policies I have questions about are:

An instructor can only use textbooks that have been preapproved by the department.  Preapproval requires a majority vote from the department.
An instructor may not use multiple-choice tests for assessments in class.

I believe both policies have negatively affected my students.

For example, the majority of the instructors in my department want a single textbook to save the students money. However, I believe the textbook used is antiquated.  The technology used with the book is subpar and no animations which I believe are a vital component to a calculus course.  It seems ridiculous that 51% of the department vote can stifle innovation, especially considering once a teacher uses a book for awhile they are less likely to want to change as it requires more work.  It seems like an endless cycle.  If I am forced to use their textbook for half my career than I probably wouldn't want to switch in the latter half and would force newbies to use my antiquated textbook... and the cycle continues. In addition, at some point, OER textbooks will be all we can use if the majority of my department prioritizes cost over quality.

In regards to multiple-choice exams, I find that my students can be served better by assessing their ability to expressing answers in different forms.  Surprisingly they often don't know how to do this as free-response doesn't require this. Below is a basic example of how I could use multiple choice to aid in students learning:

1/2+1/3 is equivalent to

a.  3/4

b.  4/6

c.  20/24

Students are usually taught to get 5/6, but often don't realize that 20/24 is equivalent because they are simply following a process and not understanding their answer has equivalent forms.  I believe using multiple-choice in these scenarios is worthwhile sometimes.

It is my understanding that as a tenured instructor, I am able to teach the class in the pedagogical manner I believe is best for my class.  Wouldn't this include what textbook I use and the types of assessments I use?

Maybe I am wrong.  However, if I am correct, what sources can I site to my department to sway their understanding?  I want to makes sure I do not forward bad information.  Thank you.


texts: If a paper is rejected by many journals before finally being published, will that cause conflict with the reviewers who rejected the manuscript?

texts:
I had a manuscript written 3 years before. The results of the manuscript was obtained accidentally while doing some easy trial methods. Although the results were very interesting, but the method was very very simple. So I thought to publish it in a low impact journal to increase my number of publications. But things went very opposite and got rejected in 5 journals. Everyone were commenting that the method is very simple and may introduce the unknown errors to the estimations or computations.

As no one was commenting other than the methods, so I had no way to modify anything. Very bad thing is that none of the journal took less than 4-6 months to take the first decision and my manuscript remained unaccepted for two years and half.

Finally I thought to submit it to a high impact journal. Very surprisingly, the reviewers appreciated the simple method used and accepted the manuscript with a major revision to highlight few other things.

My accepted manuscript highlights the same methodology which was rejected by 5 other journals.

Will there be any conflict or issues when those reviewers (who rejected my manuscript) see my accepted paper after final publication?


texts: Procedure to follow when added to conference abstract without permission

texts:
We were recently sent a copy of an abstract by another group with whom we sometimes collaborate. This abstract was due and submitted over a month ago. This document was never shown to us and our approval was never asked, but the names of all the principals here are on it as authors. (It further contains a negative finding for our methodology versus another.) We were simply sent it with an apology and not much of an excuse. We have dealt with some borderline shady behavior with this group in the past.

I am new to this kind of behavior and have the following questions:

If we wish to not be on this abstract, who is generally the person to approach at the conference about it? Is it the communications person who sends out the routine emails, or someone else?
Is it appropriate that we request only that our names be removed, or is it SOP for this abstract to be retracted (which I guess would be bad for the grad student who leads it)?
Should we expect there to be consequences at this conference in future for the group that sent this in, or will it simply be withdrawn and that is the end of it?
Is there anything else I should be thinking about doing in this situation?


texts: How is the job market for Chemistry like?

texts:
Apologies if this isn't a correct website to ask. But I'm a UK student applying to study Chemistry at university mostly because I'm good at the subject and I enjoy learning the applications of what it can bring to us in the future like nanotechnology. I applied to UCL (Chemistry with Managment), Durham, Manchester, Bath and Warwick. I intend to get into a career in finance or IB possibly but not too sure yet.

I've recently decided to take a year off to see what I actually want to do with life and also just to relax after being burnt out over countless times and travel.

I think most of my problem is because of the fact that I take other people into account of chemistry and not just block them off.

So I just want to know what I can do with a Chemistry degree?


texts: How do I get LOR from a project mentor who's still pursuing PhD since she doesn't have an official email or access to the University letterhead?

texts: I plan to apply for Masters. I am currently working as a research intern at a reputed University in my currently. I was assigned a Ph.D. mentor on joining the project by the Professor. Ph.D. mentor guided me on a daily basis and has a better understanding of my work and abilities than the Professor. The professor has little knowledge about my capabilities and I'm afraid he'll give me a very weak LOR if at all he agrees to give. Is it advisable to get a LOR from my Ph.D. mentor considering she does not have an official University email address or the University letterhead?


texts: Email Professor asking if I can talk about the research we conduct

texts:
I attended a networking event and met a distinguished professor at another major university. I am studying to attend graduate school for one of the Ph.D's that the university actually offers, and the professor would like to meet to me about admissions and research. I have been in an undergraduate lab with one of my professors for almost a year now at my university. I want to be respectful and talk about the research I am doing with my professor, but want to ask them first if it is okay to share our purpose.
I know some professors in the past do not encourage their undergraduate research assistants to talk about their work until publication. My professor will not be on campus this week but will be checking their email. I would like to get back to the professor I met soon to set up a meeting time in their office and discuss so does anyone have any advice or a sample emaiL I can follow asking my professor if it is okay to share the work we do in the lab?

Thank you very much.


texts:
I am writing a literature survey for papers from 2000 to 2017.
Should I use a present tense or past tense when I am describing methods that were used in those papers?