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Conferences as publication venues – black and white or is there a grey or third way?
There are two ways of treating conferences that are commonly mentioned on this site:

Conferences are publication venues for papers (or similar). Submissions will be subjected to a serious peer review, are citable as evidence, and are a relevant achievement.
Submitting the same material to two different conferences or a journal and a conference would be considered self-plagiarism.
This applies to computer science and engineering (or at least some subfields thereof)
– for details, see: Is the status of conference publications in Computer Science really absolutely unique?
Conferences are not publication venues.
The material presented there is typically also published in journals, books, and similar – but this process is not tied to the conference; it may occur before the conference, later, or even not at all.
Submissions are only subjected to minimal review¹, are not citable as evidence, and not considered a big achievement.
Participating in conferences is still considered important though.
It is common that authors present the same material at different conferences.
This applies to the majority of fields.
¹ to weed out utter crap or to decide what should be a talk and what a poster

In light of this Meta question, I am interested whether the above two cases are the only two.
To me, it would not be surprising if this actually is the case, as the two categories have a self-preserving mechanisms.
For example, for a conference belonging to the first category, weakening the criteria for submission would usually be a bad move.
On the other hand, I am very well aware that I do not know every field’s customs.
Hence, I am asking: Are there conferences that hold a status not described by the two categories above?
Please answer only if you can name and describe such a conference – if this question remains unanswered, this would be an acceptable and meaningful outcome.
Note that this is only about what is submitted directly to the conference for the purpose of being presented there.
Whether articles corresponding to the presented material will be collected for a book, special issue of a journal, or other form of proceedings – be it with separate peer review or not – is irrelevant for the purposes of this question.

What if you present at a conference but don't publish anything? So maybe the Beamer-files of your presentation get uploaded, but there is no written form of publication, no paper-like summery of your talk?

@DirkLiebhold: That sounds like the typical second case. (I edited the question to make this a bit more clear.)

Although it is true that some conferences have only a very limited review process, others can be quite competitive, because there are limited spots in very specific sessions, so applicants are not guaranteed they will be able to present, and "reject" applications will be redirected as posters.

Yes, there's a third type where a single conference uses multiple submission categories, and submissions to one category are thoroughly reviewed and published as papers in the proceedings, whereas submissions to the other category only appear with short abstracts in the conference booklet or similar, and may also be restricted to specific sessions (such as poster sessions).
I know such conferences in mathematical oriented engineering fields. As just one example, I can mention the Vienna International Conference on Mathematical Modelling. If you look at their call for papers, they have a category "Full Contribution", where full papers are solicited, to be published in the formal proceedings after the review and presentation. But they also have categories "Discussion Contribution" and "Student Contribution", where only abstracts are submitted, and there's no formal publication associated with the submission.
There are other conferences in the same field which make this distinction as well within their submission categories.

Another field like this is social network analysis.

Are there conferences that hold a status not described by the two categories above?

Yes. An example of such a conference is the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). They accept full papers, notes, work-in-progress short papers, posters, demos, etc. and have different selection criteria and processes for each submission type:

Refereed content: is rigorously reviewed by members of the program committee and peer experts. The process includes an
  opportunity for authors to respond to referees’ critiques. Submitters
  can expect to receive formal feedback from reviewers. The program
  committee may ask authors for specific changes as a condition of
  publication. Papers and Notes are refereed content.
Juried content: is reviewed by a committee but in a less rigorous process than refereed and does not include an author’s
  response or conditional acceptance. Juried content is generally not
  required to make the same level of lasting and significant
  contribution to our knowledge and understanding as refereed content.
  Authors who submit to juried tracks may expect to receive light
  feedback of up to a few paragraphs in length. The following tracks
  contain juried content: Late Breaking Work, Case Studies, alt.chi,
  Student Design and Research Competitions.
Curated content is highly selective but does not necessarily follow a reviewing process by a committee. Curated content may be
  selected from submissions or invited by the track chairs. Authors who
  submit to curated tracks should not expect to receive formal feedback
  on their submission other than the selection decision. The following
  tracks contain curated content: Workshops/Symposia, Panels, Courses,
  Doctoral Consortium, EXPO, Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings,
  Videos.

(source: https://chi2018.acm.org/selection-processes/)

Does any content from the types 2 and 3 lead to some sort of publication (other than a short abstract in the conference programme)?

Yes, for example: work-in-progress and demo papers are published (archived) in the ACM Digital Library and included in the Proceeding. I believe authors retain authorship and can republish the work.

Publications for categories 2 and 3 are usually "extended abstracts", which are usually considered non-archival (i.e. not part of the academic literature). They are stored on the ACM DL and appear in conference proceedings, but a work that is published only as an extended abstract doesn't usually block novelty claims.

@nneonneo "Non-archival" does not mean "not part of the academic literature".

There is also a rather new hybrid journal-conference model, such as the one implemented in Ubicomp 2017:

New Publication Model
Starting with the 2017 edition, UbiComp no longer considers full paper
  or note submissions. Instead, it will invite for presentation papers
  published by the Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile,
  Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT). IMWUT has 1 volume per
  year with 4 issues per volume, published in March (Issue 1), June
  (Issue 2), September (Issue 3), and December 1 (Issue 4).
The UbiComp 2017 main technical tracks will consist of papers in IMWUT
  2017 Issues 1-3. Authors of these papers will be invited, but are not
  obliged, to present at UbiComp. The conference will retain its
  workshop, poster, and demo tracks, which will have their own
  publication outlet.

To explain the change, in earlier years this conference was the category 1 conference-as-publication-venue, with peer review and proceedings published. Now full papers have been moved to a multiple deadline per year model in a journal, and authors of papers accepted to the journal are then invited - but not required - to attend and present at the yearly UbiComp conference. A number of other conferences in related fields are discussing possibilities of adopting similar styles of hybrids.
This is not a case of an already common practice of a journal inviting submissions from conference proceedings, such as turning a smaller conference paper into a full journal article. To attend and present as an author of a full paper, you have to go to the journal to get to the conference, rather than the other way around.
Note that one of the influencing reasons for all this is in multi-disciplinary fields, where publication cultures clash because - as a single example - someone from psychology and someone from computer science want to co-author a paper, but one field doesn't respect or acknowledge conferences and the other field has a variety of reasons for not wanting to use traditional journal models. There is also a variety of other concerns, but those go beyond the topic of discussion anyhow. Supporters of this method hope that it will better support fields who only count journal articles, while at the same time still supporting the conference culture of networking and dissemination of conference publishing communities.

IEEE Conference on Decision and Control uses a similar hybrid model with the journal IEEE Control Systems Letters since very recently, although you can still submit papers to the conference only.

I don't think those are “categories” at all or that there is a sharp distinction between what's citable “as evidence” or not.
As you requested specific examples, consider design conferences like the biannual Design Research Society conference. You need to write a short paper, it's reviewed and distributed afterwards but having been involved in both I can tell you the reviewing process is a lot less thorough than at CHI.
These papers can be and are cited but it's also quite common to republish them, typically with some revisions, sometimes at the invitation of the conference organisers, sometimes independently. As far as my employer was concerned, this counted as a publication when measuring the output of our department but not on a par with a journal publication, another crucial difference with the computer science model.

Conferences in the field of bioinformatics have been experimenting with different formats, since they bring together people from several different disciplines that have various publication models.
Some of these include peer-reviewed papers that appear in proceedings but are not considered a journal publication in biology, and can be independently submitted to a journal. In fact, sometimes a conference will associate with a specific journal and offer co-submission such that it is reviewed in both the conference and the journal at the same time, and later all accepted papers get published in a special issue of the journal.
Another non-standard idea is something called a "Highlights Track", in which papers which have recently been accepted to a journal and are potentially of significant interest to the community can be submitted and a subset is selected for presentation.
Often you have multiple submission tracks in the same conference in order to accommodate the needs of the different disciplines.
If you would like specific examples I suggest looking at current and past ISMB (Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology) and RECOMB (Research in Computational Molecular Biology) conferences.

I guess this is a hybrid of sorts: The EWTEC conference series (which is application rather than discipline-specific, but is probably more engineering than anything else) peer-reviews submissions - even those that are eventually presented as posters - and they are considered relevant outputs that can be cited and put on a CV. However, the community tends to consider such papers as being worth less than an journal article - and anecdotally, peer-reviewers tend to go a little easier on them - and indeed the copyright transfer to EWTEC specifically allows the author to use their conference paper as the foundation for an expanded version for a journal.
Summary: Conferences whose proceedings are valid, citable outputs, but that are considered inferior to journal articles.

Not sure if they are a really separate category - I wouldn't say so, but: whereas the bigger conferences within neuroscience are merely following your 2nd category (minor review of abstracts, not unique content, no strict correspondence between submission and presented material (in case of posters of work-in-progress)), posters presented there are, often, citable. This can be either as "poster at a conference", or the submitted abstract may even be published in some kind of journal (e.g. Clinical Neurophysiology). Whereas citation of such material is rare, since usually the material will be published in form of a proper paper later, it does happen.

While I don’t doubt that those posters are citable (everything is), I doubt that they are citable as evidence, given that they are usually not available to posterity for control. Being on the fringes of neuroscience myself, I have never heard of posters being trustworthy sources.


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In what sense are UK universities public?
You often hear that almost all UK universities are public.  Wikipedia, for example, says "There are four fully-fledged private universities in the United Kingdom, the University of Buckingham, BPP University, Regent's University London and the University of Law."
However my understanding is that funding for UK universities comes almost entirely from tuition fees and grant income.
What is the legal/technical/practical difference between a public and private university in the UK?

Given that the page you've cited explains the difference, what are you looking for an addition to that?

However my understanding is that funding for UK universities comes almost entirely from tuition fees and grant income.

This is incorrect. Tuition of UK students is subsidised (to varying amounts in the constituent countries of the UK). In the most extreme case, Scottish students pay no tuition at universities in Scotland. If you compare 'home' fees with international fees at any public university, you will see that UK and EU students pay substantially less than international students (although it is not the case that the UK government tops up the UK tuition fees to the amount paid by an international student).
Sheffield University has some informative pages on how exactly this funding works. In particular, student tuition is subsidised via HEFCE grants, which vary depending on the course. This page appears to date from before the new variable fee regime in England, so the numbers and formulae may be out of date. But the funding mechanism subsidises the clinical years of medical, dental and veterinary students the most, then lab based courses and the non-clinical years of the medical courses, then courses with some lab or fieldwork, and then everything else.
Private universities do not receive this funding.

Thank you very much. Is it correct that in England 85% or so of the funding comes from tuition fees and grants in public universities?

@felix Also as a student, you can get a student loan from the government, which is pretty much the best loan that exist in the planet (it can even expire)

@AnderBiguri Are you not eligible for the loan if you go to one of the private universities?

@felix I am not sure of that actually, but it would make total sense if you were not.

This suggests that you would be, but it only covers the tuition up to the amount it would be at a public university.

@felix The Sheffield numbers suggest ~80% (as of 2010). "Other income" and "investments" totals 19%. "Research grants and contracts" was 16%, but this will include public funds through Research Councils UK, which is public money but distinct from the Funding Council grants. I would expect the majority of UK universities research grant income to come from RCUK (other sources would be eg/ the EU, Wellcome Trust, private industry)

In England the government provides ~£4 billion to fund universities via HEFE. About 1/3 of this is for teaching, 1/3 for research and a bit less for captial spending and other costs. There are different bodies for Scotland and Wales but I suspect they work similarly.
There is lots of info on the HEFE website about how the funding is allocated etc. I haven't looked too deeply, but the teaching funding is split almost evenly between supporting high cost subjects (e.g. physics/engineering) and supporting low access groups.
This funding is a small but significant % of university funding ~15% according to wikipedia.
In return the universities have to follow various regulations. The most significant of which is the tuition fee cap (~£9,000 currently) and do various things encourage encourage disadvantage groups to go to university.
Theoretically any university could refuse this funding and become private. However, I will speculate that the increase in tuition fees required to cover the loss would make them unattractive to students compared to public universities.

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How to ask friends for help?
I have some contacts on a social networking site who are much more knowledgeable than me. Some are PhDs/professors and some work in big tech companies (Google, Facebook, etc.). Every now and then, I would have some questions to ask, and often times I cannot get the (timely) answers from Q and A sites like StackExchange or Quora.
Every time I attempt to turn to them for help, I would hesitate because they have not replied to my last message. In such messages, I just describe my questions and ask if they would give me some suggestions or directions.
I wonder how to network to find more support from "friends"? I don't know how others socialize for help, and others don't ask me for help with specific technique questions. Often others ask me for recommendations like books or courses and I would try my best to help.
How do you deal with specific questions when you feel that it's time to find someone to discuss or ask?

Often the people you are approaching for help as you describe, have plenty of deadlines to keep up with and along with maintaining personal life and other chores, there is no room for tending to questions like yours, that too over social media. This is not because they are unfriendly towards you, but it's just life.
You can of course still get help from them and have a discussion in your favour by helping them with structuring your questions. So:

Ask questions focussed on the specifics - like what, when, where and so on - on the said topic. Like if you are asking for which course to take to learn about machine learning, list a few options that are available to you. This shows that you have done some research and are truly interested in learning a new skill.
Different people have different preferred modes of communication. For me it is email. You can ask what their preferences are.
Often, a quick call is better than long walls of text, in which case, you should take notes while on call to stick to the details of the discussion.
Leave a "thank you" message for them later, this shows that they contributed to your career/personality growth.
I find it weird when completely unknown people ask for help on a career. So build on your networks for a while, instead of dropping random questions in the chatbox. Nobody (and in future, you) appreciates that.
Remember that it is you getting help from them, they don't gain anything from such a discussion, so make it enjoyable for them too - by being polite and humane.

Hope these help.

sometimes, we should be just humans and help each other if we have the heart to.
one could find time
one could stop and listen
one could just get his head out of this glittering reality and be aware of others.
but if one loves himself that much, then he will allmost never find time for others.

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Advice on start-up package negotiation in the UK
I just got a lecturer position at UK university. However, coming from the clinical field, I have no idea what items I need to negotiate. I know the research part of it but my colleague told me it is not only lab space but I also have to negotiate equipment and consumables.
I will do teaching but I have just realized that I need to negotiate the teaching package and I have no idea what things I can negotiate
I have read many things but it is only for US universities.
I'd appreciate some guidance on this as I negotiate a startup package at a UK university.

How much towards consumables and equipment you might reasonably expect is going to be discipline specific. How much teaching you are expected to do is going to be discipline and institution specific. Things will also be dependent on what level you are coming in at and whether the university in question is a teaching or research focused institution.
For an overview you might like to consult Acton SE, Bell AJ, Toseland CP, Twelvetrees A. A survey of new PIs in the UK. Elife. 2019 Sep 20;8:e46827.
In addition to lab/office space, other things you might want to consider is large equipment, cash  (which would be used for consumables, travel, computers, small equipment), PhD students and teaching relief.
In terms of large equipment, the approach is usually - if you absolutely need it to do your research, we'll help you find a way to get access to it. This might be buying something or promising you access to someone else's, it might be promising to put up the match funding an equipment grant would require.
In terms of students, preliminary data for your first grant will almost certainly come from a PhD student. Many places will allocate a studentship to a new lecturer. If this isn't the case, you'll need to find out what the situation is with access to PhD programs like DTPs (doctoral training programs), are you allowed to apply to them? Can it be arranged such that you are co-supervisor if a certain level of experience is required?  Is there a way to prioritise your applications?
Cash is generally very limited. I got £10k ten years ago, and that was fairly typical, and things havn't changed much since. Although I did also get a PhD studentship that came with £5k/year research costs.
Finally teaching. In most places you will eventually be expected to spend 40-50% of your time teaching. For a sense of scale a year is approx 1600 working hours, so 40% is 640 hours. We get 2 hours prep for each hour teaching plus 20 minutes a student marking time, so that's at least 100 contact hours. But few research focused places will require that in year one. So you can negotiate how long after you start your job you'll have to start teaching, and how quickly your load will increase. So I negotiated 0 hours in my first year, 20 in my second, 50 in my third, 100 in my fourth.
An final important thing to consider is what your probation (read tenure) criteria will be. How is success going to be judged and over what time scale?
One last thing.
Get. Everything. In. Writing.
Do not rely on anyone's say so. Particularly be aware of heads of department promising things they don't actaully have the power to deliver.

There is normally no negotiation for positions of Lecturer in the UK. Your salary is determined by HRs and you normally start at the bottom of the grade. There is normally no startup package.
Congratulations on getting this position. Welcome to the UK academia.

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Can I use 'Fortunately' in an academic paper
When using "Fortunately" in a technical paper, the appending statement can appear subjective; and hence shouldn't be used in an academic context (?). When used to highlight, for instance, the solution to a potential problem:
"Thing X must be able to do difficult task Y. Fortunately, many existing solutions are available that can do task Y"
It seems to me than the subjectivity of 'fortunately' actually depends on context. If task Y is something controversial, such as drone strikes against military hospitals (to take a very extreme example), then the statement following 'Fortunately' can seem perverse to many: It comes across as if the author is in moral agreement of performing task Y.
Now imagine if task Y is something harmless, such as "the envisioned calculator must be able to store user preferences between power cycles.". In this case, 'Fortunately' is a very applicable adverb to use: "Fortunately, many cheap forms of solid state storage are commercially available in the target form factor."
Can I/Is it safe to use 'Fortunately' in an academic paper?

I think it's fine. In your example, "Fortunately, many cheap forms of solid state storage are commercially available in the target form factor" I think the word "fortunately" adds clarity.

If you, yourself, question the usage, then you should probably avoid it.
I think that in the present case, if you need a bridging word, then "However" works just as well.
In general it is probably a bad idea to ban any given word, not knowing all possible contexts in which it might be used.
That said, I find no problem with using "Fortunately" in this context. It is, indeed, fortunate that the times and the work of others have come together to provide us with ways to a solution of the problem at hand. In other times it might not have been possible, for example.

Yes, but in the interest of brevity, I suggest leaving it out.  There's no clear benefit to using the word.


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Is it always OK to ask for a copy of the lecturer's slides?
Weeks ago I attended a lecture/seminar in NYU Shanghai, and I am not a student nor an alumnus of it. After the lecture I attempted to ask if I can have a copy of the slides because the content is so interesting. The lecturer said to me that I'd better email her later and she will send me it. And I searched Google for her name and found her email address and shot her an email(using my hotmail email address), but now I still have not recieved the slides.
I thought she doesn't know me and hence might don't know that I am not affiliated to NYU Shanghai. But it seems that she doesn't have any reason to share with me the slides.
When I was a graduate student I attended a lecture on open source and what the lecturer said about it is still whirling in my head: the slides that are not allowed to share are not valuable enough to be shared. I love such ideas, abeit sometimes too idealistic.
But when is it appropriate to ask for a copy of the slides and when it is not?
EDIT after one day of waiting and two additional emails:
Following the suggestion by @WolfgangBangerth I sent the lecturer one more email and she redirected me to the host of the seminar and then I cold-emailed the host with some explanations such as who I am, how I relate to the university and why the slides are important to me. Just now I recieved the slides from the host. Thanks.

Do you have a better email address? Hotmail frankly has a reputation for being a bit sketchy (rightly or wrongly) and it's quite possible your email was caught in a spam filter.

@BryanKrause Oh. Maybe my gmail?

That might be better, particularly if you have an appropriate professional gmail address.

Don't exclude the possibility that the academic is slow at keeping up with emails, especially in the aftermath of a conference - she may have come back to hundreds of messages in her inbox.

Try asking using an old fashion smail letter with your email address included. I'm sure a prof would get fewer letters than emails.

It is always appropriate to ask. But some people are unwilling to share their slides for a variety of reasons (none of which I think are particularly good, for basically the reasons you mention in your quote).
So you may or may not get the slides, but it is certainly ok to request them!

Great! I will request them the second time. Let me see.

But with no luck this time again. But let me try again. Let me see what would happen.

@Lerner there's nothing wrong with asking a first time, but repeatedly emailing this person may start to cross over into harassment.

@GregoryJ.Puleo I understand what you mean. She replied and let me ask the host of the seminar/lecture, and then I CCed her in my email to the host.

@Lerner OK, that makes more sense then -- your comments led me to think you were repeatedly emailing her despite receiving no reply at all.

@GregoryJ.Puleo And I also explained to the host why the slides are important to me, how I will use the slides(personal use only) and who I am and how I relate to the topic and NYU Shanghai and so on.

The answer depends on what you mean by "OK". If by that you mean "not inappropriate", then sure. It isn't some kind of taboo or insult. But if you mean when is asking even a bit too much, well if they didn't respond apparently it was.
Every email request that requires the other person to perform some new task runs a high risk of crossing that line and not getting a response. I.e. requests where they have to go look something up, or dig out some document to attach, etc. Sometimes people mean to but then forget, but often they just think "nah" and move to the next email.
This is magnified greatly when the person receiving the request is in a position that gets many such requests every day. And moreso in a academic jobs where they are always fighting to get out from their todo list to make time for "real work" like writing and doing research.
Finally, if the person requesting the information has absolutely no relationship with the other person, the odds go down another order of magnitude. In such cases the person is basically a saint if they consistently respond to everyone. Yes I know such people too.
Conversely, I'd note that when you put someone on the spot in person and ask if they will do you some favor such as this, it makes them uncomfortable to refuse directly even if they want to. So they may give you an agreement they didn't mean. Indeed in some cultures it is supposedly impolite to decline a request directly, which is often seen as too blunt. So they will agree (or seem to agree) in a face-saving not-really-agreeing way that is hard for outsiders to read as a refusal.

Your last paragraph gives a perspective to all of this I did not consider at all until now (even though I've heard of "never-say-no" cultures).

I've never heard of it, either. It seems like a vague, non-committal answer would serve the purpose of saving face without actually being a lie.

Yes. I think you are right. I don't get them on my second attempt(in fact third attempt).

In my opinion it is always ok to ask for something. One thing to keep in mind is the question whether the lecture was public. In Austria most lectures from universities are public so anyone can join and listen/participate (only lectures, no seminars).
A reason for you not getting the slides may be that the professor was just busy and forgot to reply to your mail.
Another point to keep in mind is: Do you need all slides? Is there something the interests you particularly and you know the number of the slides. Then I'd suggest to ask for this slide rather than the full set of slides. I've seen situations where lectures have just been copied by a lecturer. So some lecturers might be cautious to send their slides.

I would find a request for a single slide much more annoying than a request for the entire presentation.

Not to mention that it seems unlikely that someone who doesn't already have a copy of the slides would know specific slide numbers. You could describe the content of the relevant slides, but then the professor would have to search through the slides trying to figure out which ones you're talking about.

So some lecturers might be cautious to send their slides. But the lecturer specifically said that she would send them when she was asked after the lecture.

Great idea. I do need only several slides but unfortunately I just took some notes and forget which slides.

Saying "e-mail me later and I'll send you the slides" may be a way of telling "no, I won't give you the slides" without starting a discussion as to why not. Same as saying "we will keep you informed" at the end of an interview to a candidate which didn't pass.
It's not impolite to ask, but unless you're entitled to the slides, there's no guarantee that you will get them.

Yes, I failed again. This time she didn't refuse me directly again and let me cold-email the host for it. And I will just follow her suggestion.

Asking is fine; there's no reason for it not to be.
The top hypothesis that an academic doesn't get back to you about any particular thing must always be, "Too busy; not caught up on the last thousand emails."


text:
Receiving invitations to submit papers and attend congress's of unrelated fields
At the beginning of this year I published my first paper and since then I get multiple emails a day inviting me to attend to congress's, give talks, submit papers etc. in completely unrelated fields (nanotechnology, cancer research, ...). I get addressed as Dr./Prof. very often even though I'm still in doing my Bachelor.
Is this normal, did I tick the wrong box or are these Phishing Attacks? It's getting kind of annoying, I get so many emails!

Yes, unfortunately it became normal to receive this kind of academic spam. These journals and conferences are probably predatory journals or conferences which are only interested in the publication fees and do not really provide a reasonable peer-review. My suggestion is to stay away from these.

I get addressed as Dr./Prof. very often even though I'm still in doing my Bachelor.

This is also quite normal in academia to by default address everybody with one of these titles. In my experience also reputable journal do this.

Hm okay thank you! I guess Im going to live with it.

Actually, even without a published paper, if you have a website or such that gives contact information that implies you are in academia, you will attract such predators. Really bad actors might even ignore unsubscribe requests since they confirm that they have reached a live person.


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Should I mention in my statement of purpose that I am applying because of my girlfriend
I am applying to a university for a PhD position because my girlfriend is a PhD student there. Our affair is quite serious and it is almost surely going to convert into a marriage. We might even get engaged in 2019.
I have been in touch with professors from this university. Moreover, I am using some of the results of another professor directly in my masters thesis. I have a lot to write in the statement of purpose from a technical point of view.
However, because of my girlfriend, this university becomes a top-priority for me against all other PhD offers I may get and I want to stress this in my PhD application.
Should I mention this in my SOP? How should I mention it, if the answer is yes.

I mentioned my interest in a career in a foreign non-English speaking country was because of my fiancée when applying for postdocs. I’m not sure you always should be you can. In my case it was to show I’m serious about living there despite cultural and language barriers.

Similar problems have been discussed at length in our [tag:two-body-problem] tag. I just proposed the most similar one as a potential duplicate, but the other threads with that tag are also helpful, even if they consider slightly different problems (e.g., lateral moves, or applications for tenure track positions).

I see. Although my question is not exactly the same, reading the other answers have been helpful. I'll mark this as duplicate.

Also, I think the "two-body-problem" is a terrible name for a tag. I had no idea it existed. It could be more useful if it is renamed to "relationships" or "interpersonal-affairs"

secretidentity12: just regarding your last comment, the term "two-body problem" is a long-standing bit of "academic slang" for situations of the form you describe, probably originating as an allusion to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem. It may not be ideal, and perhaps in time the language will change, but I just wanted to point out that it is not merely some kind of "private joke" on academia.SE

Will you have an interview with them? You can mention it there.

I can't see any scenario in which that would help and can see many in which it would hurt you. The first question asked would be "Is this guy serious???" People are looking for people dedicated to the academic process, research, learning, etc. Personal reasons such as this, and many others, shouldn't be mentioned. Take about why it is that you want to work with this faculty and what  your long term academic goals are.

I am not sure that the reaction you describe is always the case any more. I agree that personal reasons should never outweigh the academic reasons, but as someone who has to handle some PhD applications and is faced with the question "are we just being used as an insurance option?" I think I might respect certain personal considerations as tie-breakers

@YemonChoi
This was precisely my point. I want to rule out the possibility of not getting an offer because the university thinks my application is not sincere enough.

I agree with Buffy. Put it other way around: there are people with whom you compete. Do you think the university should prefer person 1 over person 2 only because his/her has non-academic relationship to university? I do not think. Furthermore, I think that if this was a case, that would be unfair towards other people. If you mention it you might be tagged by the committee as a boyfriend of someone. But you might want to be someone of your own.
A possible reason to declare this might be if university requires to declare any family relationship with university stuff. But I do not think that it's your case because your girlfriend is not an university employee.

Yes you should mention her as a collaboration, but don’t declare any conflict of interest. You will only get yourself in trouble if you do. Show the University you have done your research.


text:
What does Unconditional firm mean?
I recieved an offer of place for a PhD at a British university, which I accepted. My application's status was updated to :
Unconditional firm,
but due to my unfamiliarity with the British system and an issue occuring with my application, I would like to ask what does this status mean? Did I secure my place, or the university awaits further confirmation from my part?

I took the liberty of adding the [tag:united-kingdom] tag, since this sounds like a term that may be specific to UK universities, or at least some UK universities. I would recommend that since this is a rather important question, you contact the university and ask them, rather than taking advice from random internet strangers.

Thank you for your suggestions. I have already emailed the university.

Good! When you hear back, please do add a self-answer here, it may help people later on in a similar situation (and they should also still contact the university, we don't know whether their university has the same terms with the same meanings as yours).

Note that "Unconditional firm" does not necessarily mean that you have secured a funded PhD position. It can mean that the university is happy to take you on as a PhD student, but only if you can self-fund it in some way (i.e., actually paying the tuition fees yourself or finding some source of funding such as an external scholarship).

@MattPitkin or indeed the middle group that the student is of acceptable standard and somewhere on the list for potential funding, but not necessarily at the top. Given where we are in the year, I'd expect many scholarships to have been decided at most UK universities, but some still to be open, or at least not allocated.

The language they're using for that sounds like the language used for undergraduate admissions in the UK (via the UCAS system). We don't use that language for PhDs at my institution (that I'm aware of), but maybe it is part of a standard system elsewhere.
That terminology comes in two parts.
The first is the university's response to your application - this can be rejected, conditional, or unconditional. Rejected is straightforward, conditional means they accept you provided you meet some criteria (usually successful completion of a current course with a particular grade) and unconditional means they're happy to accept you without any further conditions.
The second part is your response. The two relevant options here are decline or firm. Decline is again straightforward, while firm means you've indicated that you want to accept the position. It's 'firm' rather than something like 'accept', because the undergraduate system also lets you specify second-preference ('insurance') courses, which you can take up if you don't get conditional grades for your first choice.
Details on the undergraduate decision system is available e.g. on the UCAS website.
So, if that was an undergraduate position, I'd interpret that as they've offered you the position without further conditions, and you've accepted it, so you're good to go.
However, as I mention above, this is not universally standard language for a PhD application, so I wholeheartedly endorse the suggestion in the comments to double-check with the university if you have any doubts!


text:
How deal with an innovation from outside academia
I am self-educated software developer, and I believe I stumbled across something that is both novel and useful. I'm not talking anything large or groundbreaking, but still novel and potentially useful to others. I believe it may be suitable for publication.
The find in itself is related to a publication from 1997, which continues to be somewhat frequently cited (about 30 times per year).
I have found a journal I believe is a very good fit for the material.
I have no access to anyone who has experience in publishing papers or academia in the field. That leaves me with the following stumbling blocks I have to find out on my own:

I lack the overview of the current research in the field. It's nice and good an outsider thinks they have an innovation, but the work may be not novel at all.
Even if it is novel, what I regard as a small but nevertheless interesting and useful find may be regarded as trivial and not publishable by academia.
Even if it wouldn't be, and would be suitable for a paper, without any experience in writing papers, I will likely make all beginners errors, and have nobody to proofread the paper.

What, if anything, can I do to overcome these hurdles?

"itself is related to a publication from 1997". Then go to google scholar, find the articles that cite this 1997 paper, look at the most recent papers and by their title or their abstract, determine if they relate to your work.

Note that generally old papers are not cited because of their "novel" approach, but for historical reasons. e.g. "the first proposing this method was" or "as proven in "

I took the liberty of adding the [tag:independent-researcher] tag. I'd recommend browsing through our previous questions tagged both independent-researcher and publications. None are exact duplicates, but many are related.

Thank you @StephanKolassa! independent-researches is probably exactly what I need. I searched for the phrases "amateur", and "layman", by the way, in case you are interested in adding synonyms.

@AnderBiguri: Or simply because it used to be novel then, but no-one touched the topic since. At least personally, I feel this is the most frequent reason I see myself cite old publications.

@O.R.Mapper: 30 citations per year doesn't sound like nobody touching the topic to me... I agree that it would be useful to look at the context in which this paper is being cited.

@StephanKolassa: Certainly, the paper the OP mentions is not comparable to those that I usually cite, but Ander was referring to old papers in general, not just the one mentioned by the OP.

Just being the devil's advocate: is academic publication the best way for you to publish this result? Maybe presenting in a conference or writing up and publishing it / blog it / writing a white paper can potentially reach a much wider audience, and you may use much more familiar writing/argumentation style.

@Greg it's certainly a possibility. I won't deny a certain measure of academical inferiority complex and a desire to prove myself in academic circles due to my lack of eductation is part of my motivation. It's the answer to a slightly different question though; the question what I can do instead of trying to write a publishable paper.

I would recommend e-mailing the authors of the original paper. (In general contact information for academics can be very easily found via googling.) Briefly explain your discovery and pose your questions.
In general, such e-mails are quite welcome in academia. There is some possibility you might get no response, but I think it is likely that you will get a polite response, and that the authors will be encouraging and helpful if your work is worth publishing.
If you don't want to do much of the grunt work yourself, you may be able to coauthor the paper with the authors and/or others whom the authors might put you in touch with. (But don't propose this until you get an initial positive response.)
Good luck!

Write a blog post

blog posts in general are very appreciated by software devs. (I used to spend ages reading them when I was working as a dev to keep up on state of the art)

This of-course assumes your "thing" is software related.

Academics in general, do read and write blog posts. They are more annoying to cite, but still reasonable.
There are a few micro-fields of applied CS that publish exclusively through blog posts (The only one I know of is "Arbitrary Precision Document Representation")
You're not a professional academic, therefore you have no "publish or
perish" based KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
further as a nonacademic writing publishing a paper gains you very little increase in employ-ability (even if it gets cited thousands of times). Some employers might care, for most its just going to be a neat thing you did once (not that different to how they might feel if you said you have climbed Mt Everest)
You (as you admit) don't have the skills to write a paper, nor the connections to get someone to help. You do have the skill to write a blog post you demonstrated that in the asking the question.
Not related works is expected in a blog post, it doesn't matter how trivial etc. The worst judgement someone is going to pass on you is ignoring it.

You can supplement this by writing a paper, and putting in on a pre-print repository like arXiv.
As  @Ilmari suggests in comments

These tend to have low bar for entry, and are not peer-reviewed.
It is almost certainly going to be around forever. (even if Cornell Univerisy vanishes, there are certainly going to be independent backups that can recreate the data)
it is indexed by academic search engines like Google Scholar, so it will be found easily.
Lots of industry academics (at lest in my field), tend to publish on arXiv, because they don't have the need to publish to keep their jobs.
it is easy to cite, and is becoming quiet common to cite a work published only on arXiv.

You can then link to it in the blog post, saying "A more formal writeup is available on ..."

The down side to this that a post on a random personal (or company) blog is far more likely to disappear some day than a paper hosted by an established publisher or academic institution. Sure, you can decide to commit yourself to keeping it available, but what if you get hit by a bus next year? I would at least look into getting your paper on arXiv or some similar repository.

@IImari I agree. I was going to suggest also putting it on arXiv, but I thought that might detract from the clarity of the answer, and figured someone else would suggest it, immediately. I will edit it in, since doing both is better.

Good suggestion. I would also add that blog posts allows more diverse formats, therefore more flexible when one needs to figure out what to write. It allows pure theoretical argument, examples, demonstration and test of concept, even tutorials and no review would argue whether this content type suitable for the given journal or not.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How difficult and common is it to switch labs after starting a PhD?
I am having troubles deciding between pursuing a PhD in lab that is more bioinformatics flavored or a lab that is more computationally flavored.

What are the risks associated with switch labs after starting a PhD? How difficult? How common?

Currently I have an advisor willing to take me into his computationally flavored lab, but their primary sub-domain is not one to which I am familiar. I would like some assurances that switching labs would be an option 6-18 months into my PhD.
The alternative is to continue taking classes as a non-degree seeking student until I decide on what lab I like. I have no intention on switching universities.
Note, with either lab I can keep the same major. In other words, the difficulty of switching domains is not what I am asking here.
This is located in the USA.
I have read other questions such as:
Hiring a PhD student who left another PhD position
Switch PhD program: how to contact possible PhD advisors when already enrolled in PhD program?

This might depend on where you are and on the level at which you start doctoral studies. In the US, starting with a  bachelors (only) it would likely be possible. In Germany, with a MS, maybe not possible at all - or very difficult. Say more about your situation to get answers.

I seek to know how difficult and common it is to switch labs once in a PhD program for 6-24 month. I will see be in a similar domain, so that is not the worry.

Again, place matters. In the US the program may be five or more years in total. In Germany only three.

@Buffy Sorry, just corrected – thank you!

The reason it is difficult to answer this is that it can depend to a large extent on personalities. A "new" advisor might not want to take you on thinking about their relationship with the "old" advisor. The "old" advisor might feel insulted and cause problems for you. You might, after a year, have responsibilities to the current lab that will be difficult to transfer. It can be a mess, but it happens.
Rather, I'd suggest that you make a commitment to a lab and stick to it. Your doctoral studies aren't your career and it is always possible to change direction after you finish a PhD, especially if it is within the same field. Changing labs can set you back, leaving you with a "lost" year as well as bad feelings.
But, for a bachelors degree holder starting doctoral studies immediately, the first order of business is passing comprehensives, which requires coursework for most. If you don't need to make a serious commitment to the research of a lab (as is true for most) then switching is generally easy and non-disruptive.
The research leading to the dissertation is to teach you how to do it within your field and how to write scholarly papers. Once you get that, the specifics of how you spend your career are pretty malleable.
That said, don't choose something you hate or you will lose motivation. If you start in something and have an opportunity to move before you finish and it isn't too disruptive, then you have an opportunity. But no answer here will guarantee that such an opportunity will arise. A straight path may be the quick path.

Switching labs at PhD level should be quite the exception and it should only happen if nothing else works. It definitely should not be a planned move.
You'll upset your old supervisor and the new one will be wary of you. If you stay at the same institution, chances are nobody will want to touch you if you do such a switch.
Better to right away come clean to seek a solution that permits you to combine the expertise topics you seek to develop in with all relevant supervisors, upfront.


text:
How to address a reader and a postdoctoral research assistant?
I want to send an email to two people. One of them is a reader in India and the other is a postdoctoral research assistant in Germany. I do not know how to address each of them at the start of the email - “Dear Professor", "Dear Dr.” or what?

Possible duplicate of What salutation to use for someone with a PhD who is a Lecturer or Reader in the UK?

@Allure This is about Germany, not UK.

@MassimoOrtolano But India does use Commonwealth academic job titles.

@origimbo "the other is a postdoctoral research assistant in Germany"

I can't answer authoritatively as I don't have direct experience of India or Germany, hence the comment rather than answer, but I'd suggest sticking with "Dr".. India seems to use UK titles, in which a Reader is not a Professor - and Germany is a stickler for titles and if this person was a Professor you would know about it ;-)

The formal way to address a postdoc in Germany would be Dr. [Surname]. My experience is that at least among Phd students/Postdocs people will quickly switch to an informal first-name address.
But for first contact you should use the formal Dr. [Surname].


text:
How do theorists obtain summer funding after the beginning of February?
My adviser just informed me that summer funding for theoretical research in his department is unavailable for the coming summer. I trying to brainstorm many different ways to obtain summer funding. Anything from writing my own grants to finding part time jobs over the summer.
How do theorists obtain summer funding after the beginning of February?
Me personally: I am a first year physics graduate student in the United States. My theoretical discipline is a mix between cosmology and condensed matter.

What sort of person are you (postdoc, grad student, etc)? What sort of department is it? What country?

I don't know about the US, but as a general rule,  the answer to the question "how do I secure funding for five months ahead" is "start looking seven months ago"

Teaching assistant positions often become available at the last moment.  A physics department that does not offer summer funding is a bit odd.

It is difficult for a first-year graduate student in theoretical physics to obtain research funding for the first summer at most universities, as you have already learned. If your department offers courses during the summer, there might be TA positions available, though you presumably have inquired about those by now. Another possibility might be to look for a summer TA in the math department, though they will presumably give preference to their own students for any available positions. Other than that, I can only offer sympathy.


text:
Under what circumstances it is appropriate to add a team as a co-author, and how should I do so?
I would like to be able to recognize contributions in cases where the contributions of individual may not warrant co-authorship, but where the work would not have been possible without the diverse contributions of a community (e.g. developers of an open-source software).
I am particularly interested in the case of non-peer-reviewed white-papers, conference abstracts, software, and documentation, but also where it is appropriate in the peer-reviewed literature.
In the cases of writing an article, such documents could be placed in an appendix or archive. But citing "First author et al 2015" instead of "Acme Team, 2015" seems to promote the team while demoting the implied importance of the document (i.e. within the document it can look like padding if the references are to my self).
What is the appropriate context and method for using a team rather than individual name as the author? Is it possible to obtain a unique identifier, such as Orcid or ResearcherID that identifies a team of contributors rather than individuals?
Some prominent examples of this style of attribution include:
R Programming language:

R Development Core Team (2008). R: A language and environment fo statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.R-project.org.

IPCC

IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L. White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1132 pp.

And some conferences, e.g. the American Geophysical Union, allows team citation:

A research team may be referenced during the submission process in the Title of Team field, in lieu of adding the names of individual team members.
...
Scientific teams are permitted within an authorship list. Such teams and their members should be formally defined entities such as instrument, field or laboratory experiment, or mission teams. Examples: include "Scientific Team of ODP Drilling Leg XXX" , "The Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem Team".

It sounds as if you should include this information in the Acknowledgement section.

Naming a team is significantly unhelpful, because it leaves no clear indication of who to contact.  The author list, and especially the first author slot, are not for sharing credit broadly.  Moreover, team membership changes over time, so even if every person currently a member of the team made an authorship-level contribution, that will soon change, making it an inaccurate way to share credit.  You need a single person to name as corresponding author, and an author list that doesn't change.

Regarding the new edit: The R foundation is a "company", it is an entity by itself. The IPCC example still have the names...

@Fabio what qualifies as an entity?   Note that the IPCC reference lists names of report editors, not authors.

In the case of R, it is a foundation, with headquarters. You can send them mail and someone will answer it. Of course, you can extend that definition to a lab, but then you wouldn't have necessarily someone responsible for the work. The main point is to have a reachable corresponding author, including 10 years from now...

It's not immediately evident in your question but I gather that you are asking about how to cite other people's work. Or possibly previous work to which you partly contributed.
Referencing previous work serves the purpose of giving robust information to your reader to locate said work, not to attribute credit.
In that very aspect of your academic work, don't be creative. What's relevant is the citation style imposed by the journal or conference you are publishing in, or your institution's guidelines for theses, or at the very least, the standard citation style that you chose for that particular document you are writing.

See similar questions having the same answer:
How to cite papers where the names are sorted?
Style in citing two authors in the same sentence

Credit were credit is due. If they contributed enough to be co-authors, add them as co-authors, if not, thank them in the acknowledgements. That's it.
AFAIK, the preference for a team instead of first author is yours only :) ... et al means more people, and the reader will know there are more people involved. I never saw that in CS, might be doable in other domains, but I do find it weird and I think you risk "breaking" the citation systems (like google scholar automatic counting, etc).
I reckon it is mildly disconcerting to see the a name repeated over and over again, because it makes me think "are they the only people working on this? Is this field relevant?". That wouldn't change if you replace the names by teams...


text:
How long should I register a domain name that will be referenced in scientific publications?
I have a website (with data and modeling interface) that will be referenced in a series of scientific publications that are beginning to be published.
Currently the website is along the lines of myserver.institution.edu/mysite but I would like to change this to something like mysite.org.
Costs for the site range from $37/year for 2 years to $9.99 for 100 years. Even 100 years would be a tiny fraction of the overall research budget, but my first inclination is to go for five years at $33/year. But I don't even know if the web will still be around by then, much less a server hosting this work.
(this is related, but not a duplicate of related, but not a duplicate of How to archive an academic blog or website?)
Is five years long enough? Is 100 years justifiable?

Related: Cool URIs don't change

If you consider the data of permanent value and essential to your paper, then you should try to preserve it permanently.  The question in that case is not how long to register a domain name for, but rather how to find an organization that's willing to archive the data in the long run.  If you don't have that, then it's going to disappear eventually anyway.  If you do, then you can do whatever you want with the domain name as long as you provide enough information that someone could access the data from the archive even once your domain has expired.
Most scientific publishers solve this problem by archiving supplementary information and data along with the paper.  There are also field-specific data banks.
On the other hand, if this isn't an essential part of your paper (but rather just for illustrative purposes), then you can do whatever you want.

This is a very good point. I have actually already figured out a way that the entire system (software, data, website) can be encapsulated in a Virtual Machine that could be archived. But it will take a bit of work to have it ready for publication. I can also provide a dump of the database and the source code.

It is also possible to manually archive web pages in WaybackMachine. Depending on the content of the website, this could be an option.


text:
How to react to a student’s panic attack in an oral exam?
Suppose, I am an examiner in an oral exam. I have done my best to design and conduct the exam to reduce students’ anxiety, but it just didn’t work: The student has a panic attack that makes it impossible to continue the exam in a regular way. How can I rescue the situation, if at all?
Some clarifications:

The student is not just nervous, but is in some anxiety spiral, freezes, cries, etc. They obviously cannot think straight anymore or answer questions in a manner that would allow a reasonable assessment. Any attempt to just continue the exam would only exacerbate the situation.

Of course, every panic attack is different. I am aware that I need to weigh the alternatives depending on the specifics of the situation. This question is asking for the toolbox; I still need to select the right tool myself.

Assume that, before the panic attack, the student has not yet demonstrated sufficient skill, knowledge etc. to pass the exam. (Usually, because the exam only took a few minutes so far.)

This question is not about prevention. While that is certainly the preferable way, it doesn’t always work and we already have a question on that: How to help reduce students' anxiety in an oral exam? That question is about what can be done in preparation or while staying “examination mode” such as asking very basic questions or switching the topic. This question is about when that has failed.

The baseline option (i.e., doing nothing) would be to let the student fail the exam and re-take it as far as permitted by the pertaining examination and accommodation rules. I acknowledge that this may be the best option in many cases, but it is still dissatisfying as it is a lot of work and effort for everybody involved and the situation may just repeat.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

First of all: if your university has a support unit for disabilities and/or mental health issues, contact them and ask the same question. They are the professionals here; we are just keyboard warriors on the internet.
In any case, here are some possible ideas:

Wait 30 minutes for the panic attack to pass (and then asking a different question); this may already solve the problem.

When you resume, have the student write their answers, even if it is an oral exam. This may reduce the stress.

Do you have the option to adjourn the exam without it appearing as failed? If so, I would prefer that. Treat it as a medical emergency.

I have experienced the effectiveness of (1) and (2) in the past (as a third person, I was neither the student nor the professor).

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

Please consider adding something like this to your answer:  "Consider offering the student multiple ideas regarding what to do, and also ask the student for suggested additional ideas.  If the student is unsure which option to choose, ask the student if they'd like your advice.  If you try one option, and it doesn't work, offer to try another option instead."

@unforgettableid I am not sure; I feel like a student in the midst of a panic attack may not be able give a good answer to these questions. I'd prefer to trust my own judgment in the moment, and ask the disability support office for advice after that.

@FedericoPoloni: One option may be to ask for general feedback from students (which they could submit privately/anonymously later) on how to handle this sort of situation; that avoids the issue of asking someone while they're having a panic attack, at least.

I think this should be seen as a medical reason to postpone the exam.
Like a student stumbling and breaking their leg after the first question, or becoming unconscious.
I know that after the start of the exam, you have to be careful about medical reasons because of possible cheating, but I think you can trust your judgement here.

During my final exams at my school we had a case like this. One girl was completely incapable of taking any verbal exam. But it seems there was no fixed rule who had to take the exam and where.
So while this student was waiting outside the exam room sitting on a bench, another teacher sat down besides her, talked to her, asked about her preparations, then various questions about the subject, and so on. Last question was reportedly “Are you afraid of that test?” “Yes.” “No need, you passed.”
Not quite the same situation, but you could check if a subterfuge like that is possible and legal.

This seems like a "one way" filter: it might be fine to give a passing grade to a student with such a method, but it wouldn't be fair to give them a failing grade without telling they were giving a test. Similarly it would be tricky if the exam has multiple passing grades.

You already answered this to the other question. Unfortunately, I don’t think it belongs here since it requires quite a lot of preparation.

In addition to what @GoodDeeds said, I'd find it very hard to give a grade to such a student (unless she clearly knows everything in the "trick exam". How would I know she would not get a better grade if it was a real exam?

This is an innovative and clever idea (+1).  One concern I would have with it is that it doesn't give the student the actual training of experiencing having to give a talk when they are paniced.  Part of the goal in academia is to prepare students for later work in a world that might not have the same accommodations as the university, so that would be a downside.

@user111388 After the "you passed", you send the student to go in and determine the grade. That way the student isn't anxious about failing anymore and can hopefully do the best to achieve the grade they deserve.

So, was the 'you've passed' true, or a blatant lie? I had a situation when a student of mine had a panic attack about a third into a guitar exam. Burst out crying, and would not continue, even when consoled by father and myself. Could not continue, but marks showed he'd passed everything until that moment.

First, you might want to check if there are rules about this topic in your university (e. g. about medical emergencies in exams). There might be rules or a "teaching help center" which can answer this question to some extend.
If there is not and you are free to do whatever you want, I would count this exam as if it never happened and reschedule it (I'd do the same if some other medical emergency happened or if there would be a fire alarm). As you describe it, a normal exam is not possible in your circumstances. Failing would not be an accurate measure of the student's knowledge.
If your structures allow this, I would talk to the student afterwards (maybe in the next days) if this happens often and if the student wants some adjustments (e.g. a friend present at the exam, drinking water at the exam, more writing instead of speaking etc.).
Since, in my experience, this does very rarely happen, I'd say it's okay to reschedule and meet their adjustments (as long as they are reasonable and fair). If this happens often at your university (or you believe some students fake it to cheat somehow), do talk about this topic in a faculty meetings and try to invite experts on panic attacks to give input.
However, if this happens only once and you are not sure if the student might fake this - I'd say it's much better to let the "guilty student" alone as to punish a "non-guilty" student.

If I were in charge of the situation, I'd just declare the situation "adjourned", no matter what the ambient administrative rules... Next, try to take all steps for the welfare of the student.
Later, think about rescheduling, ... and have a calm talk with the student about the business of oral exams. And/or possibly have a university office recommend some sort of "accommodation", for anxiety...
In contrast to some other remarks: no, in my observation (mostly about grad-level oral exams of various sorts), panic-attacks are not about incompetence, but are manifestations of sometimes-chronic, sometimes-acute mental health issues.
No, I do not pretend to have any way to "solve this problem". My approach for many years, with my own research students (in math...), was to do endless rehearsals, with them at the blackboard, me sitting in "the audience", playing various roles as "heckler", or, with "time-out", to give advice on how to deal with the heckler... At that level of things, "endless rehearsals" seemed effective in de-sensitizing people.

Consider multiple redeemable assessments for this item (or some rehearsals), to give additional "exposure"
Another answer here recommends that you should assess without any special consideration unless there is a prior accommodation agreed.  That seems reasonable to me, partly from a procedural standpoint, but also because a major part of the reason for assessment is diagnostic.  For situations like this, one approach that can be useful is to give students multiple "bites of the cherry" by having multiple redeemable pieces of assessment.  This allows the student to perform the assessment and get back a mark, but it also means that bad performance on an individual assessment item is not fatal to the overall course mark.  In cases where there is difficulty with a particular type of assessment (e.g., involving presentation or public speaking) the approach of using multiple redeemable assessments can also give the student greater exposure and practice of that type of assessment; hopefully greater exposure lessens anxiety and panic over time.  A variation on this is to have sessions planned specifically for rehearsal, where students will practice speaking to their course lecturer or the class as a whole, to get used to speaking to an audience in a formal setting.  (In this case the rehearsals would typically be non-assessable but they would still give some opportunity for practice.)  Obviously this is something that should be planned in advance and described in the course outline, so this is more a solution for future cases rather than a way of dealing with the present case.
I notice that there are a lot of answers here that recommend various ways of alleviating the student's poor performance by allowing substitute assessments or other accommodations in the assessment, or by treating this as a medical intervention akin to a heart attack or loss of consciousness.  However, one thing to note in relation to this your assessment is that oral presentation and public speaking are highly useful professional skills; these are skills that a university should teach its students and give them assessed opportunities to practice.  Because of the importance of oral presentation in professional work, there is pedagogical value in a student being placed in a pressure situation where they practice speaking and conversing on an academic topic to a small or large group, and they are judged on the quality of their exposition.  There is also pedagogical value in ensuring that the result of the assessment effectively performs its diagnostic purpose --- i.e., failing a student who is not yet competent at giving an oral presentation.
It is perfectly natural to feel bad for someone who is panicked by this situation (see the classic Seinfeld joke on public speaking), and to want to alleviate the situation, but by removing or nullifying the thing that causes them panic (but which they will encounter later in life after university) it is likely that the student will not gain exposure and practice for that skill with realistic feedback on their lack of competence.  It is a generally accepted psychological principle that exposure lessens anxiety (which is the basis for exposure therapy) so this may be a situation where a failed assessment, augmented by later attempts at the same type of assessment, will be a valuable learning experience for the student.

Something like this happened to me in a music exam.
I knew that my sight-reading was deficient. As the exam progressed and the sight-reading got near I had the weirdest symptom. My eyes began to shake! When the score was put in front of me I simply said to the examiners "Are my eyes shaking? I can't read anything". They looked puzzled and passed over that part of the test. Luckily my score was high enough in other sections and I passed.
Had they insisted, I would have probably run out of the room or my symptoms would have got worse.
The point was that, in my case, my physiology came to my rescue to cover for my lack of mental ability.
Conclusion
Real (not faked) physical symptoms can occur if a student isn't sufficiently prepared or believes they are not. In my case, as soon as the pressure was removed, I was embarrassed but physically back to normal.
What to do?
Skip over the difficult patch. I suggest learning some simple grounding exercises and suggesting the student go through them.
When they are calmer, ask them for some feedback on what the problem is. Point out that nobody is expected to be perfect at everything.
If you get to the stage where they need the skipped part in order to pass, then be upfront and tell them. Ask if they now feel capable of at least trying and that they will likely get some credit even if not as much as they hoped for.

Stress can induce nystagmus - the "shaking" motion of the eyes. Nystagmus decreases visual acuity: our eyes can still see, but the fine detail will be gone. Nystagmus alone, and moreso nystagmus with stress, can also cause dizziness.

You don't mention the exact context of the exam, but I recommend doing everything you can to avoid calling it a failure, or officially recording it as such in any official capacity.  Just treat it as an unavoidable testing irregularity, similar to how you would have likely handled a fire in the building.
I recommend working with the student, the department, and any relevant powers that be to create a testing situation that would satisfy the requirements and not trigger a panic attack.  Maybe a situation where the examination committee reads the documents involved, generates a list of questions, gives the student enough time to formulate written answers, and then the committee can have an oral component for follow-ups to the answers, if an oral component can't be avoided.
Another possibility would be holding the exam over zoom, with the student in familiar environments.
Maybe even just having the committee hold "practice" sessions with the student, to get them used to the idea of an oral exam, would be enough to alleviate the situation.
All of the options are more work, but we do that for our students.

If you have no warning that the student is prone to this, then mark them as if they did not attend (or failed)
It may sound harsh, but this is a standard principle in all academic settings I'm aware of.  If a person has a recognised condition or disability, then provision is made for this ahead of time.  This provision may be anything reasonable such as environment, assessors, extra time, breaks, or anything like that.  The student contacts the school/department, and reasonable provision is negotiated so that their condition does not disadvantage them.
If a person has not contacted the school/department and negotiated provision for some condition or disability, any assessor must not give them any extra benefits, regardless of what happens.  The school cannot risk an overly-lenient assessor giving out bonuses to students just because they feel sorry for the student, regardless of how justified it may seem.  Also remember that you'll likely have a couple of dozen other students to assess, all waiting for their turn, and you can't disadvantage them.
All schools do have provision for dealing with unforeseen emergencies though, for instance if a student has a heart attack mid-exam.  Perhaps the student has never had a panic attack before, so this was genuinely unexpected.  In that case the student would follow the appropriate procedures for this, and the school can figure out what is best to handle the situation.  This may be a second exam, assessment based on existing work, assessment based on teacher feedback over the year, or something similar.
If you have been made aware of this, then follow the rules
If the student has told the school/department that this is a possibility, then you should have a well-defined rule book to follow for them.  That's the point of the student making people aware ahead of time - precisely so that someone such as yourself isn't left winging it, with a severely distressed person on their hands, and quite likely getting severely distressed yourself.
One of the most common provisions, by the way, is that they should have a carer present (or nearby) who can be called in if/when this occurs.  So the typical response if this does happen will be to get the person who knows how to deal with it, and you shouldn't have to.

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First and foremost you need to know the rules of your institution.  If the flexibility was there - I would say pause the exam and see if the student is able to return to assessment in a reasonable period of time (say no more than 30 minutes).  If they can continue - I would continue in the same way (without modifying the assessment, including without avoiding the questions that preceded the panic attack)
If the option existed to return to the exam another time without academic penalty (and option A wasn't suitable) - then I would take this.  I would encourage the student to seek medical attention and submit necessary paperwork for any accommodation required, which would be managed by the relevant office at the institution, who can ensure that accommodations are reasonable and fair.
If I have to complete the assessment, and make a determination - I would use the appropriate code for an incomplete assessment and note the medical episode.  I would iterate my willingness to be rescheduled for the assessment.
At the end of the day - if the student is unable to complete the assessment then they cannot pass the assessment.  Hopefully, the institution does not have a one-shot assessment process.  I would not modify the form of the assessment without it going through a formal, documented, process for accommodations.

I was a teacher for 8 years, so I'm going to offer my two cents which may prove to be an unpopular opinion, but that's nothing new.  I always managed better than average success on my exams and had plenty of students go on to be very successful using my methods, to take from that what you will.
My experience with "test anxiety" is that 99.99% of people who claim to have it, are anxious because they aren't skilled and knowledgable enough to perform well on the test, and they know it inside.
The first question to be honest with yourself with is: "Is this oral exam environment even remotely reflective of the environment the student will be expected to perform in for the future, if they were to pass?".  If the answer is yes, you need to fail them and they need to sort out this issue.  You can't pass a student who A) didn't demonstrate the required knowledge and skills, and B) get's so overwhelmed by a situation where they are required to demonstrate their knowledge that they have a meltdown.  You aren't doing a student any favours by passing them along before they are capable of meeting the outcomes of the course, it will catch up to them eventually, better now than later.
Secondly, accommodations are well and good, but you can NOT accommodate to the point that the fundamental outcomes are no longer being properly assessed.  I assume that you're using an oral exam because that's reflective of the required skills in your course, and you've stated that you've already done your best to design the scenario to reduce anxiety, so that's the YOU part of the scenario taken care of.  The THEM part of the scenario is seeking the help to deal with their anxiety/panic in whatever ways might be necessary. That's not something you can do for the student.
At the end of the day, you may have to accept the reality that some people simply don't have the knowledge and skills to be successful in a particular field.  You can't alter your standards to make them appear successful.  You get to set the bar, and provide students with the resources to clear it, but you can't lower it when they fail.

Is this oral exam environment even remotely reflective of the environment the student will be expected to perform in for the future […]? – Well the answer to this is almost always no because in most real jobs, you have eight hours every day that matter roughly to the same extent instead of half an hour every month that exclusively matters. There are some exceptions like project presentations, but even then they are for more predictable than an exam. The root cause of exam anxiety is that exams are unfamiliar situations that matter a lot.

Also mind that nobody here is suggesting letting anybody pass who hasn’t demonstrated the relevant skills.

My way so far was Academia - Industry - Academia. There was nothing similar stressful to exams in Industry. (Many of my professors seemed to think that the avarage graduate ould design the whole day bridges, on their own, without being allowed to cooperate, wirhout being allowed to use the Internet, under time pressure, the bridges being used by lots of people without quality control, with the sole responsiblity for possible people's death by the graduate. That's not remotely true.)

I have to say that many people have some sort of "imposter syndrome" going on, so are convinced (contra-factually) that they are incompetent, etc.

@Wrzlprmft Applying for jobs with a technical section to the interview, where one has to solve problems on the fly, strikes me as not unlike an oral exam. And the pressure of getting a job or not (or a career or not, depending on the situation) is perhaps in the same zone as passing a single subject.

@DavidRoberts: So we need to expose people to stress in the artificial situation of an exam such that they can take the stress in the equally artificial situation of a job interview?

@Wrzlprmft that's not what I said. I was responding to the rhetorical question "Is this oral exam environment even remotely reflective of the environment the student will be expected to perform in for the future […]?", by giving an example where it might indeed be reflective, and one where a lot might rest on a student's performance. I'm not saying it's a good or bad idea to emulate that in an oral exam.

IMO, the relevance of the "environment the student will be expected to perform in for the future" is none. This is a school exam, what their job (might) be like doesn't matter.

Fail them unless they have a disability plan.
If they have a disability plan with the university's disability services team for their panic attacks, then follow whatever accommodations they are given as a part of that.
Otherwise, fail them. The point of exams is to assess skills, and for oral exams, one of those skills is public speaking. They've clearly demonstrated that they're lacking those skills, so they deserve to fail. Just go down the marking rubric and mark them appropriately for their performance (or lack thereof).
If you're feeling compassionate, maybe make them aware of your university's disability services in private afterwards.

"and for oral exams, one of those skills is public speaking" It seems that you are used to very different oral exams than I am...

Oral exams assess public speaking just as much as written exams assess paper writing. Not only is it simply not on the list of things we evaluate: If a candidate inserts a lot of ehms, this does not affect their grade (except maybe subconsciously) just like we do not evaluate written exams by the answers being well structured and free of punctuation errors. Moreover, the situation of an oral exam is simply not comparable to giving a talk just like taking written exam is not comparable to writing a paper.

Horrible answer. Would you recommend the same if some other mediacal emergency occured and they became unconscious?

@Wrzlprmft I think we must, because the point of these sorts of exams is to simulate things like business presentations. They're expected to create a PowerPoint slide, and stand up in front of the class to present their presentation, which they are then marked on both based on the contents of their presentation and on the presentation of their presentation. Lots of "umms" and "ahhs" would get them marked down on the presentation portion of the marking criteria.

@user111388 If that medical emergency were related to the skills being assessed, yes.

@nick012000: I think we must – I have no idea what you are referring to here. What “must” we do? — Apart from that, what you are describing is something I would call a seminar talk or thesis colloquium/defense, not an oral exam.

@Wrzlprmft Ah, it appears I confused your comment with that of JochenGlueck's above it, sorry.

That's sad. I am really happy that industry does not work like this.

at nick012000: I agree with @Wrzlprmft's comment: What you describe (in front of the class) would rather be called a "seminar talk" or a "thesis defense" where I work (and where I have worked in the past), while an "oral exam" would be something which is typically not public (and does typically not include the preparation of any kind of slides). So as I said in my first comment, you seem to be used to very different oral exams than I am.

I did have a situation like this in industry: a colleague had a panic attack 2 minutes into an important sales presentation. As would normally be the case, there was someone else who could take over (me), I knew the subject but not the content of the presentation, but it was all fine, and the next time she had to do it, there was no problem. So yes, the stress levels can be similar to an oral exam, but the consequences of the "failure" are not usually that great.


text:
How to increase the replay value of presentation karaoke?
In the context of an event for academics up to the postdoc stage, we organisers are considering hold a presentation karaoke (a.k.a. Powerpoint karaoke) for fun. The general idea is that you have to give a talk along a presentation you have never seen before.
The experiences amongst us organisers with such are mixed (or non-existent). A major concern (based on experience) is that the event gets redundant after one or two talks, and thus is not even worth the preparation – in short: presentation karaoke has a low replay value. Are there any strategies to avoid this? I am exclusively interested in ideas based on practical experience (yours or others’), not educated speculation. The only guide I could find does not address this issue.
Mind that our event is explicitly targeted at people who are experienced with talks in academia and ideally the slides reflect that, e.g., they should feature diagrams, plots, horrible equations, etc. (although no or little pure text). Thus, experience from similar events targetted at a business audience may not translate.

I'm trying hard to come up with the value proposition for this for, well, anybody. Other than showing that some (perhaps only one) people can give good talks about anything.

@JonCuster: Please see my edit.

What is the meaning of "replay value" in this context?

Might it be that the replay value is simply...limited? I can't speak to this specific game, but for improv in general I feel like short form improv is far easier and the key is more variety rather than refinement of any particular game/format.

@TerryLoring: Please see my edit.

I would just absolutely not do this except with a group quite explicitly interested in improv.