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How to find one or two good recent PhD theses (that are internationally recognized as best) in your chosen area
I am finding it difficult to select a topic for my masters thesis (my advisor is unwilling to offer suggestions on the matter). I intend to do thesis in the field of internal combustion engines. To get some good ideas about finding a good topic I want to study some recent PhD theses in internal combustion engines but I don't know where to find them. Also I would like to know about modern research trends in that field.

In general, doctoral theses do not receive much recognition outside of a university, let alone on an international scale. The reason for this is that nowadays the thesis is nowhere near as widely circulated as the papers that can be extracted from the thesis.
Moreover, if you want to find out about good thesis topics, look up what's going on in the scientific literature of the area you're interested in—in this case, internal combustion engines. Find the most highly-respected journals, and see if they've published recent review articles in different areas related to your topic. That might give you a sense of where recent work has been, and provide you with a good body of reading material to work from.

You can also add the facts that not all PhD theses are in English, reducing the even more the pool of possibly interesting documents.

"Find the most highly-respected journals, and see if they've published recent review articles in different areas related to your topic. That might give you a sense of where recent work has been, and provide you with a good body of reading material to work from." How to find that????

Ask your advisor. Check with your university library. Use Google (especially Scholar. Part of the challenge of research is learning where to find good resources!

Many disciplines have prizes and awards for the best thesis in a given year (or longer period). For instance, in our field there is a well-recognized one called Householder award. There are many more if you restrict to the national level, often funded by privates or industries.
If you look for past winners, you can be fairly sure that they are outstanding theses. (After that, getting your hands on the actual document might be more difficult, though).
Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with Engineering to suggest you a good one in your topic; you may try to add "thesis award" to your google searches, but sometimes they are tricky to find without knowing the exact names.

Thanks Federico Poloni and Aeismail for your input. Let's say your teacher tells you to read journals online which sites will you go to/search to find them and read

That's a completely different question; you shouldn't ask it here. In any case, it sounds too generic for this site; you'd better talk to your advisor. Don't be scared, they are human beings, too (well, most of them).

As i mentioned he is "unwilling" to help further at the moment and will help only after I select topic myself

My answer complements the other answers.
While writing my dissertation proposal, I felt the need to look at some other published dissertations in my area (~HCI/privacy). I realized that one of my committee members, who dissertated very recently (2007) has an incredibly relevant dissertation in my area and also won the best dissertation award from her alma mater.
So, that is one strategy. In general, look at the best works in your field and find out if any happens to be the primary work of a PhD student. Chances are, that work will be incorporated into his/her dissertation and if you look at their CV's, often, you will find that they won a "Best Dissertation" award or something similar to that.

Sorry, couldn't get what you are saying :-(

What I am saying is that often, if you look at the seminal works in your field and see if PhD students are co-authors on those works, chances are that their dissertations will contain some portion of this work.


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Abbreviation of qualification
What is the correct abbreviation for National Certificate in Financial Planning? NatCertFP or maybe NatCertFinPlan?

The two abbreviations you mention yield respectively 2 and 0 results in a Google search. Do not abbreviate that name.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Publishing with Elsevier - Does the manuscript have the author info?
I am uploading a paper for an Elsevier journal. The system indicates that a Manuscript should be uploaded. I don't have previous experience with this system. My question is: should the Manuscript exclude all the information about the author? Or should the manuscript be the whole paper in its final form?

Did you check the instructions for authors? A manuscript should always be complete with author names, affiliation and addresses unless specified otherwise. Some journals anonymize papers but that should be clear at the time of  submission

To expand on the comments: each journal sets his editorial policy, which is clearly stated on the journal's website and instructions to authors. For example, Journal of Accounting and Economics:

This journal employs a single blind review, where the referee remains anonymous throughout the process (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-accounting-and-economics/policies/peer-review-policy-for-the-journal-of-accounting-and/)

and Computers and Education:

This journal employs double blind reviewing, where both the referee and author remain anonymous throughout the process (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/computers-and-education/policies/peer-review-policy-on-computers-education/)

If you want to submit to a journal with double-blind review, do not include authors' name (or any other incriminating information, for example in acknowledgments). If single blind, then include the author names in the manuscript.

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What do I do as a depressed and incompetent TA?
My mental health is declining and as a result I haven't been a good TA.  For example I let my students out of section early because I was too tired to present some of the material, and I did not understand some of my section notes because another TA prepared them, and I didn't read them in advance.
I also have trouble helping students during office hours, and often ask students to repeat themselves, and I don't do adequate preparation (by reading the solution sets in advance).  I often don't know how to answer questions and I ask the students to collaborate with each other and solicit help from people who have already solved the problem.  I wasn't the best TA to begin with, but now that I'm depressed, I am basically useless, and embarrassingly so.
I feel pretty bad about this and I am also terrified that my students will complain to the professor, who is friends with my advisor.  What should I do?  I haven't told the professor or anyone about my diagnosis (of bipolar disorder).  And I am afraid to talk to the people at the school counseling center, because they might force me to take time off (this happened to me in college), and I can't really do that in grad school without irreparably burning bridges.

Are you forced to be a TA ? For how long it will last ? Seems to me like if it is a job that you do not like ( at least for the current semester ).

@seteropere I am a PhD student and TAing pays my stipend.  I only have a few more weeks in this term but next term I will also be TAing (for a different class).

Can you clarify "irreparably burning bridges"? What are the problems you expect?

Imagine the word where your phd advisor can not answer your questions, the taxi driver do not know how to ride a car, a doctor is not able to diagnose the illness, plumber not being able to fix the sink, firefighter not being able to extinguish the fire. I think it is clear where I am heading. In my opinion, if you can not fulfill your responsibilities, you should quit and give people with a better skills chance to do the job right.

@PatriciaShanahan I am afraid my advisor and everyone else I am working with will think I am a useless liability, and they shouldn't have worked with me or chosen to supervise me.  Once I tell them I'm mentally unstable, I can't un-tell them.

Also it would mean I'd stop working on my research projects.  And research is not something that can stop just because a grad student gets sick.  I would be letting people down if I left, even more than I'm letting them down already.

What does your therapist say?

@Davidmh I'm kind of between therapists right now.  I've been seeing one for the past couple weeks (who hasn't given me any advice on this) but I'm going to meet a new one on Monday.

"now that I'm depressed, I am basically useless" Don't trust your perception. Depression distorts the way that people see the world. What you see as 'useless' may in fact be useful - even getting students to help each other is useful because it helps them to learn. Your job isn't just to memorise and repeat things, it's to help people learn, and getting students to collaborate is a means to that end. One of the best ways of learning (for everyone) is to ask students to explain a problem to the class.

It's not clear how bad things are for you, but is it possible that your choice is something like (a) take time off now, or (b) have a blow out in half a year?

You sound like every TA I have ever had.

May I suggest changing the title of your question from "What do I do as a depressed and incompetent TA" to "What do I do as a depressed TA"? I think there is no problem of incompetence here. According to your description you know what is wrong with your teaching: not preparing in advance. Or rather, not being able to prepare in advance because your depression does not allow you to find the forces to tackle the task. Is that right? If it is, you're not incompetent. I am sure you would do fine if you weren't depressed. :-)

Ohhh, no, I'm so sorry you're going through this. I deal with depression too.
First, you really need to recognize that everything you're perceiving, you're perceiving through a Fog of Depression. Your brain is attacking your self-esteem and motivation, and also causing you to worry about things that you don't need to worry about nearly as much as you think you do, and it seems even more awful because you can't see an end to your problems. There is, in fact, an end--there is a solution out there--and you can find it and your life will get better again.
This includes your perception of your past performance. You have been doing better than you think. (Yes, you have.) Don't dismiss your efforts.
Second, talk to your professor. Straightforward honesty can help you get to the root of your problems and start fixing them. If your prof is a human and not a jackal in a human suit, they shouldn't think any less of you for something you can't control. (No, you can't control the fact that you have an illness. You're not just being lazy.) There may be school policies in place protecting you from discrimination based on mental illness, which may or may not be a thing you'll see. Your worries on this count may be entirely baseless depending on what the people around you are like. Remember, you are chemically disposed towards pessimism right now and it's screwing with your head--you need to learn to recognize the thought patterns that cue you in as to when it's the depression talking.
If you don't tell your professor, then at least tell SOMEONE about your diagnosis. It doesn't even have to be someone official. Just tell someone who won't make you feel like crap about it and will maybe go to Dairy Queen with you sometimes to cheer you up. Getting out of the house/apartment/dorm/whatever is really important.
Third--It's the middle of winter; could your mental illness be worse because you've got some seasonal affective disorder on the side? If so, you should buy some full-spectrum "daylight" light bulbs. I'm talking about the kind where the color temperature is something like 5000 or 6500, instead of 2700 or whatever lower number. This helps replace sunlight in winter when your brain is missing it, and using those light bulbs in your living spaces, like in your desk lamp and so on, can help dramatically with SAD. I know it sounds like one of those bizarre homeopathic remedies, but it does work--there are studies out there and my personal experience backs them up, you can Google for them if you're interested.
Fourth, sometimes you do need to take time for yourself. Ask yourself: would the mental health professionals at your university really recommend something that would ruin your career? Where did you get the information that taking time off would burn bridges? Is it based in fact, or in anxiety? I'm not saying that your worries are for-sure baseless, but you need to double-check. You can tell the counselors about your concerns, too. And maybe you don't need to take a lot of time off--maybe a month while you try out a medication, or even less time while you just take time out to relax and take care of yourself.
I know I have a bad habit of taking things on that I can handle academically--like, I learn well enough to take them on, they're nothing I can't understand--but they're too difficult to keep up with emotionally and I have to step back one way or another. That's okay. Everyone has limits, no one's Superman, you're not a robot. But because you're not a robot, your limits WILL change over time. You've learned you're dealing with a problem; once you adjust to coping with it and find out what works, your limits will expand again. Sometimes you need time away from stress to get to that point though.
Fifth and related: take time out for self-care. Bake a cake (like this one), take care of a houseplant (green oxalis or african violets will bloom indoors), learn how to properly keep a betta fish (the people over at the forum bettafish will happily tell you how to make a betta live for years instead of months), cook yourself dinner instead of ordering takeout, read a few chapters of a kids' fantasy book each night, take a long bath with soap that smells nice, spend time with your friends, listen to music, leave the house just to buy a cookie at a coffee shop, follow a web comic (you might like this one--hold out on it, the art starting in Vol2 is pretty odd but it gets better fast).
This point might seem off-topic, but it isn't. You really do need to make sure that the thing that's been stressing you out isn't your whole life.
Good luck :) We're rooting for you!

Upvote for the Girl Genius link.  Well, really for all the good advice… but also for the Girl Genius link.

I utterly disagree with Mad Jack. You do not need to resign and by resigning, you set yourself up for a future where you will think of resigning every time you have a task that you do not think you will be able to complete to the high standards you set for yourself.
Try to disaggregate the two things -- the depression and the incompetence. If you are merely incompetent (or not as competent as you would like to be), read the rest of this answer. If your depression is putting you at risk to yourself or others (and will not be alleviated by acceptance that one cannot be competent at all things all the time), then perhaps Mad Jack's advice is warranted.
Now, about incompetence.
The reality is that you cannot be good at everything you do. Not all classes go well - even with the best of intentions. Sometimes, a class just fails. Sometimes it's your fault, sometimes it's the students, sometimes it's a combination. There are many classes that I've wished that I could have quit teaching halfway through.1
Sure, after you finish this semester your TA evals might be bad, they might be scorchingly bad. But that's ok. You fulfilled your obligation -- poorly, perhaps -- but you fulfilled them. The students themselves will recover. It's terrible that we can't all be always be stellar teachers, but we're human beings. You're just a blip -- one section of one of the 32 classes they take at the university.
You've found out that teaching does not come naturally and that teaching is hard. This is a good life lesson. It's part of your graduate education.  You will get better at teaching the more you do it -- or at least figure out how to work around your incompetencies. We all do.
1. In the interest of full disclosure, I also struggle from depression and so this is written to you from the position of a peer. This advice is of course null and void if you at risk of entirely melting down. Your first duty is to yourself. But only you can know how close you are to endangering your own health for the sake of the class -- not anonymous internet peers.
Anecdote: I was forced to TA a class on a topic that I knew nothing about when I was a grad student. It quickly became clear that the even the most basic students knew infinitely more than I did about the subject. I was a terrible, terrible TA but my professor worked around me, the students learned to never come to my sections or office hours, and somehow we made it work. Now every time I get assigned a terrible TA, I believe it to be karmic retribution for my past sins. So talk to your professor. S/he may have also been a terrible TA and may be more than willing to work with you on this.
Finally, mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder are not incompatible with academia. There are many successful academics with tenure (Kay Redfield Jamison and Emily Martin have both written books on their own experiences with bipolar disorder). Yes, during our trough periods things can be hard to do, but when the fog lifts we tend to be more productive. I've used that successfully to write two books, publish numerous articles, blah blah. Fortunately I'm at a university that allows for some umm ... eccentrism in the faculty body. I am three sigmas on that scale. :-)

I am not getting it. So the person receives money for being a TA, but he can not do the work because he does not know a material good enough to answer students' questions. And based on your answer it is not his fault. You encourage him not to resign and continue poorly perform his job. Sounds strange to me.

You can not be good at everything, but if you are bad at something do not agree to take tasks you can not complete. Imagine yourself in the hospital, where a nurse is unable to perform her basic duties (she is good at farming, so she can not also be good at the tasks she performs here). She fulfilled her obligation poorly (instead of pill_A she gave you pill_B) but she fulfilled them. You as a patient will survive (hopefully). How would you as a patient feel about her incompetency? Don't you think that she should quit/be fired and give a place for another a better prepared nurse?

@SalvadorDali you seem to have a naive idea of how the world works. People who are new at their job might often make a mess of it at some point early on. That doesn't mean they should quit. And yes it happens to doctors and nurses too - hopefully there is a senior person looking over their shoulder. In a university the senior person is the professor.

@SashoNikolov I agree that everyone makes mistakes, but from what I read in the question, it looks like mess continues and deteriorates. Also it looks like it is highly unlikely that the person would be able to clean up the mess. Exactly because of this, I think that it is time to give someone else to do the job with a less mess.

@SalvadorDali we do not know enough to make this judgement. And I don't think the somewhat dramatic analogies are helpful.

@SalvadorDali The original poster has only a few weeks left. It is unlikely that the department could find someone else who from scratch could come in and do a better job in that short time frame. This is not life or death in the intensive care unit; this is a TA job. But putting that aside, your callous attitude makes me hope that you never find yourself suffering a mood disorder such as depression; it's far worse than you seem to be capable of imagining.

@Corvus: I'm somewhat with Salvador on this.  I agree with you that it's not life and death; however, the situation is negatively impacting the lives of the people the OP is supposed to be helping.  The correct thing to do here would be for the OP to speak with the professor and try to put this part of their life on hold until they can get the help they need.  Serious depression isn't something you just "deal" with on the side.  Rather they need to stop, regroup, and begin working with a professional that knows how to help them.

@Corvus The right solution is hardly to just stick with it, depression doesn't automagically become better. For one, yes I think it is irresponsible to take a TA assignment for next semester when I know that I couldn't offer my students the help they needed. But much more important: Even if I were doing an awesome job as a TA, taking time off (something that certainly has never happened to any gradstudent anywhere before) and getting better should have a much higher priority.

There are at least two issues, what to do about your TA performance, and what to do about your depression. You need help with both.
Depression could affect your self-evaluation. Your performance as a TA may be fine with some minor problems, or could be really bad, and you might not be able to tell the difference. You need an objective observer to evaluate how you are doing before deciding what, if anything, to do about it.
Similarly, if depression is affecting you to the point where you at least feel you are incompetent, whether accurately or not, you may need medical help with that.
The real problem is your feeling that seeking out help will risk "irreparably burning bridges". I know by practical experience that graduate students needing leave or other accommodations for medical issues is something that happens, something for which colleges have procedures in place. I don't know why you feel seeking help from the school counseling center, and if necessary taking medical leave, would be such a serious step in your case.

Thanks for your input Patricia!  I've had experience with school counseling centers, and the last time I told them I was depressed, they forced me to go on medical leave, and encouraged me to transfer to another university.  In general universities do not care if you are suicidal, as long as you don't kill yourself on their campus.

Also my advisor just accepted me as his student (when no one else would).  So I'm afraid if I told him about this he would regret taking me on, and think I had tricked him into thinking I was a good student, when really I was mentally unstable.

@Jennifer Suffering from a mood disorder is not incompatible with being a good student -- or a good scientist at any level. You might be surprised at how common mood disorders are among successful faculty. You would never say "I tricked him into thinking I was a good student, when really I have lupus" -- so I don't think you should be saying this about bipolar disorder either.

@Jennifer as an example for what Corvus said, in this page, RoboKaren said to be struggling with depression too, and she has managed to get tenure on a large R1University.

@Corvus I feel like I don't add value though.  Who would want to invest time and effort into someone who doesn't produce results?  I feel bad because I was very productive (and hypomanic) before my advisor chose me as his student, but then I fell into depression literally a few weeks after that, as a result of something unrelated.  I feel like I falsely advertised myself as a productive young scientist when really I'm more of a basketcase.  Also, last term I really loved teaching and I think I did a better job as a TA.

@Jennifer A few points. (1) you can get better and you may be able to stay better for long periods of time (2) when you are well you add huge value or you wouldn't have gotten into the lab (3) several of the most creative, productive scientists I know suffer from bipolar disorder; I'd be very proud to have been the advisor for any of them.

@Corvus, thanks for your kind words, I'll keep that in mind.

+100 for "depression could affect your self-evaluation".

@Jennifer You have had experience with a particular school counseling center.

@Jennifer If you feel as though you are the only person going through something like this, read the Academia Meta thread Is the seemingly high prevalence of clinical depression cases in A.SE askers normal?.

@Jennifer you feel that way because you have a severe depression and low self esteem. I don't know you, so I can't tell you how good or bad you are, but you can't either. You need external evaluation. Talk to your supervisor, and while you are at it, make sure he gives you feedback on your work. A "well done" or "good job" when appropriate will help you see your own worth.

Whoa.  Everyone here is missing a key point: This is bipolar, not just depression.  This is very serious -- this is the disorder that killed Robin Williams.  Jennifer's functioning is affected during the depressed phase and it's getting worse.
Jennifer, your first priority is to save yourself.  The prof can get a new TA, although it might not need to come to that if you get some help first.  By letting this go on, you are causing the very thing you don't want to happen: Your students will complain, your professor and advisor will find out, and you will be looking at some consequences that you don't want to happen.
Get ahead of this thing now before that happens.  Get on meds -- there are some really good ones out now.  You can keep your moods in check by following a treatment plan.  Also, remember, when you are in your depressed state, you aren't making good decisions and your thinking may be distorted -- some of the things you fear may not happen.  Therapy is confidential -- what happens in session stays in session.  Your job may also be protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.  A therapist can give you an extra set of eyes and ears and give you a more hopeful perspective and a better way of dealing with this.  It sounds like you could use someone in your corner right now so that you aren't battling this by yourself.  That must feel very lonely and overwhelming.
There are low cost options through universities and county mental health services.  Your first good decision would be to find a source of help and just get there.
Good luck, Jennifer.

Jennifer,
My heart goes out to you.  I am an educator who has also suffered from depression.  Each case is unique and I am not sure if my personal insights will be helpful in your situation.  First of all teaching and learning are very complex endeavors.  Perhaps you have unrealistic expectations for what makes a successful teacher.  Each student brings their own baggage to the classroom that can interfere with the learning process.  This baggage is persistent and often stays with a person over a lifetime.  As a result, there is ALWAYS more a teacher could do to help their students.  Expecting to solve everything is unrealistic and defeating.  Herculean efforts still are not enough to meet everyone's needs.  If this is your goal, it is easy to get in a state of mind that any preparation is wasted effort because it only leads to failure.  In fact, the act of preparing can make you feel hopeless so it becomes harder and harder to do.  Lack of preparation makes you less successful so you feel even more the failure leading to an escalating spiral.
My advice would be to try to set small, realistic goals and prepare to achieve these goals.  For example, you could prepare the session so students have a better understanding of . . .  After recitation, be sure to be realistic about your performance.  Remember you can't be everything to everyone.  If something comes up that seems to be a need among many students, let yourself off the hook for not meeting that need during this session.  Perhaps make it your small, realistic goal for the next session if it is important enough and seems to be a problem for a significant number of students.  When you start to think of the problems of individuals, remind yourself of your small goal and pat yourself on the back for meeting that goal.  Choose your small goals carefully so you get the most bang for your buck.  Ask yourself what seems to be giving the most students difficulties AND is most important to their understanding of the fundamental principles.  Most importantly, acknowledge and celebrate your successes.  Don't define unmet student needs as failures but as possible opportunities for future goals.  Keep those future goals small and focused, remembering a class of students has more needs than any one person will be able to meet.
Best wishes to you, Jennifer.  Know that others struggle with these issues as well.

+1 for "there is ALWAYS more a teacher could do to help their students".

This post really struck me because I am also a TA working on my PhD and have struggled with depression for the majority of my adult life. I've always found that I am most successful in school in my classes, my teaching, and my research when I keep my mood up. That being said, keeping my mood up has been a task more difficult than school could ever be, so rather than addressing your concerns specific to being a TA, I figured I would share with you what I have found works best to keep my mood in check. Note though, that this is merely one man's personal experience, not based in scientific research.
Now, I've tried plenty of medications, and I've never found one that works for me. Either they make me feel strange, they don't work, or they cloud my thoughts(which is unacceptable for someone trying to do research in a thought subject). If a medication does work for you, then that is great. I am going to discuss the alternative options that I have found for keeping my mood up.
There are really three main things that I have found to be successful at keeping my depression at bay: Exercise, a healthy diet, and choosing to do the little things for the future. Exercise and diet are obvious. I try not to take either to the extreme, but I try to run a few times a week, and do some kind of strength training activity a few times a week. Recently that activity has been rock-climbing at my university's rec. I also just try to make little changes to my diet(get a salad rather than fries with a meal when I eat out, buy higher quality foods with more wholesome ingredients, substitute V8 or unsweatened tea or other non-sugarwater flavorful beverage for all that pop[soda/coke/proper regional substitute] I was drinking) and I try to avoid having an ongoing relationship with the pizza delivery man.)
Now, doing the little things for the future... this is the one that I use to pull myself out of a bad funk(you can't start exercising or eating right when you can't even get off the couch, so those two come a little later). This is something that seems so insignificant that I am able to accomplish it even in the worst of my depressive fits, but has an interesting psychological impact on me.
So what do I mean by the little things? Brushing my teeth for example. cleaning up my house a little, doing the dishes. Taking a shower. doing my laundry. Now, these are all very basic things, and you probably are already doing some/most/all of them, but what you might not be doing is thinking about what they mean. After I do one of these things,brushing my teeth for example, I ask myself "if I really wanted to end it right now, why would I care about my dental hygiene?" that answer is, I wouldn't. So, why did I just brush my teeth? the only logical conclusion is that I don't want to end it right now. Our minds have an amazing way of rationalizing things, and it has trouble when it cannot find reasons for why we do what we do. If I don't consciously think about that though, my mind won't realize that the only reason I would have brushed my teeth is because I want to continue on. I know this sounds so simple and basic, but repetitive use of this technique has gotten me out of some very dark places, and to a point where I could start eating right and exercising.
Now, as I said, these things have worked for me. I cannot guarantee that they will work for you, but if you do choose to use them, I wish you the best of luck in controlling your mood, and hopefully in turn becoming the best TA you can be.

First off, disclaimer - this is not clinical advice!
I think the best thing to do is get support from other people around you. The worst thing is when you have to deal with this alone. In theory, a therapist can supply some of that, but I think you need to share what you have told us with friends around you that can relate to your situation. They may have dealt with something similar before, and they might be able to help you with knowledge about the subject you are TA-ing. One powerful way to use them is to make specific commitments that you share with them, so that they can hold you accountable.
It seems to me that the most immediate thing to deal with is your inability to commit time to preparation for your sessions. So, work out a schedule that lets you prepare, share it with a friend and report to them daily on your progress. Don't lie and don't make excuses. Stop using social media. Don't work at home. These are things that have helped me ;)
Ultimately, it is likely that your problems with TA-ing are linked to lack of confidence in your abilities. That's a big topic, but as a PhD student, you were selected because you are good at something. You don't need to be an expert in everything and you don't need to be afraid to admit it to others - even your students. Focus on the things you are good at (think about what made a PhD possible for you), learn more about the things that are interesting to you, and become just competent enough in the rest.
I am sure it would be possible to arrange time off for mental health reasons, and this should not "burn bridges". But it seems to me that you feel down because you are not doing well, not the other way around. Taking time off is not going to change anything except save you from this particular course and reinforce the idea that you can't do it. Instead, I would focus on getting through this TA. Set some ground rules for yourself that you can't break - for example, you can't finish the session early, you have to spend X hours preparing, etc. And don't worry - the students will learn what they need even while having a so-so TA.
I wish you the best!

Things like this are difficult but you need to ask for help from a psychiatrist. With the right kind of medication it would be able to help you quite a bit. Don't be afraid of asking for help.

This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post.

On the contrary, @Davidmh, this is the best possible answer to this question.  The Stack Exchange community are generally not qualified to answer a question such as this.  Jennifer needs to pose this question to a professional, such as a trained counsellor, psychotherapist or psychiatrist.  It frightens me to see "strangers on the internet" acting as if they were mental health professionals.  I am not a mental health professional, but I know where to find one, and how to make an appointment with one; and the best advice I could give to Jennifer would be to do exactly that.

And specifically, a mental health professional can give some advice how to approach your employer, and a lot of advice what support you should want from them (e.g. whether or not leave would be good or bad for you at this point). Or, even if they couldn't do that, this answer would be incorrect but it's still an answer. The questions posed are "what do I do?" (title) and "what should I do?" (question body). This is a direct answer: you should ask a psychiatrist for help with the stated problems.

What do I do as a depressed and incompetent TA?

The students are suffering as a result of your condition. So I think the right thing to do is

seek help for yourself, and
ask to be removed from your TA post until you are able to effectively TA again.

Thanks for the advice.  How can I do this without burning bridges?

@Jennifer Explain the situation to your advisor. They are people, and will not consider you telling them about heath problems "burning bridges". If you are in for example the US or Europe, the university legally has to make reasonable accommodations for you, so you might for example be allowed to be a grader (no student contact, minimal stress compared to TAing) instead.

I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer while I was a PhD student. I got permission to go to one course unit of research for a quarter during treatment, so that I was still registered and had a parking permit, but did a minimal amount of work. As far as I can tell, effectively taking a quarter off for medical reasons did not burn any bridges at all.

@Jennifer While there are no guarantees, I think it is better to be forthright with your professor and advisor about your condition. See, for example, the following question: When is it appropriate for a PhD student to discuss personal problems affecting his productivity with his advisor?

I think that offering to step down might be the right thing to do, but that's slightly different than resigning. Some instistutions might rather have a bad TA than no TA at all, so you might be putting them in a tougher spot by abruptly stepping down. I'd recommend being forthright with the dept, but, instead of asking to be removed, saying something more along the lines of: "I'll gladly step aside if you have someone who can replace me – but I'll do my best to tough it out if need be."

@J.R. That's a good point.

The thing is: the vast majority of professors actually do care about the well-being of their graduate students. I certainly did not realize this when I was a graduate student myself, but you have to know that professors are people too: they have children who may be sick or are struggling in school; they have parents affected by old age; they have friends who have problems. In other words, while you as a graduate student typically only interact with your professor in a professional capacity, they do understand issues such as mental health. They may also have been through similar issues with other students before.
The way you describe your situation -- regardless of whether your perception is accurate or not -- is not good for anyone. First of all, it's not good for you. It's not good for your students. And it's not good for the department who put you in this class. The key to improve the situation for everyone is to make you better, but this will not happen unless you take the first step and talk about it with those who can help you. I am certain that most professors will see it as their professional duty (and their human duty) to find ways to help you. As I said above, they may in fact have dealt with similar situations before (for example, I think that I have sent home every single one of my students at least once when I saw that they had trouble with private issues, and I have talked to almost every one of my students about personal problems at various times). They also typically have large professional networks both within and outside the department to look for the best ways to find you help. They also have the resources to replace you in the classroom if necessary. The two solution the least productive to anyone are (i) to fire you, given that everyone has invested time into you and that they likely feel towards you as humans should, and (ii) let you continue to struggle in the classroom and be unproductive.
So, my advice is to talk to your professor. It is the first step to build a network of people around you who you can go to for help if you find that your health issues collide with your professional obligations. If you do not feel like you can talk about these things with your professor about this right away, first talk to someone else in the department (the graduate coordinator, the department head, one of the administrative assistants, a postdoc in your lab) and ask them if they can mediate a meeting with your professor. As I said, my experience tells me that everyone will find it quite obvious that the first order of business needs to be make sure you get better.


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Are translation journals still a thing?
In the second half of the 20th century there were a large number of English-language journals published in the West that carried only translations by Western academics of Russian-language articles.  The original versions of these articles were written by Soviet academics and had appeared in Russian-language journals published in the Soviet Union.  The English journals were commonly known as "translation journals" (not to be confused with translation studies journals, which are about the art and science of translation).  Perhaps the most famous translation journal was Soviet Physics Uspekhi, though Physics Today once listed sixteen further translation journals published by the American Institue of Physics and associated societies, and there may have been many many more in other scientific fields (and humanistic ones too, for all I know).
Were such translation journals unique to the Cold War, or do they still exist today?  A successor to Soviet Physics Uspekhi is still published today, under the name Physics-Uspekhi, but I think it operates quite differently and for quite different purposes nowadays.  In particular, its editorial office is in Russia, not in the USA, and it seems that it is Russian academics (possibly the authors, or someone working at their direction) who are supplying the English translations.  So rather than serving the interests of English-speaking academics who wish to discover or disseminate the work of their Russian-speaking counterparts, the journal today seems to be serving Russian-language academics who want to bring their work to a wider English audience.
Are there any scholarly fields today where a lot of research is being published in non-English journals, where these articles are being routinely translated into English by translators unconnected with the original authors, and where these translations are being published in dedicated journals?

I'll note that there is less need for such journals today since research is pretty collaborative internationally. There is no longer a perceived need to cut out researchers from other countries as was done in the Soviet era. There are some rumblings, however, of unhappiness in high circles about collaboration between Chinese researchers and those in the "west". Mathematics, for example, was carried out independently in such places as (then) Leningrad and Princeton. Different ideas were explored. People driven by ideas, rather than politics, found this to be an unhappy situation.

In mathematics there are still regularly published English language translations of Russian language journals. Examples:

St. Petersburg Mathematical Journal
Functional Analysis and its
Applications
Russian Mathematical Surveys
Transactions of the Moscow Mathematical Society

There are quite a few others.
For most (if not all) of these journals it is often now the authors themselves who supply the translation (I believe this was sometimes the case long ago, although various US professional societies organized formal translation programs, sometimes with funding from agencies like the NSF; the issue is that translating research articles requires substantial understanding of the content, and this greatly limits the pool of potential translators).
Here is a Japanese source journal:
Sugaku Expositions

I'm quite skeptical that the Soviet leadership allowed Soviet mathematicians to regularly translate their own work into English.

@RonJohn They even had a whole publishing house "Mir Publishers" to sell translated scientific works into the west. After all, doing so not only help to convince the west that soviet science is clearly superior, selling the stuff also brings in hard western currency which always was in high demand. So why would they stop their mathematicians from helping out with that?

@mlk well, I guess it would have been somewhat plausible for them to only translate abstracts, but not full articles. That would still “help to convince the West that Soviet science is clearly superior”, but also encourage Western scientists to actually learn Russian. And they could still have sold the Russian-language articles to Western libraries and/or translation journals.

@leftaroundabout That is true, but there are many examples of Soviet authors actually translating the full articles and sending them to the West, whether something else might be plausible or not.

Cover-to-cover translation journals continue to exist. There seems to have been a major loss of translation journals when the USSR broke up, but many of those journals still operate today. To give some Russian examples from fluid dynamics:

Fluid Dynamics (Izvestiya RAN. Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, definitely translated professionally; the articles list the translator at the end)
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (Prikladnaya Matematika i Mekhanika, ended in 2017)
TsAGI Science Journal (Uchenye zapiski TsAGI)

My impression is that the translations are made by professionals with limited domain knowledge. I've noticed plenty of minor translation errors that would have been avoided if the translator had domain knowledge.

My OP also assumes that modern-day translation journals use translations supplied by the authors.  Note that I didn't mean to imply that the authors themselves are necessarily performing the translation, just that they are arranging it. Does this jibe with your knowledge of the modern-day journals you posted? For example, do the translators tend to have Russian-sounding names or English-sounding ones? (Browsing old issues of Soviet Physics Uspekhi, it seems most translators were not Russian.)

Fair points about translations being supplied by the authors by not necessary performed by. I checked some articles listed in Fluid Dynamics, and it appears that the entire issue I checked was translated by a single person with an ambiguous sounding name. I've seen both Russian-seeming and non-Russian-seeming translators listed in the past, as I recall.

The identity of the translators of the older Soviet journals published through the American Institute of Physics appear to be somewhat ambiguous. (My impression immediately post-1989 is that it is unlikely that the original authors were able to produce the fairly consistently high level of English in the translations.) Those journals ceased by 2005. The (replacement?) Russian journals now published by Springer call for submissions in English with some links to editorial/translation service providers.

In chemistry, Angewandte Chemie (German, "applied chemistry") and Angewandte Chemie International Edition are twin journals having the same articles, Angewandte in German* (example) and the International Edition in English (same example).
Nowadays, one submits in English so the translation process is English -> German. AFAIK this is done by the publisher with the exception of communications which stay in English also for the German edition unless the authors supply a German version.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Submiting a two page paper to a math journal
I recently posted my two-page paper to arxiv and sent it to the editor of a good journal. The editor responded:

"Your result is not substantial enough" and so it was rejected."

I cannot say that I totally disagree with the editor, the paper does not make any significant progress on number theory but I can't say that my paper is totally without value. It is the first time I have tried to publish a paper, and I am confused:

Was my paper rejected because it is too short?
Should I submit it to another journal?

I would really appreciate if someone gave me some advice on how to proceed.

My research is related to number theory. I do not want to sound harsh, but the result you obtained doesn't look like anything breakingly new. I think that working with the Wikipedia, many master students would manage to derive these results if given as a homework, not to mention that the Wiki page contains a very small potion of the results on asymptotics of the prime counting function.

@tohecz you did not sound harsh but i am not talking about asymptotics in my paper.(this is the reason i thought it could draw some attention)Also some other "formulas for $\pi(n)$ are published.Why not mine?Also many results in mathematics could be proved from many master students if where given as homework but i think this kind of logic cancels the hole idea of publishing anything new.

The formula from wikipedia seems to be sufficient to get your result. What you do is asymptotics, because you just say that some function is closer that 1/2 from another function infinitely often. Now tell me how that is not asymptotics. Sorry, just try to ask people at Math.SE for a proof of your theorem, I believe that you'll get one in 10 minutes (unless people consider it completely non-interesting). If everything posted there was worth publishing, we would all be screwed.

(1) "Substantial" does not mean "Long". A short paper can make a substantial contribution if it gives deep insight. A long paper can make an negligible contribution if it says nothing new. (2) The general advice to publishing is "edit and try again". But the editing usually should reflect the comments from the editors and the referees in the letter of rejection. When the charge is that the result is not substantial enough, you either (a) agree, in which case you find a journal whose bar for publishing results has lower threshold for "substantial" or (b) disagree, in which case you edit...

... the manuscript to include a discussion of why your result is substantial. (Literature review and comparison to other current works are heavily encouraged.)

@Willie Wong thank you very much!I will try this and get whatever possible i can to improve my paper.

Evaluating individual research papers isn't really on topic here, but here's a little information.  I like your formula, but unfortunately I don't think it's really novel or important enough to be published in a good journal.  There many journals out there, and it could certainly be published somewhere, but you probably wouldn't be happy with some of the papers that would be published alongside it.  Posting it on the arXiv means it will be archived and can already be cited.  Beyond that, you could publish it in a journal, but I don't see a strong scholarly or career argument for doing so.

@tohecz what i am trying to say is:Mills proved a result that is not so usefull in practice in an one page paper.http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.bams/1183510803  I do not claim that my result is usefull in practice or that is a great theorem but i believe is something that should be mentioned.Am i wrong?Should it be "buried"?

@AnonymousMathematician thank you very much for your comments.Could you suggest some journals?I did not have the intention to post my paper for evaluation here really but i think it was necessary to give the link

I read once somewhere that Einstein's paper on 'E=MC^2' was only 3 pages long.

This might be appropriate to mention:
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/627736/interesting-but-short-math-papers
in particular there is a link to a super short paper:
http://www.ams.org/journals/proc/1972-036-02/S0002-9939-1972-0309047-X/S0002-9939-1972-0309047-X.pdf

@Squirtle Yes, this is a great paper you linked!Thank you for the encouragement!

Your link does not point to a paper, but to all your papers.

I am no expert in number theory, so I can't really help you with the last question (if you should submit your paper to another journal). However, it sounds like the editor stated the reason for rejection pretty clear: In his impression the results are not substantial enough. This is a valid (and frequent) reason for rejection. So in this respect you are in good company. If the editor did not state explicitly that he finds the paper "too short" than there is no reason to believe that this was the reason for rejection.
To get good feedback on how to proceed with your paper and your research you should ask your advisor (or find one).

i do not have any more an advisor i have graduated in 2010 and for some serious reasons i was out of research since then. I sent an e-mail to one of the proffesors that i used to have good connection but  he replied "my mother is in the hospital we will talk again after some days" etc (this happened before 6 months)I sen him the paper and told him to answer whenever he could (but he did not)


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Do journals have legal copyrights to the online supplemental information?
I have a paper in an biology journal (Wiley is the publisher) for which I would like to put a much more mathematical version on ArXiv, mainly the theorems and proofs located in the online supplement (that biologists will not read but that perhaps a mathematician who does not read this journal might be interested in), with no figures or sentences copied from the biology paper. I could perhaps call it a pre-submission version of the paper (which would be somewhat untrue, but Wiley does allow pre-peer-review preprint publishing on ArXiV; none of the peer-review process affected the supplement; so in spirit this would be sort of true).
Does Wiley’s copyright agreement prevent me from doing this? Wiley’s information on supplemental information doesn’t seem to address the issue.

When you say "supplement" do you mean an official supplement hosted by the publisher or a supplement that you post perhaps with a link from the paper (e.g., on arxiv, figshare, your website, etc.)

@JeromyAnglim Hosted on the journal's website (otherwise the journal clearly has no copyright to it). Note that the publisher does not format or copy edit the supplement..

At least for some Wiley journals, the supporting information hosted by Wiley bears a Wiley copyright notice on the front page. (example). You might have to actually ask them, if you want to know about your specific case.

Have you asked the publisher?

Clearly they must have a copyright to the material in order for them to distribute it. The question should be, do they have an exclusive copyright, and that can only be answered by reviewing the publication agreement that you signed.

@JonCuster, actually, they only need a license from the copyright holder not the copyright itself in order to publish.

@BillBarth - good point - I'm not a lawyer. Yes, they must have some permission (license) to publish it, but may not hold exclusive rights.

I would assume that whatever copyright agreement you signed for the paper, would also apply to the supplemental material.  So you'll have to read it to find out what rights you retained.

Wiley
Taking a look at Wiley’s general copyright agreement, they only “the Contribution”, which in turn is defined in the header as “Manuscript entitled ___”.
Now it’s debatable whether the supplemental material is part of the manuscript. However Wiley needs at least some permission from you to publish the supplemental material and I could not find any information on separate copyright agreements for the supplemental material, so I assume that at least Wiley considers the supplemental material to be included in the manuscript.

Wiley-Blackwell licenses back the following rights to the Contributor in the version of the Contribution as originally submitted for publication:
a. The right to […] place in a subject matter archive, […]. This right extends to […] the Internet. The Contributor may not update the submission version or replace it with the published Contribution. […]

Again, it’s not specified whether this applies to parts of “the Contribution”, but given that a partial publication is less than a full publication in terms of copyright, I would argue that it’s included.
Finally note that all of the above only applies to the general copyright agreement. Wiley mentions that the individual journals may have differing agreements:

Author re-use rights vary between journals. Please refer to the copyright form you have signed or are required to sign to review the applicable re-use rights.

As there are some questions of exegesis in the above, the easiest safe way is to ask Wiley whether they agree with your endeavour.
In General
Addressing the titular question:

Do journals have legal copyrights to the online supplemental information?

As journals want to disseminate the supplemental material, they need you to at least transfer at least the rights needed for this. Since those rights are a subset of the usual copyright agreement, it makes sense from the journal’s perspective to plainly treat the supplementary materials the same as the main paper:

It’s less complicated for the reader.
It’s less work.
Most people do not care much about supplementary materials anyway.

Therefore I do not find it surprising that most journals (in my experience) do this. However, at the end of the day, you have to look into the journal’s copyright agreement to be sure, or even talk to the journal itself, if the copyright agreement is ambiguous and you do not want to risk any bad blood.
Finally a sidenote from personal experience: I once wrote a paper presenting a new method and wanted to attach the source code for an implementation. Since the journal’s copyright agreement did not allow me to disseminate the source code on GitHub with a free license simultaneously and the copyright department did not want to relax the copyright agreement in that respect, I ended up removing the supplementary material and posting it on GitHub alone.


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Can I omit my undergraduate school from my CV?
I noticed some prominent academics omit where they got their undergraduate degrees from in a CV (I am sure it's not a case where they never earned an undergraduate degree at all; those people also exist).
My question: After earning a PhD degree, is it bad form to remove from your CV that you have also earned an undergraduate degree (possibly from a lower ranked place)?

Maybe wait til you get tenure?

Would you care to give some examples?

Sometimes, I have seen academics list only their PhD when all of their degrees are from the same place - at least I have seen this at my home instituion (non-US). This is normally on short "website CVs" and not in anything longer though.

As a PhD student, I still keep my high school on my CV (though I think I omitted it once or twice in the past). It's the best way to display my nationality, while omitting the age / gender / nationality / marital status section that I do not like to include in my standard CV.

There are all sorts of CVs, ranging from complete CVs to abbreviated highlights.  Job applications or promotion/tenure cases generally require complete CVs, but shorter versions can be useful for getting a quick overview in other circumstances.  Senior faculty sometimes post short CVs on the web, to emphasize their best qualities (most famous papers, most prestigious prizes, etc.).  For comparison, a complete CV could easily be twenty pages or more, which would be much more cumbersome.  I would not recommend imitating this until your CV also becomes unmanageably long; otherwise, it can come across like unrealistic boasting: "there are so many wonderful things I could tell you about myself that I wouldn't want to waste time on trivia like where I went to college."  Of course it can sound like boasting for senior faculty as well, but so can posting a lengthy but complete CV ("I bet the world is eager to read a list of every invited lecture I've given"), so there's no really modest option there.

Exactly what I was going to post. TL;DR: People have different versions of their CV for different uses.

My question: After earning a PhD degree, is it bad form to remove from your CV that you have also earned an undergraduate degree (possibly from a lower ranked place)?

Yes, I think this is bad form in most circumstances.  Your curriculum vitae is supposed to be a comprehensive description of your academic history.  Technically speaking "brief CVs" are not really CVs at all.  This is really a technicality, because by whatever name these "like CV's but briefer" documents are often used for various purposes, including posting on your website and for grant applications.  In particular when you apply for an NSF grant you need to turn in a biographical sketch; unlike what you might expect this is not a brief vignette about your life story but is in fact a severely abbreviated CV, generally limited to two pages.  What you put in this document is carefully prescribed by the NSF: your undergraduate education is one of the things they ask for.  In general the length issue seems to me to be a red herring: how many undergraduate institutions will someone have?  This information belongs on the first page of any CV; how many pages follow is less relevant.
Coming back to the general question, the purpose of a CV of whatever length is to describe your academic and professional history.  Here are the two basic principles of (academic) CVs:
(i) They should be honest and forthcoming.
(ii) Subject to (i), they should paint the candidate in the best possible light.
If you don't include your undergraduate institution because you don't want people to know that information, then in my opinion you are violating (i).  Someone who tries to hide such basic and innocuous information seems problematically unforthcoming by academic standards.
Then there is (ii): if you omit mentioning your undergraduate institution from your CV, then a lot of people are going to suspect you're doing this for reasons other than the ranking of the institution.  Things that I would think of:

Maybe you didn't get an undergraduate degree at all.  (This is rare but could be a problem in some circumstances.  Or maybe you claimed to have an undergraduate degree to get into a graduate program but actually didn't.  (Again rare, but crazy things have happened!)    Anyway, these are things that people don't need to be worrying about if it is not the case.
There is something fishy or problematic about your undergraduate education: e.g. maybe your degree got rescinded later.  If you don't list the institution, then we cannot even in principle investigate, and that's a cause for concern.
Maybe you are trying to hide how long you spent in school or how long you spent out of it.  Although (at least in the US) your age is really not our business, we are allowed to notice and take into account if you spent ten years out of school in between your undergraduate and graduate degrees.  When I look at candidates' CVs, I calculate the number of years in between the undergraduate degree and the PhD.  People who did their undergraduate degree a long time ago are (I think) more likely to either be a bit less committed than the norm or unusually mature, decisive and experienced (in other words, it's bimodal).  I also largely subscribe to the "real mastery takes ten years of hard work" school of thought that has been espoused in various recent literature, so if I can see that someone is, say, only eight years past their enrollment in an undergraduate program then I expect them on the one hand to be a little green and on the other hand to still be on the rise.  If you spent ten years in industry applying your undergraduate work, then the learning curve is different.

Finally, let me say that even the premise of being embarrassed at having gone to a lower ranked undergraduate institution seems suspect to me.  In the US, most people decide that they want an academic career years after they decide on their undergraduate institution, so having gone to an undistinguished undergrad institution is rather common even among top people.  Moreover, most people view the undergraduate education as being distinctly "negative time".  In other words, if I know that you got a PhD from a top place and then I learn that you went to a mediocre undergrad institution, then given where you are now learning about how far you've come makes you look if anything better, not worse.  If you got your undergrad degree at Harvard or Princeton, probably some pretty good graduate program will take a chance on you even if you did not actually do all that well.  However, if you go to Gonzaga University and then get admitted to a top program (I am not picking on Gonzaga but rather choosing a real life example of a high-flying collaborator of mine), then gosh: you really must be good.

Short answer - no.
The Pragmatic reason
At any American university (and likely any decent university), they will check that you actually graduated with the degrees you list.  A missing BS/BA will be found out in short order if you are hired.
The Academic reason
Your CV is suppose to be a complete list of your academic achievements - papers, talks, degrees, and the like.  Its not meant to be brief.  You should provide a complete list of your academic credentials including undergraduate studies.


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Is it possible transfer from a MS program into a PhD program within the same school?
I recently enrolled in a 2-year MS in HCI program.  My BS was in Computer Science.  Now, looking at my career goals and opportunities, I am wondering if it would be possible at all to email my director and ask if I could get into the PhD program (at the same school).
Would this be feasible at all?  Would I have to completely re-apply? Or can I do 1-year of the MS and transfer into the PhD program? Or is that something that is frowned upon?
Just to point out, I am asking about transferring from a MS to a PhD program WITHIN the same school, not switching schools. I figured that if I were to switch schools, that would be an application process from scratch.

I really think the answer depends on your department and/or your advisor. If they say yes, you got it.

I did it where I did my grad school, and it was pretty normal there.

This is usually kosher, but it can depend on the school and field. The department might want to see what you do over the first year or so, both academically and in terms of clicking with faculty and their research. The best thing for you to do now would be to find a faculty member whose research really interests you and try to find opportunities to work with them. If that doesn't work right off the bat, sign up for a class they teach and kick ass in it, then try again. Once you have this relationship, and assuming you're producing good work for them, it's rare that they wouldn't support you staying on, so long as they have the resources to fund you.
You, as a Masters student, are essentially a free trial for the school/department/professor. They get to see how you fit in the department and what you're capable of *plus* they don't have to pay for you. If you're a good fit, there shouldn't be a reason why they wouldn't want to keep you. However, they'll likely still ask you to apply (formalities).


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Questions to speaker per Smartphone in University lectures
I was at the MIT-Vienna-Conference and they had a pretty nice App-System (Superevent), where Questions to the Speaker could be asked per the Superevent-app, upvoted from others and finally answered by the speaker, all without hand-raising, etc.
I now would like to try to implement that sort of "Guerilla" in my University for Lectures, since the Professors will never agree to use something like this in the near future. Therefore i also don´t have the money to buy a Conference App. Most of them are restricted to 25-75 people in the free plan, but we normally have 150-200 people sitting in a lecture.
So here´s my question: Does anybody know of free solutions of this?
My primal need is: Question to speaker-App for Android and iOS
My wish would be: An own "Help-area" for each lecture, possibility to provide resource-links, up and downvote(Evaluation) of lecture.
I could get my hand around some money by asking the student committee, but most of the conference apps work on a plan per conference, which would be way to expensive for all the lectures in my study.

May I ask why?

What do you mean?

Perhaps this system might work well at a conference. But I do not think it would translate well to a normal lecture class (as I assume the OP is talking about).
Distracting students en mass by encouraging them to faff about with smartphones, whilst the lecturer carries on talking, sounds like a terrible idea. If it's really interesting or important, you may interrupt the lecture. Otherwise, save it until the end.

i understand what you mean, but that´s actually not the point. In my studies even if students have questions they don´t want to ask them in front of everybody or forget them until the end and for sure not ask something that would start a discussion. They are shy. It´s an austrian thing maybe. Let´s just say, the normal "Are there any questions?" at the end doesn´t work. That´s why it would be nice to have a system, where you can ask questions anonymously. The answering should for sure happen at the end. I was very surprised at the conference how good it worked.

I use TodaysMeet. It's a tweeter-like forum for students to ask questions and I usually follow up online during break or after the lecture. You don't need a Tweeter account to operate it. I do not like having a rating function with your suggested service. The high/low rating can be so conflated and I am not sure about its usefulness.

Hi! That´s actually not a bad solution! That´s more or less what i was looking for. Unfortunately no App-Version. Since i will have to install about 50 Rooms and get 100-2000 people to use it this can get pretty chaotic. Also no possibility to delete the questions after they have been answered or at a certain date/time after the lecture. but thx!

I now did a "temporary" solution, where i built an app with appery.io, that has a list of all the lectures and when you click on one it opens the corresponding "Todaysmeet" room. I will not answer my questions, since it´s not exactly what i am looking for.

This free guide - the Event App Bible - lists lots of conference/event apps. I believe there are a mixture of free and paid-for systems included. You should look at the "Audience Response Systems" to id apps that offer this type of functionality, and cross reference that against the pricing table. Hopefully you can find something that works for you. (The guide comes from the Event Manager Blog and was updated recently (2015))

If you don't find a proper open source implementation, you could use Twitter with retweet counts as upvotes and hashtags for each course. I've seen it used by conferences as a question suggestion mechanism.

Problem is, that the people need a twitter account, which is not very common in austria

@mordondro: True, but signing up for an anonymous twitter account isn't any harder than installing a special-purpose app and setting it up for your courses.  (They are both easy but take a minute or two and some instructions.)


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Honorific for someone who earned a PhD in philosophy itself?
I know that a PhD is now just used to mean doctorate, so what would a person who has a doctorate in philosophy be called?

The same as any other PhD! They would have a PhD in X.

@AustinHenley I mean stuff like D.F.A. (doctor of fine arts), D.C.S. (doctor of computer science)

If they had a higher doctorate they would have a "Doctor of Letters" I believe. Doctor of Letters is basically the (equally) highest qualification a university can give (and not all give them). (a PhD is generally (but not nesc) a prereq for a doctors of letters)

Generically, a PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy, not a doctor in philosophy. Thus a PhD in philosophy would a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy (as opposed to a PhD in economics, who would be a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics).

To the point and nailed it.

Doctor. Just like everyone else with a PhD.

Based on your comments to the question:
PhD is not used to just mean "doctorate." A PhD is a specific type of doctorate. The reason people talk about, say, a PhD in computer science is that that is their actual literal degree -- their diploma says "Doctor of Philosophy" on it, not "Doctor of Computer Science." Especially formally (like for honorifics), you never call yourself a PhD unless that is your actual degree (informally, some US schools hand out ScDs that are equivalent to a PhD, and you might say you have a PhD because it's clearer; however, formally, you do not have a PhD then).
Other than ScD in the US (and D.Phil, which is just PhD in English instead of Latin), other degrees I can think of would never be called a PhD even informally. A DFA is generally honorary, but even if not it's not a research degree. An MD isn't a PhD, even though it's a doctorate. An EdD is not a PhD.
So,  a PhD in philosophy would be a PhD. Someone with a PhD in computer science also has a PhD. Things could have been set up so you'd have a D.Math, or a D.Physics, or a D.Comp.Sci., etc.; but that's not how it works, so you really have the actual same degree as people in other fields.

In the UK,  the system in your last paragraph is used for philosophy, and the abbreviation is D. Phil.

@alephzero Are other degrees then not D.Phil? Because if everything's D.Phil, then the conclusion is that it uses an older sense of "philosophy."

'DPhil' is still in Latin (the most notable British university to use that abbreviation, Oxford, still conducts degree ceremonies almost entirely in Latin); Latin word order is much more flexible than English.

I hold a PhD in philosophy. Long ago I was introduced to a group of non-philosopher cognoscenti this way: "Attention everyone, we now have a PhD squared in the group..." I had never heard that before, but everyone else seemed to know exactly what he meant, and started asking me deliberately silly philosophical questions. A doctor of philosophy of philosophy ... PhD-squared.

Isn't it then just the 'Ph' that is squared? :-)

mathematicians aren't generally big hits at parties.

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text:
How much is an editor paid?
How much is an editor of a typical research journal (e.g., with annual 12 issues and 5,000 pages) paid?
I talked with a book editor, and he said he received less than $3,000 of the book sales for a research book with over 1,000 pages and 30 chapters.
I am curious if is it comparable to a full salary or is it just an honorarium, and editors provide this service because of scientific prestige only?

In my experience: Zero.

Can you clarify what you mean by "book editor". Some "edited books" have a named editor who asks other people to write chapters. The editor then sometimes rights an introduction. There are also copy editors who proofread the text. There are also handling editors and editors and an editor in chief.

Do you mean a journal editor as in editor in chief, or a person who edits papers, books, newspapers and other publications for grammatical issues, typesets papers, etc.? If your question is about the second group of people, then you probably chose wrong tag for your question regarding its excerpt.

May the people willing to close give their reason for that? I guess the question could be improved, but it is a very relevant one. Clearly, many editors are not paid, or almost not, but I am led to believe that others are, and any information on this would be welcome at it seems difficult to get.

@BenoîtKloeckner have not voted to close, but I think the close votes are because in order to answer the question, we need to know what type of editor and where.

Typically journal editors are volunteers. I suppose for some of the flagships (Nature, Science, Cell, etc.) they might have full-time paid editors, but your typical niche research journal editor doesn't get much if anything at all.

I think you misspelled "tabloids".

Those "big three" do rely on professional editors. This was part of the reason for the establishment of E-life. See this discussion:
http://elifesciences.org/elife-news/randy-schekman-answers-questions-on-his-stance-against-luxuryjournals

I know of some journals with an IF around 3 that pay the editor around 5-10k I believe.

@Behacad, can you name one?

Hmm, no, sorry. This information is based on personal correspondence with editors, and I don't feel comfortable sharing.

It depends on the journal and on which type of editor you are talking about.
A lot of journals do not have paid scientific staff. They have editorial staff doing administrative work and a senior editor dispatching the received papers between "Associate editors" (but each journal has its own designation).
The associate editor decides if the paper is suitable for the journal, finds reviewers and makes a decision.
These associate editors are generally not paid, they are academics doing this as a community service. If the journal is run by a scientific society, editors are usually members of this society.


text:
How do I get my school funded?
I have built a school where English, Mathematics and Georgian language are taught to minorities living in the Republic of Georgia.  I named the school as "Alternative Education Center".  This is (09-27-2019) our second year, and last year we had an average 50 students.  For me, the school is non-profit, which means I have not taken money for myself, but the school is a registered business entity in Georgia.
ATM offers good quality education for the lowest possible tuition, and we have been paying our teachers twice more than public schools in Georgia.
This year, I am planning to offer IT courses, which includes software and web development lessons.  Plus, we will open a "tech park" where young minds gather and develop their projects.
However, we have three classes with very limited conditions. The land where our school is belongs to a friend, and he is willing to donate the land to ATM, but I need funding to construct a new building that will fit to education standard.
How do I find funding?!

Welcome to AcademiaSE! This is an interesting question and an ambitious goal. But I'm a bit surprised: if the school is a non-profit, why is it registered as a business entity? I don't know the law in Georgia but isn't there a charity status which would allow the school to accept donations? Also I assume that there are government subsidies for education institutions, right?

I can't tell if this is a primary school or a tertiary school.  You need either a loan, a donation, or a government grant, and I don't see how we can figure that out for you.

There is one possible source of funding that might be available: a NGO (Non Governmental Organization). The UN has an office to support such organizations and you might use them to find something open to you. Start a search on this page but click some of the links there to learn more, including their home page.


text:
How to email current students in graduate programs you're considering?
What is the right approach for sending emails to contact the graduate students in the graduate schools that we are applying to?
Some questions to ask current graduate students are suggested in this related question.
When asking such questions by email, what are things to consider to maximize the chances of a useful response?

Are you contacting them for contacting's sake, or because you have a question? There's no rule that you have to talk to current graduate students at places you're applying. If you have questions about course load or environment, sure. But asking us how to contact them and then what to ask them implies that there's no present reason to contact them.

Related: Is it appropriate for a prospective PhD student to contact phd students at a target school?

Related: What questions should one ask to the former/current students of a professor before deciding whether to do PhD under him/her?

Since part of this answer is already asked and answered in another question, I edited this one to focus on the email aspect. Please let us know if it doesn't preserve the intent of the original question.

My email has been posted at both my MSc and PhD department's website. I do not mind cold emails, even before applications are submitted. I answer this question maybe 3-4 times a year before applications are even due: "If you could go back in time and start over, would you still come back?". Applications cost money, I don't mind spending an hour or two every year helping people whose shoes I was once in.
Most people are the same I'd think.
Edit:
I'll read anything with my advisor's name in the email, so, if you title the email "Prospective student for Advisor" or something like that, then It will probably at least get read.

I'm not sure this is an answer to the question, "How to email current students... what are things to consider to maximize the chances of a useful response."

I see, I misread the question, I'll edit it to make it more useful, though I did answer how (department website).

I upvoted this answer instead of AnonymousMathematician's answer just because it made me feel more hopeful in the process.  That said, I will keep Anonymous' advice in mind and not be annoying; clearly a stranger is doing me a favor if they're replying to a cold e-mail

Once you have been admitted, the department will typically help put you in contact with graduate students.  Of course they will select the most enthusiastic ones, so it can be helpful to reach out to others to get a better sample (for example, students in your research area or who are working with potential advisors).  You can generally find contact information for graduate students on the departmental web page or on their personal web pages, and it's reasonable to send a quick e-mail.  You can ask whatever you'd like, but you should remember that it's not really their job to tell you about the department.  It's best not to ask questions you can get answers to elsewhere (for example, don't ask about degree requirements), awkward questions (such as departmental gossip they might be uncomfortable discussing, especially in writing), or repeated/demanding questions (after all, they are doing you a favor).
On the other hand, I don't think you should contact graduate students before being admitted.  Most graduate schools receive substantially more applications than they will be able to accept, and sometimes far more.  It's not efficient to spend a lot of time telling people about the department if they are probably not going to be admitted anyway.  Instead, that can wait until the admissions decisions have been made.  (Plus you'll generally get more enthusiastic responses once you've been admitted.)

When I was applying to grad schools, I cold e-mailed some people and got some very helpful responses.
In the first place, you might start by apologizing for cold e-mailing them. If there are any extenuating circumstances, you might explain them. I e-mailed under two different circumstances:

I was accepted by program X, and got the sense that I didn't want to go X, and wasn't planning to fly cross-country to visit -- but I wanted to hear from a couple of people at X first.
I was waitlisted by program Y and I was pretty sure I wanted to go there. But things were going down to the wire, and I didn't get the opportunity to visit before the acceptance deadline.

You will optimize your chances by writing your e-mail in a way that expresses your gratitude and a little bit of your personality. Ask them questions that you can't easily learn for yourself by browsing the department's website. And write your e-mail in a way that makes it clear that you are hoping for a response but then won't need anything else from them. (Unless you end up visiting later, in which case I recommend offering to buy them lunch or a beer.)


text:
PhD dissertation different from master thesis; What might I be able to do about methodology?
I understand that it's possible, thankfully, to have your dissertation in a different topic from your master's thesis, but I seem to have a problem (see below). Do you know any other problems might I run into?
Background on me:
I am finishing up my master's in mathematical finance and now plan to pursue a PhD with my dissertation being in stochastic analysis/calculus, a branch of mathematics used in finance and physics.
My background on stochastic analysis:
I have had 3 classes related to stochastic analysis and 2 classes applying the concepts.
My thesis, being on the P-side of mathematical finance, has extremely little relevance to stochastic analysis, which is more used in the Q-side of mathematical finance.
The ONLY time stochastic analysis ever came up was encountering something in a paper that gives probabilities in the Q-side, and I thought of using a theorem to convert them to the P-side but later found out the paper was unnecessary or inapplicable (I forgot; I think I figured out another solution).
One problem I seem to have:
Some PhD applications seem to require a PhD proposal including a hypothesis, literature review and methodology.
I am not quite sure how mathematical research is conducted. Most of my research has been mainly in finance and statistics. What might I be able to do about this?
I am considering taking a second master's if needed but hopefully it need not come to that.

What country are we talking about here? In Germany, this is very common and you only continue working on your master thesis’s topic, if your thesis resulted in questions worth investigating as a PhD project or if both theses are part of a larger project (and of course, only, if you actually want to).

@dgraziotin That is extremely comforting. Thank you.

@Wrzlprmft Well in general? Any info is appreciated. US, UK, any European country, etc. Like your info. Very much appreciated and very comforting. Thanks :)

Among the about 25 first years we had, I can think of one case in which the phd topic was a continuation of undergrad/masters focus. This doesn't answer your question, but the case described strikes me more as a rule than an exception. This was the US, but not math which might make a difference.

@MrMeritology Thanks for pointing out that my last paragraph may be confusing but that's not what I meant. Will edit.

@Jack OK. Thanks for clarifying your intention.

@MrMeritology Edited.

@dgraziotin Edited (see last part please). I'm very sorry for the confusion. In my case, I feel I am actually changing fields. Technically, mathematical finance and stochastic analysis fall under mathematics, but I think the methodologies are different at least in my case as my thesis involved the part of mathematical finance that has to do with statistics and not the part that has to do with stochastic analysis.

Your situation seems very specific to UK universities and PhD application process.  I'm not familiar enough to answer.

@MrMeritology I think other places besides the UK do that. Never mind the specifics. My primary concern is the methodology. Essentially, I've been doing mostly finance in the master's thesis and have no idea how to do mathematical research besides using stackexchange to do my homework for me. Do you think this will be problematic? Even if it's not for the PhD proposal like if my application was just like the US, is the shift in methodology going to be a problem during my PhD? Or will it being proposed hinder me from getting in in the first place?

@Jack While using StackExchange to answer specific questions is good, it shouldn't be used "to do your homework for you". You can answer your question about methodology by reading research papers, esp. survey articles in the major journals. There are also journal articles specifically on research methods.  Go find them. Do you know Google Scholar? https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=methodology+%22stochastic+calculus%22+%22stochastic+analysis%22&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

@MrMeritology I was exaggerating. I meant the only kinds of non-financial, non-statistical mathematical research we did was problem sets if those count. I consider those research because I asked on stackexchange. Anyway I sort of found the answer elsewhere but thanks for the link and the info :) http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42304/with-a-background-in-mathematical-finance-and-desire-to-apply-for-a-mathematics?noredirect=1#comment94292_42304

If you are accepted into a PhD program, you should consider your dissertation topic to be independent of, and separate from your masters thesis topic. A PhD dissertation is fundamentally different from a Masters thesis.  A PhD dissertation is expected to make a new contribution to research (however small), whereas a Masters thesis is a summary and application of existing research.  PhD dissertations are a deeper dive into a topic or research questions, and an attempt to shed new light on the topic or questions.
You may have a Masters thesis that leads naturally into a deeper investigation as a PhD dissertation.  Or not. You should focus your attention on the topics and questions that motivate your interest in a PhD.  What are the core, unanswered questions?  Which of these questions can you, with your skills and interests, address with some chance of success?
Leave behind the details of your Masters thesis.  Focus on what you have learned in the process, and what new skills or capabilities you have.  Now, with these insights, you should engage with surveys of research in your field -- those describing the unsolved problems or most critical questions.  How does your experience, education, and interests lead you to engage with these unsolved problems or critical questions?

I feel so bad. You presented such a great answer to a situation that is not really mine. Sorry for the confusion. My primary concern is "Focus on what you have learned in the process". My thesis was in the P-side of mathematical finance dealing mainly with statistics. I would imagine there would be stochastic analysis if my thesis was more int the Q-side of mathematical finance. Hence, I feel I have little background in mathematical research particularly for the methodology part of the PhD proposal I have to submit for some applications.

Right so my questions are 1 what might I be able to do regarding the methodology problem? 2 what other problems might I run into?


text:
Is university teaching better than high school teaching experience in applying for teaching-funded PhDs?
When applying for graduate assistantships or part-time teaching for grad school scholarships, is university teaching necessarily better than highschool teaching experience? if so, by how much?
Possibly relevant details:

I am graduating soon with a master's degree from a third world university.
My plan is to get a PhD but am considering getting teaching experience to boost my chance's of getting in.
I am considering teaching at my university (or another university in my country) for a year or so.
However, I have something like a dual citizenship in a first world country in the sense that I permitted to work there in addition to an established residence (my mom and sister live there while my dad and brother live with me).
Said FWC is where I would like to get my PhD.
My parents suggested I teach at my sister's highschool (or some highschool in said FWC since I will unlikely get into one of the universities there).
I am fine with either in terms of job requirements (e.g. highschool has more requirements and students tend to snooze off more), but the pay is alarmingly different by a factor of 5.

Another difference is that if I teach in my university long enough, I might be able to teach or assist in teaching advanced stuff like probability, linear algebra, calculus III or financial maths. There's also a tutorial center nearby and there are occasional students who need tutorials in probability, statistics and linear algebra.

In the US (and probably in Europe too, though I don't have direct experience with things overseas), there is no expectation that candidates for teaching assistantships have any teaching experience.  And at least at my institution having teaching experience would not really have any effect on your chance of being admitted.

Although what @AndyPutman said is certainly correct, so far as I know in the U.S., having some experience with the ambient culture, and some teaching experience in that culture, can be a slight plus, especially if command of spoken English is potentially an issue.

I think it would be a good idea to include in what field you want to pursue a PhD. If, for instance, you think about a PhD in education (possibly in the teaching of mathematics) it could be an advantage to teach at a High School. I don't know how the regulations are in other countries, but in the Netherlands you cannot just teach at a high school without education in high school teaching (after university, a one year master course)

@AndyPutman I was wondering because I was thinking of teaching while applying as I would start applying after the heavy portions of my master's. Thanks.

@MaartenvanWesel Not for what I was going but thanks for the info.

If there is an option definitely university teaching is more valuable as it is at the same level as the teaching you will experience while doing your degree. However, you should consider that PhD is a research-based degree and teaching obligation is not primary concern. So you might get the position without having any teaching experience and finally get your PhD being a year or so younger.

I was wondering because I was thinking of teaching while applying as I would start applying after the heavy portions of my master's. Thanks Kid.