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Post-doc position/fellowship application - PhD limited results due to no supervisor support and small research group - explain in positive way
This is not to blame the supervisor for obtaining few results, but clearly phd students working in large groups or under good guidance can exploit more their potential. Also phd students working in large groups often publish as a co-author just because there is a lot of collaboration within the group. So at the end of the phd students from small groups have had less chances of publishing more.
When applying to post doc positions or fellowship, the applicant must explain what results were obtained during the PhD, the skills that were developed (management, research, etc). Say that during the phd the student did not receive any guidance or support from the supervisor and that the lab only had 1-2 phds and no chance of collaboration within the lab, how can this be explained in a good light and also to show that
1) the student truly acted as an independent and mature researcher without complaining about the lack of supervision
2) to convey the message that the few results achieved during the phd should be evaluated in light of this lack of supervision, and that not being in a large lab did not allow to get those 'extra' papers that phd students in large labs might have chances of publishing.

Your black-and-white view of big vs small research groups does not match my experience of a wide range of variation in both. Sell what you actually did.

As somebody who graduated from a very large CS lab, your assumption that a large group somehow translates into more papers for everybody brings bittersweet tears to my eyes. What it mainly brings, in my experience, is a supervisor stretched too thin to supervise, group politics, and many many students who get somehow left in the shuffle because they were not independent enough to deal with it and not loud enough to make themselves heard.

@xLeitix of course there can be a lot of variation, but clearly a lab where the supervisor doesn't have time for its students and no shared projects, it's very different than a collaborative lab where many students can even get projects started between themselves. Perhaps you are referring to the other end of the spectrum? Getting a couple of 3rd-5th author papers + one first author paper definitely looks better than just the latter.

Don't make excuses because you weren't in a big lab. Tell what you did and what you learned, be honest about it.
Important skills that you have acquired might include

the ability to plan, organize and conduct research mostly on your own. Make sure to point out how this will help you in the position you are applying for, e.g. you will be able to plan projects,...
the ability to network with foreign researchers (if you had almost no one in your lab to work with, you maybe exchanged emails with other labs, worked with them,...?).

These are only two examples of something you might learn in a small lab that you often don't learn in a big group. Depending on your situation, there might be other things of course, but try to figure them out. Then, there shouldn't be a reason to feel any worse than guys from a big lab, who might have one or two publications more than you.

Good answer. "Focus on the positive" is a valuable life lesson for all kinds of applications. It's impossible to frame a story that starts with "sure my results are only medium ..." in a way that makes people want to hire OP.

@xLeitix I know about the focus on positive, that's why I asked how to explain between the line the lack of supervisorship or support.


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First, third, or "we" for Marie Curie Individual Fellowship
Maybe I am overthinking this. But which person should I use in the fellowship application? There are sections about the actual science, about the applicant, and about the exchange with the host institution. Is it ok to switch person according to the section? Or should I refer to myself as the "Researcher" as the templates use?

US-centric answer: use the singular first person in grant applications. "We" is okay but sounds silly (unlike in papers where it is an old and deeply entrenched norm). And as for "the PI plans to blah blah blah", I find that one of the most annoying speech patterns in academia, and believe it deserves to die a quick, merciful death. /rant

Well it seems we have suggestions of using all of the above...

I upvoted @DanRomik comment - but strongly advice against using it. European countries have a much lower - if not negative altogether - emphasis on the individual. Referring to yourself as "we" if the grant involves other people, or "the PI" for individual work, is awkward but still the committeee preferred choice

Optimally, you would check this with people in your field, in the best case somebody who has already written a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship proposal. In my area, the usage of "I" has become fairly standard for personal grant applications, to the extent that using "they" would be considered somewhat unusual. Using "we" for such grants is not recommended, as apparently some people want to see this as a sign of lacking independence. (I completely disagree with this assessment, but why take the risk?).

what is even more standard is to say the PI plans to do such and such. I never saw any application writing "I" or "we".

In a successful Marie Curie IEF, I used both "we" and my name, e.g., "John Smith will ..." This was in CS/HCI.
But, as a native speaker of a romance language, I'm quite fond of the pluralis majestatis (the Royal We), so I didn't think twice about it.

An option that was suggest to me when I wrote my (successful) MSC application was to make use of the chosen project acronym (which you have to choose anyway). Use sentences like:

ACRONYM will solve (world hunger).
ACRONYM will overcome (major problem) by using (fancy sounding technique).

In my experience allows you avoid most cases were you would otherwise want to use "I" or "We" during the scientific proposal part (often simply to allow for the flow of the text). You will be left with cases that specifically refer to the applicant, who you can refer to as you deem appropriate (see other answers).

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Time spent marking essays
A stack of psychology exam essays has just landed on my desk for marking. It was a 3 hour exam with 3 essay questions. This is a final year essay so I do not have to provide written feedback. How long should I be spending marking an essay?

Time you have for marking / number of exam papers

Daniel: The problem is that the question is asking how long you should spend grading these essays. A more general question would be: "Are there general guidelines about how much time I should spend grading (exam problems/homework assignments/essays, etc.)?"

@aeismail sorry to harp on it, but I don't see the difference. Is it I didn't ask for general guidelines or my question was localized to essays.

@DanielE.Shub: The fundamental issue is that the question sounds like you're asking about how much time to spend three essay questions written on a three-hour exam. If someone wanted guidelines for grading, say, a fifteen-page paper, this question wouldn't help them.

This is an optimization problem. However, the information about constraints are lack.

I don't work in a field with essay exams, but I do ask my students to write proofs, so maybe my advice is still useful.
TAs at my university are contractually limited to at most 20 hours of work per week.  You have 60 exams to grade in one week; that suggests an absolute limit of 20 minutes per exam.  Since each exam has three essays, I would aim to spend at most 5 minutes per essay.  It'll probably take longer at first, especially if you also have to develop a rubric, but you'll get faster as you work through the pile.  Aiming for 5 minutes leaves you lots of slack.
Also, I strongly recommend grading vertically—grading all of essay #1 before reading anyone's essay #2—instead of horizontally—finishing each student before starting the next.

I cannot recall the last time I worked a 37.5 hour week (my contractual load). While 5 minutes per essay seems on the light side to me, I think it is probably close.

Although the logistics of the situation dictate one only spend this much time in the given situation I hesitated to give such explicit advice. If the essays were really expected to take 3 hours, I find it unlikely this is a reasonable amount of time to grade them.

@AndyW: You may be right.  But if the university wanted the essays to be given an obviously reasonable amount of grading time, they would have paid for more graders.

Perhaps you meant the Professor for the class? If the class size was 60 one TA is not unreasonable, and the professor should help with the grading as well. Either that or other accommodations should be taken in the future to prevent such a shortened time (or reduce the scope of the essays). I know people who teach mass lectures without TA's, but they don't give essay final exams!

The only analogy's I could come up with had to do with cooking food. Perhaps the external circumstances dictate you only have a minute to cook and plate a hamburger, and someone can say well it takes 10 seconds to plate, ergo I have 50 seconds to spend cooking the hamburger. That doesn't mean you can actually cook a hamburger in 50 seconds.

My school attempts to make it as reasonable as possible. TAs are not allow to mark exams in my school so it makes it difficult. It is a 360 person class and there are 6 faculty members doing the marking. We know to block off the entire week in advance and get teaching relief for doing the marking. We have a good ruberic to start with.

The only hard and fast advice I have been given in general is to not spend more time grading than the person did writing the essay. Note in most instances you shouldn't spend anywhere near that amount of time, but in general you should be cognisant that grading essays is an arduous task, and for a size like 60 it certainly shouldn't be done in one day (I don't know anyone who grades that many by themselves to be frank, all classes of that size I am familiar with have TA(s)).
Other elements will impact how long the grading takes. Such as are you grading all of the exams by yourself or are there other professors/teaching assistants grading exams. If there are multiple people sometimes it is necessary to have a collaborative meeting, and even co-grade several essays to make sure you are being consistent.
For essays people typically make rubrics with which to grade, and this focuses the content for your review (as well as makes expectations explicit to students). The more focused the rubric the easier your task of grading becomes. The only other advice I would give is I typically read all of the essays once, making small comments, marks and notes for myself, and then go back through a second time and grade the papers. This obviously adds more time to grading though.
Not being able to give students feedback is awful for learning, so I would suggest (if possible) you at least keep notes for yourself and/or keep copies of the essays for a short period. Thus if a student requests feedback it will be possible to give them some.

I have 60 scripts and a week to mark them, so I don't think 3 hours per script is possible under any circumstance. I agree about the rubric, 2nd marking, and no feedback.

The first paragraph of this answer sounds like it is saying one should expect to spend three hours grading a three-hour exam ("you should make arrangements in the future..."), which seems wildly off-base to me.  I don't grade essay exams myself, so maybe I am out of touch, but that sounds impossibly high.

I would agree with you Anonymous, and I didn't mean to imply 3*60=180 hours in this instance is appropriate. The advice is most of the time given somewhat in jest, as you don't want to slave over very poorly written essays that the student took very little time to write. I have attempted to rephrase my opening paragraph to make this clear.

In the humanities 4000-5000wd an hour for commented responses on essays.  Two to three times as fast for commentless grading of essays.
This is a "work norm" ala Taylorism, but it hasn't been subject to speed up as far as I've seen (unlike the head count in tutorials work norm, for example).
Source: Australian system, multiple essay based departments' work cultures amongst permanent members of staff; and multiple rounds of multiple sites of collective contract negotiations with casual employees; as a Trade Unionist and department level administrator with previous pay responsibility.

The answer by Andy W discusses the role of Rubrics, which I think is key to simplify grading. They provide better understanding for both expectations and evaluation from the student's perspective.
To add to that, one method that I find works in many situations to reduce grading is to gather students after the exam and discuss the answers in session. This way I can express the points I consider important for a good answer. I realize this cannot always be accommodated in the schedule of courses and exams. But, students appreciate the opportunity to ask questions etc. The grading can then be done quicker since I can refer to what was mentioned in session rather than making many detailed comments. The comments necessary will then be more of a summary connecting to the rubrics and how the answer fills (or not) these criteria.
To say how much time is needed for the grading is difficult in detail but I believe significant reductions can be made, including post-grading discussions with students.

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How to know when you should change what is taught during a lab classes
I teach a lab class that is only constrained by some broad learning objectives. I have been using the same project now for 5 years. It now runs very smoothly and I know what difficulties the students are likely to have. I think that is an advantage, but teaching the class is beginning to feel stale and I am worried that hurts the students. Given I could easily chose a brand new project and still deliver the learning objectives, how do I know when it is the right time to change topics.

The interesting question is, does the project feel stale for you or for the students? The students are, after all, only doing the project once, so there is in principle no harm in using the same project year after year.
Of course, there is the possibility that the project that was cutting-edge when you defined it is now an old relic, using methods and technologies that nobody actually cares about anymore. In this case, you should of course move on, but if this is not the case, I see no inherent value in changing the project (especially since any change also means that the first iteration of the new project will be a bit rough around the edges).

I think that "who finds it stale" isn't very important.  I find that when my professors think what they're teaching is "stale," the attitude passes down to the students.  Sure, the project is brand new to me, and might be exciting, but if the professor's attitude shows "I've been over this a thousand times in past years, and I'm bored," it makes the activity less interesting for the students.  (My $0.02)  But, if the professor can keep their disinterest to themselves, then I totally agree with this answer. +1

@anorton I agree.

My high school Physics teacher changed his course every two years. The reason was that after that time, he would start thinking that what he was teaching was way easier than what it actually was, and he wanted to remind himself of that. Of course, the content was almost the same, but the notes and the preparations were brand new.
A lab is of course very different, and having a rock solid set up is very useful (better than spending an hour just to find out that one of the cables was broken inside, happened to me).
You could take advantage of your knowledge of the instrumentation by using the same machinery, but slightly changing and improving the experiment. For example, instead of reading values from the LCD screen of a multimeter, you could upgrade to a USB one and get the full stream of values (budget allowing). Then, one could try to do a finer analysis of the data. Another option is to look into the residuals of your data from the theoretical curve, and see if there are any patterns beyond noise, and try to figure out why.


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Etiquette/social norms for a grad student toward a faculty going on sabbatical
I took a class with a professor and really liked his teaching.  Since then, we've had several conversations and I've gone to him for advice once.  While I don't work with him and I don't know if he'd necessarily consider me a friend, I do feel like we've had a number of positive interactions.
He's going on sabbatical within the next few months, and I'm (crossed fingers) on track to graduate this next May, which means that there's a fairly high probability that I will be gone before he returns.
It feels premature to be saying goodbye to him now, around a year before I'm (possibly) leaving.  If I graduate on time and he isn't back, do I just shoot him an e-mail which seems a little impersonal?  Leave a handwritten note in his mailbox?  Or is that really weird?
Is there a standard way of saying goodbye when I know there's a decent chance that I won't get to do it in-person a year from now?  Or is it just normal that professors don't expect/aren't surprised when students they know are gone when they come back?

When a professor goes on sabbatical for a year they know full well that students will graduate in the meantime. They have seen this happen from both sides (they were students once and their professors took sabbaticals as well.) There is no standard way to say good-bye. A note,  either electronic or physical, delivered before you leave is appropriate. So is asking the professor in question if they will be attending any of the graduation/end of year ceremonies that you will be having. Or you can simply say good-bye the last time you are going to see them before they leave since it may be the last time you see them.
General advice for keeping it from being "really weird" is to keep whatever you do short. Rambling will make it get uncomfortable for both of you. You have three basic things you might want to say: thank you, good-bye, best wishes for your sabbatical. You don't need a lot of words to get through those ideas.

Don't say goodbye until you graduate!  Send a short note when you're done thanking the professor for the positive interactions ... that's usually more than enough.


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How to recruit a post doc from an area outside your labs expertise?
I have just been given a dataset, and hopefully the money to hire a post doc to analyze it. The data set requires a post doc with experience in health informatics. No one in my deptartment, including myself, has experience with health informatics. The dataset is about 4 orders of magnitude bigger than anything anyone I know has looked at, and 2 orders of magnitude bigger than the largest published datasets in my field. How do I go about recruiting and hiring a post doc in an area outside my expertise?

A time-honored method is to identify professors around the world who are experts in the desired area, contact them, and ask if they have grad students who will be finishing soon and might be interested and qualified.

Grad students or postdocs looking for a second postdoc.


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Ownership of equipment purchases during Marie-Curie Individual fellowship
I know there is a related question Does equipment purchased with grants stay with the PI? but I'm not sure if Individual Marie-Curie Fellowship follow different rules. I am talking about personal equipment like computers, monitors, etc. not lab equipment like pipettes or microscopes. It is true that technically the funding is given to the host institution but the project is self-standing and the Fellow is not a permanent staff, if that makes any difference.

If you really want to know: Ask your institution. Otherwise, just wait and see what happens.

In my experience, this depends on the rules of the host institution. Some institutions will allow researchers to keep the equipment purchased (as well as books etc.), while others want to retain it for themselves after the end of the fellowship. This can be the case even if the equipment in question has lost most of its value over the duration of the fellowship, or the institution already has the books in their library etc.

... some institutions also might not formally allow to keep the equipment (I guess this is problematic, since it is public money), but might just silently ignore if you keep it.

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Is it better to cite a PhD thesis or an article under review?
A collaborator of mine has finished and defended his phd thesis, he has also submitted one chapter of the thesis as an article, and now this article is under review.
I am submitting an article and I want to cite this work, which one of the two should I cite? And if I cite the article should I use "Smith et. al, in review unpublished or pers. communication"
I was thinking that even though not peer-reviewed, a thesis might be better than something under review.

Might get different opinions on this, but I would say that if the thesis is publicly accessible, I would prefer to cite the thesis, but hopefully his article finishes review before yours does and you can replace with the new citation before final publication.

I would cite both.

Do you know if his article will be accepted? Would you know so soon enough? If there is a chance that it will be rejected (there always is but you may have a feeling of the quality of his article) I'd cite his thesis.
In any other case I'd cite his peer-reviewed article with Smith et al., under review or Smith et al., submitted to (name of journal). Papers are usually more accessible and perceived to be of higher quality than theses and it would also give him one citation on his article already.
Or, as Pont pointed out, cite both: Statement in your paper (Smith 2016 [this would be the thesis], Smith et al., under review [this would be the pending article]).

There is no way to know if an article will be accepted ahead of time.

@user4050: Of course not but you may have an opinion of the present article or the past quality of works from your colleague.


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Can I write a template just like the Elsevier LaTeX template?
A scientific  institute wants me to write a LaTeX template just like the articles which are published on the ScienceDirect website, in other words, the institute wants a template like the following:

Is it OK to do so with regard to copyright issues?

Elsevier has its own LaTeX templates; check whether they come with a permissive license. If not, ask Elsevier.

It is a bit odd the institution wishes that their online stuff looks like a well known publisher?

@JonCuster: Is it? It may depend on what it is for (the question doesn't even mention the vague "online stuff" you assume as a use case), but picking one of the few commonly used styles of "official publications" seems common enough e.g. for paper-like student essays and similar.

@O.R.Mapper - it might be fine, it might not be, depending on the institution and what they are trying to do, which is not made clear in the question.

Clearly using Elsevier trademarks (like the logo, and journal identity) is out of the question. I suggest asking your insitution's legal people, or, if available, someone in the library who knows about copyright, how much of the general layout could be adapted.

If you check it on Elsevier web page, it clearly states that modification of the manuscript template is totally ok and they provided the download  link.
On the other hand, there are also some other templates that are specific to a journal that is stated to be ethical if you ask the editors' permission.
Check the page out to get more instructions and useful information.

Does it look like that picture? In my experience, the submission template provided by Elsevier journals does not look at all like the final articles they publish.

@mehrdadzandigohar: The draft version of elsevier articles doesn't look like the final version at all.


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How to find articles containing specific keywords such as "cosmology" in several scientific databases?
I need to check articles containing specific keywords such as "cosmology" daily. It takes long time to search one by one search engines and databases such as ScienceDirect, GoogleScholar, arxiv, and similar ones.
Is there a service or application to search in all of these websites?

ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and other publisher or database services allow you to save a search and have any new items matching that be emailed to you (though it may not always be within a day - I vaguely recall that I usually knew about PLOS or ScienceDirect papers before I got the email - often via the Google Scholar alert! Still fairly timely, though.)
arXiv allows you to get a daily email with all new papers in a specific subject category. I don't believe it supports keyword searching for alerts - however, one of those categories is cosmology, so it may work fine for you.


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Why are there dollar amounts listed near the copyright information for journal articles?
Specifically I am looking at this paper, but I've seen these in other papers too. At the bottom of the first page, it has some metadata and copyright information:

© 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
1549-6325/2019/02-ART29 $15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3301312
ACM Transactions on Algorithms, Vol. 15, No. 2, Article 29. Publication date: February 2019.

I understand the copyright notice, and the DOI, and the human-readable citation information. But what is going on on the second line, besides year, issue number, and article number? What is 1549-6325? And what, if anything, costs $15.00? Is the $ character being used to mean something else here?

In itself that doesn't seem illogical
However, if the article is being copied at all, what difference could it make whether the copy was sent out as a pile of paper, or a digital file ?

This is called a Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) fee code.
When you request a book via Interlibrary Loan (ILL), the lending library physically mails the book, and eventually receives it as a return. Today, when an article is requested, the lending library scans it and sends the PDF. (It used to be photocopied and mailed). This is far more efficient than mailing the whole journal two ways.
However, because the article is being copied, it may exceed fair use and become a copyright violation. In 1978 the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works studied this issue and provided guidelines on how much copying should be seen as permissible by libraries. The suggested limits include that a library can request five articles per title per year, among other conditions.
When these fair use conditions cannot be met, (e.g. a sixth article is requested) a copyright license must be obtained. The fee code line indicates the publisher has set up a voluntary agreement through the Copyright Clearance Center to collect a $15 royalty for this license. The other information is used by the CCC to identify the article and determine which publisher to remit the fee to. The fee code may be listed on each article, or it may be listed in the printed front matter to apply to all articles. I believe this scheme also applies to certain other library photocopying cases outside fair use, like making a copy for course reserves.
Including the fee in print is from the days before the Internet. The library would make a list of all fee codes that were due and send it with payment to the CCC.
Today, we have online systems. In your example, you can search the DOI through the Copyright Clearance Center Marketplace. If you go through the wizard and select "Report interlibrary loan borrowing", you will see a $15.00 per-copy fee, plus a CCC processing fee.

You can read about this process in the article "Pay-per-view in interlibrary loan: a case study" (J Med Libr Assoc. 2012 Apr; 100(2): 98–103.) This article points out that the listed cost plus CCC service fee is often higher than purchasing the article direct from the publisher.

By the way, for practical purposes: don't ever pay this fee. Even if you can't get access from the journal, just write an author and they'll usually be happy to email you a copy (perhaps a slightly pre-official version, but often the actual published version).

I haven't noticed this before, but it does match the cost of the individual article for a non-member who does not have access:

Click "Get Access", "Get this Article". You may need to access from a different device/location or at least an anonymous browser session if your institution subscribes to the journal.
My suspicion, though this is far outside my area of expertise, is that they are including this amount in the document as a marker of its value alongside the copyright notice, such that if they were to bring a lawsuit for violation of that copyright, they can point to that amount directly and claim in court that the person they are suing clearly knew of it's value ("it says $15 right there! you posted it on your website and it was downloaded 10,000 times and so you owe us $150,000") rather than having to provide separate documentation. I have no idea whether this is actually legally useful, or just a suggestion from someone who thought it was legally useful but has no better legal background than me.
For the rest of the numbers:

1549-6325/2019/02-ART29

Anyon points out in a comment that 1549-6325 is the ISSN for ACM Transactions on Algorithms, in addition to the 2019 = year, 02 = issue, and then this is the 29th article in the issue. Overall it seems like this is the publisher's internal system of shorthand for identifying a specific article and would be unique for every article they publish.


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How do I ask instructors for more challenging and/or interesting homework?
This question is prompted mostly due to a Numerical Methods and Computer Programming In MATLAB course I took this summer (textbook). To summarize the course it's basically methods for solving linear, nonlinear, and differential equations and systems of those equations, and learning how to program the respective algorithms in MATLAB.
I'm a fast learner for most topics. I already have programming experience, so that half of the class was no challenge. The mathematical concepts I grasped quickly, and as a result most of the lectures were too slow for me.  This isn't anything new for me, I often have this issue.
The bulk of the homework problems given were standard book problems and had no real significance or relation to the application of these methods. There were one or two problems that were applied and those were great, but to be honest I have a problem doing homework and have had it for around 20 years now (since grade school). I understand the importance of it, it's rarely (if ever) difficult for me, but it bores me and I have no motivation to do it. It doesn't help that now I work full time with a wife and 1.5 children, so there is a small window in which I even have to fit this homework.
A couple of weeks into the course I thought perhaps if the homework was more interesting somehow (puzzle-like, application problems (aka story problems), etc) then that would be better for me, but I didn't know how to approach the professor about this. Long story short the bulk of the grading is homework and I'm not doing as well as I could be. It's likely too late for this class, but how would I approach this in the future? It'd be torture to have to continue down this road.

Maybe get a hobby or put time into researching interesting topics for yourself?

Turn it into a challenge. I'm like you, and I hated school, and was not motivated to do homework, but doing homework is part of what you're learning, so... you need to learn to do it. If it you have to play mental tricks with yourself, like starting a stopwatch on trivial programming tasks, do it. This is not going to change, it will follow you your whole life and you need to find a way to get past it. Doing the trivial and mundane is a constant challenge for folks like us. The world is 99% trivial and mundane, though.

@nyuszika yeah, wife was pregnant, so it's 2 now :-)

So you're saying that the homework was too boring, and that's why you're doing poorly? That seems a little iffy to me.

@JimConant I get bored easy, what can I say? Low motivation to do the coursework although I comprehend it very well.

Why not just ask?  Maybe this seems naive but if you approach the professor and say, honestly, you don't feel you are doing as well as you could or even should be, they would be willing to discuss that; a student taking an interest in their learning is a valuable thing.  You can state your desire for creative questions, and ask if the professor has any recommendations for outside material, or has some of their own.  I can't imagine any professor being anything but delighted at the prospect of a student being self-aware of their performance hurdles and seeking more advanced knowledge in the professor's field.

As an instructor, I can verify that I am excited when this situation occurs. This kind of interaction leads to good things.

As a teaching assistant, I have had this happen to me a couple of times and I have been very happy with those students.

He's not completing the "easy" work though - in that position, I wouldn't give a student more challenging work to do. You have to get past the easy stuff first - sometimes just saying that is enough motivation for them to do the homework. "Show me how easy this is for you and I'll give you something harder" - but simply saying it's too easy isn't the same thing. Prove it. By getting it done.

You can try to make the homework interesting on your own. This is a roundabout way around the problem, but it's worked for me in the past.
I had a Space Propulsion class that resulted in a lot of rather tedious homework, even when I wrote the solutions in MATLAB. By the end of the class I was writing programs that allowed you to 1. vary the parameters of the problem, and 2. Show a graphical visualization. If you're writing Diff EQs, try adding the ability to vary the constant parameters, add a vector field graph, and put it all in a nice GUI.
If the teacher/TA spends any amount of time grading the homework (some classes I've taken, they simply make sure you attempted the problem), then they will probably appreciate the time and effort. I got extra credit for a number of my homework submissions that I did in this way.

But (s)he might say "that was not required". Also, you might treat casually the banal exercises and risk of losing points. Is it worthwhile?

The worst that can happen is that you learn far more from the assignment than you otherwise would have, but receive a couple fewer points. If this strikes you as a bad outcome, you should rethink why you are taking this course.

Not challenging enough homework problems is not a good excuse to not do them. The homework is necessary when taking programming/math courses. You need to do them so that you know how to crawl before you learn how to run.
You must finish the homework to prove to yourself and your professor that you already know the basics and you're ready to learn the advanced materials. You take the finished homework to your professor and tell him that they are too easy for you and you want more so that he can give you more interesting problems to work on. Professors would really like the students like you because they know they have good and eager to learn students in the class.
I suspect you're in the wrong class. It probably is offered to the students who do not have strong math background as you do. (This is not unusual. I had personal experience that students in my programming class did not know what logarithm is.) In the future, check with the department to make sure the course contents fit into your level of knowledge before you take them so you won't waste your time and money.
Best wishes!

You're absolutely right, it's no excuse. I never thought about looking for alternative courses, I just follow the flow chart they give me.

@MDMoore313 The flow chart they gave you is probably designed for average students. It may not best fit to your case. Again, talk to your prof and best wishes.

Instructors have to strike a balance for the group as a whole, which will always leave some students over-challenged and other under-challenged. Having a chat with the instructor about what else you might be doing is not a bad idea, but in general, students that are ready for more are usually also able to find good challenges for themselves. Certainly in this age of the internet!


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In what ways would co-authoring a graduate research paper as an undergraduate help me?
I have been working on a graduate level research project, with the bonus of being listed as a co-author if I make a significant contribution (which I likely will). I am still an undergraduate, but have significant experience (professional and educational) in the field.
My question is: Is this a big deal? If I go to grad school in that field, would this allow me to obtain a PhD quicker?
What if I don't go to grad school, but choose to work in the field, would being listed as co-author on a research project of this level hold enough weight to warrant listing on my resume?

It doesn't exactly "allow you to get a Ph.D quicker". However, you would have more experience in academic writing than if you hadn't contributed to the writing in the paper. Writing a paper isn't just "writing" a report - a lot of analysis, interpretation, and technical work goes into papers and these are skills you want to have as a Ph.D student. Being a co-author on a paper will make your application stand out.
If you go into any job, you can list this as a project that you have worked on. If you are familiar with the contents of the paper, then you can talk about it as if it was another project that you've worked on. Having your name on the paper is verifiable and can look pretty impressive especially if you are familiar with the details.

It won't let you get a PhD quicker, but it will improve your chances of getting into PhD programs.  It will also give you valuable experience in the process of writing a paper and getting it published.  This could result in you publishing more papers during your grad school career (because you'll be better at it), which could improve your chances of getting a desirable job after you finish your PhD.

The benefit will hopefully be that you get to learn how to prepare and write a scientific paper. If you continue to graduate school then having been involved at this level will obviously be a positive. If you are not planning to continue with research you will still benefit from learning the process since academic writing is something you will likely continue doing in a professional role. In addition you will have some insights into how papers are written which may help you read and assess papers and reports. Since communication through written reports is key for any academic work this will be of use to you. It may not count for very much when applying for a job but you should also consider the skills you will improve when taking part in such a process.


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Is referencing another PhD dissertation or Master's thesis a reasonable practice in a Master's thesis?
Not much literature can be found on what I'm working on and it's all by the people I work with. Am I able to reference their work/text in my thesis or I should just stick to referencing material published in journals and conferences, however remote they might be and just get away with whatever's not published and not back them up?

Also see this question Can you cite other master's theses when writing your own?

Why would you think it wouldn't be okay? If the information is available there, why not use it?

If you use someone's previous work, you must cite it. No exceptions.  It is completely irrelevant whether that previous work appears in a journal, conference proceedings, PhD dissertation, technical report, arXiv preprint, working paper, lecture notes, newspaper article, TED talk, StackExchange comment, or cocktail napkin.

I cited three PhD dissertations and two Masters dissertations as part of my Masters dissertation.  Reference it like you'd reference any other publication.  In fact, I also cited a lecturer's powerpoint slides.  Actually, now that I think about it, I cited my own previous work at one point too.
Every source is valid so long as you reference it.  That's not to say that every source necessarily carries weight, of course.  You have to evaluate the source.  But from a citation point of view, it's all good.

Yes, you are able to reference their work in your text, as long as you make clear in the bibliography what type of document (master thesis, PhD thesis, Institution) it is.
However, i would not consider it to be ideal if your work critically depends on such references in the sense that a central assumption or starting point in your thesis breaks down if the reference provides false or incomplete results. Particularly in the case of master theses / dissertations it is not generally clear whether and to which extent they are peer-reviewed and what their overall trustworthiness is. With (accepted!) PhD theses things are better, as these normally go through a review process. Furthermore, for PhD theses i would expect that their main points have been published somewhere (conference or journal) and then you clearly should prefer these publications.

There's a reasonable argument to be made that it's unwise to depend critically on anything you can't verify - including things in peer-reviewed papers, which have been known to be wrong. Ultimately, peer review is just as much a human activity as anything else, and is prone to error - the best that can be said of a peer-reviewed paper is that it has been checked by somebody of unknown experience for an unknown amount of time. In many cases, people put a lot of effort into peer review, but that's not always the case, and even when it is, errors creep in. You're well-advised to check yourself.

This is really an addendum to the two previous answers, but nevertheless it is still answer-worthy IMO.
It is mostly true that with PhD theses, the crux of the stuff is generally published in journals etc. so that those count as more reliable sources (I dare say primary sources). However, it is not necessarily true that this will always be so. For instance, I am aware that at least in Theoretical Physics, University of Bielefeld is an example of an institution where it is not mandatory to have the stuff written in the thesis published. Theses are judged for what they contain and whether or not that represents an original contribution to the subject. I am using this only as an example, the general statement is - it is possible for a PhD thesis to contain original stuff which is otherwise unpublished. And at any rate, it is possible to have stuff written more elaborately than in the published papers (mine is an example). (Occasionally, this might also be because some letters journals have stringent limits on word counts and/or pages, so people shrink stuff there and feed out many more details in the thesis).
Thus, there is no harm in citing a PhD thesis, provided you mention that it is what it is.

"not mandatory to have the stuff written in the thesis published" - in particular, all the stuff. In fact, at my university it is mandatory to publish some parts of your research before writing your doctoral thesis, but at the same time, it is also mandatory that the doctoral thesis contains more than just the sum of all previous publications.

If others have completed theses or dissertations related to the topic you are studying, I would definitely cite them. While writing my MA thesis, there were very few peer-reviewed publications available in the particular region I was working in but there were a number of recently completed theses and dissertations. Some of these were excellent and provided great data to support my own arguments, while others were of lower quality and were not cited. As long as you're critical of the content and argument of these documents you should be fine.

As with most referencing questions, you have to consider what you're depending on them for.  If it's a matter of "further details on the previous experiment", a thesis is likely to go into much more depth than a paper and is the best you're likely to get.  If it's "so-and-so proved that..." you should really be looking for something peer-reviewed.  Most cases will fall in between, and then you need to use your judgement and be clear what you're citing.

you shouldn't quote a master's Thesis because they are typically not published. only published work should be cited in a research work. If it hasn't been published no one is responsible for the Content

And if they are published? Your whole argument builds on this (false IMHO) assumption.


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Postdoc supervisor's impact when applying for a follow-up job
I'm currently a postdoc and I'm planning to apply for faculty positions soon. However, I'm pretty sure that my current supervisor wants me to stay on for another year. When applying for a job, I'm usually required to state 3 referees. Am I expected to state my current supervisor as one of the referees? Is it going to weaken my application if he's not among the 3? Due to the mentioned conflict of interest, I would rather state other people I've been working with...

For how long have you been in this postdoc position? It may affect whether you or the advisor is viewed as the "bad guy" here.

Unless there's a contract (and leaving early is violating it), a supervisor doesn't "own" the postdoc. Maybe they have joint projects they are working on, and maybe the supervisor would like to get something to get to completion, but it's not clear that this discussion has happened: the "pretty sure" is a bit of a warning sign. While this doesn't help with your question, I wonder if you've spent enough time talking to your supervisor about what your plans: maybe this question will be moot.

+1 for Ask your supervisor.  If she's willing to write you a reference letter, great!  If you don't have a contract to stay, but she isn't willing to write you a reference letter, ask why.  She might just think you're not ready (in which case you should take her advice seriously), or she might just pull the "loyalty" card (in which case RUN!)

@eykanal: 2 years so far.

If you need to list references, you will almost certainly be expected to list your current boss—in this case, your advisor—as a potential reference. At the very least, if you do not, there is a non-insignificant chance that at some point in the interview process you'll be asked at will ask why he wasn't listed. You should have as good of an answer as possible ready.
Note that stating "I'm ready to move on, but he wanted me to stay on" may raise flags for a potential employer, as they could wonder whether this reflects a lack of loyalty on your part.

I personally think that if any academic is questioning "loyalty" then you should stay well away from them. Academia should not be about building little empires at the expense of your postdocs/grad students (though it often is). As JeffE mentions in his comment (paraphrasing) if they "pull the "loyalty" card ... RUN!"

@eykanal: The person in question is a post-doc. Postdoctoral appointments are typically two to three years. Nobody should raise a stink if a postdoc says "I want to do something new" beyond the first two years.


text:
Is it possible to study abroad as a PhD student?
I hope to enter a PhD program in economics in the next few years, ideally at a top US school (Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc.) Are there usually opportunities to study abroad during such a program? For example, if I attended Berkeley intending to focus on macroeconomics, would it be possible to study abroad with some of the macro theorists at Cambridge or U of Edinburgh?
This would not be an opportunity to "experience the local culture," which many undergraduate study abroad experiences focus on, but more a chance to gain multiple perspectives from academics in different countries. In my opinion the rigors of a top PhD program rule out the former.

I don't quite know about PhD. but CMU has a Masters program in collaboration with a University in Portugal where you spend one year in CMU and one year in Portugal learning and doing Projects at both the places.

I don't think what you're describing is all that common, and I've never heard of any sort of systematic program, but it does happen.  I ended up spending two months abroad during grad school to participate in a once off trimester program in my area of specialty.  There weren't any standard arrangements in place, though: my home university (very generously) moved things around so I could do it.  I think I've heard of other cases, all similarly involving unique circumstances like faculty moving around or particular personal connections.

Same here.  My advisor moved from the US to Germany two years into my PhD; I followed him for one semester.

Pretty much this: there are no standard programs. Everything has to be agreed upon and arranged by the institutions involved. However, I think there is a lot to be gained by doing some sort of stint away from your "home" group. I had to do a three-month internship as a condition of my fellowship; it was hugely influential for me, as it led me to consider a whole different career path (government research) that I would never have imagined pursuing beforehand.

In the mathematics milieu, there'd be little motivation to do this, and several motivations to not do it. E.g., if one is in a top-ranked program, contact and connections with the faculty there, e.g., one's thesis advisor, are critical, not only to eventually generate letters of recommendation but, presumably, to be exposed to their ideas, their ways of thinking, and many intangibles.
A scenario in which I could imagine "travel abroad" would be professionally useful would be in which one found oneself in a "second tier" program, but somehow had the opportunity to "visit" a "first tier" program for a substantial bit of time. Then the point would be to pay attention to the ideas and viewpoints of the faculty there... obviously... and eventually elicit letters, maybe?
Otherwise, merely dislocating oneself from one's base is pointless.
Edit: quite apparently (in light of JeffE's comments and whoever's downvotes and such) there are varying viewpoints on the benefits-or-not of "study abroad". Presumably this is related to one's mental model for what happens in grad school, especially the role of the advisor, but also the "maturity/responsibility" of grad students. Also, while "travel is broadening", depending on one's model "broadening" may not be the goal of grad school. Sure, the extent to which "travel" makes provincial prejudices harder to maintain, one might hope that being at one of the best places avoids that already. If one's model views advisor/student as master/apprentice, disconnection seems undesirable. If the model views the advisor as merely an older colleague who's been successful, then very different actions seem reasonable. The latter sort of model-feature is arguably a corollary of the "grad student as independent thinker" principle. (My preferred tweaking of this is to "critical thinker".)
To my mind, the bottom line is that some of the most interesting projects/issues have enormous and informative backstories very badly documented in the formal literature, so that even a very good grad student has tremendous difficulty assimilating things. Optimistically/ideally, one can get different perspectives on these issues by talking to different "top experts", hence motivating "travel". However, a key bottleneck is that it may take a few years of full-time attention to catch on to a mature expert viewpoint. If there were a unique, objective such, then one could get variations on it from various experts. However, it is not at all clear to me that there is such a unique, objective unifying "story".
In fact, the variations on what might have been "the standard story" appear to often be fairly critical, and the variations and nuances thereof take a long time to get a grip on. Thus my raising the "apprenticeship" model.
As hinted at, if grad school does take "several years", maybe there is more room to fit in residence elsewhere, but some of the elite programs like people to finish in three or at-most-four years, and then it's harder to see how this would work out.

I strongly disagree.  Taking a semester away from one first-tier program to visit a first-tier program in another country is a win for everyone.  The several years in the home department are more than enough to osmose ideas and generate good letters, especially if the time away leads to good research.  Staying at home can easily lead to tunnel-vision, even in the best departments.

I suppose it all depends how long one spends in grad school. But if there's that much slack, why not finish the degree faster and do a post-doc in the other place, rather than go as a grad student? I don't see a benefit to spending more time in grad school.

Apparently you think that the time away is a "break" from the PhD.  That ain't necessarily so; if anything, especially in mathematics, the opposite is more likely.  I made enormous progress toward my PhD dissertation during my semester abroad (one semester out of eight).

Not thinking that it's a "break", but not necessarily to the point. It's true, there is the internet, but what replaces weekly one-on-one face time with one's advisor? Certainly such things could be managed nowadays infinitely better than Before Internet, but the alleged "tunnel vision" risk and such seems unsubstantiated to me. At second-tier places, yes, for sure.

what replaces weekly one-on-one face time with one's advisor? — Weekly one-on-one face time with someone else, obviously.  And I've observed "tunnel vision" from people coming from even the strongest departments (Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, ....)

Well, presumably you speak from experience, but my experience (math, not CS) is quite different, both my own experience and observations of students at various places. If anything, even good students seem inclined to under-utilize the faculty wherever they are. And if one's advisor has a really unusual/good research program, which is desirable, it may easily happen that there's nothing like it happening elsewhere, so "travel" amounts to cutting off from that enterprise. If that's desirable, then why not make the move "permanent"? Apparently the CS world is very different from math.

I'm a bit taken aback by the categoric nature of Paul's advice. As a Europe-based mathematician, I spent three months at a good research institute in another country during my PhD and found the experience beneficial; several of my office mates went to other countries and seemed to find the experience fruitful. It seems to me that travel is an inherent part of academic life. Why not travel as a postgraduate student? The idea that all the best people and worthwhile activity are in your own back yard is liable to foster an unduly insular outlook, in my humble opinion.

It seems like you are talking more about economics in your question, but in fields closer to engineering, doing internships at company research labs seems almost mandatory for excellent PhD students. Visiting other universities is less common, but certainly not unheard of. As such, I would not agree with the general tone of most answers here. I would say, for engineering, spending significant time outside of "your" lab is both common and beneficial to your further career.
I even know of (some) formal exchange programmes that are established to send students abroad. For instance, in Singapore, programmes exist for both incoming and outgoing visiting PhD students. These exchanges can last between 3 months and 2 years, as far as I know, and are supported by government grants. The government of Austria (my country of residence) also has multiple funding programmes running that scholars in various career stages can apply to for funding research visits.

It is possible but very rare. Professors think, if you want to work with us in your dissertation why could you possibly want to go abroad? Some people do internships abroad during the summer while they are studying. Others begin to work with a professor who then moves to a university abroad and the student follows the professor to the new school. That usually implies that the student ends up graduating from the second school and it is a major move.
Finally, some students get a scholarship which sustains them for a year or two to study with a researcher at a top school. At Penn some professors received European students on a regular basis for a year or two, to work on papers together and the students then went back and graduated from their school having done their paper and network at Penn. But if you wanted to go from there to Princeton or MIT, good luck.


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How are DOIs managed for ongoing time-series?
I'm familiar with DOIs been allocated to historic time series, to give academics a unique, citable identifier for datasets. Similar to how a DOI is allocated to a specific journal article.
As the International DOI Foundation says:

A DOI name provides a means of
  persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related
  current data in a structured extensible way.

What's the procedure for DOIs for datasets that continue to grow: for example, a time-series of external temperature data for an airport? Is one DOI allocated to the ever-growing time-series. Is there a DOI for each year's worth of archived data? Something else?

Maybe you want to give an example of a dataset that has a DOI? I was not aware that this is even a thing.

@xLeitix See, for example, the Data cite FAQ.  There are also many Q&As on the topic on [Opendata.SE] Stack Exchange.

That being said, I think this question might get better answers on [OpenData.SE].

I agree with gerrit. This question is much better suited for the Open Data site than here.

If it is off topic here, I think we should let it get closed first before considering migration; see this meta discussion

@xLeitix All data sets at the Dryad Data Repository receive a DOI, and this is the case for most other data repositories as well.

There does not seem to be an absolute rule, though "new DOI for a new version" seems most common. Speak to whoever's hosting your data in case they have a different preference.
The California Digital Library summarises various approaches here. Some require registering a new DOI for each new tranche of the data; some will reuse the DOI but use a new version number or date to help you identify the relevant bit; some distinguish between major and minor additions.
It's worth noting that the "generate a new DOI for a new version" approach assumes that you're adding, say, a new month's data to the set with each version. If it's being updated on a daily or hourly basis, this approach breaks down; you don't want to generate dozens of DOIs for only marginally different versions! Here, the "snapshot" approach recommended by the Digital Curation Centre is much more efficient - produce a static copy of the dataset as it currently stands, on an as-needed basis or at standard intervals, and cite that.

Update: the new STM Report on scholarly publishing, out today, notes that the "The RDA Data Citation Working Group is investigating possible
technical solutions [for dynamic data]" without giving much more detail (p. 140); the most recent material to come out of that group seems to be this workshop report from last year.

That's a great collection of links. All of these approaches and variations on them are used in the wild. Worth noting that the DataCite metadata schema (for dataset DOIs) allows for various types of link between datasets, including "is new version of" and "is previous version of".


text:
Value of scientific community statement on brain training
Recently the "scientific community" made a statement on brain training to inform users that there is little evidence to support benefits from the games. With such an impressive list of signatories wouldn't a systematic review and meta analysis that was peer reviewed be a much stronger statement? What is the purpose of scientists issuing such a statement and what effects will it have on funding to understand how brain training affects, or doesn't affect, the brain?

Actually read an article similar in context to this question. The power of play: The effects of Portal 2 and Lumosity on cognitive and noncognitive skills

In addition to finding what the truth is, an (often underserved) responsibility of the scientific community is to get that truth out to where people can use it.  I wouldn't be surprised if systematic reviews and meta-analyses like you mention have already been conducted.  Those, however, will probably be effectively inaccessible to the general public, from some combination of where they are published and how they must be written.  Public statements in plain language like the one linked are important for getting the scientific consensus out where the public can use it to avoid wasting their time and money on products that don't work.


text:
Teaching a class because advisor bought out and advisor input
The situation is thus: my institution allows professors to buy out of teaching a class.  This semester, my advisor has done so and as a result they needed someone to fill in.  After discussion with my advisor, I applied for the position to gain teaching experience (having had none previously).
Thus far, teaching the class has gone smoothly but our department has a huge waitlist problem.  When I originally applied for the position, the class had 40 spots.  Later, without my input, it was increased to 60, and there were still over 50 people on the waitlist.
Prior to the class starting, my advisor attempted to get the department chair to increase the class size to 90 so that more waitlisted people could get in.  However, the chair responded by saying that the department felt that it was important for graduate students, particularly in their first attempt at teaching, to have a good experience, so they didn't want to increase the class size so drastically without my approval.  I responded telling them that I didn't feel comfortable taking on so many students when I hadn't taught before and the issue was dropped.
Now, in the second week of classes, my advisor is again pressuring me to admit any waitlisted students that would like to take the course, increasing the class size to 70+.  I've told him several times that I am not comfortable with this and thought the issue was closed.  However, one of the waitlisted students has gone directly to my advisor and now he's specifically telling me to admit this student.
As it stands, I currently have 62 students in a 60 person class and I understand that taking on one extra student is technically not a big deal.  However, I feel uncomfortable for several reasons:

It feels like I'm rewarding bad behavior (e.g., the student going to my advisor and forcing entrance into the class)
If I admit this student for going to my advisor, I am concerned that every other student on the waitlist will go to my advisor and I'll get similar e-mails about all of them and suddenly my class size will be 70+ students

Technically, I don't have to admit this student, but that would be going directly against what my advisor is telling me to do.
I guess the questions are:

In the long term, how much control should my advisor have over my class?
In the short term, should I admit this waitlisted student?

Since you say that you technically do not have to admit further students, I assume there is a system for admitting students so how does that system work and who sets the rules? Surely not your advisor. I think information on how your system works may be of use to answer the question.

Just be slightly more scary and students will withdraw.

@Peter: a common system is that the class has a posted maximum size, but the instructor can give permission for additional students to enroll beyond this size. It sounds like the advisor is pressuring Zai to permit extra students to enroll, but Zai (understandably) doesn't want to.

Make a pot of coffee for you and him. Put a mug in front of him and start pouring. Don't stop and let it spill. "Oh! It spilled!" He yells. "Oops, sorry! I thought you always like things overflowing," you say. Put down a roll of kitchen towel and then walk away. Proceed to teach brilliantly and get a better course evaluation than he ever had. Act fully not caring about that at all.

I think you should focus on your students not you. Graduate students always focus on their "research" and forget what it was like when they were undergraduate. That poor little kid did everything he could to come to "your" class. Why not accept him? Your instructor is right. Maybe you will have 5 more students. So what? If you cannot handle teaching to a higher number of people, that is your problem, not your students. You should feel privileged that more students want to attend your class, despite your inexperience.

Does the teaching include elements where time/effort spent increases linearly with the number of students, such as homework exams?  Is reward in any way a function of the number of students?  I think it's normally not but I don't know customs in other parts of the world and in other fields (it would make sense if grading 100 exams gets rewarded more than grading 10, but the world does not always make sense).

@a1exandros There are 110 students who want to take this course and it is the OP's first time teaching. We are not talking about 60 vs 65. Overwhelming a new teacher is bad for everyone.

Just be slightly more scary and students will withdraw. — [citation needed]  If this is a required class, they'll more likely stay and give crappy evaluations.

In the long term, how much control should my advisor have over my class

None, for the duration of this instance. The advisor bought out. You're in charge. End of story. Now you might need some help in standing up to your advisor, and you need to bring in the chair of the department (who's already shown a willingness to help) and/or other senior faculty who manage curriculum activities. Don't do it confrontationally: merely say that you're really uncomfortable expanding the class size and don't feel like it's right to selectively admit students who have access to your advisor, but that you'd feel more comfortable with a faculty intermediary to help mediate.

In the short term, should I admit this waitlisted student?

No. you're right that this is both setting a bad precedent as well as being unfair. Again, as for how to proceed, see above. You haven't indicated exactly how the advisor is pressuring you, but I think it's fair to point out to them that this undermines your authority as the teacher, and you really need to maintain your independence because you're "only a student". Anyone with teaching experience should understand the importance of establishing authority and presence in the classroom.

You are the captain of that ship. You must never forget this, nor should you ever let anyone else forget this.
I have issues with being asked for special things like this and I generally refuse, for two reasons:

The school naturally wants larger class sizes because it means more revenue with less expenses (more students per teacher)
The larger the class, the more classroom management work there is to be done which limits the energy I can dedicate to conveying the points I'm trying to convey, which in turn lowers the quality of the experience for my students

While I not a fan of using your power just to show you have power, I do suggest, especially when you are just starting teaching, that you start small and work your way up...and that you push back when others, including your adviser, are trying to get you to do something you are uncomfortable with.
The first semester is always the hardest (my first semester showed me everything I thought about the right way to teach was wrong). You must also set the tone about who is in charge and when it comes to your classroom, you are. You should not admit anyone beyond what you think you can handle and I think a class of 60 is plenty for your first semester.
When negotiating issues like this with your adviser, you must be able to speak from experience. You will have that next semester. For now, stand strong.
Good luck!

Poor thing... Well, I am not going to teach you to say no because after all he is your adviser and you probably don't want to directly upset him over this teaching fiasco. However, I can provide some tips to be less miserable.
First, refocus. Don't just look at the enrollment, look at your mode of teaching. Some teaching methods, when passing a certain number of students, do not change dramatically even the number of students keeps increasing. For class size less than 20 there may be more group work, interactive discussion... but once it passes 60, upping to 70 should not make you revise the syllabus to any considerable extent. Doing this favor can buy you some brownie points from the department and dean, etc.
Second, once you're over that class size phobia, use your position to negotiate. Ask for a pay increase, if the payment is fixed, ask for a couple extra TAs, if there isn't any, ask for a copy of new software, a few books on teaching and engaging students (those suckers are expensive,) a laptop, a set of whiteboard pens, a plane ticket to an upcoming conference, parking reimbursement, publication fee, journal subscription... whatever you can think of. (I actually was in a similar situation once and I got a conference + hotel + air fare paid for.) Get the most support out of it and don't be shy! Your department needs you and it will do fair things to keep you a happy teacher.
Third, stop over induction. Just because you allowed your adviser to send k more student can never imply he can send k + 1. You're trapped in your little logic maze. Counter offer him sincerely. Tell him that you really appreciate the student's desire to join, and you can up the quota, but in turn make your adviser promise making no more of such exception because the students will be very confused of who is actually in charge, and that will not go well along the semester. He, besides being a jerk, may just be excited that people actually want to learn a subject that he loves.
Fourth, learn to deflect. You can often find a pivotal point to transfer the conflict between you and your supervisor to between someone else and your supervisor. For instance, tell him that you'll think about the 2 extra students, but don't inform the students yet. That way the students will not start broadcasting the trick. Respond yes to the registrar at 4:50 pm of the due date of the add/drop period. Want more in? Your supervisor will have to talk to the registrar, who already seems to be on the side of keeping the size manageable.
In conclusion, excrement like this happens in academia on an hourly base. When you are at the lower end of an intricate power ladder, try to compensate, balance, and leverage. Having taught a big class is a good experience, and judging by the popularity I think the students will be motivated. Do get the most fun out of it, and best wishes to your first course.

Response to comments:

Negotiations don't normally work once the semester has already
  started. You cannot reasonably expect to get extra teaching staff
  support after the allocations process is complete and courses are
  underway. That's one of the reasons for having registration limits in
  the first place!

I think this comment further highlights how self-imposed rigidity can limit our options. First, just because I said TA doesn't mean I won't take a grader, I will even just take a couple more people to move chairs and tables, why not? It depends on OP's needs and I merely provided some examples. Second, tertiary institutions operate in so many different forms and traditions that if we have seen one academic department, we probably have just seen one academic department. Perhaps in our department it won't work, perhaps in OP's it does. I have only worked in two institutions, and this negotiation mechanisms worked in both of them. Once, as I have said, sponsored a conference trip. Another allowed me to up the food budget so that I can have two nights of presentation with refreshment and gave me US$350 budget for course-related expenditure.
The key point, to me, is not if the class has started or not. It's the OP still has power to say no. As long as that is in effect, some form of negotiation should be able to take place.

Negotiations don't normally work once the semester has already started. You cannot reasonably expect to get extra teaching staff support after the allocations process is complete and courses are underway. That's one of the reasons for having registration limits in the first place!

@aeismail - This would depend on the size of the institution at which you are teaching.  While teaching as a grad student, I know that I had graders for some of my larger class sizes.  The OP may know if this is the case at his / her institution.  If so, I would ask ASAP for a grader.  If the OP does not know, then ask around.  There is almost always extra money floating around to higher a few undergrad graders.

@nagniemerg: Graders aren't TA's.


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Teaching timetable conflict
My wife and I teach at different universities. This is the first year that we have run into a timetabling conflict that makes dropping our son off at school difficult. The conflict involves wife's 200+ person lecture that is centrally timetabled in a lecture hall that is in near constant use and my 30 person lab in a relatively unused computer lab. It is unlikely that any type of changes could be made to my wife's class that would help with the conflict. I teach one of 8 sections of the lab. While all the sections occur on the same day they happen in a number of computer labs which have some unused time on that day. I would like to see if I can reschedule, or adjust the schedule, of my teaching. The lab is scheduled to start at 9:00. My son's school starts at 9:00 and I could start teaching at 9:30. Who do I approach and what do I ask for?
I feel like I could try and swap sections with someone else (mine is the only section that starts at 9:00) or I could also ask the organizer for the lab if I can move my section. Is there another option? What is the best way to approach this?

I'm neither a parent nor a university professor so maybe I don't understand the gravity of situation. With that being said, how about taking your son to school half an hour earlier?

@Pouya in the UK (as well as the US, and probably many other countries), you cannot just leave your child outside school unattended, especially a 5 year old like my son.

@StrongBad I would add this to the question. In Austria, you could easily drop off children at least one hour before school started (with supervision, of course), so it is not a given that that's not possible.

@StrongBad, I see. I suggest you add the age to the question. In my place it is part of school life to be there half an hour earlier to socialize with other kids or prepare for the classes (granted that school principals are already there).

Does the kindergarten have any zero period activities? Did you look into before-school daycares near the school?

@StrongBad how much time do you need to get to your university, after you drop your child at school (about 30 minutes)? Also, do you have such classes every day, or two or three days a week?

Is this not something you can discuss with the department chair or undergraduate director? They would be the ones who might be able to help you get the class rescheduled.

I don't think you can ask to move the start of your lab section. As in the other related question about class times, those times are fixed by the university and not really movable without lots of notice. Your best bet is to get together (physically or virtually) with the other section teachers and find someone willing to switch with you. Then you can propose it to the lab organizer.
Outside your university, you might see if there's a friend or neighbor you trust who can drop your kid at school or a way to arrange with the school to drop your child half an hour early. It can't hurt to ask them.

What I was trying to say is my lab is locally timetabled by the department and not centrally timetabled by the university. Our term has not yet started and the students do not know their lab section yet so changing it should be relatively easy and not disrupt students planning, since we haven't let them plan yet.

OH! You should definitely see if it can be moved if no one wants to swap with you!

I don't have constraints like getting a child to school, but I routinely (perhaps once a year) ask the department head for schedule adjustments because the adjustment will make my life easier.  They've always been granted.

I assume getting a baby sitter or a before-school childcare is not an option? In our case, we have the children signed up in the before and after-school program on as needed basis.


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On a Conflict of Interest disclosure, what's the difference between 'ongoing' and 'current'?
For an upcoming publication, the corresponding author has forwarded me the copyright release and conflict of interest disclosure form.
On this form is a table to be completed regarding "Did you or your institution at any time receive payment or support in kind for any aspect of the submitted work", with rows for grants, consulting, support for travel, and so forth.
One of the columns is a multiple-choice question "Is the relationship
current (C), ongoing(O), or past (P)?"
It's pretty clear what it means for a relationship to be 'past', but what is the difference between 'current' and 'ongoing'?  Is 'current' a relationship that existed at the time of the work, and 'ongoing' a relationship that exists at the time of submission for publication?
The additional guidance in the instructions for this table is quite unhelpful, as it gives external instructions to consult for every other column but this one.

Note: Items 1, 2, and 3 listed below come from the ICMJE Uniform Disclosure
  Form for Potential Conflicts of Interest at http://www.icmje.org/update.html
  (dated July 2010), except for the columns in numbers 1 and 2 that ask
  whether the relationship is current, ongoing, or past.

I think you may have to ask the editor or publisher. I have no idea either; they seem to me like synonyms.

You'd have to check with the journal to be certain, but based on what I have seen in other places, I would guess that the difference is whether the relationship causing the conflict of interest is open-ended or not.  Thus, for example:

DrugCo is a major sponsor of a conference, which Prof. X is chairing this year.  This would be "current" because the relationship is expected to end when Prof. X finishes as conference chair.
DrugCo retains Prof. X as a consultant to assist with patent actions.  This would be "ongoing" because the relationship could persist indefinitely.


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Citing a result due to a single author that appears in a paper with multiple authors
Let's say that Jones and Smith publish a mathematical paper containing a result (Theorem 3.1, say,) which is said in that paper to be due to Smith alone but appears for the first time in her joint paper with Jones.  How should I cite this result?
Here are a few examples of ways I might cite the result if Jones were not a co-author of the paper (for definiteness let's say the paper is number 7 in my bibliography):

"By a theorem of Smith [7, Theorem 3.1]..."
"Our argument is based on that of Smith [7, Theorem 3.1]..."
"...implies the hypothesis of Smith's theorem [7, Theorem 3.1]..."

How might I adapt these phrasings to the situation described above?

"which is said in that paper to be due to Smith alone but appears for the first time in her joint paper with Jones". I have never seen such a thing. Could you cite the exact wording that indicates this? That would help suggest how to cite it.

I would just cite it as "Jones and Smith" and not worry about it.  The standard in math is to cite papers by their authors.  If Smith wanted to be cited alone, she should have published the result herself.
I think this situation has some precedent in other fields.  I might be wrong, but think some journals such as Nature (see http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/#a5.5 "author contributions") make the authors disclose who did what.  It does not mean that the paper needs to be cited differently depending on what part of it is used.

Thanks for your answer.  I suspect it may be different in math than in science, because in my experience it is not the standard practice in math to say who did what in a jointly authored paper, so when a math paper attributes a result to one of its authors I would assume that there is a definite reason (e.g. the result was proved before the collaboration began, is unpublished, and is included in the joint paper because it is an essential part of the paper, but doesn't completely dominate the other authors' contributions to the paper.)

Yes, I understand.  I would still cite with both authors and not worry about it :)

The citation is to the paper by both authors, but I think that is not exactly what the OP is asking about.  He is asking whether he should describe the result as being due to Smith or due to Jones-Smith, I believe.

To clarify the question in light of Pete Clark's comment, I should say that I know that the bibliography entry must be "[7] A.B. Jones and C.D. Smith, ...." and the question is only about how to cite their paper in the body of my paper.  But perhaps you already interpreted the question this way.

This is an unusual situation in mathematics: I'm not sure if I've ever seen a singly claimed theorem in a multiply authored mathematics paper except when the theorem has its provenance in explicitly mentioned earlier work of the single author.  (I would be interested to see an example.)  I'm pretty sure there is no "standard" answer.
One idea would be to bail out of listing either author's name: you could just say "Our argument is based on [7, Theorem 3.1]...." This is not ideal: I think that when you cite someone's work in a critical way then their name should appear in the text itself rather than be pointed to / abbreviated in the bibliographic citation.  But this is not a hard and fast rule, so far as I know.
I suppose that if the paper itself says the theorem is due to Smith alone and not Jones-Smith, then you should attribute it that way in your writing.  Thus all of your suggested phrasings seem appropriate to me.  Readers who see "theorem of Smith [7, Theorem 3.1]" and then flip to the end to find a paper of Jones-Smith may be a bit surprised...but then they'll read the paper and see that you've reported the attribution as Jones and Smith themselves did.
If this is a really famous theorem then the community at large -- or even different portions of the community -- may have its own feelings about how to refer to it.  (A vaguely similar instance in contemporary mathematics is that some people speak of Maynard's Theorem and others speak of Maynard-Tao...) In this case, by saying one thing rather than another you may be signalling some kind of political allegiance / personal fealty....Such issues are beyond the scope of this answer.

An example would be the paper "Weakly homogeneous trees" by D.A. Martin and W.H. Woodin, which appears in the following book: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/mathematics/logic-categories-and-sets/games-scales-and-suslin-cardinals-cabal-seminar-volume-i.  The book is mostly a collection of reprinted articles, but includes a few new articles, such as the one mentioned above, that I think are based on older unpublished work.  If I remember correctly (I can't access it now,) the paper states two main theorems, one attributed to Martin and the other to Woodin.

I would like to avoid writing things like "our argument is based on [7, Theorem 3.1]..." for the reason that you mention and also because I have been led to believe that it isn't grammatical (the bracketed expression behaves as a footnote and not as a noun phrase.)

@TrevorWilson, whether it's grammatical or not, it's a very common construction.

@BillBarth Sure, but I value correctness higher than commonality.

@TrevorWilson, English usage is subject to description much more than rules. Last century's grammatical is this century's hillbilly talk.

There is a paper by Gitik and Shelah on real-valued measurability. One section contains results of one of the authors, one section contains results by the other (http://shelah.logic.at/files/597.pdf). Come to think of it, I have seen a fair share of examples.

The examples you suggested are fine even when Jones is a coauthor of paper 7. In fact, I see it as the best way of conveying the information. I have seen such citation being adopted, e.g., in this paper. If you have access to it, see page 258, where the authors wrote

... in Budal’s original derivation [12, eqn (5.2)],

although the cited paper 12 is a two-author paper, as you may find in the references. In this example, one of the authors who cited paper 12 was a coauthor of that paper, so he knew that the derivation was due to Budal alone.


text:
Reapplying to same PhD program after one year, should I state I applied the previous year?
I was wondering if someone who is reapplying to the same program after it was not accepted the previous year is seen as a negative thing.
If in the application form I am asked if I applied the program in the past, should I state that I did or would that look bad on my application?
Why is this question been asked? And does not really matter what my answer is? The university clearly states that all application material is destroyed after a few months. Thus the admission commitee look at this question?

Applying a second time shows that you are determined to become a phd student and do not give up at first hurdle...

EMBL explicitly tells people who haven’t been accepted in the first go (but who passed the initial aptitude assessment) to apply again next year.
They do keep record of your application so lying about it would be very stupid, but re-applying definitely doesn’t harm your chances a priori. In fact, at EMBL you wouldn’t even need to re-take the assessment.
Certainly this is a quite institute specific answer but I’d think that it’s a good rule of thumb. Even if your particular University handles this differently (destroy application material), chances are, somebody will remember you.


text:
Do I need to send e-mail to follow up a PhD interview day?
I had an inteview day for a PhD program at a US institution. I met 4/5 professors and a few phd/post docs students. Should I send a thank you email to my host professor or not? What about the other professors?
I think the interaction we had that day was good enough so I am not sure if an email follow up is really that necessary.

well, I haven't even had time to send out these thank you notes that I have already receieved an offer :-P

A polite and courteous thank-you email is never inappropriate. Also, if you've left anything out of your interview day (or promised to follow up on something), it's a good opportunity to do so.
However, you shouldn't turn this into an opportunity to go overboard and plead or beg for a spot, or oversell yourself. That is unlikely to go over well, and can undo the good job you did on your interview day.

It depends a bit, I guess... I personally think that it's always nice to send a mail and thank the person for the hospitality. I don't think it will increase your chances for the position but hey it's good manners :)
Whether or not you get a position is often related to not only how good you are as an individual, but also:

whether or not you will bring some new expertise/perspective to the lab/group
whether or not the group leader believes you will fit into the existing group (socially/culturally etc..)
whether or not it will cause them an extra effort to get you there (in case you'll require work/residence permit, specific equipment etc)
whether or not they already have a more suitable candidate in mind (it's pretty mean for the individual but also very understandable for professors to have interviews with other candidates when they have already made up their mind about a particular one. Motivation behind something like that could be to plan for future projects or bureaucratic reasons)

These are only a couple of factors I can think of. But to come back to your question; I think you'll have nothing to lose and if anything it'll show that you have appreciated the chance to visit the lab and talked to people, which is a positive thing. ;)


text:
How much time should someone take to respond to a PhD admission offer?
I have received an admission offer for a PhD at a prestigious US university. However I am also currently working in another lab outside the US with a potential to also receive PhD admission there.
I think the deadline to respond to the US school is April 15 but the professor asked me politely to give an answer within a reasonable amount of time, also my former supervisor (which has no interest in the matter) suggest not to string along the US school and try to make a decision well before the deadline.
I feel it might be unethical to wait the last minute because I respect the professor and he might lose good potential candidates. On the other hand I want to wait and see if there is a concrete possibility of pursuing a PhD at this other place.

As soon as you are sure, or April 15, whichever is sooner.
You have no ethical obligation to answer before the April 15 deadline, especially if you are waiting for an offer from another department.
On the other hand, it would be nice to answer earlier if you can.  So it would be nice of you to contact your current department's admissions committee (either directly or through your lab director), tell them that you have another admission offer but would prefer them, and ask if they're likely to offer you admission.  If they haven't decided, it would be nice of you tell them about your April 15 deadline and ask them when they expect to make up their mind.
(I'm assuming that you prefer to stay in your current lab.  If you'd rather accept the pending offer, even if you got an offer from your current lab, then what are you waiting for?  If you're not sure, then what more information do you need?)

Exactly. Figure out what information you need to make a decision, and then you can decide. It sounds like the lab you're in is stalling ? Can you push them a little, or even hint that this other place is waiting and it's in their "best interest" to tell you something ?

In Europe there is no 15th of April deadline and nobody cares about US deadlines (if anything the top institutions would want to put pressure on people to make decisions quick so that they don't loose them as good PhD students are not that many (yes its sad but true)). There are many early cycles e.g. Oxford and Cambridge give people offers before the application deadline date for many US departments. And lets say if you get a funded offer in November if your supervisor is keen you can arrange to start by Trinity term in April.
Also this can be the case if the offer was made in irregular time of the year which is not that uncommon (e.g. in Sweden you can start Phd anytime during the year as soon as the guaranteed funding is available for the entirety of the PhD).
In many places you will be interviewed and asked whether you will accept the offer or not just to make sure you are not going to waste their time for a long time. You might say this is unethical behavior and I agree but it has happened to myself a couple of times. You will be expected to make a decision within reasonable amount of time and that is specific to the institution and how they run their business. Back in the day I had offers that gave me less than a month or ones that were open for a couple of months. If the position is funded and there is an expectation to start ASAP especially if there is a company behind the project you might be called in and be given an ultimatum and I have seen offers being retracted.
Advise: talk with the institution that has given you the offer, explain the situation, and get a date by which you can reply. If it is close enough you might be able to stretch it a bit by asking politely for a week or two more time.


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How to prepare and what is discussed with professors at a PhD interview session? US application
I was told that at an interview session for PhD admission I will be meeting each professor I am interested in for about half hour. I was wondering what generally is been discussed. I imagine it would be mostly how my interests are related to the professor's research and why I am interested in his work.
What would be the best way to prepare for these interviews? Should I read two or three publications for each professor?
On what am I being judged?

Typically, the point of the interview is two-fold: to help the professor to judge whether you are smart and have potential (two separate things), and to help you judge whether you want to spend the next 4+ years working with this guy as your boss. To that extent, you're being judged on your potential, which means you need to show excitement about his research (in that you've read about it and are familiar with it, see below), and lots of enthusiasm. Knowing your stuff is also helpful so you don't look like an idiot.
In most cases, you'll discuss your undergrad work, you'll be asked about your familiarity with the professor's research (basic familiarity goes a long way here), and you'll be told about his current research work. Different professors have wildly different interview styles, so it can be anything from conversational to almost exam-like.
The best way to prepare would be exactly as you suggest; read two or three papers from that professor. I would recommend choosing one with a recent publication date (i.e., within the past 12 months) and the one he has with the most citations. Different search tools allow you to find that for different fields; for example, hubmed allows that for biology/medicine fields.

Good answer. And, to reiterate, since this seems not widely understood, it is future_potential that is important. Past performance of course gives some indication, but this is not the same thing. Look toward the future.