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How to help a student researcher with narcolepsy continue research
I was torn between workplace and here, but I think the question is better here.
I have an assistant researcher that I have indirectly worked with for 3 months, and for the past month have hired directly for a research project full time (they are not taking classes for 6 months to work on my project).  Recently the student informed me they have narcolepsy, and feel it may interfere with their work but would 'like me to understand'.
An important aspect to this is, I do not need advice on legal matters in terms of workplace disabilities etc. (which is why I believe this is not appropriate for workplace), as I have already spoken with HR and I am in a country in which an employer has the power (ie. they told me I can just fire the student, in fact, they were a bit too keen on this, not that I agree with this system at all).
This is a bit different than a physical disability in terms of accessibility, and I don't think it is that comparable to a learning disability as they have no understanding or application hindrance with this one caveat of random extreme lethargic feelings or tiredness.  The closest I can think of is insomnia.  In that type of situation, I could encourage the student to work hours that benefit their sleep schedule as long as they are responsible with it.
Has anyone had experience with a student researcher with this type of disability?  Are there strategies that can help the student perform well?
Update:
The type of work is programming and algorithms.  There are no safety concerns relative to the lab work.

"How to help a student researcher with narcolepsy continue research" - Then I thought about ways to keep the student awake, "to continue research". I'm a horrible person. This seems to be a bit offtopic because it looks like you are seeking for medical advice. If the student can perform well enough despite of this condition then there should not be any problem. If there are no risks to produce damage to anything by falling asleep then, what's the problem?

As a rule, when someone informs you of a disability that can affect their work, the best way to help is to discuss with that individual what accommodations you could make that would be helpful.

@Trylks I am definitely not looking for medical advice.  I am looking for experience with a type of student (granted it may be too narrow of a topic), maybe similar to someone with schizophrenia http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8374/disabilities-in-the-classroom but with a different situation and as a contributor to research

@ff524 I do agree with that, but I think there is some extra responsibility on myself to have a reasonable suggestion, which i would hope can be informed by others in the same situation.  The person is a student and still relatively young, and full acceptance of their 'wishes' may not benefit the situation.  For example, if they feel overcome by their situation and are looking for a 'get out of jail free pass' when work is not done

full acceptance of their 'wishes' may not benefit the situation - Hence why I suggest "discuss with that individual" and not "ask them to email you the list of accommodations they want." :)

@ff524 yes i see your point.  My hope is to find some others that can give a perspective to a similiar situation.  I would like to go into the conversation with some precedent knowledge.  Granted an online forum is not the best source, but considering the advice I have received in my current location (not my country of origin) is a bit far from what i would consider reasonable accommodations for disabilities, I would like to hear from others.

Something that strikes me is that you have worked with the student for one month, and from what you say it seems that you didn't notice his narcolepsy until he told you. This seems to indicate that it does not greatly affect his work.

@fkraiem Yes I thought it was strange, the answer by Stacey is revealing of a possible reason for it.

I have had Narcolepsy for ten years now. I am also currently an undergraduate at university. In my opinion, based on personal experience as a person with narcolepsy, there are a few things important to consider.

Firstly, the severity of narcolepsy is different for all those who suffer it so abilities vary. I am at university full time and whilst I am offered accommodations to assist me, on the whole, I produce high quality work.
Secondly, a person with narcolepsy may doubt themselves regardless of their abilities because others around them are quick to doubt them. This is why, on most occasions, I have not disclosed my condition to employees. Once I am employed, the quality of my work speaks for itself and then I disclose it for safety reasons. This is an internal battle because I fear that I am being untruthful to start with. At the same time, I know the stigma narcolepsy brings and that given the choice between a candidate with narcolepsy and one without, I would lose. If this person has told you about their narcolepsy it means they trust you and respect you and feel compelled to be completely truthful with you. They probably don't want to let you down so they will probably downplay their abilities in fear of this.
Whilst narcolepsy is characterised by 'sudden uncontrollable bouts of sleepiness', it's usually brief and full alertness is resumed after a short nap. Narcolepsy occurs because the hypocretin/orexin have been fought off by an autoimmune disease. This means sleep/wake cycles aren't regular. A person with their hypocretin intact do all their sleeping in one block, usually when the sun goes down. A person with narcolepsy sleeps in smaller blocks of time and stays alert for a shorter amount of time. Theoretically then, a person with narcolepsy can be awake and alert for the same number of hours a day as a non-narcoleptic but needs to do this by by breaking it up into smaller blocks. (You could liken this to differences in diet - some people eat three big meals a day while some people eat six smaller meals a day.)

To conclude, yes narcolepsy makes my life more difficult. I wouldn't be able to succeed at university without the support and understanding I get from the staff. But life is full of challenges and it is the way in which we deal with them that sets us apart. If you have developed a good working relationship with this person, then they already fulfil one important aspect of those needed for the position. A person with narcolepsy is aware of their shortfalls and given the chance, will do what is needed to overcome them. Don't let a diagnosis change your perception - just because a person doesn't have a medical label attached to them, doesn't mean they don't have other relevant faults or issues.
My advice is to write down what is required to fulfil the needs of the research - do it in measurable terms. For example., how many hours a day/week is sufficient? Then sit down with this person and discuss it with them. Approach the requirements as you would anyone else. (For eg. Can you commit to these requirements? etc) If you were happy with their work previously tell them that. Also admit that you don't know much about narcolepsy but you know that everyone is different. Tell them you want them to succeed and you have faith in them. Tell them how important the work is to you and if you think you are a good team, say so.
I hope this has been helpful and thank you for not listening to your human resource department who clearly lack knowledge and empathy.

Great information thank you.  You say you receive support at your institute, would you be comfortable sharing some of them (if they are different than the advice you give in the last paragraph)

As a doctoral student (and research assistant) with narcolepsy I will echo much of Stacey's answer. After outlining the responsibilities and expectations of the job, I recommend meeting with the student to discuss possible accommodations which may allow them to conduct research without creating undue burden on your lab and project. As you mentioned, a flexible work schedule that accommodates their sleep schedule is one option.
Personally, I've worked with my mentor (the PI) to create a very flexible work schedule and we focus more on the outcome of my work than the hours I spend working on it. There are rare times when (due to health insurance glitches) I can be without my medication for a few days up to 1 week. When this happens I make my mentor aware of how this is impacting my functioning; at times we've had to re-prioritize projects during those "med gaps" because I am unable to work as intensely as I normally would. Similarly, because narcolepsy medication can include stimulants, if I catch the flu my physician advises I skip my narcolepsy medication in order to allow my body to naturally rest. So, my mentor is also aware that if I catch the same flu bug as everyone else in the winter, it might knock me out of commission for a few days. Once I am back on my feet (or have received my meds from the insurance company) I make up the hours I missed in the following week.
As mentioned in the other answers, narcolepsy has a range of severity and so the accommodations needed will vary as well; you will have to decide what works for your lab. One last note: as a graduate student there is often an emphasis on working excessive hours or going without sleep to meet the demands of research, classes, etc. This is not an option for me and at times my work output has been compared to classmates who sleep 5-6 hours a night to "crunch" large projects. I think sometimes with "invisible" disabilities or illnesses it is easy to forget the subtle or significant ways it can impact that person's life. The fact that you are seeking information on this topic and investigating ways to be supportive of your student is great.

This may be no direct help, but I knew a narcoleptic in high-school. This is a serious condition. Because of the main symptom, excessive daytime sleepiness, it is very hard for affected individuals to remain alert and direct their focus to tasks such is studying. reading, etc. For comparison, wikipedia says, that narcoleptics feel during the day "comparable to how non-narcoleptics feel after 24 to 48 hours of sleep deprivation" (try to imagine how it would feel like to perform under those circumstances). This is obviously a great hindrance to people in general, but perhaps even more so for academics.
Furthermore, it is very important that affected individuals manage somehow to cope with the condition (which is very hard, serious lifestyle changes/adaptions are necessary), as an excessive use of stimulants may worsen the condition over time. I find this an important point, since people in academia are known to be subjects to stress, depression, feelings of being overwhelmed, imposter syndrome, etc, which all could push the student in question to increasingly use the therapeutic stimulants.
So, in my opinion, if the individual is responsible and has a relatively stable personality, I see no problem in supporting them in their endeavor, by trying to (reasonably) adjust their working environment to their needs.
I'm a strong proponent to inclusion of disabled individuals, so I suggest you should let the student finish the said project, so they might get a feel themselves, if that is really their future. A career in academia isn't for everyone, so there is no shame in quitting and moving on, regardless of any medical condition.

As a grad student with narcolepsy, I was originally super nervous to talk to my PI about it.  Once I got up the courage to do so, I was able to get a number of small accommodations that made things so much better.

Because I am waiting for medication to kick in, mornings are tough. My PI worked to avoid scheduling meetings before 10am. There are many situations where this might not be feasible, but when it is it can make a huge difference.
Sometimes during the day I get extremely sleepy. I used to spend hours trying to fight the sleep off, but now that I have permission to go nap in the breakroom, I can take 10 minutes to nap and reset my body, avoiding the hours I used to spend working inefficiently while struggling to stay awake.
Now that my PI knows, I have also been able to share with her what tends to trigger my cataplexy, which helps me avoid it.

The accommodations themselves are not that big, but they have allowed me to be a much more productive student.

I don't know if anyone is still keeping up with this chain but I just wanted to say to the original poster that I am a bit surprised that your HR Dept. encouraged you to just fire the employee.  I was diagnosed with narcolepsy over 10 years ago and spent about a year and a half working for an employment lawyer as a paralegal.  While every state is of course different, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a part of the Code of Federal Regulations (in other words it applies nation-wide), and it states that an employer must make "reasonable accommodations" for an employee with a disability who is otherwise qualified.  It is likely that in your position you could have fire the narcoleptic employee for his or her condition with no consequences, but there is also the possibility that the employee is aware of the ADA and will consult with a lawyer on the matter, causing you to incur unwanted legal fees at the very least.
In my opinion, for the benefit of all involved, a person in your situation should always make an effort to reasonably accommodate before considering termination.  It could be as little as something like providing a place for the employee to put his or her head down to take a 15 minutes nap during the day.  Considering that the steps of research are typically planned out in advance, I would say that it is probably one of the more manageable jobs for a person with narcolepsy as opposed to something unpredictable.
Of course this is not legal advice but just my individual understanding of the situation.

The original poster might not be in America.

I have narcolepsy and I am a doctoral student. I don't know about for your student, but for me, praise is more productive than empathy, but empathy is much more productive than judgement. Your student will probably benefit more from encouragement and understanding mixed with praise than he/she will if they feel incapable and overwhelmed.


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Do any academic institutions publish objective surveys of alumni satisfaction?
Having seen some questions asking about the costs/risks/benefits of doing a PhD I wonder if any academic teaching organisations actually contact their students after graduation and seek structured feedback (qualitative and quantitative) about the perceived or actual longer-term costs and benefits of their degree (bachelor's, master's or doctorate).  And if so, do any of them publish the results?  My own alma mater have never asked for feedback (just contributions!).

I took part in a survey for my alma mater, but I have not seen the results yet. Only the plans to measure success. And yes, they asked for contributions :). My earlier alma mater did ask a question about how prepared the alumni felt for the job, with good approval ratings, but it is a small, ridiculously selective institution in a not-so-Western country, and is hardly generalizable to anything.

@Stask. The plans look quite serious. I suppose that any interest in performance measurement is better than no interest. But the value of self-assessed performance reports is always questionable, e.g. who reports on the students who dropped out along the way?

One learns from failures more than from successes. So yes, the dropouts should be in the picture. But they are impossible to get -- alumni are hard enough.

"objective survey of [...] satisfaction" Hmmm ... I am so glad I'm not in a people science.

@dmckee. Ha! I guess life must be so much simpler in Physics... dealing with all those concrete concepts like spin, charm, light, virtual photons, ... ;-).

Yes, here is an example.
A quantitative assessment of the 'long-term costs and benefits' is complicated by the subjective aspects of many parameters. For example, some individuals value salary over independence, other don't. But my alma mater, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) does objective surveys and statistics on alumni employment. These numbers should be interpreted knowing that answers are given on a voluntary basis and, the EPFL being modest in size, n is small.
Some examples of the results (for 2011):
"One year after graduation, MSc graduates who did not start PhD studies are employed at 90.9% by the industry in Switzerland. It took them an average of 9.5 weeks and 12 job applications to find a job (less than in 2010). Their average entry-level salary (in Switzerland) was CHF 77,967 in the private sector and CHF 76,591 in the public sector (slightly more than in 2010).
One year after PhD graduation, 90.5% of graduates have a job. However, finding a job was harder: they needed an average of 14.9 weeks and 19 job applications (significantly more than in 2010). Salaries are also lower than before, average entry-level salaries were CHF 93,716 in the private sector and CHF 82,720 in the public sector."
They also asked PhD graduates if they think their degree is 'useful for their careers':

29% said it was mandatory,
29% that it gave them significant advantage over non-PhDs,
40% that it was sometimes an advantage, sometimes detrimental depending on the employer,
4% that it gave them no advantage
whatsoever, and
1% had no idea.

Some more data on work satisfaction of PhD graduates:
                    very high    high    average     low     very low
overall sat.        21%          54%     23%         1%      1%
interesting job     19%          51%     24%         4%      1%
adequate training   22%          41%     22%         14%     1%
degree recognition  24%          38%     28%         9%      0%
salary              8%           29%     51%         10%     1%

Here is the link to the original document (in French).
Notes: translations are mine, 1CHF=~1US$, the MSc is considered the 'undergraduate degree', global unemployment in Switzerland is <4%, PhD studies are funded with a salary of roughly CHF 50'000 with negligible tuition, these are numbers for PhD in sciences and engineering, numbers for humanities are very different.

Very informative, thanks for abstracting it so clearly. I guess its always going to be difficult to get meaningful data unless enforced by government.  But this does at least seem to show that 75% of PhD graduates were more than averagely satisfied.  It would be interesting to compare different institutions and (as you indicate) the "very different" results for humanities.  By the way CHF 50,000 salary for a PhD student sounds rather good even considering high living costs in Switzerland.

@steveOw, yes the PhD salaries are good in Switzerland, the 'sacrifice' is much smaller than, say in the US, where you live on meager stipend and lose many years of good pay.

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Can you get a tenure-track position in philosophy with a J.D.?
As stated in the title, I'm wondering if someone could shed some light on whether it is possible to land a tenure-track position in philosophy with a J.D. By way of background, I double majored in philosophy and psychology, and I am heading into my 3rd year of law school. A life as an academic sounds more appealing than it did a few years ago when I chose law school over a Phd., and I'm curious if a J.D. could suffice. Any helpful insight on this topic would be greatly appreciated!

If you really want to be a philosophy professor, then why don't you go to grad school and get a PhD?

Andy, while I understand where you're going with the inquiry, that was not the call of the question.

Mr. Resipsa: it's a fair question.  It might perhaps be possible to get a job as a philosophy professor with only a JD.  However, you would be much more likely to attain this outcome if you got a PhD in philosophy. A lot of times on this site people ask "How do I go about X?" and it turns out that they want to do X so as to eventually be able to do Y.  If doing X is not actually the most sensible path to doing Y, then someone who sincerely wants to help -- rather than narrowly answer the precise question asked -- will probably point this out.

Similarly, someone who is sincere about wanting to do Y should be open to advice on how best to go about it, in particular to opinions as to whether their current plan is reasonable and/or optimal.

Mr. Clark, I understand, but I would have phrased my question differently if those were the types of responses I was looking for/thought would be helpful. I appreciate you acknowledging it as a fair question, but Mr. Putman's response was less than helpful in answering my question

Realistically, no.
There's more philosophy PhDs looking for jobs than jobs available in philosophy, and your undergraduate experience while helpful probably won't make you stand out as an expert in philosophy. Or to put it another way, while you've been earning your J.D. which prepares you for law, philosophy PhD earners have been studying the very subject material they will teach.
But you might be eligible for positions where they are looking for someone in philosophy of law. Specifically, if they want someone with practical experience (but then they wouldn't want you straight out of your J.D.). Probably a good way to ask this question would be to e-mail Brian Leiter (or someone else) who works in law and philosophy.

Explanation from the downvote would be appreciated. I have a philosophy PhD and severely doubt anyone with a JD would be seriously considered even if they have an undergraduate degree in philosophy.

It is possible but you'll be competing against people with doctorates in Philosophy and dissertations and publications in philosophical journals.
Usually the requirement for faculty at colleges and university is the "terminal degree in the field." For law professors, this is the JD. For studio artists, the MFA. And most other faculty, the PhD.
I don't think the Provost would raise any issues with your hiring in terms of credentials, but the more difficult thing will be to convince the hiring committee (consisting of mostly philosophy profs with some other humanists) that you're the right person for the job.
Be prepared to articulate why you'll be capable of not only teaching PHIL101, but PHIL2xx, 3xx, and 4xx. If you're at a university, would you be capable of mentoring PhD students?  The assumption will be that you don't have that experience, so the burden of proof will be on you.
Many JDs figure it's just as easy to get the PhD with a few more years of school and emerge with a JD-PhD.

[Editorial Aside: That all being said, I think you're a bit nutso. Have you seen the starting salaries for law professors? They are earning $150,000+ in the few few years and often have tenure by their 4th year. If I were you, I'd go into the teaching of law and teach very philosophical law classes.]

This answer seems fine - but I'm wondering abit about the aside at the end. Have you ever met a law professor that wasn't first a lawyer? (I have not - I haven't met that many though!) So the 150k mark strikes me as a bit unrealistic for a newly minted JD.

Sure, my colleague in grad school. I wondered why he took the extra two years for law school after his PhD, but once he told me his starting salary as a law prof straight out, I had to agree he made the better choice financially!

Then again, he went into what was arguably the top law school in the country, so your mileage may vary.

I agree with @AndyW that I've only seen them with expierence practicing and then teaching versus straight out. Not saying it can't happen, it's just what I usually see :) Try going to a couple of university websites and look at their law (and philosophy) department teachers. They usually always have a bio, see how many have had experience and/or different degrees than PhD.

RoboKaren, I would actually be more prepared to articulate why I am capable of teaching upper electives such as jurisprudence, but your point is well taken. I agree that pursuing a law professorship would be quite lucrative, but as Jen correctly pointed out, they tend to have experience in the field.

@Mr.Resipsa demonstrating you can teach an upper level specialist elective is generally not a huge selling point to hiring committees, most academics, especially junior ones, have to teach lower level core classes.

@StrongBad Agreed, but Robokaren alluded to my ability of articulating how I am capable of teaching upper level philosophy courses as being my weak selling point. That being said, I understand my capability of teaching upper level philosophy would most certainly be limited to the philosophy of law-type courses, and that it would not necessarily demonstrate an ability to teach lower level core courses.

At a theoretical level, it's certainly possible.  Saul Kripke never went to graduate school at all, but that didn't stop Princeton from giving him tenure in philosophy.  If you're the next Kripke, then nobody will care what sort of degree you have.
At a practical level, you can't get hired in philosophy with just a J.D., assuming you aren't talking specifically about philosophy of law (which might draw on your legal background on an equal footing with philosophy).  If you are, then that's worth a more detailed and specific question regarding the necessary background and experience.  For a start, see these comments by Brian Leiter.  If you want to do philosophy of law with a primarily legal background, it sounds like the chances are higher if you look for a law faculty position rather than a job in a philosophy department.
On the other hand, if you have in mind a philosophical career that does not make heavy use of your legal background, then the J.D. will be essentially useless.  It's a terminal degree, but not one that certifies any level of background or experience in philosophy, so it will be irrelevant.  The only way to get a job in a philosophy department at a four-year college or university is to convince them that you have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in philosophy (including not just basic knowledge, but also advanced seminars, carrying out research, and writing a dissertation - even if you won't be doing further research or teaching graduate courses).
This level of experience would be rare among law students, and even if you genuinely have the equivalent of a philosophy Ph.D. you should expect to have a difficult time making a convincing case for this.
I haven't seen your particular case (applying for philosophy jobs with a J.D.) in practice, but I've seen similar sorts of job searches in other fields (arguably with closer degrees, since Ph.D. degrees in related fields are more similar to each other than either is to a J.D.).  In order to pull this off, you must have credible and compelling recommendations from mainstream faculty in the field you're applying to.  So one key question is what the philosophy faculty at your current university think of you.  Are they willing to write letters making a case that you are as qualified as their own Ph.D. students?  If so, then you may have a shot at this, and you should talk with them for advice based on your personal situation.  If you don't know any philosophers who are willing to write that sort of letter for you, then that will be a major barrier to getting a job in a philosophy department.

Super thorough, great analysis, and just an overall superb response to the question I was asking!

I think in part you're mixing up (or at least not clearly distinguishing) two separate questions:

If you have a J.D., could you become a philosophy professor without getting any additional formal qualifications?  (Yes.)
If you have a typical resume for someone just finishing their J.D., would anyone hire you to be a philosophy professor? (Almost certainly not.)

To go to an analogy that might be more familiar, your question is a bit like asking "Can you go to Harvard if you get a GED?"  The answer is yes in a certain formal sense; I'm sure there are people whose highest qualification is a GED who have gone to Harvard.  Probably, somebody, somewhere, with a JD has gone on to being a philosophy professor without getting an additional degree, but that doesn't mean it's something a reasonable person should expect to do.
The important point here is that having a degree (even a very specific kind of degree) is not the primary qualification for becoming a professor.  It's publishing in your field, convincing important people in the field that you are smart and good at what you do, and being able to teach undergraduate and graduate students in your field.  A PhD helps you become a professor because it gives you a chance to do those things in a conducive environment, not because you get a sheepskin at the end.  If you are able to do those things, maybe you can be successful in philosophy.  It doesn't sound from your question like you've had much of a chance to do them yet.

Ben, the analogy is a bit extreme, and frankly, quite pretentious. I think you're assessment is probably correct with respect to almost all large research universities or highly-regarded philosophy programs, but have you considered small liberal arts colleges or the like? I'm not saying the outcome would be all that different, but I think your analysis may be too narrowly tailored to a prestigious, Phd-granting institution.

@Mr.Resipsa The analogy is actually pretty good. You seem to be confused about the degree of supply of philosophy-PhD holders. People from anything south of R1 PhD programs would love to teach at SLACs on TT, and there are armies of them. It's a hirer's market, so there's no reason for them to go outside of philosophy to find philosophy people. Moreover, they especially need people who teach the core -- not upper division electives

The fact that you are a freshly graduated JD, and not a PhD cries out loud that you don't have any substantial research in the chosen field (neither other academic field). I don't think it is a good sign...

I'm not sure that you answered my question, but I like how you left the response open-ended lol

There is no clear cut answer to your question. Can I get a job as a CEO of Microsoft fresh out of school? Technically can, no law forbids it, however you have to be REALLY good at the interview.

Clear cut answer or not, I think your responses were off target for the question that was posed

Sure, feel free to have your own opinion on the question and rate me according to. This is a place for debate, so I actually encourage you to do so. My opinion is however that in a career/resume question a "this is a huge red flag" is a well targeted, and often used answer. So I keep my post.

'Red flag' without more is not super helpful in this context--so much is implied by my posting of the question. I agree that we're both entitled to our opinions, so I guess I'm 'agreeing to disagree' with you

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Am I able to change my GPA once I submit a graduate school application?
I am wondering if I apply to graduate school in US in fall and lets say the due date to submit the application is December 1 and fall quarter grades are posted two weeks after that. Now I am wondering am I be able to update my GPA after positing the fall quarter grades,which is after submitting the application?

I think it really depends on the school you are applying to:
You can call their administration that you would like to hand in recent new transcript, or just send it to them and hope they accept (it should certainly not be a bad thing to do it).

Thanks. I know after I get accepted I should send my final transcript to them but what I meant is that do they send us as email that please update your application?

@user59419: They probably won't send you an e-mail requesting further information (once you have completed your application), but you can send them an e-mail offering it.

Thanks, but isn't that create somehow unequal situation.You look at grades and see if it is good you will email them and if it is bad you will ignore it. The same for all applicants.

@user59419 Yes, but you have absolutely no cost of trying it out. Conversely, if you are better than previously submitted, you should fairly be granted to show it.


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How long it takes for GRE score to be delivered to graduate school?
I would like to know how long it takes for a General computer based GRE score to be delivered to graduate school in US. Some graduate schools mention do not take GRE later than specific date so I am wondering does it really take long time to send the score online?

As an aside, the reason that schools ask for your GRE by a specific date is usually linked to the fact that the score is part of your application, which will likely be considered incomplete and in a holding pattern until you get your scores in, so regardless of the "take by" date, you should probably take the exam as soon as possible.

Per the ETS website, for the online general GRE (emphasis mine):

About 10–15 days after your test date, your official scores will be available in your My GRE Account, and your scores will be sent to the score recipients you designate

It is up to the receiving institution to decide how they want to receive those scores: online (which doesn't add additional delivery time), or paper mail (which adds some additional shipping time).


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Will sitting for the IELTS Academic module void the validity of my previous General Training module score?
I have already taken the IELTS GT examination and my score has not yet expired. If I take the IELTS academic exam, will my previous score be voided? I need to take both format of exams for different purposes.

I think this is a specific question about the IELTS system and not a general question about academia.

Questions related to graduate admissions are considered on-topic, though.

For the best information you could Contact IELTS
That said, from reading the information booklet (pages 3-5) on their website the two tests have some sections that apply to the both GT and Academic tests which are speaking and listening. They then have 2 modules that are different for each test, which are reading and writing.
They are also used for two different purposes

IELTS Academic is for test takers wishing to study at undergraduate or postgraduate levels, and for those seeking professional registration.
IELTS General Training is for test takers wishing to migrate to an English-speaking country (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK), and for those wishing to train or study at below degree level

From this it would seem unusual that the results from one test would void the other when they are both different tests.
Edit based on OP comment:
After the OP contacted IELTS thay said that 'they are both separate results and it will be your choice entirely which one you wish to present when applying to institution's.' which confirms that one test would not void the other.

Hi, thanks for your link. This is what they replied to me - "In answer to your question about the results they are both separate results and it will be your choice entirely which one you wish to present when applying to institution's."

@enthusiast You can post this comment as an answer to your own question.


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My paper's content is slightly changed from the abstract I have submitted to a conference, can I edit the accepted abstract on my poster?
I'm fairly early on in my PhD research. A few months ago I submitted an abstract to a conference, which was accepted. The conference is coming up soon, and my research has taken a slight turn away from my accepted abstract (still same field, collaborators, etc...--just asking slightly different questions and taking a slightly different approach).
My question is, am I obligated to put the program-accepted abstract on my poster? If I am, should I try to tie my poster content as closely to that accepted abstract as possible? Or can I present poster content that would've been more appropriate for a different abstract?
Or can I use a different abstract on my poster, and thus tie the content more closely to what my current research path is?
What about keeping the original abstract in its entirely, but appending it?
EDIT: I'm in the field of astrobiology (probably most similar to the fields of geology or astronomy if I had to relate it to a more conventional field)

You can get more specific answers by mentioning the field you are in. I can speak to mathematics, where you have a lot of latitude to change the abstract - nobody is likely to mention it even if you make significant changes.

I work in astronomy.
I have never heard of anyone in authority at a conference complain about a slight deviation from a submitted abstract.
I suggest writing your poster on your new direction, with a corresponding abstract.
I would also submit your amended abstract to the LOC of the conference as soon as possible. Mention that your work has taken a slight turn but the main topic and co-authors are unchanged.
If there is time, the LOC can include your amended abstract on any web-page or hard-copy documentation. Apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause the LOC and ask nicely that they make these amendments, if possible.
Even if these documents cannot be altered, I doubt that anyone is going to get upset that your new abstract is not exactly the same that you originally submitted.

I don't work in astronomy.  I think the answer is conference specific as well as field specific.  For some conferences, getting the abstract right the first time and submitting changes is a big deal. (http://icm2014.org is a current example for me.)  In addition to talking to the local organizing committee (LOC), it would be prudent to talk to other attendees (past attendees if it is a periodic thing) of this conference to get their take.  Another route to go is to use the old poster, but mention a handout on the web somewhere indicating the updates and new directions.

In most fields, it is quite common for the subject matter of either a poster or a talk to stray quite significantly from the submitted and accepted abstract. This is understood as part of the "cost" of asking for abstracts to be submitted months before the conference is actually held. If people want to present cutting-edge research, then it will often require either a generic abstract or deviations from what was submitted.
That said, you can't arbitrarily change your poster topic too much—it should still be in the general area of the poster or abstract you submitted (otherwise it may end up being out of place in the session where it's presented). But deviations that stay within the topic matter are fine.


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Can research papers be mentioned as projects in a cv?
While working as a research associate at an institute, I contributed to a research project through it's development and experimentation phases. From my contributions on this project I was listed as a second author on some research papers.
How should I list these papers on my CV, independently or in relation to this research project?

It cannot be a research paper without a project. Research papers are for describing the results of the projects. Even review articles represent projects to collect the information about the current status in the particular branch of the science.
Once you are a co-author, you have been involved into that project. Co-authorship always assumes significant enough involvement. Hope this answers your question.


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"Do you need travel support?" Questions on Conference Applications
I am applying for conferences now for the first time while I have my own grant. My grant is mainly for my living stipend but has some money set aside for travel over 4 years. I am starting to apply for conferences and they are asking if I need support. The technical answer is "no," but the more complicated answer is that to go to all the conferences I want to go to, then I will need support from some of these conferences in order to pay for it for the course of 4 years.
Do I just say "yes" despite the short answer? It's very clear I have this grant that has some travel money, but in the end it's not unlimited, but I don't want to come off as greedy.
How detailed should a response to a travel support requirement inquiry be?

Often just saying "yes" isn't the end of it; you are then given instructions on how to formally apply for support.  The application may then ask you about other funding available to you.

I think it's pretty crystal clear that it is intended to mean "Would you have hardhips attending the conference if we did not fund your travel?"

What you should answer will depend on the conference you're attending and the country it is hosted in. Different conferences will have different amounts of money available for travel support and there is no single set of criteria that is used to determine who is eligible. Often travel support is aimed at students and researchers with a very low budget, for example those from poor countries. It is typically not intended for people who have the budget to attend several conferences, but want to attend more.
So figure out what the eligibility criteria are. If they're not listed on the conference website you can either just fill in "yes" and hope that you are provided with documents that provide further information.
But as is often the case, the simplest way might be to just ask. Send an email to the conference organizers asking what their criteria and intended target audience are for travel support.


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What is the usual dress code for academic workshops?
I'm attending my first academic/industry workshop next week and was wondering what is the convention with regards to the dress code. It's a three-day affair where each participant is required to present a 3 minute introduction to their PhD. Other than that the event consists mostly of talks by other people.
Normally, I'd go with formal business wear if I were presenting as a named part of the programme. If I was just attending I'd go for 'academia-casual'. That being said, I've never been to a workshop so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, especially with the inclusion of the 3 minute 'introduce yourself' presentation.
The workshop takes place in the United Kingdom and the field is engineering/computer science.

I'm sure that the answer would depend somewhat on the discipline.  For example if your academic field was Management, then it would probably be more formal than many other fields.

@BrianBorchers Thanks for the suggestion, edited the question to include this information.

Academia casual, as you put it, is perfectly fine.
Basically, imagine yourself doing a TA in front of students. I would say, a similar kind of attire would suffice.
I've seen people doing an academic presentation in a T-shirt and slippers, and that was a damn fine presentation, too! Even if you'd rather want to wear some more formal footware than slippers and some jeans and not shorts, I think that my point is clear:

No beachware.
No three-piece suit.

I've worn a shirt and formal trousers to multiple conferences without feeling overdressed, but that's probably the most formal thing you'd wear if you are not the conference chair.

I've seen people wear suits or coat and tie.  Worked fine.  Would try to be presentable in them though. For example the shoes should match the formality of the outfit and be a reasonable color.  For men, it is safest to wear black leather shoes and a black belt and a gray or blue suit.  Just...if you are going to wear a suit, look like you know how to select one.

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How to do short research projects with professors?
I am a physics student looking to apply for PhD positions. To increase my chances of getting selected and to increase my exposure to research, I want to publish research papers. The only research I did was in my MS degree which was in the field of quantum optics. I was thinking maybe I should contact foreign professors about it. Is it possible that I can work on a short-term research project with some professor? Do students do this normally? Please guide me how I should proceed with this.

From the start of your masters project to publication of the results, how much time elapsed?

In what country (countries) are you hoping to study for the doctorate? In some, you are probably already fine.

I completed my masters in 2022 and my research project took about 1.5 years, and I want to apply to universities in Europe, US, Canada, Australia. The thing is I want to secure a fully-funded scholarship and do my PhD from a prestigious university. I am an average student like I don't have a 3.8 or 3.9 GPA (although I got an A in my research) , so I want to compensate that by doing research projects.

I don't understand how paper publishing relates to short-term projects with professors. What about submitting your results to the conference and publishing them in conference proceedings? That would allow you to meet some experts face to face, and you will also publish.

That's a nice suggestion. Can you please guide me more about conferences and how is publishing in conference proceedings different from normally published papers?

This answer is US focused and probably not valid elsewhere.
A fully funded doctorate at a prestigious university is probably impossible. Funding is normally through TAs and RAs, not scholarships. They include tuition, most fees, and modest living stipend. But any R1 university in the US would serve you well, whether you think it prestigious or not. Even the 50'th ranked university will, if the department is large enough, provide a good career background.
No, students don't "normally" do research with US professors unless the students are at the same university, as the professor has little incentive to help and is busy enough with their own students. So, the answer to your "how to..." is probably that you can't. The exception would only be if you had something rather extraordinary to offer in a research idea and background.
Also, "short term" seems like an issue to me. Research (true research) isn't time constrained and publication can take quite a while, as you have already seen.
For US study, I'd suggest putting together a good application with good letters of reference and casting a wide net among R1 universities with what you have. Perhaps you will catch something. Many (most) student start with only a bachelors in field here, so you may well be qualified already.
Only if your applications all fail to gain a position should you worry about alternatives to "strengthen" your CV.

List of R1 universities in US

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Is a “professional journal” a “scholary journal”?
Can someone please explain to me the difference between a professional journal and a scholarly journal?
I have done some research, and from what I gather, a professional journal is a type of scholarly journal (a subset, if you will).
I lost marks in my essay for using a professional journal, and not a scholarly journal.
The database I used to find the journal (provided by the university) indicated that I was using an article filed under scholarly journal.
Can someone please shed some light on this situation, simply because I do not want to make the same mistake again. I do not care if I am wrong, I genuinely want to just find out the answer.

What essay? And how did you use the journal.

Scholarly journal is in general more academically oriented. Professional could deal on a wide range of topics faced by some professionals (e.g., basketball players) and not always has anything to do with scholarly matters.

According to Lock Haven University:

A scholarly journal is also called an academic journal.  It is a
periodical written by academic experts in various subject areas.   A
"peer review" journal is a subset within scholarly journals in which
the articles submitted are reviewed by researchers in the same
discipline to determine if the article merits publication.  This
review process helps to ensure that only excellent and high-quality
research articles are published. All authors who publish in the
scholarly literature MUST cite sources they used in the writing of the
article, so you will find a section at the end named variously as
bibliography, sources cited, works cited, or footnotes.
A professional (sometimes called a trade) journal is a journal written
for people who work in a certain field.  Grocers, resturant owners,
doctors, librarians, teachers, nurses, and other professionals need
information to help them conduct their jobs and profession more
efficiently. Trade journals are half way between scholarly journals
and magazines: they require some background knowledge but the articles
are not scholarly in nature.  They address workplace issues, provide
tips on better work performance, and other work-related information.
The articles that are submitted are reviewed by professional editors.

So basically, a scholarly journal is most likely written by someone who works in academia and a professional journal is written by someone who works in industry. In your situation, you could argue that the library is at fault for mistakenly labeling the journal as "scholarly" or your professor didn't know it was a "scholarly" journal. It wouldn't hurt to bring it up to your professor and see what he/she says.

In the profession journal paragraph, The articles that are submitted are reviewed by professional editors. Do we consider those reviews "peer reviews"?


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How to cite my own code in an academic paper?
I’m about to submit a research paper to the Intel STS competition. I am basically finished with everything about my paper, but I need to cite a certain algorithm that I invented in my own paper. I do not want to put it inside the paper because it’s outside the scope of what I talked about in the paper, and besides the paper is already twenty pages so I can’t fit in any more material.
Is it acceptable if I simply post the code to a website like GitHub, and cite the link in my references?

The Intel STS, as a competition, probably has its own rules for this that are different than norms for academic papers - you will have to contact someone on that side or read their rules. I suspect that, in general, competitions would frown on this - linking to outside documents allows you to put more information in the paper than is permitted, and would also let you change the code after the deadline has passed. But this is only my guess!

As you suggested you can create a GitHub repository for your code. There is also the possibility to create a release of your repository. Then you can get a DOI for that release using Zenodo:
Zenodo How-to
You can then put that DOI in your paper as reference and do not have the problem with changing code, because the DOI is associated with the specific release.

Or make a branch/tag for the specific release in Git.


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Does publishing research in physics during bachelor degree help in applying for master’s in mathematics?
Before I applied for my bachelor degree, I was unsure whether to take physics or mathematics because I liked both of them equally. Then I decided to go for a mathematics degree. Currently I am in the last year of that degree. During my time at university I published several research papers in theoretical physics in top journals in the field and I got several awards from my university. Also, in my mathematics degree, I have so far achieved the highest marks in my mathematics department. I have three months to graduate and I am looking to start a master’s degree.
I am an international student (outside Europe and America), and I am looking to continue my study in Europe, but there are several things that I am unsure about and I would appreciate some help on:

Does publishing research papers in physics help me get a scholarship for a master’s in mathematics in Europe or is it irrelevant?
Does publishing research papers in physics help me get a scholarship for a master’s in physics in Europe even though I have bachelor in Mathematics?

It'd be great if someone could answer this question. I have a similar concern.

@JunaidAftab - If this is important to you, consider starting a bounty on this question (see link right under the comments).

The answer to both of your questions is "yes".  Indeed, publishing original research in any STEM field has at least some (and usually quite a substantial) positive impact on graduate school applications for programs in other STEM fields.


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Scopus: Inclusion of papers
I have some papers published in journals that are approved by Scopus. But these papers are not included in Scopus. How can I get get them included?

Once the articles are accepted by a journal, it takes time for coming online. Moreover, your question is unclear and lacks further details such as the following:

Are you sure the journal is indexed by Scopus (have you verified by from Scopus site?)
Whether the article has been published as "online-first"?
Has it been indexed at the least by 'Google Scholar'? -- Usually, Google Scholar is fast in indexing as it directly captures the metadata from the journal site.

For the articles to appear in Scopus page, it will take some more time than Google Scholar takes. There are internal steps that are taken care before indexing the articles in Scopus. It usually takes 3 weeks to 2 months for an article to appear in Scopus (from my own experience), I can't provide data points. Also visit a similar question here.


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How thorough should I be when reviewing chapters for a book?
I'm editing my first book and, as part of the process, I have to review the chapters from the different authors. I'm doubting about how deep the review should be, I mean for example If I think that if the authors include a certain figure the section will be more clear, should I comment it? Or do you think that it is personal style and each author should keep his/hers?

Try your best to make the book a high quality.


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Is my contribution enough to ask for co-authorship?
I am an undergraduate research assistant in a physics lab.
At the start of my research term, my supervisor suggested a project to me. The project is to design, test and implement a piece of apparatus in our experimental setup. With the new component I have built, we will be able to take very precise measurements that were not possible with the old setup. The component I am building will effectively open up some new areas of research for the group.
Note that the apparatus I am building isn't new in our field; others have implemented it previously so I can't publish a paper on what I designed and built. I will have to leave the group soon because I attend another institution, my research term is up and I must physically move back to my home institution after that. I will not be able to collect any data or help write any paper in the future.
However, since taking this data would not be possible without my component, do I have any claim in co-authorship for (at least one) future paper? Or is an acknowledgement more appropriate for this scenario? I have no idea as to what level of contribution merits co-authorship on a paper. I think this is a good learning experience.
If I do have some claim, should I approach my supervisor about this?

To the user who raised the close flag: I don't understand the reason this question needs to be closed. It's an undergraduate research related question which is allowed on this site. It's not a shopping question. It's general enough to be a legit question. It's about Academia. I don't know any duplicate exists. If you would like to see it  closed, please specify the reason. Thanks.

In my opinion, it does not deserve authorship credit. Some university have specific requirements about authorship. For example, one university where I was previously studying had this requirement: an author should at least have done two of the following three things : (1) participate in finding the main idea of the paper, (2) participate in designing and carrying the experiments, and (3) participate in writting the paper.  According to what you said, you would only qualify for (2), and it would be indirectly, since you just implemented something that was already published. Thus, in my opinion, they could put your name in the "acknowledgements" section instead of as a co-author but if they don't it may also be ok depending on the context. Moreover, if you got paid to do what you did, then perhaps that they don't even need to put your name at all.

Your previous university’s authorship requirements are somewhat in contrast to most journal’s requirements, according to which everybody meeting criterion 1 or 2 must be offered authorship.

Authorship guidelines usually require all authors to approve of the final version of the manuscript, so you cannot become an author until that point has been reached.  If you have created a substantially novel design, you have a good chance of reaching that point.  If your design is mostly like those previously implemented, then your chances are not so good.  Your question does not provide that level of detail.
It is very important to consider your supervisor's viewpoint.  Assuming your supervisor is a university professor, including an undergraduate researcher as a coauthor will likely make that professor look good because including undergraduates in research is part of a faculty member's responsibilities.  Adding a coauthor costs the supervisor nothing, so long as the supervisor adheres to ethical guidelines.  I recommend asking your supervisor what you need to do to meet the requirements for coauthorship.
Confining your work to a fixed research term is not a realistic way to publish papers, though it may work sometimes.  It is unclear why you "have to leave."

Authorship guidelines usually require all authors to approve of the final version of the manuscript, so you cannot become an author until that point has been reached. – I am not sure how this is intended, but it sounds a bit like that approving the final manuscript is something you have to do to become an author (and it’s okay to make you not an author, if you do not do this), while actually it’s the other way round: If you intelectually contributed to the research, you must be offered authorship, and if you are an author, you have to approve the manuscript.

authors: สุชาติ ปิ่นแก้ว


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Trade-off between content and style
I am in the UK and I completed an undergraduate dissertation.
In my dissertation I went much higher than my level. All the content in my dissertation was at a masters level and everything was self-taught.
However I sort of came undone in my viva, where I was told I kept jumping into stuff.
I was wondering, when writing an undergraduate of a masters dissertation, is it better to go above and beyond your level and be ambitious or make sure the document is written very well and stay at the level you are currently at?

I was told the dissertation could have been written much better. — It seems you've already been given the answer you are looking for.

I have made a small edit. It was more a case of being told that I keep jumping into things without introducing them.

Based on reading your question, I think that a title "Trade-off between content and its presentation" better matches the problem you're describing. "Style" sounds there more like something, related to formatting, visual presentation or structure, with less connection to the essence of the subject domain.

As you already noticed, you do not need to decide for one or the other but have to make a trade-off. I would advice to make this trade-off strongly in favour of good writing, i.e., schedule your work such that you have sufficient time to write down your thesis (or similar) properly and to have it reviewed for intellegibility (likely by your supervisor) and react to this. The reasons for this are as follows:

Your work is wasted if nobody understands it. The people who reviewed your thesis usually include your supervisor, i.e., the person who is most familiar with and most interested in your work apart from you and the single person whom you really need to demonstrate the value of your work. If even they had no chance to appreciate it, what was your work good for?
Communicating your work is one of the most important skills of an academic and hence one of the most important skills to learn in your studies. Most academics spend a considerable amount of time by communicating their work to others and academic success crucially depends on it. For example, people only tend to cite your work if they understand it. as far as I can tell, this is no different when you intent to leave academia.
Thus, time invested in learning communicating your work, in particular time invested in writing a thesis properly, is certainly not wasted. From another point of view, communicating your work is one of the skills you should be able to demonstrate when writing and defending a thesis – it’s not just about your knowledge of your field and applying this knowledge.
There is a saying that goes along the lines of this (and which I fail to find properly phrased right now):

You only really understood something if you can teach it to others.

While there are a few people whose didactical skills are exceptionally bad in comparison to their expertise, these are really the exception (and you should not strive to be one of them) and this saying is mostly true otherwise. There are two things to “learn” from it:
By trying to properly communicate your work, you take different points of view at your work and thus understand it. This may enable you to find ways to improve your work or to apply it and connections to existing work.
If you cannot communicate your work, this is usually seen as an indicator that you did not fully understand what you are doing and thus is likely to lower the opinion of others of your work, in particular of important people such as your supervisor.

Thanks for the answer.I am hoping I am still going to get a decent mark in my dissertation. My tutor did say that going for a topic at a much higher level will definitely work in my favour. Also my my supervisor did say that if I wrote up what I did properly I should get a first.

Seconding this answer... Similarly, the "is it better to go above and beyond your level and be ambitious or make sure the document is written very well and stay at the level you are currently at?" misses the issue. Incoherence in the perception of your audience is a fundamental problem on your part. Yes, working on harder things can result in greater difficulties in explanation, but this is not at all an excuse for incoherence.


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What does my experience from a master’s thesis tell me about whether research is for me?
I have just had my first experiences in research, namely six months of a master’s thesis. Along the way, especially starting out, I felt a mix of:

anxiety for not understanding the topic
internal pressure for delivering a good result
discouragement from many attempts and no solution

In the end, I could gradually figure some small things out and this led me to have more confidence and be more relaxed, and having further and better results.
Judging from this post there are some already seen elements in my story. For instance, one seems to get used to the “soul-crushing” part by gaining confidence things will work out, in a slow, gradual growth process. But then how do I know if research is for me without doing even more research? I am not sure how to judge my experience. It was bad at first, not so bad (and not so good) in the final period.

The further you go in "academic" degrees, the more research is involved.  However, there are many "professional" masters and doctor degrees that are mostly based on fulfilling coursework.

The first question that comes to my kind is what would be your positive reasons to choose a career in research? As long as what comes to your mind are negative or at best neutral thoughts, it looks like research is not for you, but of course you may have some good motivation you just haven't written about.

By the way, I believe that the general idea that there is some "truth" regarding whether "research is for you" or not, and you somehow have to find it out before you decide what to do is wrong. Some people clearly feel it's not for them, some people clearly feel it is, if you don't belong in either of these categories, accept that you don't know, and you've got to decide something anyway. Of course you can change later on if any decision doesn't turn out well.

@ChristianHennig Thanks for the comment. I think the positives for me are: I am doing something creative (that is in line with my personality), and challenging (also makes the work non-boring). But for instance, I do not have a topic I would genuinely like to explore and advance. Said otherwise, when I am not doing research, I never feel like going and doing some. There must always be something else for me to enjoy the process: a paper in sight, or receiving money, or adding something to the CV, etc.

@Lilla Fair enough. I'm sure there are people in research who are like you in this respect, so this is not necessarily a reason against. One issue is that research (like doing a PhD) can play out extremely differently depending on what exactly you do, your supervisor and environment etc. Of course you also need to think of alternatives. It's really very personal, and as I wrote earlier, I doubt that there is any magic way to find out in advance. You may also think about the people and environment to work with, e.g. if there is a potential supervisor who encourages you.

Starting out in research can be overwhelming and the mix of things you describe sound familiar (and probably will to many researchers, if they are honest about it).
Of course, with experience, some of these things will either disappear or become less. Even with 20+ years of experience, it can still be intimidating and challenging to change topics, but what wins out for those researchers is the joy and excitement of learning and discovering new things. Internal pressure will hopefully gradually develop into strong internal motivation - again, because you find joy and excitement in not knowing now and figuring out ways to know more later. Discouragement is something that will also hit you less hard as you become used to the fact that failure is a large part of the game - you need to learn to love troubleshooting and getting back on the horse when you fall off - because in research you will continue to fall off on a daily basis.
I think what you need to figure out for yourself - and this can totally start at the MSc level - is to whether you have that inner spark and desire  and drive to make it through all of these difficult challenging aspects. Does your love for research and tackling the unknown win out over all the challenges it presents? In other words, do you think you are someone who will be comfortable (and even happy) not knowing and not getting things right on the first, second or third try?
I think that a hint of that 'spark' can/should be there prior to the start of e.g. a PhD. "Not so bad" (as you describe how you feel at the end of your thesis") might not be a strong enough intrinsic drive to embark on more research (especially when you are talking about a PhD, which is a whole other ball game as the tension arch is longer than that of an MSc thesis and on top of that you will also feel the responsibility of making sure that you succeed because your topic is now first and foremost your responsibility).
So my advise would be to talk to people who have done or are doing a PhD. Do you recognize some of the things that motivate them? Can you, knowing what you know now, gain some additional research experience in an internship or something similar to see if and how your second experience feels different from the first one?
This is very personal and not for everyone - so listen to your gut: if the positives don't outweigh the "negatives" (ie the challenges that you mention), then there are plenty of other things you can do with your life!


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Distinct Research questions in Phd research proposal?
I am writing my PhD research proposal. In "Research Aims / Questions" section, I have proposed two distinct research questions which are from the same sub-field but divert from each other a little bit.
Here is an example in my discipline, Computer Science, and subfield, Communications. The first research question involves analysis of router throughput with some specific algorithm.  The second question involves a compression mechanism a router, and the compression mechanism is not related to its throughput.
Question: Can I be successful having two not-closely-related research questions? or should I write two separate research proposals?
Any help would be appreciated.

Is this for your dissertation? If so, clarify your question.

I'd stick with one research proposal for simplicity.  When I wrote my proposal, I ended up with four distinct Questions, which then turned into 6 hypothesis for testing.  The questions don't have to be perfectly aligned with one another but it helps that they are touching on similar topics.

It sounds like your proposal is for a PhD in technology of some kind, as such I can't tell you if the specific questions that you asked would work. However, I can share my own experiences so far. As a general rule, the easier your PhD questions are to research and answer, the better. For that reason, many people stick to one question. If there is more than one question in the proposal, they should be highly related. For example; in my own dissertation I am sampling approximately 30 schools across the country to determine if an anomaly that I discovered last year is universal, or if it is localized to that specific school (or possibly if it occurs in some areas but not others). Then, depending on the findings of that analysis, a secondary question becomes: what predictive factors determine those outcomes? In my case that will be easy to answer because I will have already taken those variables into account in order to control for them during the data collection phase. I'm not sure how much that helps, but in short I would avoid two questions unless they are directly related to each other.


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How to decide whether I should use “we” in an essay?
The answers to this question promote a view that the personal pronoun we is acceptable in an academic paper. But I did not see an answer there, or more generally on this site, that discourages the use of we. This question is different to the one mentioned above because it queries whether the word we should be used at all, not just to ask whether I or we is more appropriate.
The economics department at my university (UCT) discourages the use of personal pronouns in an essay – I was marked down in my essay for my use of the word we. At the end of my essay, I wrote

In conclusion, we note that the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.

I decided to use we in my essay because I had grown accustomed to seeing it in mathematics textbooks, so I assumed that it was formal enough. But the economics department says that it is not formal enough.
Even though it seems acceptable to use we in some circles, it seems that it is a point of debate. What guidelines should I be using in order to make my decision about whether to use we or not?* Should I continue to use we as I see fit, except for economics essays? Or, should I apply this rule to all my academic essays (I also study public policy & administration)?
It would ostensibly be silly to have different writing styles emanating from the same person. The problem has not been brought up before, and I have used the word in a number of sociology essays in first year, and one public policy & administration essay in second year. In those essays, I used the word in the following ways.

In this section, we discuss motivations for why provincial government should be restructured.

and

Applying this model to provincial government, we can graph a U-shaped function of long-run average cost.

and

Approaching the question from the side of the teacher, we find that inequality can be caused via culturally insensitive teaching methods.

As a final clarification, I do prefer to use the word.
* Edit: Although it was not initially made clear, I have not been provided with style guides. However, I doubt that I would ask this question if I were provided with style guides. Saying that I should "follow the style guide" makes perfect sense, but doesn't really help me in my situation. I asked this question on academia.SE so that I could ask others to brainstorm ideas about how I could make the decision without a style guide (e.g. how were those rules formed in the first place?).

"It would ostensibly be silly to have different writing styles emanating from the same person." - why? You adapt your writing style according to the community you write for, the kind of document (general announcement, grant application, paper on finished results, ...), and the format of the publication (formal document, newsfeed announcement, press release, ...), anyway, do you not?

"discourages the use of personal pronouns in an essay" I'm confused: did you mean the first person plural personal pronoun or any personal pronoun? If you can't use a personal pronoun, which pronoun would you use instead? Are you expected not to write any sentences that use the active voice?

Please provide a couple of example sentences from your essay that have "we" in them.

@aparente001 I found that I actually only used the word once in my economics essay. It is now quoted in the question.

@DanRomik they do not have a style guide, so I am just saying what I remember being told. I don't think they were that specific, but I think they don't want me to use any personal pronouns at all. That means that I should use words such as one and the author instead of personal pronouns as a way to make the tone more abstract.

As already noted, there is usually little you can do against a styleguide, unless it’s blantantly against every convention. Be prepared to encounter styleguides with much weirder rules, in which, e.g., the punctuation at the end of this sentence is “correct.”
That being said, you can impose some guidelines. I am aware of the following occasions on which we (or I) can be used in an academic paper:

To describe experiments or simulations you performed, e.g.:

We transmogrified 500 apples and determined their contrafibularity.

To refer to the results and other work from the same paper:

In comparison to Smith’s transmogrificator, our method has the advantage that […]

In derivations (most common in mathematics):

Combining equations 23 and 42, we obtain: […]

To summarize the paper in an abstract or introduction:

We here present a new method to transmogrify bananas.

or

In this review, we summarise recent advances in the transmogrification of fruit.

In phrases such as:

We note that […]

In the acknowledgements:

We thank Jane Doe for constructive comments.

Now, if you are writing an economics essay, you are probably not performing experiments or deriving new theories, which excludes reasons 1–3. In fact, most review papers use we only for reasons 4–6. Moreover, you likely do not have a summary in the style needed for reason 4. Using we only due to reason 5 would be so rare that it can be considered inconsistent style, in particular since it can usually be avoided easily.
Thus, I expect that the reason for which you were marked down was that you used we in a way that is not considered appropriate in academic writing at all, or because you used it only due to reason 5 only.
If you want a general guideline (if none is obviously imposed): If you describe experiments, derivations and similar of your own, use we. In the abstract or introduction of a review paper or something similar, you can use we. If you are doing neither, avoid using we except in the acknowledgements.

I think economics papers can easily have (social scientific) experiments, and there are plenty of theories and derivations (economics can be very mathematical). So I think all the points apply.

@ahorn: Sure, but does this apply to essays too?

True. There is less likely to be primary research in an undergraduate essay.

You're doing a postgraduate degree, so you should have been taught / be about to be taught the basics of academic writing.
Here is one of the basic rules.

Follow the style guide.

You've been told what the style guide for your coursework says about personal pronouns: it says don't use them. Follow it. Don't use personal pronouns in your coursework.
When you write for something with a different style guide, follow that style guide instead.
Different style guides have different rules. That's what makes them different.
No, it is not ostensibly silly to have different writing styles from the same person, assuming that person can comprehend and follow Rule 1, above.

Thanks for the advice. I have requested the style guide from the department, although I don't think they have one yet. I am an undergraduate.

Styles differ by (sub-(sub-))discipline, so if you work in different disciplines you'll do a lot better if you adapt your style to that discipline. Its unfortunate, but I don't think there is a real solution to that.
As can be seen in the comments, it is also discipline specific whether you should use "we" or "I" if you are the only author, and opinions are quite strong on that. So here the same rule applies: you will be most successful in communicating what you want to communicate if you just follow the conventions of the discipline you are aiming at.

However, I think it is a real mistake to use the word "we" if there is only a single author. — The I/we distinction is also field-dependent.  This is an issue of culture, not logic.  The standard fiction in mathematics is that "we" means the author(s) and the readers, who after all are not merely letting the symbols wash over their eyes, but are actively working through the results with the paper as a guide.

@JeffE I see what you mean, and edited the answer. In my discipline, this is interpreted as the author trying to delegate part of her or his responsibility to the reader. It is the task of the author, and only the author, to make her or his case.

I googled
style guide avoid personal pronoun -gender
(could someone edit that to center it or at least move the margin over a little bit, please?)
and found plenty of people recommending avoidance of I and we.  Apparently, whoever graded your essay is one of those people.
Here's your we sentence again (thanks very much for posting it):

In conclusion, we note that the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.

I'm a big believer in "rules are made to be broken," but in this case, even without your department's stuffy rule, I don't see a need to include the "we note that".  I could sort of see it in an outline of the content of your article -- as a tour guide might describe the different places your article goes.
Look how much stronger a statement this is:

In conclusion, the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.

By the way, there are a few other things you could do to increase the impact of your final sentence.  By its location, it is already clear that it is the conclusion.  So let's give "In conclusion" the axe.
"Dealt with this" is such a vague expression -- perhaps you could be more specific here about how South Africa dealt with the crisis?  If your article doesn't get into that, but only shows how South Africa was affected by the crisis, then perhaps you could put in something about the particular way, or the particular degree to which, the country in your magnifying glass, South Africa, was affected.
What a shame, that you've got nasty people in your department penalizing you (in a vague, non-written form, yet) instead of giving you friendly edits.

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text:
Is it appropriate for assistant professors to supervise PhD students?
As pointed out  in another question, the general tendency today as compared from classical times is to make junior professors (at assistant level) more and more independent. However, I wonder that assistant professors (common in the US university) supervise PhD students.
The philosophy of academic ranking is to prepare academics for academic/scientific tasks.
Although, academics normally have postdoc experience before their appointment as assistant professors, it is not mandatory. Moreover, postdoc experience is not experience conducive for the supervising of students.
In relation to the above is it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students?
Does it reduce the quality of the education/research?

How can not having supervised PhD students before be a hindrance? If that was the case then nobody would ever be allowed to supervise anyone.

@TobiasKildetoft I think the question intends to ask, "Is it appropriate for assistant professors to supervise PhD students alone?" In some places, PhD students working with an inexperienced advisor are also co-advised by another (more experienced) advisor.

The different customs re: who can supervise a PhD student in various countries, are discussed in some detail in Assistant professor vs Associate professor

Around here, a decent researcher would've supervised multiple lower-level (bachelor/master) students and their thesis already during their PhD studies, and would also be more on the 'bleeding edge' of their area research than most professors, so practical experience is not an issue. A more senior scientist might be better when they're available; while the junior one is almost as good but has far more time to devote to that student.

I have witnessed the situation @Peteris described, and even in a way that it was naturally continued in a way that one of the main responsibilities of postdocs was to provide guidance and support to PhD students - usually on a more frequent and concrete basis than the professor (due to time and presence constraints that professors often face). Hence, by the time a postdoc would become a junior professor, they would have gathered a sufficient amount of experience in co-guiding PhD students already.

My Ph.D. adviser was, at the time, a Peirce Instructor at Harvard; his Ph.D. was two years before mine. I got excellent advice. One piece of that advice was to contact a specific senior researcher (at a different university); all the rest of the advice was directly about my work.

Assistant profs not only can, but must supervise PhD students. One of the de facto requirement of a tenure is to successfully supervise at least one PhD.

@Greg but they can be co-supervisor!

Isn't it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students? Don't it reduce the education/research quality?

For certain institutes I've been in, I would find myself asking the opposite question: isn't it wrong for senior professors to supervise students when they have little time for them?
Of course it is not always the case that full professors have no time for their students, but I have seen it happen many times: I've seen cases where students were meeting their official full professor supervisors once a month (or less frequently) and putting names of supervisors on papers that the supervisors had never read. This seems to me to be prevalent in research institutes where the hierarchy tree has a high branching factor to get value out of available funds (few Full Professors, lots of PostDocs / Assistant Professors, even more PhD students and Research Assistants, etc.); in such cases, the priority for senior professors is getting funding for and managing projects. In my case, when I was a PostDoc in such an institute, I was doing the day-to-day supervision of a number of students whose supervisor(s) had no time for them.
Of course it varies from place to place. But my hypothesis is that by the time you reach the Assistant Professor level, either you will have the necessary skills and personality to be a good supervisor, or you will probably never have those skills.
In summary: I don't believe that seniority amongst professors is a good predictor for quality of supervision.

The "high branching factor" structure you describe sounds suspiciously like a pyramid, hmmm....

Complete with slaves and everything!

@ff524 is this http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144 what you mean?

@Peteris Nice one, yes!

Isn't it wrong that an inexperienced assistant professor (who is not far from his PhD studentship days) can take control of one or several PhD students?

It is alright for an assistant professor to guide one or several doctoral students. He is not experienced in probably guiding PhD students, but, he is definitely experienced in conducting research, which will help him translate this to guidance.

Don't it reduce the education/research quality?

Well, maybe. Supervising PhD students is a learning activity like most anything else. As such, it is to be expected that maybe when an assistant professor supervises her/his first student, s/he may do things that should would handle differently later on. But this is not tied to the status of the person, but to her/his experience in advising. So if you don't let assistant professors advise PhD students, they would start doing it later on and be equally bad in it, because when would they have learned how to do it?
An additional concern is that there are only so many full professors to go around. While I concede that working with a more senior professor may have advantages, these advantages would likely disappear if every senior professor has to handle significantly more students (as the entire 'advising force' of assistant professors falls away).
I should also add that, in general, assistant professors are not nearly as inexperienced as you seem to assume. Today, at least in my field (CS), there is hardly any assistant professor that did not have multiple years of postdoc experience, which also includes co-supervising master and PhD students. As such, I am not sure if the problem you seem to consider even exists.
Edit based on ff524's comment:

I think the question intends to ask, "Is it appropriate for assistant professors to supervise PhD students alone?" In some places, PhD students working with an inexperienced advisor are also co-advised by another (more experienced) advisor.

Yes, this is actually the case in many well-respected university (dutch universities come to mind right now). I think this is great if the main responsibility/load is still on the junior professor, with the senior person being more an advisor to the advisor than to the student. If the model degenerates into the junior professor basically being a proxy for the senior person, this seems counter-productive.

Of course it's appropriate. In many research-intensive academic departments it's the assistant professors (the younger researchers) that are doing the innovative research.
I had several friends who worked with an assistant professor years ago. That professor later won a Nobel Prize for the work being done in his assistant professor days, with the help of those students.

In many fields, Today's assistant professors are older and more experienced than they were in the past.  By the time an assistant professor in math has a student start research they're typically 6+ years out from PhD (3-4 years of postdoc plus a couple years to settle before students are likely to ask).  I think that means its pretty reasonable for assistant professors to take students.

I am an assistant professor supervising two Ph.D. students. Everyone in my department seems to be happy with this.
It helps that there are senior faculty who are happy to give advice to me when needed!

I'd rather say: it depends. The question can also be asked as: Is it appropriate for all professors to supervise PhD students?


text:
A researcher that I know organizes a symposium within a strange conference and has asked me to go. What is the appropriate etiquette for declining?
I have been invited to a symposium related with my research field within a conference devoted to a broad area in Mathematics, not really associated with my field. This symposium is organized by a researcher that I met in previous, well-established and respectable conferences.
The problem is that I have never heard before about that conference to any colleague in my field, if we exclude the emails sent by the conference organizers asking researchers to attend or to organize a symposium within the conference (I have received myself a lot of them in my email spam folder). Indeed, I am really confused about the reputability of the conference itself, and I tried to find it out without too much success in this closed question.
I have decided not to attend the conference given the information that I have at hand, since as a young researcher I want to stay as far as I can from potential predatory conferences. Also the funding money for attending conferences is limited and I think I will get a better value for it on another conference.
Now, my question is regarding the way and etiquette for rejecting the invitation. My initial idea was to be honest and tell the symposium organizer about my reason to not accept the invitation (not feeling confortable in that conference), without making up any excuse such as problem in the dates or whatever. But maybe in that way I will hurt his/her feelings, something that obviously I do not want.
What will be a honest and polite way of rejecting this invitation?

I also was close to attending this very conference but never did. My reasoning was as yours: Better value at other venues…

You basically said it best yourself:

the funding money for attending conferences is limited and I think I will get a better value for it on another conference.

This seems to me like a perfectly acceptable reason which needs to be enough for any reasonable person. You can't go to every conference where somebody you know asked you to go, and this one isn't high enough on your priorities list.
(personally, I would not lecture the other person about what you perceive as a spam conference that (s)he is involved with - just say friendly and truthfully that this specific conference is not of great interest to you, and that should be it)

Just say "no thank you" or say nothing. You don't have to make an excuse to not attend a conference symposium. You appear to be a junior researcher, so I'm assuming you were invited to participate not to give a keynote address or be honored otherwise. The symposium organizers will have invited more people than they can actually host since they know many will decline. There's no need to antagonize your colleague by accusing them of being involved in a sketchy conference or worse accusing them of being associated with something predatory.

Thanks for the answer, @BillBarth (+1). Certainly I am one among other people that the symposium organizer has potentially invited. But it seems to me a little unpolite to do not reply his/her invitation or to answer with something like "no, thank you", at least without providing a minimal explanation. I agree with your last sentence.

I think that it is not polite to give no answer if you know the guy who invited you.

Well, if you feel morally compelled to say more than "no thanks" or "I can't make it", that's on you. I still believe that this is one where you don't want to bare your soul on the subject, and a shorter response declining is better than a longer one explaining your reasons.

I interpreted "say nothing" as "don't answer at all"...

Thank you very much for the invitation to this conference.  It seems like a very interesting event.  I will not be able to attend, but I wish you the best of luck with it.
Yours, etc. ...

This is polite but firm.  Like Jake says in the comments, it is possible to increase the apparent (or intended) sincerity of the message by being more specific about why you think the conference will be interesting.  And it is true that you are unable to attend because you have given higher priority for your limited travel budget on other events.

... and then I realize I have been taking messages like these at face value for all these years...

@drxzcl The wonderful thing about this sort of low-content message is that it is also often said sincerely.  I, at least, always have more things that I would like to attend than that I reasonable can attend.

There's no polite way to say, "I believe your conference has no value, and isn't worth my time."
So I'm glad you are asking for an honest and polite method to decline, rather than an open and polite method to decline.  I don't believe you can be open, honest, and polite in this case.
I don't believe you can honestly express regret that you cannot attend, but you can at least express a wish that the conference be successful, or that they achieve their goals with the conference and speakers. If you expect to check on the conference proceedings afterwards, whether out of curiosity or professional interest, it might be worthwhile expressing that as well.
"Thank you for your kind invitation to present at conference XYZ. While I must decline, I do look forward to reading the conference proceedings."
Keep it short, simple, and straightforward.
If this is a close friend, and you believe they are headed down the wrong path, it's probably worthwhile to follow this up with a phone call (no need for this conversation to be in writing!) and express your underlying reasons.  If you are on the fence, call them prior to sending the refusal and see if they have evidence that it isn't or won't turn into a predatory conference.
The reservations you have may be valid, but expressing them when you decline the invitation is unnecessary and impolite.  Keep those reservations to yourself, and only share them if asked, or if they are a close colleague or friend and you wish to save them from later difficulty.

In today's world, it is difficult to predetermine an outcome of a conference, unless you are aware of the list of the participants. In the research field, every bit of new information is valuable, thus you might not be exact at outweighing the symposium, based on limited information.
Advice:

Politely request your inviter to give you extra information, the usual 5Ws. If any of the who, when, what, where, how are not coherent, then depict them and inform him that you did not feel attracted because of A,B,C.
If financially, it does not match, be specific and tell him that you do not have the financial means.

A researcher is a civilized person and would not be hurt by valid reasons.
NB: Having emails in Spam boxes does not mean that they are spams. It just means that their email server is not green listed on your email's red flagging.