text:
In the upper echelon of universities, is it the case that international students generally perform better than local ones?
This question is aimed at undergraduate level, since postgraduate students are more mobile. By "upper echelon" I mean those that are, say, in the top 200 universities in the world (presumably there are lower-ranked universities that struggle to attract international students).
The idea is that most admission spots are reserved for local students for political reasons - it would be a political disaster if the country's best universities, especially if they are publicly-funded, teach more international students than local ones. So international students already have a higher bar to clear to be admitted. Therefore the international students perform better because they are better (e.g. they are the top 10% of their country's students, while local students are only the top 30%). Accordingly it should not be surprising, in fact it should be expected, that most of the best students of each cohort are international.
Is this the case in practice?

The discussion on caps on international students has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

In the UK at least, this is not the case. Non-EU international students pay full fees so there is a strong push to accept as many of these students as possible. They still nominally meet the same minimum admissions requirements,  but very few home students come in at the minimum. Once at university, many struggle with the language and differences in learning expectations and perform more poorly.

"international students pay full fees so there is a strong push to accept as many of these students as possible."  This is true in many countries.  In the US substitute "out of state" for international.  I think Germany does not charge more for international students, though.

And who pays the reminder of the fee for EU students? Because if it is the state or the EU, I don't see where the incentive is from the university perspective.

@Alexis it used to be that the number of UK students was capped by the government on a per school/department basis. I never understood how non-UK EU students fit into the picture.

@AnonymousPhysicist My university uses "non-resident" to cover OOS and international, who pay about 3.3x resident tuition.

From my experience (German speaking countries, UK, Spain): We just took the best students and the nationality did not really play a role. (exception: medicine where politics wants to make sure that enough doctors stay in the country after graduation).
BUT:
The reason why international students often perform outstandingly is that a positive selection takes place before: students that seek international education (possibly in a language that is not their mother tongue) will often be the most motivated and smartest students of their home country. Local students might just give it a try even if they are not that outstanding. Assuming that each admission process has false positive and false negative outcomes a pre-selected international cohort that got admitted might perform exceptionally well (low false positive rate).

Thanks for answer. Are you saying you indeed observe international students perform better in these countries (German speaking countries, UK, Spain)?

Well, I do not have a quantification but feelingwise I often see international students at the top


text:
Is it possible to apply for a post doc (and get a post doc) while struggling with the health issues (a life-threatening illness: cancer)
I struggle with the exact question (or at least will have to face it near in the future) that was asked here: Do I need to mention having survived a life-threatening illness when applying for a new academic position?
When I was a kid, I had a cancer. Now I work at the university as a research assistant and I'm on my way to a PhD. After finishing my PhD, I would love to apply for a post doc, preferably in Sweden, Iceland or Norway (but my advisor suggests US or Australia, so I'm not sure where exactly I'm going to go).
There is a serious possibility that I will have a reoccurrence  in few years (talked with my oncologist many many times about it), or will not have, nobody could tell that, but there is a strong possibility.
At my current university (middle Europe) it was not a problem, I wasn't obliged to mention it to anybody, however, I informed my employer about my illness. My previous condition is almost not relevant today, however, I do have days when I do not feel good and just want to rest and sleep (but have to go to the University anyway, and of course, I go).
So, with my condition, is it possible to find a university and apply to post doc or not? And another, not less important: do I need to mention about my health when applying for a post doc position?

If your condition is manageable i.e. neither your condition nor the treatment plan for your condition will seriously interfere with the discharge of your duties, then your health is your problem and you don't need to tell anyone. If your condtion and the treatment plan for your condition will interfere with the timely discharge of your duties, then your health is someone else's problem, too, and you'll need to disclose it so that they can plan around you if need be. Assuming that the good will toward you is there, that is.

If you expect that your health will turn for the worse and that your ability to discharge your duties will be severely impacted, you might be better off postponing going for the post doc until your health has improved to a level where you can discharge your duties. Getting very sick as a post doc and that sickness being a surprise to everyone around you could be an exercise in burning bridges for you.

Whatever you do, make very sure that you will be able to get suitable healthcare. Applying for a postdoc is a time you're unusually likely to end up moving, and local rules can be very sensitive to details (as a postdoc in Quebec, I did not have the full advantages of being either a student or a worker, so had less in the way of healthcare than pretty much anyone else around the university).

I second Jessica B. In Sweden, for example, some post-doctoral scholarships do not include access to the excellent Swedish social security and health care system.

Serious health problems can strike anybody at any time.  You know that you have a much higher than background risk of having your condition return, but you also have a pretty good chance of getting into a serious traffic accident or having a parent come down with a serious illness or getting hit by major depression or any of the myriad other ways that your ability to do your work can become impaired.  No sane organization expects its employees to be in a protective bubble where bad things cannot happen to them.
If you can do your work effectively now, and don't have a known crisis expected in the near future, then the only sensible thing to do is to carry on with life.  You don't need to inform potential employers, any more than you would need to tell them that you might get into a traffic accident because you commute.  As noted in the comments, though, you definitely do need to make sure you have good access to health care that will cover your condition if it recurs.

Let me put in a cautionary note about a potential problem that could arise. When I applied for my position in Germany, I was required to submit a Gesundheitszeugnis (health certificate) that was signed by an authorized doctor registered with the German embassy. I do not know how a diagnosis of cancer will play out in such circumstances.
However, if you are an EU citizen, this may very well not apply to you, because you will be able to relocate from one EU country to another through "freedom of movement."

I know of 3 reasons for Gesundheitszeugnis (or also Betriebsärztliche Untersuchung - which I had to do whereever in the EU I was working): 1) show you are fit for the job (e.g. no blind bus drivers), 2) detect whetere there are conditions that need closer monitoring in your work settings (e.g. skin trouble and working in lab gloves) 3) If e.g. you work with medical samples and get diagnosed with hepatitis, your employer's insurance is responsible. Thus they (require the employer to) make sure you didn't have it before and ask them to pay for something they aren't responsible for.

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Not publishing an author photo on Elsevier journals
This is related to Co-author does not want biography+photo in paper submission but specific to Elsevier journals. In the mentioned question, answers showed that for IEEE they have a policy where a biography/photo could be omitted.
Can a paper be published with Elsevier, in journals which ask for an author bio/photo, without the author photo?
You can find several journals which ask for this on https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site:elsevier.com+passport-like+photo

I disagree with the "too specific" close vote: even though it is about a particular institution's regulations, Elsevier (like IEEE) is a massive institution with unified policies, and this is likely to be a simple answer about a durable policy.

Just curious... Has anyone already tried submitting a photo in which they wear a colander?

Not seen anyone wearing a colander, though, I've always thought the author photos in this paper are hilarious (all the authors seem to be making a "funny face" of some sort).

ASK THE EDITOR prior to submission.
In practice, some Elsevier editors do accept the absense of a photo.
(That's all, folks; there is not much more to be said about it.)

Do you know if any editors refuse omitting photo/bio?

@Kimball Not known to me.

As the author, you are certainly free to refuse to share personal details (be it the picture or biographical details). What the particular journal (or publishing venue, more in general) will do in case of refusal is up to them. They might refuse publication (unlikely, in my ignorant opinion), publish with a summary bio and no picture (i.e., "(author) is reachable at author@umiskatonic.edu" and nothing else) or just leave it out altogether (I'd guess this, if asked nicely).

I have sometimes used very atypical, but professional, photographs of myself (where I am barely recognisable).

What if the author has been in a witness protection programme? Or is someone like Greg Egan, with deliberately no photos online?

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


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Is there a need to cite a general idea in the introduction which shall be later developed with a reference?
Say like you state in your introduction the following:

This part will examine the demographic reality and the cultural habits of X people in Y country.

In the body of your work, you elaborate with citations:

X people are characterized by a habit of doing A, B and C (Smith 2010, p. 1). They are a population of 100000 (Smith 2010, p. 2), whatever.

Is it required to backup the introduction statement with the same citations? isn't it just a general statement? In case where the 'general statement' (which supposedly doesn't need citations) was inspired by the actual cited study, shouldn't I back it up even if written in a general form?
My question was inspired from this.

If that's what you have, no.  You're not mentioning any specific detail in the introduction that would attributable to another person/paper.  The only person/paper you could cite for "Section A of my paper talks about topic B" is you/your paper :-)

Citations are only needed when you make a statement that requires external justification.
Thus, if you say: "This paper will examine X people in Y country" there is no need for external justification, since it is a statement about the paper itself.
When you say "X people in Y country are characterized by a habit of doing A, B and C", however, that's a statement that requires justification, either by external citation or by data presented in the paper.


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Google Scholar: Will having HTML and PDF in different subdirectories lead to incorrect indexing?
I am trying to get our department's green OA repo at my university's web-site properly indexed by Google Scholar.
The PDFs in our repo for a large part legacy scans with no structure. This means that there is little hope of Google being able to scrape usable metadata from the PDF, so having an HTML abstract with metadata linked to the PDF is in our case essential for providing Google Scholar with the correct metadata.
Our repo is based upon on the Drupal 7 CMS: The author fills in the Google Scholar Metadata, which is stored as a regular Drupal node (HTML), and then uploads the full length PDF to the site.  The PDF is stored in the server's file system.
The way Drupal works means that the URL of the HTML abstract becomes http://example.org/node/NNN, while the uploaded PDF will have an URL like http://example.org/sites/default/files/XXXXXXX.pdf. The two are then linked together through the citation_pdf_url metatag in the HTML.
I was happy with this, until I spotted the following paragraph in section H of the Indexing Guidelines  for Google Scholar:

The content of the [citation_pdf_url] tag is the absolute URL of the PDF file; for security reasons, it must refer to a file in the same subdirectory as the HTML abstract. (my emphasis)
Failure to link the alternate versions together could result in the incorrect indexing of the PDF files, because these files would be processed as separate documents without the information contained in the meta tags. (their emphasis)

Given that this means what I think it means, indexing of my repo will break as node/  is indeed not the same "subdirectory" as sites/default/files/.
However, who keeps HTML content in subdirectories in 2014?  The current webdesign paradigm is to separate content (such text rendered with HTML) from assets (such as PDF files), and only the latter is actually stored in the file system. To me, this requirements is outdated and will also probably break almost every repo that is built on some sort of CMS.
I am prepared to bite the bullet and write the code that is needed in order to spew out static HTML files that can be saved in the sites/default/files/ subdirectory along with the PDF - if that is what it really takes to make Google Scholar index my repo.
However, before embarking upon this task, I wanted to hear from other that have repos that provide metadata for Google Scholar if this "same subdirectories" is absolutely required if you want the HTML abstract and full length PDF to be linked by means of citation_pdf_url tag.
Will having HTML and the PDF in different subdirectories really lead to incorrect indexing or no indexing of the PDF files?

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about search engine optimisation. [webmasters.se] might take this.

No , this is not about SEO. It is about what precisely is required to be indexed by Google Scholar.  It can only be answered by someone that is familiar with Google Scholar. Those people are here, and not on the Webmasters site.  (Nor is this about programming.  I know how to program something that creates static HTML on the fly.  The question is whether this is necessary.)

I did search of "Google Scholar" on  Webmasters SE and found a few Q&As. I believe there are indeed some experts there.

I did search Webmasters, Stack Overflow and this site for questions about Google Scholar before posting.  All of them have questions about Google Scholar, but I found this site to have the most knowledgeable users.  That's why I posted here.  I guess I'll have to move on (probably to Stack Exchange) if it gets closed here, but I still have my best hopes for this site.

Google Scholar is pretty smart about these things.  On all of the websites I'm involved with, we keep the PDFs in a separate directory from the page that links to them, and Scholar finds them just fine.  Of course, we also don't us the citation_pdf_url tag, so maybe we're fine because we're low-tech and Scholar does the inference for us...
I recommend doing it the easy way, and trusting Scholar to be smart.  If it doesn't do the right thing, then you can always go back and drop the tag and wait for a refresh.  And then if that doesn't work, you can do it the hard way.

Unfortunately, Google Scholar is not smart enough to scrape metadata from our PDF scans :-( .  However, since this is closed now, I guess this answer is the best one.  Cheers!


text:
Etiquette in difficult situation with colleague
A former colleague of mine who I thought that I knew quite well has recently become verbally abusive towards me because I would not leave my current job  to work with him in his lab on different project at another university.
Looking back on our interactions I now see that he was manipulating me much of the time and was angry that his latest effort was unsuccessful. I am concerned that because I have refused his request he will try and ruin my reputation (he made some veiled threats that I won't go into and implied I owed him because he "mentored" me).
To make matters worse, I had agreed to collaborate on some things with him before his behaviour became obvious to me.
Is it appropriate to simply avoid/ refuse all contact with this person or will this make things worse (especially with the collaboration dilemma)?
How would you deal with this? I do not feel that I have done anything wrong and that his reaction was very bizarre.

I am not sure I understand your question. That person is at another university working on a different project, right? What is the problem if you just leave him alone?

There is no problem with leaving him alone and this is what a family member suggested I do. However I am concerned that he will continue to harass me or do something completely outlandish as "revenge." .

@user45175: Well, we hope he won't continue to harass you or do something completely outlandish as "revenge".  But what could you possibly do to guarantee that -- inside of academia or out, we can only exert so much control over other people.  Almost everyone I know would agree that the best response to someone else's abusive and manipulative behavior is lack of engagement if at all possible (which, happily for you, it is).  So I think your family member has the best answer.

Thanks - I guess I was just looking for moral support... I have seen this type of thing happening to other people but I didn't recognise it happening to me. It's difficult because I thought we were friends and he tried to use that card on me the other day to make me feel bad.

You might, at least for a little while, keep a log of any contacts and interactions so if he does escalate, you'll already have a record.

@user45175 - You definitely need moral support, but I'm afraid this isn't the best place to seek it.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this site isn't designed for moral support.

Threatening is always manipulation. Usually there is talk than walk behind it.
it is not option to conform to his threatening behavior, and you certainly do not want to work with such a person. You owe nothing to that person if verbally abused you. So you should minimize interaction with such a person. Can you pull out from those collaborations?
There might be anti-discrimination institutions that -could- be helpful, depending on circumstances.

What does "talk than walk" mean?


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Debriefing participants right away or later in an online study
I am curious about this question related to ethics. Within my own online study (by the standard code of ethics), it is needed to review participants after the study. However, I am wondering whether it has to be done right away or for example within 3 days of completing the initial study. I see pros and cons of either.
For example if I consider it from the viewpoint of giving the debrief right away, then
pros are:

Participants can ask questions more easily as they remember more
Higher likelihood of being interested in the debrief

cons are:

Researchers cannot check whether any potential problems (e.g. errors, software malfunction) arose during the procedure and if it would be required to repeat the procedure.
Respondent cognitive fatigue

It would be nice to hear examples of how you would deal with it.

I don't think this is a question of ethics, there is nothing morally wrong either way, but of study methodology, and I think the answer depends on many specific factors: how likely is that you can get hold of your subjects after a few days, how long and tiring the experiment is, how feasible is to have both options...


text:
getting into mathematical biology with a biology background
I have a bachelor in biology with a minor in cs. In addition to cs courses like data structure and algorithm etc... , I've also taken courses in discrete mathematics, statistics/probability, linear algebra, differential equations and multivariable calculus. Taking those courses, I realized I love math and mathematical modeling as well.
How can I get into a mathematical biology masters or PhD?
Are the courses I've taken enough to get me through admission proccess?

In my university (FCUP in Portugal), we used to have a mathematical biology masters. I think both mathematics and biology BSc were acceptable, but most students came from biology. You have to go to the webpage of the masters you are interested in and check the requirements.

i checked it. its a masters in computational biology not in mathematical biology. i've checked entry requirments of many universities and almost all of them required just these courses i've taken but recommended more.

We have this masters...https://sigarra.up.pt/fcup/en/CUR_GERAL.CUR_VIEW?pv_ano_lectivo=2023&pv_curso_id=16821 reading the requirements: "Bachelor's degree in Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics or related fields, with a minimum grade of 12 (of a 20 points grade scale). Candidates should possess a minimum of 72 ECTS in Biology and Biochemistry, or in the scientific areas of Mathematics and Computer Science." It seems they value biology courses more. You have to see if you fit. The more qualified, the better chances of course you have of getting in.

Mathematical Biology and Computational biology are closely related, with a big superposition. Also in Portugal: Master in Computational Biology @ University of Coimbra.

This probably depends on the country. Where do you propose to study?

i don't really mind the country. just a good university.
computational biology, as far as i know, has more emphasis on machine learning and cs, while mathematical biology is more about modeling using systems of differential equations. i know they're just names, but am talking about latter one. @TheDoctor

In the US, I'd guess that you are qualified for entry into a doctoral program. If you have insight at all into the math courses you took it seems to me to be a solid enough base to start the journey.
Other places than the US might require more, of course, and many places require a masters first, but I don't see any serious missing parts for entry into a masters. In the US, though, a doctoral program would be a better choice if that is your goal. A masters isn't needed here to start most doctoral programs (with some exceptions).

thanks. do you have any recommendations for further math courses? i know courses like PDE or dynamical systems are gonna be useful, but what about some more pure courses, like algebra, real analysis or complex analysis?
although it's probably better asked as another question.

An advisor in such a program would be a better source, but you have the basics, I think. You might want to learn something like Python programming. But the discrete math and stats will be useful, along with the others you have.

@vhd I work with computational biology and never learned real/complex analysis, these are too theoretical. What I use a lot: ODE, PDE, SDE, Analytical Geometry, Linear Algebra, Calculus, Discrete mathematics/Scientific computing (derivatives and integration methods, optimisation/minimisation, ...), Python and some high performance language such Fortran 2008. But as Buffy said, the best is to get a supervisor to advise you, what you'll need depends on the actual research project.

can i ask you about the field you work on? epidemiology , evolution , cell biology ...?@TheDoctor

Take a look at the journals in the discipline and some papers recently published by faculty in the programs you are considering. These should show you the commonly used kinds of mathematics, which I think will pretty much be what you and others have mentioned.
There is always some other kind of math that might be useful in specific contexts but will rarely be used. I suggest looking at some more statistics first. I also think it never hurts to take another math class since it is easier than learning math on your own.

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How to make citation for a new paper in arxiv?
I have uploaded a preprint to the arXiv. I can find it in google search now. However, I cannot find it in google scholar. The reason for searching in Google scholar is that I want to make a BibTeX citation for my paper as below. Do I need to do something for my paper to appear in Google Scholar or do I just have to wait?
@article{tatarchenko2017octree,
  title={Octree Generating Networks: Efficient Convolutional Architectures for High-resolution 3D Outputs},
  author={Tatarchenko, Maxim and Dosovitskiy, Alexey and Brox, Thomas},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.09438},
  year={2017}
}

Welcome to Academia SE. Can you please [edit] your question to specify what you want to achieve and what the problem is? I fail to see what Google Scholar has to do with you citing something with BibTeX.

@Wrzlprmft I believe that the connection is that Google Scholar has a BibTeX export functionality.

If you only want to have a BibTeX export - this is possible on the arXiv website itself via NASA ADS.

You could always write the citation yourself.

As Christian mentions, there are already BibTex entries for your articles.
On NASA ADS: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2017arXiv170309438T&data_type=BIBTEX&db_key=PRE&nocookieset=1
On the University of Trier database: http://dblp.uni-trier.de/rec/bibtex/journals/corr/TatarchenkoDB17
Whether you use one of these or wait for the one from Google Scholar, the main issue will be how your bibtex style renders the citation. You may need to adjust the fields "journal", "pages" and/or "eprint" to obtain a suitable result.
EDIT: I found those links on the arxiv page https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.09438 on the right column, as mentioned by ff524

It's probably worth noting that you can get these links from the arXiv page, in the sidebar on the right side.

Yes. I must wait for the google scholar. It is automatic generating it


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Is it unwise to start a Ms/PhD program without a stipend - will it upset professors if I leave with a masters to apply to funded programs?
I was recently notified that I was accepted to a Ms/PhD program with a full tuition scholarship but I am waitlisted for receiving a Stipend. I don't currently have the best credentials so I don't think the prospect of me getting into a better program is too good.
Would it be unwise for me to start this program? For now my plan is to attend until I get an MS and then at that point apply to a better program if I still don't have a stipend. I figure a tuition free MS is better than the usual.
By "unwise" I meant, will it potentially upset professors if I leave after two years with the masters to apply elsewhere to potentially funded programs (if I still don't have a stipend at that point). I don't want to ruin my reputation in the process.

Can you afford to do so? If so and you don't have any options then go for it. If you can improve your credentials during the program maybe you can get a stipend latter or apply for a better program.

A huge part of this decision is your own financial situation. If you can afford the cost of living for a couple of years then it could be worth it. I wouldn't suggest going heavily in debt, but it shouldn't be too onerous without having to pay tuition. Note that, depending on the program and field, it may be possible or even likely that you will be supported as an RA on a research grant in later years.

thanks for your answers. It's rather doable since I can commute to this school from my hometown. It's not the most pleasant commute (1.5 hours via train) but it could be worse.

For what it is worth, I was accepted without funding but was offered a GA for my second semester and have been funded ever since.

That's awesome! Did you do anything special to impress them that first semester?

I don't understand this question. "Is it unwise" - in what sense? What do you want us to tell you that you don't already know?

A 1.5 hour commute might get tiresome very, very quickly. If that is 1.5 hours each way, then an 8.30 – 17.30 workday means leaving home by 7.00 and getting back at 19.00. Ugh.

By "unwise" I meant, will it potentially upset professors if I leave after two years with the masters to apply elsewhere to potentially funded programs (if I still don't have a stipend at that point). I don't want to ruin my reputation in the process.

If you have a chance for funding somewhere else - take it. Your professors should understand. Such is the nature of life.

I think that you are more asking, whether it is common to start graduate school without funding. Generally at the MS level, it is not uncommon for MS students to be unfunded. All depends on the school. Most schools that I've encountered would much rather fund PhD students since you get more out of the students.
Now at the PhD level - I would not advise a PhD without funding. Trying to live 4-6 years without a salary is difficult, and most people I've seen try this failed. There are enough schools out there that you should be able to get funding somewhere (unless you really have bad scores/grades and shouldn't be in graduate school).


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Is there a maximum duration for an MS in Germany, and are there allowances for medical leave?
Does someone here know how many years at the maximum one can take to finish MSc degree in Mathematics in Germany ? My friend enrolled for three semesters on regular basis but due to his mental instability he couldn't do anything. He almost has all the credits required and just needs thesis to be done. He is planning to take take a year gap to recover and may be finish his degree .
Is it possible for him ? Are there any provisions that restrict a person to take only certain number of semesters or that a person cannot take a year break or something of that sort ?

It is almost always possible to take a vacation semester, which is either free of charge, or at a fraction of the standard fee you would normally pay. (But you also lose some student perks, such as the public transportation ticket and student discounts.)
But you have to check with your Studienordnung or Prüfungsamt. You will certainly have a maximum number of semesters for your studies as well as a maximum time between finishing your last lectures and beginning your thesis.
In case of illness, as long as you have an official waiver from a doctor saying you can't study/work, most of these limits don't apply.
tl;dr: Check with your "Prüfungsamt"

Also check with the Studienberater for your program. [You may also lose any "bonuses" associated with finishing the program in the Regelstudienzeit ("official" program length).]

Also check with the Immatrikulationsamt for things like Langzeitstudiengebühren (fee for taking more than a few semesters longer than necessary).

As far as I know it just becomes more costly after a certain time. Search the Internet for 'langzeitstudiengebühren'.

Universities are interested in "creating" degree holders, too. In case of the German state universities, even the financial resources will - at least to some degree - depend on the number of students finishing (not starting) academic studies.
If you talk to the registrar's office (DE: Prüfungsamt) in advance, many things are possible; we had even things like leave of absence "for helping at bringing in the harvest" (if the parents have a farm), and, not uncommon, due to various health reasons.
But please try to resolve this in good time, it's much easier that way than after impending removal from the register of students.


text:
Is it useful for a student trying to get an undergraduate research position to have a personal website?
I'm studying a Bachelor in Engineering Physics undergraduate program and I know that most of the people that does research or that teaches have his/her personal website with their publications and their curriculum. I even know a friend of mine that has his own personal website. This made me think about creating one for myself. However, I don't really know if it really matters to have one now. I don't know if it is important to give my undergrad curriculum via personal website.
The things I'm including in the website will be:
CV
Portfolio
Contact Information
Research Interests
About me (section where I can talk about me in an extracurricular way)
So, will it matter if I do my website and include it in my signature whenever I send a mail to a professor looking to have a research stay or a research project with him?

This question is off topic for this site because it is specifically targeted at undergrads. If you want edit it so that it's more general, that would better.

This depends on what you want to do next (get a job? Go to grad school?) and what you would put on this website (info that's already on your CV? Portfolio of your projects?) There's no objective answer in the general case, but depending on the specifics there might be.

The intention is not that undergrads answer this, but researchers or people that has experience with this topic. It wouldn't give me any useful information if an undergrad answers this. @BenjaminMakoHill.

The website would contain the CV and its PDF format so people can download it, a portfolio of projects, educational videos and simulations, a "contact me", an "about me" (that contains doesn't relate with the curriculum), a "Science news" (with recomendable news), and a "Blog". @ff524

What Benjamin was saying is that questions about undergrad study are outside the scope of this site, as defined in the [help/on-topic]. If you ask about whether a personal website is useful for graduate admissions, or for getting an undergrad research position, it's on-topic; otherwise it's probably out of scope. (If you make it more general as he suggested, i.e., "Is it important for a student to have a personal website", it'll be on topic, but you'll get answers about grad students, which won't be useful to you.)

You send a mail to a professor   for what?

@scaaahu: In order to make an impression if I'm looking to have a research stay or a research project with him.

Please consider putting looking to have a research stay or a research project with him in your question.

Thanks for clarifying. Undergraduate research is on topic here, as I mentioned in my previous comment, so I've reopened the question.

A website is an investment in academia, personal life, industry, or whatever. There is no guarantee your professor will look at it, but if they do, it will probably make your application to anywhere look better, especially if your portfolio contains samples of your work, which are only cited in the CV. If it isn't useful for this lab position, it will definitely be useful in the future.

As just going through a round of interviews for hiring students to a research lab, I would say it is beneficial for you to have a website, on the condition that it is informative of your work.  Out of your list, the only one that I would view as beneficial is a portfolio.  Without the portfolio section, I would say it is not beneficial.
When people apply to my lab, they send their CV.  This usually includes some bullet points of work, school, extra curricular, etc.  The hardest part to extract from a CV is the type of work or actual capabilities of a student.  When receiving multiple applications, the ones that had a website were taken positively.   I was able to see not just the bullet points, but what type of work the student has previously done (Just be careful to be honest and full disclosure, if it was a group project, specify your role).
On the other hand, if your website gives no extra information than the CV, I would be a bit annoyed if I was directed to the website only to learn nothing more about the applicant.


text:
Is it common not be able to use tenured department colleagues to write letters of support for tenure?
I am up for tenure at a US university. It is a regional comprehensive 4-year primarily undergraduate university; it's mostly teaching school but has 10-15% graduate students.
I am allowed a maximum of 5 letters of support. I have two from department colleagues (both long-term tenured and one is a sub-dean) and three external. My chair has asked to remove the two department ones as this is basically just ‘not done’ (against the spirit of the guidelines, the guidelines make no mention of who can or cannot write letters). It is not written in either the department tenure guidelines or the university tenure guidelines that you cannot use department faculty for references.
Is it common not be able to use tenured department colleagues to write letters of support for tenure?
Update: thanks all. Got the tenure thing.

Whether or not this is addressed in the policy, if it is just "not done", then you won't benefit from having pushed the rules, and those letters won't help your case.

You could fight the rules, but then the department will think that you stir up troubles. That can't be a good image to have going into your tenure review. It kind of sucks to say it but I'd just do as you're told, especially if you think that you deserve to be tenured (in which case, those two letters shouldn't make a difference since the writers will comment on your case in the tenure review anyway).

A partially rhetorical question--If this is "not done", why did the two colleagues, who should know better, agree to write letters?

@mkennedy they had 25 years experience between them as well. They both said they just never knew but now of course we all realize not to do this.

Congratulations!

Yes, totally common. The reason is that these people have an inherent conflict of interest: they would be judge (letter writer) and jury (get to vote on your case) at the same time.
You will want to choose people as letter writers that (i) know you professionally, (ii) are well respected in the field, (iii) have no stake in all of this because they are at unrelated universities.

Well, it's not really that sort of conflict of interest, I think. Rather, it's that one's own colleagues already have as much input as they choose in the relevant faculty meetings and so on. So such letters are just a loss, at best. Further, as in @PeteL.Clark's answer, having such letters tends to suggest both that one is clueless about the process, and that one's work is not well known outside one's own department. There is also the significantly irrational feature about prophets-in-their-own-land, but you are in no position to debate that issue.

In some colleges, letters are expected to be evaluations of candidate, primarily  of scholarship. The candidate will submit 7-10 names and the chair will contact the letter writers (and may use others) to try to get the minimum of 4 responses. The letter content  and name of those who respond is not shared (except in anonymous way) to candidate. In that model, letters from collaborators/coauthors/shared school or advising experiences carry little weight. The bylaws do not say avoid collaborators, but  if they try to emphasis the idea of experts 'evaluation' it is likely implied.

If you're going to make a legal analogy, I'd say that witness and jury would be more appropriate. The judge would be the department chair or chair of the hiring committee.

@DavidRicherby -- yes, great analogy: "Witness and jury".

Your department chair is 100% correct in asking you to remove letters from faculty internal to your university.  She is doing you a favor by mentioning this to you!
To be honest, that you think this might be appropriate makes me worry that you may have insufficient familiarity with how the tenure and promotion process works at American universities.  The whole purpose of these letters is to get a sense of your academic profile in the academic community at large (i.e., outside of your institution).  A good such letter is written by someone with a lot of status in the community and a good perspective...which includes a lack of involvement in local affairs and politics.  On the one hand, it is a waste to get a letter from faculty in your department, because faculty in your department already play a much larger role in the tenure and promotion process: they evaluate your entire dossier and vote up or down.  On the other hand, if you are asked for five letters of evaluation and you choose two of them from your own department, it will likely create a very strong negative impression: it looks like no one outside of your department has ever heard of you and your work.
I don't mean to be harsh or alarming, but: you need to get a clue pretty fast.  Calling attention to the fact that internal letters are not explicitly against the rules of tenure and promotion is absolutely the worst perspective you can have on the situation: in this regard just as is usually the case in life, not everything that is a prohibitively bad idea is explicitly prohibited.  I strongly recommend that you approach a trusted mentor (for this inside your department is probably better, although you should take whatever you can get) and say something like "I realize that I have relatively little knowledge of how the promotion and tenure process actually works beyond the formal rules, which I now have reason to believe do not tell the whole story.  Can you help me out?"
Good luck.

I saw that you had people from your institution as letter writers, and that immediately struck me as a huge red flag.  I'm actually rather surprised that they were willing to write letters at all, since they ought to understand the tenure system better.

"I'm actually rather surprised that they were willing to write letters at all" - unless they actually want your application to be rejected, of course ;)

I agree that the fact that the OP's colleagues have written letters for him is curious, and there is a chance that at his particular institution the culture is such that this is not discouraged.  But given that (i) at the vast majority of US institutions this would be a very strange thing to do and (ii) the chair has brought up the point, I certainly wouldn't want to take that chance if I were the OP.

I would agree. The name of the tenure game is not as much to have effusive praise, but to not have anything that can be used against you.  So three external letters by themselves is better than 3+2 internal, where the presence of the internals becomes a "red flag" for someone who doesn't want you there.

There are several reasons why even a teaching institution might not want letters from inside your department.

It would be redundant, as the department is likely expected to collectively submit a letter.
There may be various conflicts of interest that are more likely for departmental colleagues (such as a reluctance to go through a search if tenure is denied and the friendships that naturally develop through working relationships).
These letters are partially to give the committee an idea of the candidate's interdepartmental interactions, which are often highly valued at liberal arts schools.

Note that at teaching institutions, as opposed to research institutions, it's not actually uncommon to have colleagues from the candidate's own school write letters or otherwise provide input. Faculty at other institutions may be better/more objective at judging research, but they are much less likely to be in a position to discuss the candidate's teaching and collegiality.
At my own institution, we are required to submit letters from faculty at the institution during some stages of the tenure review. However, there is still a preference that these letters not all come from within the department.


text:
How can I tell if an unsolicited offer to publish a book with Springer is legit?
Our team had a paper recently published in Energy and Buildings, and one of us (not the main author) received last week an email from someone claiming to be an editor with Springer.
According to this email, the editor was "impressed" with our paper and invites us to write or edit a book.
I have a nagging feeling that this is one of thousands of similar random emails sent to the authors of published papers. How can I know if this is a legitimate email, and whether it would be worth the effort? The email address comes from a springer.com domain, so it's probably not a random spammer.

Is the editor named in the email? Is (s)he listed as an editor in the Springer website? Is there contact information on that website, and does it match the address indicated in the email? All of these can help distinguish scams from legit mailings. Note that it is trivially easy for spammers to spoof the From fields of emails, but it wouldn't help a scammer to ask you to email Springer with your reply. If in doubt, you can send a polite response asking for more information to the contact address on the Springer website; if it's a scam then they'll disown it.

Book editors sometimes send unsolicited e-mails to people who write well on topics that can attract an audience, so this could well be legitimate.  There are a lot of scams, but generally from publishers you've never heard of.  On the other hand, there's no reason to think these signs of initial interest will necessarily lead to an actual contract.  If it interests you, it can't hurt to look into it.  If it doesn't interest you, you can safely send a very brief reply or even ignore the e-mail.
Whether it's a legitimate e-mail shouldn't be too hard to figure out.  If there's a return address from springer.com and someone claiming to be this editor responds to e-mail sent there, then it's probably legitimate (although in principle it could be a rogue employee or a hacker inside Springer's network or yours).  If the e-mail asks you to get in touch in some unconventional way, such as a private e-mail address, then it's probably not legitimate.
Whether it's worth the effort depends on the circumstances.  Springer publishes some truly excellent and important books, as well as others that are mediocre at best.  Whether publishing with them is a good idea depends on your career plans and book ideas, as well as what you think of the contract they offer and their publishing practices.  You should take a look at what else they have published recently in your area, as well as what has been published in series handled by this editor.

Book editors sometimes send unsolicited e-mails to people ... so this could well be legitimate. I must say I never understood the point of such emails, even the legitimate ones. If you ever have an idea for a book, don't wait for an editor to contact you; sit down and write it. If it's a good book, you will have no trouble at all finding a publisher for it. If it's a bad book, don't write it in the first place. The idea that you should change your entire professional plans for the next few years because a random editor you never met was "impressed" by a paper you wrote seems ludicrous to me.

@DanRomik: Yes, I think editors are aiming for two scenarios.  One is someone who already intends to write a book but doesn't yet have a publisher in mind.  The hope is that preemptively building a relationship now may keep the author from considering other publishers.  (This is bad for the author, except in the rare case when the author already knows this is the best possible publisher for the book.  It's best to keep your options open until you know what else might work out.)  The other scenario is an underconfident author who won't even try writing a book without external encouragement.

Perhaps this will be an unpopular sentiment, but I think that you might do well to consider whether this email is a scam of a sort even if it comes from the real Springer publishing company.
Suppose you write this book for Springer. How many copies would it sell? How much will Springer charge for it? Given the answers to these questions, will you make any money? (Short answer: any royalties you do receive will not remotely compensate you for your time.)
So what is your interest in writing such a book? Presumably, getting your ideas out there to the world. This brings me back to the first questions. What does Springer charge for an academic monograph? You might start at their shop website to get a sense of what they charge for similar works. (Short answer: usually >$100 for anything I want, and let's not even get started on the handbooks. Some of these sell for thousands of dollars--for a book!!!) So given these prices, how many copies do you think you will sell? (This is a perfectly fair question to ask the editor who contacted you, but be sure to ask for hard data about comparable books, not an off-the-cuff guestimate.) Are university libraries the primary market, or do they sell an appreciable number of copies to private individuals? How many university libraries have enough money left over from their Springer (and Elsevier, and Wiley, etc) subscriptions that they would buy this monograph. (Conjecture: probably only double figures in the US).
So now imagine that you write this book. Suppose it takes you a year of work (hint: this is a massive underestimate) and you receive close to zero financial compensation. Copies end up in at most a few hundred academic libraries around the world. Was this an efficient way to get your ideas out? Or is this not so very different from any of the other predatory publishers spamming academic authors in hopes of capitalizing on our naivite?

I agree it's silly to decide to write a book only because an editor from Springer or any other publishing house contacted you (see my other comment in response to another answer), but you seem to be questioning the legitimacy of the entire academic publishing industry. And why pick on Springer in particular? Yes their books are a bit expensive but I've personally learned a lot from many excellent Springer textbooks, and it's a fair guess that many authors who publish with them do think that this was an efficient way to get their ideas out. Your excessive negativity is unwarranted IMO. ...

...And I say this as a book author. I published with Cambridge University Press and am also making my book available to download for free, so I think I understand where your sentiment is coming from. However, you should keep in mind that putting out a professional, well edited, esthetically pleasing book takes work and expertise and costs money. Publishers need to recoup their costs on small volumes. So yes, there are predatory and exploitative practices and we should call them out where they exist, but that does not mean all publishers are scammers.

The one valid point you make is that writing an academic textbook will generally not make an author any meaningful amount of money compared to the time and effort it requires. Doing it for the money is indeed a very bad idea.

(-1) In this context, “scam” can only possibly mean something that does not come from the Springer publishing house, will not result in an actual book or requires the author to pay some cold hard cash. Much could be (and has been) said about the state of academic publishing in general but that's not a reason to hijack this question to air some views about that.

This is a rant about the price of books based on a decision to classify the whole academic publishing system as a scam, not an answer to the question.

David: the OP asked "How can I know if this is a legitimate email, and whether it would be worth the effort?". I addressed the "worth the effort" part. I don't see this as off topic at all. @DanRomik: the only reasons that  I single out Springer is because they were the ones that sent the email and that their prices are much higher than those of typical university presses. Important also to distinguish between monographs and textbooks. Textbooks may make sense to write w/ Springer. They require more publishing expertise and sell far more copies than monographs.


text:
Should formulas include units?
I recently submitted a paper that includes formulas related to building physics, such as
Q = K (t_b - t)

where Q is the daily heating load, K is the building's heat loss coefficient, and so on. All the quantities should be familiar to the reader.
A reviewer asks that I provide units for the quantities in this (and other) formulas. But this formula will remain true no matter which system of units I use.
Should formulas include units? If not, how can I tactfully rebut the reviewer's request?

You're right, they shouldn't. You can referer them to quantity calculus. I can give you a few references, but now I don't have the time to write a proper answer.

@MassimoOrtolano is talking about Buckingham's \pi calculus. The unit system may need to be specified generally, because physical equations have different constants depending on the unit system (e.g. Maxwell's equation have different factors in SI and Gaussian systems), or cosmological equations set c=h/2\pi=1. So, it might be good practice to mention the unit system used for the particular set of equations. However, if you use SI units overall (or some other common unit system in your branch of engineering), it should not cost a lot to add a sentence.

There are two possible issues. If the reviewer simply thinks that units should be provided for stylistic purposes, then you should look through a couple of past articles and see if they provide units. If they do, follow the model. If they don't you can respond with it appears that units are not typically included in << The Journal Name >>, but if there has been a change in style the units can be included.
The bigger issue is if the reviewer is confused (or believes the reader will be confused) and that providing units will clarify the confusion. If this is the case, then not providing units is a big deal. In this case I would provide units in terms of fundamental dimensions (e.g., length instead of meter and time instead of second).

I agree and disagree with the second paragraph. I agree - if reader will be confused, providing units is big deal. I disagree in providing them in fundamental dimensions. (At least in this case- this equation is in applied heat transfer and thus I assume 1) a lot of the other calculations are heat-transfer related; 2) somewhere there are some numerical results). Heat transfer coefficient K - which would normally be Watts/m^2 degK) has some weird things going on in some engineering subfields. I assume the point the referee is trying to make is to make sure that everything is unambiguous.


text:
Applying to PhD programs; do I need to include transcripts from unrelated master's degree program?
I'm interested in pursuing a PhD in a particular humanities field and I feel that my undergraduate GPA is strong enough for me to get into such a program at a top school. However, my path to deciding this has been somewhat circuitous. Along the way, I completed a master's degree in a completely unrelated subject which I became uninterested in and disillusioned by while I was in the program. I decided to complete it anyway and as a result of my lack of passion for the field, I didn't perform very well in my master's program and just did the minimum to complete my degree.
Now when I look at PhD applications, I see that every school's admission page says you must submit transcripts from all university level courses taken even though only a bachelor's degree is required for admission. My question is, if by omitting transcripts from my master's program, would I be violating most admission policies and/or risk having a misleading or unethical application?

Yes. If you don't follow the instructions then you are not following the instructions.

Yes, omitting your Master's degree transcript is a serious ethical violation (lying by omission) just below making stuff up (lying). The requirement also includes transcripts in cases of incomplete, withdrawals, expulsion, and non-degree program or study.

"All university level courses taken" means "all university level courses taken", so yes, you should submit it too. Otherwise, if at any point they discover that you had been enrolled in that masters, you could be in trouble for lying.
Even if they don't require you to submit it, you will have to explain what were you doing during that time. And a bad master's is far better than sitting at home doing noting.
Now, you don't want it to hurt your application, so you should consider explaining in your cover letter why you did poorly. That shouldn't be too difficult, I think a good bachelor and a bad master is still better than just a good bachelor.

If the requirements say

You must submit transcripts from all university level courses taken

Then yes, you must submit transcripts from your unrelated master's. To do otherwise would be a violation of the policy, which clearly states you must submit all university-level transcripts.

In fact completing a Masters degree is a positive aspect in your application, regardless of not being in the same (or similar) field of studies.
Since the topic of why you believe yourself to be a suitable candidate for the Ph.D. program will be part of your application at some point in the process, you should present the experience as a positive one, where you both demonstrated your ability to do graduate level work successfully, and that it lead (wholly or in part) to your realization that you were not as interested in that subject as you expected to be.
This should be followed up with some justification why you expect to remain focused and interested in the longer and more detailed Ph.D. program, but I view that as an essential requite to anyone's success in a graduate program
anyhow, so you will need to figure how to make a strong and convincing argument. For own state of mind, as well as your admissions application.


text:
How to write a letter to nominate an awesome Professor for an award?
How to write a letter to nominate an awesome past Professor for an award for work he has done in our university?  This professor established a cyber security scholarship program at our engineering university for students to pursue this field, especially when it was emerging 15 years ago.

What pointers do I mention in the letter?
How long can the letter be?
What tone should I use (serious, humor, etc)

Please advise.
The award is given by the university based on these criteria:

A record of outstanding teaching effectiveness both within and outside
  the classroom
The ability to inspire, promote, and sustain the intellectual
  development of students
A pedagogical approach that is innovative (new approaches using
  current or new models of teaching), intellectually rigorous, creative,
  and engaging
Demonstrated scholarly/professional contributions and their
  integration into the classroom that foster critical thinking and
  challenge students to independent inquiry
Advising/mentoring of undergraduate or graduate students or doctoral
  and clinical supervision-interactions outside of the classroom and the
  quality of such interactions
Contribution to developing or enhancing curricula in the field
Length of service
Internal school awards/honors received

First, thank you for wanting to do this! Once the awardees have been announced, no matter the result do let your professor know you did this, and pass on the award packet you created (let any letter-of-support writers know you plan to do this, as a courtesy; they probably won't be fussed about it). Your respect will mean more to your professor than the award!
Now, to your actual questions.
Pointers to mention. Think of this like a cover letter for a job application. You want to address as many of the listed criteria as possible as specifically as possible. (Award-ceremony emcees often quote from nomination letters, so try for good soundbites!) You don't have to hit every single one (especially as that list is rather long), but try to touch on half to three-quarters of them.
Length. Often the award criteria will specify this. If not... honestly, I'd call or email somebody in the office sponsoring the award and ask what's typical. I've seen one page up through almost ten, and it's not good to err in either the too-short or the too-long direction.
Tone. Err on the serious side. If you have an anecdote displaying your prof's sense of humor, use it if it speaks to one of the award criteria ("quality interactions outside the classroom" or "classroom effectiveness" might fit), but be absolutely sure the humor is one hundred percent harmless first -- you don't want to land your prof in hot water, you want them to win the award!
Good luck to you and your prof!


text:
Is there any reason to register the copyright to your PhD dissertation with the US Copyright Office?
I am in the process of submitting my thesis online. I think most of the people here are familiar with ProQuest. One of the option you have is to have them register the copyright to your thesis with the US Copyright Office (in your name).
From my point of view, a thesis should not be copyrighted simply because I think of it as an extended paper. I will gladly let people use my work and cite me appropriately.
Having seen that option though, I am wondering if there is any reason to register the copyright to a thesis.

Any creative work is copyrighted by default as soon as it is written down (or otherwise placed in a fixed medium), so as written, this question doesn't make much sense. Are you referring to registering your copyright with the US Copyright Office? Or putting an explicit copyright notice on it? Or choosing not to release it under a more permissive license? Or something else?

@ff524 Yes you are correct: I am referring to Registering my copyright with a U.S. Copyright Office.

I have edited the post to reflect your comment; but you should realize that your second paragraph doesn't really make a lot of sense, given how copyright works and the context of the question. You can register your copyright with the copyright office and still make it available with a permissive license; and not registering the copyright doesn't mean it isn't copyrighted.

Registering a copyright with the US Copyright Office is a legal formality that establishes a public record of your claim to the work.
It is mainly useful if, in the future, you want to sue someone who infringes your copyright. Specifically,

Before an infringement suit may be filed in court, registration
  is necessary for works of U.S. origin.
If made before or within five years of publication, registration
  will establish prima facie evidence in court of
  the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in
  the certificate.
If registration is made within three months after publication
  of the work or prior to an infringement of the work,
  statutory damages and attorney’s fees will be available to
  the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an
  award of actual damages and profits is available to the
  copyright owner.

These and some other similar benefits are described in this circular from the US Copyright Office.
Based on your post, you seem to have some misconceptions about how copyright works. Note that:

Even if you do not register the copyright, the work is still copyrighted. In the United States and many other countries, a creative work is protected by copyright automatically as soon as it is written down or otherwise placed in a fixed medium.
Even if you do register the copyright, you can still make the work available under a permissive license, such as a Creative Commons license. See Is Creative Commons against copyright? for more information. For example, with CC-BY-NC you can choose to allow most non-commercial uses of your work as long as it is attributed to you, but still prohibit others from selling your thesis as an expensive book on Amazon.
You mentioned that you want to "let people use my work and cite me appropriately." Copyright does not prevent people from doing either of those things. Even if you reserve all rights under copyright, people are still free to use the ideas in your thesis. Copyright only protects your expression of your ideas, i.e. the words or images you used to express your ideas. So copyright prohibits people from copying large parts of your thesis verbatim into their own, or from posting copies of your thesis on another website (unless you choose to allow those things by assigning a permissive license to the work), but not from building on your work (and citing you). See Does copyright protect the author's creative ideas? for more information.
You wrote "a thesis should not be copyrighted simply because I think of it as an extended paper." The vast majority of papers are also copyrighted.

Thanks for your great and detailed answer! It was enlightening.


text:
What is the etiquette for making an appointment to request a letter of recommendation?
I'm currently a college sophomore looking to transfer to a university overseas, and I need a letter of recommendation from my adviser in order to apply.
Usually, in order to get in touch with my adviser, I just sign up for a 20 minute time slot, but that system is usually intended for students to quickly discuss class options.
I feel like signing up for the time slot and asking her for a letter of recommendation in person with no warning is sort of rude, and I've also heard that asking for a letter entirely over email is also rude. So, scheduling an appointment over email seems like the best option, but I'm not sure if I should explicitly reference my transferring and the letter of recommendation, because that seems tantamount to just asking over email. Any suggestions?

Welcome to Academia.SE! I edited the second question out of your post because we ask that independent questions be asked individually, one question per post. But please go ahead and ask the second question in a new post!

Related: Is it better to request a recommendation letter in person after class or by email?

The reason to want to talk in person is to be able to have the space for discussion and nuance that may be impossible over email.  But you can certainly start the discussion over email.  Why not send an email saying your plans and that you are interested in getting a letter of recommendation, but then close by saying that if the professor is willing, you think it might be a good idea to meet to discuss?


text:
How to complete laboratory courses after building fire?
A couple of weeks ago there was a fire in my department. While it only directly affected one research lab, the whole building is currently closed due to safety reasons while the place is cleaned. The current timeline has the building closed for months (well into the fall semester).
We've already started to recover from the shock. Courses have been relocated, grad students near graduation have been sent to other institutions to finish their work and researchers have started to find friendly labs to work in.
However, we've been having problems with our undergraduate laboratory courses. These courses consist of three to five experiments, each of which takes several weeks to complete. The experiments require specialized equipment, which is now trapped in the building, and cannot be moved before the cleaning is complete. We are the only department in the university that has this specific equipment.
We are currently at a loss about what do to with the students that were taking these courses. Some options that have been proposed are:

Give everyone an incomplete.

While this would seem logical, since the students will end up with only half of the course material, the courses are both a requisite to graduation and usually taken in the final year. This means that we would be pushing the graduation of many of our students. Additionally, we would not be able to handle the doubled demand for the courses when we can give the again.

Try to complete the experiments in other departments

Another department at our university has some labs that run somewhat similar experiments. However, they would not be available for at least two more weeks (when their students are expected to finish their courses). By that time the semester will have less than a month left, not enough time to fully complete the remaining experiments. To do this, we would have to design new experiments that attempt to have the same teaching value and that can be completed in the new labs in limited time. Some of the professors running the lab courses are understandably reluctant to do this at short notice. Additionally, some of the experiments are pretty much unique to our department, so that it might be impossible to do them at the other labs.

Give the students experimental data to analyze

My preferred option is to give the students experimental data, and have the students analyze it and file reports as if they had actually run the experiments. However, some professors argue that this would betray the point of the laboratories, which are meant to focus on the experimentation.

Stop the courses and give everyone a grade based on the work completed so far

Some professors prefer the idea of just stopping the courses as they stand, and basing the grades on the work the students have completed so far. However, this is difficult since the labs are run in groups, and different groups have managed to complete differing amounts of work. Additionally, this is likely to affect students grades negatively, since historically their grades are boosted by the final exam, which they would not take in this situation. Additionally, I don't see how this is better than option 3, since stopping the course midway also leaves unmet several course objectives.
Are there really no better alternatives? Is there some way to allow the students to complete the lab courses without compromising its objectives?

Wow, what a difficult situation!  Personally, I agree with your assessment that option #3 is the least-bad from a pedagogical point of view.

I think #1 is a non-starter - the fire is more or less an act of god, and punishing the students for it seems unjust. #2 may be doable (but it doesn't sound likely in your circumstances). #3 is decent, as is #4. I think most accreditation boards (or those I've dealt with in the US) would be fairly amenable to some university accommodation for unusual circumstances like this, so the object would be to get the students some feel for experiments (and their problems!).

@jakebeal Yes, it has been a true mess. Everyone's main worry has been with the research labs, since they will likely be locked out of their labs for months. This has unfourtanetely put these issues with the labs relegated, and now we don't have much time to decide.

@JonCuster Yeah fortunately we aren't expecting much trouble with accreditation.

@Sciencertobe - as another burden to consider, not related to this question or answer at all... Soon you should start considering what it will take to reoccupy and restart the lab spaces. Since there was a fire it seems unlikely that everything was shut down safely and securely so you will be going back in to an undefined safety scenario. Think hard, and good luck.

As an experimentalist myself, I feel strongly that that hands-on part of laboratory is an important part of the course, but ...

The students have presumably already done some of the planned hands on work, so option #3 would not be a total loss on this front.
Analysis of data is not generally the same as classroom problems, and is also an important part of the laboratory experience.

Toward that end I would suggest

Investigating option #2 vigorously in hopes of recreating or substituting for some part of the hands-on work that would otherwise be lost. Try to get all the students one more hands-on experience if at all possible.
Use option #3 to address the analysis skill you were hoping to teach. Give them not only the data, but the equipment, methods and technique parts of lab reports from previous students (be sure to get permission where this might be needed).
Use a library assignment to get them thinking about the skills they are not practicing. Perhaps assign them each to report (either a oral presentation or a paper) on the methods used to perform [some common analysis in your field] when that technique was new and the equipment was not as forgiving as today.

And declare it the best you can do under the circumstances.


text:
In what countries is it possible to enter a life science PhD program directly after a Bachelor's?
I would like to know which countries allow admission to a PhD program directly after finishing a Bachelor's (Life Science), without requiring an intervening Master's degree?
And if you go directly into a PhD after the B.S., which countries support it? In India(my country), it is nearly impossible other than you join a integrated course.
Is it same everywhere?

So having a bachelors degree in india makes it impossible to get a PhD? That seems a bit weird.

@Neo: In most countries other than the US, UK, and Canada, it's very difficult to get admission to a PhD program without already having a master's degree.

These questions may help you: PhD in Germany after Bachelors and Applying to Ph.D. with 5 years in Bachelors

This is a Q&A site, not a discussion forum, so this isn't the place for an "open to all stream discussion". Please edit your question to be a lot more specific.

I edited for clarity.

In addition to @EnergyNumbers comment, this would likely vary by university rather than by country.

In general, applying for a Ph.D. program in life sciences with just a bachelor's degree is possible in at least some of the US universities (I do not know, however, to which extent this affects your chances at acceptance).
E.g. the Harvard medical school web site says "Minimal requirements include a bachelor’s degree and undergraduate preparation in the sciences."


text:
What's the standard text that I should put at the bottom of a handout containing unpublished data, asking people not to cite it?
I'm giving a handout out at an upcoming lecture. It contains unpublished data that will soon (within the next year anyway, if accepted) be published. I trust the people at the conference to respect my wishes. What's a polite footer to include at the bottom of the handout to these ends?

Why would you want people not to cite your work?

I want them to cite the article now under preparation rather than a handout. Motivation is not purely scientific here - I also care about my citation index...

This is not a situation that calls for subtlety.  I recommend adding large bold capital letters across the top of the first page:

PRELIMINARY VERSION — DO NOT CITE OR DISTRIBUTE

I would also include a footnote at the bottom of the title page indicating where the final version will be made available.

A footer is likely to be overlooked.
Put the statement that this is unpublished, preliminary results, in your abstract or so.
You might also mark it by overprinting with "Preliminary" by using e.g. LaTeX' draftwatermark package.

+1. A watermark on every page is best. PowerPoint can also do this.

authors: الهلالي الحميري


text:
What's a novel way to say "all errors are my own"?
Typical disclaimer is now just common fodder for all papers and books. Any advice on a more original take to this generic statement would be appreciated!

That's certainly not a typical disclaimer in applied CS.

"work done by @mateuz and barring a response below, is error-free. thoughts, questions, bugs, feature requests?" and add a link to your github repo/comment form/etc

OK, maybe not for Applied CS, but there are many other fields out there...

Also not common in biomedical field. I have seen similar claims in books, but not papers. Most journal requires a signed document from all authors to show approval; all of the authors are held responsible. It is, however, possible to summarize who did what in a paragraph. If one author is responsible for the statistical analysis, it may imply errors in the stat section are that author's.

"It is traditional for the author to magnanimously accept the blame for whatever deficiencies remain. I don’t. Any errors, deficiencies, or problems in this book are somebody else’s fault, but I would appreciate knowing about them so as to determine who is to blame." — Steven S. Skiena, The Algorithm Design Manual

I've never seen such a disclaimer in an academic paper (pure maths, theoretical comp sci). Who else's would the errors be?

The current advisor generation may not get it. Also, "your" might say more than you want here. :D

Making the manuscript error-free is left as an exercise for the reader.

Now that I read this nice one from you, using it is plagiarism :(  (it would be odd to provide a citation in a disclaimer)  ;-)

I hereby place it in the public domain!

But, using a text from the public domain without stating that it's not ones own, is still plagiarism, isn't it?  ;-)

Plus one for public domain, but creative commons license anyways, if I recall. :)

Such statements should, imho, be accompanied by a "best effort" declaration, maybe with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the reviewers. If I read an article of which the author basically says, "includes errors", I'm not confident in the accuracy of the presented material (even though it's a tautology).

It would be nice to include the sentence "This text contains at least an error" as well.

I wonder why this got upvoted so often. It is a non-helpful response, and there are fields in which this disclaimer is common, so the original question is fair to ask.

What is the point? If errors are due to factors other than those under ones own control, it should be mentioned (people are usually careful to protect their own names from problems they are not responsible for). Any unreferenced errors, ambiguities, misconceptions will clearly be labelled as the fault of the author by default.

The point is to protect against angry colleagues, and there are fields (not CS) where adding such a disclaimer is customary. For example, sometimes, a citation to previous works will lay out a different story than the author of that previous work prefers to be told. The disclaimer points out that "errors" may be possible (as always), so the author of that work is more likely to see this as an error rather than a try to attack that older work.

Another case is when someone puts a draft paper of some work on her homepage for a work that is still in the discussion-with-peers stage. Ideas by peers may already be integrated as essential parts of the paper, thus justifying co-authorship of a final published version of the paper, but not every draft version is thoroughly checked by everyone who contributed. Yet, it makes sense to add the contributors already as authors, so that they receive  some preliminary credit for the ideas. Adding the disclaimer helps to free the contributors from being able to justify details of the unfinished work.

@DCTLib Why would you be making a draft public without the consent of your co-authors? If your co-authors have consented to the draft being made public then they are consenting to be associated with any errors in it so no disclaimer is necessary.

@DavidRicherby The draft would not be made public without the consent of the co-authors (whose contribution at that point the paper might have simply been contributing some ideas and explaining them to the leading author). The idea of such a draft is to stimulate discussions along colleagues rather than being perfectly throroughly checked published works.

Consider for example a 100-page draft with some ideas by various authors. It is put online such that everyone from the community can read it, not only those that contributed ideas already. The work is discussed at a workshop. After the discussion on the workshop, the lead author who collects and compiles the ideas probably scrapes 70% of the paper and replaces their concepts. If everyone who contributed one idea would have had to read every detail, then (1) the work would have been delayed a lot due to the workload, and (2) much work would have been in vain, due to the replacement of stuff...

...now, for such works, it makes sense during the discussion phase for one of the authors to take the lead, but already attribute credits for ideas. After the discussion of the draft is finished, all credit-takers get involved in writing an actual paper, and the "all errors are mine" sentence is dropped. The result of the overall process is that the scientific process is accelerated by not requiring many people to check and double-check every intermediate step, and all researchers taking responsibility for all intermediate steps would neither help the later authors nor science in general.

Donald E. Knuth writes in the Preface of Volume 4A of his series The Art of Computer Programming:

I fear that [errors] lurk among the details collected here, and I want to correct them as soon as possible. Therefore I will cheerfully award $2.56 to the first finder of each technical, typographical, or historical error.

This is not novel but if there is a greater way to own up and ask for help, I don't know it. This assumes, of course, you want to know about errors and not just issue a blanket "my faul, duh" statement.
Incidentally, Knuth cites Christos H. Papadimitriou (Computational Complexity, 1994) just below; if you are in for a little snark:

Naturally, I am responsible for the remaining errors---although, in my opinions, my friends could have caught a few more.

I don't think it makes sense to copy such a statement (even as citation) to replace your own words. The best way is probably to be authentic and write what you think.

Usually, such a disclaimer appears when the author of the paper/book acknowledges some contribution from other persons that do not appear as authors, especially when (for papers) the referees are acknowledged for constructive comments and suggestions.
The polite way is to say "all remaining errors are my own".
The "heavy-weight professional" way is to say "the usual disclaimer applies".
A natural way to create a Catch-22 (a vicious circle) would be to state "to the best of my knowledge, this paper contains no further erors".

I find the increasing prevalence of this type of acknowledgement annoying. In political science, it seems like it is on almost every paper. Indeed, some authors have now switched to just writing "the usual disclaimer applies". Why I would need to acknowledge that I am responsible for (errors in) something I have authored continues to allude me. A novel (yet pleasantly classical) strategy would be to say nothing of this sort at all.


text:
Why are degrees in Business Administration (and similar) considered Science?
Why do people studying e.g. Business Administration (or similar) receive BSc or MSc degrees? Those guys don't rely on the scientific method even if they may use some mathematical or scientific tools from social sciences sometimes.
Is this just an institutional artifact?

I am not sure about Bachelors degree. But, I always thought MBA means Masters of Business Administration. I never heard of MBA is considered MSc. Would you please clarify by giving some examples?

Master's of Science in Business Administration at Boston University. There are many, many others, too.

@Teusz have you looked at the BU BSc curriculum? It seems to me that most of the core classes are "science".

This question is poorly worded. Are you asking is Business Administration a science?

"those guys don't rely on the scientific method", sorry but this is just plain ignorant. While there are likely exceptions (you will find examples in STEM also), those guys does indeed rely on scientific methods. I can't believe that this is a good faith question

@Repmat I sincerely mean it in good faith. I'm not interested in snark.  Business Administration and e.g. Entrepreneurship are obviously very important topics but are they science?

Business would be classified as a social science, no? (It can be easy for those in the physical science to forget about social sciences, I think). In any case, as @BrianDHall mentions, it's a fairly hollow distinction.

Somee University's have found that they actually had no policy to differentiate why some degrees were only offered as a BA or as BS and decided to create (or at least formally define) a difference, like this story:

BA/BS, Difference Between Degrees
Background: in 1984, the Academic Senate Curriculum Committee was
  asked to prepare a policy statement which would differentiate between
  Bachelor of Science degrees and Bachelor of Arts degrees at California
  Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The need for this arose
  when some departments at Cal Poly proposed to change their B.A.
  degrees to B.S. degrees. The requests were refused by the Chancellor's
  Office in part because Cal Poly, SLO, had no campus policy which
  specified the differences between the two degrees.

This one University created this type of distinction:

Bachelor of Arts Degree:

is usually less specialized than a Bachelor of Science degree.
requires a minimum of 180 quarter units for the degree; 36 units are
  required in the major, of which at least 18 units are at the 300-400
  level.
is normally awarded in such majors as the languages,
  literature, other humanities, and history.

Bachelor of Science Degree:

typically involves technical fields.
requires a minimum of 180 quarter
  units for the degree; 54 units are required in the major, of which at
  least 27 quarter units are at the of 300-400 level.
is normally
  awarded in such majors as the physical and biological sciences,
  engineering, and agriculture

Here's a different take on the same issue:

The BA is a liberal arts degree intended to develop skills and talents
  essential to succeeding in a global society. It combines study of the
  arts, humanities, historical perspectives, and the natural and social
  sciences with advanced critical inquiry and an in-depth knowledge in
  an academic discipline (major). The program develops cultural, social,
  and political literacy, including the abilities to communicate
  effectively and clearly in writing and in speech, and to understand on
  a basic level a world language other than one’s own.* In so doing, it
  fosters the ability to understand and actively participate in
  discourses both within and beyond the field of your major (such as a
  minor or second major), and it promotes engagement with cultural,
  social, and political difference.
The BS is a liberal arts degree intended to develop skills and talents
  essential to professional work. It combines study of the arts,
  humanities, historical perspectives, and the natural and social
  sciences with advanced critical inquiry and an in-depth knowledge in a
  specific academic discipline (major). The program develops an
  understanding of empirical analysis, scientific methodology and
  protocols, and mathematics and quantitative techniques. In so doing,
  it equips you for continued engagement in professional research within
  your chosen field.

What's the actual difference in terms of coursework, other than the choice of major itself? The BA requires a foreign language (2 semesters) and a few extra humanities classes, while the BS has no requirement for foreign language but adds an extra natural science lab and extra math class. It's mostly a nonsense differentiation that means nothing, but it sounds fancy and gives the illusion of choice if you don't know why you want to go to college - so it's an effective part of the marketing to some audiences.
But in all of these note that no mention is made of the scientific method, math, or any classically recognized type of 'art' (such as painting, literature, etc). The words art and science are not well defined in this way across academia, and so in the end they are used in whatever way the school decides they want to use them.
There are some other classifications in use as well, such as bachelors of: music (BM), applied science (BAS), fine art (BFA), and even a Bachelor Of Business Administration (BBA).
One final note is the classification sometimes ends up purely as a result of what 'school' or 'college' within the University grants the degree. Some schools define themselves as liberal arts/humanities schools and only offer a BA, some define themselves as technical/technology schools and only grant a BS, business schools are more likely to offer something branded as a BBA/MBA, schools of "letters and science" often offer both, etc. In such schools the difference is who is in charge of that particular degree, more than it reflects a genuine difference in what the classification means to students or other community members.
And all of this is just in the US system!

TLDR; The difference in a BA/BS and how "business administration" will be classified (as BA, BS, BBA, etc) means something only within the context of a given school, varies widely between schools, and sometimes means nothing. Each institution generally chooses for itself what, if any, difference there is, so you'll need to refer to each school for reasoning on why they do things they way they do - and sometimes the answer will just be tradition. 'Art' and 'science' in academic degrees don't necessarily mean the same thing as they do in the vernacular.

IIRC, when I was in undergrad at my university, even the "pure" sciences (e.g. Physics, Chemistry, Biology) were awarded BA's and only engineering degrees were BS's.

At University of Essex they provide both degrees, and they even give an explanation of the differences. It boils down to the following:
An MBA in Business Administration:

Takes it's starting point in the student's previous work experience
Focuses on tools rather than theory

An MSc on the other hand:

Is accessible to people without prior work experience (more like a normal education)
Takes it's starting point in theory

More informally, an MBA is often for people who cannot advance further in their career without an academic degree of some sort.
Does that now mean you should regard BA as an academic degree in the same way as eg. chemistry or physics? No, but different subjects has different traditions, and it is generally not very fruitful to play the 'subject x is not a real science'-game.

Professional degrees
Professional degrees are a thing, and MBA is generally considered one of them. They are similar but a bit different from the 'general' academic degrees - they follow a similar structure, studies and rankings but one of the main differences is that professional studies will generally focus on acquisition of a large amount of domain knowledge (whether that domain is business administration, pharmacy, dentistry, surgery, engineering or law) and only a minority of students at the very end of their careers will work on what would be "truly" science.
However, those fields have solid traditions that are often older than whole academic disciplines, so they have always been parts of higher education. The details will differ between countries - some will call all of them as 'masters', some will have specific naming for each subfield, and some will explicitly have two 'tracks', differentiating between MSc and the various professional masters degrees.