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When and why a scientific technical report is written?
While making some paper search in my scientific field, sometimes I find articles that are not published in journals or conference proceedings, but as technical reports.
In my experience, I've never written a technical report, and I've never even been asked to do it.
So I was wondering: what's the difference between a technical report and a scientific paper?
Why some researchers publish a work as technical report instead of sending it to a conference or a journal?
When do you suggest to write one instead of addressing it to a conference or a journal?
PS: It seems to me that writing technical reports is more diffused in English-speaking world than in Continental Europe. Is it true? Why?

Technical reports are just a slightly more formal form of preprint.  It's not an alternative to conferences or journals, except in rare cases when something is judged worthy of disseminating but somehow unsuitable for publication.  Occasionally something inadvertently stays as a technical report forever, for example if the authors try and fail to get it published, or if they lose interest.  (For example, sometimes a student who is leaving academia writes a technical report before going, but nobody else cares enough to try to get it formally published.)

Perhaps it varies by field but other uses I have come across in my field are;

Required by a grant funding agency (i.e. a report of the findings from the study to the grant agency). Here is such an example of a NIJ report. These tend to be much longer and more detailed than a single journal article.
Reports disseminated by other institutions. For instance, the non-for-profit I work for releases technical reports that we want to disseminate to the public (the same goes for the state agency I work for). The material may be the same as subsequent journal articles but the intended audience is not limited to academics and is much broader. Here is an example of this by the RAND corporation. Another popular one in the Social Sciences is the Campbell collaboration library of meta-analysis.

These are similar to what Charles stated, but I would nit-pick a bit with the motivation. They aren't always just another means to disseminate what are otherwise journal articles. It is also a very potential heterogeneous field of papers. The RAND and Campbell articles I cited above are typically considered very high esteem (and go through a similar peer-review process to more typical journals). But pretty much any agency can release a technical report (put your agency name on it and post the pdf on the internet) so they can vary dramatically in quality.

In the particle physics world---where we have large organization that operate for decades---"technical report" is one of the several names given to internal documents and communications with the funding agencies that are intended to

communicate important technical details between units (e.g. the accelerator division needs to inform the experimental scientists of the operational limits of the beam position monitors)
propagate and preserve specialized knowledge and competencies
to document details that won't be written up in a paper for many years (large experiments often leave off writing a detailed description of the experiment as built and run until after several data papers have appeared; by the time you get ready to write this "instrumentation paper" many of the people who installed the device may have moved on)
provided supporting justification for grant requests and project proposals
demonstrate readiness to actually start spending money on conditionally approved projects (which is essentially all US projects in the post SSC era; and both the Europeans and the Japanese have similar administrative protections)

Accordingly most particle physicist will spend some time writing such documents every few years.

In addition to the answers already posted, sometimes when a professor is given a professorial chair (endowment), he or she is required to submit formal documentation describing the research done while "sitting in the chair."  Some departments/colleges/universities will accept (non-refereed) technical reports in lieu of refereed papers just to get around the technicality.


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What to do when you discover computational errors and mistakes in your accepted paper at the proof stage?
My paper is accepted with minor revisions and now is in proof stage. Unfortunately, I have found computational errors in my calculations which have led to some wrong results.
What should I do?

It's hard to say without knowing the paper, but this does sound like a pretty significant difference. I am honestly not sure what the procedure is in this case, but it is very likely that your paper may have to be re-reviewed in light of the new data.

Talk to the senior editor in charge of your paper.

Send a mail to the editor and just add a sentence that tells the charts were normalized.

I think corrigenda, not errata, should be used, because it is an author's error rather than production error.

Sometimes mistakes happen. Yes, it's a pain to have to deal with this mistake now after the paper was accepted for publication, but it's a good thing that you caught your mistake before the paper was published.
Note: If you have coauthors, before doing anything, contact your coauthors and explain to them the changes you need to make. Do this before doing anything else.

What should I do? Should I send the errata to editor or copy editor?

As you mentioned that you are dealing with an IEEE journal, my response here is specific to the IEEE:
Talk to the senior editor that you are working with currently. Tell them specifically the changes you want to make and that "the logic of the concluding remarks is still correct and the discrepancies only impact the affected numerical results and the specific conclusions drawn from them," and that "the other numerical results are correct."
The senior editor will take it from there. Based on my past experience, you do not need to contact the editor-in-chief about this directly.

Will it affect my paper's value?

No, but I don't really follow why you think correcting a mistake will affect your paper's value. Correcting a mistake prior to publication is a good thing.

Will it need to go through another review cycle?

This will depend on the steps taken by the senior editor.

If your findings and conclusions are unambiguously unaffected, send the results to the editor saying you found an error with the numbers and asking for it be fixed. The editor might be annoyed at the last minute change but they are used to this sort of thing. I don't know what your "paper value" refers to.
You seem pretty worried about this. If this is because you think other people might assume that this difference would, in fact, have affected the findings and the way in which your paper was reviewed? If so, that is an issue. If this is a concern, you should email the academic editor and explain the situation. If things are as you think, there won't be an issue. If the editor disagrees, the paper might be need to be re-reviewed. In any case, it certainly seems best to have this all above board.
Changes in language, like changes in numbers, can have an important impact on a paper. As an author, you have a responsibility to not make substantively important changes to either after the paper has been accepted.  It's your responsibility to not abuse the editorial system.  If you are worried that you might be, you need to talk to your editor.

If you really care about the validity of your data and that it may be used for future research by yourself and others, I would say that it is vital to send the errata to the editor and you will feel better for three reasons:

You will have produced and published an honest piece of empirical research, unlike many shady and incomplete papers out there.
You never want to be accused of fudging your numbers by your colleagues/peers.
If you were the editor of this journal, would you like to foster a sense of scholarly pride in your published paper's validity, re-testability etc?

It will probably have to be re-reviewed, but if you're up front and honest with the editor or copy-editor about the errata, it's unlikely they'll reject the paper.

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How to find the right balance between a challenging and an enjoyable mathematics exercise session?
Next semester, I will be leading exercise sessions in a first year course of mathematics. More precisely, the course is Linear Algebra and the audience consists of young, first year undergraduate mathematics-students. The course is taught at a university in continental Europe. Judging from my personal experience, I know that most first year students of mathematics have plenty of troubles with the new, abstract material that is taught at a university. Hence, it would be good to make the student's experience in my exercise sessions as "easy" and enjoyable as possible.
However, I am not a fan of just doing simple, easy and short exercises. My opinion is that you do not make things easier for the students, if you omitt doing the hard exercises and just do the easy ones. Of course, this does not mean that everything I want to do is hard, but every now and then, something difficult will have to be discussed in the exercise sessions. Often, the hardest exercises are the most enlightening ones.
Moreover, my experience tells me that most students have wrong expectations of an exercise class: they expect to understand everything without (only a tiny bit) personal contribution and blame the instructor (which would be me in that case), if they do not understand everything. This has happened more than once to me and if I tell them that they have to work, I am considered to be the 'strict teacher', whose subject is the most important one and who does not understand that the new material is hard. I would be totally fine with that image, but this demotivates students and let them feel safe because they have someone to blame (Once, I heard the sentence "I would have understood the new material, but the exercise class was too bad and on a too high level" - in my opinion, I discussed everything in detail and pointed out which things are the most important ones and focussing on these).
In short, I find myself in the following vicious circle (it seems like you can achieve two of the three things below at a time, but not all three together):

Maximizing the students' enjoyment level (i.e., they should understand as much as possible and just have a good time during my exercise class)
Doing an exercise class which is on a reasonable (not too high, but also not too low) level
Keep the students motivated and tell them quite clearly, that they have to work to understand the new material

Or - in very short - the question is: Which aspects constitute a good exercise class (in mathematics) and which of these aspects are the most important ones?

"first year course of mathematics." That's very ambiguous: please clarify which degree program and include the broad geographic location (e.g. England, US, continental Europe, India...).  In fact, even specifying the subject could be helpful, or at least clarifying whether there is a specific subject.  I am a math professor, and I'm finding it hard to answer the question at the current level of generality.

Note that while this is not off topic here, you might choose to move it to [matheducators.se] if you want, if you think it might get better answers there. (But please don't post it on both sites, that is against SE network policy.)

Thank you ff524. I'll let the question here. And @Pete L. Clark, I have edited my question. Thank you too for your comment!

Go for the second and the third points. When I took analysis, at the very first lesson, during the first proof on set theory, the professor paused to say: "You shouldn't expect to understand now the whole proof: try to grasp the concepts, and then work hard at home to develop a better understanding." But it was 26 years ago, maybe now the expectations are different.

You're presenting a false dichotomy. The best exercises are both challenging and enjoyable!

I agree with @JeffE. When I took set theory, I was bored with the tautology exercises in the first chapter and I did not enjoy them at all. But, I enjoyed every exercise in the Axiom of Choice, well ordering and Zorn's Lemma chapter.

As a grad student now who took undergrad linear algebra with a professor I really liked, I will attempt to generalize what I saw that worked.
The best way for students to learn something that is as potentially abstract as linear algebra is to relate it to something concrete. My professor always liked to point out that once you leave R2 and R3, everyone visualizes geometry differently. As a result, he often tried to keep his visual explanations in that space.
However, for higher dimensional vectors, you can still relate the material to multi-dimensional concepts without drawing a picture. A great example (and pretty interesting exercise) is Markov chains. When we went over eigenvalues and eigenvectors, we motivated all of the math by walking through Markov chains. He used Markov chain gambling schemes (e.g. holding a bet steady when you win, doubling when you lose) to illustrate eigen-decomposition in a practical way. In that way you can help students develop intuition by talking about something that makes sense outside of the math-sphere.
In terms of practical exercises, I've found that progressive problems tend  to work best. That is, where each problem is working towards one ultimate problem solution. Generally, each step is a little more complex as well. For example, maybe the first step is finding the Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors, the second is diagonalization, the third is something tangential like inverting the matrix, and the last is applying what you've calculated to some practical problem like a Markov Chain.
In other words, ease students into the harder material by showing them the simpler ways to do it first. Once you can intuitively understand the general concept at basic level, it's easier to move on to more advanced views of the same and similar concepts. Plus, when students see complex material from the viewpoint of something simpler to understand (like maximizing gambling winnings), it provides a reference point for them to start from.

marcman.. .do you have notes, slides about what you just talked? :) I would have loved to take this one step at a time with practical examples because this is the only way I can learn something .. and I <3 Markov Chains

In addition to the helpful comments and answer already provided:
Please let go of the idea of enjoyment and look for engagement.
I have fond memories, from my calculus classes, of the portion of the class when the teacher had us all go up to the blackboard to write up solutions to some of the homework problems.  Each student had a section of blackboard to work in and a particular problem to solve.  Then we all sat down again and compared what was in our notebooks with what we saw on the board.  You could get up and go look at a problem closer if you wanted to.  Discussion among students was permitted and you could ask the teacher a question.
When I was a language teacher, I was trained to include a variety of types of activities in each class.  This is a good thing to do in math too.  Some abstract reasoning, some mechanical matrix manipulations, some verbalization.
Make sure you do some spiral review, meaning, you should generally take 5 or 10 minutes to throw some problems at them from earlier units in the semester.  If you notice that students are getting caught off guard by this, then tell them ahead of time what sections you'll be drawing review problems from during the next session.
You asked about the easier problems.  A good place to put those is in the beginning, as a confidence-building, getting into gear, warm-up.  The warm-up should last 3 - 5 minutes.
Keep your "lecturing" to an absolute minimum.
A discussion session (that's the term in the U.S.) is a great place for students to make connections with fellow students, that might result in small study groups being formed.  Encourage these connections!
Watch the gender dynamics carefully.  If you start to see some males behaving in a show-off-y way, and some females getting very quiet, that's a red flag, and it's time to try some new ideas.
I know you're not supposed to ask the identical question at the math educators site, but I would strongly encourage you to come up with a similar question to ask there -- you'll get more helpful ideas there.
Also, observe some other instructors' exercise sessions as a fly on the wall, and notice what works well and what doesn't work so well.  And ask students what works well and not so well for them.

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Is it reasonable to use full word and abbreviation in parenthesis in a chapter title?
Can I use full word plus its abbreviation in parenthesis in a chapter title?
here is my case:
Chapter 2
Human Immune System (HIS)
is it correct? Is there any differences if the the full word have appeared before in the previous chapter content.

In general, the only abbreviations that should be used in "headlines" and titles are "standard" ones that are normally (or at least very frequently) written in their abbreviated form. So, something like Escherichia coli could obviously be written as E. coli in a title without problems. (Similarly, in my field, we have an algorithm entitled "particle–particle particle–mesh" which can be written as "PPPM" or "P3M" without detriment.)
However, any abbreviation that you have introduced in the course of writing should probably be avoided unless the alternative is too unwieldy. Moreover, you should not normally use both abbreviations and the expanded text unless you're using the title to define the abbreviation: for instance,

SAUCE: Simplified Abbreviations for Unwieldy Complex Expressions

I can not say this is incorrect, but it is probably unorthodox. If there are no strong reason to put an abbreviation in the title, you may wish to introduce it in the first sentences of the chapter itself.


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Is completing two years of your PhD sufficient to satisfy journal reviewing requirement of having a PhD?
For reviewing papers, some journals ask you to have a PhD degree.
I want to know, if the PhD degree is the obtained certificate at the end of your PhD, or it could be also be, for example, your third inscription in the PhD (you have previously two succefull years in preparing the degree).

"Having a PhD" means that you completed the entire degree program—including writing, defending, and depositing a dissertation—and were formally awarded a degree by the host university.  Current PhD students would not qualify as reviewers for the journal you describe.

As a related followup (perhaps this is not the place?): I sometimes get emails asking for reviews that open with a line like "Dear Dr. Doucette". No mention is made that I must have a PhD to review, but there does seem to be an implicit assumption that I do have one. In such a case, am I obligated to inform the editor explicitly that I do not have a PhD?

@JohnDoucette No, I don't think so.  The editor is just erring on the side of caution; it's better not to leave off the "Dr." in case you do have a PhD.  And most journals (fortunately) don't have a stupid degree requirement for refereeing.


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Should I inform my professor of a very recent paper vaguely related to his research?
I'm currently an undergrad student and have found a recent paper, published in Nature a few days ago, that represents a huge breakthrough in its field (I'm active in that area, so I'm aware of it), but has barely been reported elsewhere.
One of my professors is doing research in a related, but not the same area. I was thinking of sending him a short email along the lines of "It seemed like this might be of interest to you, so just for your information: There has been a breakthrough in [area] recently, published at [link to Nature online], in which ..." and one or two sentences about the content.
It is nothing that requires a lot of thought to understand, and the fact that it happened at all is more important than the details. One can easily understand most of it from the abstract.
Would such an email generally be considered more of an annoyance, or acceptable?
Update:
Thank you all for your helpful answers and also the many interesting comments. I have sent him an email and received a short reply.

I would modify the wording slightly in the direction of "Just in case you have not already seen this....". I don't think you should assume the professor is unaware of developments in his field.

Sounds like the deepmind go paper. ;-) Just don't wait for too long otherwise he will surely have heard of it already.

@BlindKungFuMaster Indeed. I gather my perception was correct in this case, then :) I will heed the good advise of user Chris White though.

Treat a professor like anyone else - this email is an attempt to be helpful and would not be an annoyance.  Just be somewhat aware of your tone - if you do not know the professor as well, you don't want to be overly-familiar.

Yes, send it. We all like to get links to papers we might have missed. I would leave out the "breakthrough" part. He may have seen it (or even reviewed it), but there is no harm in sending it along to either him or his entire research group.

In general, I'd expect a positive reaction from a professor to a student who is reading cutting edge papers in related fields, with the wisdom to see where things are actually related.

E-mailing the whole research group seems excessive to me, especially since there are chances that they already know it.

In the absolute worst case scenario I can imagine the professor's response could be:
"who's this little upstart sending me papers in my own field? I know very well what's going on!"
Of course this is worst case, I would never expect this to happen... but it might. If you wanted cover all your bases and minimise your chances of appearing like a "little upstart" (this is probably only a tiny chance to begin with), you can always phrase your email as requesting an opinion:
"I came across this paper, I wonder what your thoughts are?" or "what do you think the implications of this paper could be?"
It's an especially useful tactic if you are cold-calling.

No! You are changing an attempt to be helpful into something the supervisor needs to do.

True, but I wouldn't say "needs to do". They might respond, they might not, but either way it paints the sender as a conscientious student who is taking some initiative, while avoiding making the student look like they are presuming anything about the professor.

I agree with @StrongBad, offering information is fundamentally different than requesting that someone analyse information and give an opinion on it. It's irrational to expect that someone would get offended that you didn't expect them to have read something, if anything include a question like "have you seen this research?" that can be responded to (ie, not ignored) without increasing the professor's workload.

[EDIT: due to an interesting mix of positive and negative reactions, I have provided additional context, mainly for robot readers. I am not against emails, but sometimes words can be more efficient, see at the end]
Providing useful information to others is a great quality. It  shows you care.  To know that you have provided useful information to a person requires feeback. Feedback is an central concept in biology. A good information "should" be provided to the right  person, at a right time, with an appropriate medium.
In our time of email avalanche (I get about 20 emails  a day with a link to read "for my information"), may I suggest you to do something less virtual:

print the paper, read it carefully, pick an important piece of information so that you can talk about it easily
when you meet your professor (at the end of a lecture, dropping by his office), ask whether she/he has 5 minutes to talk about a paper you have found
convey your information: "I read that... and thought this paper was in your scope of interest". If the professor seems interested, and did not read it, or only browsed it fast (as I do most of the time when someone only send me an email with pdf link withoout more context), offer him/her the "physical" paper if interested.
if your professor does not have time, do not insist. You have proposed something, now it is up to the professor for the next move.

You may have a more direct feedback than with an email lost in a mailbox.
A final personal note, from a fellow PhD, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. When he wrote a email to his advisor, and the advisor found the mail too long, too complicated for the purpose, he replied with 6 letters:PLSSPK. Meaning: "please, speak".

I disagree with this answer. As a professor, I would vastly prefer that someone point me via email to a recent paper I might be interested in than scheduling a meeting to discuss it with me. First of all, that scheduling requires an email. Second, 5 minutes is never 5 minutes. Third, is the point of this to inform me of developments in the field or to impress me with the student's insights?

Wow, I am shocked by the negative reaction to this answer. Exactly why does the university bother to have a physical campus if this is the prevailing attitude/practice? Isn’t live in-person collegial student-professor interaction one of the primary purposes to a university?

@Raghu Parthasarathy as a professor and an advisor, I like to give credit to people, but also provide directions. I am glad I do not need an email schedule to talk with humans ("that scheduling requires an email"). I am glad when someone (a student, a colleague) drop by my office to give me an information. It means to me it  is important enough to the person to move his **s from a chair. Then, if the information is known to me, or weak, I can explain face to face why, and how I would like to interact in the future: "this  is outside the scope, but this other domain is interesting to me".

@Basil Bourque I am surprised as well, and your support means to me. I believe this reaction is an interesting sign of times, and will add some details later this evening. Now I have to go to work, and talk to human colleagues (including my present PhD student)

@BasilBourque live in-person student-professor interaction is important. This answer proposes changing the interaction from letting someone know about a paper into a short discussion about the paper. If instead, the answer proposed that instead of emailing the paper the student should give the professor a printed version, that would be fine in my mind.

@Larent Duval, and others: Thanks for the comments. I realize I sound grumpy. A point of clarification. I encourage students who I'm working with in my lab, undergrads and graduate students, to come and drop in, in person, which they do quite a lot of. I do the same and we spend lots of unscheduled time in face-to-face interactions. I would love to extend this to the 60 students in the class I teach, or to any student at the University, rather than asking that they come to scheduled office hours or arrange times to meet, but if I did this, it would be disastrous for me, my lab, and my class.

@Raghu Parthasarathy The OP was a personal and positive intiative. I also encourage colleagues and students to come and talk. Yet, I do not hesitate to provide limits. That is our role too. This is why I added  "if your professor does not have time, do not insist". And I am not against emails, too (but not too much, if words can be more effective.

@Laurent it's obvious that you're trying to be helpful, and in a different context your suggestions may be appropriate, but the fundamental problem with your post, and the reason for the "interesting mix of positive and negative reactions", is that you're giving advice about a completely different thing than what was asked about. OP simply wanted to know if it was appropriate to inform a professor about a paper he/she found, nothing less or more. Your advice reads much more into this question, making tons of unfounded, and very likely incorrect, assumptions. So... sorry, but I'm with the -1's.

@Dan Romik Would the OP have asked me the question (in private) "Would such an email generally be considered more of an annoyance, or acceptable?", I problably would have say: "Go ahead". Now, StackExchange is an open forum, and some Go Ahead answers were given before I could answer. Which made me think about providing a different type of answer. Don't be sorry, I just see a fundamental problem elsewhere


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Should a student be penalized for using a theorem outside of the curriculum?
I am taking an abstract algebra course and I am really interested about the topic.  So much so that I spend most of my time reading supplementary materials.  I consequently know a lot more theorems than the ones covered in class.
In a recent quiz, I used a theorem in one of my proofs that was not mentioned in the lecture since.  My professor gave me partial marks for my answer for the reason that we didn't cover this theorem in class even though the proof was completely valid!  I can't really see where he is coming from.  How would someone be able to use a theorem correctly if he doesn't know its proof?  I was quite baffled by his comment.
Do you agree with this?
EDIT: The professor just Emailed me and said that after thinking for a while, he decided to award me the full mark for the question. He also mentioned that he didn't want discourage me from studying the subject (since he saw most of my previous quiz grades were full marks) and I was passionate about it, but kindly requested that I include any proof for a theorem that I cite from now on in his exams. He also sent a broadcast message to the whole class indicating this.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Nit-picky comment: "How would someone be able to use a theorem correctly if he doesn't know its proof?" This is extremely common in mathematics. 'Assume the Riemann hypothesis is true...'

This depends on what is announced in the syllabus and on the kind of test.
If the syllabus explicitly says that tests should be solved using the course material only, then, yes, any answer using anything else than course material is not totally correct and should get deductions. If the syllabus does not say so, the answer is not so clear anymore.
If the test is kind of a final exam on the whole course where the students are tested on the whole subject, than I (and this is a personal opinion) would not deduct anything if the proof is technically correct, whatever tools have been used (unless the problem says "solve this with this method"). However, in an intermediate test it may well be that the instructor wants the students to show that a certain technique can be applied or a certain concept can be used. Going beyond the course material spoils this idea and (again, personal opinion) one may deduct points, although it would be much better if these policy has been stated beforehand.
The above should answer the question "Why could points be deducted?" but not the "Should points be deducted?". I think the answer to the latter question is really opinion based (and may be a question for matheducators.stackexchange.com).
As a side remark on "How would someone be able to use a theorem correctly if he doesn't know its proof?" I (and I guess most other working mathematicians) do that all the time. I would not get anywhere without using theorems of which I haven't even dare to read to proof. Some examples from outside my field: People use Fermat's last theorem, the "Kepler conjecture" (also a theorem now), the four-color theorem, the "10,000 pages theorem" on the classification of finite simple groups, the Poincare conjecture (proven as special case of the geometrization theorem)…

Some people even use results that nobody knows how to prove.

Thanks for the answer. I didn't even know  matheducators.stackexchange existed so thanks for the info. Also, I totally agree, if it was mentioned clearly before the exam, I would without a doubt have included the proof to avoid any problems.

There's also the possibility that OP did something like (for example) using the fundamental theorem of arithmetic to prove Euclid's lemma (which is not only pointless but circular, because a typical proof of FTA uses Euclid's lemma).

Sure, that's what I meant with "technically correct".

"If the syllabus explicitly says that tests should be solved using the course material only" - this is a position that will kill any education system (it already has?) It's the "no child gets ahead" solution to the "no child left behind"... use it long enough and the next generation of teachers won't know anything else.

I think that this is expected behavior, and that most professors would score it the same way.
A first point is this: As Landric says in a comment, the point of an exam is to assess mastery of basic knowledge covered in the course. If one uses a more powerful outside theorem, then the steps that they've skipped likely contained important concepts or techniques, that there is now no proof that the student has mastered. So the professor needs to ping the student to demonstrate those basic techniques before progressing.
A second point would be: Consider this to be modeling working within a particular tradition or development. Many mathematical textbooks and papers may be using competing (even contradictory) definitions, axioms, assumptions, etc. It's important to use only those results which are developed directly from that chain of reasoning. So in a sense this grading protocol tests the "focus" of the student, if they are aware of exactly what results are supported/in effect in the "field" represented by the course.
A third point (related to the preceding) is this: This tests your ability as an explainer/writer/teacher of future students. At any time, it's important that we detect and "dial in" in our explanations to the level of abstraction/knowledge possessed by the other human(s) in the transaction. If we cite some result or theorem completely outside and beyond the awareness of the other person, then it fails to serve as an illuminating explanation. We have an obligation to be aware of what the other person has developed, and keep our explanations in that context, so that they have a chance to truly understand. Write assignments as though the intended audience was another student in the same course.
Here's a programming anecdote that serves as an analogy, from a friend a few weeks ago: Professor gives an assignment to code a hashing function, or a basic search algorithm. Students routinely turn in work that's a single line long, calling the equivalent pre-existing library function that does that job. Obviously that's not what's expected, fails to show the low-level understanding desired, and is pretty comical if you think about it.
Maybe your case doesn't seem so egregious, because you saved just a few steps. But if the professor doesn't score in this way, that would always be the end result; one-line proofs citing some outside source, and failing to show mastery of the basic techniques.

R.Collins Referring to your programming anecdote,if that student wrote that library before, or showed in some way that he is capable of writing it, why wouldn't you allow him to use it? Maybe I get this wrong but the point of a course for me is to learn new things. If I have learn the intended thing, and even read more stuff, why should you stop a student from using it. The student wouldn't have understood that theorem if he didn't understand the basics would he? I don't think any student would go on searching for additional theorems until he understands the basic ones don't you think?

The exam or quiz is precisely the venue where the student proves that they are capable of using the basic techniques. Students look to outside sources to avoid doing basic work all the time.

@Coconut Courses are supposed to teach understanding, and mere citation does not demonstrate this, regardless of where the citation comes from. You say you've learned the intended thing. Great. How does your professor know this? Maybe you're in a study group, some other student found it, and now you all use it to shortcut half the proof. Graders wouldn't see this. The new requirement to include the proof is a very smooth move to elicit a demonstration of understanding. As far as the annoyance of writing five steps... it's a worthwhile trade-off for maintaining academic rigor.

@Coconut: if you prove the big theorem in your answer then you can use it. Unless the question explicitly demands a particular method that you don't use, of course, so watch for the difference between "hence prove..." and "hence, or otherwise, prove...". If it was just about what you've learned, examiners would have to accept "This part of the question is a lemma proved by Cauchy in 1843, QED". The point is not to learn what statements are true, it's to learn how to prove them. So pulling in a big theorem often is begging the question.

For that matter, suppose the question in complex analysis is "state and prove Cauchy's theorem for a triangle". Surely it's obvious that citing Cauchy's theorem for a closed curve is not a legitimate answer? Even without looking into the details of the course curriculum and the examination statutes of your institution, we can intuit that "know Cauchy's theorem" is not sufficient to meet the examination criteria.

A funny point: if I happen to prove a theorem large enough to cover the entire or most of the test, then what's the point of the test?

It depends. Consider these examples.
Suppose during an elementary calculus exam you a question asking you to prove that a given real polynomial of degree three has a root. A standard solution would be to use the intermediate value property. You could also use the fact that any real polynomial of odd degree has a root, and technically that would be a proof, but that would clearly not be a good solution -- the proof of that general fact is just a more abstract instance of the proof for a given polynomial of degree three. In fact, you could even use the general fact that every polynomial of degree three has a root. I hope you can see how that would be very far from being a solution.
For another example, suppose you had a class in elementary number theory, and you were asked to show that some diophantine equation has no solutions, but somehow you could reduce the equation to an instance of the Fermat's Last Theorem. Technically, you could just do the reduction and apply the theorem, but would that really be a good solution?
You could even think of a more extreme example: suppose you were asked to prove a given theorem during an exam (regardless of whether or not it was taught during the class in question). Would simply invoking the theorem and saying that the proof is completed be a good solution?
For a more subtle example, suppose you were to find the limit of sine of x over x at zero. You could try applying L'Hospital rule. This is not such an advanced theorem, but using it would still be wrong (as you need to know the derivative of sine to apply it, making the reasoning entirely circular).
The point is, at least during the introductory courses, you are mainly supposed to show how well you understand and apply basic concepts. Frequently, there may be an advanced theorem which would allow you to largely or completely avoid really using these elementary concepts, and you don't show that you understand them well. Moreover, this can allow you to do (possibly veiled) circular arguments.
On the other hand, if you use some more advanced concepts to circumvent a technical problem (or just to make a more beautiful proof), while still showing that you understand the underlying elementary ideas very well, you should not (in my opinion) be penalized. Similarly, if you use advanced ideas, but prove every step "from the ground up", I would say that penalizing you would be very wrong.
During more advanced courses as well as final exams, you are expected to have more broad knowledge and are much less likely to be penalized for using even somewhat advanced concepts. However, the same basic rules apply -- using the Fermat's Last Theorem would not be OK in my opinion, not even during an intermediate graduate number theory exam (unless explicitly allowed). It's mostly a matter of common sense.

Presumably using FLT could be implicitly allowed, if they ask a question that, you learned from the course, was an open question waiting for FLT? It's probably an error in the question: they should have said "show that FLT proves this". But hey ho, it's clear what they mean, so if you're fairly sure all known proofs use FLT then you have to go ahead.

The sin(x)/x example is very apt - I did this one myself, only trying to use the Taylor series expansion for sin(x)... in retrospect, not actually that convincing!

This is all hilarious and brings back memories.

In addition to sin(x)/x where the circularity is subtle (and depends a bit on your definitions of sine and pi), there’s the limit of x^2/x at 0 where L’Hop is obviously and undoubtedly circular.

@NoahSnyder: Sure, but using L'Hospital for x^2/x is just silly, and the correct solution is obvious. On the other hand, as AJK wrote, trying to use it for sin(x)/x is (I think) pretty common mistake (and the correct solution much less obvious -- unless you define sine by power series, but that's already pretty circular in the context of first year calculus).

The correct solution is obvious if you understand limits, but I'd happily bet that a substantial number of students would use L'Hopital's rule if you put lim_{x \rightarrow 0} x^2/x on a final exam.  Lots of high school calculus teachers don't understand limits, and teach students that L'Hopital is the way to do them.

An important point to keep in mind here is that mathematical knowledge is largely contextual rather than being a collection of isolated facts that one learns in some arbitrary order. Consequently, when an exam question says "Prove assertion A", it is generally implicit that what this really means is "Prove assertion A in the context of the material discussed so far in the course" rather than "Prove assertion A, and you may use any result that ever appeared in the mathematical literature".
Note that in the former interpretation the question makes sense from the point of view of testing whether the student has learned not just why assertion A is true in some formal sense, but how this is relevant to the topic of the course and how it's related to the context in which assertion A is being discussed.
By contrast, the latter interpretation is highly problematic, since assertion A itself in all likelihood also appears in the mathematical literature, and it is obviously nonsensical to allow a proof that appeals to the result one is trying to prove. And if one does not allow that, should one allow a mild generalization of it? Should one allow a super-powerful theorem that implies it but that encapsulates thousands of pages of mathematical reasoning the student couldn't possibly have studied? And so on. So, in my mind, a student who assumes this interpretation will have demonstrated that they fail to grasp this important issue of context and/or are trying to get away with their ignorance of the specific ideas and techniques discussed in the course by appealing to some external knowledge they happen to possess. The fact that they possess such knowledge may be impressive and worth rewarding, or it may not be - that depends on the specifics of the case, so depending on those specifics I can see it being reasonable to deduct points in some cases, or being more sensible to award the full points for the question in other cases.

A point that is frequently missed by students is that, in a course, in addition to the syllabus, there are frequently a number of implicit assumptions. Whether these implicit assumptions are significant or not, depends on the professor.
These assumptions are related, for example, to the methods that are to be employed to solve certain exercises, to which theorems the student is allowed to use, to what should be assumed in case of missing data, to which models should be employed for certain devices, etc.
Usually, students unconsciously learn these assumptions from the lectures and the exercise sessions.
Failing to comply with these implicit assumptions might result in a lower grade.
For instance, when I was a student of electronic engineering, one of the main courses during the first year was that of circuit theory. When I took the exam, one of the exercises was about the transient response of a first-order circuit. There is a standard method to solve these kind of circuits, but I decided to use the Laplace transform.
When the exam committee hand us back the papers, I found that they awarded me half marks on that problem, and there was the following comment: "The student doesn't know how to solve first-order circuits".
Of course I knew it! I simply decided to use another, correct, method, because I judged that in that particular case, for me, using Laplace transform was quicker. Thus, I complained with the committee: "This statement is false!". They looked at the paper and said: "You shoot a bird with a cannon, you deserve half marks". That's it, the implicit assumptions was: "you shouldn't use a method other than the standard one".
Given your last edit, it's nice that your professor decided to award you full marks, but for the next time, beware the implicit assumptions.

"... in a course, in addition to the syllabus, there are frequently a number of implicit assumptions...:"  If a student should be penalized for using information that isn't explicitly taught within that course's syllabus, then (by your own reasoning) these "implicit assumptions" need to be spelled out in the course.   You can't have it both ways.

I agree with this answer. Interesting to reflect on the fact that the professor's never had to deal with this issue prior in his career (i.e., the implicit assumptions were understood by all other students), and it sounds likely that this requirement will get added verbiage on his syllabus in the future (as preferred by Dirk above).

I went for double-kills on my AP physics I exam, writing both the standard method and more unorthodox methods whenever I could.  By the time I told my teacher, he was almost crying, but it turns out I got a 5 on the exam.  I have to wonder what the grader thought.

There is mention on this page of "implicit assumptions" that only material taught in a course should be used in the examinations for that course.  But there are enough counter-opinions on this page to show that standard is not universally agreed upon. There are equal reasons to assume that any mathematically valid methods are fair game.  Perhaps the student had experiences in the past where he or she was rewarded for thinking outside of the box or for studying more than they had to.  Is that really an outlandish possibility?  Is that really such a bad thing?  How would they know what this particular professor finds acceptable?
Think about the classic story of Gauss adding the numbers 1 through 100.  Has that story EVER been recounted in a way that suggested he should have been penalized for not using the laborious method expected of him?
If a professor wants a student to use a particular method for a proof, then that needs to be made explicit.  Students can't be mind readers.  (And even if they were, they couldn't use that information anyway unless mind reading was explicitly taught in the course.)

I feel like you conflate "a method of proof not taught in the course" with "invoking (without proof) a theorem not covered in the course".  The student appealed to a certain theorem that was not covered in the course and did not mention the proof.  I think we all agree that if the student had given the proof of the theorem, he would have been golden.  In fact that's what his instructor told him to do for the future (while being generous in response to an isolated incident).   Others have explained well why "You can use any theorem from the literature in an exam" is certainly not tenable.

If Gauss had written down (in German) "the nth triangular number is equal to n(n+1)/2, so the solution is 5050" then possibly he should have been penalised under exam conditions. Certainly he should be if he'd written down "I happen to know the answer: it's 5050". Either the formula or the specific result for n=100 could be cited from the literature, but the question is not "cite the result from literature", so even if he'd cited correctly he still fails.

However, if he applies a particular method in the special case of n=100 (which I think is how the story's usually told: he offered that 1 + 2 + ... + 99 + 100 and 100 + 99 + ... + 2 + 1 can be summed in a clever way), then we assign credit according to whether or not he justifies his method. What he can't do, under exam conditions, is use citation in place of proof.

These implicit assumptions might be relevant in a course that is specifically on social skills where observing, analyzing, and using implicit assumptions is a key skill. Math, however, is not a social skill. Your point about the famous Gauss incident is great, and one of the finest examples of the OP's concept in action.

@RobertColumbia: Apparently then it is a social skill, since you can fail it if you lack sufficient observation and analysis to understand what an examination question is asking you to do. If it helps to understand why this is, one can distinguish "doing mathematics" from "convincing the examiners that you meet the criteria to pass". IMO this question is about the latter.

There's actually quite a rich field of thought that mathematics is, in fact, a social explaining-convincing skill. Consider this quote from Cantor Medal winner Yuri Manin: "A proof only becomes a proof after the social act of 'accepting it as a proof'." Quoted here: https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/issues-in-the-proof-that-p%E2%89%A0np/ Or this blog post by Dick Lipton: https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/surely-you-are-joking/

Penalized? No. But it's reasonable that you be required to prove or solve problems using the material you've studied rather than a "5 kg hammer" that you found lying around in some book.
Remember the professor wants to help you familiarize yourself with the subject of that course; the exam is just a means to that end - it's not supposed to be a test of how good/intelligent/knowledgeable you are in general.

No.  You shouldn't be penalized.   The professor should applaud your understanding of the subject.   That said, in school you should make a habit of answering questions the way a teacher wants them to be answered.   Otherwise you'll have to deal with issues like this.

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How many referees is too many for a journal or conference paper submission?
I recently reviewed a paper for a Math/Comp-Sci conference. The author's response came back with responses to 12 referees.
Am I wrong in thinking it absurd that there are this many referees on a paper?
For one, I, like many researchers, expect a paper to have about 2-3 referees, so make a rule of refereeing about this many papers for every paper I publish.  I will cannot referee 12 papers for ever paper I publish.   What does this do to the referee pool?
Secondly, having so many referees seems to make the decision of any single referee as insignificant. If I spend 2 days on a paper, as is not uncommon in math, I would like to think my opinion counts for more than one vote in 12.
Finally, responding to 12 referees is quite a burden for the author;  especially if referees make suggestions about style or presentation, which could be contradictory.
I am not just ranting. Is there another side to this that I am missing?

I'd think that there's indeed something weird going on in that situation... It is true that, apparently, the contemporary game-ish version of many academic pursuits-of-better-understanding-for-humans is completely lost, etc. You've gotta "deconstruct" what's going on, ... since, I'd sadly claim, a naive appraisal of the situation would wildly disserve you...

I think it would be worth asking the editor what is going on.

I'm not in a position to judge anything, but is it possible that the editor sends requests to more-than-required number of referees due to usually low turnover rate?

Is is a respected journal? Isn't it possible that the journal itself is a scam?

What did the editor / conference panel chair say when you asked them?

I think you should probably be reviewing more.  Many papers are rejected and never published.  Also many papers submitted to conferences/journals will be written by scientists who are not (yet) capable of reviewing a paper competently.  If you are competent to review papers, then you also need to take these factors into account and hence review at least 5-6 times as many papers as you publish.  Perhaps that would make a good question by itself?  I'd agree though that 12 reviewers is excessive and suspicious.  I also feel very sorry for any author having to respond to 12 reviews!

Thanks for your comments.  The journal was a conference proceedings, and was asking for reports in 15 days. So very possibly they were expecting a low turnover.   I originally checked the conference out to get a feel for what should be accepted to it.  It wasn't a high profile conference, but it did seem legitimate.

Also, about asking the editor, I didn't ask originally.  I just wrote back that I don't want to make reviews for them.  But you are right. I have now asked for an explanation.

I fully agree that 12 referees is too many. 2 to max 4 referees is fine. More referees will indeed leave the authors with conflicting comments, and does not contribute to the quality of the review.

Having 12 referees is both unusual and a ridiculous amount to have. The most I have ever seen is 5 on a single paper and even then I thought that was pushing it. As @Danny Ruijters mentioned having 2-4 referees is a good number.
I don't see a reason why there would be a need for 12 referees and, if possible, it may be interesting to talk to the author about their opinion with 12 referees is.
Having that may referees will dilute the opinion of any one of them. Like you said having a 1 in 12 vote isn't the same as a 1 in 2 or 1 in 4.


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What to do when professor is not responding to emails or calls and his action is required to commence a masters thesis?
I'm planning to start my master thesis soon. It will be an external thesis in a company.
As this kind of thesis is not very common in German universities, I need to find a professor to supervise me during the whole semester.
Luckily, a professor agreed to supervise me and advised me to meet with one of his PhD students to discuss my task, whether it meets all requirements.
We met the following day. Afterwards, I sent my professor an email to arrange a meeting to clarify some things and get his final OK.
As he hadn't responded for about a week, I sent a reminder. This time he answered, we met and discussed more things. He even suggested to call my boss to clarify my task, so that I don't need to "liaise" between them.
After talking to my boss, I sent my professor another email with times, my boss is available for the call.
This email remained unanswered for another week, as well. I wasn't sure how to react, so I contacted my professor's secretary. She told me to send him another reminder, also she would talk to him.
He answered me a few days later and promised, to call my boss during the following 2 days.
Unfortunately, he didn't.
I'm in an awkward situation now. My boss asks me regularly about my professor, because I can't officially start my thesis before we have his OK. I'm waiting for about a month now.
The phone call between them wouldn't last more than 10 minutes and all the little issues about my thesis would be resolved.
His secretary said, this behaviour is very uncommon. Also, I never had any problems with this particular professor.

Could you ask the secretary about the times the professor is usually in his office and then ask your boss to give your professor a call? Might be easier that way around.

You didn't really ask a clear question but I will answer the implied question: "How would you handle this situation?"
My experience with emails and professors is they are hit and miss. For some this is a very reliable method of communication, for others it is not. This isn't necessarily generational since quite often universities give young professors a new email address which becomes just one more thing they must monitor. In addition, as the semester progresses, most professors' inboxes become flooded with student email along with the usual administrative junk mail.
My suggestion would be find some way, phone call, in person visit or "ambush" outside of a regularly scheduled class. Once you find a way to make contact, explain your predicament with your boss and ask if there is a better method of communication. If the reply is "just use email" then explain this has proven unreliable and if you are to continue with the collaboration you need another method.
Bottom line is this is a collaboration.  If you are unable to collaborate, you will not finish your research and you will damage your reputation at your job.  If the professor is unable to communicate in a manner supporting the collaboration, you need to find a different professor of find a different thesis.

Not everyone does well with emails. Quite frequently I had to remind my supervisor that I had emailed him, and he would look embarrassed and find my email, and then be happy to talk to me for well over two hours, cancelling any other meetings he had.
I remember once I said to him, "So many unread emails? GMail now has some 'Important' filter that picks out those that are important so you don't see the unimportant ones immediately"
His reply was, "Yes I am using that, it is very effective, as you can see today I have only had 394 important emails. Maybe I will read a few of them." [and this was not a sarcastic remark!]
After that I would see him in person or telephone him if I needed anything urgently.


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What does "Awaiting Reviewer Scores" mean within the context of a ScholarOne submission system?
I submitted a paper to a Taylor and Francis journal that uses the ScholarOne submission system. The manuscript status has changed from "Under Review" to "Awaiting Reviewer Scores".
What does this change mean?
What is the flow chart of the different statuses for a manuscript?

With a typical ScholarOne configuration, "Awaiting Reviewer Scores" means that it is actually out with (at least some) reviewers, while "Under Review" would instead mean the previous stage, where it is being considered by the handling editor(s) and might still be rejected without review.
After the review scores come back, a manuscript then returns to the handling editor for a recommendation, and thence up to the chief editor(s) for a decision.

"Under Review" should be de-ambiguised to "Under Editorial Review"

I have found a tutorial for Editors for Oxford journals. I think, this slide explains it all.

What does "MSs" stand for?

@TrungDung "MS" is an abbreviation for "manuscript," so "MSs" would be "manuscripts."

None of the answers above are accurate at least in my scenario. I had a revision decision, and after I submitted the revision, the status went to "Under review", and after about 4 weeks, it has now changed to "Awaiting reviewer scores". In this case, the reviewers were already lined up to get the revision, and so it doesn't make sense for "awaiting reviewer scores" to just mean that the reviewing is in progress -- in fact, it's "under review" that means that, and it doesn't make sense for "under review" to mean pre-screening. What the "awaiting reviewer scores" most plausibly means here is that the reviews are now due! 4 weeks is also the time I'd expect the AE to allot for the reviewers (from past experience), and so the timing is right for the status to change from "Under review" to "Awaiting reviewer scores" - so it just means some reviewers haven't yet submitted it and the reviews are either due or overdue. This explanation also makes sense if you just look at the English of the status "Under review" and "Awaiting reviewer scores" -- the scores aren't awaited unless it's due! It's probably why they chose this language for the status message. In addition, for all my submissions in the past, the "Under review" status has always meant that the paper was actually with the reviewers as opposed to with the AE waiting for the assignment; papers have been in the "Under review" status for me for several months after which they change to "Awaiting AE recommendation". So it makes no sense that "Under review" means pre-screening (as suggested by one of the comments) - it may be different for different journals but I doubt that is the case for any journal.

"Awaiting Reviewer Scores" means that the paper has been assigned the minimum amount of reviewers that the Associate Editor has set for the manuscript. The minimum would be either two or three depending on the publication but the associate editor might have sent a few more invitations around. "Under Review" means that reviewers have been selected and invitations have been sent out but some of them have not responded yet or some of them have rejected the invitation and the editorial board is still looking for reviewers.
I also think that it is up to the specific settings of each journal to show the different status of the review process. In some you can see "Under Review", "Awaiting Associate Editor Recommendation", "Awaiting EIC decision" etc but in others you just see "Under review" for the whole process.

It seems the term "Under Review" is named ambiguously, which is what causes the confusion.

Yes, Indeed mine is undergoing the same process as we speak. under review basically means that your manuscript is still with the handling editor and is being reviewed if instructions were followed, thus fit enough to be sent to blind reviewers. Awaiting reviewer score, it has been sent out to selected reviewers and is still awaiting for their scores (comments).

Awaiting reviewers scores simply mean the article is with the reviewers and the journal office is waiting for the comments.
Under review also can mean that the article is being considered by the science editor for technical and English language check or it is with the subject editor and he is evaluating it for external review, or the article is with the reviewer for evaluation.
So, the former (Awaiting reviewers scores) is a direct statement that the article is with the reviewers.

You said "Awaiting reviewers ... the article is with the reviewers ..." and  "Under review ... the article is with the reviewer for evaluation.". Would you make it more clear?


text:
If a paper is rejected by many journals before finally being published, will that cause conflict with the reviewers who rejected the manuscript?
I had a manuscript written 3 years before. The results of the manuscript was obtained accidentally while doing some easy trial methods. Although the results were very interesting, but the method was very very simple. So I thought to publish it in a low impact journal to increase my number of publications. But things went very opposite and got rejected in 5 journals. Everyone were commenting that the method is very simple and may introduce the unknown errors to the estimations or computations.
As no one was commenting other than the methods, so I had no way to modify anything. Very bad thing is that none of the journal took less than 4-6 months to take the first decision and my manuscript remained unaccepted for two years and half.
Finally I thought to submit it to a high impact journal. Very surprisingly, the reviewers appreciated the simple method used and accepted the manuscript with a major revision to highlight few other things.
My accepted manuscript highlights the same methodology which was rejected by 5 other journals.
Will there be any conflict or issues when those reviewers (who rejected my manuscript) see my accepted paper after final publication?

Your referees at specialist journals said, basically, "These methods aren't good enough to answer these questions, because X." But the generalist high-impact journal may have looked more at the results than the methods.
If X is "we just don't think this is very sophisticated, and the tools are out of fashion," I suspect nothing will happen.
If X is "there are uncontrolled errors larger than your effect," and you haven't explained in your paper why that isn't true, someone might write a comment on your paper. This comment will look a lot like your earlier referee reports. The field will then decide who is right. (See, e.g. the "arsenic life" experiment for a recent high-profile example.)
Beyond this, if I saw the second case from a paper I refereed, and there was no attempt from the authors to address the points I raised, I would not be happy with the authors, and might be less likely to extend them the benefit of the doubt in future referee reports.


text:
Do I need to mention having survived a life-threatening illness when applying for a new academic position?
Do I have to (or is it wise or unwise) to mention having survived a life-threatening illness (such as cancer, a (early) heart attack, etc when applying for a new (non-leading) academic position?
Assume that my health condition is now good enough (and the past health troubles are not obvious from my outward appearance) such that from a medical point of view nothing speaks against my further persuing my academic career and interests.
Nevertheless, due the specific medicaments I have to take for the rest of my life and some remnants of the past health issues, there might be times my productivity might slightly be lessened. Also, even though the probability is not very high, it can in principle not be 100% excluded that the illness will come back at some point.
Of course I would not mention this in a written application, but should I talk about my health condition in the context of an interview or before things are getting serious and it comes to signing the contract?
BTW I currently live in Germany

If you think it helps explain a work or productivity gap in your career, I would mention it and I would do so in writing rather than let your prospective employers speculate. Because overcoming a major medical challenge can help you align your priorities and strengthen you in other ways, doing so can definitely be done in a way that leads one to conclude that it is a strength, not a weakness, of your candidacy.
If your previous condition is not relevant in these ways, I don't think you have any obligation to bring it up. Sure, your illness might return but nobody is 100% immune from serious illness impacting their ability to work or be productive. For that matter, severe chronic illnesses that unambiguously affect productivity (e.g., cramps, migraines, etc.) are simply not the kind of thing that people bring up while interviewing and candidates have no responsibility to do so.
Reminding prospective employers of this can open to the door to (illegal) discrimination based on your medical history and I don't think you are helping either yourself or your prospective employers by bringing it up. When you take an offer, it might be good to let your future department know about your history as background but you might even let this just be raised socially.

Good answer.  One other point is that you may want to carefully study your prospective employer's insurance, medical leave, and disability policies.  For an institution like a university, sometimes these are publicly posted; otherwise you could contact someone in the human resources office and ask any questions you have.  As far as I know, they would not have any reason to tell the hiring committee you were asking, so it shouldn't affect the interview process in any way.

As @NateEldredge notes, it's imperative to look at the insurance/benefits situation. In particular, there still remains the possibility that insurance refuses to cover "pre-existing conditions" of certain sorts. This should not be the case for academic situations, but one should look carefully.

@NateEldredge However, this is relevant only to some countries (U.S. for sure, I dunno about others), and it is irrelevant for most European countries (where the health insurance is government-based and not company-based).

@yo' Or in the case of some countries where they have free health care (which you could argue is government based, but technically it's not really insurance in the normal sense)

If you live in the United States, you are not obligated to provide any information pertinent to disability, including life-threatening illness.
What with competition for jobs being so fierce, you may find yourself
overtly or covertly discriminated against in favour of someone who is
healthier.  That's why the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed
into law.  Any questions regarding your health from an employer are
also illegal, so you are not obligated to answer.

The asker did not specify that they live in the US - your country-specific information may not be of any use to them. It's still good advice, but it's too specific without first confirming which country's laws apply to the asker.

from what I understand, protections in Canada, France and the UK are even stronger than the US.

Yes, but you're still making assumptions about where the asker lives, they might live somewhere where such discrimination is not only legal but socially acceptable. I know it's unlikely, but it's still possible, you should always ask rather than make assumptions.

@Pharap nah I am not in the US, but the information is a good one to have anyway as (who knows?) maybe at some point I will be there and others already are.

@Pharap, even if I am making assumptions, I believe the OP is still not morally obligated to disclose.  No deceit is present because I do not consider it dishonest to lie to a tyrant, which companies outside US jurisdiction who would discriminate about it amount to.

@Dilaton Since employment and discrimination law does vary so much from country to country, it would be helpful if you would edit the question to say where you are.

@DavidRicherby This is kind of my point. Instead of making assumptions, it's much easier to simply ask the OP which laws apply to them.

@Dilaton I admitted in my very first comment the advice was good advice, I just think it's bad practice to assume the OP of any question on the stack exchange is from a certain country - especially when laws come into play.


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What to do when paper is deemed in scope for the conference but not for the proceedings?
I submitted a paper to a conference. I wasn't quite sure if my paper was within the scope of that conference (it seemed a judgement call), but it was accepted. I went to the conference, and after attending several of the talks, I felt my paper was actually a good fit after all. My presentation of the paper went well; lots of people were interested in the topic and asked good questions. I was reasonably confident that my paper would be accepted for publication in the proceedings.
All student papers received an extra round of feedback before the formal submission for publication in the proceedings. I just received my feedback; the reviewer was very complimentary, but said that the topic was not within the scope of the conference.
So now I'm not sure what to do. Making the paper fit the scope better won't really be practical; I already did the best I could in that direction. The formal submission is due in about a month. I believe it's a good paper, so I could probably find a home for it elsewhere. I have two questions.

Should I formally submit the paper as-is. Would it be better to simply try to find a more appropriate place to publish? Or should I just consider it a lesson learned, forget about this paper, and move on to the next one.
Is there something I could have done up front to establish whether the paper was in scope or not? Perhaps in future it would be better to only submit to conferences where it's very clear that the paper is a good fit. This issue is likely to arise again for me, because my research is sort of at the boundary of two fields.

Should I formally submit the paper as-is. Would it be better to simply
  try to find a more appropriate place to publish? Or should I just
  consider it a lesson learned, forget about this paper, and move on to
  the next one.

In academia, you have to fight for papers you believe.  Reviewers can vary wildly in their assessments, and their assessments can be wrong.  Ultimately, if you feel that this is an appropriate place to publish, I think it's worth submitting it anyway and rolling the dice.  I have two caveats:

If possible, ask a third party in your field whom you respect about their opinion of the paper.
Think hard about why you think the paper belongs in the proceedings and, if possible, add a clear motivation to the text.

Is there something I could have done up front to establish whether the
  paper was in scope or not? Perhaps in future it would be better to
  only submit to conferences where it's very clear that the paper is a
  good fit. This issue is likely to arise again for me, because my
  research is sort of at the boundary of two fields.

In general, you can write to people on the technical program committee of the conference (or the chair of that committee) with a brief explanation of your work and a request for an assessment of suitability.  It is important not to get discouraged from rejections ... they are common, sometimes for good reasons and other times for utterly stupid reasons.  The key is to learn what you can from the reviews, improve the paper, and resubmit where appropriate.


text:
Can editors review a manuscript and make a decision if they cannot find any reviewers?
I had submitted a manuscript to an International Journal few months before. It is already 5 months. But the status is still showing "under review". Since it is getting late, so I contacted to the Journal stating the current status. I got a reply that they have contacted a number of reviewers, but no one shows interest to review it. At present they have sent the manuscript to the editor.
So whether an Editor can reject it most probably? or can review my manuscript to make a proper decision?

The editor certainly has the power to reject an article without having it reviewed.  If they can't find a suitable reviewer, this is probably what would happen, unfortunately for you.
In some cases the editor might have the authority to accept it without an outside review, but this would depend on the policies of the specific journal.  Anyway, if they were planning to do this, they probably would have already done it.


text:
How to balance trying hard in a Master's program with stress of working too hard and not having a life?
I have a nice problem but it's making me miserable.
My background is in visual communication and I'm used to getting regular feedback as well as seeing what my classmates are up to. Also, the grades we would get back then didn't really matter but the quality of the work was what would land us a job later so I'm always concerned with the quality of what I'm doing. Also, this sometimes makes me feel like I'm starting with a handicap as I'm not used to writing papers and English is not my first language.
Ever since I joined a Master's program in a different field, I can't seem to set reasonable expectations for myself (or align my expectations to the ones for the course). As I work on a project, I keep finding holes and making it better until I'm satisfied. Since there is little feedback and that I don't know what my classmates are doing, I just do my best or as close as I'm able to. The nice part is that sometimes the work ends up having potential for publication, I get a nice GPA and the esteem of my teachers. The not-so-good part is that I just don't have a life until school is over and my stress is really ramping up. The obvious solution would be to not try so hard but that seems like a waste of an education.
Any advice?

You should ask the faculty for more feedback.  How your peers are doing does not really matter much.  Since this is Academia, I do not think we are going to tell you to work less.

Emillie,
I to struggle with the same issues.  I am working on my Masters as well.  I have a few handicaps that make my life a bit difficult when trying to do my best.  When I ask my professors questions, I get, Keep up the good work, if you require more time, let me know.  Never the answer to what I am actually asking for.  Anyways, I strive for one day at time.  I keep my head up and continue to find enjoyment in small things, to keep my head from exploding on the larger things.
Remember why you started what your doing now.  Pull your energy from your roots/background.  And focus on why you want to do what your doing!  What is your end game?
Try to get some exercise, specifically cardiovascular.
Then start to eat the elephant again, one bite at a time.
There are those who don't want you to succeed, and strive on seeing you fail, because that is one less person in the pool or class.  When you do finish, and you will, keep that in mind!  Be a motivator!
Good Luck,
Ron

This is a situation that you simply cannot balance without making some changes to your lifestyle. The most important point is to take breaks, and not to feel guilty for doing so.
The other answerers have good suggestions on productive ways to spend break time, but there are less productive ways as well. Go to parties or bars, have a few drinks. Go on holiday. Join a board game club. Some people just need other people, and if you're that sort of person then it can eat at you from the inside if you spend all your time working in solitude.
If you are the sort of person who can stick to a well-defined schedule, then I would suggest scheduling your leisure activities well in advance, and try to keep to a routine that you do not break unless it's really necessary.
Lastly, give yourself at least one day in the weekend where you do not work unless you're super-motivated, genuinely want to get something done, and have no personal things that need doing.

+1 for "it can eat at you from the inside if you spend all your time working in solitude".

Great answer by Ron.  I have some additional specific suggestions for you.
What you are suffering from is sometimes called school anxiety.  Practice telling people that you are suffering from school anxiety, so it will roll off your tongue without causing you distress.  Then you'll be ready to talk to your professors about it.  Make a special appointment with each one.  If it's easier to bring a friend or a representative of the Disability Services office with you, for moral support, go ahead.
In the appointment, tell the professor calmly that you have been suffering from school anxiety.  Hopefully at that point the professor will jump in and ask, "Is there anything I can do to support you?"  If not, that's okay, you can just start talking about things s/he can do to support you.  Specifically, what I have in mind is for you to send the professor a draft before you feel finished, for feedback.  This kind of hand-holding can help prevent anxious over-editing.
Also, you should be working with the college Writing Center.  That will also help prevent over-editing, and it will help get you out of your isolation.
The other thing you can do in that last regard is to interact more with classmates and department mates.  Try to find a study partner or study group.  Look for notices on bulletin boards about Friday volleyball.  If there aren't any, put one up yourself.  (Volleyball was just an example, of course.)
It's fine to be meticulous and hard-working, but when you see the editing making you miserable, that's a red flag, and it's time to build in more support for yourself.


text:
Should each substantive chapter of a PhD dissertation be of similar length?
A professor told me once that the chapter sizes (measured in number of pages) in a PhD dissertation should be coherent. That is, the number of pages in each chapter should be somehow close to each other (to the average). Note: This does not include the Introduction and Conclusion chapters.
Is this really an important factor when writing a dissertation?

It's just a general guideline, don't worry about it too much. Aside from the fact that there are many ways to lay out a thesis, there are many reasons this would be violated.  I would venture that a better way to state this rule would be, "A chapter should be of medium length." If a given chapter is too short, it's likely an indicator that it can be combined with some other section. If a single chapter is too long, split it up into parts (experiment 1, exp 2, discussion, etc).
In any event, you should first check into how your advisor wants the thesis laid out. Consider asking your advisor to see some dissertations of other previous students to get a feel for how he likes to have things laid out; that'll be a good way to get a feel for how to lay out your own.

I believe this is a general rule for any book, not just a thesis.