text:
Is it normal for my masters advisor to ask me not to share code from my masters work with my PhD advisor, and not to continue with the same topic?
I have couple questions for you guys and I hope to find some answers here.
Scenario:
I finished my master's degree with a thesis at school A.  During my master's program at school A, I was a research assistant for my thesis adviser (Let's call him Professor A).
Now, I am applying to school B for PhD (because PhD isn't offered at school A) and I am hoping to work with Professor B who has a same research interest as Professor A.
Professor A has requested that:

I do not share any codes with Professor B.
Choose a research topic that is different from my master's thesis for the conflict of interest.

Questions:
My questions are:

Is this understandable and typical situation for many students? What do you do about this?
Do I need to completely change the trajectory of my PhD research topic from Master's and start a new topic in the same research area?

Edit:
We are in the US.
Codes were collaborated. And already received my masters.

Is the software public domain, property of school A, your property, or what? That depends on School A's policies and the relevant laws.

II don't know anything about the law in your country, but I think that the request of Professor A has a weak justification:

As lang as you wrote the code in the course of your master
program, your advisor has no right. The algorithms should be considered as public domain (unless you've
signed an NDA). It is different, if (parts of) the code are done by
others.
Being a master student does not constitue an employment relation. There is simply no base for any restriction to your further academic career.

Beside of this, I consider the behaviour of Prof. A (given you've presented all facts) as a bad academic style. Knowledge exchange, a.o. by exchange of people is a well established academic method. To answer your direct questions:

While conflicting loyalty may be a typical problem, I've never heard that a colleague of mine issued such request. Your course of actions depends (of course) on practical issues, too: Is there any danger that Prof. A prevent you from getting the master degree? If so, explain the situation to Prof. B and try to reach an agreement that you "officially" apply after you get your degree.
As I explain above: IMHO no. I would be a waste academic
resources, i.e. your knowledge and abilities. (Beside of this, it is
always a good advice to at least widen your area of expertise as
well as include at least few topics that are totally new for you: It
make you a better researcher)

While I agree with the second half of this answer, the first half contains several inaccuracies. I suggest you [edit] to correct (or remove) those parts.

"As long as you wrote the code in the course of your master program, is should be considered as public domain" - This is just not accurate. With a few exceptions (e.g. employee of US government), code is owned by either the author of the code, or by their employer or someone else who has arranged ownership (e.g. through a contract). It is not in the public domain. (Saying it is in the public domain means that nobody, including the author, owns the code.)

Also, regarding "Being a master student does not constitue an employment relation" - The OP was a research assistant for the masters advisor. In some circumstances, a research assistant job is an employment relation.

@ff524: It depends what "owning" means. In my country, there is a difference between the intellectual property (who can claim to have written the code; this right is not transferable), and usage right (who may use it). The OP ask for the second (usage). Unless specified otherwise, any document that is study-related would be public. This may be different, if the OP wrote the code in her/his function as RA (what is not related to the status of a Master student)

"Public domain" means that the intellectual property belongs to the public, not any individual. If the intellectual property is owned by an individual and they also license it in such a way that others can use it, it is not in the public domain. See answers to this question for further clarification.

@ff524: As I stated, the law is different in my country (that was the reason for my disclaimer at the start); US law does not apply all over the world. The OP does not provide an information on the country she/he studies. However, even if the concept of PD is different, the software is probably not owned by Prof. A, unless it was subject of the OP's RA activity.

My explanation of what "public domain" means is not US-specific. Regardless, if you are trying to say that the work should be publicly available, or that some usage rights should be granted to the public, but don't necessarily mean that the student relinquishes intellectual property rights, you should [edit] your post to say that, rather than using the phrase "public domain" which has legal implications that you don't seem to intend.

(Your profile says you are in Germany. The meaning of "public domain" in Germany is very similar to its meaning  everywhere else in the world; it means that no individual holds the intellectual property rights to the work. It's also debatable whether the student's code could be released into the public domain in Germany, even if he wants it to be, under some interpretations of German law it makes even less sense than in the US to say that it "should be considered as public domain." See Gemeinfreiheit on Wikipedia.)

Let me clarify. Codes were done as a collaboration between me and professor A. Also I already received my masters so there is no danger with my degree. Now, I want to respect the request. It looks like I can't share anyway because it was a collaboration. But what about the topic? I gained a lot of knowledge from my master's thesis and when professor A says, "choose phd research topic that doesn't overlap with the research that you did with me," what is a fine line between same and different topic? After all, I was anticipating to use my knowledge from masters thesis to phd research.

And we are in the US.

@ff524: You are right, I refer to "Gemeinfreiheit". Since you are able to understand German, please note the the second sentence in your reference: "[...] public domain is similar but not identical to [...] Gemeinfreiheit." In Germany, any idea or theory of an exam thesis is "gemeinfrei", f.c. here, 5.a

@davab: If the code is a collaboration, A has the same rights as you. Regarding the topic: If A believes that she/he has to keep your knowledge, maybe A can offer you a research position with better conditions than B.

Ideas and theories are in the public domain because copyright protection does not apply to ideas; copyright only applies to the expression of the ideas in words, images, source code, or some other medium. (This is true generally around the world, and also in the specific context of a German thesis - see e.g. 5.b. of that document). So while the idea may be in the public domain, the source code is not; copyright protections do apply to the source code.

@Matthias: problem is that there isn't a PhD program at school A. So I'm choosing school B.

@davav: Right, you've mentioned it, I forgot. The most PhD programs I know have the concept of a co-advisor (even from another school/university). Couldn't you convince A to be your co-advisor while B is your advisor?

@Matthias I suppose that is what I need to do. I need to sit down with Prof A and clarify the expectation and what I can do to work with him. If prof A doesn't agree on that, I guess I have to either choose different topic or burn the bridge (which I don't want to do).

I think restricting the use of the code, if the advisor was a co-author, is a legitimate request (even if not protected by law, so you had in principle the option to - legally - ignore the request).
Forcing you to switch topics is not.
If you want to be cooperative with A, you could try to avoid using, say, "state-of-the-art" techniques which A has not published yet, until the publication is completed. But it is unreasonable of A to expect that you abandon a potential future career direction on their behest.

This might sound funny but What can constitute as a different topic?  How different of a topic can be regarded as  "different" in same research area?

Are you going to submit to A's request? Frankly, there are people that believe that a whole area belongs to them; while I do respect the work of PhD students in that I consider their topic to some extent out-of-bounds, as long as it is limited, but if it is a major field/principle/theorem (think, say, Riemann's hypothesis), they cannot expect to be exempt from "infiltration". Even less so, can an established scientist. I am not answering your question about "different topic" directly here, as it is too opinion-based, but perhaps it gives you an idea how to approach this question.

I think speaking with the professor to clarify somethings would be best for me.  To understand her intentions and limits that I would have


text:
Author contributions include statements about experiment not conducted in study
I am a graduate student submitting a computational biology paper for peer review. It is intended to be a “methodology paper” for the journal. Our paper uses new methodology to analyze several public datasets and demonstrate the use and benefits of the new methodology. There were originally two authors (my advisor and I). We added a third author (Author C) for having shared one of the datasets (data #3) with us several years ago (and it became public recently). Author C had a few discussions with us about the results of our methodology applied to data #3 and provided a few interpretations. I recently asked Author C for how we should state author contributions and two of the sentences they added were along these lines:
“Author C planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to identify results for data #3. All authors analyzed data #3.”
I was a bit concerned by both sentences.
Data #3 is open/public. I believe Author C planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to generate data #3 for their own earlier paper, where they analyzed it using traditional methods. The current paper simply uses multiple public datasets (including theirs) to demonstrate the benefits of new computational tools. It is not about the collection of data #3. I feel they simply shared data #3 for the current paper and that we analyzed it with our own methods. If we state sentence #1, we may be expected to include a detailed methods section for the wet-lab collection process of data #3, which is really a part of their own previous paper and deflects from the focus of the current “methodology paper” (it would start to feel more like a “research paper”). At that point, it would be strange to not also include method sections for the collections of data #1, 2, 4, etc. (which are also public datasets).
Regarding sentence #2, I did not feel that Author C analyzed data #3 with us in the current paper, but simply provided interpretations based on their previous analyses of the data #3 for their own paper.
I do not plan to mention my concerns with sentence #2 as it is ambiguous, but I plan to propose to Author C that we remove sentence #1 or specify that it was for a previous paper. Is it reasonable for me to ask this? Or, when a wet-lab biologist like Author C generates data, can they add that they planned, designed, and conducted the experiment to generate that data as their contribution on multiple papers, without even including the details in the methods section of the papers themselves? Could this put them (or me as first author) at risk for appearing unethical?
I am mostly hoping to better ascertain what the “norm” and ethics are in this area, and how I can handle this situation respectfully and fairly.

The statement seems to be accurate, but it could be made a bit clearer since different methods were used in the various analyses. It may or may not give the impression that C helped in your experiment. Perhaps you could suggest a rephrasing of the second sentence:
"All authors analyzed data #3 using different methods."
That would make it clearer. You could also cite the paper of the third author there to make it even more clear.
It may be that C didn't intend to leave it a bit ambiguous.

Thanks @Buffy. I may make that suggestion for Sentence #2 (although I might just leave it as is). Do you mind sharing your thoughts about Sentence #1?

That one seems a bit less potentially misleading than the second. It seems consistent with your description, also.

I had thought statement #1 was more misleading, but it may be that I am unfamiliar with the norms. The experimental part (data collection) of data #3 was planned, designed, and conducted for another paper. The data itself is already public. In this paper, data #3 was simply analyzed. Is it the norm to still add the first sentence in the acknowledgement section without having an experimental methods and/or experimental design section for the collection of data #3 (as it was published in another paper)?

The fact that the data is public is of no consequence. You can cite the paper with the original setup/analysis and thus be clear. Making it public doesn't mean you don't need citations anymore. The data didn't magically appear nor create itself.

Thanks @Buffy. I definitely agree: We cited their data article throughout the manuscript. I was speaking specifically about the "authorship contributions" section. I was concerned that Sentence #1 "planned, designed, and conducted the experiment" in the "authorship contributions" section would make it appear that the data acquisition experiment was part of the current paper. The current paper did not include any experiment, only analysis of the public cited data.

Perhaps I can propose that we keep Sentence #1, but have another citation to their experimental paper immediately after it to again emphasize that the experimental part was in the other cited paper? This would be similar to my original idea that we specify that Sentence #1 is referring to "a previous paper". Does that seem like a reasonable proposal? I am just concerned that not doing so will make our paper appear experimental when it was methodological.

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text:
Is it appropriate for a graduate student to ask faculty whether they would like assistance in writing a grant?
I am a Ph.D. student who will be graduating sometime in May 2018. I am hoping to apply to the academic job market in Fall 2017. My goal is to obtain a tenure-track assistant professorship position at an R1 university in a field within computer science and/or statistics.
I recently looked at job descriptions, and found that evidence of grant-writing abilities is highly-valued, especially at R1 universities. I took a short course in preparing future faculty, and the instructor recommended that we ask faculty members in our department if we can help them write a grant. He said that most professors would be happy to have a student help write the grant.
I do feel that I am not a particularly competitive candidate, but that having grant-writing experience would give my CV an edge. However, I do not know what to make of this advice. I do not know if it is acceptable to ask faculty members about this. I do not want to offend anyone, and do not know how to approach it with etiquette and respect. I also do not know if faculty members would even find that advantageous to them - especially if the student is not familiar with their work or writing grants in general.
Would it be wise of me to ask faculty members in my department, as the instructor advised? If so, are there things I should avoid? Things I should be sure to do? Ways to ensure I would receive "credit", "authorship", or at least ways to place it meaningfully on my CV?

On the one hand, bid writing is a laborious and unforgiving activity, so any offer of help, one would hope, would be gratefully accepted; on the other hand, bid proposals do need to be written correctly and a lot rides on their success, so you are likely to encounter colleagues who are very possessive over them.
Offer to assist would likely be taken more positively than offering to write - and this could involve all sorts of things, attending and minuting meetings with stakeholders, working with administrators to develop costings, doing legwork around gathering information needed for the bid as well as drafting an argument and a case.
How to offer your services?
This will depend upon the culture within your department, however if a research coordinator or other kind of support officer is employed, perhaps they would be someone to approach first.  They would be immersed in the network in your dept and will know what's coming up.
I'd dissuade you from sending a round-robin email as this would just be annoying; an informal/social offer of help might work better - perhaps your supervisor could point you in the direction of someone currently or about to work on a bid?

Thank you for your comments. I do not know much about grants and distribution of credit, but I wonder what types/amounts of input in the grant development would receive what types of credit, like authorship of some sort that one could put on their CV. I don't know how effective it would be for me to list that I "helped" with a grant if my name is not officially creditable. Do you happen to have any suggestions about how to ensure some type of credit (if such a thing would even be feasible)?

I wouldn't think about credit in such a concrete sense.  Imagine that this is a professional CV, if you have supported/assisted in a type of task then you would put that on your CV and briefly outline what you have achieved - there's no need to worry about being an 'officially creditable' author of a bid, experience is experience.   Remember also that you are just starting your career, no-one should expect you to have the experience of a seasoned academic when you're starting your post-doc.

Getting grant writing experience is important for an academic career.  However, as you point out if you are not familiar with their work you will not be much use (at least in the initial drafting process).  So it's important to find the right people.  Ask staff who work in your area, most probably people who you have already collaborated with, and so you are at least somewhat, familiar with their work.  Don't worry about the lack of experience in grant writing, we know that everyone has to start somewhere.  Start by asking about the grants they are currently writing, explain you want to get experience and discuss with them where they might need help.  It could be useful, for example, for you to draft an introduction section, or a layman's explanation of the grant.
The other opportunity to develop your grant writing skills is to offer your proof-reading abilities.  When you hear someone is coming up to a grant deadline, offer to read it through for them, help them find typos and mistakes and/or give them feedback on content. This will help you gain familiarity with the style and content of grants, hopefully successful ones.  People are generally grateful to get as much proof-reading feedback on grants as possible, but we're often reluctant to ask people as we know everyone's busy.  Offers of help with this stages are generally well received, and even if you don't know the field intimately you can still be a lot of help.

One of my summer job employers (a professor) told me that grant-writing abilities were rare, and therefore appreciated.
There was one caveat, however: In offering your services to a professor in a particular field or topic, you should have reasonable (not perfect) knowledge of that field or topic. In other words, don't go offering services "blindly" based on your grant-writing skills. That's because the value of those skills would be cancelled by someone's having to educate you "from scratch" in his/her field.

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Should a Statement of Purpose for a PhD program concentrate on facts or emotions?
I am applying for Ph.D. programs in pure mathematics. One of the confusions I have about writing a Statement of Purpose is whether I should concentrate on the things I did (mentioning facts: REUs, Courses, Talks, Putnam exam, Teaching) or whether I should be more poetic and write about why am I a person who wants to do research, why am I capable of doing it, and why do I love mathematics. If I have mentioned some information already in one of the parts of my application, is it bad if I write about it again in my Statement of Purpose?

there are many good questions already about this, duplicate.

@user4050 Could you give me some references?

Possible duplicate of Choosing research ideas to include in a statement of purpose

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/36725/20058

In your statement of purpose you may fantasize about what you'd like to do.  (Other parts of your application will document what you've accomplished.)  You may use 10 - 20% of your essay to cover motivation if you wish.

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text:
Will a low grade in my final year of an undergraduate program affect my chances of being accepted into graduate school?
I am currently taking a course where my final mark is determine by 2 papers worth 50% each. I really hoped to get at least a B on my first paper. Unfortunately, I got a B- (71%?). I worked for 2-3 weeks on this very short paper and got help from both my TA and the writing clinic. I am in my final semester of undergrad (have not applied to grad school yet) and now I am considering dropping this course. If I drop this course, I will not be able to graduate in June and will have to take a course in the summer. This also means that I will only have 3 courses on my transcript this semester (if I drop it). This is a philosophy course and thus there is no positive correlation between how hard one studies and their mark (professors have told my class this many times). I will need a B+ on my second essay. I want to graduate in the top 10% of my class and, in order to do that, I need at least a 75% in this class. However, I am not sure how possible this is no matter how much I study or how much help I get. My other marks on my transcript are good, especially the ones that relate to the program I am interested in doing graduate work in. I am not studying philosophy in graduate school. My cGPA is a 3.5 and my GPA for the past 2 years of study is a 3.6-3.7. Graduate schools usually require at least a 3.3 for the last 2 years and a 3.0 overall.
I am not sure whether or not to drop this course. Will a low mark (high 60s/low 70s) in my last year affect my chances for grad school?
EDIT: "Good" GRE scores will not be able to "make up" for an discrepancies in my transcript since I am not required to take the GRE (nor is it accepted by most places).

This is a philosophy course and thus there is no positive correlation between how hard one studies and their mark -- What is this I don't even

@JeffE In philosophy courses that are essay-based (no final exam), often times someone can spend 3 weeks on an essay and get a poor mark whereas another person can write an essay overnight and get an A. It's all a matter of how well you form your arguments and not how well you know the topic. Our professors have told us this many times. Whereas in science courses, if you study hard for an exam, you will likely to well.

If you're applying to philosophy programs, the course matters.  If you aren't, it probably doesn't matter much.  And I recall there being an entire term specifically for people getting lazy and under-performing in their senior year (because they finally see the end in sight).  I don't remember it, though.  It was my last year and I wasn't really paying attention...

It's all a matter of how well you form your arguments — Sure. But one can study and practice forming arguments, just as one can study and practice solving differential equations or cooking or playing basketball.  If the class really does grade based on a skill that is impossible to improve, what on earth is the point of taking it?

@zibadawatimmy Right, I understand that many people would slack off in their senior year. However, that is, by no means, me. If anything, I have actually worked harder this year as I know that this is not the end of my academic career and I need high grades for graduate school.

@JeffE Good point. However, a course such as this is subjective and so I don't necessarily know what would get me a good mark. It depends on if the TA likes it. It is neither right nor wrong.

@aspire94: Success in research is subjective and researchers don't necessarily know what would produce successful research.  It depends on if the research community likes it.  Even if it is right, it still needs to be interesting and important to be successful.

This is March.  Isn't a little late to start applying for fall?
If you get a conditional acceptance somewhere, you should be able to satisfy the conditions with summer study.
For a PhD, grades are not the be-all end-all -- as long as you are not falling out of good standing.
As a PhD student, you'll need to take responsibility for your progress.
You could start preparing for your new role as a student by pretending that you are already a PhD student, and focusing on things that matter more than a letter grade.
Think: what other criteria can help you decide whether to drop a particular course?

The program that I am applying to is an MSc that has a rolling application process. Meaning, I can start in any semester (as long as I find a supervisor). I plan to apply for the winter semester (2018).


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Should I ask a professor for the third time for a letter of recommendation?
I contacted two professors six weeks before the deadline. One prof emailed me back immediately. The second one still hasn’t. It is due in 3 weeks. I emailed him last Friday asking him again if he would be willing to be a reference but still no response. I don’t have his phone number and he doesn’t work at the university. I really don’t want to annoy him, but should I email him again? I do have his gmail address (I’ve been emailing him from his work one). Usually he contacts me from his work one but I have received ones from his gmail account in the past. But I am afraid this would be frowned upon and looked on as being too invasive? I am really at a loss. I do have another reference, however, she is more a professional reference and I am not sure if that is allowed (the school isn’t getting back to me on this question).
This question is not a duplicate. I am wondering if I should email the professor for a third time or if that would be considered inappropriate?

I was in a similar position as you a few months ago.
Given the deadline, it matters that something rather than nothing is submitted before the deadline. Ask asking for extensions is an unreliable strategy.
Send an email to your professor stipulating that you are concerned about the lack of response (which you are) and inform the professor what your plans are (asking someone else).
No need to ask why, be short and to the point.

Dear Professor X,
It has been sometime since the last time we talked about you writing a
  letter of recommendation on my behalf. I am concerned that your
  silence is indicative of your unavailability to write a letter. I know
  you are busy and I understand your time constraints.
In the meantime I’ll be asking [you can choose to be specific or
  vague].
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best regards,
[Your Name]

Make sure the second letter writer is willing and able to submit in time.

So I should send a third email? Should I send it to his personal email? If so, what should I say?

Third and final email, to both university and personal email. As for what to say, I’ll add a sample letter for you in the answer.

Don’t copy it word for word, but it should capture the basic facts and not burn bridges.

Yes , it is perfectly fine in approaching the same professor for the 3rd time. It happened with me in past. Initially i thought it would be rude to approach, but at last I mailed the professor and he replied me back.
But you should write the email sophistically. You should describe your problem in the mail.


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How to continually email references without annoying them?
I am beginning to realize that I may need to suddenly bombard my referees with several emails. They have both confirmed that they would be references.
Firstly, I would like to know whether the school I’m applying to has sent them the form yet that they need to fill out. They should have, but I’m not sure if they did. The application is due January 31st.
Secondly, I sent one of my referees a document of the tasks I worked on during my undergraduate research project to help with the reference. I had a meeting with him last week and he asked me to send this to him. I did yesterday morning and still haven’t heard back. He usually replies very quickly. Should I confirm he received it?
Thirdly, The internal scholarship just opened up and I just found out I need a couple of references for this (it’s only one application). This reference form is nearly identical to one of the other ones I asked them to fill out. I would like to ask them for this reference as well (it’s due at the very beginning of March).
Lastly, assuming they don’t send in their references until right up until the deadline, I will also need to eventually send them a follow up email to make sure they send them in.
I feel like a huge burden emailing them as they are extremely busy (they work with the government in addition to being a professor). How should I go about sending these emails?

The first three sound like they can be combined into a single email (but you don't necessarily have to - check out this question). Other than that, people generally respond well if you thank them warmly for their time and effort.

The title should say 'continually', not 'continuously'.

Firstly, thank your recommendation writers for your time, send them a table of the institutions that you are applying to and the deadlines if you have a large list of places that you are applying to. Also, note that the deadline for recommendations is usually after your deadline to submit your application. If you have submitted your application by the deadline then the program will consider you. Admissions often waits for the letters before they make the decisions. However, I was contacted by a good university with only one letter of recommendation while my other writers were being late.

"If I flag down a bus at a bus stop, will the driver be annoyed?" Answer: "Maybe, but it is their job to stop and deal with you." Only in academia do we worry about the fragile and irascible ego of the prof. Just imagine that somehow the bus drivers's mood could determine whether you are allowed to get onto your connecting train.

People who have agreed to be your referees know you will be applying to various things (or should do: you should have given them a reasonable outline of your plans). The number of different things they need to do is not so important. What matters is the total time it will take them. If they have three references to write at once, they can copy/paste it across, having got into 'writing your reference' mode just once. If you time requests such that they have to keep coming back to it, that will take much more time and effort for them.
So, do your best to group any reference requests into as few blocks as possible. That means you need to plan ahead about your applications, and ask for some well ahead of time, so they can be done along with references for places with earlier deadlines. As a bonus, this also massively reduces the 'night before the deadline' worry.
Personally I would scrub round the 'did you send it?' email. If it's after the deadline, there's not a lot you can do about it either way. If the place you are applying is very strict on the deadline (ie including references), make sure you have told your referees that. Unless you know they are particularly unreliable (in which case you probably want to take a different approach anyway), they will not mess things up for you except in an emergency. Some places will accept references slightly after the deadline, and the nicer ones would let you know that not all your references have arrived, so you can give the referees a poke. Also, if you've given them things in a neat block, there's a good chance they will let you know they've sent the references by themselves.

Thank you. I believe I gave them enough information about my plans and enough time (6 weeks). However, I did not know the internal scholarships existed. I have secured a supervisor at the school I’m applying to and she told me about the scholarships. She only told me about a week ago that she also wants me to apply to internal scholarships, but they aren’t due until much later. It was only this week when all of the information about this scholarship and it’s due date was released. For the references, I am asking them to fill out 3 assessment forms provided by the school. They are VERY similar

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Is it bad style to include a list in an abstract?
If I am writing a study paper and I have given some descriptors as to which systems will be measured (things such as "openness" and "availability" in my case) is it acceptable for me to provide a list of this after with a short sentence expanding on what metrics that word in intended to include?
e.g.

Openness - Measured by the proportion of the human population has access and the ease of entry for those who meet the requirements
etc...

I think you have to look at published literature in your field.  In my field (economics) that would be very unusual, enough so that I would absolutely avoid it.

I have occasionally had lists in my abstracts. My group keeps them as part of the text i.e., "We show that 1) blah blah blah, 2) other stuff, and 3) this one thing."

One important thing to keep in mind is that the abstract is typically copied to various article databases, which have varying support for markup. As such, much of the formatting will not necessarily be carried over. That nicely formatted bulleted list which appears in the pages of the journal can turn into a confusing mess in online article databases. (e.g. It might lose the bullets and be smashed into a single paragraph.)
For this reason, it's generally recommended to avoid any special formatting in article abstracts - even things like italics should be kept de minimis.
If at all possible, skip the bulleted list, and keep the list in plain text format. If you do want to keep the bulleted list, be sure to format the list entries such that things stay readable even if the bullets are removed and everything is collapsed into a single paragraph.

Abstracts are almost always formatted as a single paragraphs of plain text.  This is for stylistic reasons and because indexing databases often have limited formatting support. By stylistic reasons I am referring to the idea that journals aims for a consistent look for how papers are formatted. This consistency is presumably partly driven by tradition and convention. But consistency also helps readers quickly identify sections of a manuscript.
If you want a list in an abstract, use a standard inline list format such as:
(a), (b), (c)

Results showed (a) blah blah blah, (b) blah blah blah, and (c) blah blah blah

or
(1), (2), (3)

Results showed  (1) blah blah blah, (2) blah blah blah, and (3) blah blah blah

@FedericoPoloni okay. I tweaked to make it more of a stand-alone answer.

Still not clear to me what you mean by "for stylistic reasons". Do you think that 'inline bullets' are stylistically better than normal bullet points with proper spacing around them? Or is it a "because we've always done like that" reason?

@FedericoPoloni updated a little

There is a stylistic tool that allows for listing in text and looks perfectly natural, the semicolon.

The semi-colon allows you to list: your results, which might also
  require some additional explanation to be put after a comma; other
  people results'; some previous results and pretty much anything else.

This is one of the function of the semicolon, so it should not cause style issues and it should not cause any markup issue either!

Lists formatted with a semicolon (or with "inline numbers" as suggested in @JeromyAnglim's answer) are less readable though, especially if the additional explanations are long. If properly-formatted bullet lists were supported everywhere, they would be a superior solution in my view.

I agree, this is one possible solution when markup and/or appropriateness are a concern under the condition that the items are not too long.


text:
Can the book "Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track" be understood without any prior reading?
I want to read the book Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track only if I would be able to understand it without first doing more than about a few books worth of other reading I have not yet done. My first question is

Would almost everyone who got a high school diploma in Canada be able to understand that book even if they never took any more education after that or read any books they didn't have to read in school?

If the answer is no, then I have another question

Would almost everyone who got a high school diploma in Canada be able to understand that book after reading only a few other books even if they never took any more education after that or read any books they didn't have to read in school?

If the answer to that is yes, then I have another question

What books do they need to read in order to be able to understand that book?

After reading this answer, I think there's a real possibility that the answers to the first and second question are both no and in order to understand that book, I might first have to read so many research results that it takes years to read them. It's also possible that the answer to the first question is yes. It's possible that the author of the book did a really great job of summarizing the research results in a way that people can understand without first having read them.
If the answer to the first or the second question is yes, then I want to read that book because I might think of useful ideas for the world based on it. If that's not the case, I prefer to use my time to read other books that I can understand and have a chance of thinking of useful ideas based on.

This can only be answered by understanding your level of education and vocabulary around the concepts discussed in the book.

From experience, I'd suggest the only way is to give a quick search and see if you can find a sample chapter. You can usually get a few pages, if incomplete, through Google Books, and usually the better part of a chapter or more from Amazon, etc. you might also borrow it through a local library. Give it a go and decide if it makes sense and you want to read more, or if now is not the time and you might want to read other material first. This works for all books. It can also save you from books  that sound good or that people tell you is good, yet they are just not for you at the time.

@BrianH Are you suggesting that I could read through a chapter now because you have the experience that I can learn enough from it or are you suggestion that I should have done that before I asked the question? If it's the first one, I think it could actually be good advice. If it's the second one, I feel that it might be bad advice. Before I asked this question, I did not know that I could actually understand anything if I read a chapter and feel that if I couldn't understand anything, it would be such a waste of time to read a whole chapter before asking this question so it would be better

not to take the risk and just ask this question without first reading a chapter.

Would almost everyone who got a high school diploma in Canada be able to understand that book.

We don't comment on specific books or specific individuals. But, there is an easy way to answer this yourself -- go to the Amazon page, click on "Look inside" and then "Surprise me!" Read a few random paragraphs and see if it makes sense.

even if they never took any more education after that or read any books they didn't have to read in school?...I want to read that book because I might think of useful ideas for the world based on it

I don't mean to be condescending, but reading one book will not make you an authority who can develop "useful ideas for the world," even granted that you are smart and have some relevant life experience. There are education professors who have spent their lives thinking about how to improve the educational system, and even they rarely see their ideas accepted and implemented.


text:
What tried and tested possibilities are there to create a poster without using LaTeX?
What tried and tested possibilities are there to set up a (nice) poster for a conference without using LaTeX?
I find LaTeX always cumbersome for that purpose and I am curious about alternatives.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please do not write answers in the comments.

In the past, I've found MS Powerpoint to be a very acceptable way to make nice posters since it supports large paper formats and scaling images well. If you need equations, you can make those in a standalone LaTeX doc and cut and paste them from the PDF to the poster pretty reasonably. It's been a few decades since I've had to do this, so LaTeX may have an improved way of doing this now, but it's there to back you up for better looking equations.

See IguanaTex add-in for including Latex expressions into PowerPoint.

+1 - This is how I've made every poster for the past decade. It's not perfect and there are some frustrations, but it's simple and ubiquitous enough that I've never found the need to switch to anything else.

I feel like PowerPoint is the only hammer in many people's toolboxes... You can use it for a lot of things, but often becoming more familiar with "screwdriver" or even "wrench" may turn out to be better in the long run, even if it seems more daunting up front.

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

The equation editor in modern MS office handles LaTeX now

My recommended tool for this is Inkscape. It uses vectorized shapes and is pretty intuitive to work with.

Very seconded: it supports layers, object grouping, assists with alignment (configurable grid, rule lines, snapping to object boundaries, equal distribution of objects/gaps), drawing of basic shapes (only lacking in the number of pre-packaged standard shapes). Drawbacks: typesetting text still is less comfortable than with Powerpoint or InDesign. And mathematical formulas... better import them pre-rendered shapes.

Yes! You should mention that it can render LaTeX internally too; https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/61274/is-there-any-way-to-type-latex-code-directly-into-the-text-boxes-inkscape

Also, if you are adding lots of complex graphics and have a normal computer you may need some tricks to work with the larger file sizes https://inkscape.org/learn/tutorials/avoid-performance-issues/

Inkscape is great for assembling figures for papers too!

@Clumsycat: In particular, Inkscape's performance on MacOS is currently acknowledged to be poor. I'm a Mac user and I love Inkscape for small figures, but I'm not sure that I'd want to try assembling a poster with it.

@MichaelSeifert I've not got access to adobe illustrator to compare, but I would concur that I need to be careful when using inkscape on large files. Ask it to load too much and it will crash and freeze. It does seem like it could handle that more gracefully. None the less, I have made A0 print quality posters on my macbook air, just using the tips on that link ( inkscape.org/learn/tutorials/avoid-performance-issues ).

I use Inkscape as well. The main thing I think that hinders it for me for making posters is a lack of an object/layer hierarchy. For example, if you have text with a box as a background and you want to move them, you have to select them both. If the text could be set as child object to the box, then you could move them both by moving just the box. Same with duplicating groups of objects. It also helps with keeping things on top of each other (e.g., keeps you from accidentally blocking the text with the box)

@anjama what's wrong with grouping the text and the box in that scenario? You can have groups within groups.

@anjama: Inkscape has layers, but the last time I checked they were pretty primitive.

Modern HTML + custom CSS works very well, assuming sufficient web-development experience or a good template.  Done well, it has significant advantages over the usual "fixed layout" of LaTeX, Office, etc; specifically:

It adjusts to your reader's device, if you share the poster after the conference
It is accessible: it allows reader to use screen-reading technology, including for math, in a much more reliable way than PDF (or, gasp, image files)
It is easy to edit (boxes reflow automatically)

And of course, it can be printed to PDF as needed. Here is an example
Here is a template that I built not so long ago: https://github.com/cpitclaudel/academic-poster-template/ .  There is also a concrete example and a tutorial.
There are a few examples of use from other universities in the "forks" list on Github.  For posterity, I include a screenshot:

And one of the mobile view:

Thank you. Having a presentation available across different media definitely seems worth checking out.

HTML is probably the last thing I'd turn to if I wanted to print out a poster, but that is probably the go-to approach for publishing or sharing it electronically (for those willing and able to put in the work to create it).

It seems to be a great device for online presentations but what is the best way of putting such an HTML poster into a common format, such as A0 or A1?

Thanks for sharing your code! I've been doing my presentations in HTML/CSS/Javascript for years now and it has many advantages. I never thought of using this for a poster.

@NotThatGuy I was surprised by how well it worked for printing.  With LaTeX I used to spend hours (OK, maybe not hours, but too much time) making sure that the bottom of all the boxes were aligned at the bottom of the poster.  With powerpoint adding content in one column and trying to reflow was a nightmare, so minor additions became large projects.

@Ambicion you can print to a specific page size, using Chrome for example.  Here's an A1 poster that I just generated: https://people.csail.mit.edu/cpitcla/links/The%20Essence%20of%20BlueSpec%20%e2%80%94%20A%20Core%20Language%20for%20Rule-Based%20Hardware%20Design%20(PLDI%202020%20poster).pdf

Interesting. For your interest, I tried printing it on Windows 10 (via Firefox or Edge) and while the layout looked decent, it didn't display the background of the article headers or bodies. I will try what happens on Chrome or on Linux.

Okay, I figured you need to show 'Background graphics' in Chrome and you need to manually set the 'Scale' parameter. Chrome's scale limit of 200 precludes using A0 directly though. Maybe something to work around in the next development step.

Here's an A0 copy: https://people.csail.mit.edu/cpitcla/links/The%20Essence%20of%20BlueSpec%20%e2%80%94%20A%20Core%20Language%20for%20Rule-Based%20Hardware%20Design%20(PLDI%202020%20poster)%20-%20A0.pdf ; I generated it by adding zoom: 2 to the CSS of the body; with that just 115% was enough to fill the A0 sheet.

I often use Adobe InDesign. InDesign isn't an introductory program, but I don't find it to be hard to use to do simple things like arrange text and color boxes.
Universities often have copies somewhere, for example, a set of workstations in a library. You could also pay for one month at a time (it's a subscription service) when you need it.

+1, but this might have the steepest learning curve. If your uni’s license gets you a laptop usable copy, then at least you can work from home on it.

@Bill I don't think the learning curve is even that steep for making a poster, since you're mostly just arranging boxes. I'm not sure why working from home is an advantage (unless you mean for COVID reasons?), at least at my university the graphic design computers had huge monitors which was quite nice.

COVID. Not everyone can go back to work yet.

@BillBarth Ah, got it. Yeah, my university seems to have ended the free-software-at-home deals for non-art students unfortunately.

Affinity Publisher is a nice and much cheaper alternative to InDesign, although it also has a learning curve. And Affinity often has sales where you can get a copy for around $30USD.

@ElizabethHenning I'd suggest making another answer! I haven't heard of it but I'm definitely intrigued by a non-subscription price ...

Scribus https://www.scribus.net/ is the free alternative to InDesign. This is the right answer if you don't like the markup style document preparation of LaTeX then at least InDesign/Scribus/etc. are actual tools for publishing actual print media. I don't think Scrubs as opposed to InDesign merits an answer of it's own, but maybe "use desktop WYSIWYG publishing software (such as InDesign, Affinity Publisher, Scribus, etc.)" could be rolled up into this answer.

@user3067860 Having only used InDesign, I'm going to keep my answer to what I'm good with endorsing.

InDesign is the go-to software even for the most professional publishing. But the price of the license shows this... Very inacessible.

@VladimirF Hence why I mentioned that most universities have some copies available for use.

Well, some people use Microsoft Power Point (no idea how the manage) - Libre Office Impress is the Open Source alternative.
Given that a poster is more a layout, it might make more sense to look at Microsoft Publisher or Libre Office Draw.
Then there are Adobe Illustrator as another option and maybe also Adobe InDesign.
Depending on the type of layout and graphics you want to employ, you may even consider photo manipulation programs such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or Krita (Krita is great, on Linux and Windows). However for text heavy content you will have potentially a lot of issues organizing them.
Although I wouldn't call LaTeX cumbersome: LaTeX requires upfront work, but once you have figured out your approach of doing things, it is very efficient.
I'd rather figure out how to make something work in LaTeX (with the option of asking questions here or elsewhere) than fiddling with incoherent drag and drop formatting options to end up with a worse looking document...
Though some details might be subject subject dependent: MS Office is not able to properly print units (no half space) following SI recommendations and the typeset is too heavy and hence ugly for printer use (works well on screens though).

Illustrator still exists?

Second Libreoffice Draw; its free and about as good and easy to use as MS Visio.

@AzorAhai-him- It used to 10 years ago :D (I have sort of turned my back on Adobe products). Just checking and as of today; the 6th Aug 2021 Adobe Illustrator is still available thus yes, it still exists.

Adobe InDesign is a direct equivalent of Microsoft Publisher, while LibreOffice Draw is the equivalent of Adobe Illustrator, so those two should probably be switched around in those sentences.

@DetlevCM, yeah, that's what I meant haha, your answer suggests it doesn't.

@AzorAhai-him- Oh, now I get where you are coming from :D. I'll tweak the sentence. My knowledge of Adobe Illustrator is rather theoretical... - I have a CS4 copy of it as part of a package bought back then...

In addition to all the great tools that have been suggested ( PowerPoint, Inkscape ) I suggest trying Microsoft Visio. It is was designed for schematics and plans but actually it works amazingly well for posters because it designed to allow clear and easy alignment. It might be an overkill solution but most of my students have managed to make great posters with it.

I use Visio to make block diagrams. It always takes way longer than I think it should. Am I missing something ???

@JosephDoggie Align and even-spacing functions? They usually help with organization and speeds up the process.

On the mac, i use Keynote for posters. It supports vector graphics so images and text scale well. It has good and simple tools for alignment and grouping (but text flow/wrapping is not good). It has pretty good grouping and aligning/distributing. If i am presenting a 2m x 1m poster I will set the document size to 2000 x 1000 pixels so that i know that 1 mm == 1px.
I have found that Keynote hits the right level of simplicity for throwing together eps/pdf graphics and some extra text and annotations.
In my experience more powerful tools, like inkscape or illustrator or inDesign have a steeper learning curve and are not really necessary for what i want to do.

On the Mac, I would also recommend OmniGraffle -- nice PDF and vector graphics support. I've made several posters for conferences at Cold Spring Harbor with it.

@Andrew omnigraffle is pretty great but i stopped using it when it got expensive.

Similar to the person here who replied Inkscape, I very much enjoy creating posters and even slideshow presentations using the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).
There are definitely pros and cons compared to LaTeX or Libreoffice Impress et al., but in general, if you have knowledge of even the most basic tools in GIMP, it gives you great flexibility and creative freedom, and you can do some really nice posters. My only caveat is you'd need to think how you want to layer the poster before you begin: it's flexible to change individual objects, but if you decide you want to go with an altogether different template half-way through, then it's not as forgiving. (unless of course you have such a template already made from a previous GIMP poster and you're happy to rearrange the individual elements manually).
Also, GIMP is very scriptable, with a relatively simple python interface. But that's if you want to go the extra mile for automation :)
Here's an example of a poster presentation a did a few years back for a conference:

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Why are method sections usually impersonal, when the main text isn’t?
There are generally two possible ways to present experiments and analyses in academic writing, which I label as follows for the purpose of this question:

Personal, also referred to as active or first person, e.g.:

We discombobulated the giraffes in the flux compensator until we determined them to be transmogrified per Hinterwald’s criterion.

Impersonal, also referred to as passive or third person, e.g.:

Giraffes were discombobulated in the the flux compensator until they were determined to be transmogrified per Hinterwald’s criterion.

Most fields, journals, etc. nowadays have a clear preference towards the personal writing style. However, there is one peculiar exception:
In many experimental fields, it is common to separate experimental and statistical details into method sections, which are usually an appendix to the main paper. These are most commonly written in impersonal style, although the main papers are exclusively written in personal style for decades. Why?
What I considered so far:

Actions described in the methods section are occasionally performed by others than the authors of the paper, e.g., lab assistants, central facilities, or robots. However, these actions may also be described in the main text (albeit more rarely). For example, you will often find authors writing in the main text that they sequenced some organisms when the actual sequencing was almost certainly done by a company or central facility.

Method sections receive very little love. They are often badly written, unorganised, not really peer-reviewed or copy-edited, typeset by the authors in Word, etc. Thus the students that usually write them may be in cultural inertia and just copy the style from papers they find, since nobody bothers to tell them to do differently. While this is a conceivable reason, I do not consider it to be very plausible.

Please note that this question is not about:

Whether personal or impersonal writing is better for method sections or in general. On this, see this question and links therein.

When impersonal writing is used to describe something that was not done for the paper in question, usually in a previous publication.

How to exactly separate these styles, and whether Strunk and White could correctly distinguish the active and passive voice.

Interesting question. Glad you asked it. I hadn't thought about this until a couple of months ago when I had the chance to mentor some postdocs on how to review.

All of my papers are entirely typeset in Word.

Also, as a linguist I'll quibble that "active" and "first-person" are different things. "The RAs evaluated the participants for ..." is active but not first-person. But, I do think your summary phrasing of "(im)personal" is apt.

@AzorAhai: … which is more or less exactly why I chose it this way and used “also referred to as” for the alternatives.

... "also referred to as" implies synonymy.

@AzorAhai: Well, some people do use it synonymously, whether we like it or not. Just see the answers so far.

Third person but not passive voice or impersonal: "The authors propose...". Impersonal, not passive voice: "A computer recorded the output".  The passive voice often serves to give an impersonal tone ("an impersonal tone is served by the use of the passive voice" is hardly an improvement) but they're not the same thing linguistically even to an amateur.

Ah for the days of longer style guides that actually explained things. If I pull out my American Institute of Physics "AIP Style Manual" (Fourth edition, 1990) one finds:

9. "I," "we," and impersonal constructions
(1) The old taboo against using the first person in formal prose has long been deplored by the best authorities and ignored by some of the best writers...
(2) The passive is often the most natural way to give prominence to the essential facts:
Air was admitted to the chamber.
(Who cares who turned the valve?) But avoid the passive if it makes the syntax inelegant or obscure...

My bolding.
If who specifically performs the experiment matters, it isn't a good description of how to do the experiment. But, in analyzing the data and discussing the implications, that is on the authors and what they did.

This adds very little to Anyon’s answer, so my comments to that answer mostly apply here as well. In particular, you’ll often find descriptions of the experiment in the main paper and descriptions of the statistical analysis in the methods. Also mind that I am pretty aware of the general arguments for and against personal and impersonal writing, but they fail to explain the custom in question.

@Wrzlprmft - fair enough, I got caught up in doing actual work after starting to write an answer around the same time. The burdens of wanting to be paid...

To answer your main question (and a good one!):

These are most commonly written in the impersonal style, although the main papers are exclusively written in active style since decades. Why?

I recently had a couple of experienced editors from top fisheries journals
talk to a group of postdocs and early career scientists I mentor/co-mentor.
They talked about this specific topic.
They personally preferred 3rd person for methods because they felt it should not matter who conducted the methods.
Thus, the methods should be impersonal.
However, they also noted they prefer well written and understandable papers rather than fighting over 1st versus 3rd person.
Personally, I usually write my methods primarily in first person and use some 3rd person simply to vary structure.
I will also specifically use 3rd person if somebody else did the work such as a contract lab analyzing samples or a national monitoring program collecting field samples.
For your other considerations, here's my musing:

What I considered so far:
Actions described in the methods section are occasionally performed by others than the authors of the paper, e.g., lab assistants, central facilities, or robots. However, these actions may also be described in the main text (albeit more rarely). For example, you will often find authors writing in the main text that they sequenced some organisms when the actual sequencing was almost certainly done by a company or central facility.
Method sections receive very little love. They are often badly written, unorganised, not really peer-reviewed or copy-edited, typeset by the authors in Word, etc. Thus the students that usually write them may be in cultural inertia and just copy the style from papers they find, since nobody bothers to tell them to do differently. While this is a conceivable reason, I do not consider it to be very plausible.

I think the inertia comment is on to something.
I know of very few people who take scientific writing courses at the graduate level so most people learn from their advisors and committee members who edit their work.
So, "good `nuff" writing for methods gets the section done.
Introductions are almost always 3rd person until the aims/objectives/hypotheses of the paper.
Results and discussion can be either.
Personally, I think both active and passive and 1st and 3rd person have their places.
Broadly, a well written paper can be use either style, or, probably better written using both.
I think a well written paper (e.g., understandable, clear, and concise) is more important than the style choices.
Switching between the two can help by adding in variability.
For example,

We observed fish swam farther during the day (some numbers and test statistics here...). Males swam less than females (more numbers etc) other than during pre-spawning events when males swam more than females (more numbers etc.).

changes from first person to third person.
As I've grown as a writer, I think knowing the rules so you know when you can break them to improve your writing is important.

They personally preferred 3rd person for methods because they felt it should not matter who conducted the methods. – Did they say anything on applying the same argument to the main text? (Also see my first point under What I considered so far.)

I remember the comments about the methods. I'll update my answer with your other ideas

Many take the view that the it makes sense to write the methods in an impersonal style, as it really should aim to be purely objective. The platonic ideal then is that the same methods could be carried out identically by another group (that happen to have the same equipment), so why emphasize the person(s) over the procedures? This can be contrasted with other sections of a paper, which often incorporate some degree of interpretation, which is inherently more subjective. Further, as the AIP style guide (4th ed.) put it:

The passive is often the most natural way to give prominence to the essential facts:
Air was admitted to the chamber.
(Who cares who turned the valve?)

Another potential issue is that a methods section written in the active voice can easily end up with a large number of sentences starting with, or containing, a first person pronoun.

That would essentially be the first thing I listed under What I considered so far: Going by this, it’s rather a question of what you write as opposed to where you write it. However, in the journals and field in question, you will find the same kind of statement in personal style in the main text and in impersonal style in the methods. Relatedly, the AIP style guide also advocates for personal style on occasion, which would also apply to method sections. (Of course, your answer may still accurately describe the bad reason why people do things the way they do.)

BTW: The fourth edition of the AIP style guide is from 1990, after which it seems to have been discontinued. That also explains the reference to abstract journals in the section in question.

The publication year is why I opted for "put it" rather than "puts it" (or, should I say, "as it was put in"). Yes, the advice in the AIP style guide is what I consider the sane position, i.e.  aim for clarity and readability rather than 100% sticking to one voice. However, in other places you commonly see the recommendation to keep the voice constant within each section (certainly, varying it too much can be jarring), which is presumably part of why you see such marked differences between different sections.

Another potential issue is that a methods section written in the active voice can easily end up with a large number of sentences starting with, or containing, a first person pronoun. – In terms of redundancy and stylistic bore, the method sections in question have far worse problems than this. Most of them contain long sequences of grammatically identical sentences along the lines of: “X were Yed with Z.”

The publication year is why I opted for "put it" rather than "puts it" (or, should I say, "as it was put in"). – Ah, I mistook that for a grammatical-number error.

I don't think it has anything to do with who did what and whether the personal involvement matters - it is about the purpose of the sections in a paper. The methods section, historically, is meant to allow others to repeat what you did. In that respect, it is more like a protocol (but in narrative form) rather than in an experiment report (with interpretations and conclusions). It is supposed to be dry, short and informative. Now of course, in the days of (seemingly unlimited) online space, this section is changing. It is becoming more elaborate (because people realized critical details often didn't fit in a methods section with a max word count) and stylized even (e.g. in the STEM field you increasingly see a key resources table - all with the goal of maximizing the chance of reproducibility by others).
Put differently: the main text is a scientific narrative that advances insight and theory, the methods section is there to allow others to repeat the work that led to those new insights (but that may also leave openings for other interpretations of the data - this is how science progresses).


text:
Who owns the copyright of the acquisition of an object or sample owned by a third party?
Our lab performed 3D scans of materials (e.g. metals, rocks etc.) produced by other institutions and universities. But I am also interested in other analyses.
I was wondering who has the copyright on the data, the one who acquired the data (the person who performed the analyses, collecting the actual data and metadata, in this case, me), the person/institution who created the materials that were scanned, or the one who provided the materials?
I waited for more than one year, now I would like to make the data public, and I would like to understand if I own the copyright of the worked that I carried out.

The copyright belongs to whoever it was assigned in various legal contracts

Sounds like a discussion to have with a lawyer.

Data cannot be copyrighted. In US copyright law at least.

@DanRomik but I know there are some Database licences,

I’m not an expert, I only know what’s in that article. Copyright law is pretty complicated, law.se may be a better place to ask about this.

Please clarify what you mean by "acquired." You said it was produced by other universities. Typically, I would say that they "acquired" the data. You just downloaded it, no?

@AzorAhai--hehim No I produced the data, the other institutions provided me with the materials eg. pieces of metals with different coatings

@GM I edited for clarity, please let me know if the edit is correct. Also, why does waiting for a year matter?

I don't know the complete answer, because I work with human data that has its own rules, but you almost certainly do not hold the copyright (if any) personally.

@AzorAhai--hehim one year is usually the normal embargo period so not that it implies something in my case but I wanted to highlight that they could have used the data for pubblication if they wanted in this time.

Copyright almost certainly isn't the correct legal basis here (IANAL, so take that with a grain of salt, but as comments have pointed out, data is not subject to copyright in many jurisdictions), so I would suggest dropping that part of your thinking. The issue is not whether you have copyright of something produced, but whether you were allowed to use the materials you were provided to produce publicly available data.
Usually when materials pass between entities, including between universities or between a private company and a university, they are subject to a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA). This is a contract that specifies what can and can't be done with provided materials.
In the absence of such an agreement, there may be some implied rights but it might be best to go ahead and secure an MTA after the fact, or at a minimum get some informal agreement that you can use to protect yourself. Otherwise, you're in a situation where you are at the mercy of those who may be upset by your actions, which could start an academic or legal dispute that you don't want to be involved in.
(note: I'm assuming there is something somewhat special about these materials such that you could not have obtained them from other sources)

First, IANAL so keep that in mind.
Copyright only applies to artistic or creative work so it's going to depend on what you mean by data.  The general rule is that "mere information" can't be copyrighted.  The canonical example is the phone book.  You can copyright the way the information in one is expressed or presented but you can't copyright the information itself.  It sounds like you've got something similar in the measurements that you've taken from these samples.
With that said, copyright is a complex area of the law and situations that may seem simple to a non-lawyer may actually be quite complex.  If you're at all unsure, your best bet is to contact a lawyer.

Not any lawyer - the university undoubtedly has people on staff whose job this is (probably don't have to pay them either, but no promises).


text:
How do I generate an Undergraduate Thesis worthy of publication?
Simply, what do you expect from a good bachelor's thesis?

Firstly, a paper and a thesis are two very different things. Secondly, why do you want to win an Ig Nobel prize? Your goals (writing a good thesis and winning an Ig Nobel) seem orthogonal to me.

"Please don't laugh.", but... "I'm trying for an Ig Nobel."... don't you want people to laugh?  Seems like you should do something that's hilarious to optimize your odds.

"Please don't laugh" - if I remember the selection criteria correctly, you want people to laugh, then think... :)

What do you expect from a good bachelor's thesis?

The expectations for a bachelor's thesis vary from country to country and from field to field. However, I think the main points can be summarised as follows:

the author shows a good understanding of the given problem
the author is aware of the existing literature in the field, can discuss the literature critically and understands where their problem sits in the literature
the thesis is well-written and successfully communicates the author's findings, ensuring that anyone wishing to replicate their experiments could do so

A bachelors thesis is NOT expected to be an entirely original work nor does it need to represent an advancement in the field. I think I am safe in stating that publishing work from a bachelor's thesis is highly unusual.
A successful thesis requires consistent work on a specific problem with demonstrable results that can be disseminated to the community (be this your peers at university, future employers or maybe to a journal for peer review).
You are missing one key ingredient: a supervisor.
At the bachelor's level, it is very difficult (due to inexperience or unfamiliarity with the literature) to identify a problem which is open-ended enough to allow plenty of work on it, but not so esoteric or challenging that the student will not be able to make any meaningful progress or learn anything valuable from the experience.
You state that

Most of my lecturers are PhD scholars themselves struggling with their own papers. Ego in academia may prevent them from assisting me in my paper.

Have you asked them about this or are you making an assumption? They may well be very happy to supervise your project; after all, getting other people interested in research is very important for academics.
I think that you and your thesis will be far more successful if you find a supervisor who can give you the guidance and direction you need. Your supervisor will also be able to answer your questions about publication of your work (if it merits it-- again, I stress that publication should be low on your list of priorities. Get to know the literature, gain some expertise surrounding your problem and write, write, write).
Now to address your questions about an Ig Nobel.
I'm not sure if you've maybe misunderstood what these prizes are about: they're a gentle satirical mocking of the Nobel prizes, and generally awarded for ``pointless'' or silly research-- not serious science. I'm not sure that aiming to be awarded one for your bachelor's thesis is a good idea.
You can nominate yourself for an Ig Nobel, but as their own website states (emphasis mine):

Self-nominees seldom win. It seems characteristic of the Ig Nobel prizes that the "Igginess" is a side-effect, not a goal.

Don't aim for an Ig Nobel. Concentrate on finding a supervisor, working on a tough problem, writing a great thesis and getting to know the joys and pitfalls of research.
There are some other questions and answers on this site that may help you further:

Finding a supervisor (this question is about getting a supervisor at another university, but the advice is applicable to your situation).
Do's and don'ts of undergrad research
What counts as undergrad research (when aiming for grad school)

@DVSA this is highly field and lab dependent (in my university it would be very unusual for an undergrad to be contributing towards a PhD project) and I was trying to keep my answer general. However, I stand by my original statement: a bachelor's thesis does not need to be publishable. It's just a bonus if it is. I also wanted to emphasise this for OP as they seemed very hung up on the idea of publishing for the sake of it and I don't think that's helpful in their case.

@astronat I don't think DSVA is saying a bachelor's thesis needs to be publishable, but that the work should go towards something that could be publishable. Due to time constraints it's difficult for a bachelor's thesis to be a full project by itself, but it should be more than a literature review (i.e., not original research).

@Bryan: As astronat says, in some academic fields (e.g. pure mathematics) there really is no reasonable expectation that a bachelor's thesis contains anything other than exposition.  Nor is it necessarily desirable that it would: e.g. most math bachelor's theses written at the best universities in the US do not contain original research, even though many of the authors have done some original research in other contexts (e.g. a summer REU).  Learning and mastering a portion of an advanced mathematical field largely independently can indeed be more valuable than original research.

@DSVA: ". I even don't understand why supervisors would invest time and money doing something no one needs...". One answer: training. In my field it is very rare for an undergrad to produce publishable research, and in some subareas outright impossible.

"Concentrate on [...] working on a tough problem" I would rather say "tough-but-not-too-tough problem". There's not a lot of point setting out to do something inaccessibly hard and ending up with exactly nothing.

@DavidRicherby, yes, I explicitly stated this in the paragraph below the sentence "You are missing one key ingredient..."

I'm trying for an Ig Nobel.

First, let me say that I love your attitude.  Academia could stand to enjoy a bit more humor, especially when applied productively.  Some of that's been lost when people are afraid to step out of place or appear unprofessional; but, if you're aiming for the stars, you'll be in good company if you're relaxed.
And since

I'm currently a CompSci&Engg

, I'd recommend:
Do p-hacking!
Say that you want to find some desired relationship in your data.  You do a regression, but the results aren't really convincing.  What then?  Well, clearly, you just picked the wrong regression model.  So, you try a bunch of 'em 'til it works, including a bunch of correction methods for confounders, and once you find a statistically significant result, clearly that was the correct model all along.  p<0.05, because it's science, yo.
Clearly I'm joking, right?  Unfortunately not.  There're a lot of unbound degrees of freedom in practiced experimental design and data analysis; these unbound degrees of freedom are optimized for reportability, leading to skewed data analyses.  It's like doing machine learning, except everything's training data; no validation set until someone comes along to do it later.
It seems perfect because:

It's an extremely important topic.

It's under-researched.

It's funny.

1.  It's important.
From "Experts issue warning on problems with P values" (2016):

“It is a safe bet that people have suffered or died because scientists (and editors, regulators, journalists and others) have used significance tests to interpret results,” Rothman wrote.

They're not being overly dramatic.  A lot of medical literature reports findings that just don't follow, guiding future research in fruitless directions as people who have medical problems today spend their time downing snake oil.
For a quick intro, the American Statistical Association (ASA) provides "The ASA's Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose" (2016).  The overall problem's called the reproducibility crisis.
2.  It's under-researched.
While we know that it's a huge problem, I haven't seen good studies into how it keeps happening or effective initiatives to improve the situation.
For an undergrad thesis worthy of an Ig Nobel prize, you could do something like come up with a clear, consistent methodology for turning arbitrary experimental data into results that'd be considered valid by currently practiced standards.  Ultimately, your goal is to produce a methodology for "proving" any conclusion you like with p<0.01, or something like that, then use this methodology to "prove" all sorts of absurd results.
Off-hand, I'd try this:

Get an experimental data set.

Try to fit it to a regression model.

If the results are "significant", record.

Repeat Steps (2)-(3) once for each possible combination of:

Regression model.  (Use linear, exponential, log, polynomials, etc..)

Correction method.

Outlier reduction.

Variable transform.

Repeat Step (4) for various experimental setups.

Report the most "statistically significant" result.

Include disclaimers about how the results are preliminary and that more research is needed to determine significance.

3.  It's funny.
If it's on xkcd, it's funny.  (Proof:  Randomly sampled a few comics; analyzed for various definitions of "funny" 'til I found one that fit; p<0.05.)
Seriously though, this is the sort of project that if you do well, then add a bit of flavor with funny comics that anyone can understand (like this xkcd), you could easily make headline news.  Plus a few new memes!
4.  ???
Do it for the memes, man.  If you don't, who will?
5.  Profit:  Ig Nobel.
If you write a thesis on how to "scientifically" prove anything, then use it to prove a bunch of silly non-sense, it seems like you should get an Ig Nobel.  Plus a lot more fame; again, it's an extremely important topic that needs more public awareness, both within academia and outside of it.
If they don't give you one, I'd write you up an Ig Ig Nobel.  I'll even print it off on the back of a napkin, egregia cum laude, if the thesis is good enough!


text:
My previous advisor wrote that I'm not creative in his recommendation letter
I was applying to a MSc about a year ago, and I asked my advisor in BSc to write me a Letter of Recommendation. He said Ok.
Later, I found his LoR in the application system by asking one of my friends working in the department, and it turned out that he wrote something like this:

I have quite high expectations and my courses are extremely hard, but he got my courses and asked me to supervise him afterwards which means he tends to challenge himself, but the fact is that he is not that much creative. He is also good with planning, you can plan tasks with him and he will deliver them accordingly. Overall I think he is a good candidate for a graduate program.

I don't think that this is a very good recommendation letter, the thing about "not being creative" seems so detrimental to me, what do you think? Should I use this LoR in future applications? I have no idea that whether this is a good LoR or not.

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First: if I came to know you asked “one of my friends working in department” to reveal confidential information, I would immediately disqualify your application and in fact I would probably look to take administrative action against an employee or faculty in my unit who relayed the contents of a LoR to the candidate without asking for permission to release.  It is IMO completely unethical to ask or pressure someone to disclose confidential material, and it is even worse for someone to agree to disclose such material.
Next, whether you ask or not this person, I can tell you I would refuse to write a LoR for someone who has acted the way you have.  Moreover, I would feel bound to advise colleagues of what you did, and I would explicitly mention in any future LoR your unethical behaviour.
The letter is fine: get used to criticism as it is unlikely that any of us was born on the 8th day of Creation.  However, if I were you, I would not ask this person again for a LoR because your actions reflect extremely poorly on your judgment, and I would fear this person would have to disclose this if they were to know what you did.

Indeed, this is possibly quite a creative way to ruin one's application.

I don't think the OP wants to ask the advisor to replace the letter and I also don't think that OP wants to reveal that he/she knows the content. I understand the question as: Is it a good idea to ask the advisor for letters of recommendation in the future?

@JFabianMeier yup I addressed that in my last paragraph.  As explained, the OP could make their situation much worse if their actions come to light.

@BryanKrause so you're saying op should disclose their behavior to prove that they are actually creative? Oh the turntables ;)

@ZeroTheHero Your last paragraph sounds like you think the OP wants to go the advisor and say something like "You wrote I am not creative in the letter of recommendation, can you correct that?", but I don't think the OP ever had something like this in mind. I think the OP purely asks for future letters of recommendation.

More a comment than an answer to your question but I think a useful supplement. Since many bring up ethics I think the professor wasn't that ethical either (at least according to the details provided here). It might depend on the culture and field but I think that explicitly mentioning that student is not creative is pretty damning and is almost guaranteed to end the chance of any successful application there and then. (It is not just not mentioning creativity but having noticed an explicit absence of it!)
I believe that if you are going to write such a letter that leaves very slim chances of a successful application you should be giving the student a heads up about either the specific criticism you will include or if you think that will not be productive at least a warning that you can't write a strong recommendation letter for them. That way the student can plan accordingly. (Really it seems rather cruel to see them try and fail at every application without alerting them to the fact that your letter is secretly very negative. It also creates a lot of useless work for both you and the student in the application process). If the student still insists on wanting your letter despite your warning you have done your part and can write the honest letter including the criticism.

We have become too accustomed to letters just being glowing. An entirely glowing letter is meaningless, because I have been a graduate student, and I have trained and taught many over the years. I am yet to see these incoming classes of flawless geniuses everyone promises. Ironically, if this student has a good GPA, and especially for a masters program, I would be highly motivated to rank this student well. Sure, they lack creativity, but they are hardworking and reliable. Suddenly the hardworking and reliable part likely rings more true if the letter comes across as genuine.

Sorry, this feels like going way too far on guessing what is going on. The letter is full of praise in all but one point. It looks like an honest appraisal which should support the main message: "Overall I think he is a good candidate for a graduate program." If that is unethical, something is seriously broken in the selection process.

I disagree.  Including a well-balanced assessment that includes a mild criticism reinforces the value of the positive comments.

@everyone I guess ;).  I guess it depends on the position they are applying for. But in my field I would say that there is hardly a more damning thing you can say than someone not being creative. I guess if they are looking for labor in a lab or something you can do without but that is not what a PhD should be about. The job is finding creative solutions. I would prefer a letter that says "very good, very creative, raging dysfunctional alcoholic."
It really puzzled me how they can say "not creative" and "Overall I think he is a good candidate for a graduate program."

@Kvothe the OP is talking about applying to a masters program, not PhD. The objectives of a masters student are quite different, and in many fields simply represents an opportunity to expand their skill set. It is also not helpful for a student whose strong suit may not be independence and creativity to be thrust into a program where that may be the main expectation, that is setting them up to fail.

@R1NaNo, oops did miss it was for a masters and not a PhD. That slightly changes things in that it might be okay to not be creative. Still even for a masters I would probably pick the student that didn't have a letter saying they are not creative. I think even for a MSc it should be the hope that you are preparing the student for a career in Science. And I was not saying write a good letter when you expect them to fail. But tell the student you are not writing a good letter.

@Kvothe where we differ is that I do not believe this is a bad letter. It is an honest one, and frankly a helpful one. The notion that higher education is the realm of the delicate creative is antiquated. There are many areas of employment that require high levels of education and low levels of creativity. Do I particularly care if an electron microscopist is very creative? What about an analytical environmental chemist that has to precisely sample 300 lakes and extract data? Sure, a theoretical physicist, someone making new materials, they definitely should be.

Well, you are not supposed to know the details, what reasons are you going to use to ask him to write again?
He did say some good words for you such as you can deliver tasks.
I think the best possible way is to try to find another one to write you a letter, and request don't count that letter in your application, which may not even be possible.

sarcasm
Yes, I think you should tell your advisor that you saw the letter and then ask for another. This will give your advisor an opportunity to adjust their letter of recommendation to reflect that you not only lack creativity but are also brazenly unethical. I think this will be very valuable for any potential department that you will be joining to be aware of.

I don't think the OP ever intended to say something like this to the advisor.

@JFabianMeier yes, it was my response to the appalling behavior, if I did something similar and breached a confidentiality agreement I would be reprimanded and potentially suspended without pay (pre-tenure it would have gone on my file and may have impacted my career trajectory). My hope was the OP would see this and think long and hard about the situation, because I think that sentence in their recommendation letter is the least of their worries if they are ethically OK with obtaining confidential information as they claim they have.

Considering that the ethics may not be clear to the OP and that the OP looks like a non-native English speaker, sarcasm may not land well at all.

Please mark sarcasm. Both voters and readers might get the wrong impression. Imagine the outcome of following your advice :-D

Please mark sarcasm. - I would say this is especially true on a public site with a wide variety of users from different cultures who don't really know each other.

Note: This answer was written from Middle Eastern region perspective, and might not reflect the reality of Western Academia, its principles and values. Keep this in mind.
Depending on your country, this recommendation letter might be a huge liability and will terminate your ability to get into any MSc. program permanently.
I would not use it, and I would obviously not disclose the fact that I have received confidential information in the way that you did - this might be punishable by the Ethics Tribunal (or your local equivalent).
Additionally, considering the content of the "recommendation" letter, if local Student Union/Student Association authority exists in your institution, I would anonymously report the relevant professor for providing malicious letters of recommendation - if such a mechanism exists in your country as well, do not underestimate its effectiveness; behavior like this usually costs the professor their position, though the exact consequences wary between countries. If you have this approach available, ensure that you do so anonymously and do not provide the exact text of the letter, unless you have immunity privileges by the Association for complaints (this is not necessarily the case in every country with S.A., you need to check this ahead of time).
Since many other answers touch on ethics, I also want to point out that in my country of origin writing such a recommendation letter is culturally unacceptable to the point of physical retaliation, and the letter would be revealed to the applicant during application process anyway (in my country it's required by law).

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text:
Is it of academic value to submit two papers describing two different but somewhat similar architectures?
I'm going to submit two papers within the coming weeks. I'll be proposing two new architectures (one new architecture in every paper).
To sum up, the first paper surpasses the current state of the art.
The second paper improves some criteria above the first paper however the overall result of the second paper would degrade compared with the current state of the art by a little.
I was wondering whether it is ethical and of any academic value to submit both papers or I must just submit the first paper?

You can submit both papers to one or two different conferences, as long as you have two new contributions in them.
Side Note
It is advised not to cut the "meaty" part of a very nice contribution, into two or more different papers/journals. This sort of "slicing" put your future academic life at risk, because there are some academics that write many poor papers, by just slicing a contribution into different papers; and they are very well known for their "efforts". So, do not put your academic career at jeopardy, and think this through (i.e., contribution(s) you want to discuss in each paper).