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How to Write a Thank You Letter?
My professor gave me a project and I have completed it successfully. Now he has told me that he will get funding for my project.
I am so excited about that. How can I write a thank you letter?

Why is this hard?  I don't understand.  You have the intensity of feeling to drive a heartfelt thank-you.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you worked on a trial project, it went well, and now you will be continuing work with a funded follow-on.
This doesn't really strike me as a situation that needs a formal or complicated thank you note. Just tell the professor that you're happy things have gone well and are looking forward to continuing to work with them. The best possible thank you that you can give is to continue putting in good effort as you continue to develop your work with this professor.

I agree with jakebeal but it does no harm to write a one or two line email of thanks.
Any one suggest wording? You have been offered a spot on the funded project?


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When transferring credits do I need permission from the "leaving" university?
I did three years of my four year undergraduate degree in the UK. I want to do my final year at another university in another country (still in Europe). I contacted the university that I am interested in and after sending my academic transcript they confirmed that they would be willing to accept my credits and that I can start in a higher year.
My question is: Do I need anything from the University I am leaving? Do I need permission from them to transfer my credits?

What research have you done on the matter? Have you investigated how transferring works at either of these institutions?

@MJeffryes Most universities I researched do not provide any public accessible information about transferring. Like I said, I did contact the one I am interested in and they said something along the line of "Yes, we'll accept you. Just apply through the normal process and then get in touch with us in order to get exempted from some of the courses". I am confident that that's going to be ok. Now the only thing I am worried about is whether my current University has anything to say in that matter. If I don't have to I rather not contact them about this. If I have to then I will.

Note that the answer to this question is likely to apply to graduate education as well, so I believe that it should not be closed as "undergraduate only"

One issue that occasionally comes up at US universities is that in order to transfer credits, the previous university has to send an official transcript to the new one.  Many universities require that before they will send the transcript, you have to have paid all tuition and fees you owe them (or have financed them with a student loan).  So if you are behind on tuition payments or even owe library fines, you may not be able to get the transcript you need.

@NateEldredge That's important enough, and relevant enough, I'd suggest turning it into a full answer.

You should not take the term "transferring credits" so literally -- nothing is taken away from the (at that time) previous university. Instead, you are convincing the new university that you already obtained some parts of the education they are offering (so that it would be a waste of your and their time to do that again), and have the credits to prove it. The new university then awards you the appropriate credits according to their regulations (which might be more or less than the corresponding ones at your old university) based on their trust that you could in principle pass the modules again. The credits at your old university remain (at least for some time), should you decide to switch back.

Yep, it's not a transfer, but a recognition.

One issue that occasionally comes up at US universities is that in order to transfer credits, the previous university has to send an official transcript to the new one. Many universities require that before they will send the transcript, you have to have paid all tuition and fees you owe them (or have financed them with a student loan). So if you are behind on tuition payments or even owe library fines, you may not be able to get the transcript you need.
Other than that, in my experience, there isn't any particular permission that you need in order to transfer.

And they'll probably charge a fee for sending a transcript...

Here in Chile it is up to the receiving institution to decide if they recognize previous work for credit or not. The original school has no say in the matter.

You are not telling us the most important thing -- you want to graduate and get a degree, right?  From which university do you want the degree?  If you intend to return to the UK to graduate, your university there will have to give you credit for the classes taken abroad, and you should ask them about their exact requirements to do so.  If you intend to graduate at the new university, take a good long look at their requirents to graduate with a degree in the field of your choice, then make sure that between the classes you are going to take and the ones you have taken you meet these requirements.  If you do not, it will cost you at least another semester (plus the fees and costs of living associated with any delays).  From the university you are leaving (without graduating) you will only need proof of the grades from the classes taken there (this may involve a translation, possibly certified in some way; ask about this at the university you plan to graduate from).  As detailed by Nate Eldridge, you probably should be current with all payments when you ask for a transcript.  Good luck!

I think this answer is important, because it's unusual to take 3 years to another university, whereas bringing one year back from abroad, even the final year, is relatively normal.

"If you intend to return to the UK to graduate" - if that is the case, quite a bit of the premise may be changing. For a planned temporary stay abroad, the process would usually be quite different than for (possibly permanently) changing the university. In particular, a transfer of credits to the university abroad might not be required in the first place as you are not entering any of their majors with the goal of graduating there.

You don't need your old university's permission to enrol at a new one, and the new university doesn't need your old university's permission to recognise the transcript you've already showed them in lieu of taking their equivalent courses.
You should immediately ask the other university, the one you want to transfer to and that you're already in conversation with, the question you've just asked here. "Do you need anything from my current university?".
They might say, "no, we already have your transcript and the offer we've given you is unconditional". They might say (as Nate's answer suggests) "we need formal confirmation of the transcript we've seen". They might say, "we will request a basic reference from your current university, to establish your good standing and that you weren't expelled for some kind of misconduct". It's up to them what they want.

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How to find a high quality PhD advisor in another country?
I an currently finishing my first year in a Masters program in Computer Science / Mathematics and thinking about getting a Ph.D. I'm not really sure, however, that I want to make my Ph.D. with the same thesis with which I'm getting my Masters degree.
I heard the opinion about Ph.D. as "doing interesting (for you) stuff, development your skills and even getting paid for it". But it seems too unrealistic for me, especially in my city/country (Russia). Probably I can think about getting a Ph.D. in another country, but how can I manage to do it without a proper Ph.D. advisor? Probably, I can determine an area of my interests, but how can I determine if it is suitable for a Ph.D. or not? And how can I find the person who can guide/help me with it?
I'm feeling a little bit nervous when thinking about writing to a complete stranger in another country "I want to do PhD under your supervision" or something like this.

Complete strangers in other countries are used to potential students e-mailing them, so don't be shy about that! Do you know what you want to do a PhD on? Is that something you can talk with your Masters advisor about?

Complete strangers in other countries are used to potential students e-mailing them — ...and hitting the delete key.

@JeffE, I received several great responses from complete strangers about PhDs, if they are interested in taking a student on and the intro is snappy there is no reason to say they'll automatically delete...

@Stephanie My personal experience and many questions here indicate that your experience may not be typical, though. Frankly, this probably also has to do with you being from the UK, while most students who email "complete strangers in foreign countries" are from certain developing countries, who have a reputation for taking a scattershot approach to topic selection ("I take any topic that gives me funding and gets me outta here.").

@Gaurav, I've not thought about probable PhD thesis carefully yet. But I can say it will be more in practical CS than in applied math (the one I do now). I haven't talked about it with my advisor.

@xLeitix, I'm from Russia, and probably it's not on the list of "certain developing countries" (but of course, I don't know how well US\Europe professors treat russian students)

@xLeitix yeah I imagine the quality of the CV/email and reputation of the country has an effect, I'm fortunate enough to come from the UK and not have the same problems.

I understand that English might not be your first language, so some friendly advice is to replace "man" in your question with "person", unless you are unwilling to work with women, in which case you should state that explicitly.

It depends on your credentials and references. But having good record enables you to apply to many good schools (e.g., Princeton, MIT etc.) in the US/Europe, via dedicated online application sites. So you do not need to personally contact anyone.
The other option is to use Findaphd.com, and other dedicated mailing lists who solicit PhD applications.
Of course, sending emails to professors, without knowing in advance whether they have the money to support a PhD student, is possible but has quite a low chance of success.
You might also use your existing professional connections within your local academia to seek potential PhD opportunities.

You may misunderstand how one gets a PhD advisor in a CS department at American universities.  Typically you apply to the program, then either get assigned an advisor or select one after arriving.  Often, students enter one program expecting to work with a certain advisor but end up working with someone else.
Also, PhD theses usually are different topics from Master's theses.  There is no assumption that they will be on the same topic, as your question seems to imply.
Most departments are broad enough to satisfy a variety of interests, although, at this stage of your career, you should at least have one or more general areas of interest, such as AI, systems, theory, HCI, etc.  You would be expected to specify areas of interest and experience in your application essays, although it's okay for you to change directions later on.
Good luck!

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What are typical data sharing policies in research consortia?
Since I am very new into academia I am really unaware of typical regulations in research consortia. Right now I am working in a research consortium in which many different research teams will do different surveys. On the other hand, I will be responsible for a more holistic point of view and will also do some upscaling. Also, I am doing my PhD in this project.
Right now some of the regulations sound really awkward and unfair to me:

Primary data is property of the one who collected it.

This is alright of course

The collector of data has the first right to publish about it.

Of course the collector of data shall have the fame for collecting it. I could see a case arising where I just want to validate my results by cross-referecing this data. I honestly do not see why I shouldn't be able to publish a paper where I use this data in a side study. It shouldn't grab any fame from the collector because I will not describe this data in detail nor will it (in this case) be a big part of my publication. This is not such a big deal though, because I can still ask if it is possible when an actual use case arises and of course I understand that they want to protect themselves for their work.

The collector of data is allowed to share the data with other researchers when they are granted co-authorship and intellectual property rights on the results.

This one is really where I have trouble with. I am basically obliged to use the data but do not have any right to access it. I rely on my partners to allow me to use the data and I don't know when/if I get access. That is really not in the interest of the project and is really unfair. Also they demand co-authorship for using their data without contributing anything else to my publication, which again I can somehow understand if the data enables my publication but not if I only wanna use it in a side study e.g. for cross-validation, though.

An agreement with the data collector is needed if a PhD student or other students want to use data for their theses

Of course I understand the need of such an agreement. There is no regulations if and when I should get data though and thus again I am relying solely on the good will of the data collector without any regulations. Since I wanna do my Phd on this project, this could really result in problems for me (and/or worsen my research), if they deny me data. Also there is a critical imbalance here, because every other Phd candidate will be working in a group, which collects data while I am not.

The biggest problem I have with the draft of the data policy is, that I do not have any rights on the data although the project is designed in a way that I should be using this data and thus I always depend on the good will of my collaborators to fullfill my obligations defined in the proposal. They can in theory hide their data untill the project is finished and it shall become open access.
Also I probably need to publish solely with my professor to do my PhD and the data policy sounds really rigid and even harmful to me. Also it will only benefit data collectors and basically hinders my research. Why shouldn't I be allowed to publish on a different topic with the same data?
Why do I need to give co-authorship to someone who didn't even work on the paper and does not want to work on the paper? If the data was essential for my research I could somehow understand it, but if it is not? I found this for co-authorship and that sounds reasonable to me.
So my question is: Which of these points are common practice or are they as rigid as I think they are?

What sounds unfair about any of this? If people could run off with someone's data after they've invested years and potentially thousands of dollars collecting it, people would hoard even more.

Why do you have to publish solely with your professor? That's a requirement I haven't heard. What country is this?

Because I am responsible for creating a holistic point of view for the whole project and dont collect data myself, but according to these regulations I cant even publish anything, if the data collector has not yet published about it even though I basically publish in another science (data science) than the data collector and also am obliged to publish. Also I might be interested in using these data as 1 of 100s input data sets or as a cross verification of a model. And in these cases I dont really see their contribution to my work. But since you seem surprised, it seems that this is common?

@AzorAhai-him- (2): I am not absolutely sure about this, since the promotions regulations are not finished right now. My professor told me so, though.

Your first comment is just more reasons why you don't like the rules, not why they're unfair. I encourage you to reflect on that. I don't see how using them as input or cross-validation changes anything. Having to publish only with your professor is bizarre though, and I see no reason for why that would be. What country is this?

I disagree: I need to publish and if my partner organizations don't publish, publish close before the end of the project or even afterwards, it is not possible for me to publish even so I am obliged to do so. Also I see a disbalance inside of the consortium since I am as much part of the consortium as they are, but I will always need to ask if I am allowed to use their data. What do I do if they deny it? Again I am obliged to use this data. That cannot be in the interest of the funder! This is even more ridicolous since the funder demands open acces for data (not stated when though).

Why aren't they publishing? Obviously, a publication would be good for them so the fact that they haven't yet suggests the data isn't ready anyway. Who is obliging you to publish and use their data, if they are not releasing it to you?

Of course the data isnt ready. But publishing takes time. It is not even mentioned if the article needs to be submitted, accepted or published. If it needs to be published I probably can start working after the project is over. Sounds really fair to me!

It sounds like you need to talk to your colleagues and understand when the data will be published, when they're willing to hand it off to you (since you don't see to want to collaborate).

Anyway, in other improvements to the question, what is "upscaling"?

I totally agree that the requirement of publishing solely with your supervisor is very odd. Also, when you say " I see a disbalance inside of the consortium", what is wrong with that? Of course there is no balance: other people collect data and you don't (as far as I understand).

@DanielHatton I added some clarification why I think some of these regulations are bad. And no they expect an automatic right to be a co-author even if they do not contribute in any other way to the paper (and they don't want to contribute in any other way).

These all seem fairly usual, except perhaps the mandate for coauthorship (more below), and in fact, it's excellent that your consortium has set up guidelines for data-sharing because it can get messy when done casually.
You seem to have the perspective that data collection is trivial -- and compared to many other forms of data collection, surveys are -- and that PIs should be willing to give you the data and let you run off with it to do your models.
But designing materials, recruiting participants (paying them), and getting the funding to do all this is not trivial. Most people would agree that someone who collects data should get first crack at it because they put in the hard work to get it. The paper that first releases data is usually what is cited, and so labs want that first paper to have their name on it.

The collector of data is allowed to share the data with other researchers when they are granted co-authorship and intellectual property rights on the results. ... An agreement with the data collector is needed if a PhD student or other students want to use data for their theses

It might be a tad onerous to start off with listing them as authors, but on the other hand, this would also oblige them to discuss your results, and help you interpret data. IP rights don't mean anything here. An agreement is fantastic!

Why do I need to give co-authorship to someone who didn't even work on the paper? If the data was essential for my research I could somehow understand it, but if it is not? I found this for co-authorship and that sounds reasonable to me.

If there couldn't be a paper without their data, it seems essential, no? I agree that once data have been made public, they no longer need to be made authors, but when you are collaborating before data has been released, this all seems like standard and good practice to me

That said, if you've been accepted to this consortium, they have an obligation to help you with your needs. It seems like you need to have a good talk with your advisor and the other stakeholders and understand what you need to do to start working with these people and their data. Drafting up the aforementioned agreement sounds like a great place to start!

Thank you very much for your answer! It seems that you misunderstand me, though. Therefore I added some clarifications in my question above. Again they see their co-authorship completly different and after providing data they expect to be a co-author without contributing anything else. Also no I don't think collecting data is in anyway easy especially in the circumstances of our study. The funding is already provided though.

I also didn't say there couldn't be a paper without their data. There are 2 research directions I am thinking of right now: upscaling of data (essential input then) (cf. [this][1]) and cross-validating with their data or using it as an input data set (not essential). [1]https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199599868.001.0001/acref-9780199599868-e-1964#:~:text=The%20process%20of%20reconstituting%20activities,to%20...%20...

@gilla I don't see what you think I misunderstood. Your edits are consistent with my answer.

There's also an ethical angle with data collection: if Researcher A surveys a bunch of people and then Researcher B uses that data in a way that the participants weren't expecting, that's inevitably going to be a problem for Researcher A. In that situation, ensuring the data are used appropriately may be part of A's authorship contribution.

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Is it ethical for a Professor to disseminate wrong answers online?
I recently took a class where the Professor created multiple online study guides, on popular student sites, which intentionally contained the wrong answers. He did this because his exams were based heavily on the end of chapter questions in the book. Also, the Professor told us at the start of class using Google to help answer the questions would be useless because all the top results regarding these chapter questions were his wrongly answered guides.
Was this ethical of the Professor to do? The book used in the class contained no answer (or partial answer) keys and no additional student material was provided for the book. I understand he did this in order to force students to read the book and keep them from simply Googling all the answers at the end of the chapter. However, this removed a way for students to verify their answers were correct.
Edit: In response to some of the comments, he was not bluffing. During the course I was unable to answer one of the questions (it turned out to be a misprint in the book) and tried using online resources. The wrong guides were easy to spot, because half the chapter questions involved determining which SQL statements were valid. Some of the guides were simply answered as A, B, C, D, A, B in order down the list. Other were just flat out wrong. Also, as far as the exams went, I shouldn't say they were heavily based on the book. The Professor literally copy and pasted the questions from his instructors manual and didn't bother changing any wording or the answer order.

"However, this removed a way for students to verify their answers were correct." Did it?  If the online study materials were not directly affiliated with the text but simply made by other students, how would a student have been able to verify that their answers were correct before your professor's action?  Arguably he is trying to drive home the point that you should not lazily seek unreliable sources for this kind of information.  (Note that I am not answering "yes" to the question as a whole, just seeking clarification on this part.)

The part that I don't understand is: the professor seems to be indulging in one practice that I (as a professor) find rather lazy -- namely "his exams were based heavily on the end of chapter questions in the book" -- and then partially offsetting the disadvantages of this in a very labor-intensive (and yes, rather strange) way.  Why not just write exam questions which are not spoiled by preexisting internet materials?  This is not so hard...

I would not call that unethical, but I strongly question the pedagogical validity, appropriateness and effectiveness of such unusual approach.

@AleksandrBlekh perhaps not to the class he is teaching given the disclosure, but what about to the general internet populace? I would argue that he is doing a disservice to the community (by willingly posing false information intended to confuse people), which is unethical

Is this an "opinion" question?  If so, maybe those answering should reveal if they are professors, students, or neither.

@user2813274: I tend to agree with you on this - not completely, but significantly. I was under the impression that the posted misleading information gets deleted from Internet after the term.

It's not exactly unethical, I think that you're looking for another word.  Possibly "a jerk".

@AleksandrBlekh This is not the case, one of the reasons there are so many wrong guides is he creates a new one once a semester, so he says. He has been teaching that specific class for over five years now.

@user123: Five years worth of wrong information? Unbelievable!

It's also possibly against the TOS for the sites the professor is posting incorrect information on. It might be worth reporting him and seeing if they're willing to take action to ban him from access. Certainly Stack Exchange sites would do that.

@user123 Would you mind telling us the title of the book?

This isn't an answer so I suspect it will be removed, but until that happens: not necessarily. Plagiarism and copyright infringement are different, but both are somewhat context-dependent. There are cases where copying content is ethical (not plagiarism) and also cases where it is legal (not copyright infringement). There are other questions on this site that address these issues; I'd recommend you search for them.

I consider deliberately distributing wrong information a far bigger offense than say plagiarism.

@user123 Do you think it is at least remotely possible that the professor  and his supervisor gets (an anonymous) link to this question?

If he just wanted to prevent cheating, he'd use questions that weren't word-for-word from the book. Instead, he intentionally allows it to happen in such a way that he can punish the cheaters with the misinformation. Punishing cheating is more important to him that preventing cheating -- and he doesn't care how many innocent bystanders on the internet he takes down with them. Sounds like he may have a nasty vindictive streak and an axe to grind.

Was this ethical of the Professor to do? [...] this removed a way for students to verify their answers were correct.  Not for that reason -- he told you up front about the wrong guides.  You don't have some kind of right to easily finding solutions on the internet.  But as noted by other posters, the internet at large is unaware that the guides are wrong and his actions are unethical for that reason.

I think perhaps you should post his name, let him develop a reputation for having intentionally presented bad information online, and see if he thinks it was worth it. His anonymity is the problem here.

@ChrisB.Behrens Even if it is deserved, I don't condone using one breach of ethics to punish another, and neither should you.

Wait I'm confused. How could deliberately lying to the entire human race be considered ethical?

I am not bound by a specific code of ethics in this circumstance. And even so, he has no reasonable expectation of privacy in this case, barring a specific agreement with the students or the university. As for a general case of ethics, all I am proposing doing is assigning authorship to work he has produced on the Internet.

Would it be ethical if he had anonymously placed erroneous books in the library, because he preferred that you get the source material directly from his lectures?

Name names.  If what the professor did was ethical, people will surely rally around him/her as a great opponent of cheating.  If the professor was acting unethically, the world will jump on him/her and the University might even apply some discipline.  Why would you protect the name a professor took that were completely in the open?

This raises the question of whether a professor has an ethical obligation to a wider set of people than just their registered students, i.e. internet readers, general public, MOOC students. (And if yes, whether that's a lesser obligation than to the registered students who pay their bill, get them tenure etc.) Most of us here would agree they have, but I wonder if academic codes of conduct (individual universities, AAUP, etc.) have kept up-to-date with explicit policies on this.

The end goal of education is to have students learn and understand the material such that they can apply it in practice. While I do not condone copying answers, students should be able to use online resources to aid their studies and should be encouraged to discuss the material with others, so long as the answers are original. Disseminating false information is not helpful to students who are trying to learn legitimately, and it interferes with anyone outside the class trying to learn the material on their own.

(continued) The right way to handle this is to require students, whenever reasonable, to give explanations of their answers in their own words. Students should be asked to demonstrate understanding of the material in their responses. If the rationale for an answer is copied, it receives no credit. What the professor is doing is outright unethical, and I would in fact bring it up to the academic affairs office for investigation.

(continued) I would reasonably suspect that the professor wants to get revenge on cheating students. He's seeing students as adversaries, not as good-faith learners who want to gain the skills needed for a good career in modern society. This is not how you nurture a learning community.

Wow.  With only one question, user123 moved into the top 5% of users in all of stackexchange this week!

Is it ethical for anyone to disseminate wrong answers online?

@SteveSether I understand why you would want me to, but I'm not going to name and shame.

This isn't about shame, it's a public act that the professor did that he/she is undoubtedly proud of.  The professor doesn't consider it shameful, but normal behavior.  There's no secret to keep here, and no confidentiality even implied.

I have a strong negative opinion on this.
In 2002, I joined a PhD program and was at the same level of computer science education as peers who had recently completed CS degrees at good schools. My last prior formal CS education was a master's degree that I completed in 1975.
I achieved that, as well as staying employable in the computer industry for over 30 years, by continuous independent study. As computer science kept changing around me I felt at times like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
Not having answers to the questions in a textbook was something I could handle, though undesirable. If I had found answers on-line that conflicted with my answers I could have wasted a lot of time trying to resolve the discrepancy, including trying to contact the answer author to point out an error.
Wrong answers to questions in a good textbook are particularly destructive. I put a lot of effort into selecting the books I use. In order to progress, it is necessary to attempt exercises that are a stretch. In some cases, it is difficult to check whether an answer is correct. Searching on-line for answers may be the best available resource.
The professor was, intentionally or not, sabotaging independent study.

I can't say I disagree with you, and uploading intentionally incorrect things to the internet is surely very close to the bottom of the list of things I would ever do.  However, I think maybe you underestimate the peril of independent study from the internet: indeed, how do you know that what you're reading is correct?  I think that vetting material -- especially material coming from authors unknown or untrusted -- for correctness is one of the essential skills for (especially independent!) study and becoming more so all the time.  (But once more: spreading misinformation seems very bad.)

@Pete L. Clark Poisoning a well and simply making a well that could get contaminated are 2 different things. When reading decent sources online I accept that people can make mistakes. If knowledgeable people are setting out to poison the information sources in their area in an informed fashion that makes them horrible people. It happens but making the problem worse is a wholly evil endeavor. The professor in question should feel nothing but shame.

@PeteL.Clark I have no issue with teaching to take everything with a grain of salt, but saturating the entire web like this with self-corroborating incorrect information makes it harder to vet. If I post onto StackOverflow that 1 + 1 = 3, that's one source, but if I manage to sabotage Wikipedia, Math.SE, and 10 other sources, it starts getting harder to tell that 1 + 1 = 2.

@Murphy: I agree.  My comment was more on the learner's side: one should not proceed under the assumption that everything academically related that you read on the internet is correct.  I use the internet all the time to speed up my learning (and teaching) process.  If I open up a document and it has more than one mistake on the first page, I usually discard it and move on to the next one within a few minutes.  I recognize that students have a much harder time with this: giving them more than one source to read at a time is often too much. I was just giving advice for the self-learner.

@Compass: I think 1 + 1 = 3 is a bad example, because it's so general.  I think what we're talking about is more like: "The answer to Question 5 on p. 153 of Textbook X is False."  Again, I do not approve of this practice in the slightest, but I think it's being compared with a much more insidious one.  If a professor tells me that he has changed all the top instances of 1 + 1 = 2 on the internet to 1+ 1 = 3, I will smile and back away slowly: he's clearly delusional.

@PeteL.Clark Actually, I have a good example I just remembered where a core concept similar to 1 + 1 = 2 was actually transmuted to 3. Java, the programming language. For years,most people assumed and were taught that Java is pass by reference. Turns out, we were all wrong. Obviously, this wasn't a professor trolling us, but a poorly explained concept that snowballed in a bad game of telephone. I thought the former was true for more than a decade.

@Compass: or at any rate, you were all using a definition of "pass by reference" that didn't correspond to anything used outside Java. Those who actually cared what "pass by reference" means when used of languages in general, in my experience, always understood Java. Meanwhile, nobody [competently] using Java thought that you could could do int i = 1 + 1; someMethod(i); and then i will have any value other than 2. So you all knew it wasn't the thing everyone else called "pass by reference", you just didn't know that's what they called it :-)

@SteveJessop Not enough coffee to handle this x_x

@PeteL.Clark If they chose not to vet their source, that's their own folly - unless the course is on academic research or requires explicit reference to printed material, they shouldn't be faulted for finding accurate information online.

@PeteL.Clark At some point there are no more books with answers and questions - so if you need any help google (scholar) is one of the very few routes to follow. If my prof clearly states he doesn't want me to search on the internet for answers I would also expect him to pick up the phone during my study time, which is always way out of office hours (too many hours where I have to attend courses).

@SteveJessop: Do I understand right, that in Java developers were expecting, you know that i ~can't~ be changed outside of a method, when they stated some thing about "i is passed by reference"? So a whole community didn't know what they were talking about? Or is this just a late april fool?

@Zaibis: actually, I cheated by using an integer variable to make it absolutely clear that pass-by-reference didn't happen. What many Java developers thought is that objects (rather than integers) in Java are pass-by-reference. Then the difference between passing a object variable by reference and passing an object reference by value is sufficiently unclear and abstruse that most Java programmers got on quite well without knowing the theory or using precise terminology. But they knew that givenObject o = Object();, calling func(o) couldn't have the effect of o = something.

This "solution" you've presented was brought up in a related question from a while ago.

...Then I went to Yahoo Answers, made a bunch of fake accounts, and posted tantalizingly wrong answers to all of my own HW questions. I have told all subsequent students not to google the HW answers because there are wrong solutions out there.

The consensus at the time was that this is not appropriate, and ultimately impedes the process learning for most of the community for the "benefit" of preventing cheating in your class.
Let's consider the action your professor has taken.

Also, the Professor told us at the start of class using Google to help answer the questions would be useless because all the top results regarding these chapter questions were his wrongly answered guides.

Let's look at the effort spent trying to do this. The professor found the right answers, and then purposely answered them wrong, and published them around the web to "solve" his problem for a relatively "personal" benefit of ensuring academic integrity in his own course, at the expense of every student of that course in the world.
At the very least, it's not helping anyone. At the very most, if he is using his position as a professor (i.e. actually listing his credentials/qualifications) for these study guides, that would raise additional red flags that could potentially be grounds for something that the university might need to be made aware of.

He did this because his exams were based heavily on the end of chapter questions in the book.

In my opinion, he should have instead used his time to write exams that were not so heavily based on end of chapter questions in the book.

To be fair, if someone is posting incorrect content on Yahoo Answers, it's not really like they've gone out of their way to find a pristine well to poison. But it's still poisoning the well, or at least not making it any cleaner.

It is massively unethical, because the internet does not exist in a vacuum.
Consider the possibility that someone looking for a valid answer online, because they do not have or cannot afford this textbook, finds your professor's answer and assumes it is correct.  Because of his deception, he has misled this and every other person who seeks this answer by knowingly posting the wrong answer himself.
It is also ultimately futile and harmful to the learning process - it discourages students from trying to use all resources available to them, discounts the possibility that the text could be wrong, and gives students a sense that they are being cheated by the professor.
It is unethical, it is detrimental to the learning process, and frankly his disrespect and sabotage of online resources makes him look like a luddite.

Much worse than a luddite. Luddites had goals and ideals, and while you may not approve their methods, at least it's undeniable that they had a point. This doesn't.

@Lohoris I disagree personally that all Luddites have a valid point/goal, but I think our difference of opinion here may be...Academic. B)

If an academic publishes incorrect information that's an ethical problem. Academics who lie when publishing information about their domain of expertise when it suits them can't be trusted to be honest when they publish scientific papers.
I would look at the ethical guidelines of your university to determine what they have to say about lying and deliberately publishing incorrect information. If those guidelines not only forbid lying in scientific papers but are more broad, forward information about the case to the relevant authority in your university that deals with ethical breaches.

I agree, this is somewhat unethical.
I can understand wanting to discourage just Googling the answers - however, where the unethicality of kicks in is for those people who dont't know that this professor has deliberately poisoned the well and released study guides that are flat out wrong - and pushed those wrong guides high enough in the results lists to be common.
Now, not knowing this, a person unrelated to the class in question gets a hold of this guide; they might try to use said guide to try to learn the material in question - only to be using the flat out wrong materials, and not knowing they were deliberately made to be wrong.
Depending on the knowledge level of the querier, they might figure out the guide was wrong - but, what if they don't know any better? Since it was pointed out, he deliberately made sure his bogus guides were highly likely to show up as a result.
I also see a problem in the fact it's being pushed up to a global search engine - so, it's spreading misinformation to more than just the class.
I mean, if it were just doing Professor X's CS310 class study guides - OK, bad form poisioning those specific key words - but Google sub-parses the documents, so now, other people see these results.
Sounds like he is just too lazy to write up good questions and wants to just cut and paste his Teacher's Edition textbook questions.
I just wonder what his teacher/course evaluations are like, and what his supervisors and those higher up the food chain think of his practices and doing this?  Maybe it's time (or just after you get his grade) to go to the head of the department and/or the dean of students and figure out what is up and why this is an acceptable practice, and why you feel it's unacceptable and how this kind of inhibits self-learning. Pretty much, come in ready to defend your position. If it's not just you, well, then I would make it more the merrier and show the administration how you feel.
Perhaps they aren't aware of exactly what he's doing, and the extent to which he's going about it.
Defend your position, but don't necessarily come off as overly troublesome and trying to make drama - more as concerned about this issue.

Well, like everyone he is free to post on the internet anything he wants that is considered legal. Wrong answers are legal from that perspective.
Regardless what he intends to teach/enforce his students, there are likely other people who google similar questions and are mislead by his "trolling" (to use internet jargon). For a professor, who should be teaching and spreading knowledge to people, spreading misinformation to intentionally mislead readers is wrong and unethical.
Furthermore, I guess the book is not very well written, the books I studied, usually had questions which challenge the general understanding of the subject rather than a google-able fact.
In the end, I don't think there is anything you or anyone else can do about him. Even under pressure, the professor can simply post anonymously and don't tell the students up front.
PS I'm really perplexed that someone takes time to systematically alter the perception of some topics on the internet, instead of only adjusting the (exam) questions like every other teacher I know does. This tilting at windmills shows extreme weakness of character in my eyes.


text:
How does hiking in Himalayas show academic promise, as an admission criterion?
I am a student from India and I have been reading a lot about graduate admissions in US lately. I have read in some article that an average(below average) applicant from the "maybe" pile is moved to an "accepted" pile when their resumes contain something like "hiked in Himalayas".
Now I realize that it is a great achievement but it does not correlate with the capacity to publish quality research papers at all. So how do universities measure the applicants future in academic prospects?
P.S. Sorry, I do not have the link of the article.

Are you sure the article talked about graduate school? For undergraduate admission, the US has long factored in soft criteria you tend to scratch your head over as an international applicant. Your admission essay ideally documents your burning desire to save the world, and your example probably fits an extracurricular. While this has long also been mocked nationally (eg, see "Welcome to the Dollhouse" - "There goes my extracurricular!"), it's here to stay.

Your question is somewhat related to this one. Instead of just stating that you hiked in the Himalayas, what are the soft skills you developed there that are both transferable and relevant to an academic application?

@PatW No its not related to that. Soft-skills would help in communication(say) which is indispensable for quality research, discussion and dialogue. However, hiking Himalayas has nothing to do with that. An example would be, "I am a good listener hence I became a good mathematician." in comparison to "I climbed Mt. Everest hence I am  a good mathematician"?!

@gnometorule Yes. I am pretty sure that I saw it in reference to graduate school application.

@spunkpike No, climbing the Everest doesn't make you a good mathematician. However, climbing the Everest would suggest that you are determined, able to adapt to high-stress situations and everything else that you want to add. If these skills are not relevant in an academic application from your point of view, then you can omit them of course.

In our program, simply hiking in the Himalayas would be unlikely to help, whereas ticking a few first ascents in the Himalayas might. Why might that help? In my experience people who have what it takes to excel in one high-stress, high-competition environment (e.g. world class athletes, elite pilots, etc.)  tend to do very well our academic high-stress, high-competiton environment.

This article by Matt Might is probably the source of the original suggestion.

Here is a link: http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-apply-and-get-in-to-graduate-school-in-science-mathematics-engineering-or-computer-science/

The idea that this is so is merely a "romantic" notion spread by the internet, I think.

As the ideal candidate is oneself, experience hiking in the Himalayas is extremely useful if and only if a member of the admissions committee does likewise.

I've never seen a graduate admissions committee take anything like this at all seriously, and I would certainly not recommend it as a strategy for getting into grad school.  If anything, emphasizing irrelevant experience makes applicants look clueless and may hurt their chances of admission.
But I agree that you can read all sorts of strange things in discussions of graduate admissions on the internet.  Some commentary is by people who simply don't know what they're talking about, but some is by faculty who have actually served on admissions committees.  The best explanation I can give is that certain faculty are just eccentric.  If you gather opinions from enough professors, you'll presumably find people who honestly believe that some non-academic experiences (such as hiking in the Himalayas) are so formative or telling that they are enough by themselves to salvage an otherwise mediocre application.  I haven't run across this particular opinion myself, but I've certainly worked with admissions committee members whose judgments differed from the rest of the committee's in other ways.

RE: some people who honestly believe that some non-academic experiences (such as hiking in the Himalayas) are so formative or telling that they are enough by themselves to salvage an otherwise mediocre application. The "maybe" pile is not the same as the "mediocre" pile, and the hiking expeditions don't necessarily "by themselves" salvage the applicant's chances. Your paraphrasing of the O.P.' s paraphrasing is reminiscent of the Telephone Game.

Some commentary is by people who simply don't know what they're talking about — Matt Might is not one of those people.

Yes, this was written before I knew the original source and is not intended as commentary specifically about Matt Might or his article.  (He's certainly not in the "doesn't know what he's talking about" category, although I strongly disagree with certain aspects of his article, such as the calculations in the "Do the math" section.)

@AnonymousMathematician Yeah, those calculations made me doubt the veracity of the rest of the potentially good advice, as nearly every calculation is fundamentally flawed. Natives of a country (at least the US) get accepted at far higher rates than published acceptance stats indicate because of the large amount of international applications, it treats admission as discrete and independent events which woefully understates the probabilities, etc. It's quantitatively flawed and biased towards discouragement - which I don't think was intentional.

I think that you are making a mistake in how you are interpreting the Matt Might article that others have dug up in the comments.  You say:

average(below average) applicant from the "maybe" pile is moved to an "accepted" pile

If you read the earlier part of the article on the mathematics of graduate admissions, though, you'll see that's almost certainly not what's going on.  The pool of good applications for graduate schools is pretty deep, and University of Utah is a good school that will draw a lot of good applicants.  Anybody in this professor's "Maybe" pile is probably not an average applicant, but a rather above-average applicant, and the extra tidbit is a tie-breaker that nudges them ahead of other good applicants.
In other words: there's probably a whole lot of academic promise already shown, and the "Hiking the Himalayas" bit is a somewhat different dimension that resonates with this particular highly opinionated professor.  Another professor might just as easily look at that and say, "Now there's a person who won't be happy in the lab all day!"
And that goes back to what I see as one of the key messages early in the article: "The most important advice from this book is to get in touch with your potential advisor before you apply."

First, kudos that you are thinking so hard about your application! :-D
My guess is that you should put down in your resume anything that you feel qualifies you for the job in question. I tend to shy away from putting hobbies in, but if they brand you in a way you want to appear for the job in question, I think it could help to add them!
I would say "hiking in the Himalayas" could show that you have: An adventurous spirit, determination, an ability to think "out of the box", a well-balanced life...lots of positive qualities that look good in a graduate student! :-) Whatever brands you as the kind of person that would do well in that job. If you're a home baker, it could show that you: have an experimental streak, are settled and comfortable with yourself, or are a nourishing, supportive person.
I liked the previous answer saying that different qualities will appeal to different professors, and it helps if you know them. But ultimately, be yourself and think about the "fit" between your intrinsic qualities and the job you're applying for, and fit them together.
All the best with finding your position!

Since your advice of including hobbies contradicts what I have heard from people on admission committees, could you clarify if you have any personal experience on such committees?


text:
My research paper filed as a patent in China by my Chinese supervisor without me as inventor
I completed my PhD 3 years ago from a university in the UK. Today I was looking for some papers in google scholar. I found a patent in China. The patent was written in Chinese however, all diagrams/figures and equations were exactly same as one of my PhD research papers, which was also part of my PhD thesis.
I translated Chinese text to English I found that work is exactly....same as my PhD thesis and research paper. My research paper was published 1 year before the patent was filed. When I translated the inventors name. I found one of the inventors is my PhD supervisor, who is Chinese but works in a UK university. I couldn't believe it. This patent was filed by a power company in China with my PhD supervisor as one of the inventors.
I am fully aware that the research paper is an open source idea anybody can use it. However, this is the case of copyright infringement. I have full right on text, diagrams, figure and tables in my research paper and my PhD thesis. They have copy-pasted diagrams as well. These diagrams are scientific diagrams nobody can reproduce them without the data.
Now, I am not sure, where should I complain?

should I first confront my supervisor directly as he is one of the inventors? or
complain to the university, because if this paper is a patent then only the university has first right over it before a power company in China. I never gave any consent to sell my research work or file a patent of my work without me being the inventor.
Another issue is that I did research at a UK university. This patent is filed in China. What actions I can take?

This is probably a question for a lawyer.

I recommend posting this question (or a variant) to AskPatents.

This conversation has been moved to chat. Please take all discussion/speculation about international patent law enforcement options to chat or a qualified lawyer.

Please share your ex PhD supervisor’s response when you discussed this with him.

This sounds like a clear-cut case of a violation of academic ethics to me - if he’s willing to steal work from you, how could anyone trust anything he’s ever published? I’d strongly consider going to talk with the head of your faculty, school, or department, depending on how your university’s hierarchy is structured, so that the university can begin academic integrity proceedings against him, and I’d also consider talking to the university’s lawyers about what your legal options to dispute the patent are, and if you would be able to file one in the UK.

Thanks. I will complain to the university. Till now I was thinking he has made only one patent from my PhD research. I just found his Chinese google scholar he produced 5 patents from my PhD. Two of them are repetition of ideas.

+1 talk to your university. @SS23 no offense but you are the small fry here. The university's lawyers would love to have a word or two with this guy. Universities rarely take kindly to their rights being infringed.

@Spark I’d imagine that his boss probably would, too; this sort of academic misconduct is the sort of academic misconduct that might well cost him his job - and possibly his visa, too, if he’s there on a work visa.

This also drags the university through the mud.  I certainly wouldn't want to study there.  The university will definitely fight this big time.

@SS23 - Can you update us later on with what happens?

This is the answer. Others that focus on (in)ability to do anything in China are missing the point. This professor is committing egregious acts of academic integrity at the UK institution where he's employed, and can be made to answer for it there.

If the supervisor currently works in a different UK university, be sure to contact their ethics department as well. I'm sure they'd be interested to hear about this person's ethics -- or lack thereof...

Given how long ago the paper was published it is too late to file for a patent in the UK. Or did you mean “file a dispute in the UK”?

Legally speaking, patenting is not necessarily taking someone else's ideas. The professor might be doing something immoral, but I doubt the university will do anything on your behalf. It is immoral, but in the end he's not plagiarizing and he's not breaking any laws and he's likely not even breaking uni policy. I nearby uni to me actually patents their professors' research.

At the UK universities I have worked or studied at they specify in terms of employment, that any IP arising in the course of employment is the property of the University. So I'd imagine that the University involved might be more than a little bit miffed with your ex-supervisor if you bring this to their attention.

I would be cautious about going to the university before talking to a lawyer of your own.  As he is or was their employee, the university has every incentive to turn their lawyers against you, rather than against him.

@Joe How exactly is using other people’s diagrams, tables, figures and text without crediting the original author not plagiarism? It’s pretty much a textbook definition of plagiarism as far as I can tell.

@JanusBahsJacquet Good question. It's not plagiarism because his supervisor was exactly that - his supervisor. He will likely be an author of that paper along with OP. I pointed out in my post that it is hard to tell who wrote what this far from the writing. Additionally, the translation of the text is fair-use as it ticks all the boxes that I'm aware of in that domain. Definitely patentable and def not plagiarism from my knowledge. The Uni might treat it as such, but do they really want to get involved in something so far removed from them? There are MANY more points, but for another time.

@JoeB We don’t know the details here, but it’s very common for PhD students to publish papers as sole authors in many fields, and the asker states outright that this is copyright infringement, which would not be the case if the supervisor is co-author, so I’m assuming he’s not. As sole author, the asker retains copyright on text and illustrations unless open-sourced, and translating or republishing them without his permission would not be fair use for the purposes of republication; I assume the rules are no less strict for patent applications.

@JoeB Note that I am not talking about the parent in China here; I am talking about plagiarism as an act of academic misconduct, same as this answer. It may well be patentable (I know nothing of patent law), but any university worth its salt will take a very dim view of its academic staff plagiarising the work of others – even their own students – for patent purposes. If the supervisor was not co-author and co-creator of the article, it is unquestionably misconduct; even if he was, it is at least dodgy to do this without notifying the asker as the primary author.

@JanusBahsJacquet I totally agree as previously stated that it is unethical. That has little bearing on what OP can actually do in this situation re his uni or the patent.

@JanusBahsJacquet Just a minor point, which I am not sure about, how the situation is in UK, but generally there are "moral" inalienable rights part of copyright, such as being identified as author of the work, which you retain always. Also open-sourcing needn't mean transfer of copyright, rather it usually is granting others use of your work under certain conditions (some of which usually include your right to be recognized as author of original work).

I think it is quite possible that this answer is wrong because there is no reason to thing the supervisor participated in the plagiarism.  The power company may have acted without informing him.  The name on the patent might even be someone else with the same name - that's a common issue in China.

China does not have a good history of enforcing IP rules. This is a widely-covered topic (Stanford legal blog summary, CNBC study, google search on the topic). This topic has been a focus in recent international politics, as IP has been a non-insignificant focus in larger trade talks. While President Xi has claimed that he's cracking down, things still aren't that great.
To that extent, you're simply now experiencing pain that many others have felt. Unfortunately, there aren't many resources available for you to remedy this problem.
As you say that your advisor works for a UK university, you might be able to do contact the UK university and see if they can assist in policing this in some way. It is unlikely they can for the patent to be overturned or rewritten to acknowledge you, but there may be some other pressure they can exert on the professor. Similarly, if anyone tries to claim rights to your invention outside of China, it's highly likely you could claim prior art.
Lastly, while certainly suspicious, I wouldn't take it as proven that your advisor was responsible, at least not based on what you've written.

"As you say that your advisor works for a UK university, you might be able to do something there...  if anyone tries to claim rights to your invention outside of China, it's possible you could do something." - Details of what 'something' is would vastly improve this answer.

I just extensively modified this post, adding a lot of links and tried to remove offending text. I hope this helps.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please keep comments focused on the question itself and take all discussion on related issues to chat.

@eykanal In this state it's certainly a better answer, but there is so little left of the original that I think it's highly misleading to keep it attributed to the original poster and it is undermining the voting system that you transformed 50 votes for one answer into 50 votes for another answer

@eykanal I think your edits are inappropriate.  You have removed the facts.  What exactly is alleged to be inappropriate?  That China is a dictatorship is truthful and relevant.

@AnonymousPhysicist - Posted a question to Meta.

@Nobody - Posted a question to Meta about this, would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Legally, you don't need to do anything, you lost nothing and don't need to worry.
Ethically, well, others answered that adequately I think. Obviously it's not ok, but you don't even know for sure your advisor was involved. I would just like to add that you should keep in mind the cost to yourself of taking any action and whether you really want conflict in your life when you aren't actually threatened.
Details about the legal aspects:
In general, getting a patent is meaningless. The patent registry does some research to verify validity, but only as much as their fee pays for. States don't enforce patents in general, so the people who filed the patent would need to sue you. Then you would trivially win, because I assume you had your thesis published in a reputed place which can vouch for the publication date and it's such a blatant copy (which thus isn't novel, and that's the basic requirement for patents all over the world).
You yourself couldn't get a patent on the idea anyway (in most countries), because you published your paper and thus destroyed novelty (yes, patent law really works like this - you need to file for a patent before you publish anything).
Next, Chinese patents only have any effect in China even if they are legal and enforceable in (Chinese) court. Because of the exorbitant cost of patents and the questionable enforce-ability in China, you probably don't want a patent in China anyway unless you are Chinese or otherwise based there.
If, next time, you wanted to get a patent yourself you should talk to your university early on. Often they will get a patent for you (but also own the patent) or help you get a patent (depending on your contract with them).
(I passed a 2ECTS course on intellectual property at a good university recently, but that's all of my credentials)

I believe you have a year after publication to file for the patent.

This is a good answer and there's no good reason it deserves a minus vote.

@Acccumulation You need to file a pre-registration (don't know the proper term in English). That's less detailed, cheaper and easier than the whole registration. Then you have a year or slightly more to file the rest of the patent. If you publish before the pre-registration someone can challenge the patent on the ground that it isn't novel and cite your own paper as prior art.

@Acccumulation IANAL (thankfully :-) ) - the following is 'from memory' but believed correct.| Until 'a few years back' the USA worked on 1 year after publication for a patent to be able to be filed. About all the rest of the world required filing prior to publication. The US changed to the international norm said few years back.

I'm curious about the downvotes, more than a third of the votes are downvotes. Don't think that happened to me before.

@Nobody Idk why that happened to me when I was a new contributor. Stack Exc is infamous for users being harsh to newbies. Don't lose patience though and good luck!

@Nobody "I'm curious about the downvotes" - Next time you post, don't make the last sentence say "I probably don't know what I'm talking about here". That doesn't go well with the people who take seriously SE's mission statement to become a long term repository of knowledge.

@BlackSwan "Stack Exc is infamous for users being harsh to newbies." That's an unfair common misconception. Stack Exchange is not negative towards contributions of newcomers simply because they are newcomers. However it does proudly apply a model of rigourous peer review, so if you submit a post that is incorrect or badly formed, then yes it will be marked negatively. That's the system working as designed, and as it should. That newcomers think they are being singled out just because they are new is one of the most destructive myths spread about this platform.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit If the mission of SE is so important to it's veterans. Wouldn't the veterans who downvote want to comment why they downvoted so answers can be improved? Or atleast why they downvoted, if for a relevant reason.

@LiefdeWen Yes, absolutely. And then, when we do, we get criticized for being "negative", as shown in the comment I was replying to. Can't win.

Please let me note that I wasn't complaining and if I received written critique I would be thanking for that and not complaining either. I do think that my last sentence boils down to "I got it certified by a renowned university that I spent at least 60 hours (2 ECTS credits) learning about the basics of IP law" and not "I don't know what I'm talking about". While 60 hours isn't much, it's enough to cover the very basic statements I make in my answer.

@Nobody I doubt that is the reason for downvotes. Seeing as the highest-voted answer is "go for the throat" academically (copyright infringement like this strikes people in an emotional way) and this answer is quite the opposite of that, I'd imagine it has something to do with saying not to go after the unethical professor. I think if you stated the same thing you do at the end (you should keep in mind the cost to yourself) at the very beginning of the post people would understand you're not saying "meh, don't worry about it" so much as you're saying "there is a cost to taking action."

@JackArbiter Good point, I rearranged the answer a little.

@Nobody I disagree that "I took a lecture on intellectual property recently" implies I got it certified ... etc (as per your comment). To my reading, it means "I attended a (single) lecture", suggesting almost the least possible training in the subject! - whereas it sounds like you actually completed a meaningful course. I think you should change it: as it stands, it diminishes your answer which is a shame (and IMO would account for some down-votes).

I am not a lawyer but this is my understanding of patent law...
Another consideration is that a patent is granted on the understanding that the object or idea covered by the patent was not publicly disclosed prior to the patent application. Such a public disclosure constitutes "prior art".
If your paper was published by a journal, or your thesis was deposited in an online university repository, then relevant prior art was publicly disclosed, predating the patent application. As such the patent should not have been granted in the first place and would be unenforceable if push came to shove in a court. So your university (his employer... perhaps shotly to be his ex-employer) should have a very easy case to get the patent set aside. They will have the legal firepower available to do this, you won't be able to afford what they can afford to protect their reputation. Talk to your research organisation.
Even if the system in China rejects the complaint, the holders won't be able to register a patent anywhere else in the world for this substance / process and anywhere else in the world will be free to use the substance / process so it will seriously devalue the theft of your IP.

Patent law varies considerably around the world.

It would be good to have an answer with this approach and some more substance. I suspect the patent would be invalid because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art in most of the world. Maybe contact the company's competitors to find someone interested in fighting the patent in court? :)

According to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_law_of_China#Novelty such a patent is invalid in China.  I thought the big issue with patents in China was the enforcement i.e. you (typically a foreign entity) have a patent but you can't get it enforced.  I guess in this case it could go the other way with the novelty rule not being enforced.

A thesis or journal/conference paper is almost certainly not in the public domain; for a written work to be in the public domain the copyright must have expired or the author must have explicitly dedicated it to the public domain, and even that would be valid only in the parts of the world that allow this.(There are also some other country-specific rules probably not relevant here.) However, the (non-copyrightable) methods in the thesis might certainly qualify as prior art that could serve to invalidate the patent.

@CurtJ.Sampson In the link I provided above it states: "an invention is not new (and therefore is unpatentable) if it was published or publicly disclosed anywhere in the world before the priority date."  It doesn't appear that being in the 'public domain' is relevant.  I think this answer is not using the term 'public domain' in the strict sense that you are reading it.

Three issues together with a TL;DR:

Science ethics (talk with your Uni)
Copyright (largely irrelevant as it's China, unfortunately)
Patents (dito)

The "patent" aspect would be your least worry. I assume that you do not actually want to use the idea of your paper in China, but maybe in a western country. In that case, any western court should make that very much possible for you. Patents are all about invention; the entity acquiring a patent must prove that they invented it, and if a challenger can prove that the thing was extant before, then it's a moot point.
The "copyright" issue is a big headache for you, but it does not hurt you, really. You did a paper anyways, so it is out there, and in western countries which respect the idea of copyright, that's it. You can easily prove, by comparing the dates on the documents, that you are the copyright holder. If you, say, want to rework your paper into a book, or something like that, you can easily do that (in the west).
"Ethics" is really only applicable here because your supervisor is in the UK as well. If you want to go that way, sure, your uni should have contacts for you. It won't change anything in China, but maybe it creates enough repercussions for that person so something changes... which will be more for your own peace of mind than anything else, I guess.
Except for notifying your uni, I'd let it go, frankly. Unless you have very concrete plans to actually use your paper in aspects of copyright/patentability, you'll not gain anything except gray hair and gastric ulcers... and even then - what I called "easy" up there would still involve lawyers and a lot of time and possibly money depending on whether the chinese company has a dependency (or a vested interest) in a western country.

To sum that up - China wins again.

@JefferyThomas inside China, yes. But I don't see an invalid patent (from the outside perspective) as a particular problem for OP. IANAL and such goes without saying. ;)

IANAL either.  For me it's the principle of the matter.  They took something that didn't belong to them and are taking credit for it.  That is unequivocally wrong.

Letting it go? No, that's not a good advice. The University should be notified.

@Sulthan, yes, talking with the uni is good (I've added a half sentence to make that more clear); but I think he has no chance of reversing the patent in China, and on the other hand the patent in China doesn't actually hurt him in a way patents can be hurtful (presuming he didn't want to patent that in China himself, obviously, which I see no intention from OP for).

@AnoE So... free pass for China?

patents filed in China are nothing but mandarin/Chinese version of my research papers. How can anyone's research paper could be used as patent? Is it normal to take someone's research paper to be rewritten in English or Chinese as a patent.

In western (english) countries, certainly not, @SS23.

Even if China doesn't recognize patents or copyrights from other countries, might not some process internal to China have some effect, since this doesn't involve any patents from any other country than China?

Patents are only useful in the case of a dispute.  And a patent dispute will really only occur when there is competition.  If nobody competes with the company that "stole" your patent, then in the big picture, the patent is meaningless.  If the corporation that filed the patent is state-owned, then it is likely that it will never face meaningful competition to begin with.  At that point, the patent almost certainly provides prestige value only.
It is hard to see how anything of value has been taken from you unless you intended to productize your Ph.D thesis inside China.  However, there is a way for you to possibly extract value from the patent that even the patent holder cannot.  You should simply advertise on your C.V. that your thesis is already being implemented in China, and refer to the Chinese corporation and its patents as proof.  This certainly validates your ideas more strongly than not having a physical implementation.  If you really want to take it to the next level, you should contact your adviser and make them give you a fawning quote about your work and how it made possible the glorious Chinese patent for the good of the Motherland (or is it the Fatherland?).  Unless acknowledging your role would somehow cause a loss of face for your adviser, this seems like a win-win situation to me.
Even if acknowledging your contribution would cause a loss of face, making your adviser balk, you can simply turn the screws by letting your adviser know that you will be contacting his corporation's legal department to advise them of the provenance of key patent data.  That should remove any hesitation to give you the well-deserved acknowledgment, which could easily be written in English, in a place that few people in China are likely to see or look for.

Seems like what was stolen was the opportunity for self-branding.

I, too, am not a lawyer, but know enough that patent law varies considerably across the globe. It is even possible that a patent granted in China won't be recognized in the US, though I have no specific knowledge of that. But, among other things, the standards about what can be patented are likely different in different locations. Certainly the process is.
The proper course is to talk to a patent lawyer who can give valid advice. Your university, if it is a large one, probably has access to such lawyers who can advise you and even file for a patent (say in the US) on your behalf and that of the university.

Even if it's not recognized in the US that won't really matter.  China will profit from it however they can.  Speaking with a lawyer is advised but be aware that China has zero regard for the international courts.  They'll do whatever they please.

Patents from one country are never recognized in a different country. You have to apply for and be granted a patent in every country you want to protect your intellectual property. There are ways of streamlining the process, i.e. the International Patent Application allows you to only apply once to multiple countries, but each country will still go through its own application process, its own investigation, and grant its own patent. The European Patent goes one step further, in that there is not only one application, but also only one application process and investigation, and if the …

… European Patent Office decides to grant the patent, then all signatory states (that are named in the application) must grant the patent, but the patents are still separate patents for each country, and the inventor still has to file patents in each country in the official language of that country. In general, unless there is a specific treaty that both countries have signed, no country will ever recognize another country's laws, no matter whether that are patent laws, copyright laws, tax laws. That's part of what it means to be a "country", make your own laws however you choose.

There are long-standing plans for a EU-Patent, but they are just that: plans.

What does the US have to do with the situation? The question clearly says that OP is based in the UK.

@PeterTaylor, Hmmm. What does country of residence have to do with it. Patents can be filed elsewhere.

According to this Wikipedia article inventions that are not new are not patentable in China since 2009. The article also mentions two ways of initiating an opposition procedure.
One of them, is at the CNIPA which has a rather comprehensive English website: http://english.sipo.gov.cn/. I'm pretty sure that calling them would at least give you some answers as to what actions are available. The site also contains translations of Chinese patent laws.
There is also another option for you. You can contact the power company that filed the patent. Or threaten your supervisor with that. It is very likely that he received compensation for the invention from that company. In this case, that would mean he committed a crime as the invention was unpatentable and he sold them something that wasn't his.
If the power company filed the patent without even your supervisor's knowledge, it might be a little more difficult. Power companies in China are state-owned mega-corporations with... well... a lot of power. You would need a little more noise to make them give up the patent. I doubt that is the case here though. They don't really have competition. It doesn't make sense for them to try to patent open source ideas.

The problem  I see is that it looks like they either they rubber stamp the applications or the "examiner" only checks Chinese patents.  The reason I think this is that I took a look at patents on Impedance measurements(I'm building a meter for personal use) and found Chinese patents on some of the foundation methods as well as common applications.  This included patents on the current to voltage measurement method as well as a Arduino based meter using a AD5933.  And this is in the last ten years, easily.

It is unfortunately common to hear stories similar to this with regards to graduate work. There are no proven damages you list, so there is really no way to sue. It would also not be very beneficial in this circumstance, as it is very difficult to influence or otherwise enforce international intellectual property rules on other countries in general.
The most promising way forward here is not a legal solution, but a social one. Contact the supervisor associated with the publication, and explain that you found your paper filed as patent in China. It is possible they were also unaware, but that isn't necessarily relevant. The relevant issue is to see if they can help correct the patent filing to include you as an inventor.
It is possible to correct the names of inventorship for a patent in China. Given that you approach this from an inclusive stance as opposed to a combative one, you may have some luck there.

According to the The International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI), "the inventorship of a patent application can be corrected after the filing date in China upon request with related statement of agreement or evidence."

As for the request, make sure that you can provide some sort of documentation to the supervisor for them to present. China's patent office will require some proof of inventorship when filing a correction.

The inventorship of a patent application can be corrected after the filing date in China upon request with related statement of agreement or evidence.
Under the current Patent Law of China, where the request to make a change is due to failure to fill in the name of inventor or his wrong name filled in, the certifying document signed or sealed by all the applicants (or patentees) and all the inventors before the change shall be submitted;

Short of them consciously making the decision to include you in this list of inventors, it is highly unlikely you will see any beneficial outcome from being forceful here.
There is also the counter argument which may hold some weight regardless of being entirely accurate. If your supervisor were to argue that they directed the effects of your research only to the extent of organizing your work, then you would not be considered as an inventor in China.

The Patent Law of China does not define inventorship based on any particular part of the patent application. Anyone who makes creative contributions to the substantive features of an invention should be considered as the inventor of the application. On the other hand, a person who is responsible only for organizational work, who offers facilities for making use of materials and technical means, or who takes part only in other auxiliary functions, is not considered to be an inventor. While, from a legal
perspective, the “substantive features” refer to those features that distinguish the invention from the closest prior art and thus render the invention patentable, in practice they are generally considered as the act of proposing the original idea of the originally claimed invention.

- Source for citations: https://aippi.org/wp-content/uploads/committees/244/GR244china.pdf

I'm not a lawyer and I don't know much about Chinese law, but much of this has been missed by other posters so far and I've done a bit of IP work in the past.
China is a "First to File" country
My country is a "first to file". ie if your boss files a patent for something you invented, he has full right to it and you might actually not have any rights over it at all. From a quick google search it appears that China is also a "first to file" country. If your supervisor filed the patent correctly, it should go through if you don't do anything.
More Chinese patent law from my quick google search
In china there are three types of patents: invention patents, utility model patents, and design patents. This might be an invention patent, but I'm not sure. Now, I believe according to this site, there would be a 6 month grace period where you would have been able to contest this patent since it was first made public in an academic setting. However, according to this site, China has no patent opposition procedure. You can still try to beat this by filing an invalidation application as outlined in the same site. It doesn't seem to me that the patent itself is invalid though.
What can you do?

If it is important to you, file a patent in the UK and in any other country you want to do business in/want your ideas recognized/want to be involved in litigation in (ooh fun!, not).
Talk to your supervisor and ask him to add you as an inventor.
Consider speaking to a patent attorney.

Copyright and Patent are two different things
If you wrote the paper and made the figures, then perhaps you are right and you automatically have copyright over that stuff. Be aware that some journals actually take copyright from the authors and some uni's do the same. Neither of those things invalidate the patent itself. I know it sounds strange, but it's patent law - it's all strange. I do not know which of the above is the case though. It is very difficult to determine who wrote the paper this far from the actual fact. Your supervisor may very well have thought he did sufficient work to be the inventor and/or have written significant portions of the paper.
Ownership and inventorship are not equivalent
Even if you were listed as an inventor, you don't necessarily have ownership over anything. So let's say you were able to get yourself listed as an inventor......you are still in the same boat, but now you have bragging rights. You still couldn't sell something based on that paper in china without infringing on their patent. If your intent is to make money off of this paper in China, then I would honestly say it isn't worth it. There are other countries where your paper is not patented and where you could engage in rampant capitalism at your pleasure. If you intend to do that, it's an easy, albeit expensive, journey of several thousands of dollars for each patent.

patents filed in China are nothing but mandarin version of my research papers. How can anyone's research paper could be used as patent? Is it normal to take someone's research paper to be rewritten in English or Chinese as a patent.

I don't know what type of patent they filed, but yes a research paper can be patented under a few conditions. In china they have to be novel, have industry applicability, and substantive features or qualities previously uninvented (unpatented). I recently was named as an inventor on a patent of a research paper. Def possible. I know it's totally wonky that someone else can patent your research, but that might be how it is (I say might since I'm not a lawyer hehe). Seek the advise of someone who is qualified to give you more specific actions if you wish to be on the patent as an inventor.

Also even if you are an inventor on the patent, that does not give you ownership rights to the actual patent. From what you've described, your supervisor is not the owner of the patent and the chinese corp is. Currently, neither you nor him are owners of the patent.

In my post, I only mentioned that the patent is filed by a Chinese company with my supervisor as one of the inventors. It's not just a Chinese company. This patent is filed by a Chinese company and a top university in China, where my supervisor is a visiting professor. My PhD was entirely conducted and funded by a UK university where my supervisor is a full-time professor.

A type of spying.

@SS23 Would you be able to link us to the patent please?

I'd have thought "first to file" would mean first inventor to file, not first plagiarist to file.

There are some other stipulations besides just "first to file". In the US, you should be an inventor to file, but in practice that is def not the case. In China, there is no enforcement on having to be an actual inventor to file. I wish the OP would iink me to the patent and paper. It would clear things up, but as he hasn't I'm guessing his advisor is on the paper as an author and that makes things exceptionally difficult to contest. ie boss-man might be a legit author of that paper and might have full rights to be an inventor on the patent.

Are you sure that the officer knew that the patent is just a translation and piracy of your work? Like sending them an complaint or something. I really think it is possible that they just failed to cover some PhD paper in English.
I can help you in the translation the Chinese.
Also, as far as I know, patent is to gain protection by disclose of the technique. So the Chinese government will no way benefit from such patent(because it should be open to everybody due to your published paper). It matters only with your supervisor's profit.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Do faculty hiring committees inform the candidates of the results?
Context: I've applied for several tenure-track positions. I have one or two favorites, but I'd gladly embrace any of them, basically because I only applied to good universities, with good programs, in good cities.
Question: Usually, they will just ignore the 'discarded' candidates or inform us of the decision?
In my previous experience, I was informed, after I asked via e-mail, several months later. I understand that it would be a significant amount of work, most places have more than 250 applicants per process, but no information at all is kind of rude, isn't?
I also know that the candidates that are selected for the interview are contacted, some universities give a tentative timeline, so you can infer if you were selected or not, but that's not the general case...

A related, and possibly duplicate, question http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8316/how-long-does-it-take-for-a-recruiting-process-to-finish

Also related http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15117/why-there-is-a-lack-of-transparency-in-us-tenure-track-job-searches

I don't know about CS, but in math we usually get several hundred applications (or more) for each general faculty search (our department typically doesn't target).  It's just not practical to contact each applicant.

@Kimball but if HR valued it at all, their system would allow the search committee to send mass emails.

I believe in some institutions, the search is not "finished" until the successful applicant has actually started work.  Until then, all other applicants are theoretically still in the running, so rejection letters can't be sent until that time, which often is months later.

The very best practice is to inform appplicants as soon as possible that they are no longer viable candidates. Thus, first round cuts would know quickly that they have not advanced to the second round.
Whether or not this was ever common practice is debatable but it is undoubtedly becoming rarer. Some reasons include :

Increased number of applicants: it is easier to tell twenty people they didn't make the cut, but some positions now receive several hundred applicants and search chairs are not always provided the tools they need for mass notification.
Bureacriticization: some universities require that no one be notified until the final candidate be found, offered the job, and they accept the position. This can often be over a year past the initial job posting and is a stupid rule. Others require HR to do all communications, but HR can often not be entirely responsive or communication can break down.
There is also variance caused by the degree of conscientious and amount of free time that the search chair has. Mid-career faculty often have absolutely no time due to administrative overload. Almost retired senior faculty have time but may have forgotten what it is like to be on the job market.

One crowd sourced solution is the job wikis that have sprung up. At least you'll know if and when the medium-round candidates have gotten telephone interviews (or the short list candidates have been invited to campus) and you can presume you're out of the running if you haven't.

My own experience was that whether and when a response came appeared to be exceedingly arbitrary.  Some places gave a rapid "no", others gave a "no" after many months (one after more than a year), and some never said anything at all.  I have heard of similar experiences from other people.
I have not been able to discern a pattern of which organizations are likely to fall into which category, and also know that different people seem to have different experiences with the same organization, presumably based on who is running the committee in a given year.

I think the committee chair is key here, having served on (but not chaired) several hiring committees.

In some cases it's the responsibility of the human resources office rather than committee to do this.  Also, these responses may be delayed if there's a delay in filling the position (e.g. because of negotiations with the candidates.)

This is my own. I've gotten swift "No", "No" after enough time that it was absurdly obvious, and on occasion an automated "This position has now been filled" notice from HR. Along with just silence.

Also consistent with my experience. I never heard anything from the majority of schools I applied to.

In France, for mathematics, there is a semi-officious website where results of almost all hiring committee appear the day the decision is taken (short lists, then rankings). It is incredibly useful to candidate, and to committee which need not e-mail each applicant individually to have the information reach them.


text:
Graduation attire - masters hood while receiving an associate degree
I earned a MS degree a while back.  I went back to school for another degree that happens to a "lower" degree...associates of science.  Can I wear my Master's hood while getting the AS degree at graduation?

You have not said which country etc. Might make a difference...

Usually if you're receiving a degree, you wear the attire corresponding to the degree you're receiving. Why would you want to wear your master's attire?

At both the universities I've attended, the graduate attire was stipulated when submitting my "intent to graduate" (and yes, it was based of the degree received in both cases as observed by @ff524). So in this case I'd ask your university's bookstore or registrar

For what it's worth, my wife recently graduated with her masters (USA) and wore her undergraduate gown. No one noticed.

I'd avoid doing this regardless of whether it is officially allowed.  You motives may be completely pure (maybe you just want to celebrate both degrees, or enjoy wearing the fanciest regalia to which you are entitled), but it could come across as denigrating the associate degree by seeming too eager to make sure everyone knows that you have a higher and more prestigious degree.

This depends entirely on the regulations of your university.

@AnonymousMathematician That depends entirely on the university. For example, at Cambridge, the only correct graduation attire is the gown associated with the highest degree you already hold, along with the hood of the highest degree you're receiving that day. (So, for example, I received my BA wearing my undergrad gown and a BA hood, and my MA and PhD on the same day, wearing the BA gown and PhD hood.)

If you don't specify the country and the university, this question is really meaningless: in certain countries you can wear whatever you wish at any graduation.

This is an awesome question.  I think you should do it. Look at it this way - successful lay people sometimes get honorary PhDs, right?  They're not shy about showing that off. So why should you be shy about wearing your appropriately awarded, university-backed regalia?  ...but maybe clear it with the appropriate office.


text:
Do citations of the arXiv version of an article transfer to its journal version after publication?
The arXiv version of my article has two citations. Now that my paper is published in a journal, I want to know if these citations will be transferred to the journal version? Should I withdraw my article from arXiv?

Don't withdraw your article from the Arxiv. It is meant to be an archive. Withdrawing something is generally taken to indicate the original was too wrong to be corrected (the other major case is a paper that has been subsumed by another).

No, the citations will not change just because the paper is published in a journal (however, if the citations are themselves in preprints, then contacting the authors to make them aware of the publication would make sense, and would probably make them either update the citations in the preprint or at least change them for the final publication).
However, what you can do is update the arXiv paper to add a mention of where the paper has been published.

Even if you mention this to Arxiv, google scholar won't give correct bibtex info. I am going to avoid Arxiv in the future. Your university should offer a local preprint service, those have worked fine for me. It seems like Arxiv just wants to self-promote to me. Contacting authors of each article that cites you does not seem feasible to me.

@dorien I don't see how a local preprint service would be better. Nor do I have any idea what you mean by arXiv self-promoting. Nor for that matter what bibtex info you mean.

I'm guessing that your concern is whether the citations from the two versions will be combined in a citation database.  The answer is that it depends on the citation database, and whether it considers the possibility of something like arXiv preprints, which cannot be taken for granted.  Google Scholar certainly does handle this case: it will detect similarity between the two versions and attempt to merge them (or you can do it manually if it doesn't detect it on its own).  I don't know whether other databases such as ISI or PubMed do, however.

ISI doesn't consider arXiv versions at all.

Similarly, MathSciNet does not include anything from the arXiv; papers are indexed once the are published.

@OswaldVeblen: this is not quite true anymore, MathSciNet will eventually link arXiv references to the pubished version using "cf. MRXXXXX" (or attempt to, anyway). However I am not sure whether such links are counted in their citation counts; I believe they are not.

@OswaldVeblen, and that unfortunate omission in MathSciNet is why by now it is primarily useful for historical, rather than contemporary, searches and such.

Google scholar cites to arxiv too, which is extremely sad. Even if the journal reference is filled in on Arxiv. Leads to missing citations and looks a lot less good.

Just puzzling over this same issue.  It seems that as of early 2019 MathSciNet does count a cite to the arXiv version of my paper as it if was to the paper.  They seem to be doing this via the MRXXXXX reference as Tom Church indicated.