I did a Ph.D. in the area of engineering mathematics. The thesis used some of the concepts from Mathematics, such as basic probability and statistics (Bachelor/Master level), calculus (Bachelor/Master level), optimization (Bachelor/Master level), etc. Mostly, the works applied the existing mathematical tools to some physical problems instead of developing methods. However, it was possible to publish some of the works in good applied mathematics/mechanics journals. All my undergraduate and graduate degrees were obtained from the mathematics department of a reputed institution in India. Being a student of Mathematics background, I now want to learn and work in the area of applied numerical analysis/scientific computation. I am currently working as a postdoc researcher in a reputed university in the USA, but that also in the area of engineering mathematics. Is it possible to get a postdoc opportunity in the area of applied numerical analysis/scientific computation or other related areas where mathematical techniques are developed rather than using it? In that case, how to convince the supervisor that I am capable of learning the research topic and work on it when I have no such publication record yet? Please give your suggestion on how to proceed.
I'm in the following situation: In 3 months, I'll finish my PhD in theoretical physics, and I'm certain that I want to pursue an academic career. However, I'm just as certain that my PhD research is a dead end. (My advisor doesn't think so, but I disagree with him.) Thus, I seek to change the direction of my research, but I need a few months to obtain the necessary skills. Anyway, I missed the main application period for post-doc positions (in the US).  Given the following options (feel free to expand this list), which do you think provides the best perspective of leading me to a interesting post-doc position?   Finish my PhD. Get any post-doc position. Do the work I'm required to do there. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. After 1-2 years, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in. Finish my PhD. Get a well-paying job in the software industry. Do the work I'm required to do there. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. Work harder to keep publishing papers. After one year, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in. Abort my current work. Find a new subject and a new PhD advisor. Live on unemployment money as long as possible. Work hard in my spare time to teach myself the stuff I want to. Work harder to keep publishing papers. After one year, find a post-doc position I'm really interested in.   Pros:   Get the PhD title sooner. Stay in the scientific community. Get the PhD title sooner. Earn lots of money (6 figure). In a 9-to-5 job, have more spare time for private research than on a post-doc position, where work is never finished. Go to a foreign country. It's what I should've done 2 years ago. I'll have the education I want when I finish my PhD, not later (but be older anyway). No immediate advantages over the other options.   Cons:   If a logical continuation of my PhD work, I'll suffer from demotivation. My next advisor will not want me to work on other topics that I'm not paid for. Might have to stay for 2 years. I'll move out of the scientific community for some time. I know it's hard to get back in. I'll be even older when I finally get my PhD. Not sure if I would find another advisor. Open fight with my current advisor. I don't want to live on unemployment money for long.   A particular question concerning the options above: Does being out of academia for a year kill your prospects of obtaining a postdoc position later?  I do have some collaborators who will help me to keep publishing, provided that I put enough work into my research. Also, I'm willing to familiarize myself with other topics on my own (a prerequisite for an academic career anyway).  The next application period will be from October to December 2013, which isn't far away. I'm sure I'll have most of the skills I want by then (and a paper published proving that), but still would have to work until summer 2014 wherever I am applying now.  Please give me honest answers, even if they hurt. I'll provide more information as soon as possible, if anyone has questions.
Canned reasons for up/down vote (w/ example of how it would work) I'm annoyed by down voters that don't explain why they down voted a question or an answer. Although, at the same time, I understand that they . I think there is a middle ground, though, where the voter can remain anonymous, while the poster can get aggregated feedback on ways to improve the post.  Rather than having to imagine what it might be like, the current stackoverflow engine can emulate this rather effectively with the use of comments and the up-voting of those comments (essentially saying "I agree"). So I thought I would give it a try. The only difference is that in this testing post, you will always see the list of "canned responses" where as in the complete version, it will most likely be hidden in a popup (e.g. when you hover over the score of an answer/question). To try it out, simply up or down vote this question (or one of its answers), and press the up arrow next to the comment which best describes why are voting that way. For example, if you hate this idea, give this a down vote, and then press the up arrow near -1: I don't like this idea.  In addition to retaining anonymity, this will also save time for the voter so that they don't need to write out the comment. This wouldn't be required, obviously, and there could be a default option selected don't leave a reason. In addition, there could be a custom option which allows you type exactly why you are down-voting this way. Depending on the final implementation, this could either simply be converted to a comment automatically prefixed with -1:  or +1:; or, to retain anonymity, it would be added to this same list that shows the canned responses and how many users have voted that way.  Here are some ideas for the canned responses:  Question:   +1: Well formatted and thought out question. -1: It doesn't seem like enough time was spent trying to solve this issue on your own. -1: I don't like this idea. (Could be especially useful on meta.stackoverflow.com feature-request.) -1: No prior research/work. (Idea from .) -1: Poor question. Please see . -1: Doesn't contain code. (This would be useful on stackoverflow.com. Idea from )   Answer:   +1: Concise. +1: Insightful. +1: Worked for me. -1: It's wrong. -1: Confusing. -1: Encouraging bad behavior (e.g. answering a question that shouldn't have been asked; see ).   I made this a community-wiki since there will probably be testing of up/down votes. Several of these canned responses have been taken from . This same idea was also . Rescuing/Compiling old TeX file starting with “\input amstex” I have a map of an area and georeferenced photos. I need to be able to bring the pictures as points and then be able to click at a certain point and an image pop up.   I have revisited this issue, i managed to get this far but the pop up doesn't work.   See image: How to get a drive formatted with exfat working? Entire function bounded by a polynomial is a polynomial Suppose that an entire function $f(z)$ satisfies $\left|f(z)\right|\leq k\left|z\right|^n$ for sufficiently large $\left|z\right|$, where $n\in\mathbb{Z^+}$ and $k&gt;0$ is constant. Show that $f$ is a polynomial of degree at most $n$. Texture packing algorithm What is a good texture packing algorithm?  Technically,  is , so a heuristic is what I'm really after. Analogue of closed graph theorem This is the analogue of closed graph theorem for compact space          Suppose that $X$ and $K$ are metric spaces, that $K$ is compact, and that the graph of $f: X \rightarrow K$ is a closed subset of $X \times K$. Prove that $f$ is continuous.      Because metric space is first countable, all we need is to prove that if $x = \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} x_{n}$, then $f(x) = \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} f(x_{n})$. Suppose $x = \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} x_{n}$, then because $K$ is compact, sequence $\{f(x_{n})\}$ has a subsequence $\{f(x_{n_{i}})\}$ converge. Because the graph of $f$ is closed, we must have $\lim_{n \rightarrow \infty}\{f(x_{n_{i}})\} = f(x)$. All we need to prove now is $\{f(x_{n})\}$ converge to $f(x)$, but I can't prove that. Can any one help me. I really appreciate. Thanks Using mask as a garbage matte to hide an object I'm trying to use a mask to hide a part of a render layer, so that when the render layer is shown over a movie, some parts in the movie will appear to be in front of the render layer.  For example, assume I want to add a box to this image, so that it would look like it's behind the person:    I created the following simple object:    If I render the object, it looks great - the object is solid, everything else is transparent (I didn't use any 'sky'):     Now I create a mask to describe the standing person (or at least the part that would otherwise be covered by the box):    What I want now is to create a "hole" in the rendered box, so that when I use Alpha-over, the box look as if it's behind the person, but I can't find an easy way to do that. My first guess was to use 'Set alpha' to apply the mask (inverted) as an alpha for the rendered layer, but this doesn't look good:    The mask did create a "hole" where it should, but now all the other pixels are not transparent. How can I "retain" the transparent pixels while setting more pixels to be transparent based on the mask (use it as a matte)?  Note: I can do this with (I'm ashamed to say) some math work on the alpha channel, but it just doesn't seem right:    Thanks, and sorry for the [oh so] long question. I had the Facebook and Instagram apps installed on my iPhone (latest iOS). I deleted both apps and checked that there was no data from either app stored on iCloud (I went to Settings - iCloud - Manage storage and there was no mention of them storing anything on iCloud). Then I reinstalled Instagram, opened it, clicked on Login and the page still showed “Login as MYFACEBOOKNAME”.   How is this possible? How can I delete my FB login info once and for all on my iPhone? I am using PHP and JavaScript. My JavaScript code contains a function, get_data():  function get_Data(){     var name;     var job;     .....      return buffer; }   Now I have PHP code with the following.  &lt;?php     $i=0;     $buffer_data;      /* Here I need to get the value from JavaScript get_data() of buffer;        and assign to variable $buffer_data. */ ?&gt;   How do I assign the JavaScript function data into the PHP variable? Remove default ID attribute from HTML helpers in ASP.NET MVC Jutifying: irrational + rational = irrational I am not sure how to show this. This is what I tried.   Proposition: If x is rational number and y is an irrational number then x+y is an irrational number.  Logically speaking this is  P=x is rational  Q= Y is irrational  R= x+y is irrational  $P\wedge Q \rightarrow R$  Explanation: What I did  $x=\frac{p}{q}$ P and Q integer  Y cannot be written as the a rational by definition  So therefore  $x+y=\frac{p}{q}+y$  Will not be a rational number as there cannot be a common denominator. How do I make a floor plan with specific dimensions? This is my very first time of using blender. I've tried several tutorials but can't find anything that tells me how to do the very basic thing i want to do.  I simply want to draw a floor plan for a room which is 13 feet by 11 feet and make it 3d so that ultimately i can play with where things go in that room.  Can anyone take me through the steps needed to do this?   I will be so grateful.  Thank you in advance Why do physicists believe that particles are pointlike? String theory gives physicists reason to believe that particles are 1-dimensional strings because the theory has a purpose - unifying gravity with the gauge theories.   So why is it that it's popular belief that particles are 0-dimensional points? Was there ever a proposed theory of them being like this? And why?   What reason do physicists have to believe that particles are 0-dimensional points as opposed to 1-dimensional strings? When playing with the complete elliptic integral of the first kind and its Fourier-Legendre expansion, I discovered that a consequence of $\sum_{n\geq 0}\binom{2n}{n}^2\frac{1}{16^n(4n+1)}=\frac{1}{16\pi^2}\,\Gamma\left(\frac{1}{4}\right)^4 $ is:     $$\int_{0}^{1}\frac{\arctan x}{\sqrt{x(1-x^2)}}\,dx = \tfrac{1}{32}\sqrt{2\pi}\,\Gamma\left(\tfrac{1}{4}\right)^2\tag{A}$$   which might be regarded as a sort of Ahmed's integral under steroids.  I already have a proof of this statement (through Fourier-Legendre expansions), but I would be happy to see a more direct and elementary proof of it, also because it might have some consequences about the moments of $K(x)$ of the form $\int_{0}^{1}K(x)\,x^{m\pm 1/4}\,dx$, which are associated with peculiar hypergeometric functions. How can I stream live video on YouTube? Nowadays, I see a lot of users live streaming on YouTube and wanted to try it for myself. However, when I go to my channel I don't see an option for live streaming.  I tried researching how to do this on YouTube and Google, but without luck.  So I was wondering, how can I live stream on YouTube?  I don't have any pro account or any of that, but I've watched livestreams from users who I don't think have pro accounts either.  So livestreaming is open for everyone, right? Encode URL in JavaScript? Get all non-unique values (i.e.: duplicate/more than one occurrence) in an array How can I find just the *.mp3 files with a recursive command like ls -R *.mp3 in a directory that contains several sub-directories and at the end copy these files in a directory that I choose.  Thanks for your support. Standard graded algebra