I'm considering to apply for a PhD. My situation is roughly this:    GPA in my BSc is about 2/4. GPA in my MSc will be about 3.6/4   I have two peer-reviewed conference papers with proceedings and two peer-reviewed journal publications. I'm a first author in two of them. I could probably have two good recommendation letters. Third would be related to teaching, not research.  Would I have any chance to get admitted to top universities? I feel that the BSc GPA is a problem. And I'm now in a small university no one has never heard of. On the other hand, my MSc grades are good, and as different from my BSc grades as "night and day." Will schools likely give more weight to my MSc or BSc grades?
Suppose you do bad in undergraduate school in say computer science. But you do very well in a masters program in computer science. If you want to apply to a PhD program in computer science, will the masters degree grades offset the undergraduate degree grades?
Traditional search-as-you-type on newer Nautilus versions What happens if there is a security problem in a package in the universe repository four years after the 12.04 LTS release; will the package be updated from upstream, patched, or left alone?  It's my understanding that the "5 years of support &amp; security updates" applies only to the core of Ubuntu -- anything in Main repository.  Not for things in the Universe repository.    For a more specific example -- if I install Ruby now, and want to use it for the next several years on 12.04 and it has a security vulnerability; while this might be patched in the upstream (so I could always download the latest from their website and compile it myself or use a PPA), will this upstream fix be migrated into the precise package repositories? What about backports? So far, I didn't have the chance to use either of these services. Before starting, I would like to hear your opinions. What are the advantages and disadvantages? Why should I choose one over the other? I am mainly interested in the technical side, but I would also love to hear comments also regarding the plans and prices. Can I uninstall and reinstall Ubuntu Software Center? Since migrating to a true install and upgrading to 12.04 I have had several problems that seem to relate to the Ubuntu Software Center. Hanging at applying changes and blank screen on screen lock only when it is running, for instance.  My question is: Can I safely uninstall and reinstall Ubuntu Software Center and could this possibly fix those problems or are they just bugs I have to wait for updates for? Some improvements to blockquotes Update  Sorry for the delay! I’ve been thinking about this feedback in between my other projects, and I’ve landed where I’ve started 😕  I’ve made sure to continue highlighting spoilers in gray. The differentiation from normal blockquotes is super important since their behavior is so different. I explored keeping spoilers yellow, but that still has the same theming issues throughout the network. Red seemed too powerful, with its error connotations.  I understand completely that folks are using blockquotes to highlight images. However, I don’t think that’s a  we want to formally pave. I’m ok with being opinionated here—blockquotes should be used for quoting, not as a way to highlight images. I understand that this will be frustrating to Machavity who made excellent points about differentiation in his answer, but I don’t think image highlighting ought to dictate how blockquotes are styled.  I’m also cautious of adding borders to images as explored by user1306322 for the same reasons and for the additional fear of being too prescriptive in how we display images there.  It’s a tough one! I went back and forth with the design team and I still think this is the best path forward.  Original post  We’re making a few changes to blockquotes soon. Historically, we had a bit of feedback that the yellow backgrounds were overpowering, reducing the contrast of the quote itself. The yellow border also lacks contrast with the background. Others have indicated that there should be  and between .  These yellows also compete with theming in our communities, especially those with backgrounds that aren’t perfectly white like English Language &amp; Usage and Role-Playing Games.   We’re proposing we switch to a single gray bar in our blockquotes. This should fix those theming issues and make it easier to distinguish between quotes, spoilers and code.  This will also improve blockquote nesting, since our current nesting is a mess because the darker yellow bar is barely noticeable on the paler yellow background.  Spoilers should pretty much behave exactly the same way. More room for later improvements there.  Here’s how our current blockquotes look. You can click to expand:    Here’s what we propose:    There is a lot of prior art out there for this approach. GitHub has styled theirs this way for a long time. So has Slack.     Let me know what y’all think. I think these changes will be an improvement, and I hope you do too.  Huge thanks to Catija for gathering some meta posts on blockquotes and creating an awesome blockquote playground post for testing. SPSite.Exists returning true for a just deleted site collection Short story - I have a process that creates some sitecollection, so to test it I keep deleting and recreating the same site over and over. The process includes a check with the istruction SPSite.Exits, done to check if the sitecollection is present or should be created.  Sometime, soon after I delete the site collection, SPSite.Exists will report it as still available. Is this a cache related problem? What is the value of the series   $\sum\limits_{n=1}^\infty {\frac{1}{10^n-1}}$   and can one find closed forms for the sums   $\sum\limits_{n=1}^N {\frac{1}{10^n-1}}$?   I found that $\sum_{n=1}^N {\frac{1}{10^n-1}} $  =  $\sum_{n=1}^N (\lim_{m\to\infty  }{\frac{10^{-n}-10^{-nm}}{1-10^{-n}}})$  =  $0.111\ldots+0.0101\ldots+\ldots$ but I can't go farther.     The original question is: "Where does the second '1' appear?" How can I add left aligned text to an equation? I have a document I am trying to copy to learn TeX. Here is what I have encountered: How can I have the "or" in the equation. This is what I have right now:  \[ f = ma; \]  But $a$ is the change in velocity,  \[ f = m \frac{dv}{dt};\] \[ f = m  \frac{d^2y}{dt^2};\]   Edit: Trying out Stefan's answer I'm having trouble understanding the simple voltage regulator that can be built using a zener diode (from section 2.04 in the Art of Electronics).  I know that it would be better to use amplifiers, et cetera, but I'm just trying to understand how this circuit works.      I don't really understand how the circuit works, but I am guessing that when a load is applied to the output, it drains current from the source (Vin) and thus causes the voltage to drop?  How does the zener diode help to maintain the voltage and thus make this circuit act as a regulator? What's the most popular way to encrypt individual files or folders? LibreOffice Calc - Disable rounding There are a  on this topic, but no simple and definitive answers.    Can someone please tell me how to permanently disable cell rounding on the .csv file which is created by script?  Basically, '377635637222436751' is being converted to '377635637222437000' automatically and that isn't really acceptable for my needs.  I've tried this: Tools->Options->Calc->Calculate "Precision as shown"   and this: Format > Cells > Numbers > Category > (scroll down for) Text. (but considering my script creates the .csv -- this option isn't very good since it must be done after the file is created)  And neither is working.  The number stays rounded -- even after formatting the column after the file is created.  Does anyone have any suggestions? vector space dimension of linear varieties Suppose $Y=Z(f_1,\cdots ,f_r)\subseteq \mathbb{A}^n_k$ where each $f_i$'s are linear homogeneous polynomials which are $k$-linear independent. Then $Y$ is also a vector space over $k$. My question: Is the vector space dimension of $Y$ is same as the dimension of $Y$ as an affine variety? If yes how?    Thank you. Where is the .Trash folder? The following is an Exercise of Conway's Functional Analysis.   Prove that $X$ is a $\,Banach$ space iff whenever $\{x_n\}$ is a sequence in $X$, such that $\sum \| x_n \| &lt; \infty$, then $\sum x_n$ converges.   I easily can show that if $X$ is a Banach space then $\sum x_n$ converges. My problem is showing that $X$ is a Banach space. For this I suppose that $\{s_n\}$ is a Cauchy sequence in $X$, then I want to make a series. For this I do not have any idea. Please help me. Conjugacy classes in $A_n$. Suppose $n$ is a non negative integer $\geq 4$ and $\sigma\in S_n$ a permutation. Conjugacy classes in $S_n$ are completley determined by the cycle structure of $\sigma$. If we let the alternating group $A_n$.act on $S_n$ by conjugation, the orbits coincide with the conjugacy classes in $S_n$ except for those (even) permutations whose cycle structure is composed of even cycles (which corresponds to cycles of uneven length) of distinct order (fixed points are treated as cycles of length $1$.) See   For instance a $3$-cycle in $A_4$ has cycle structure $[3,1]$ which fits the bill, and a $5$-cycle in $A_5$ or $A_6$ works too, since the cycle structure is $[5]$ and $[5,1]$ respectively. On the other hand, a $3$-cycle in $A_5$ will does not satisfy the criteria as it has cycle structure $[3,1,1]$ with two fixed points.  In this case, the conjugacy class of $\sigma$ inside $S_n$ splits in $2$ orbits of the conjugation action of $A_n$, and if $\tau$ is any odd permutation, for instance $(12)$, then we have $$\mathrm{Conj}_{S_n}(\sigma)=\mathcal{O}(\sigma)\coprod\mathcal{O}(\tau\sigma\tau^{-1})$$  My question is How can we differentiate between the two orbits? Does it have geometric meaning?    I can see that this information can be useful when looking at representations of the alternating groups, since there are as many irreducible representations as conjugacy classes. As for some geometric interpretation, I ask because there is one for the three cycles in $A_4$. If $S_4$ is understood as the group of symmetries of a regular tetrahedron, then $A_4$ is the subgroup of direct symmetries, and a $3$-cycle corresponds to a rotation of angle $\frac{2\pi}{3}$ or $\frac{4\pi}{3}$ with axis passing through one of the vertices. Conjugacy classes inside $A_n$ preserve the angle, and that's how we can tell them apart. In this case the computations are so simple we don't really need this picture, but I think it is a nice way to understand the fact $3$-cycles in are not all conjugate inside $A_4$... Is there a simple way to flatten a list of iterables with a list comprehension, or failing that, what would you all consider to be the best way to flatten a shallow list like this, balancing performance and readability?  I tried to flatten such a list with a nested list comprehension, like this:  [image for image in menuitem for menuitem in list_of_menuitems]   But I get in trouble of the NameError variety there, because the name 'menuitem' is not defined.  After googling and looking around on Stack Overflow, I got the desired results with a reduce statement:  reduce(list.__add__, map(lambda x: list(x), list_of_menuitems))   But this method is fairly unreadable because I need that list(x) call there because x is a Django QuerySet object.  Conclusion:   Thanks to everyone who contributed to this question.  Here is a summary of what I learned.  I'm also making this a community wiki in case others want to add to or correct these observations.  My original reduce statement is redundant and is better written this way:  &gt;&gt;&gt; reduce(list.__add__, (list(mi) for mi in list_of_menuitems))   This is the correct syntax for a nested list comprehension (Brilliant summary !):  &gt;&gt;&gt; [image for mi in list_of_menuitems for image in mi]   But neither of these methods are as efficient as using itertools.chain:  &gt;&gt;&gt; from itertools import chain &gt;&gt;&gt; list(chain(*list_of_menuitems))   And as @cdleary notes, it's probably better style to avoid * operator magic by using chain.from_iterable like so:  &gt;&gt;&gt; chain = itertools.chain.from_iterable([[1,2],[3],[5,89],[],[6]]) &gt;&gt;&gt; print(list(chain)) &gt;&gt;&gt; [1, 2, 3, 5, 89, 6] A locally constant sheaf on a locally connected space is a covering space; Proof? H2G2 — Teleportation Also Results in Time Travel? Prevent parameter expansion in shell script I often have to do a recursive search in files. Tired of typing the whole "find/grep" combination all the time, I just created a script with the following line:  find . -name $1 -exec grep $2 {} + 2&gt;/dev/null   The idea is that I should be able to run it as, for example:  myfind '*' hello   The problem is, when '*' gets passed into the script, the script is expanding it to each file in the directory.  I tried putting a quote around $1:   find . -name '$1' -exec grep $2 {} + 2&gt;/dev/null   However, this turns $1 into a literal string.  Would appreciate your help in finding the right syntax. Must be something simple that I am missing. Why is the Mann–Whitney U test significant when the medians are equal? I've received a results from a Mann-Whitney rank test that I don't understand.  The median of the 2 populations is identical (6.9). The uppper and lower quantiles of each population are:   6.64 &amp; 7.2 6.60 &amp; 7.1   The p-value resulting from the test comparing these populations is 0.007. How can these populations be significantly different? Is it due to the spread about the median? A boxplot comparing the 2 shows that the second one has far more outliers than the first. Thanks for any suggestions.