I will soon be published at a peer-reviewed journal and this is my first publication in my career. My concern is that I'm Asian descent and have an extremely common last name, and personally I do not wish to be identified with my legal last name at all.  On the other hand, my Asian first name is relatively unique. Also, I've been going by an English nickname since I moved to US, and all the people I know knows me as my nickname since I always introduce myself with it in person and in my resume.  So, I thought I would choose my publishing name that is unique and personal to be  not this:  [legal first name] [legal last name]  but this:  [daily-used nick name] [legal first name].  I thought about adding my nickname as middle name, but this still results in tons of same names due to my last name.  The question is, would this be considered a good idea if I will always use this for publishing from now on? Or would it cause any big troubles in future career, such as employers having a difficulty with identifying my work or other issues? Are there any potential issues with this style of pseudonym?  I read other similar posts about publishing in pseudonym, but the closest I could find to my question was this:
I've recently embarked on my PhD studies (cancer, structural biology) and have yet to publish. Currently, there are some 200 papers in my name and several thousand under my surname. Because of this, I am considering switching my surname to an old, rare, surname in my family, which is only used by one active researcher.  My question is this: are there any reasonable alternatives that does not include legally changing my name? I personally don't mind changing it, but the old surname happens to be "noble", and may come off as quite pretentious. I would be able to change to another, less pretentious, surname, but in terms of rareness, no alternative comes close.   In short, what are my alternatives?
Search text within multiple pdfs and docs I got a bunch of notes written by other students, but they are from an old textbook that didn't deal with everything in the same order, so I need to search through the notes for every chapter (each individual chapter is in a different .pdf or .doc) for "trace conditioning" for example.  I used to use Google Desktop for this, I have Launchy now and I told it to search pdfs, but it only searches the titles, not the content.  Thanks for any help. How to prove sum of powers property of roots of unity? How can I decode HTML characters in C#? How to determine an object's class? If class B and class C extend class A and I have an object of type B or C, how can I determine of which type it is an instance? Good Number Theory books to start with? I can see that this works for any integer $n$, but I can't figure out why this works, or why the number $42$ has this property. There's a new popup helping you with searching, but one of the hints is wrong:    Searching for  will return answers as well as questions, and it's not the number of (up/down)votes which counts, it's the score. Better would be "posts with a score of 3 or higher" or "questions and answers with a score of 3 or higher". Prove that in a triangle $$r^2+r_1^2+r_2^2+r_3^2=16R^2-(a^2+b^2+c^2)$$ where the symbols have their usual meanings. I am looking for a smaller or elegant proof using trigonometry. A geometric proof would be super cool. I did prove it but it took me ages to do the calculation. Thanks. When a Battle Master fighter gets a critical hit and uses a maneuver that adds a superiority die to the damage, is that damage die doubled? The Battle Master fighter has access to a number of maneuvers that add a superiority die to the damage roll. For instance, the Trip Attack maneuver says (PHB, p. 74):     When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one   superiority die to attempt to knock the target down. You add the   superiority die to the attack’s damage roll, and if the target is   Large or smaller, it must make a Strength saving throw. On a failed   save, you knock the target prone.   The Critical Hits rule states (PHB, p. 196):     When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the   attack’s damage against the target. Roll all of the attack’s damage   dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as   normal. [...] If the attack involves other damage dice, such as from   the rogue’s Sneak Attack feature, you roll those dice twice as well.   During our game, the fighter PC rolled a critical hit. He then wanted to use a superiority die to use the Trip Attack maneuver to trip the enemy. Based on the above rules, is the damage from the superiority die also doubled?  I'm assuming the answer is yes based on the last statement in the Critical Hits section, but I wanted to confirm. I try to solve this problem. I seems to come close to the end but I can't get the conclusion. Can someone help me complete my proof. Thanks          Show that the polynomial $h(x) = (x-1)(x-2)\cdots(x-n) + 1$ is irreducible over $\mathbb Z$ for all $n\ge1$ and $ n\ne4$.      Suppose $h(x) = f(x) g(x)$, then we must have $f(i)g(i) = 1$ for all $i = 1,2,...n$. So both $f(i)$ and $g(i)$ are $1$ or $-1$. In either case, $m(x) = f(x) - g(x)$ has degree smaller than $n$ and have $n$ different roots ($1,2,...,n$). So we must have $m(x) = 0$. Then $h(x) = f(x)^{2}$. So $n$ must be even. Let $n = 2k$. Because $f(x)$ has degree $k$, there are $k$ values from $\{1,2,...,2k\}$ at which $f(x)$ is $1$ and $k$ values at which $f(x)$ is $-1$.  This is where I got stuck. Hope some one can help me solve this. Thanks. Virtual functions and performance - C++ In my class design, I use abstract classes and virtual functions extensively. I had a  feeling that virtual functions affects the performance. Is this true? But I think this performance difference is not noticeable and looks like I am doing premature optimization. Right? Helvetica font has jagged edges I use 'Helvetica' as my font and build my document using Texmaker. But the PDF generated has jagged edges while using this font and when I use a different font (say Times or even Helvetica sans-serif) it builds just fine.     Please suggest if there is anyway I can get over this. The problem with these jagged edges is that it appears very dull and unreadable at 100% resolution.  OK guys, now here is the MWE  %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% HEADER %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \documentclass[a4paper,twoside,12pt]{book}  %% Language %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} %\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage{graphicx,color,subfigure}  %% Line Spacing %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \usepackage{setspace} %\singlespacing        %% 1-spacing (default) %\onehalfspacing       %% 1,5-spacing \doublespacing        %% 2-spacing  %% Other Packages %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% \usepackage[left=1.5in, right=1.5in, top=1in, bottom=1in, includefoot, headheight=13.6pt]{geometry} \usepackage[pagebackref=true,breaklinks=true,letterpaper=true,colorlinks,bookmarks=false]{hyperref} \usepackage{helvet} \usepackage[square,numbers]{natbib} \usepackage{hyphenat} \usepackage{fancyhdr}   \begin{document}  \pagestyle{empty} %No headings for the first pages.  \cleardoublepage %The first chapter should start on an odd page.  \pagestyle{plain} %Now display headings: headings / fancy / ...  \pagebreak  %------------------------------------------------------------------------ \chapter{Divorce}   A major change that has occurred in the Western family is an increased incidence in divorce. Whereas in the past, divorce was a relatively rare occurrence, in recent times it has become quite commonplace. This change is borne out clearly in census figures. For example thirty years ago in Australia, only one marriage in ten ended in divorce; nowadays the figure is more than one in three (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1996: p.45). A consequence of this change has been a substantial increase in the number of single parent families and the attendant problems that this brings (Kilmartin, 1997).   \end{document} Given a pointed category $X$, is $|N(X)|$ contractible ($N(X)$ is the nerve of $X$)? Or are there counter-examples? I read this book in Middle School and I can't for the life of me remember the title, but I can remember what it was about for the most part:  Takes place in the future, the government imposes laws that outlaw people from being different in appearance and skill level. For example, if you are fast or strong or tall, they will put weights on you to weigh you down so that you'll be more slower/shorter and more like the average. Another example, if you are pretty the government issues you "ugly glasses" etc.  Basically, it's all about making sure everyone is equal and punishing the extraordinary.  One of the main characters (a man) decides to literally loose himself of his shackles and weights, breaking them to display his power (if I'm remembering correctly).   Any ideas folks? How to draw Venn diagrams (especially: complements) in LaTeX optexp environment error when compiling with XeLaTeX I have troubles with optexp environment. There is a code  \documentclass[pstricks,margin=12pt]{standalone}  \usepackage{pst-optexp}  \begin{document} \begin{pspicture}(3.2,5) \pnodes(0,3){A}(1,3){BS}(3,3){M1}(1,5){M2}(1,1){PD} \psset{mirrortype=extended, mirrordepth=0.2}  \begin{optexp} \beamsplitter[bsstyle=plate, compname=BS](A)(BS)(PD) \mirror[compname=M1](BS)(M1)(BS) \mirror[compname=M2, variable](BS)(M2)(BS) \lens[compname=L](BS)(PD) \optdetector[compname=Det, dettype=diode](BS)(PD) \addtopsstyle{Beam}{beamwidth=0.2, fillstyle=solid,fillcolor=green!20!white} \drawwidebeam(A){BS}{M1}{BS}{M2}{BS}{L}{Det} \end{optexp} \end{pspicture}  \end{document}   and the result is this    and I get "MiKTeX GPL Ghostscript 9.19: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1" error. When I remove optexp environment, so  \documentclass[pstricks,margin=12pt]{standalone}  \usepackage{pst-optexp}  \begin{document} \begin{pspicture}(3.2,5) \pnodes(0,3){A}(1,3){BS}(3,3){M1}(1,5){M2}(1,1){PD} \psset{mirrortype=extended, mirrordepth=0.2}   \beamsplitter[bsstyle=plate, compname=BS](A)(BS)(PD) \mirror[compname=M1](BS)(M1)(BS) \mirror[compname=M2, variable](BS)(M2)(BS) \lens[compname=L](BS)(PD) \optdetector[compname=Det, dettype=diode](BS)(PD) \addtopsstyle{Beam}{beamwidth=0.2, fillstyle=solid,fillcolor=green!20!white} \drawwidebeam(A){BS}{M1}{BS}{M2}{BS}{L}{Det}  \end{pspicture}  \end{document}   the result is     which is correct but optical components are behind beam. I use XeLatex. What am I doing wrong? Which packages are missing? Thank you (example is from manual "Drawing optical experimental setups" where the code works correctly). How is the zero flag set in terms of hardware? How to perform orthogonal regression (total least squares) via PCA? I always use lm() in R to perform linear regression of $y$ on $x$. That function returns a coefficient $\beta$ such that $$y = \beta x.$$  Today I learned about total least squares and that princomp() function (principal component analysis, PCA) can be used to perform it. It should be good for me (more accurate). I have done some tests using princomp(), like:  r &lt;- princomp( ~ x + y)   My problem is: how to interpret its results? How can I get the regression coefficient? By "coefficient" I mean the number $\beta$ that I have to use to multiply the $x$ value to give a number close to $y$. I'm having an issue with blender where whenever I try to render as any sort of video, instead of showing up as an mp4 or whatever file type I chose, it will show up as a mystery file that cannot be opened. This issue started recently and randomly: I was always able to render perfectly fine before and I used the exact same settings now that I did then.   not sure exactly what I'm doing wrong. Here are the export settings I am using: I faced with a problem after update,   I missed 2 buttons from above panel, System menu (including shutdown, suspend &amp; …) and User (including log out &amp; …)  how can I restore them !?...