For grad school application (US univerisity), we need recommendation from prof. I guess the process is that system send out recommendation letter request to prof's email.  Do you guys know how long does it take to submit these recomendation letter? Does it need to fill extra form while submitting these letter?    I ask because I want to know how time consuming it is. Should I limit the # of school I apply because it might be too much work for the prof?
When applying for post-doctoral and faculty positions you are typically asked for three (sometimes more) reference letters to support your application.    Given that it is competitive out there, it also makes sense to apply for all positions that are good matches to your qualifications and career development goals (in the case of post-docs).  Sometimes this may mean asking for several reference letters (or pre-application "can you support me if required?" requests) in a short space of time.  Also, there may only be a small pool of people (i.e. 3 or 4) who know your work sufficiently well to give an excellent reference.  I have also been told that referees want to help you out, and that there is no reason to fear asking them.  And, that in many cases once a letter is written it can typically be quickly repurposed.  But there must be a breaking point.  How do I manage this without being disrespectful?  How many requests in a given unit of time is too many, or harms my credibility?   I am asking this question in this forum, as I am interested in the norms in the academic world, which are often somewhat different than the rest of the working world.
Help Me Understand My Bicycle's Gears I'm a new blender user, but have used other modelling programs before.   I've downloaded a  and unzipped it.   When I import the obj into blender, it is my understanding (from here: ) that the mtl should just import itself with it. However, when I import the obj, I just get a grey model with no texture. Is it actually importing the mtl but I'm not seeing it? Also for the record, I have changed no settings in blender.  Picture for reference: How do I pass variables and data from PHP to JavaScript? How do you call an external command (as if I'd typed it at the Unix shell or Windows command prompt) from within a Python script? Sort by author in Alpha bibliography Using the alpha bibliography style, citations are sorted by the citation key. I'd like to use the same style of authors-year citation keys (e.g., [CP92]) but have the bibliography sorted by the first author's lastname instead of alphabetically by the citation key itself. This would keep the same papers by the same first author together.  For example, alpha would produce the following sorted order:        [Cha81] D. Chaum. Untraceable...   [CL04] J. Camenisch and A. Lysyanskaya. Signature...   [CP92] D. Chaum and T. Pedersen. Wallet...      Whereas, abbr would produce the following sorted order:        [1] J. Camenisch and A. Lysyanskaya. Signature...   [2] D. Chaum. Untraceable...   [3] D. Chaum and T. Pedersen. Wallet...      I am looking for the same sorting as abbr but maintaining the citation key style of alpha.  Is there a way to achieve this hybrid style? How do I print all lines of a file with duplicate values in a certain column How to compute $\int_0^{\pi/2}\frac{\sin^3 t}{\sin^3 t+\cos^3 t}dt$? Calculating with Mathematica, one can have $$\int_0^{\pi/2}\frac{\sin^3 t}{\sin^3 t+\cos^3 t}\,\mathrm dt=\frac{\pi}{4}.$$   How can I get this formula by hand? Is there any simpler idea than using $u = \sin t$?     Is there a simple way to calculate $$ \int_0^{\pi/2}\frac{\sin^n t}{\sin^n t+\cos^n t}\,\mathrm dt $$ for $n&gt;3$? Could anyone come up with a reference for this exercise? How do I change JPanel inside a JFrame on the fly? To put it simple, there's a simple java swing app that consists of JFrame with some components in it. One of the components is a JPanel that is meant to be replaced by another JPanel on user action.  So, what's the correct way of doing such a thing? I've tried  panel = new CustomJPanelWithComponentsOnIt(); parentFrameJPanelBelongsTo.pack();   but this won't work. What would you suggest? Someone mentioned that "veiling glare" or "veiling flare" was to blame for reduced contrast in a photo. What does this mean exactly?  What causes veiling glare, and how can it be avoided? How does it relate to those floating polygonal lens flares one often sees in movies? I am firmly convinced he is innocent and his accusation is the result of the police conspiracy.     I am firmly convinced he is innocent and his accusation is the result of the police's conspiracy.    Which sentence do you think is a better choice? How to make a live Ubuntu 18.04 USB with a persistent storage of more than 4GB Good tool for finding photo duplicates based on image data What is a good (and preferably free) tool for finding photo duplicates based on the photos themselves?  So, not filename, filesize etc., but how the photos look like. It would be nice if it managed to match photos that were the same image, but not exactly the same size for example too. If votes works differently on meta sites how does that of accepting answers work? In the faq of meta sites you can read something like the following:     Voting here works a bit differently   from other Stack Exchange sites. On   Meta Stack Overflow, voting is used to   express agreement or disagreement, not   to point out a lack of quality or   helpfulness. Please don't be concerned   if you receive downvotes – members of   the community may simply disagree with   your bug, feature request, support   issue, or the nature of the   discussion.   My question is: If votes works differently on meta sites how does that of accepting answers work?  Take for instance a question on a meta site that is meant for the community to discuss some issue. What does it mean if the question is accepted? Accepting an answer is up to the author of the question so it cannot be a sign of what answer the community concludes from the discussion. It could mean that the discussion is over but that should be up to the community and not the author of the question. Is it so that accepting an answer for a discussion question on a meta site does not have a particular function? How should I handle questions which are answered in the comments? Sometimes I have asked a question which got no answers, but is answered in the comments to the question.  How should I handle these questions? I can't accept an answer, so it is never an accepted question.  For example this one:   (ok here the answer in the comments is from me, but nevertheless I also have others of them) What happens if I get the same skill from both my background and my class? Blending colors in photoshop and illustrator How can I prevent Chrome from offsetting newly opened Window? When I open a new Window in Chrome on Windows 7 (by pressing CTRL+N), the new window does not exactly overlap the existing window.   Instead it is offset to the right slightly.   So, immediately after opening a new window I have to manually move it to the left so that it uses the full screen real estate.   Is there a way to prevent this offset? I'm trying to fill empty space in my mesh, and I looked at the knife tool page on the Blender Wiki, and I'm not sure if there's a way to make it so that a new edge is made using the knife tool. I took a screenshot, and hopefully it'll explain better than I can of what I'm trying to do. Oh and I'm using Blender version 2.71, by the way. Evaluate $$\int \frac{2-3x}{2+3x}\sqrt\frac{1+x}{1-x}d x$$ What substitution should I use ? $\sqrt\frac{1+x}{1-x}$ suggests $x=cos2\theta $ but its not useful in $\frac{2-3x}{2+3x}$ How do I call a .NET assembly from C/C++? Suppose I am writing an application in C++ and C#.  I want to write the low level parts in C++ and write the high level logic in C#.  How can I load a .NET assembly from my C++ program and start calling methods and accessing the properties of my C# classes?