I am a mathematics undergraduate. I would like to get into a top 10 PhD school and might not do so this year. I would like to apply again and want to do what whatever is necessary to maximize my chances.   I have always heard that a masters in math is terminal and it might be too late to apply for one this year anyway(please correct me if I am wrong here).  What are my options?  Edit: I am currently in India, finishing my bachelors from one of the top schools here. I applied to places like UCB, Columbia, Chicago, Michigan-Ann Arbour and Wisconsin - in the area of algebraic number theory. I now realize that it was a little out of reach as of right now.   I have slightly low grades overall and good but not great math GPA(8.5 and 9.3/10 - 10/10 in graduate courses) and Subject scores(88%). I also do not really have research but from what I understand, undergraduate research is rare.
When applying to a PhD program in the US, how does the admissions process work? If an applicant is weak in a particular area, is it possible to offset that by being strong in a different area?  Note that this question originated from this . Please feel free to edit the question to improve it.
Need help identifying the fantasy book about a portal to a fantasy land in the basement of a house I can't remember any names of characters or locations where the story took place but I do remember the basic plot of this early 90's novel; a human man inherits his father's house. In the basement there is a doorway to a fantastic land where adventure ensues. He fights elves and wins their deadly elf swords which he buries under concrete at the end of the novel (because if you don't get rid of them they will come back and get you).  At the end of the novel he must remake the world in his own imagination, turning the tough Elf King into a cobbler and making Jesse Jackson President. I have been looking high and low and have drawn a blank.  Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! order $a$ = 5, $a^3b = ba^3$. show that that $ab = ba$. Origin of electric charge Baryons have charges that are the result of a polynomial calculation of their building blocks (quarks)'s fractional charges. But what gives these quarks electric charges? What interactions do they have with photons? And what about leptons, like muons and electrons? How do they get their -1 charge? And then, how do positrons and anti-muons get +1 charge? Same goes for quarks: how does up-antiquarks get -2/3 charge? Or I may want to formulate my question this way:  How does any elementary particle interact with the EM-Force to get an electric charge? Source shell script automatically in terminal How can I automatically source a particular shell script when I open a terminal window by right clicking somewhere and choosing "open in terminal"?  For example, every time I open a terminal I need to run the following command line:  source myscript   How can I make it so that I don't have to type this automatically?  My script is written in tsch:  #!/bin/tcsh setenv DISPLAY 127.0.0.1:10.0 cd /ast/dcm/data   I'm using CentOS 7. Is this WUBI? What is "Installation size" setting for? I'm new to Ubuntu... I went to the downloads page and downloaded the Windows Installer as I am hoping initially to have a dual boot on my currently Win 7 PC (I would consider preserving my Win7 install as a VM under Ubuntu instead - advice?)  It's asking me to choose an "Installation size" but there's no explanation as to what the significance of this is. Is this a disc partition?  Can I increase it easily later if it's too small?  I came here to ask these questions and now I see a bunch of threads about 'WUBI' and possible downsides of installing Ubuntu this way. Is the Windows Installer I just downloaded going to give me WUBI? Word for giving animal characteristics (esp. physical ones) to humans I am writing a paper about Art Spiegelman's Maus, specifically the metaphor that Spiegelman creates by depicting his obviously quite human characters with the heads of various animals, or a couple times animal masks. The metaphor is used at times to bestialize/animalize the acts of the Nazis and, in some cases, to show the arbitrary nature of the classes/groups/divisions they and others applied to human beings.  I considered "chremamorphism," but this describes the attribution of the characteristics of an object to, or the objectification of, a human. I also considered "animalize" and "bestialize," but those describe some of the effects that can be produced by Spiegelman's metaphor, not the metaphor itself - in many scenes in the book, the characters are extremely human, and I think that the negative or degrading connotations of these words makes them inappropriate for this use. Nor do "anthropomorphism" or "personification" fit, because Spiegelman is not applying human characteristics to animals but the other way around. None of the words that I can think of quite fit.  What is a word that accurately describes Art Spiegelman's depiction of obviously human characters as having animal body parts or wearing animal masks in the comic book Maus? Can anybody explain the necessity of the RC network shown in the figure. I found this in circuit for a logic power supply using Fly-Back converter? How can I view the time of a text message in iOS 7? In iOS 7, I've noticed that some SMS/MMS messages have a date and time stamp displayed above the message.  Although this is useful, not all text's in the list receive such a date and time stamp.  Is there a way that I can view the date and time for ever text message? Reflection is quad dependent and looks non realistic Im rendering varous objects with a Sharp glossy effect but the reflections are quad dependent on the object (image below), meaning they behave separately within every quad making it look 8bit-like. Can anyone tell me why this happens?. (Im pretty sure subdividing would fix it but I want to know why I cant have a low poly object reflecting normaly.  The object has 2 modifiers: Subdiv Surface and Solidify. (Perhaps the Subdiv is causing it?). Help me you Blender savys I dont have a powerful CPU to test and test within every render would take me hours and hours.  Image: Why is integration the inverse of differentiation, I mean why do I get the same function when I integrate and then differentiate the result? I watched this movie when I was a kid and never discovered it again.  It’s about a boy whose father left him after his divorce from the mother, the kid enters a world somehow where he has a big sword he needs to keep searching for precious stones to fill it with. it has certain holes that look like each stone shape! I also remember the kid going to eat with his mythical (dragon-like friend), and he gets stuck in the restaurant because the crazy restaurant lady won’t let him leave without finishing huge amounts of food!  The kid also gets bullied so I’m guessing the the swords journey is to teach the kid how to deal with all of this... Wrong (hyper-)references after resetting chapter counter The following MWE produces a PDF whose TOC has two entries: “Foo” and “Bar” with correct page numbers. So far, so good. However, upon clicking on the link to “Bar”, I am taken to the page for “Foo” instead.  \documentclass{report} \usepackage{hyperref} \newcommand*\backmatter{\setcounter{chapter}{0}}  \begin{document} \tableofcontents \chapter{Foo} \backmatter \chapter{Bar} \end{document}   (Produced with pdflatex, run twice.)  This MWE is whittled down from a (much!) more complex document but the above does seem to reproduce the error reliably.  Re-setting the chapter count seems to confuse hyperref, even though the page references are still accurate. Notice that in my real document, \backmatter does other things, including setting the numbering style to alphabetical so there’s no chance of confusion even though both chapters are ostensibly labelled as “Chapter 1”.  How do I fix this? Is this a bug? Are there workarounds? Is there a noun for something that is "out of place" in space, like an anachronism is "out of place" in time? E.g., an old-timey barber shop in a chic neighborhood. Background: I'm making a retro style game for both fun, and an unofficial contest.   I have bought a song, song X. However, I then found notation for song X, and all the instruments. So basically, it's a program recreating song X in a sense.  I took the notation, and used another program to make it sound like a chiptune does (just for the fun of it, and it sounds good :P). However, I would like to use this in my game. It's non-commercial, but is this allowed? I would've said yes, because I'm not actually using the original, copyrighted song.  I think the main point is can I:   Use the music with no reference to the author Use the music with a reference, since it's non-profit. Not use the music at all since the melody and rhythm is copyright. Does app review rejection list all issues? Our app was rejected recently with reason Google+ signin, which we understood is not according to Apple policy and need to fix.  While discussing about this issue we came across an interesting question with Apple review process, does Apple review team list all issues (if more than one exists) while rejecting app (or) would they stop reviewing other areas as soon as they found an issue (in our case Google+ signin)? Is imperative Quicksort in situ (in-place) or not? Test model coefficient (regression slope) against some value In R, when I have a (generalized) linear model (lm, glm, gls, glmm, ...), how can I test the coefficient (regression slope) against any other value than 0? In the summary of the model, t-test results of the coefficient are automatically reported, but only for comparison with 0. I want to compare it with another value.  I know I can use a trick with reparametrizing y ~ x as y - T*x ~ x, where T is the tested value, and run this reparametrized model, but I seek simpler solution, that would possibly work on the original model. Do companies have IT "spyware" on corporate iPhones? RAID10 vs. RAID5 for data files We are trying to evaluate the potential performance improvements that could be gained by switching an existing applications .mdf files to a RAID10 LUN vs. the existing RAID5 LUN they are living on right now. The transaction log already lives on a RAID10 LUN.   So the question is, if we move data files to RAID10 would the end user see performance improvements in the GUI? or would it be just faster writes to the data files when a checkpoint occurs and the changes get written to the data file but no improvement would be seen at the end user level? Official ESTA application website and are the others scams? A quick search for ESTA application returned many results. According to , the official site to apply for an ESTA is .  Are the others scams, legitimate third party resellers or "added value" services?    (defunct - domain is for sale circa 2020)     Can anyone confirm either way?  Updated 2020: The above have better "not affiliated with the U.S. Government" warnings now, but beware there are newer more sneaky sites starting all the time:        And fortunately more official guidance about this issue: