email asking professor for help I have been rejected by a particular university for MS two times now. I really want to get into it to work with a professor. I am thinking of emailing him to ask him what I can do to improve myself to become acceptable. I am trying to improve myself on various fronts that I can think of, so I would like ask him if I am on right path. I am a first generation student and I have no guide to ask, so he is that only one I can think of, to ask these questions. What would be the proper subject line for this? Right now I have "Help needed to improve myself" as subject. In the body, I will explain my situation and ask him if he could give me some of his time. What would be the proper way to proceed in asking for his help?
How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor? When needing to ask a professor about something important and potentially delicate, what is an appropriate way to phrase the question or write the email?  Examples include:   Requesting a recommendation letter Asking for exceptions to policy (e.g., ignoring a course prerequisite, rescheduling an exam) Asking if you can do research with them, join a group, get into a program Scheduling a meeting, exam, or defense Letting them know about a change of plans Letting them know about a life event affecting your work or studies (e.g., wedding, funeral, sickness, vacation)
Number of publications needed to get into a computer science PhD program? I've looked at the resumes of the type of candidates that get into computer science PhD programs at the top few universities (e.g. Stanford, MIT etc.) and a lot of them seem to have multiple publications (2-4) done during their undergraduate years. Is this representative of the entire pool? Or is this just a self-selected group that puts their resumes online.  I currently have one first-author workshop paper (5 pages), and I wonder how this might affect my chances at entry into these top universities. How to make a multiboot USB key? I want to cut my 8 GB USB key into several partitions to use  for a Windows XP (maybe d before).   I also want to put the  remix pack into it such that it has the second bootable OS. I want to tweak and modify it a little because if I can I want to switch Ubuntu 9.04 to the  version.  How to do it easily?  IMP: in short I want to make a dual-boot USB key with Windows XP SP3 and Ubuntu 8.04.3 LTS. What are good starting settings to store for exposure bracketing shots? I started experimenting with the Custom Functions (C1,C2,C3) on my Canon 7D and I decided a useful one to have may be setting it up for exposure bracketing. So it's a quick switch if I ever need it, as opposed to going through the menu to set it up.  I realize the settings would vastly depend on the situation, but do you have any suggestions for some good all round settings to program in as a starting point?    Examples: 1 stop vs 1 1/3 vs 2 stop brackets / ISO choices / Metering mode / shooting mode and so on. Custom fields not useable in Approve/Reject Approval Request I'm trying to get through my first SalesForce mod and it's definitely been a rocky path. I have one task I'm trying to do, but this section is holding me back.  I have two custom fields.  One a pick list and the other a text box. I have added them to the Approve/Reject Approval Request section in the Opportunity page. I added the fields through the Select Fields to Display on Approval Page Layout and they DO show up on the Approve/Reject Approval Request section. I added them in like ().  However, just the label for the fields show, the field itself is nowhere to be found and can't be used.    You can see and even use the fields when you open the Opportunity page itself, but when you go to use the Approve/Reject, you can't do anything with them or see any values.  I was never a SalesForce user and got this tossed in my lap and really don't know my way around yet. I appreciate any help on this!!  Thanks!!  Kurt Why can we distinguish different pitches in a chord but not different hues of light? In music, when two or more pitches are played together at the same time, they form a chord. If each pitch has a corresponding wave frequency (a pure, or fundamental, tone), the pitches played together make a , which is obtained by simple addition. This wave is no longer a pure sinusoidal wave.  For example, when you play a low note and a high note on a piano, the resulting sound has a wave that is the mathematical sum of the waves of each note. The same is true for light: when you shine a 500nm wavelength (green light) and a 700nm wavelength (red light) at the same spot on a white surface, the reflection will be a superposition waveform that is the sum of green and red.  My question is about our perception of these combinations. When we hear a chord on a piano, we’re able to discern the pitches that comprise that chord. We’re able to “pick out” that there are two (or three, etc) notes in the chord, and some of us who are musically inclined are even able to sing back each note, and even name it. It could be said that we’re able to decompose a Fourier Series of sound.  But it seems we cannot do this with light. When you shine green and red light together, the reflection appears to be yellow, a “pure hue” of 600nm, rather than an overlay of red and green. We can’t “pick out” the individual colors that were combined. Why is this?  Why can’t we see two hues of light in the same way we’re able to hear two pitches of sound? Is this a characteristic of human psychology? Animal physiology? Or is this due to a fundamental characteristic of electromagnetism? Stein's lemma condition (Apologies if I break some conventions, this is my first time posting!)  I am working on proving Stein's characterization of the Normal distribution: for Z $\sim N(0,1)$ and some differentiable function $f$ with $E[|f'(Z)|] &lt; \infty$, $$E[Zf(Z)] = E[f'(Z)]$$ Writing the LHS expression in integral form and integrating by parts, I eventually obtain: $$E[Zf(Z)] = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}} \left[ -f(z) \cdot \exp \left\{ \frac{-z^2}{2} \right\} \right] \Bigg|_{-\infty}^{\infty} + E[f'(Z)]$$ Now I need to show that the first expression on the right hand size is zero. Intuitively, this seems clear because of the exponential term, but I am having trouble explicitly applying the condition on $f'$ to prove this rigorously. Any ideas? I have a Lubuntu (now 14.04) installation. Recently, I logged in to find that the Wi-Fi icon had disappeared, and there was some sort of a keyboard icon in it's place. I have restarted multiple times, but it doesn't fix it. I can't find the same applet in the panel settings, and resetting the panel didn't help. When I try to manually start nm-applet, it starts, but prints a bunch of warnings to the console:  nm-applet-Message: using fallback from indicator to GtkStatusIcon   It then starts, using ugly icons for the Wi-Fi connectivity symbol.  What do I need to do to make it start correctly? Once it starts, why isn't it using the right icons? Kworker, what is it and why is it hogging so much CPU? How to install X11/xorg? My 12.04 x64 system won't boot into GUI, but I can still use virtual console with my own account, so apparently it's the Windows Management System that's causing it, how can I reinstall it from tty, what's the apt-get command? How to enable hibernation? In Ubuntu 12.04 and newer, . How can I enable this back? What is the best way to add options to a select from a JavaScript object with jQuery? After updating to 2.81, my previous works (done in 2.80) doesn't show colors This image is what's supposed to look like in Edit Mode/Object Mode(although I still can make these screenshots even after the update by pressing F12 which is rendering) but the following is what my donut looks like now in Blender.  It shows no shadows and colors. The only thing I did is updating blender to 2.81 from 2.80. And I don't know what but something seems off with blender. Sometimes I can't click any objects so I just pressed tab and then now it's all clickable. Seems like I was in edit mode, but to me, it looked exactly like object mode. I don't know what is wrong with it. How do I make my colors show up again? Should I have more than one brokerage account? I have my brokerage business with one particular well-known US brokerage house. I find being able to access my retirement accounts and personal investment accounts through the one interface useful.  However, I was talking with a friend of mine and she said she never puts more than about $50k into any particular brokerage account.  Managing three or four such accounts seems like too much overhead for me. I'd prefer to spend my "investment time" reading up on my investments and researching new ones.  One reason to have more than one brokerage account with different houses is the issue of  insurance:     Within limits, SIPC expedites the return of missing customer property by protecting each customer up to $500,000 for securities and cash (including a $250,000 limit for cash only).   What other reasons could I have to use more than one brokerage account? Question about $\lim _{q \rightarrow \infty}\|f\|_{q}=\|f\|_{\infty}$ Let $(X,B,\mu)$ be a complete measure space,Show that $$\lim _{q \rightarrow \infty}\|f\|_{q}=\|f\|_{\infty}, \quad \forall f \in \bigcup_{p} \bigcap_{p \leqslant q&lt;\infty} L^{q}$$ So,$\lim _{q \rightarrow \infty}\|f\|_{q}$ , $\|f\|_{\infty}$ are equal-norm with space $ L^{\infty} \cap\left(\bigcup_{p} \bigcap_{p \leqslant q} L^{q}\right)$. Case 1: $m(X)&lt;\infty $.It's easy to prove that. Case 2: $m(X)=\infty $. I have no idea about it,And I started to doubt the correctness of this conclusion. Can somebody give me a hint for this problem or just give an example to prove that this is a wrong conclusion when $m(X)=\infty $. Thanks in advance. Zip folder without including path to folder and require only one argument I'm trying to make a zip function that'll do all the steps I typically do when zipping a file or folder. Say my current directory is ~, and I want to zip a folder named Folder1, whose file path is ~/Folder2/Folder1.  Issuing  cd ~/Folder2 &amp;&amp; zip -r Folder1 Folder1 &amp;&amp; cd -   does exactly what I want. Namely, it zips so that the output Folder1.zip does not contain folders that lead up to the folder I'm zipping (namely, /home/user/Folder2), it zips recursively, and it takes in the first argument of zip with the exact name as the file or folder I'm zipping (Folder1.zip).  So I want to make a function in my .zshrc something akin to  coolerzip() { cd /path/to/file &amp;&amp; zip -r file file &amp;&amp; cd - }   where it need only take in one argument, which in this case, it will be ~/Folder2/Folder1. Then Folder1 will be the name for both files in coolerzip, and I will cd right into ~/Folder2 so Folder1 lies in my current directory before zipping. Is there any way I can achieve this so that coolerzip only requires one argument rather than three? Calculating the peak voltage of a zener diode output I have a problem with this homework, I have to calculate the peak voltage of the output after stabilizing with a zener diode.  My Input Voltage is Vin = 5V + 0.7Vsin (2pif*t) with f=10kHz  My circuit is a simple regulator with no load resistor. The series resistance is 82 Ohms, Zener voltage is 3V, max. current through the diode is 33.3mA. How can I calculate the peak output ? My problem is the offset created by 5V, wouldnt the Zener voltage be reached immidiately with this configuration ?         &ndash; Schematic created using How to set up RAID 1? "Protect Questions" privilege page has confusing wording The wording on the  privilege page is confusing and would benefit from being clarified. See these questions on  and . Suggested wording from  is to replace this:  Which questions can be protected? Any question, even a deleted question, can be protected and unprotected, subject to the following restrictions:  The question must be at least a day old A user can unprotect any protected question   with the following:  Which questions can be protected? Any question at least a day old, even a deleted question, can be protected and unprotected. A user with the privilege can unprotect any protected question. About embryonic and genetic evidence of evolution? My question here is about evidence for evolution from Embryology and from Genetics.  Mammals do have similar Embryos, but is it the case that for each species there is an embryonic development that occurs in earlier species, has such relationship been observed? What I mean for example if we generally conceive of having species$Sp_1,Sp_2,...,Sp_n$ where each $ Sp_{i+1}$ being evolved from $Sp_i,$ then is it the case that the embryonic development stages of $ Sp_{i+1}$ contains some of the embryonic development stages of all of its ancestor species.  Similar question to 1 but regarding Genetics, is it the case that every species has a genetic thumbprint of its ancestors that lie there in the non-functional sections of its DNA, i.e. is it the case that all the genetic history of our evolution is recorded in the non-functional section of our DNA. So do human DNA have some portions of the DNA of some dinosaurs for example? Ban "What have you tried?" links in comments Recently on SO, I've been noticing a lot of link-only comments on (admittedly bad) questions.  The typical comment looks like this:        Now, my first instinct is to flag the comment as "not constructive" or "too chatty", but the fact is that the blog post linked to is actually good advice.  On the whole though, the way it is being wielded like a blunt instrument comes across as—at best—lazy arrogance in my opinion and is not adding anything to the network.  Can we ban "What have you tried?" links like we did with ?  An example:    To be clear, I'm not proposing that we stop people asking for clarification or expecting askers to explain themselves properly. I just don't think comments like these are particularly constructive.