Questions to researchers scientists

This list of questions are inspired by many posts and interviews and my experience. For references, you may see at the end of the

What are some interesting questions to ask researchers/scientists?

Who were your most influential teachers growing up?

Why did you decide to go into your profession?

What do you enjoy the most about your profession?

Did you ever imagine that you would be doing this when you were a teenager/college-student/child?

What would you change if you go back to 20/30 years from now (or to your childhood?)

What would you suggest to someone who want to follow your footsteps (do research in your field)?

What were the turning points or important moments in your research career?

What was the best advice you’ve gotten?

Who are you inspirations both in your field and outside?

What are your daily habits? Are you a morning person or night person?

Could you please explain your research in 5 different levels (inspired by WIRE.com)

Could you please explain your research to a five years old?

What is that you currently working on?

How do you chose PhD students and Postdocs?

If you weren’t a scientist what would you be?

What other jobs have you considered?

Who’s your favorite scientist?

When did you get the call and what situation  or How did you know that you won the award?

Do you use social media? If yes how long every day?

How much is done in your field and what do you envision in your field?

Which one principle you like the most and why?

Which discovery you like the most?







References
Quora: As a teenager what type of interesting question can I ask a Nobel prize winner...

sudo apt/apt-get update error (no update)

Sometimes, I get following error or unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/ while updating the system. What does that mean?
The output in the terminal is as follow:

$ sudo apt update
Reading package lists... Done
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/

$ sudo apt-get update
Reading package lists... Done
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/


Solution.

Just do follow.

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock

Then,

sudo apt-get update 

This will update your system.

IQmol error (not solved yet)

How to install IQmol in Linux?

The IQmol is widely used to analyze the ouptut files form Q-Chem electronic structure theory code. In Windows, it is straight forward to install IQmol.exe package and it works fine.

However, in Linux distribution (Ubuntu 16.04), the .deb package can be installed just by downloading and opening in package installer. However, some functionalities are missing in installation.

Installation from the source.

I cloned the source code from GitHub.com/Iqmol and tried ./configure. I got following error.

./configure
The output in the terminal is:
-- The C compiler identification is GNU 5.4.0
-- The CXX compiler identification is GNU 5.4.0
-- The Fortran compiler identification is GNU 5.4.0
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /usr/bin/cc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /usr/bin/c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting CXX compile features
-- Detecting CXX compile features - done
-- Check for working Fortran compiler: /usr/bin/gfortran
-- Check for working Fortran compiler: /usr/bin/gfortran  -- works
-- Detecting Fortran compiler ABI info
-- Detecting Fortran compiler ABI info - done
-- Checking whether /usr/bin/gfortran supports Fortran 90
-- Checking whether /usr/bin/gfortran supports Fortran 90 -- yes
-- Found OpenGL: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so
CMake Error at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/cmake/Qt5/Qt5Config.cmake:26 (find_package):
  Could not find a package configuration file provided by "Qt5QtCore" with
  any of the following names:

    Qt5QtCoreConfig.cmake
    qt5qtcore-config.cmake

  Add the installation prefix of "Qt5QtCore" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
  "Qt5QtCore_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files.  If
  "Qt5QtCore" provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it has
  been installed.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  CMakeLists.txt:5 (find_package)


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "/home/full/path/to/IMol/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".

How to combine .png files side by side

The package montage can be used to combine png files side by side.

Orignally, I want to combine .eps files together. But, I couldn't do it directly. But, there is way to combine .png files as follow.

Suppose, we have two .png files

montage Figure*.png -tile 2x1 -geometry +0+0 combinedFigure.png

Then, you can use "convert" to convert form .png to .eps as follow.

convert combinedFigure.png combinedFigure.eps

This is how I got the work done. The final output file in .eps is not as clear as I expected. But for now, it is suffice. If I come to know more about this, I will update this post.



Following links would be useful to you.
Stackoverflow.com
imagemagick.org

Matplotlib common errors

Error: matplotlib.pyplot
not enough values to unpack (expected 3, got 2)

This is because, I defined as follows.

fig, ax, bx = plt.subplots()

Then, I did not use bx.

Once I removed bx,. i.e., by setting "fig, ax = plt.subplots()", the problem solved.

How to reduce pdf file size?

For a job applications, I had to upload pdf file which had to be less than 500 MB. But, the file size was larger than 500 MB. How to do this?

Here is a way.

ps2pdf fileName.pdf  outFileName.pdf 

Printing or saving the first page (or specific pages) of pdf in Linux

Install pdftk using:

sudo apt-get install pdftk
or
sudo snap install pdftk


and use:

To save only the first page (in the terminal):

pdftk fileName.pdf cat 10-12 output outfile_p10-12.pdf

To save the first page:

pdftk fileName.pdf cat 1-1 output outfile_p1.pdf

Noble Prize in Physics 2019 awarded to

The Physics Nobel Prize in 2019 has just been announced.
The 2019 Physics Noble prize one-half goes to James Peebles (Canadian American Physicist) for the "theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology", other half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Quer Queloz for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star"

The official site says:

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics are awarded ”for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos”, with one half to James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” and the other half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.”

Nobel prize in Physics is awarded each year for the fundamental contribution in Physics.

Here are three Professor's short biography (from wiki)

"Prof. Peebles OM FRS (born April 25, 1935) is a Canadian-American physicist and theoretical cosmologist who is currently the Albert Einstein Professor Emeritus of Science at Princeton University.[1][2] He is widely regarded as one of the world's leading theoretical cosmologists in the period since 1970, with major theoretical contributions to primordial nucleosynthesis, dark matter, the cosmic microwave background, and structure formation. His three textbooks (Physical Cosmology, 1971; Large Scale Structure of the Universe, 1980; Principles of Physical Cosmology, 1993) have been standard references in the field."

"Prof. Michel G.E. Mayor (born 12 January 1942, Lausanne) is a Swiss astrophysicist and professor emeritus at the University of Geneva's Department of Astronomy.[1] He formally retired in 2007, but remains active as a researcher at the Observatory of Geneva. He is co-winner of the 2010 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize,[2] and the winner of the 2015 Kyoto Prize. Together with Didier Queloz in 1995 he discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi.[3] Mayor holds MS in Physics from the University of Lausanne (1966) and PhD in Astronomy from the Geneva Observatory (1971). His thesis also had an article called "Essay on the kinematical properties of stars in the solar vicinity: possible relation with the galactic spiral structure." He was a researcher at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in 1971. Subsequently, he spent sabbatical semesters at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in northern Chile and at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii system."

"Didier Queloz (born February 23, 1966) is a Swiss astronomer with a prolific record in finding extrasolar planets in the Astrophysics Group of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, and also at the University of Geneva. In 1995 Queloz was a Ph.D. student at the University of Geneva when he and Michel Mayor, his doctoral advisor, discovered the first exoplanet around a main sequence star.[1] Queloz performed an analysis on 51 Pegasi using radial velocity measurements (Doppler spectroscopy), and was astonished to find a planet with an orbital period of 4.2 days. He had been performing the analysis as an exercise to hone his skills.[2] The planet, 51 Pegasi b, challenged the then accepted views of planetary formation, being a hot Jupiter or roaster. He has received the 2011 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award of Basic Sciences (co-winner with Michel Mayor) for developing new astronomical instruments and experimental techniques that led to the first observation of planets outside the solar system. In 2017 he received the Wolf Prize in Physics.[3]. In 2019 he received the Nobel Prize."

For official links, click here

Press Release
Popular Information
Hom page of NobelPrize.Org

Worlds first Quantum Computer reported...

Recently, there is a post titled "Google reports quantum supremacy in draft paper" regarding a pre-print (a draft that would be published in a journal) reporting a Quantum Computer.

The report said that it takes only 200 seconds by the quantum computer containing 53 qubits which would otherwise take 10,000 years if ordinary supercomputer is used.

Amazing...

Physics world reports, "Quantum supremacy, whereby a quantum computer solves a problem in a significantly shorter time than a conventional (classical) computer, may have been achieved for the first time."

It is a collaborative work of scientists from google, Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab.
It is mentioned that now the pre-print has been removed from the site.


Reference
https://physicsworld.com/a/google-reports-quantum-supremacy-in-draft-paper/

What you should know before purchasing courses?

Online learning platforms such as Coursera, Edx are great. They have high quality courses of diverse topics from well-reputed universities around the world. The professors and instructors are often well known and famous in their field. The problem is that the fees is not affordable to get the certificate after finishing the course. It is often priced at least $100 which is huge for most of the countries. I have tried many courses and finished most of the parts. But, when it comes to getting certificate, it becomes difficult. While there is an option to submit for fee withdrawal, I have not tried it. Their online degree courses are also highly priced. But, I definitely value these platforms for offering free courses free of cost. It costs only if you need certificate. Personally, I want to improve my skills, whether it to be programming skills, mathematics, communication skills, etc. But, some times the certificate is important to showcase your skills.

As an alternatives, some learning platforms provide very good courses for learning new topics. However, some of them are predatory and their charging models very. They often change the price of the course based on automatically changing algorithm. The price is fixed on the learner's interest on the courses.

Here are some strategies that I learnt you may follow before purchasing any course in such platforms:

1. Log in to your account from Firefox browser with duckduckgo search engine. Because, they don't track your personal information.
2. Don't add the course to your wish-list. This causes higher prices of courses. This happened to me. I added a number of courses in wish-list. The price never went down $15. Then, when I removed the courses from wish-list, the price of the courses was reduced below $10.
3. If you find a good course try to look for the instructor's coupon. Because, as for as this platform is concerned what the instructors are getting is very small amount. So, use coupons from the instructors and use to help the instructors.