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#PhDlife

8 posts8 participants3 posts today

Wish ur Academic Writing sounded like real clever and everything?

Then check out (and bookmark) the Manchester 'Academic Phrase Bank'
phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk

For example under 'Being critical': How to Offer constructive suggestions?

It offers these sentence starter suggestions:

The study would have been more
interesting if it had included …

These studies would have been more useful if they had focused on …

The study would have been more relevant
if the researchers had asked …

The questionnaire would have been more useful if it had asked participants about …

The research would have been more relevant if a wider range of X had been explored.

3-day weekend so far… Worked 1/2 day on Friday & went to dinner with 2 friends at an old school diner with great food. Saturday, met my high school pal & walked around the mall. Replaced my pillow, which seems to have done the trick for my neck pain! Exercised daily ... Must start reading for my summer class which starts this week, so, back to the grind soon…but it’s been wonderful to have time with friends before it starts up again. #summertime #PhDLife

Weekly lab report:

back in the lab this week!
The old Femtopower 1W 30fs pulse laser is operational and we successfully detected an argon ion signal on our MCP detector. There was a bit of extra heavier particles, so I restarted the baking of the interaction chamber. The pressure rose at the set temperature which is what we wanted to see. The baking expels gases and solids from the metal chamber surfaces and inside the metal itself. A bonus with the old laser was a demonstration of self-focusing of the laser beam. The "screams" of air molecules as electrons are torn from them is very noticible.

The Pockels Cell driver has been repaired. We tested the input voltages from the Signal Delay Generator, but they are now about 700V over spec and they do not respond to controls to adjust them down. This suggests the power supply or the regulation system is at fault (probably the power supply). The voltages were too low a month ago. To eliminate changes in the testing equipment, we tested our testing equipment, but it gave consitent values. It was a good idea to get the old laser going.

My increased focus has seen significant progress in writing the theory paper. I plan to have more words and diagrams than necessary, then pare it back. The excised parts will probably not be wasted as they will end up separately in my thesis. Setting and achieving simple consistent writing goals!

I sent @PLOS a mail with a fix for their #BibTeX style so that @misc entries (e.g. preprints) include a DOI (if any).

I always find it super frustrating when looking through a references list, then finding no DOI for an entry, when there definitely exists one - you see that the journal's bibliography style ignores DOIs for anything but @article etc. Don't really understand why.

Haven't had much success with other journals in this regard. We'll see if #PLOS is better 😀

🏠 Temporary housing in central Berlin for HU affiliates

✨ HU Berlin offers fully furnished 2-bedroom apartments for international students, PhDs, and researchers – available for 4 months (Aug–Nov 2025).

📍 Berlin-Mitte
💶 >€460/month per room
🏡 With kitchen, balcony, Wi-Fi, laundry, bike storage
👥 Shared living possible (gender-matched)
🔗 international.hu-berlin.de/en/
📩 international.campus@hu-berlin.de

www.international.hu-berlin.deLooking for a flat? Special offer for HU members! InternationalHU is offering centrally located, furnished flats and rooms for rent between 3 August and 28 November. This temporary housing is available to students, researchers and other members of the university community.

I'm looking for tips on how early-career researchers can get in touch with interesting people at major academic conferences. For instance, arranging ahead of time coffee dates during the conference with presenters who are working on similar topics. Or deliberately creating links to the work of other session participants in your own presentation. What else has worked well for you?