Science | Software | Coding | Opportunities | Kids&teens

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Science |Software | Coding | Opportunities | Kids&teens

  1. Use one (or more) of the cloud storage services. The most popular are: Dropbox, Google Drive and Onedrive. All three of those will give you some space for free. Dropbox also gives you referral bonus space, so make sure to sign-up using my referral link! Thanks :)

    You might also be eligible for extra space from your university or company or if you purchase a Samsung or an HTC phone. The benefits of cloud storage are enormous: faster and easier sharing of data, access from multiple computers, better back-up, etc.

  2. Latex is a typesetting language for mathematicians, scientists and engineers. You can use it to write thesis, articles, notes etc. - once you learn it, it's much easier to type math with Latex. There are two commonly used tutorials for it: a shorter one and a more extensive one You can also print and use this cheat sheet.
  3. Use a citation manager. Everybody has their own preference, but Mendeley is a common choise. It is free and available for desktop and mobile; it allows to save papers with highlights, notes etc. and automatically connects to your Mendeley profile.
    Cite this for me allows you to quickly manage a few citations online. It saves time when you are working on a small report with up to 10 citations.
    Other common citation managers are: Endnote and Zotero. Caltech supports the licence for Zotero, find out if your school is paying for one of them. But beware, that your privileges will expire once you graduate and you might lose your account or be forced to pay for it. There are ways to export your citations from one manager to the other, but well... it's a pain.
  4. Stay on top of the research you have to follow with the mobile app called Researcher. It allows you to track specific journals, keywords and browse through the abstracts of newly published articles in the news feed. You can then bookmark an item that caught your attention
  5. Notepad++ is my preferred text editor on Windows machines. It's tiny, lightning fast and has what one needs to code and edit text files.
  6. I use Visual Studio Code to edit, compile and run trial code. It has multi-language support and cool interface with many useful and user-friendly features. It requires some disk space, but not an autrocious amount and it runs smoothly. Other popular IDE's are: Visual studio IDE is very heavy; Eclipse, CodeLite IDE; Clion focuses on C-languages and NetBeans focuses on Java; Xcode is tailored for Mac development; and Anaconda is the most popular for Data Science with R and Python (if you believe their self-reporting).

Science | Software | Coding | Opportunities | Kids&teens

  1. DataCamp has a selection of courses on R, Python, Statistics and Data analysis.
  2. Interactive vim tutorial vim is a popular text editor in Linux-based systems. Print and use a graphical cheat sheet or a more conventional one.
  3. This Cheatsheet wallpaper is really nice way to have the shell, Emacs and vim commands at your fingertips.
  4. Set up your own web-site. Not only will it be fun and useful exercise as you will learn html and css, you will have an opportunity to stand out! I found this link and the templates from HTML5 to be immensely helpful. I used this template from them for the web-site you are browsing now. I also used brackets to edit the html file.

    You do need a domain to host a web-site. Check if your school/organization is hosting for free. Otherwise, you will need to purchase a domain. On the bright side, you will have freedom of choice for your domain name! This website discusses the issue.

  5. Check out a bunch of educational and fun coding games in the Kids&teens section!

Science | Software | Coding | Opportunities | Kids&teens

High School students International summer school for young physicists, Perimeter Institute, Canada;
Intel ISEF competition;
CERN's S'Cool Lab and Beamline for schools programs
High School graduates Pearson (international) Scholarship at the University of Toronto;
Oxford's Reach scholarship and the Hill foundation scholarship for Russian citizens;
Cambridge scholarships, etc.
Undergrad students Young Weizmann Scholars, and Kupzinet-Getz International Summer School in Israel;
Amgen Scholars Undergraduate Summer Research Program in Science and Biotechnology;
OIST Research Internships in Japan;
Caltech summer research, SURF in California, USA;
CQIQC Program in Toronto, Canada;
Undergraduate Summer Programs at the Perimeter Institute, Canada;
Internships in Germany.
Graduate students Telluride Science Research Center schools in the USA;
CECAM Summer schools in Europe

Science | Software | Coding | Opportunities | Kids&teens

  1. If you are a bookworm like me, you never have enough time to read. I found a solution that works for me. Overdrive is an app, that offers access to thousands of e-books and audiobooks, that can be borrowed from your local library. All you need is a library card (the membership is typically free) and you can listen to the audiobooks any time you perform a chore, commute on public transit etc. Make sure to listen it on 1.5 speed at least! Otherwise the reading is painfully slow...

    I am also happy with the Goodreads account to keep the books you read straight and to see what your friends are reading.

  2. Short videos explaining scientific concepts: TED Ed, Crash Course, Socratica, Scishow and many others. Most of these have their corresponding Youtube channels, many with kid-friendly versions. Enjoy!
  3. Learn to type fast with the websites like Touch Typing study, or TypingClub, or my favorite typing.com
  4. Learn how to code with Codecademy, play the Code Combat game or code your own game on this website called Coding Game. You can also use Scratch to code stuff!