I have not been funded so have little experience with gaining funds (I am self-funding), however, I would always be honest in an application as if there are subsequent issues in this area the Uni would have the right to withdraw support. There will be lots of student applications also requiring studentship funding or external funds so this will not be unusual to them. How best to convey this I think is what you are better to ask! Good luck with the aaplications (up)

Thank you so much Starlight222, all received and printed off for scrutiny this afternoon! I shall vote you a 'mega' star for such a rapid and very helpful response :-)

Please can anyone help me to access these two papers please. The Uni doesn't cover Science Direct journals unfortunately and these are fairly critical to my write-up. Thank you.

Erythrocyte consumption of nitric oxide: competition experiment and model analysis.
(PMID:11178933) Vaughn MW, Huang KT, Kuo L, Liao JC
Nitric Oxide : Biology and Chemistry / Official Journal of the Nitric Oxide Society [2001, 5(1):18-31]Nitric oxide from nitrite reduction by hemoglobin in the plasma and erythrocytes. (PMID:17964300) Chen K, Piknova B, Pittman RN, Schechter AN, Popel AS
Nitric Oxide : Biology and Chemistry / Official Journal of the Nitric Oxide Society [2008, 18(1):47-60

Well done W!

I am also very close with all chapters now written and some tidying up, graph insertions, reference insertions, editing and formatting to do. I thought that the light at the end of the tunnel would be there for me too, but I still feel that I have a mountain to climb in terms of acheiving the final product. The euphoria is not there as I hoped it would be as I still seem to be in the midst of the gloom. I am not sure that I need to submit an 'intention to submit' form for my Uni, but I will check on this. I was planning submission by Easter 2011, so not long to go in reality. My external and internal examiners are all agreed and waiting so progress is generally good. I just need to keep on going.......

Hope you are inspired to get over the final hurdle, let us know how it goes.

Thanks for this Nadia! I was contemplating how to distinguish between my two references that were published in the same year. I was considering annotation with a or b but was unsure of the correct presentation. Now I am enlightened and you have saved me the googling!

Hi Cornflower, yes the equation editor is part of the Word 2007 that I have. I have found with this Office package that I sometimes have had to 'add on' programme parts from the original disk, ie stats facility in Excel. It is in the 'Insert' menu and on the far right there is an icon that says 'equation'. You can click on the equation symbol to insert your own or click on the down arrow for any prefix equations or for ones that you have saved.

With your issues of using Word or Open Office and the files rearranging themselves, have you considered saving in compatability mode or using a facility such as dropbox?

I use equation editor in Word which allows you to save it once the equation is typed so it is easy to re-insert the same equation later. Some symbols that I need are not there in the mathematical section but can be found in the foreign letters sections. Once you have used a symbol it seems to stay in the immediate window for ease of further use. I find that you can present your equations in a few different formats by right clicking on the equation box, oh and it also aligns them all up left, right, centre etc.

Generally easy to use once you have got the idea of how it works!

I am part-time so I am at the 5 years and 6 months. I hope to submit by next easter so will take about 6 years, effectively 3 years full time. I have applied for a 12 month extension just in case as I will be borderline on the submission and completion dates. I think that 3 (FT) or 6 (PT) years is an unrealistic aim and a small extension is often all that is needed. We would all love to complete early though !!

I use a Freecom ToughDrive as an external hardrive. I think it is Samsung as this is what appears when it comes on-line with the laptop. It now comes as a 750GB at £140 ish. I have had mine a while so it is a smaller GB size but has loads of space left. I try to back up on this, our home network shared drive, emails to myself, dropbox etc. I think I need to get in the habit of regularly backing up at this stage (draft thesis) so I don't lose too much if I have to go back to an older version. Previously I used USB sticks but found they corrupted easily.

Well I have managed to improve the structure and linkage of the lit review. Now I need to review a few more papers critically and add into the review. So that is my plan tonight!

Star-shape and sneaks you are doing very well with goals, well done!

Hi, can i join in too? I don't get much done during the day as bambinos use up all of my time ;-) but I do crack the whip in the evenings! I have all chapters in draft with feedback addressed for chapters 1-7. Chapter 8 Discussion is with supervisors.....oh dear am nervous about this one. Otherwise I need to edit and format, sort out appendices, reference section etc ,'so near and yet so far' springs to mind

So my aim tonight is to revisit chapter 1 lit review for one area as I feel it lacks something now all of the chapters are drafted.

Well I have finally finished my draft discussion and sent it off to my supervisors (yes I have a couple!). I have had so many concerns with formats, headings etc and am rather worried about the red pen it is about to receive! I feel that I have said what I need to say but have I said it effectively.

So while they red pen I will have a glass of red!!

I find this whole situation rather amusing and wonder why you have published this. Firstly you tell us about how the university will do anything (underhandedly) to pass PhD students based on funding from successful students. But then you also tell us how you have plagerised and also undermined your supervisor for your own gain. Are these the qualities of a successful PhD student? I would have thought not. You are obviously angry with the institution to print this, yet you are blatantly going to accept this award when it was not given fairly. Interestingly you have registered with this site purely to divulge this info......why?

It is a shame that such an award is given in this instance when it seems there is some serious ethical issues presented here. Fortunately most of the PhDs that seem to be awarded here are for people who have passed due to sheer hard work and determination. Unfortunately some people have failed despite their willingness to work hard so obviously your system didn't apply to them. Perhaps you should consider whether you really did deserve to get your PhD?

I'd suggest taking a mini break before starting another new task. There will always be a boring section or one that you will not be as happy about compared to others. Chapter 2 is obviously your 'mundane' section. Is there anything that you could do about it? Are the changes worth doing for the thesis to present at the viva? To both questions the likely answer is 'no, not really', so don't worry about it. You are doing very well with your prep and obviously being very critical and judgemental of your own work. This is the exact quality needed to show you have what is takes to be a Dr. Well done, it will all soon be over!

Well Done Dr Barnaby! Would love to know what kind of areas you discussed at the viva. 1hr 40min viva with minor typos would be amazing, I long for a result like that. Congratulations.