Let me present to you - the Worldwide EAP Newsletter (http://ndeaa.jpl.nasa.gov/nasa-nde/lommas/eap/WW-EAP-Newsletter.html).

This newsletter has been in existence since 1999.  It is meticulously maintained by its editor - Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen aka Yosi (of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab), and published bienially over the past 10 years.  Over the years, it has published interesting new research, reports and expert comments on EAP technology, and of soft-active materials.  It is written in a clear and concise manner; it is an easy read even for people outside of this field.

Mechanical energy can be converted to electrical energy by using a dielectric elastomer generator.  The elastomer is susceptible to various modes of failure, including electrical breakdown, electromechanical instability, loss of tension, and rupture by stretch.  The modes of failure define a cycle of maximal energy that can be converted.  This cycle is represented on planes of work-conjugate coordinates, and may be used to guide the design of practical cycles.

Thank you for your interest shown in my previously posted work.  Here's a post-print for an article of an extension to my previous work.  Extension in the sense that the MD simulation was performed on "larger" metallic nanowires (2.0 nm to 6.0 nm), and the behavior of gold (Au) nanowires were studied.  The mechanism behind strain-induced amorphization was explained and the phenomenon of multiple necking was observed, implying the presence of "localized" amorphization instead of a "globalized" one observed in shorter nanowires.

Attached is a post-print of one of my journal papers submitted in 2005.  A brief description of my paper is as follows: