Study on the properties of inhomogeneous media plays a central role throughout the history of physics, e.g.
Possion’s theory on magnetism of composites, Faraday’s dielectric model of composites, Maxwell’s and later
Rayleigh’s work on conductivity of composites, and Einstein’s thesis on viscosity of fluid-particle media. As
a special branch of this field, percolation research on phase transition and critical phenomena was originated
with lattice percolation theories in 1950s [1]. The idealization of a lattice structure is convenient for analytical
and numerical manipulations; however, it is far from reality of most inhomogeneous materials. Continuum

A PhD student position is available on nonlinear multiscale modeling of materials for Fall 2010. Please contact xxu1@stevens.edu ASAP

 X. Frank Xu, PhD, Assistant Professor
Dept of Civil, Envir & Ocean
Engrg
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, NJ
07030
201-216-8711(O)
201-216-8739 (Fax)
http://personal.stevens.edu/~xxu1

This issue of CAM digest re-published D.N. Arnold's article  "Integrity under Attack - the state of scholarly publishing". The orginal article is available via weblink

http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/siam-columns/integrity-under-attack.pdf

I feel the discussion (actually the journals mentioned in the article as well) is quite relevant to the mechanics community. While impact factors have no much meaning especially in mathematics, its role may not be easily dysfunctionalized by abusive publications/citations in a short run....

 X. Frank Xu     

The article can be downloaded from  http://personal.stevens.edu/~xxu1/authorProof-07-10-1234.pdf

Research on multiscale stochastic modeling is becoming big. In this article "A Green-function-based multiscale method for uncertainty quantification of finite body random heterogeneous materials"  doi:10.1016/j.compstruc.2009.05.009 , one of the first multiscale stochastic methods is developed for solid mechanics applications.....