I am attaching a brief overview of electronic structure theories (ab-initio theories) with emphasis on the various approximations that form a basis for these theories. It also contains references that provide a comprehensive introduction to the field.

Giving presentations at conferences or seminar series is a vital part of a researcher's professional life.  Listening to others' presentations is also one of the best ways to stay current with the frontier of a research field. While the audience in conference/seminar room is often limited, a presentation posted online can be virtually viewed by any interested audience. At iMechanica, users have started to post their presentation slides, quite often as the attachments of a post briefing the presentation.  Such a way is simple and effective, but may not be the best way for everyone for the following reasons:

The lecture notes of the two courses I taught at Stanford University during the last two quarters, "ME 340 Elasticity" and "ME 334 Introduction to Statistical Mechanics", are available in PDF format online at:

  http://micro.stanford.edu/~caiwei/me340/

  http://micro.stanford.edu/~caiwei/me334/

Perhaps it could be useful to you.

The criteria of Cermelli and Gurtin (2001, J. Mech. Phys. Solids) for choosing a geometric dislocation tensor in finite plasticity are reconsidered. It is shown that physically reasonable alternate criteria could just as well be put forward to select other measures; overall, the emphasis should be on the connections between various physically meaningful measures as is customary in continuum mechanics and geometry, rather than on criteria to select one or another specific measure.

One of the things that I've thought about often in relation to mechanics is:

 1)  There's a paucity of heroes. Growing up, my heroes were not mechanicians. Certainly not any of the mechanicians in the last 100-150 years. Physics has it's heroes: Feynman, Hawking, Einstein, Wheeler, Bardeen, Oppenheimer etc. etc.

Here is a Lectureship in Solid Mechanics available in the Engineering Science Department at Oxford posted by Prof.Alan Cocks.

We currently have a University Lectureship in Solid Mechanics available in the Engineering Science Department at Oxford.  I have attached a copy of the advert and further particulars. I would be grateful if you could pass this information on to anybody who you think would be interested in this post.  We would welcome applications from candidates with significant potential for research in solid mechanics and are particularly interested in strengthening our activity in the area of high strain rate mechanics.

ES 240 notes for Bending of plates is attached.

This problem set is due Monday, Nov.26, 2007.

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A Ph.D. student opening is currently available in my group in the area of computational nanomechanics and atomistic simulation in order to study the thermo-mechanical properties of carbon-based ablative nanocomposites for thermal protection systems (TPS).  Further details about the project and requirements can be found in the attached file.

Best regards, 

 Prof. Fred Sansoz

 School of Engineering

University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont (USA) 

Part 2 of Plane Elasticity notes. Please see attached.

This Problem Set is due on Friday, Oct. 26. 

Recently, Prof. Suo and several of us students have been discussing the possibility of increasing student presence and activity on iMechanica . With this in mind, two of us: Mahdi Kazemzadeh and I, have identified three important issues we would like to get your thoughts on. Please comment and let us know what you think, even if you are not a student. Also, if you wish to add any more issues you think we should look at, please post your thoughts in this regard as well.

This has reference to (only) the *last paragraph* in Prof. Harry Lewis' recent post, found at: http://www.imechanica.org/node/1423#comment-2880.

The reason I write the present post is because I always seem to have had a view of inventing, learning, or teaching mathematics that is remarkably at odds with what Prof. Lewis' last paragraph *seems* to imply.

This is a winning entry in the Sci/Terp Video Competition at University of Maryland (UMD).

JOM is a monthly publication of TMS--The minerals, metals, and materials society. It covers a wide range of materials topics. I expecially like the overview articles, which, in four or five pages pack lots of information. Further, the historical articles about metallurgy and materials in ancient civilizations will interest those of you who like to read about history in general, and science history, in particular.

Let's contribute in a bit more educational topic!! If I want to mention two unique properties of the iMechanica, I can say iMechanica is a place where an alive discussion about popular topics of the mechanics going on every day and non stop. So this improves new ideas and as a consequence build some platforms for future research topics in the mechanics world. For me as an student, there is another beneficial and that is some courseworks or lecture notes which I download regularly. These handouts prepared by very expert scientists and are so useful. I appreciate this activities and I am very grateful to all people who also update the educational part of the webpage. Here is a new topic which with your help and comments can improve this part more and give it serious role to play here. Would you write about the summer schools which you are going to have in your universities and institutes located all over the world this summer? The summer schools is a point of interest among all students, specially if the topic will be about mechanics, modelling and simulation, nanomechanics and specially biomechanical issues. Also I will be very pleased if you will recommend the conferences you are going to hold or you like to introduce to student's section. That is another point which will be very useful. I am sure that it will be interesting for other members also. I am waiting for all your helps and news about "summer schools" and other "educational activities" running by you or your universities. I wish you all the best. Thank you.   

I am pretty new to having a class that is fully powerpoint presentations and am wondering how everyone else is coping with it. Does anyone have any pointers or useful ways they keep notes in powerpoint classes? Printing the notes before hand? Anotating directly on the notes? Having a seperate notebook for notes and seperate handouts of presentation, etc etc?