Assad Oberai wins the 2007 Special Achievement Award for Young Investigators in Applied Mechanics. The Award will be presented at the Applied Mechanics Annual Dinner, during the ASME Congress, 11-15 November 2007, in Seattle.

Recently I have observed that if I don't perform a routine task for a few months, I tend to forget the steps needed in the process. I have to relearn the process and that's a waste of time. The intention of this blog post is to provide a list of tips for my use which can also be of use to other Linux users. I like free software. Most of the software on this list can be downloaded from SourceForge or some such place.

A message from Woody Ju.  It is with deepest sadness and sorrow that I inform you that Professor T.H. Lin, our kindest role model and gentleman, passed away on June 18, 2007; he was 96 years old. Prof. Lin worked until last Friday.

He is survived by his sons (Prof. Robert Lin of UC Berkeley, Prof. Jim Lin of UCSD) and his daughter (Rita).

Following successful meetings in Lisbon and Toronto in 2004 and 2006, Elsevier will be running the 3rd International Conference on Engineering Failure Analysis (www.icefa.elsevier.com) in the beautiful town of Sitges in July 2008. Sitges is situated on the coast of Catalunya, Spain, just a short distance from Barcelona International Airport.

I am putting together a proposal in response to NSF's Engineering Virtual Organizations solicitation regarding what I call Open Source Publishing.  The proposal can be found (and edited if you setup an account) here.  I would encourage you to register and edit if you're interested.  All revisions are saved so there is no risk of messing something up.  The proposal is fairly unstructured at this point and consists