CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2007 ASME Applied Mechanics and Materials Conference (McMat 2007)
Austin, Texas, June 3-7, 2007

http://www.ae.utexas.edu/MCMAT07/

Symposium on

I am a senior research engineer at Medical Instill Technologies, New Milford, CT. Our company is currently focused on designing and manufacturing innovative dispensing systems for pharmaceutical and nutritional products, and also their filling systems. You may visit our website (http://www.medinstill.com) for more information.

We are currently exploring elastomer-based dispensing systems for fluids of different viscosities. In relation to this project, we are interested in hiring somebody with a doctoral level education and who has exposure to modeling elastomers, particularly elastomer solid mechanics, adhesion between elastomers, and flow of fluids over elastomers.

Dear Colleagues:


The 13^th International Conference on Experimental Mechanics (ICEM13, http://www.icem13.gr) will be held on July 1-6, 2007 in Alexandroupolis, Greece. It is our pleasure to announce that the Conference will include a special symposium organized by us entitled, “Plasticity, Fracture and Fatigue at the Micro and Nano Scales,” which will focus on recent developments in this area within the larger scope of assessing research needs in a variety of applications of interest.

These notes are part of my notes on thermodynamics.

Update on 14 December 2019. By now I have taught undergraduate thermodynamics three times at Harvard. I have written up my lecture notes as a book, and posted the book online.

Here are sections that I have now:

A student pointed me to a recent article on physicsweb. This article discusses a new (scientific) ranking system developed by a German student (Michael Banks) in Max Planck Institute of Solid State Physics to characterize the "hotness" of the scientific subject. If, after reading the popular physicsweb article linked above, you are interested in more details you may wish to read the attached original article posted by Banks. "Carbon nanotubes" emerges at the top of the list.

The nanotechnology of the future demands controlled fabrication of nanostructures. Much success has been made in the last decade in fabricating nanostructures on surface with desirable size and shape, either in serial using scanned-probe techniques or in parallel using self-assembly/self-organization processes sometimes combined with lithographic patterning techniques. However, controlled fabrication of nanostructures remains in general a formidable challenge. For example, despite the enormous success we have so far enjoyed with carbon nanotubes (CNTs), it is still very difficult (if not impossible) to synthesize CNTs with a degree of control that we would like in terms of their size and chirality. Fabrication of nanostructures in many other forms and with other materials is even less developed. There exists a strong need for the development of nanofabrication techniques with higher degree of control. Here, we demonstrate the general design principles of an emerging nanofabrication approach based on nanomechanical architecture of strained bi-layer thin films, which allows fabrication of a variety of nanostructures, such as nanotubes, nanorings, nanodrills, and nanocoils, with an unprecedented level of control.

The nomination of colleagues for awards is one of the most important and gratifying aspects of participating in the scientific community. Help celebrate the contributions of your colleagues by submitting a nomination for The National Medal of Science.

The National Medal of Science was established in 1959 as a Presidential Award to be given to individuals "deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, or engineering sciences." In 1980 Congress expanded this recognition to include the social and behavioral sciences. The National Medal of Science is the highest honor the President bestows on scientists. A Committee of 12 scientists and engineers is appointed by the President to evaluate the nominees for the Award. Since its establishment, the National Medal of Science has been awarded to 425 distinguished scientists and engineers whose careers spanned decades of research and development.

Teng Li, Zhigang Suo, Stephanie P. Lacour, Sigurd Wagner

Journal of Materials Research, 20, 3274-3277 (2005)

When a mechanical engineer and a material scientist were asked for the root cause of an in-vivo fracture. Mechanical engineer pointed to the loading and the material scientist pointed to the processing. While they both are correct, they both also missed the real ROOT cause, the design.

It is very common that medical device design engineers are so focused on the device functionality that often the very basic mechanics is overlooked. Lack of knowledge on the in-vivo environment (Design Requirements) is another subject to blame. However, it is common that even technology driven companies have gaps between design department and duarability deparment. Up front design engineers do not necessarily keep up with the fast paces of material advances. On the other hand, downstram subject matter experts, device tesing teams or often the R&D departments are not informed of design changes before the design is fixed. The problem is worse often in industrial leaders than in start-ups, but the sympton is the same, problem found in animal studies and/or clinical trials before they reached industrial subject matter experts.