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Brittle fracture down to femto-Joules — and below

Submitted by Markus J. Buehler on

I found an interesting paper on the arXiv website that may interest some mechanicians.  Markus

Title:  Brittle fracture down to femto-Joules — and below

Authors: J. Astrom, P.C.F. Di Stefano, F. Probst, L. Stodolsky, J. Timonen 

How the following cubic spline function is derived?

Submitted by V.Gnanaraj on

In most of the research papers on meshless methods the following cubic spline function is used as weighting function.

 w(y) = 0  if y < -2,

w(y) =1/6(y+2)^3  ,    if -2 < y < -1 

w(y) =  2/3 – y^2(1 + y/2) ,  if   -1 < y < 0

w(y)=   2/3 -y^2(1 - y/2) , if   0 < y < 1

w(y) = -1/6 (y – 2 )^3  ,   if    1 < y < 2

w(y) = 0 if y >2

Introduction to Systems Biology

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

How does the cell know when to produce a protein? Why does it produce this protein? How does it produce this protein so accurately, in transcription, timing, and concentration? It is amazing that the cell functions as precisely as it needs to in response to various stimuli. What is more amazing is that the cell's actions are a result of stochastic processes.

Graduate students and publishing

Submitted by MichelleLOyen on

I just stumbled on this very interesting discussion on why science graduate students should publish, regardless of their later career intentions.  I agree with the author on most points, but believe it really comes down to two things: (1) if you aren't going to communicate your results (both good and bad!) then you might as well have not bothered to do the work, and (2) becoming a good writer is a skill that every technical person will need in any career.

Question: Is the local energy dictating dislocation emission constant for single crystal?

Submitted by Kejie Zhao on

Hi everyone, in my size dependence study, I find the local energy dictating dislocation emission is almost constant for varied sized samples, in given directions of single crystal. I don't know this is an interesing finding, or just a common sense. Will you give me some suggestion, Thank you!

Kejie