George Whitesides wrote this handout in 1989, and then published it in Advanced Materials in 2004. It's a gem. He explains how to use writing to plan research. Although Advanced Materials does not give free access to this handout, a number of other sites do. See Google Scholar.
You are cordially invited to participate in the Symposium on the Mechanics of Electromagnetic Materials and Structures, the 5th International Conference on Nonlinear Mechanics (ICNM-V), to be held in Shanghai, China, June 11-14, 2007. You may find more information at the website of the conference.
The symposium topics include piezoelectricity, ferroelectricity, magnetoelasticity, electromagnetic fluids and various applications in engineering and technology, but are not limited to the above. Experimental, theoretical, and computational studies are all welcome.
Please e-mail your one-page abstract(s) to any of us listed below. We look forward to hearing from you. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at
Professor Ji Wang, Ningbo University, wangji [at] nbu.edu.cn (wangji[at]nbu[dot]edu[dot]cn)
Professor Yuantai Hu, Central South University, hudeng [at] 263.net (hudeng[at]263[dot]net)
Professor Jiashi Yang, University of Nebraska, jyang1 [at] unl.edu (jyang1[at]unl[dot]edu)
Professor Daining Fang, Tsinghua University, fangdn [at] tsinghua.edu.cn (fangdn[at]tsinghua[dot]edu[dot]cn)
Submission of abstract: as soon as possible.
Notification of acceptance: Nov. 1, 2006
Submission of final paper(s) for the conference proceedings: Jan. 1, 2007
In a recent post, Zhigang Suo explains how to add hyperlinks in your post. We all understand how hard to write an instruction for a simple operation, so we should appreciate Dr. Suo's every effort trying to be elucidative.
If you prefer a visualized instruction, click here to watch a video demonstration on how to make a post in your blog at iMechanica, and how to add a hyperlink in your post.
A vicinal Si (001) surface may form stripes of terraces, separated by monatomic-layer-high steps of two kinds, SA and SB. As adatoms diffuse on the terraces and attach to or detach from the steps, the steps move. In equilibrium, the steps are equally spaced due to elastic interaction. During deposition, however, SA is less mobile than SB. We model the interplay between the elastic and kinetic effects that drives step motion, and show that during homoepitaxy all the steps may move in a steady state, such that alternating terraces have time-independent, but unequal, widths. The ratio between the widths of neighboring terraces is tunable by the deposition flux and substrate temperature. We study the stability of the steady state mode of growth using both linear perturbation analysis and numerical simulations. We elucidate the delicate roles played by the standard Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barriers and inverse ES barriers in influencing growth stability in the complex system containing (SA+SB) step pairs.
Preprint available in the attachment.
The nanoHUB is a web-based initiative spearheaded by the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN). Based at Purdue University and partnered by eight other universities, nanoHUB provides a web interface to numerous resources relevant to students and practitioners in nanotechnology. The cyber environment includes online courses and tutorials, proceedings of seminars, collaborative tools, and an interface for online simulation.
For example, you can view research seminars on nanoHUB through online slideshow with audio, powered by Breeze technology. You can go over the outline of the seminar, choose thumbnail views of the slides and even search text within the titles of the slides, then locate the content of interest and save some time. Another type of resource on nanoHUB is the online simulation tools, which run realtime on nanoHUB. No installation is needed.
The nanoHUB resources are open to public for free. You just need to register to use. In the last eight months, nanoHUB has served more than 10,000 users, with about 60,000 simulation jobs run and more than 10,000 videos viewed. The web server hits of nanoHUB reach 1 million in May 2006.
The June 2006 issue of MRS Bulletin features Macroelectronics.
The guest editor of this issue include Robert H. Reuss (program manager of DARPA's macroelectronics program), Darrel G. Hopper (principal electronics engineer at US ARFL), and Jae-Geun Park (Materials Center at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology)
The issue include a theme review article by the guest editors and four theme technical articles covering various topics related to macroelectronics.
(via www.macroelectronics.org)
In theory, carbon nanotubes are 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight, but in practice, scientists have struggled make nanotubes that live up to those predictions. This is partly because there are still many unanswered questions about how nanotubes break and under what conditions.
Recently, Prof. Boris I. Yakobson at Rice University, his former postdoc Traian Dumitrica (now assistant professor at University of Minnesota), and his doctoral student Ming Hua, have developed a new computer modeling approach to create a “strength map” that plots the likelihood or probability that a carbon nanotube will break—and how it’s likely to break. Four critical variables are considered in the model: load level, load duration, temperature, and chirality. This work was published in the Proceedings of the National Adacemy of Sciences (Apr. 18, 2006 Cover feature). Full text pdf file of this paper is available here.
This is the title of a three-part series published in Physics Today by Frank Wilczek, the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT. Prof. Wilczek is considered one of the world's most eminent theoretical physicists, and is the 2004 Nobel laureate in Physics for work he did as a graduate student at Princeton University, when he was only 21 years old.
Prof. Wilczek contributes regularly to Physics Today and to Nature, explaining topics at the frontiers of physics to wider scientific audiences. The following series of his "musing on mechanics" won the Best American Science Writing in 2005:
Whence the Force of F=ma? 1: Culture Shock
Whence the Force of F=ma? II: Rationalizations
Whence the Force of F= ma ? III: Cultural Diversity
Prof. Wilczek recently published a book named Fantastic Realities, in which 49 inspiring pieces, including the above three, of "mind journeys" are included. This book also includes contribution from his wife Betsy Devine's blog on what winning a Nobel Prize looks like from inside prizewinner's family.
You may also enjoy a recent podcast of Scientific American, in which Prof. Wilczek and his wife talk about their new book.
The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 (one century ago today) ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. Today, its importance comes more from the wealth of scientific knowledge derived from it than from its sheer size --it marked the dawn of modern science of earthquakes.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recently provides a virtual tour utilizing the geographic interactive software Google Earth to explain the scientific, engineering, and human dimensions of this earthquake. This virtual tour can help you visualize and understand the causes and effects of this and future earthquakes.
Enjoy this virtual tour to explore how Google Earth (and other new softwares...) can facilitate and improve the way we teach and conduct research.
Lighting accounts for about 22% of the electricity consumed in buildings in the United States, and 40% of that amount is eaten up by inefficient incandescent light bulbs. The search for economical light sources has been a hot topic.
Recently, scientists have made important progress towards making white organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) commercially viable as light source. As reported in a latest Nature article, even at an early stage of development this new source is up to 75% more fficient than today's incandescent sources at similar brightnesses. The traditional light bulb's days could be numbered.
Read media report here.
(Via www.macroelectronics.org)
