Journal Club Forum

As many of you know, last year we had a lively debate prior to the launch of the j-club regarding the rules and regulations governing the functioning of the j-club. This continued in a more low-key fashion this year. One of the more important topics under discussion has been the selection of the future editors (which is to be done each year). I, and perhaps a few other people, had reasoned that the editor should be elected by popular vote. It was proposed that candidates will either self-nominate themselves or be nominated by other mechanicians.

Flexible electronics is an emerging technology with an exciting array of applications, ranging from paper-like displays, skin-like smart prosthesis, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), to printable solar cells. These potential applications will profoundly impact various facets of our daily life, and excite our curiosity on: what's the future of newspapers and books? Will OLEDs replace light bulbs and fluorescent lamps, and emerge as future lighting source? Can we power electronic devices everywhere cordlessly? Significant progress has been made in the past several years, especially as sizable investments flux in. For example, Polymer Vision just released the first commercial product of rollable display (as shown in the figure) after secured $26M investment in January 2007. The future success of this emerging technology largely relies on:

Lipid bilayers constitute one of the critical parts of all biological membranes, including cell membranes. A nice description of lipid bilayers and their function in biological membranes can be found here. They can be exceptionally complex and contain hundreds of different constituents, so simpler model lipid bilayers are often produced in the laboratory and studied experimentally.

Now that the Journal Club is getting started, I wanted to post some advice for students who may not have participated in such a forum in the past, either online or in person. The fun of a J-club includes the opportunity to broaden your understanding of the literature of a broad field (like mechanics) by reading carefully-selected groups of papers on small topics of interest to different sub-communities. The challenge in participating in the subsequent discussion is ensuring that you understand the papers sufficiently to participate confidently in the ensuing discussion. This will also prepare you to be a good reviewer for technical journals some day.

Biological materials are frequently constructed of hydrated biopolymer networks. Examples include fibrous collagen in the extracellular matrix and actin within the cell's cytoskeleton. There are differences in the molecular composition of the biopolymer subunits as well as differences in the network density and organization. Images can be seen here and here for dense collagen networks and for portions of actin networks look at images here and here.

Colleagues and friends,

Everyone,

As you may have already gathered from previous posts, J-club is set to launch on January 2007. Michelle Oyen has agreed to be the first guest editor/host (----does anyone remeber what nomenclature we decided on?). Her selected theme is "Biomechanics" followed by John Dolbow who will design the February issue on "Computational mechanics".

2025 Themes and Discussion Leaders