I HAVE ADDED TWO PAGES FROM A NICE REVIEW FROM GOODMANN ON SLIP DAMPING

In January 2011, the UK government announced its intention to stop
compulsory retirement for people aged 65, despite criticism of the move
by employers’ groups. Campaigners against age discrimination and unions
welcomed the change. However, official guidance makes it clear that
employers will be able to dimiss staff no longer capable of carrying out
their work. Official figures show more than two thirds of British
employers have already eliminated fixed retirement ages.

 http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2011/02/articles/uk1102039i.htm

UPDATE ---  I HAVE ADDED A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON THE ARTICLE AS ATTACHMENT TO THIS POST!

You may have heard of Qantas Airways and Korean Air will carry out inspections for wing cracks on their Airbus A380 superjumbo planes earlier than previously scheduled, after European air safety officials ordered global checks, warning of a safety risk if the defects were not fixed.

You can see a VIDEO here .

To All friends Humboldiani, from Humboldt associations in the world, and other friends simply in Physics and Biology

dear Friends -

     A nice Kolleg in Cuba in March I receive from my friend Carlos
Tallero in Havana, who in turn is in Brasil, but writes from Germany I
see!

Dealine is 26 January 2012 at 13.00.   ATTACHED YOU FIND ALL THE NEEDED DOCUMENTS!  Which you find also here .

We have 9 positions available starting between Jan and March 2012 on various themes of mechanical and management engineering at Politecnico di BARI .

An interesting application of non linear dynamics, including happiness with a simple 1D damped oscillator!

Crack Propagation Laws Corresponding to a Generalized EL Haddad Equation
M. Ciavarella

Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, , Available online 1 October 2011,
C. Putignano, M. Ciavarella, J.R. Barber   View Abstract  

After a long process (somebody may recall I made also quite some chaos on imechanica to complain with the review process in a previous journal), this paper was accepted.  Ask me a preprint if you are interested.  I can attach here a few images only.

M. CIAVARELLA
Politecnico di Bari, 70125 Bari, Italy
Received in final form 13 June 2011

Mandelbrot has passed away last week.  A very interesting  mathematician, who received tenure from Yale only at 75, he has introduced fractals also in fracture mechanics.

Benoit Mandelbrot, Father of Fractals, Dies at 85

I think I have spoken various times of this problem.

In Italy there was today an announcement that we have the biggest such problem in Europe.  See here .

When I search in wikipedia, I find various terms.

Given the success of my facebook course Mechanics of Materials MMCM see here, we had so many videos and photos, that I suggested the students to create a Youtube channel.   Here it is, with many videos based on powerpoint presentations I had from my course, and that of collegues in Torino (Masssimo Rossetto), or some conferences presentations, which the students transformed into videos.  Thanks in particular to Mariella Greco, and Simone Legari. Follows examples of the videos.  Enjoy!   The channel is here .I like the idea of a free University!

The Micromechanics of Interfaces
A Symposium in Honor of Professor Leon Keer
Symi, Greece
July 18-23, 2010

Chair:
Xanthippi Markenscoff
University of California
San Diego

I've got interested, since I am going with about 10 of my students to Paris for the Euromech conference I am coorganizing in July, by the design of the Eiffel Tower.  Eiffel was a great engineer, and indeed his shape of the tower apparently comes from his ingenious idea of  balancing weigth and wind pressure so that there is little need of foundations.  WIKIPEDIA has an account of this design idea, and the resulting integro-differential equation.

 
I added a preprint with permission of the Solution of Eiffel-Chouard equations by Weidman and Pinelis as attachment here, together with actual Excel file of the Eiffel tower profile measurement by Eiffel himself and others.... Have fun!

Is Your Thesis Hot? Or Not?

By Mary
Helen Miller

Writing a thesis about animal intentionality and tool use is
totally hot right now. A thesis about Robert Louis Stevenson's use of
the supernatural to symbolize evil? Not so much.

Suresh's group Fighting Malaria: Understanding the Biomechanical Properties of Red Blood Cells

MIT Dean of Engineering Subra
Suresh with graduate
student David Quinn. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington

Maybe Imechanica can start an investigation. I have collected some data from BBC, WSJ and Wikipedia.   Tu-154 is not new to accidents, 66 serious accidents already.  Some have been from mechanical problems (two cases prior to 2001).  Is there also here a mechanical problem?  Imechanica should play its role for first time as "wikipedia" investigation.
Plane
Crash May Strain Poland’s Ties With Russia

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

A portrait of President Lech Kaczynski of Poland lay

SEE THE ATTACHED FILE FOR DETAILS

                                            UPDATED May, 2010

Dear Imechanica friends

given the success of imechanica, and Zhigang's courses on this portal, I thought, to do something even more modern and friendly, to move to Facebook platform my courses.  Unfortunately in italian.

Given Obama's program to open to Education (see www.sciencedebate2008.com) and MIT opencourseware, and university of Phoenix success, and also given my own interest as founder of www.sciencedebate.it , I was inspired experimentally to open to facebook.

Maybe it is the first attempt worldwide?  I doubt it.  Maybe in mechanics of materials  perhaps?  Please let me know, so that we could share   on facebook some infos.

Link found between golden ratio and atomic symmetry

Researchers
in Germany and the UK have discovered symmetry hidden in solid state
matter at very small scales. The findings, published in the journal Science,
indicate that symmetry involves the golden ratio famous from art and
architecture. The research was supported in part by the NMI3
('Integrated infrastructure initiative for neutron scattering and muon
spectroscopy') project, which was funded under the 'Coordination of
research activities' Thematic area of the EU's Sixth Framework
Programme (FP6) to the tune of EUR 21 million.

dear Friend

I am comparing italian universities with Russian ones with US and with Cuban ones. Then I need some figures.

I have been able for example to find that there are about 50% of students-workers in Russia, what about US?
I mean full time workers, not just part time.

But I need to know more about these questions:-
1) how did the number of students in the last 10 years vary?  Increased?
2) how many students are doing economics or management - related subjects?
3) how many students exit the university system before graduation,
failing to complete the cycle?
4) how many students complete the cycle in retard?

I am going to Modena on Monday to talk to my collegues in the Millechili lab (MilleChili means 1000Kg in italian)

If you are upset about promotion system, look at what two italian friends proved recently, which was immediately popular before the paper publication, also because they proved random promotion is more efficient!