A postdoctoral researcher position is available at UC Berkeley. The research project is about developing a commercial software or a Meshfree Module for one of the widely used commercial FEM codes. The meshfree module will be mainly used to simulate adiabatic shear banding and spall fracture during impacts and penetrations.  A person who holds a PhD degree  in applied and computational mechanics, mechanical engineering, civil engineering  and has previous experience in FEM and Meshfree methods is most desirable.  For people who are interested in the position, please send your resume to: li@ce.berkeley.edu

A post-doc position on multiscale simulation of cell contact and adhesion shall be available this coming Fall at UC Berkeley. We are seeking for a person who has experience and background on finite element computations, especially in cell contact/adhesion modeling and simulation or finite deformation simulations.

Anyone who is interested in the position please send an email, resume, and reference to li@ce.berkeley.edu

World Scientific Pub. Co. will soon (2008 Winter) publish a new graduate textbook on Micromechanics and Nanomechanics.  The book is based on a lecture notes that have been used in Berkeley for seven years. Reading of book requires minimum knowledge of continuum mechanics and mathematics, and the book is intended for the first year graduate students as well as those practitioners who have no time to read the literature for self-study.

Based on a survey from Journal Citation Report (JCR), we listed below the 2004 Journal Impact Factors (IF) for some mechanics, material science, and solid state physics related scientific journals. Our list and information may not be complete. We welcome readers' input, comments, and information. We also caution readers that using IF as the sole criterion to rank scientific journals' academic reputation may not be objective nor true to a journal's actual scientific merits.

I posted this survey in Applied Mechanics Research and Researchers on 16 April 2006, based on a survey of Web of Science. A paper making the list satisfied the following conditions:

• It is in the areas of solid mechanics, mechanics of materials, or computational mechanics, and
• It has at least 1000 citations.

This list may not be complete. If anyone finds a missing entry, please leave a comment below.

The cited number has been updated up to 18 Dec. 2006.

In response to Zhigang's forum topic on the first course in continuum mechanics, it is so happened that I am also teaching a continuum mechanics course this semester. I shall list our continuum mechanics course outline taught here in Berkeley.

Berkely has its tradition and its special flavour on Continuum Mechanics. The history goes back to Paul Naghdi, Tom Hughes, Jerry Marsden, Juan Simo, David Bogy, Coby Lubliner, Bob Taylor, Karl Pister, James Casey, Geroge Johnson, and some others.

Meshfree Particle Methods is a comprehensive and systematic exposition of particle methods, meshfree Galerkin and partition of unity methods, molecular dynamics methods, and multiscale methods. It presents theoretical foundation, numerical algorithms, as well as applications. Since it was published in 2004, the first print has been sold out. The publisher is preparing the second print.