iMechanica - Grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century, and how they relate to mechanics - Comments

A possible restart

Mike Ciavarella — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:54:47 -0400

Zhigang and Michelle this points also to another challenge

Mike Ciavarella — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:45:49 -0400

The secure cyberspace one, which somebody calls WEB3.0

We are putting so much personal data on the web, particularly scientists because we are under pressure and usually you see long CV of scientists who put also names of wife and children just to make it longer!

Now Google has our health condition, who knows if they will sell this to pharmaceutical companies: they are very clever, perhaps more than Elsevier. You like Google Health: I, instead, start to worry...

I would be curious to know which parts Larry Page wrote of the Challenges! Probably not secure cyberspace... unless they plan to go into that business too. It is an old strategy, first you create a problem, then you are called to solve it.

As usual, Zhigang and Michelle, you surprise me for how naif you seem to be, if I may say with no offense.

More on Google Health

Zhigang Suo — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:54:42 -0400

Dear Michelle: Glad to hear that you know something about health informatics. Daniel Suo once worked in a local hospital to help with information system. He told me how inefficient the system was.

About privacy I have had similar reaction. Here is what Google puts out about the privacy policy. I don't know enough to really comment on it.

In any case, this new service seems to be an excellent idea. It attempts to resolve somthing mundane but important by using the Internet. I wish we had ideas like this for some aspect of mechanics.

re: Google Health

MichelleLOyen — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:36:04 -0400

This is very interesting indeed. I worked with a medical doctor on research at the time when the "HIPAA privacy rule " was being enacted and the privacy issues associated with health information are extremely important and complicated--it very much changed our research practices. I am not familiar with Google Health but will be interested to see how this service lines up with the HIPAA regs.

The idea of a user-centric, portable portal for health information is a great one, however. It has long been the case that the one place where such information is controlled by the patient and not by the doctor or the health insurance company is during pregnancy, and this is at least in part because the person has such a strong interest in their medical care that they become very proactive. I see this development of Google Health therefore as a potentially very promising thing, so long as privacy is maintained.

A new service: Google Health

Zhigang Suo — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:08:00 -0400

One of the Grand Challenges, advance health informatics, seems to be unrelated to mechanics, but is related to every mechanician. Google has just rolled out a new product: Google Health. Each user can maintain his own Google Health account, just as he maintains his own email account. I went to my Google Health account, and added a condition I had, and a medicine I took. Google pointed me to references about the condition. I can let my doctor access my account. Presumably she will be able to add to my record. If I start with a new doctor, I should not need to fill new forms.

If you have a gmail account, you can go directly to Google Health.

Tractor blades

Michael A. Graham — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:09:51 -0400

This is the second time in this thread you've brought up tractor blades. I think this is one great interpretation of these challenges for mechanicians. I would note that greater efficiency here does not only save energy in a green sense, but also could enable farmers in developing nations to increase production.

Elsevier has three journals that seem like they might have material on this topic—Journal of Terramechanics, Soil and Tillage Research, and Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. There seemed to be many interesting articles (especially in Journal of Terramechanics) addressing blade performance issues. From skimming a few abstracts, I do not get the impression very sophisticated computational models are being used.

Re: Ten Ph. D. problems

Biswajit Banerjee — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:32:44 -0400

The short duration of a PhD requires that the problems given to a student be solvable in sa reasonably short period of time. I feel that it's is unreasonable to hand outstanding problems (that is, significant unsolved problems) to a PhD student or a postdoc unless they have worked on parts of the problem before. Also, without external funding (is a fellowship part of that?) how do you propose that a postdoc or a PhD student should feed themselves? I suppose you mean that no expensive experimental or computational work should be involved thus rendering external funding irrelevant. So we are left with theoretical problems that can be solved analytically.

Anyway, here are two that I would like an answer to:

1) A large amount of energy is needed to turn the soil over every year before a crop can be planted. The basic method has remained the same over thousands of years. Can we use mechanics to find a way of tilling the soil with the least amount of energy use? Do we know for sure that the methods that are in use today are optimal?

2) Almost every object that is used in modern societies contains some material that has been extracted from the earth. A huge amount of energy is used in crushing rocks to a fine enough size that surface chemistry may then be used to extract a particular metal. Assuming that we would like to use energy more efficiently, is there a way our knowledge of mechanics can be used to minimize the energy used in crushing rocks? A huge number of people have worked on this problem - yet an optimal solution seems as far away as ever.

-- Biswajit

Re: Political problems

Biswajit Banerjee — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:12:32 -0400

Amit,

Indeed, all problems can be viewed from a political lens. For example, the current push toward nantechnology is to a large extent driven by political considerations, e.g., the continuance of US hegemony in high technology. Mike's original post also decried a perceived potential loss of western hegemony in the sciences. That's definitely a poltical statement. Also, a large number of research engineers (and mechanicians) contribute to enhancing the military capabilities of their countries. Since the ultimate goal of these types of research is political hegemony via military power, these types of activity may also be classified as political.

However, my point is that many aspects of seemingly political problems actually involve significant technical challenges. To get research funding to be able to solve these problems definitely requires political acumen. I hope that's what you mean when you say that these problems are political.

-- Biswajit

Ten Ph.D. problems

Amit.Ranade — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:54:14 -0400

I feel that we need a list of ten outstandingly important problems in applied mechanics/mathematics that can be tackled
by a postdoc or a ph.d. student without the necessity of external funding.

-Amit

political problems

Amit.Ranade — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:51:40 -0400

I see these as political problems and not mechanics problems.

-Amit

I'm going to ignore the

MichelleLOyen — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:17:42 -0400

I'm going to ignore the derogatory statment and reiterate why I did not like the grand challenges, particularly those that had a bio-bent.

Research runs from basic science to applied. Some of us have, as a primary goal, research into human health and disease, which tends to be more applied if it is to be directed to the clinic in the next 5-10 years. And this research is fundamentally economically-limited. If we spend ALL of our scarce research resources, not to mention our scarce healthcare resources, on "Grand Challenges" then we potentially miss opportunities in the list of Biswajit's. The things of basic life, sometimes which are addressed by groups such as "Engineers without borders"

Some of us also believe that there are substantial engineering (and mechanics) opportunities in this field of healthcare that have not yet been exploited, such that human health is not benefiting from the research that already exists to solve problems that we (engineers) find to be commonplace or old news. We don't necessarily need grand challenges beyond "apply the engineering knowledge we already have to problems of medicine and health" in order to make a qualitative impact on the world.

"</soapbox>"

Very interesting posts:

Gopinath Venkatesan — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:39:56 -0400

Very interesting posts and messages. My opinion is that science is moving forward as fast as in the days of Leonardo. How does one feel about reaching the space to find other places to live, and/or going nano? As you add to the heap of stuffs (be it anything), as the pile is getting bigger and bigger, any individual contribution is becoming more and more unnoticed.

Gopinath

Graduate Student

University of Oklahoma

Zhigang very interesting that your proposal was not funded...

Mike Ciavarella — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:24:13 -0400

It reminds me that also Larry Paige could not sell his algorithm when he was just a student.

This is entirely the problem of Research --- writing proposals which are assessed by burocrats is intrinsically stupid, and this is what has caused the collapse of research. It is burocracts who get the money, and incremental people. You are closer to be a "dropout" millionaire from Harvard, than an incremental Professor.

This is why Leonardo, Einstein, the big contributors, NEVER made major advancemenst out of proposals, and NOT EVEN from academic positions. We should let research be run more freely. The guy who apparently cracked the 5th Fermat theorem is a Russian who lives with his mum and refused the Field Medal!

We should think about this when having to design the NAE challenges. I am sure Larry Paige had NO real role there, it is only NAE who put his name. He is VERY secretive about his technology, like atomic bomb at the Manhattan project times and cold war. Imagine if there is anything of any sex/appeal in the NAE workplan. Better NOT to read it or we get confused. Better to read the old LEONARDO manuscripts 550 years old.

An old and unfunded proposal to NSF to create iMechanica

Zhigang Suo — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:08:49 -0400

Dear Mike: Your post reminded me of an old and unfunded proposal to NSF to create iMechanica. Many of us have been smitten by the raw simplicity and brilliance of Amazon, Google, and Wikipedia. I'll write more when I find time. Still unprepared for the trip. But for the time being, please take a look at the old proposal, and you will find that you are not alone in many of your sentiments. I believe that we will find a way to channel our creative energy and use our skill of mechanics.

Grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century, and how they relate to mechanics

Managers — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:19:03 -0400

After making a list of the great engineering achievements of the 20th century, the National Academy of Engineering, of the United States, has recently described a list of the grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century (of no particular order):

Update on 27 April 2008. The US National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics would love to hear your thoughts on these challenges.