iMechanica - McMat 2007 - Comments

Re:iMechanica get together at McMat 2007

williamgeorge — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:15:53 -0500

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williamgeorge

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Need Help.

RaminBabaei — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 02:18:17 -0500

I am Ramin Aghababaei , new PhD student at Mechanical Department of National University of Singapore. My thesis is about finite element modeling of nanocomposites.

Because I am at the first way of my research, I want to know more about my research topic and know exactly why I want to do or what is the problem and how can I solve it?

So I have some questions and your experience is invaluable for me in this way.

1-what are the important parameters in the modeling of nanostructures which must be consider?

2-what is the main problem of current finite element method to model the nanostructure, especially nanocomposite materials(for example in traditional methods or in ABAQUS program)?

3-Can we expand traditional methods like as Rayleigh-Ritz or Least square methods to model and analysis of nanocomposites?

Thank you very much .

Regards,

Ramin

Profiles of new PhDs...

Ajit R. Jadhav — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 11:02:59 -0400

A separate section on new PhDs and doctoral students close to graduation is a great idea... Even if one graduate student thereby receives a remark like "I believe that it involves more than a mere analogy," it would worth it!

(About the quote: That is what Einstein is supposed to have said about the PhD thesis of de Broglie.)

Senior mechanicians and iMechanica...

Ajit R. Jadhav — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 09:22:50 -0400

1. About themes per month: Demitris has a really nice idea here... But think of the other way around... First convince senior mechanicians about participating here, and then leave the selection of the theme completely up to them. ... That way, they would feel both freer and honored.

Personally, I would rather have at least two themes / month or so. (Also see below in this post.)

2. About "I'm too old to blog" and "I have no time": Introduce the concept of limited time blogging (LTB)... The senior members don't have to be bothered about the "log" portion of "blog," i.e., they don't have to commit themselves 24 X 7 to the Web. They just have to be ready to answer questions for a limited period of, say, a month or so... Also, encourage volunteer graduate students (or assign them) to help the senior mechanicians deal with the technicalities of blogging, posting replies, etc.

3. About "I have got nothing worthwhile to say." Leave these people alone!

4. About "This is just a fad." Even if they think so, they don't have to be bothered with it for more than a month. (See above. At least at iMechanica and for them, the fad will pass after a month or so.)

5. About "I hate to make a fool of myself." But they can have graduate student/junior faculty help them out. (See above.)

6. About "What's the benefit to me?" Here, really speaking, Pradip has already said one important point: Their participation can help them make the kind of impact they desire. They can help define the future of mechanics, so to speak.

Another important point. There is supposed to be a different sort of pleasure when a specialist interacts with other specialists (others also of uncommon achievements over a long time). Even simple questions then help think about one's own field in a different light...

Further, it should be possible to invite practising senior engineers, even engineering managers from industry as well. Thus, the senior people don't have to come from academia and research alone. ... See, Prof. XYZ may not be ready to interact if he figures everybody is going to be a junior faculty, post-doc or PhD student, i.e. from academia, and so, everybody will be out to impress him. Yet, Prof. XYZ may welcome the opportunity if he knows that Mr. ABC, MBA, V/P of Super Duper Engineering Ventures also is going to be "on board."

7. To conclude, things like limited-time-blogging, freedom to choose their own theme, participation from both industry and academia, availability of assistance to handle the technicalities of blogging, etc. all can go towards making iMechanica far more attractive to senior people.

Open Source Publishing

ericmock — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:18:04 -0400

Over in my blog I posted about a proposal I am preparing. You can read the latest version of the proposal here. You can also edit the proposal if you register on the wiki containing the proposal. The server is just the computer in my office so your email address, etc. will not be disclosed. Although I would like ot know who is making changes and commenting.

The idea has been many (~10) years in the making and the success of iMechanica and the rise of the 'Web 2.0' makes me believe that it might actually work. As per this thread, what I am proposing is essentially a cross between arXiv and iMechanica. The system will build on the idea of a wiki where everything is editable. Authors will post articles in editable form, and reviewers will be able to comment and even edit the article (all with consent from the original author). Nothing will be anonymous so that reviewers will get credit of insightful reviews. The hope is that this will prevent what I believe is the inevitable collapse of the current reviewing system. I.e., the community has gotten so big that many authors are neglecting their responsibilities as reviewers because there is no professional benefit. If you're really interested in playing the game and getting promoted, commended, etc. you should spend all your time writing and submitting papers, not reviewing them. Hopefully an open system will reveal these poor citizens and encourage a much stronger community were reviewing is considered just as important as publishing.

Again, please take a look at the proposal (and feel free to edit it and contribute to the discussion page) for much greater detail about what I have in mind.

Eric Mockensturm

"Most likely iMechanica

Konstantin Volokh — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:26:27 -0400

"Most likely iMechanica will be a hybrid of a repository and an online community." Precisely! I think this is the best case.

Optimally, the new submissions to a firm archive should be mirrored at the front page...

More structure on the front page?

Biswajit Banerjee — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:14:58 -0400

As the number of authors in iMechanica increases it will become increasingly difficult to keep track of all the activity. I agree with Kosta in that regarding the need for various sections on the front page. An example of what could be done can be found in the Scienceblogs front page page at http://www.scienceblogs.com/.

Scienceblogs has a daily topic which is highlighted at the top of the page. Below that there are channels such as Academia, Biology, Brain, Chatter ... which separate out themes. There are RSS feeds for each of these an, strictly speaking and hence Scienceblogs does not need to be visually organized in that way. However, I often visit the site directly and find the "headlines" approach quite convenient. We could try something similar if Drupal allows it.

Let us discuss future steps of iMechanica

Zhigang Suo — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:58:39 -0400

Dear Kosta:

Thank you very much for the note. Of the two mission statements of iMechanica, we have made good progress toward accomplishing the first one: to enhance communication among mechanicians. The second mission, to pave a way to evolve all knowledge of mechanics online, is more ambitious. So far we have not had serious discussion. Should iMechanica become a repository, or simply be an online community for people to interact and make hyperlinks to repositories elsewhere? Most likely iMechanica will be a hybrid of a repository and an online community.

The front page now consists of posts promoted by moderators from submissions by all users. Do we want to try some other ways to update the front page?

Whatever we do, we will have to gain the confidence of the users. It took substantial discussions among users to get the jClub started. Let us engage more people in this discussion of the steps that we should take.

P.S.: Versions of an entry will establish the timeline of ideas in the entry. Also, some entries are the collaboration among multiple authors. For example, see the revision history of the jClub page.

Some suggestions on iMechanica

Konstantin Volokh — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:20:18 -0400

Dear Zhigang,

Arxiv is very structured and makes impression of an online journal and archive. The latter attracts people to post their manuscripts. We do not have such firm archival structure (though I agree that the citation address is unique) and most posted papers are just copies of the journal accepted papers. In other words, people do not consider iMechanica as a reliable archival option. This problem is psychological - we need to persuade people that their posts are 'forever' and the journal-like format of the archive could be a good argument in favor of iMechanica.

Though a formal archival structure is desirable I would not like iMechanica to turn to a dead body - the live online discussions are necessary. I would redesign the front page similar to online newspapers where every department (journal-club, research, teaching, mechanicians etc) would include a couple of headlines. Probably, some senior people consider iMechanica as a student website in view of many discussions for the beginners. Such discussions a very important but they should not be the 'face' of iMechanica.

Best, Kosta

P.S. Are the earlier versions of the final posts really necessary? What for?

Citation and front page

Managers — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:53:42 -0400

Dear Kosta:

Do you have any concern about citing the URL of a post? For example, the citation for Teng's post can be Teng Li, 2007, Minutes of iMechanica get-together at McMat 2007", http://imechanica.org/node/1543.
Not sure what you have in mind about the redesign of the front page. Please elaborate. There is considerable flexibility with the software. And some software engineers have expressed interests in working on iMechanica.

Zhigang

Trustworthy timestamp and permanent accessibility of posts

Managers — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:43:15 -0400

Dear Robin:

Good to hear from you! Indeed, Paul Ginsparg's arXive was a great inspiration in early days of iMechanica and its predecessor Applied Mechanics News. See the post, "What if all papers become openly accessible?" As disucssed in your comment, as well as in the post of mine, a repository of scholarly work should embody two essential ingredients: trustworthy timestamp and permanent accessibility. Here is how iMechanica embodies the two ingredients.

Trustworthy timestamp. The server marks the time when an entry is first posted. The author can modify the entry as many times as she wishes. iMechanica saves every version, and gives each version a distinct timestamp. All users can see the history of revision by clicking the button "Revisions" beneath the title of an entry. Here is an example.

Permanent accessibility. Each entry on iMechanica is given a unique URL. In fact, each revision, as well as each comment, is given a unique URL. This URL appears in the navigation bar of your browser when you click the title of the post, the revision, or the comment. You can certainly cite this URL. For example, the URL for your comment is http://imechanica.org/node/1543#comment-3144.

Regarding permanence, the IT offce at Harvard, who hosts iMechanica, assures us that posts in iMechanica will be as permanent as everything else online. Several other instituations have expressed interests to establish mirror sites of iMechanica.

An author may as well regard anything posted on iMechanica, or on arXive, as published work. While it might be debatable whether an entry contains any original and correct idea, it is certain who said what and when.

I have discussed some of these issues in another post, "7 reasons to post your original ideas in iMechanica".

Zhigang

iMechanica is more democratic than arXiv

Mogadalai Gururajan — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:44:12 -0400

Dear Prof. Li:

As you note, arXiv is a simple repository of pre-prints and is a web 1.0 service. More importantly, in my opinion, arXiv is less democratic than iMechanica; for example, there is an endorsement system to submit pre-prints, because of which, I could not submit the pre-prints of one of my papers to arXiv, while I found no such difficulties with iMechanica at all.

Finally, I am happy to note that I have cited iMechanica in one of our papers (Ref. 34 of this attachment ). As more users do that, like arXiv, iMechanica will also become a standard source of reference, I believe.

So, let us keep up the good work!

Citing an iMechanica post in your paper

Teng Li — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:10:23 -0400

Each post in iMechanica.org has its unique web link, or permalink . It can be used to define a clear reference citation, together with the title, time stamp, auther of the post. For example, see a recent preprint posted in iMechanica, which cited many other iMechanica posts.

arxiv.org vs. iMechanica.org

Teng Li — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:05:37 -0400

Found Robin's argument thought-provoking. It raises a question: how iMechanica can learn from the success of arxiv.org?

The success of arxiv.org stems from its easy use, simple user interface, and most importantly, huge user base, some common features shared by many successful web services.

These features actually also serve as the guideline for us in designing, optimizing and evolving iMechanica.org. We've been trying to keep the user interface of iMechanica as simple as possible, provide help informatioin through FAQ and by answering questions from users. The user base of iMechanica have been increasing in a steady state in recent months, after a certain period of rapid growth.

Another feature of arxiv.org important to its success is its simple function, an online e-print archive. Authors post, readers download. Done.

By contrast, iMechanica aims at a much broader mission : to use the Internet to enhance communications among mechanicians, and to pave a way to evolve all knowledge of mechanics online. So far, arxiv.org is a web 1.0 service, no user interaction enabled, while the most important feature of iMechanica is the active discussions among users. Maybe we can learn from arxiv.org on effective archiving and combine with the power of web 2.0 services available at iMechanica. In long run, an arxiv-like channel can be designed to serve the mechanics community with the function similiar to arxiv.org, but enabling subscription through RSS feeds, and author-reader interactions.

Robin's points are good.

Konstantin Volokh — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 07:06:45 -0400

Robin's points are good. We have neither a clear citation procedure nor archives. We can probably join the arxiv.org with Solid Mechanics.

Besides, our front page presents too different blog entries. Perhaps, its contents should be more sorted. For example, the research topics should be more separated from the teaching stuff and etc.

Probably, a bit new design of the front page is required.