Dear iMechanica colleagues,

I would like to announce that Matlab routines implementing the maximum-entropy approximation schemes presented in

Marino Arroyo and Michael Ortiz, “Local maximum-entropy approximation schemes: a seamless bridge between finite elements and meshfree methods”, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 65:2167–2202 (2006).

can be downloaded from

http://www-lacan.upc.es/arroyo/local_max_ent_shape_functions.zip

This new approximation scheme from scattered data can be used in the style of meshfree shape functions for partial differential equations, as well as in function approximation in high dimensions. For a nice review on meshfree methods, see

http://dilbert.engr.ucdavis.edu/~suku/blog/meshfreeblog.html