The Fourth China-Japan-Korea Joint Symposium on Optimization of Structural and Mechanical Systems will be held in Kunming, China, November 6–9, 2006.

http://sail.dlut.edu.cn/cjkosm4/Home/Index.htm

Recent advances of computer technology have given powerful practical tools to structural and mechanical designs. Optimal design is one of such area where various theories and methodologies are well developed. It is, however, lacking general interests among field designers and engineers. Innovative optimal design techniques and new applications are yet to be developed. Following the successful first CJK-OSM1 in Xian, China in 1999, second (CJK-OSM2) in Busan, Korea in 2002 and the third (CJK-OSM3) in Kanazawa, Japan in 2004, as agreed among participants in the symposium, the fourth CJK-OSM symposium will be held in Kunming, China during Nov. 6th -Nov. 9th, 2006. As before this will be a forum for exchange of recent research ideas and fostering new developments and new applications. Reflecting current interests from various fields, several new topics are included. The scope is, however, not limited to those listed.

This symposium will be part of the 2007 ASME Applied Mechanics and Materials Conference, to be held in the University of Texas in Austin, in June 3-6, 2007.

The 9th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics will feature a student presentation competition. This competition continues in the format pursued at the recent World Congress in Los Angeles. It is open to students who have an abstract accepted for presentation at the Congress.

Hello everyone,

I had previously posted this entry on the AMD blog and perhaps it worthwhile to post it again on this forum. I would like to solicit feedback and comments on an idea to further enhance the role and utility of iMechanica.

This inspiration comes from Bell labs and the physics community.....

They started a journal club (year 2003). Each month ONLY 2-3 already published recent journal papers are reviewed and commentary posted in the form of a newsletter. Since only 2-3 papers are reviewed, the selection is much more stringent and careful. The contribution is regular and periodic (monthly). Hence, this newsletter is taken seriously by physicists.

In our case, this can be done within iMechanica. I suspect we could achieve the same kind of interest if we restrict "notable" papers to 1-3 per month and make it a regular monthly feature. In principle anyone could submit a commentary but the blog moderators will select the top 2-3.

The operational rules are open for discussion. Briefly though, I am thinking on the lines of rotating 1-2 moderators with a term of say 2 months. The moderator will receive commentaries on recently published papers RELATED to mechanics area. The moderator will highlight 1-3 notable commentaries in the journal club newsletter. A key requirement must be that the commentaries/paper highlighted are related to mechanics in some form or the other. The concept of rotating moderator is to provide breadth and prevent bias of any one individual. Rotation of journal club moderators will also keep the "work-load" well distributed.

Perhaps a post has already been made in this regard; A book containing all the papers by J.D. Eshelby was recently released by Springer. This book is compiled by Markenscoff and Gupta. Congratulations to both of them for such a great idea!

I bought this book last week and it is fascinating to read all of Eshelby's papers in chronological order. Furthermore, I found a few papers that I had not even been aware of. The price, at roughly $195 on Amazon is a bit steep but (in my opinion) well worth it. The book also contains forewords by several researcher who knew Eshelby personally.

Here is the amazon link to this book

The McMat 2007 conference, organized by the University of Texas on behalf of the Applied Mechanics and the Materials Divisions of the ASME, will be held in Austin, June 3-7, 2007.

We are now accepting proposals for symposia and abstracts of papers.

Jun He and Guanghai Xu (Intel Corporation)

Zhigang Suo (Harvard University)

USNCCM IX, July 22 - 26, 2007
Pre- & Post-Congress Short Courses, July 22 & 26, 2007
Hyatt Regency San Francisco
San Francisco, California

BACKGROUND AND SCOPE
From their inception in 1991, the biennial congresses of the United States Association for Computational Mechanics have become major scientific events, drawing computational engineers and scientists worldwide from government, academia, and industry. The Ninth U.S. National Congress on Computational Mechanics (USNCCM IX), hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, will feature the latest developments in all aspects of computational mechanics, and will broaden the definition of the discipline to include many other computation-oriented areas in engineering and sciences. From applications in nanotechnology and bioengineering, to recent advances in numerical methods and high-performance computing, the technical program will reflect the Congress theme of "Interdisciplinary Computation''. In addition to plenary lectures and minisymposia that highlight the latest trends in computational mechanics, pre- and post-conference short courses addressing advances in multiscale and multiphysics methods, as well as other topics, will be held. Numerous vendor exhibits from Bay Area and national companies and organizations are also planned. Detailed information on USNCCM IX can be found at:
http://me.berkeley.edu/compmat/USACM/main.html