Zhigang Suo's blog

The number of registered users of iMechanica is approaching 3000.  This sustained growth has been surprising to many, considering that iMechanica was launched less than a year ago, in September 2006, that iMechanica uses an off-the-shelf open-source software, Drupal, and that everyone can read everything without registration.  Why have so many people registered?  There might be many reasons, such as

Elsevier-bashing has become a sport among researchers.  The company is singled out, among publishers of research journals, perhaps because it is the largest.  We might as well use Elsevier as a representative of the publishers, and hard-working people at Elsevier should not be offended. 

A common point of contention is that Elsevier makes too much money.  This is odd, given that many other companies make far more money, and that money symbolizes success in many cultures.  So making money, by itself,  should not be the reason that upsets researchers.

One of the mission statements of iMechanica is to use the Internet to enhance communications among mechanicians. It seems that the top three uses of the Internet among many of us are

• Emails
• PDF
• Google search 

It might be useful, and fun, for us to share the experience with these and other tools associated with the Internet.  I'll start a list of tools that I have found exceptionally useful.  All these tools are free of charge.

At a meeting of the Editorial Board of IJSS, on Sunday, 3 June 2007, in Austin, Texas, the representatives from Elsevier, the publisher of IJSS, told the members of the Board that all articles published in IJSS will be freely accessible 24 months after publication.  The first of these articles will become available in October 2007.  That is, all IJSS articles published after October 2005 will become freely accessible after a delay of 24 months.

In response to a NSF call for proposal on Cyberinfrastructure Training, Education, Advancement, and Mentoring for Our 21st Century Workforce (CI-TEAM), in June 2006, several of us submitted a proposal entitled "iMechanica:  Leveraging Cyberinfrastructure to Evolve All Knowledge of Applied Mechanics"

I wish that this thought had come to me earlier, so that I could have posted it on April First.  No, I'm unaware of such a program.  Instead, Harvard faculty have just emerged from a multi-year review of curriculum, and reaffirmed the commitment to liberal education, after voting out a president not too long ago.

After testing for some time, Lesley Lam has just upgraded iMechanica to Drupal 5.  She has tried to make every function exactly the same as before, so that users should not see any abrupt changes.  If you do find any unfamiliar behavior of the new version, please leave a comment below.

On Wednesday morning, I received an email from Anastassia Paskaleva. She was unable to create an account on iMechanica, because CAPTCHA kept telling her that she typed the letters wrong. Lesley Lam, iMechanicia user number 1, has just fixed the problem. Now new users can register once more. We apologize for the inconvenience that this problem might have caused you, and thank Anastassia for letting us know the problem.

• Free energy and generalized coordinate. Equilibrium and stability
• Control parameter
• Configurational transitions of two types
• Critical point of configurational transition of the second type. Bifurcation analysis
• Behavior near a critical point. Post-bifurcation analysis
• Load-displacement relation near a critical point
• Koiter's theory of imperfection sensitivity
• A family of systems of many degrees of freedom
• Mode of bifurcation
• Vibration in the neighborhood of an equilibrium configuration

David Turnbull died peacefully at home last Saturday, April 28th, at age 92.

He was for many years Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University. His seminal work included theoretical and experimental studies of nucleation of crystals, the glass transition and the amorphous state, crystal growth, and atomic diffusion.

The New York Times Magazine this weekend featured a Harvard undergraduate student from China, and her work to shake up education in China. The article is long, but if you grew up in China, it should be a quick read, and fun. If you grew up in US or Europe, perhaps this is a helpful read, just to learn how other people live.