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Dr. Suo's group is recently studying the sharp features such as corners or edges. It becomes important to characterize fracture behaviors at corners and edges in microelectronics.

I have two questions,

Kevin P. Granata, 45, of Blacksburg, beloved husband and father, loving son and brother, passed away Monday, April 16, 2007. Kevin was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio. He began his bachelor's studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio and then transferred to Ohio State University where he received degrees in electrical engineering and physics. He later earned a Master's degree in physics from Purdue University and was employed by the Applied Physics Lab in Maryland where he did classified research. He returned to Ohio State University and completed his Ph. D. in Biomedical Engineering, continuing his research until he transferred to the Department of Orthopedics at the University of Virginia, where he was the director the Gait Lab In 2002, Kevin came to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. to continue his teaching and research interests. He had numerous publications and research grants and lectured both nationally and internationally. Kevin's greatest passion and pride was his family, especially his wife and children. He was also an athlete. He rowed crew at Purdue, participated in biathlons and triathlons and was an avid runner and cyclist. He loved coaching his sons' Lacrosse teams, reading and doing construction around his home and was a member of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. Kevin believed in being a well-rounded person and he successfully used his talents to the utmost, academically, physically and spiritually. He will be greatly missed. He is survived by wife, Linda (nee Ankenman); sons, Alex and Eric; and daughter, Ellen; parents, Mildred and Joseph Granata (Toledo); brother, Paul; sisters, Eileen and Anne; and numerous nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles. A public memorial service will be held at the Blacksburg Presbyterian Church at 2 p.m. Friday, April 20, 2007. A private funeral will be held. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to the Kevin P. Granata Memorial Trust, 1872 Pratt Drive, Blacksburg, Va, 24068. Arrangements by McCoy Funeral Home, 150 Country Club Drive, Blacksburg, Va.

Upon hearing the painful news of VPI tragedy, I am deeply saddened that we lost our young students and fellow faculty, in particular, Liviu Librescu, G. V. Loganathan and Kevin Granata. I would like to share the sorrow with the family and friends of the victims who lost their lives in the senseless crime. I am deeply compelled to write this message, since I am a faculty teaching young students applied mechanics/engineering like professors Librescu, Loganathan and Granata, and belong to a small community of Korean Americans. I feel helpless and guilty that I could not mentor our young people and hear such incomprehensible tragic news.

I would like to introduce my recent paper on field projection method with Prof. K.-S. Kim at Brown University. When atomistic simulations or atomic resolution experiments are carried out to analyze deformation energetics of atomic lattices near a crack tip, the results of the atomic positions and the total energy of the system have not been systematically converted to field quantities such as stresses or tractions near the crack tip. In this study, we introduce a mathematically consistent way of defining and measuring the cohesive tractions, separations and surface stresses in an atomic decohesion process zone using the atomic displacement data at some distance away from the crack tip. The method is called “nano-scale planar field projection method.” This is a generalization of the method developed for isotropic homogeneous solids by Hong and Kim (2003). The formulation introduced here is applicable to interface cracks between anisotropic solids as well as to cracks in homogeneous solids whether they are anisotropic or isotropic. The field projection method is then applied to a crack tip field in gold, simulated atomistically. The atomistic simulation is made with an embedded atom method (EAM) potential for a crystal decohesion along [112] direction in a (111) plane. Then, the details of energy partition in various modes of nano-scale separation processes are analyzed with the field projection method.

In a recent Progress Article in Nature Materials, David Taylor, Jan G Hazenberg, and T Clive Lee write about the damage that human bones sustain as a result of cyclic stresses under which they operate and the repair mechanisms that operate.