Blog posts

Hydrogels have enormous potential for making adaptive structures in response to diverse stimuli.  In a structure demonstrated recently, for example, nanoscale rods of silicon were embedded vertically in a swollen hydrogel, and the rods tilted by a large angle in response to a drying environment (Sidorenko, et al., Science 315, 487, 2007).  Here we describe a model to show that this behavior corresponds to a bifurcation at a critical humidity, analogous to a phase transition of the second kind.

At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star

Most frequently e-mailed by NYTimes.com readers in the past 30 days, the above article features MIT physics professor, Walter H. G. Lewin, on how his free physics lecture videos online have won him devotees all over the world.

EPFL continues to strengthen its School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). We are recruiting an assistant professor (tenure track) in structural engineering. In special cases, a senior faculty appointment could be considered. We are seeking exceptional candidates with a strong interest in teaching and an outstanding record of scientific accomplishments.

I had promised to talk about subversion in my post on digitizing and editing figures but never quite got around to it. A recent spate of requests about downloading Uintah reminded me of my promise. So here's the story.

Dear Colleagues:

We invite you to submit an abstract in our mini-symposium titled

Length Scale Effects in Dynamic Failure of Materials

at

8th. World Congress on Computational Mechanics (WCCM8)

5th. European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and Engineering (ECCOMAS 2008)

June 30 - July 4, 2008

Lido Island, Venice, Italy

A new type of elasticity of random (multifractal) structures is suggested. A closed system of constitutive equations is obtained on the basis of two proposed phenomenological laws of reversible deformations of multifractal structures. The results may be used for predictions of the mechanical behavior of materials with multifractal microstructure, as well as for the estimation of the metric, information, and correlation dimensions using experimental data on the elastic behavior of materials with random microstructure.