The effect of coating in increasing the critical size of islands on a compliant substrate
by Juil Yoon, Zhen Zhang, Nanshu Lu, Zhigang Suo
As well pointed out by Journal Club of March 2007, the flexible electronics is an emerging technology.
Blog posts
Italian stress analysis AIAS conference in Ischia --- call for papers Sept.
dear Imechanica users,
a wonderful location for our annual italian conference in stress analysis -- see www.aias2007.it. It is organized by our collegues in Università di Napoli, Prof. Renato Esposito. Attached the call for papers in PDF, and more info are below.
Floating ships of ice and increasing the toughness of glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk
I was surprised several years ago when delving into the literature to not find any references about addition of nanoparticles to ice, to study their impact on the mechanics of ice. In short, to make nanocomposites where the matrix is ice. So, with 2 high school students from IMSA, the Illinois Math and Science Academy, we set about (with their limited time for a bit of research) to try adding some nanoparticles to water and to freeze it. The students simply used their home freezers to do this, and their mechanics measurements were with a hammer and chisel...
Simpleware signs up reseller in China
Simpleware Ltd., the world leader in image-based meshing software, has signed an agreement with Gaitech International Ltd. to resell the Simpleware suite of software products in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao.
Simpleware software offers an advanced solution to problems that were previously intractable due to the complexity in geometry reconstruction. Simpleware's technology has opened up numerical analysis (CFD and FEA) to a variety of applications, including biomedical engineering, material characterisation and industrial reverse engineering.
A new methodology for ranking scientific institutions
We extend the pioneering work of J.E. Hirsch, the inventor of the h-index, by proposing a simple and seemingly robust approach for comparing the scientific productivity and visibility of institutions. Our main findings are that i) while the h-index is a sensible criterion for comparing scientists within a given field, it does not directly extend to rank institutions of disparate sizes and journals, ii) however, the h-index, which always increases with paper population, has an universal growth rate for large numbers of papers; iii) thus the h-index of a large population of papers can be decomposed into the product of an impact index and a factor depending on the population size, iv) as a complement to the h-index, this new impact index provides an interesting way to compare the scientific production of institutions (universities, laboratories or journals).
Tetrahedral: The key to life on Earth?
It seems to me that tetrahedral bonding is responsible for life on earth.
One might leap to the (reasonable) conclusion that I am referring to the element carbon and its ability to form sp3 bonds. Life does depend on carbon, no doubt. But where does life exist, by and large?
Thin films: wrinkling vs buckle-delamination
H. Mei, J.Y. Chung, H.-H. Yu, C.M. Stafford, and R. Huang, Buckling modes of elastic thin films on elastic substrates. Applied Physics Letters 90, 151902 (2007).
Two modes of thin film buckling are commonly observed, one with interface delamination (e.g., telephone cord blisters) and the other with no delamination (i.e., wrinkling). Which one would occur for your film?
Joost Vlassak is promoted to Full Professor with Tenure at Harvard
We have just heard the great news that our colleague (iMechanician number 12), Joost Vlassak, has been promoted to Full Professor with Tenure at Harvard.