iMechanica is great. I am glad to find this useful web and register an account with my full name.
I am a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Jilin Yu in the Department of Modern Mechanics at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). It is expected to get my PhD degree in July 2007. My PhD research work is mainly focused on the adhesive contact between elastic objects. Prior to this, I have ever interested in the reverse-Karman vortex street, the progressive buckling of tubes and the dynamic crushing of cellular structures. In these work, I gradually learnt the experimental, theoretical and numerical methods. For more details, please refer to my homepage at: http://mail.ustc.edu.cn/~zjzheng.
I am pursuing a postdoctoral position in the micro/nano mechanics field to continue my research career. It will be very appreciated if you could give me some advice or inform me some information about my application.
Welcome a student iMechanician
I'm so delighted to see you as an active iMechanician. iMechanica is particularly interested in meeting the needs of students (http://imechanica.org/node/151)
We have been experimenting ways to use iMechanica. For example, once other students in your group sign on, they automatically be in your group: see an example: http://imechanica.org/profile/profile_6/Xi+Chen
Another experiment I've been doing is to ask each of my students to use a tag "suo group research", so that when you click this tag, all such posts show up (http://imechanica.org/taxonomy/term/85).
Thus, a professor can distribute the work load among all members of her group. This tag also gives some identity to your group.
As a student, you will begin to build up your professional network. iMechanica identifies each user account by a number. Everything about this account can be updated: your user name, your email address, your photo, your profile, etc. After you graduate, and move on to another institution, your iMechanica account will remain the same: it will be an invariant in your career.
Please help to advertise iMechanica to your fellow students by modifying the following message and sending it along to people whom you think will benefit from iMechanica.
Many thanks
Zhigang
Introducing iMechanica
iMechanica (http://www.imechanica.org) aims to use the Internet to enhance communications among mechanicians, and to pave a way to evolve all knowledge of mechanics online. iMechanica is hosted on a server at Harvard University. A growing team of fellow mechanicians volunteer to serve as architects and moderators. iMechanica is free: writers are free to post, and readers are free to read.
You can read every post without registering. To write in iMechanica, you need to register for a free account. You can post findings in your lab and observations of a working day, exhilarating or otherwise. You can post advertisements of conferences and jobs. You can upload preprints of your recent papers, a practice permitted by most journals. You can even post a preprint of a paper already published in a journal, so that your paper gets one more chance to find its readers. You can also post your lecture notes, or post a question about mechanics in a forum. Really, you can post anything you see fit. Be creative. What you post is a decision of yours.
Why do you want to post in iMechanica? Because you love mechanics and because you want to help others learn mechanics. Well, these may be part of the reason. Perhaps more importantly, you would like to help yourself by helping others to discover you and your work. Suppose you post an entry of interest to other mechanicians, say an entry on an upcoming conference. If a reader is impressed by the quality of your post, perhaps she would like to know who you are. Click your name attached to the post, and she lands on your profile, which has the URL of your homepage. Also appearing on the post is a link to your blog. She will see your recent research if you have posted any. She might be so impressed and decides to subscribe to the RSS feed of your blog. You now have a fan for your work. She is notified whenever you publish anything in your blog.
If you are concerned that you may not find useful things if everyone is posting, you should try the search engine of iMechanica, or just Google. Perhaps it is also time for you to discover RSS feeds and social bookmarking. With all the creative energy pouring into the technology of the Internet, it is safe to say that the development of the Internet will far out pace that of mechanics. If a post is worth finding, you will find it.
Traditional modes of communication in our community under serve students and industrial practitioners. iMechanica aims to provide an easy platform for students and industrial practitioners, as well as academics. Creative uses of mechanics in industries have already been heavily discussed in iMechanica.
iMechanica runs as a common, like Boston Common or Central Park. A common belongs to no one in particular, but belongs to whoever uses it. There is time to relax in a common, there is time to build one. Both bring you enjoyment. The best way to help building iMechanica is to think what is good for you. Let software and the collective behavior of all users take care of the community. And so, fellow mechanicians: ask not what you can do for iMechanica - ask what iMechanica can do for you.
Features in iMechanica are powerful yet simple to use. However, they are difficult to describe in words, just as it is difficult to describe how to ride a bicycle by an email. So, why not explore? Stop pondering over this post, and go straight to visit http://www.imechanica.org.