Gang Bao Chairs a New Technical Committee on Mechanics in Biology and Medicine

The Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division, of the ASME International, has just established a new Technical Committee on Mechanics in Biology and Medicine, chaired by Gang Bao, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

This new Technical Committee aims to provide a home for a growing community in applied mechanics interested in biological and medical research, and a link between AMD and other organizations with similar interests. Riding on the enthusiasm in the field, the Committee will help to define exciting research directions that promote mechanics in biology and medicine.

The Applied Mechanics Division now has a total of 17 Technical Committees.

Seventh World Congress on Computational Mechanics

A message from Wing Kam Liu, General Chairman

Applied Mechanics News tops the search result on Google

AMN was launched two weeks ago, on Sunday, 8 January 2006. A week later, a Google search of Applied Mechanics News would return it as the fifth entry, in the form of a link from the ASME Applied Mechanics Division webpage.

Today, when I typed Applied Mechanics News into Google’s Search window, lo and behold, it returned AMN as the first entry, standing by itself!

The page rank of AMN, however, is still low: 0 out of 10 on the Google Toolbar. By comparison, the New York Times has a page rank of 10, and the ASME Applied Mechanics Division webpage has a page rank of 5.

Views from Industries

Two volunteers, Xuejun Fan of Intel, and Xiao-Yan Gong of Johnson and Johnson, have initiated a blog called Views from Industries. If you would like to join the team, or make any contribution, please contact them.

Research and Researchers: 2005 AMD Honors and Awards

Research and Researchers: 2005 AMD Honors and Awards

Call for proposals to host an IUTAM symposium or instructional summer school in 2008 or 2009

Proposal due no later than February 1, 2006

The United States National Committee on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNC/TAM) seeks proposals from U. S. authors and institutions to host IUTAM (International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics) Symposia or Instructional Summer Schools in 2008 or 2009. Detailed information for US proposers can be found on the USNC/TAM website at: http://www.usnctam.org (click on IUTAM Symposia). IUTAM provides a small amount of financial support for the symposia and summer schools sanctioned by the IUTAM General Assembly. US organizers are strongly encouraged to seek additional financial support from other sources. The primary use of financial support is to help with travel expenses for younger scientists and scientists from developing countries. Listings of past and current IUTAM symposia and summer schools can be obtained through the USNC/TAM web site.

IUTAM Symposia
The goal of an IUTAM Symposium is to assemble a group of active scientists, within a well-defined field, for the development of science in that field. Participation is by invitation only. In order to achieve effective communication within the group it should, typically, be limited to 60-80 scientists with expertise in the subject area of the symposium. Symposia typically consist of a few invited lectures, and a larger number of contributed papers, presented as lectures and/or posters, all pre-screened by the Symposium Scientific Committee.

IUTAM Instructional Summer Schools
The purpose of an IUTAM Instructional Summer School is to provide lectures by leading experts in a new or emerging field of science and engineering in order to foster developments in that field. Schools are typically 3– 5 days in length and intended primarily for younger scientists and those with only limited knowledge in the specific field of the school. Participation of is by invitation only.

Proposal Submission
Proposals from the United States to host a symposium or summer school should be submitted on the appropriate two-page Proposal Submission Form available on the USNC/TAM website. The completed proposal should be sent electronically to the USNC/TAM Secretary (herak@virginia.edu) no later than January 15, 2006. Proposers may submit their proposals directly to IUTAM. However, experience has shown that proposals benefit from the feedback provided by USNC/TAM, and that the recommendation of USNC/TAM when the proposal is finally submitted to IUTAM carries considerable weight. An example of a successful proposal can be found on the USNC/TAM website.

Final Approvals
Proposals will be assessed by the USNC/TAM and then forwarded to IUTAM where they are reviewed by IUTAM panels. The IUTAM General Assembly will vote on the panel recommendations in August 2006.

Second Meeting of the "Thin-Air Philosophical Society"

In August of 2005, we organized a workshop on “Current Challenges in Mechanics and Materials” at the University of Wyoming. The workshop was supported by NSF and the University of Wyoming.

Under the title “Current Challenges in Mechanics of Materials,” the four-day workshop included four major themes, one for each day. These were (a) Current Issues in Mechanics and Materials, (b) Computational Issues in Mechanics and Materials, (c) Mechanics and Materials in the Bio-World, and (d) Review and Discussion.

The workshop was attended by more than thirty participants. All the presentations can be found here. This file includes the final workshop schedule, the technical report compiled after the end of the workshop, and the list of registered participants.

Applied Mechanics in the Age of Web 2.0

The ASME International Applied Mechanics Division has about 6000 members. The number is too large for us to know each other individually, but too small for CNN to cover us in the Situation Room.

Then came the Internet. We have since been in touch through emails, and looked up each other on the Web. Many web pages created in 1990s, however, are static. For such a web page, the bottleneck is often the webmaster. He or she gets a request each time anyone wants to post anything. It is more like a broadcast than a web.

In recent years, there have been waves of new internet phenomena, such as Wikipedia, Real Simple Syndicates (RSS), open-source movement, and web logs (blogs). They are collectively known as Web 2.0.

At the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Division on 8 November 2005, in Orlardo, Florida, the Committee discussed how to exploit Web 2.0 to engage members of the Division. As the new member of the Committee, I was assigned to look into the matter.

Did I just use the word “engage”? This sounds prohibitively Web 1.0 like. The Excecutive Committee is in no position to create an attractive web page to engage you. The solution is you, everyone in the community of Applied Mechanics. A key attribute of Web 2.0 is participation.

In front of you is an experiment: Applied Mechanics News (AMN), a blog of news and views of interest to the international community of Applied Mechanics. On the sidebar is a growing list of contributors, each posting independently. In steady state, the AMN and its asscocited blogs will have hundreds of contributors, so that each contributor will only have to post once or twice a year. As most news and views in AMN are not restricted to a single country or a single organization, the contributors will be international, and need not be ASME members.

At the end of the post, you can add comments, which will be visible to others. You can reach the AMN homepage by clicking "Home" at the bottome of this page.

From the sidebar of the AMN homepage, you can link to other blogs, each managed independently by a team of contributors, members of the international community of Applied Mechnaics, just like you. For example, one link takes you to a blog on "Research and Researchers".

Also from the sidebar of the AMN homepage, the link "Integrated Structures" takes you to a blog managed by the Technical Committee on Integrated Structures, one of 16 Technical Committees in the Division.

Now here is a question for you. What other blogs would you create to serve the community of Applied Mechanics? Of course, you can simply ask to be a contributor of an existing blog. You can also submit a news to a contributor, and receive a byline. If you are active in one of the Technical Committees, please contact the chair of your committee to discuss how you can participate in creating a blog of your own Technical Committee.

As a reader, you can display the latest headlines of AMN, along with the headlines in New York Times, Science, Nature, etc., using a start page. No more email spam. You can glance at the headlines of sources of your own choice, whenever you like, using any computer around the world. Each headline also links to a full article.

This blog uses a free service provided by Google. I was introduced to it by my teenage sons, and now my wife keeps a blog for relatives and friends. Teens are the pioneers of new technology adoption. Soon we will all use Blog, just as we have been using Word. Once this simple tool is in the hands of everybody, the only thing that really matters is content. And that means you. You are both the producer and consumer of a valuable thing: the content that is of and for the internationl community of Applied Mechanics. Teens cannot do this for us. Nor can CNN.

Notes

This post now serves as a description of our approach to AMN. As AMN evolves, we'll update the post from the initial post.

Creating a blog takes about 2 minutes and a few clicks.

There are now at least 27 million blogs in existence, with the number doubling every 5.5 months, according to Dave Sifry, the founder of Technorati, a leading blog search site.

About 20% internet users read blogs, said a Gallup's poll.

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Want to edit it? Here is the entry on Applied Mechanics.

Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, according to a special report in Nature.

Web 2.0 according to Tim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, a publisher of computer books. He coined the term Web 2.0 in early 2004.

A Google search of "Web 2.0" gives about 79 million results (9 April 2006).

We are the web. Each time we post an entry, or just make a hyperlink, we help to create a dynamic web. A perspective on the history and future of the Internet by Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine.

The best Web 2.0 software of 2005

AMD Creates a New Technical Committee on Integrated Structures

The Executive Committee of the Applied Mechanics Division has recently created a Technical Committee on Integrated Structures.

The Field
Devices in advanced technologies often have complex architectures, hybrid materials, and small features. Examples include integrated circuits and thermal barrier coatings. The mechanical behavior of such integrated structures often affects their fabrication and durability. By the very nature of integrated structures, the field is cross-disciplinary, involving many materials (metals, ceramics, polymers, semiconductors, etc.), and many modes of response (fracture, deformation, instability, and mass transport). The field is extremely active, both in terms of industrial applications and academic research.

The People
Many people with advanced degrees in applied mechanics and mechanical behavior of materials are now finding jobs in the microelectronic industry and biomedical device industry. Many of them have yet found a home society. While they interact with researchers in technical societies traditionally identified with these industries, they also interact with researchers in applied mechanics. The new Technical Committee will create a home for this group of people, and a link between applied mechanics and new, exciting applications. It will also possibly provide a way for the AMD to interact with some of the Industrial Tracks.

The Organization of the Technical Committee
To forge the link between academia and industries, the committee will have co-chairs. The initial co-chairs are
• Dr. Jun He (jun.he@intel.com), of Intel Corporation. He has worked over ten years in the industry, and is an innovative researcher in the field of thermomechanical reliability. He has a strong track-record of interacting with people in universities.
• Dr. Rui Huang (ruihuang@mail.utexas.edu), of the University of Texas, Austin. He is an energetic assistant professor in applied mechanics. He has been interacting with people in industries and government labs.

Kyung-Suk Kim won Ho-Am Prize of $200,000

The Ho-Am Prize in Engineering for 2005 has been awarded to Dr. Kyung-Suk Kim, Professor of Engineering, Brown University. Dr. Kim has been a preeminent figure in the emerging field of nanomechanics from its beginnings. In particular, he has made important contributions towards the understanding of mechanics on the nano scale by creating novel scale-bridging techniques and formulating multi-scale theories and models.

Dr. Kim has led the establishment of the single-asperity friction law, using dislocation models to explain the nano and micro single-asperity-contact friction phenomena observed in experimental comparisons of atomic force microscope (AFM) and surface force apparatus (SFA) results. The friction law is a useful and necessary principle in designing fabrication processes of semiconductor nano-devices on solid surfaces and examining characteristics of nanostructures with an atomic force microscope. In addition, he provided a seminal method of measuring surface residual stresses on a fine scale, accurately formulating the self-organization principle of surface nanostructures in the evolution of surface roughness caused by stress during chemical etching. The chemical etching research was primarily funded by the CMS Division, while the nano friction research was principally funded by the MRSEC/DMR of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

He has been active in research, publishing more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals including Proceedings of The Royal Society of London, Jounrnal of The Mechanics & Physics of Solids, Physical Review Letters, editing three books in the field of nano and micro mechanics, organizing the first international nanomechanics workshop funded by the CMS Division, U.S. National Science Foundation in 1999, and contributing to the development of worldwide nano science and technology as Chairman of the Thin Film & Nano Structures symposium for the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (ICTAM) held in 2004. In addition, he has collaborated in research internationally with various research institutes, government agencies and universities including KAIST, KIST, SKKU, IMRE-Singapore, Cambridge University, US-NSF, Harvard University, UC Santa Barbara, University of Illinois UC, and Caltech. In addition, he has participated actively in industrial-academic partnerships with leading international industrial groups including IBM, GTE, Polaroid, Ford, GM, Samsung and Hyundai Motors.

The Ho-Am Prize is presented in the five areas of Science, Engineering, Medicine, The Arts and Community Service. In academic areas, the Ho-Am Prize is awarded to scholars and researchers who have made outstanding achievements of international standards. It is presented to commemorate their excellent endeavors and at the same time encourage their future activities to even higher levels and present exemplary models for the academic community. The prize in each area consists of a diploma, a plaque, a gold medal (187.5g) and 200 million Korean won (Approximately US$200,000).

The Ho-Am Prize was founded in 1990 by Chairman Kun-Hee Lee of Samsung inheriting the noble spirit of public service shown by his father, the late Byung-Chull Lee, founder of Samsung. The prize, named after the late Mr. Lee's sobriquet, is given to individuals who have contributed to cultural, artistic and social development or furthered the welfare of humanity through distinguished accomplishments in their respective professional fields. A special prize may also be given to Koreans who have made prominent accomplishments in professional fields other than those afore-mentioned, or to foreigners who have made major contributions to Korea's cultural and social advancement that transcend national and racial boundaries.