Science Magazine’s “Breakthroughs of 2006″

In the December 22 issue, the Science staff offers their annual roundup of the top science stories for 2006, along with the Breakthrough of the Year (Perelman’s proving the Poincaré conjecture) and runners-up. They also look back on how accurately they predicted the hot topics for this year, offer one Breakdown of the Year (scientific fraud), and take a shot at predicting the 2007 Areas to Watch.

New UCSD Articles: MAE/SE

Recent articles authored or co-authored by UCSD faculty from the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Department of Structural Engineering, as indexed in Web of Science:

Enhanced differential conductance through light induced current switching in Mn-12 acetate molecular junctions
Ni C, Shah S, Hendrickson D, Bandaru PR
APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 89 (21): Art. No. 212104 NOV 20 2006

Buckling of a flush-mounted plate in simple shear flow
Luo H, Pozrikidis C
ARCHIVE OF APPLIED MECHANICS 76 (9-10): 549-566 DEC 2006

Systematization of approaches to adaptive boundary stabilization of PDEs
Krstic M
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ROBUST AND NONLINEAR CONTROL 16 (16): 801-818 NOV 10 2006

Motion of a spherical particle in film flow
Pozrikidis C
JOURNAL OF FLUID MECHANICS 566: 465-475 NOV 10 2006

Review and comparison of fracture mechanics-based bond strength models for FRP-strengthened structures
Karbhari VM, Niu HD, Sikorsky C
JOURNAL OF REINFORCED PLASTICS AND COMPOSITES 25 (17): 1757-1794 2006
Continue reading New UCSD Articles: MAE/SE…

December Hours

• The S&E Library will be CLOSED Sundays from 12/10 - 12/31

• The Library will be CLOSED from 12/23 through 1/1
• Opening hours from 12/9 through 12/22 are: M-Th 8:00 AM - 7:45 PM, 8:00 AM - 5:45PM on Friday, and 10:00 AM - 5:45 PM on Saturday

Refer to the online calendar for easy reference.

When Patents Threaten Science

From the December 1 issue of Science:

When Patents Threaten Science. You can also listen to Ira Flatow’s interview with article co-author Lori Andrews on the Science Friday website.

What if each generation of scientists was forbidden to use–or even think about–the theorems, principles, and natural phenomena that had been discovered or proven by the previous generation of scientists? Researchers may soon find themselves in that position as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) comes dangerously close to issuing patents on the basic building blocks of science itself.

Student Posters on Exhibit in S&E

Student engineering posters from two groups are on display in the Science & Engineering Library through January. The student chapter of IEEE is displaying posters on the IEEE Robo Magellan Project, the Student UAV Project, and the IEEE Natcar Project.

In addition, nine posters from the TIES (Teams in Engineering Service) program can be seen in various locations on the main level of S&E. Stop in and take a look!

Continue reading Student Posters on Exhibit in S&E…

Concerns About Wiley-Blackwell Merger

From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education:

Planned Merger of 2 Big Journal Publishers Worries Many Academic Librarians

But if Wiley and Blackwell are enjoying a quasi-marital bliss, research librarians are expressing anxiety and dismay at yet another step in the consolidation of the academic-publishing industry. The latest deal is causing special concern because Blackwell has been broadly regarded as the most benign of the for-profit scholarly publishers, and librarians are uncertain whether Blackwell’s prices and practices will survive the merger.

So if Wiley is willing and able to ratchet up the prices of its newly acquired Blackwell journals to the company norm, then [university librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago] Ms. Case is correct: Libraries can expect bruising price increases. But there will be no change, in any event, for at least a year. The companies have said that their prices and licensing agreements for 2007 will be unaffected by the merger.