Jerry West, "hillbilly kid" and greatest paradox in pro basketball, tells his own story and gives a lively picture of a tense and fast-paced game.

Leading experts provide a timely overview of the key developments in the physics, chemistry and uses of magnetorheological fluids.

Soft material-enabled electronics offer distinct advantage, over conventional rigid and bulky devices, for numerous wearable and implantable applications. Soft materials allow for seamless integration with skin and tissues due to enhanced mechanical flexibility and stretchability. Wearable devices, such as sensors, offer continuous, real-time monitoring of biosignals and movements, which can be applied in rehabilitation and diagnostics, among other applications. Soft implantable electronics offer similar functionalities, but with improved compatibility with human tissues. Biodegradable soft implantable electronics are also being developed for transient monitoring, such as in the weeks following surgery. To further advance soft electronics, materials, integration strategies, and fabrication techniques are being developed. This paper reviews recent progress in these areas, toward the development of soft material-enabled electronics for medicine, healthcare, and human-machine interfaces.

This book is about field responsive fluids as smart materials, which includes magneto-rheological (MR) fluids, electro-rheological (ER) fluids and ferrofluids. It reviews the previous works and considers all the aspects that can help researchers and industries to choose proper materials as MR fluid constituents. Topics in magnetism and types of magnetic materials are presented. This includes the effect of magnetizable particles behaviors such as size, shape and density. The type of materials on the rheological properties is also compared for MR, ER and ferro-fluids. The second part of the book discusses advanced topics for MR, ER and ferro-fluids comparing some of the properties between the field responsive fluids. This book appeals to engineers, researchers and practitioners in the area of materials and mechanical engineering with interest in the field responsive fluids.

ERMR 2006 included invited speakers, technical presentations, poster presentations, and a student paper competition. At the conference banquet, Dr. David Carlson of Lord Corporation addressed the conference attendees and gave a stirring speech on the history of ER and MR fluids, as well as current and future applications. A unique feature of the ERMR Conferences is that they comprehensively cover issues ranging from physics to chemistry to engineering applications of ER and MR materials held in a general session to enhance the interaction between the scientists and engineers. The sessions in ERMR 2006 were organized based into two Symposia: a) Materials and b) Applications. Topics covered in the Materials Symposium included: mechanisms, preparation, and characterization of ER and MR materials. Topics covered in the Applications Symposium included: ER and MR devices, control systems, system integration, and applications. This structure was implemented in order to enable interaction between attending scientists and engineers in both the Materials Symposium and the Applications Symposium, and to enhance the free flow of ideas, and the potential collaborative research opportunities. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Transient Behavior of Electrorheological Fluids in Shear Flow (471 KB). Contents: The Physical Mechanism to Reduce Viscosity of Liquid Suspensions (R Tao); Polar Molecular Type Electrorheological Fluids (K Lu et al.); Yield Stress in Ferrofluids? (H Shahnazian & S Odenbach); The Effect of Dwell Time on the Rheological Behavior of MR Fluids (M Ahmadian & F D Goncalves); The Methods of Measuring Shear Stress of Polar Molecule Dominated ER Fluids (R Shen et al.); Electrosensitive Lubricants (E V Korobko et al.); Study on Characteristics of an Electrorheological Fluid Coupling (Y Meng et al.); On the Control of a MR Torque Transfer Device (M H Elahinia et al.); Comparison of ERF Clutch Designs (D J Ellam et al.); Examination of Throughflow in a Radial ERF Clutch (S M Chen et al.); Two-Layered Magnetic Fluid Sloshing in a Rectangular Container (S Yoshida et al.); Design of the High-Performance MR Brake and Its Characteristics (T Kikuchi et al.); and other papers. Readership: Mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, physicists, chemists, chemical engineers and materials scientists.