Tenth Pan American Congress of Applied Mechanics - PACAM X; held January 7-11, 2008; Cancun, MX

第十届泛美应用力学大会（PACAM X）将于2008年1月7日至11日在墨西哥坎昆召开。会议的智力价值是让工程师、科学家和高级研究生了解复合材料、计算力学、控制、动力学、流体力学、传感器和监测以及固体和结构力学领域的新研究进展、问题和潜在的合作机会。以前的PACAM会议已经成功地实现了这些目标，但近年来参与人数有所下降，尤其是在美国研究生中。因此，第十届国际PACAM的重点是召集一个强大而成功的选民聚会，以帮助稳定PACAM的未来，并强调美国继续在广泛的力学领域发挥领导作用。尽管北方大学的力学专业学生人数众多，而且力学在拉丁美洲的经济发展中占有重要地位，但两个半球之间的技术互动却少于应有的程度。有鉴于此，会议的更广泛影响是为美国研究生提供一个机会：1)在国际平台上展示他们的研究并获得知名度，2)与其他研究人员建立潜在的合作关系，3)参加潜在的学生交流。PACAM会议在这方面很重要，因为它们使这些学生以及拉丁美洲参与者能够在其他竞争会议很少的情况下与来自世界各地的学者进行接触。

The tenth biennial Pan American Congress of Applied Mechanics (PACAM X) will be organized in Cancun, Mexico January 7th 2008, through January 11th 2008. The Intellectual Merit of the conference is to expose engineers, scientists, and advanced graduate students to new research developments, problems, and potential collaborative opportunities in the areas of composite materials, computational mechanics, controls, dynamics, fluid mechanics, sensors and monitoring, and solid and structural mechanics. Previous PACAM conferences have successfully achieved these goals but with a decline in participation in recent years, especially among US graduate students. Therefore, the emphasis of this 10th international PACAM is to assemble a strong and successful gathering of constituents to help stabilize the future of PACAM and to emphasize the leadership role that the U.S. continues to carry in the broad field of mechanics.Despite the number of students in mechanics attending northern universities and the importance of mechanics in the economic development in the Latin Americas, the technical interaction is less than it should be between the two hemispheres. In this light, the Broader Impacts of the conference are to provide US graduate students with an opportunity to: 1) present their research on an international platform and attain visibility, 2) establish potential collaborations with other researchers, and 3) participate in potential student exchanges. The PACAM conferences are important in this regard because they enable these students as well as Latin American participants to engage with scholars from all over the world during a time when there are few other competing conferences.