Such precise control over the material's structure makes possible materials with useful but unusual properties.
"The rigid material becomes a structure and the other layer is the force that can start bending and twisting it, " said Mr Tibbits.
That 3-D data then got plugged into a solid-modeling program where engineering parameters such as material, thickness and structure were assigned to the shape.
The advantage of this approach is that it retains the basic fibre-plus-matrix structure of the material.
Some 3D systems allow the properties and internal structure of the material being printed to be varied.
With the help of advanced computer technology used to design fighter planes, he has been able to calculate structure, curvature, material and cost so accurately that forms impossible to create and build through traditional methods can now be brought in on budget and on time.
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Following that tradition, the brainiacs over at the University of Reading have developed a new nano-material electrode coating based on the cellular structure of plants.
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This book, which describes the descendants of a civilisation that has converted the material in its planets into a giant ringlike structure around its sun, was inspired by Freeman Dyson's idea that a truly technologically advanced species would endeavour to capture as much light as possible by building a spherical shell around its central star.
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The original structure is removed, and only the material that was on the sides remains.
Her home was barely even a shack, with walls constructed from a hybrid of any available flat material scraps that they could piece together to form a structure.
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The other, which faces a specialised type of solar cell made of a material called indium gallium arsenide, is sculpted into a structure called a photonic crystal that causes it to emit infra-red radiation selectively at the frequency best absorbed by the cell.
These intense rays are then channelled off into beamlines and focused on to samples of material, like the Mary Rose timbers, allowing their fine structure to be analysed.
Described as a "mega-scale free form printer" by its makers, the massive aluminum structure uses sand, which it forms back into a material that's like marble.
Backfill: material used to build up and consolidate the land behind a seawall or similar structure.
Scour: removal of underwater material by waves or currents, especially at the toe of a shore protection structure.
Toe protection: material, usually large boulders, placed at the base of a sea defence structure like a seawall to prevent wave scour.
Haofei Shi, the report's lead author, said the material "acts as a perfect black cloth that can completely conceal the 3D structure of the object".
Crick, along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, was given the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for "discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
The slim devices are arranged in rows across a support structure made of silicon carbide, a very light and very stiff material that will not bend or warp when it experiences the temperature extremes of space.
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