Best routes found to self-assembling 3-D shapes.
Researchers at Brown and Johns Hopkins universities have found optimal configurations for creating 3-D geometric shapes — like tiny, highly simplified geodesic domes that assemble by themselves. The Brown team developed the algorithmic tools, and the Johns Hopkins team tested selected configurations. The research may lead to advances from drug-delivery containers to 3-D sensors and electronic circuits.
There are “geometric analogies between natural assembly of proteins and viruses” and these polyhedra.
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