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Functional proteins must fold with some minimal stability to a structure that can perform a biochemical task. Here we use a simple model to investigate the relationship between the stability requirement and the capacity of a protein to…
The inherent trade-off between ultra-low thermal conductivity and high mechanical rigidity in natural materials limits their utility in advanced applications. Inspired by the unique architecture of layered honeycomb structures, this study…
Superomniphobic textures are at the frontier of surface design for vast arrays of applications. Despite recent significant advances in fabrication methods for reentrant and doubly reentrant microstructures, design optimisation remains a…
Learning to change shape is a fundamental strategy of adaptation and evolution of living organisms, from bacteria and cells to tissues and animals. Human-made materials can also exhibit advanced shape morphing capabilities, but lack the…
Auxetic materials become thicker rather than thinner when stretched, exhibiting an unusual negative Poisson's ratio well suited for designing shape transforming metamaterials. Current auxetic designs, however, are often monostable and…
The complex physics and numerous failure modes of structural impact creates challenges when designing for impact resistance. While simple geometries of layered material are conventional, advances in 3D printing and additive manufacturing…
Mechanical metamaterials made of flexible building blocks can exhibit a plethora of extreme mechanical responses, such as negative elastic constants, shape-changes, programmability and memory. To date, dissipation has largely remained…
We propose a three dimensional mechanical model of embryonic tissue dynamics. Mechanically coupled adherent cells are represented as particles interconnected with elastic beams which can exert non-central forces and torques. Tissue…
Several abilities of biological systems, such as adaptation to natural environment, or of animals to learn patterns when appropriately trained, are features that are extremely useful, if emulated by electronic circuits, in applications…
In designing stellarators, any design decision ultimately comes with a trade-off. Improvements in particle confinement, for instance, may increase the burden on engineers to build more complex coils, and the tightening of financial…
Protein structures are a very special class among all possible structures. It was suggested that a ``designability principle'' plays a crucial role in nature's selection of protein sequences and structures. Here we provide a theoretical…
Designing and fabricating structures with specific mechanical properties requires understanding the intricate relationship between design parameters and performance. Understanding the design-performance relationship becomes increasingly…
The diversity and quality of natural systems have been a puzzle and inspiration for communities studying artificial life. It is now widely admitted that the adaptation mechanisms enabling these properties are largely influenced by the…
Mechanism - collections of rigid elements coupled by perfect hinges which exhibit a zero-energy motion -- motivate the design of a variety of mechanical metamaterials. We significantly enlarge this design space by considering…
The adaptive and surprising emergent properties of biological materials self-assembled in far-from-equilibrium environments serve as an inspiration for efforts to design nanomaterials and their properties. In particular, controlling the…
This article gives a methodological overview of Value-based Engineering for ethics by design. It discusses key challenges and measures involved in eliciting, conceptualizing, prioritizing and respecting values in system design. Thereby it…
A typical protein structure is a compact packing of connected alpha-helices and/or beta-strands. We have developed a method for generating the ensemble of compact structures a given set of helices and strands can form. The method is tested…
The intricate three-dimensional geometries of protein tertiary structures underlie protein function and emerge through a folding process from one-dimensional chains of amino acids. The exact spatial sequence and configuration of amino…
Pathogen transmission and virulence are main evolutionary variables broadly assumed to be linked through trade-offs. In well-mixed populations, these trade-offs are often ascribed to physiological restrictions, while populations with…
Nowadays, most structural integrity concepts rely on simplified isotropic ma-terial data that are used within continuum mechanics modeling approaches. In contrast, modern casting and forming processes yield complex microstruc-tures coming…