One possibility Dr Yu foresees is to incorporate fibres into materials such as blocks of plastic, and then dissolve them away to create tiny channels through which fluids could flow.
Yet the haul of weapons was small: about 10 Kalashnikovs, 4 bolt-action rifles, a machine gun, a pistol, a grenade, 7 blocks of plastic explosive and one grenade.
She's found a few candidate viruses that can link methane and oxygen to form ethylene, a building block of plastics, fertilizers and tires.
The plastic guns in question are easy to print on inexpensive 3D printers because they are basically simple blocks of plastic with grooves and a few holes in them.
Acids derived from lignocellulosic sugars have a large potential as precursors of plastics and as building block compounds [49].
That means individual worms are more or less identical.Dr Brenner and his team embedded their worms in blocks of plastic, sliced the blocks thinly and then stained each slice so its features would show up in an electron microscope.
A paper published by the entertainment giant's Pittsburgh labs details prototypes already created including a bug-like figure with glowing eyes that display different graphics; chess set pieces that use light to display information about their position on the board; and blocks of plastic that appear to show explosions inside when light is shone at them.
What is more, it did so in the form of nice white curvy things that, compared with the grey/black boxy PCs, made the world seem a better place (if, by better, you mean a permanent episode of Black Mirror where we would sooner press handheld blocks of plastic than converse with our friends and family).
The facility will process huge quantities of natural gas and natural gas liquids from the prolific Marcellus and Utica shales and turn them into the building blocks of plastic.
There's a lot of gear: jacket, pants with a waist that goes up to chest-height, helmet, goggles, gloves, apres-ski boots and then the dreaded ski boots – blocks of plastic that corset from the shins down.
