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In 3D printing, it is critical to use as few as possible supporting materials for efficiency and material saving. Multiple model decomposition methods and multi-DOF (degrees of freedom) 3D printers have been developed to address this issue. However, most systems utilize model decomposition and multi-DOF independently. Only a few existing approaches combine the two, i.e. partitioning the models for multi-DOF printing. In this paper, we present a novel model decomposition method for multidirectional 3D printing, allowing consistent printing with the least cost of supporting materials. Our method is based on a global optimization that minimizes the surface area to be supported for a 3D model. The printing sequence is determined inherently by minimizing a single global objective function. Experiments on various complex 3D models using a five-DOF 3D printer have demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach.

We consider the asymptotics of the Turaev-Viro and the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants of a hyperbolic $3$-manifold, evaluated at the root of unity $exp(2\pi\sqrt{-1}/r)$ instead of the standard $exp(\pi\sqrt{-1}/r)$. We present evidence that, as $r$ tends to $\infty$, these invariants grow exponentially with growth rates respectively given by the hyperbolic and the complex volume of the manifold. This reveals an asymptotic behavior that is different from that of Witten's Asymptotic Expansion Conjecture, which predicts polynomial growth of these invariants when evaluated at the standard root of unity. This new phenomenon suggests that the Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants may have a geometric interpretation other than the original one via $SU(2)$ Chern-Simons gauge theory.

In studying the "11/8-Conjecture" on the Geography Problem in 4-dimensional topology, Furuta proposed a question on the existence of Pin(2)-equivariant stable maps between certain representation spheres. In this paper, we present a complete solution to this problem by analyzing the Pin(2)-equivariant Mahowald invariants. As a geometric application of our result, we prove a "10/8+4"-Theorem. We prove our theorem by analyzing maps between certain finite spectra arising from BPin(2) and various Thom spectra associated with it. To analyze these maps, we use the technique of cell diagrams, known results on the stable homotopy groups of spheres, and the j-based Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence.

Kronheimer-Mrowka recently proved that the Dehn twist along a 3-sphere in the neck of K3#K3 is not smoothly isotopic to the identity. This provides a new example of self-diffeomorphisms on 4-manifolds that are isotopic to the identity in the topological category but not smoothly so. (The first such examples were given by Ruberman.) In this paper, we use the Pin(2)-equivariant Bauer-Furuta invariant to show that this Dehn twist is not smoothly isotopic to the identity even after a single stabilization (connected summing with the identity map on S2×S2). This gives the first example of exotic phenomena on simply connected smooth 4-manifolds that do not disappear after a single stabilization.