- A Greener Gadgets design competition was noted (greenergadgets.com) and participants briefly considered entering their bioreactor project.  
- Discussion of automated, “jig-less” robotic assembly: participants debated whether machine vision and custom feeders are necessary, referenced Motoman DA20 dual-arm robots, and pointed to CAM literature for automatically generating assembly instructions from CAD data.  
- Open-source drug-discovery efforts were highlighted, including the new OSDD-like Tropical Disease Initiative (tropicaldisease.org).  
- A Springer 2006 volume on “Stigmergic Optimization” was shared as a follow-up to earlier stigmergic-collaboration links.  
- Participants explored the feasibility of a self-replicating robotic system, focusing on the harder problem of making the parts rather than merely assembling them.  
- SolidWorks assembly file formats and the possibility of translating them directly into robot-arm motion plans were discussed as a route to rapid, low-cost automation.  
- Frustration was voiced over mailing-list “trolling” by Marc Fawzi on post-scarcity/abundance lists, with calls for moderation.  
- A local robot-group meetup was attended, leading to an in-person encounter with automated-disassembly researcher David Treadwell.