- Sharpie-on-glass microfluidics: drawing hydrophobic Sharpie lines between two glass slides creates sub-millimetre channels that repel aqueous solutions, enabling DIY “lab-on-a-chip” prototyping without clean-room fabrication.  
- Laser-printer & lamination hack: fusing two laser-printed polyester transparencies yields sealed microchannels; cited paper “Rapid prototyping of micropatterned substrates using conventional laser printers” gives detailed protocol.  
- Passive particle-separation designs: participants collected papers on asymmetric, hydrodynamic, Dean-vortex and gradient-based microfluidic filters that exploit size and shape to sort cells or DNA without membranes.  
- PCR-on-chip feasibility: links to papers showing integrated RT-PCR and capillary electrophoresis performed in disposable microchannels, suggesting open-source path to pocket-sized DNA amplification and analysis.  
- Electrophoresis clarification: in gels DNA stays balled up so mobility scales with length; microfluidic obstacle arrays instead use collisions with patterned dots to straighten or retard molecules, enabling size-based separation without sieving media.  
- Micro-thermal actuation reference: Basu paper on 256-addressable micro-heaters that modulate surface tension for valve-less pumping inside the same chip.  
- NIH Guidelines discussion: posted Federal Register notice on proposed changes to recombinant-DNA rules, flagged as bureaucratic but relevant to DIYbio compliance.  
- Source-control debate: kanzure argued for introducing Subversion to wet-lab collaborators who “will not understand git”; fenn countered that “software carpentry” material and bikeshed-style lightweight review tools might be better.