- Robert Freitas’ nanomedicine chapter on gadolinium-based “Curie-effect heat engines” was circulated as a speculative power source for future nanobots, offering a concrete thermodynamic mechanism for in-body energy harvesting.  
- Participants compared direct-ethanol vs. methanol fuel cells for portable electronics, concluding that methanol’s higher hydrogen density and easier biomass-to-fuel synthesis make it the more practical near-term choice.  
- Synthetic-biology energy routes were highlighted: recent Wired and Popular Mechanics articles describe engineered bacteria that convert sugar or fat into hydrogen or drop-in biofuels, pointing toward distributed, open-source fuel production.  
- Japan’s ¥2.2 billion plan for a robotic lunar base by 2020 and the successful launch of the IKAROS solar-sail demonstrator (complete with anime-character payload) were noted as milestones in low-cost, high-risk space exploration.  
- A new open-source firmware and API for consumer EEG hardware is under development to let third-party developers build brain-computer-interface apps without licensing fees, aiming to replicate the Arduino model for neurotech.  
- ShopBot’s proprietary CNC control stack was criticized for opaque design (e.g., spindle speed stored in the Windows registry); the open-source EMC2 (now LinuxCNC) stack is being prepared as a drop-in replacement.  
- Strategy Markup Language (StratML)—an XML schema for encoding strategic plans—was proposed as a substrate for automated wargaming or AI-driven strategy systems, with the spec available at http://xml.gov/stratml/.  
- A viral YouTube demo of collision-avoiding quadcopters sparked discussion of onboard flash-LiDAR and tongue-in-cheek anti-drone countermeasures like “propeller glue,” referencing Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age.