• French transhumanist conference videos (no subtitles) were released on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/channels/164832, offering raw footage of recent francophone futurist discussions.

• A working open-source tissue-engineering printer in jmil’s lab can now deposit ~1 mL of scaffold/growth-media (not yet cells) at scale; the peer-review paper is under Git-based LaTeX control and all hardware files will be published on Thingiverse after journal acceptance, with a 15-minute talk scheduled for the 2011 Biomaterials meeting.

• Lukas___ floated a gene-therapy concept in which cancer-derived MHC-down-regulating genes, delivered via AAV vectors, could transiently cloak transplanted engineered cells from immune rejection, leveraging insights from cancer immunotherapy literature.

• An open prosthetics project led by electronics and mechatronics students is designing a nerve-controlled mechanical arm for an imminent amputee, weighing milliwatt-scale biological muscle generators against conventional batteries and refining electrode interfaces.

• A five-year NIH-funded effort is building a vascularized, engineered liver as a flagship case study, combining patterned multi-cell-type tissue constructs with a suite of collaborator-supplied nanoparticles for non-invasive, real-time monitoring of vascularization; progress is reviewed annually and constrained by “minimum-wage” lab salaries.

• NIH RePORTER was highlighted as a surprisingly engaging grant-mining tool, with the specific award http://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=7871327&icde=6800019 cited as “a freaking lot of fun.”

• A craniotomy hemodynamics paper shared in-channel reports an 8–10 % increase in cerebral blood flow post-surgery, framed by participants as a potential cognitive “upgrade.”

• Discussion of open-source metal 3-D printing referenced the RepRap “SpoolHead” extruder for metal filament as a starting point for future community development.