• A UK woman’s deliberation over elective amputation to receive a next-generation bionic hand spotlights the accelerating performance of prosthetics and the emerging ethical frontier of voluntary human enhancement.

• The Woodrow Wilson Center’s “Synthetic Biology Project” survey, which omits a “no regulation” option, was denounced in-channel as presuming that risk-based state control of biology is inevitable and philosophically flawed.

• Participants circulated the 2012 WHO antimicrobial-resistance report, noting that only cyclic lipopeptides and oxazolidinones qualify as truly new antibiotic classes in recent years and that a single malaria vaccine now costs ~US $800 M to develop.

• Drew Endy’s lab reportedly bypasses restriction-enzyme cloning entirely by ordering fully synthesized plasmids, signaling a practical shift toward de-novo DNA construction even in academic settings.

• A review paper, “Neuroscience goes on a chip” (Biosensors & Bioelectronics, 2012), was shared; its author provided an open copy covering microfluidic, microelectrode, and microelectronic platforms for on-chip neural research.

• Discussion of serial ventures by George Church—Codon Devices (2005-2010, ~$50 M raised) and its apparent reincarnation Gen9 Bio—illustrates the cyclical nature of DNA-foundry business models in synthetic biology.

• Richard Stallman’s recent Noisebridge talk updated his free-software stance to encompass SaaS, smartphones, and the claim that sharing unauthorized proprietary code is “the lesser evil” compared with refusing to help a friend.

• Kurzweil’s “sixth epoch” (the universe “waking up”) was accepted in broad trajectory but criticized on timelines; conversation then turned to speculative Dyson-sphere-like stellar engineering for harvesting a star’s entire output for computation.