• Multiple synthetic-biology and classical-chemical routes to the historic dye Tyrian purple (6,6'-dibromoindigo) were compared, including a 1990 “superior” method (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58318055/tyrian.pdf) and an IGEM team’s attempt to clone the full sea-snail enzymatic pathway into microbes, weighing 12 000 mollusks versus engineered petunias expressing brominated indigo precursors.

• A KurzweilAI article claiming oral C60 fullerene doubled rat lifespan (http://www.kurzweilai.net/fullerene-c60-administration-doubles-rat-lifespan-with-no-toxicity) was met with skepticism; participants noted that water-soluble “hydrated fullerenes” (C60-HyFn) are already sold as a health drink in Ukraine (~$40 g⁻¹) while questioning fullerene antioxidant hype.

• The FBI–DIYbio Workshop was announced for 12–14 June 2012 at NASA Ames & BioCurious, with travel grants and gas reimbursement offered to community-lab members by the FBI Biological Countermeasures Unit.

• A DIY microfluidic laser-cutter project targeting 1–20 µm spot sizes in 50–250 µm PDMS, acrylic, or glass layers is underway; design files and calculations are open-sourced at http://diyhpl.us/cgit/diyhpluswiki/tree/projects/laser_etcher, with an IEEE paper (http://fennetic.net/irc/laser_ablation_profile_power.pdf) quantifying 60 W CO₂ ablation parameters.

• Home photolithography for microfluidics was detailed: 20 µm resolution via 5 min spin-coat, 5–10 min UV exposure with 20 W halogen lamp, 1–2 min develop, and 15 s copper etch, with Sylgard 184 PDMS curing at 65 °C for 2 h or 85 °C for 30 min versus UV-curable alternatives like Gelest RMS-033.

• A survey of commercial DNA oligonucleotide synthesizers (Applied Biosystems, Azco, GE AKTA, Dr. Oligo, Oligator, etc.) priced at $60 k–$150 k sparked debate that open-hardware equivalents should cost <$5 k since they are “just valves and tubes,” while industry veteran Joe Kaufman argued Quake-style PDMS valves “don’t work.”

• Open-science infrastructure discussed included the Open Science Framework (http://openscienceframework.org), OKFN’s open-source Hypothes.is alternative (https://github.com/okfn/annotator-store), PubMed Central’s 1.2 TB open-access corpus via FTP, and the World Bank’s new open-access policy effective July 2012.

• Practical fabrication tips shared: spin-coating PDMS between float-glass plates yields one perfectly flat surface, degassing prevents bubbles, Mylar aids release, and casting-and-peel methods risk “volcano” defects around interconnect posts.