• George Church’s lab successfully encoded an entire HTML page and JavaScript program into synthetic DNA, then sequenced and retrieved the files intact, demonstrating DNA’s viability as an ultra-dense, long-term archival medium.  
• A USENIX Security ’12 paper showed that off-the-shelf EEG headsets can leak private data—PINs, birth dates, and locations—with 10–40 % accuracy, underscoring emerging privacy risks in consumer-grade brain-computer interfaces.  
• Participants compared 3-D printed meat (Modern Meadow) to conventional animal agriculture, noting that while chicken achieves ~2:1 feed-to-meat conversion, cultured tissue is currently less efficient, though land, water, and ethical externalities may shift the balance.  
• A UC Davis study found that triclosan, a common hand-sanitizer additive, impairs cardiac and skeletal muscle function in animal models, raising safety concerns about widespread consumer exposure.  
• Engineers evaluated open-source stepper-motor controllers (Pololu, Allegro A4988/A4989, AllMotion EZHR23ENHC) for a microfluidic project requiring ~3,200 RPM, concluding that higher-current drivers and custom MOSFET stages are likely necessary.  
• The Royal Society of Chemistry’s 2013 pricing announcement—online-only journals, discontinued Chromatography Abstracts, and ~US$3,000 annual subscriptions—sparked criticism over paywalls hindering open science.  
• Practical biohacking resources shared include the DIYbio FAQ and equipment/protocol pages at http://diyhpl.us/wiki/diybio/faq for building open-source DNA extraction and cloning reagents.  
• JSTOR’s new “Register & Read” program was dissected in real time; participants noted only ~75 lower-impact journals were included and began probing the DOI-based access mechanism for potential work-arounds.