- A 2012 Chinese paper on the “EM-drive” microwave thruster (http://www.emdrive.com/yang-juan-paper-2012.pdf) ignited debate over apparent momentum-conservation violations and prompted the group to refine crackpot-detection heuristics such as typesetting quality and Timecube references.  
- The channel routinely crowdsources open-access PDFs via paperbot, retrieving technical reports on aerosil (fumed silica), PDMS anti-stiction coatings for microfluidics, and micro-channel electrophoresis, demonstrating systematic DIY paywall evasion.  
- kanzure revealed that many publisher PDFs contain “Google Indexer” watermarks, suggesting privileged institutional access for Google’s crawler; he is improving pdfparanoia, an open-source watermark-stripper already pip-installed >1,300 times, with code hosted on GitHub.  
- A biotech lab received a major equipment donation: two tissue-culture hoods, two fume hoods, a 6 L / 20 000 g floor centrifuge, six CO₂ incubators, a liquid-handling robot, 20 vacuum pumps, an HPLC, −80 °C and −20 °C freezers, an LN₂ vessel, an autoclave, and more—raising questions about the continued utility of ultracentrifuges, now considered “mostly obsolete” for routine DNA work.  
- Participants shared a simple Google Docs viewer trick—appending a pay-walled PDF URL to “https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=” often returns the document stripped of watermarks—complementing pdfparanoia for liberating academic papers.  
- strangewarp outlined a near-term business model for autonomous <55 lb cannabis-delivery drones in Colorado, exploiting personal-grow co-op legal grey zones and anticipating 2013 FAA commercial-UAV rule changes.  
- Metformin, methylene blue, piracetam, C60, hydrogen peroxide, and noopept were briefly surveyed as low-cost, long-known compounds with purported metabolic, cognitive, or antimicrobial benefits.