- A low-cost cold-vapor atomic-absorption protocol for measuring mercury in fish was circulated, prompting the idea of a pocket-sized seafood mercury tester and warnings about the dangers of boiling nitric/sulfuric acid digestions.  
- The 20 µm-resolution “BigBrain” 3-D human brain atlas was retrieved via paperbot, leading to criticism of embedded advertising watermarks and speculation about an “adblock for science.”  
- Elon Musk’s promised August reveal of an open-source “Hyperloop” concept was met with skepticism over whether it will be truly open or merely a press event, alongside debate on pneumatic-tube vs. high-speed-rail land-use economics.  
- A Japanese lab-automation video showing a robot arm managing 30 000 mice was linked, with discussion noting that the visible arm alone could not house that many animals and speculating on CRO adoption.  
- Protein-folding research was highlighted through the PHAISTOS MCMC simulation framework, an animated GIF of folding trajectories, and two PNAS/Wiley papers on generative probabilistic models of local protein structure.  
- The community debated the boundary between “selling out” and legitimate commercialization in open biology, with the suggestion that patenting entire genomes would cross that line.  
- Paperbot was used to retrieve and mirror ACM papers (dl.acm.org IDs 319870 and 7903) to diyhpl.us, illustrating the channel’s practice of liberating pay-walled research.  
- The opening of “Bio, Tech and Beyond” in Carlsbad, CA—described as the world’s largest community garage lab for life sciences—was announced, where falling equipment costs now let professional scientists run proprietary projects while still using shared infrastructure.