- A Nature Communications paper (doi:10.1038/ncomms4026) describes a sugar-powered enzymatic biobattery that delivers roughly ten times the energy density of lithium-ion cells by oxidizing maltodextrin with a thermophilic enzyme cocktail; practical concerns include enzyme shelf-life at room temperature, the need to reload both enzyme and fuel, and the high cost of Nafion membranes.

- Counterparty’s Bitcoin 2.0 protocol (https://forums.counterparty.co/index.php/topic,48.0.html) was presented as a model for decentralized, open-source biotech funding, while DARPA’s new Open Catalog (http://www.darpa.mil/OpenCatalog/index.html) was highlighted as a repository of freely available research software and data.

- Participants compared cloud-hosting economics for bioinformatics workloads across EC2, DigitalOcean, Linode, Rackspace, and Hetzner Xen VPS, and discussed the viability of Algorithmia (algorithmia.com) as an “open marketplace for algorithms” that exposes code as REST APIs.

- Counter Culture Labs in Oakland is prototyping two open-source PCR devices: an improved alternative to light-bulb PCR and a second design aimed at small-scale production; Berkeley Biolabs remains organizationally separate despite rumors of merger.

- Garbled circuits were identified as a cryptographic primitive likely to see broad future use, and Peter Watts’ novel “Blindsight” (http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm) was recommended for its exploration of consciousness and post-human intelligence.