- A BBC radio programme “The Age of the Genome” and Nick Bostrom’s EconTalk on “Superintelligence” were circulated, framing the day’s discussion of human-level cognition and existential risk.  
- A Harvard/MIT quinone-based flow-battery chemistry was highlighted as a low-cost route to grid-scale renewable-energy storage, while DIY laser-microphone designs and a £850 second-hand Waters TOF-SPEC mass spectrometer illustrated grassroots hardware hacking for sensing and analytics.  
- Open-source neural-simulation tools (Emergent simulator, Randall O’Reilly’s papers) and comparative-primate brain datasets (neuron-count tables, connectome imaging) were shared to support bottom-up AGI and neuro-engineering research.  
- Evidence was presented that uniquely human cognition may hinge on regulatory rewiring of gene co-expression networks rather than raw neuron count, citing Geschwind 2012 and the observation that fewer than 200 human-specific brain-expressed genes have been identified.  
- White-matter architecture debates centered on the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and arcuate fasciculus, with diffusion-tensor imaging revealing a conserved orthogonal grid and Klingler fiber dissection showing two IFOF sub-components linking frontal cortex to parietal/occipital and temporo-basal semantic areas.  
- A CNTNAP2 autism-associated SNP (rs7794745) was shown to reduce grey/white-matter volume and fractional anisotropy even in asymptomatic carriers, illustrating how genotype-driven neuroanatomical sub-typing could refine ASD diagnostics.  
- Long-term digital preservation strategies were compared: microfilm for millennial stability, HD-Rosetta nickel/glass nanostructures for high-density SEM-readable archives, and femtosecond-laser-etched quartz for 3-D optical data storage.  
- Participants outlined a speculative path to primate cognitive uplift—knocking in human-specific regulatory circuits—while noting ethical, legal, and technical barriers, including the need for embryonic-stage transcriptomic atlases and glial-support adaptations.