• Steve Coles, founder of the Gerontology Research Group, was cryopreserved at Alcor immediately after death from pancreatic-cancer-related pneumonia, prompting discussion of experimental “cryopreservation-on-impact” inflatable suits that could initiate rapid cooling within minutes of a fatal accident.

• Gen9 Bio launched the 2014 “G-Prize” offering 1 Mbp of synthetic DNA to a pre-commercial startup and an academic team, but its $5 M fundraising requirement was criticized as excluding garage-level biohackers.

• Participants compared commercial microfluidic chip quotes ($500–$1 500 for 5 µm features) with lower-cost fabrication at Tyndall National Institute, debating trade-offs among channel depth, optical focus, clogging risk, and yeast-cell size (5–10 µm).

• Lens-free holographic on-chip imaging (PNAS 2011, JBO 2012) was proposed to maintain sharp imaging in tall microfluidic channels without sacrificing throughput, addressing depth-of-field limitations.

• The channel argued that “neural circuit” lacks a precise definition: at macro scales it reduces to white-matter fiber tracts, while at micro scales it remains ill-defined, creating an explanatory gap between single-neuron models and large-scale connectomics.

• Deep learning was characterized as closer to GOFAI than to biology; although its salience vectors are useful, its relevance to actual neural circuits was viewed skeptically.

• Key neuroscience papers circulated included “Cognitive consilience: primate non-primary neuroanatomical circuits underlying cognition” (2011) and arXiv:1008.5161 on a claimed “simple” microcircuit motif, both used to illustrate current definitional limits.

• A 14 MB ACM paper on “Rendering volumetric haptic shapes in mid-air using ultrasound” was shared, highlighting “weighted Tikhonov regularization” as the enabling computational method.

• Transhumanity.net was noted as newly active but criticized for low-signal articles on digital nootropics, binaural beats, and weak magnetic-field brain stimulation.

• A Medium article profiling DIYbio entrepreneurs Ryan Bethencourt and John Schloendorn described how they leveraged the 2008 recession to acquire cheap lab equipment and bootstrap biotech ventures.