- Intel’s forthcoming “Knights Landing” Xeon Phi is positioned as a game-changer for scientific HPC, featuring on-package MCDRAM and AVX-512 instructions that promise large speed-ups for bioinformatics and simulation workloads.  
- nmz787’s open-source spectrometer project is iterating on optical design choices—cheap transmission gratings versus concave flat-field-corrected reflective gratings—while balancing linearity, calibration effort, and BOM cost.  
- A practical near-infrared alcohol-sensing experiment was outlined: a 900–1000 nm silicon detector paired with a Toshiba TCD1304 linear CCD, inexpensive NIR LEDs, and webcam IR-filter removal as an entry-level hardware path.  
- NeuroElectro.org was introduced as a curated, downloadable database mapping electrophysiological parameters to specific neuron types, providing ready-to-run computational models for each cell type.  
- OpenQCM, an open-source quartz-crystal microbalance with integrated microfluidics, was highlighted for achieving sub-nanogram mass resolution in liquid-phase experiments.  
- A technical debate on 16-bit versus 24-bit ADCs for spectroscopy concluded that extra bits only help when paired with ultra-low-noise analog front-ends, meticulous PCB layout, and high-quality power regulation.  
- TCPoke demonstrated remote Game Boy battles/trades over the internet via a Teensy-based USB-HID bridge and WebRTC, illustrating retro-hardware networking hacks.  
- BlenderCAM was spotlighted as a free, open-source CNC tool-path generator embedded in Blender, enabling low-cost CAD/CAM workflows for bio-fabrication and rapid prototyping.