• Selective-breeding experiments in mice demonstrate that identical selection pressures can yield divergent evolutionary solutions: after 43 generations of breeding for high voluntary wheel-running, four replicate “high-runner” lines achieved the same 2.85-fold increase in daily revolutions through different combinations of speed and time spent running, with sex-specific responses (females improved speed, males improved both speed and duration).  
• A striking rapid-evolution example was cited: marine stickleback fish developed a 2.5 °C improvement in cold-tolerance after only three generations in cold freshwater, demonstrating that major physiological shifts can occur far faster than the 40-generation mouse studies.  
• Participants discussed launching a new selective-breeding project to shorten sleep duration in mice, explicitly referencing the above mouse-running study as a methodological template.  
• A Jeol JSM-T200 scanning electron microscope was purchased for US $200; the buyer plans to reverse-engineer, repair, and fully document the instrument to enable low-cost, open-source nanofabrication and STEM education, with the goal of eventually replicating SEM construction in resource-constrained settings.  
• The SEM needs only minor analog-electronics fixes (likely a triangle/saw-tooth wave generator or amplifier for beam steering); the owner intends to use a home-built DDS or high-speed DAC to enable arbitrary patterning instead of simple raster scanning.  
• Community members are crowdsourcing service manuals and schematics for the JSM-T200 before signing any manufacturer NDA, with Ben Krasnow already providing partial photocopied schematics.  
• A side discussion on DNA-sequencing throughput noted that Illumina (Solexa) instruments can deliver ~1 million nucleotides per second, roughly one human-genome equivalent at 1× coverage per hour per machine, and asked whether any platform currently surpasses this in raw single-strand speed while maintaining nanopore-like read lengths with higher accuracy.