• Expansion microscopy (Boyden lab) was presented as a way to achieve super-resolution brain imaging by physically swelling tissue, though some questioned its elegance versus true nanoscale optical methods.  
• A Nature paper on 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, Kenya—700 kyr older than the Oldowan—was shared, along with downloadable 3-D scans and printable .stl files of the artifacts.  
• FlashGraph, an open-source system for processing billion-node graphs on a single commodity machine, was cited as a tool for large-scale biological network analysis.  
• Personal biobanking options were debated: Idant Laboratories offers 10-year autologous blood storage for $4,500, while cord-blood banking raises ethical concerns about depriving newborns of ~60 mL of blood via premature clamping.  
• DeepBeat, an ML project that mines rap lyrics to generate new verses, was introduced alongside its arXiv paper (1505.04771) as an example of creative AI in natural-language generation.  
• Short-term SEM rental availability in Hartford, CT was announced for hardware prototyping; one participant noted delays in setting up a personal SEM due to underground oil-tank contamination at a new house.  
• Agricultural automation links included Google-backed farm-tech startups and Fundibots (Uganda), which builds agro-robots from found materials, highlighting grassroots open-source hardware in developing regions.  
• The Honduran president’s upcoming San Francisco talk, co-hosted by Lincoln Labs, Seasteading Institute, and Independence Institute, was flagged as a nexus for governance innovation and transhumanist discourse.