- Auxetic materials—substances that thicken when stretched due to a negative Poisson’s ratio—were discussed as promising for body armor and wind-resistant architecture, with examples ranging from defect-engineered graphene to Gore-Tex and paper.  
- A newly shared paper reports that neuron-targeted overexpression of caveolin-1 in adult and aged mice strengthens membrane-lipid-raft signaling, boosts hippocampal plasticity, and improves learning and memory, positioning Cav-1 as a potential therapeutic target for hippocampal disorders.  
- Participants lamented the absence of high-quality open-source brain-visualization software and listed desired features such as region tagging and pathway highlighting to accelerate neuro-research.  
- A DIY spectrograph project using the AD7667 ADC and TCD1304 CCD was dissected in detail, with debate centering on timing-generator jitter, 16-bit byte-swapping, and the trade-offs between precision external clocks and on-chip PLLs.  
- Security warnings were issued against publishing U.S. checking-account and routing numbers for donations, as ACH pull fraud is reportedly trivial under current U.S. banking regulations.  
- An Indiegogo campaign promoting DRACOs (Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers) as a broad-spectrum antiviral was circulated; skeptics criticized the campaign’s heavy JavaScript, while others pointed to the foundational PLOS ONE paper (10.1371/journal.pone.0022572) for technical validation.