- Surgeons are experimenting with soaking a patient’s skull flap in Enterobacter aerogenes before re-implantation to provoke an immune attack on glioblastoma, prompting debate over whether engineered bacteria with programmed-cell-death circuits or ultrasound ablation would be safer next steps.  
- Duke University’s oncolytic poliovirus trial required 21 years of mouse and monkey safety studies before FDA approval, illustrating the regulatory timeline for novel brain-cancer therapies.  
- Two IEEE papers on vagus-nerve stimulation were highlighted: one on high-resolution compound-action-potential recordings in dogs and another on selective stimulation for blood-pressure control with minimal side-effects, linked to the INOVATE-HF heart-failure trial.  
- A technical discussion derived Kirchhoff’s circuit laws from Maxwell’s equations using the generalized Stokes theorem and Roth’s 1955 “method of tearing,” with references to Roth’s original PNAS paper and a physics.stackexchange thread.  
- Participants compared open-source CAD/FEA tools: BRL-CAD with a new Python parametric constraint solver (SolveSpace-based) and FEniCS/Dolfin for laser-cut design and finite-element analysis, while seeking better options for living-hinge and flexure-based planar fabrication.  
- A 40 W CO₂ laser tube is now available on eBay for under US $400, but hidden costs for controllers, cooling, and mounts quickly dwarf the headline price; one user has already integrated a 3 W laser module into a 3-D printer, pointing toward hybrid additive/subtractive personal fabrication rigs.  
- The SETI Institute’s “Post-Detection Protocol” (http://www.seti.org/post-detection.html) was shared as a reference for how humanity might respond to confirmed extraterrestrial signals.