- A lightly-used Seiko SMI3200 focused-ion-beam (FIB) system surfaced on eBay for $15 k, reigniting debate over whether the same Pleasanton unit once offered free to the DIY community should remain open-access or be resold, and clarifying that single-beam FIBs lack an electron-imaging column, relying on secondary electrons from the ion beam and causing more sample damage than dual-beam SEM/FIB systems.  
- Intel released open-source optimizations for the RELION cryo-EM package, including MPI and Xeon Phi tuning guides that leverage Bayesian regularization to push single-particle reconstruction below 3 Å and toward 2 Å resolution in favorable cases.  
- A Nature review paper, “Unravelling biological macromolecules with cryo-electron microscopy,” was circulated to highlight how direct-electron detectors introduced in 2013 revolutionized cryo-EM by enabling movies of protein conformational changes from single images.  
- An ImplicitCAD microfluidic device model featuring 20 µm posts on 20 µm pitch for trapping tobacco protoplasts was refined; rendering tests now target 0.1 µm resolution to align with inexpensive laser-etching or DLP lithography fabrication steps.  
- Participants sought a light-emitting protein that binds cytoskeletons for live-cell imaging and a highly specific DNA ligase capable of appending barcodes to target DNA with high affinity and selectivity.  
- Additional links shared included the open-hardware “oh” Verilog library for IC/FPGA design, a paper on electrorheology for healthier chocolate, a backpack VR PC prototype, and the 1920s Atlantropa plan to dam the Mediterranean.  
- A participant raised the provocative idea of “voting for AI,” foreshadowing emerging discourse on AI suffrage or governance.  
- The short science-fiction story “Resistance” by Tobias S. Buckell (http://superkuh.com/TSB-Resistance.txt) was circulated as a cautionary tale about human resistance to transformative technologies.