- Kernel, a new neural-prosthetic startup backed by Bryan Johnson, publicly announced its goal to build “implantable neural prosthetics for cognitive enhancement and treatment of neurological dysfunction,” with USC’s Theodore Berger—known for a hippocampal memory-prosthesis paper in primates—serving as CTO.  
- The Berger 2016 paper linked in-channel (kanzure: http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/neuro/memory/...) describes a closed-loop hippocampal stimulation system that demonstrably improves memory performance, providing the technical foundation Kernel intends to productize.  
- Participants questioned where Larry Ellison’s previously reported $430 million anti-aging pledge actually went; fenn located the Ellison Foundation’s 2013 aging-research grant list, noting the funds appear to have been disbursed to traditional academic programs rather than headline-grabbing interventions.  
- Two Caltech YouTube videos were circulated: one showing a robot for automated single-cell manipulation in living brain tissue, the other demonstrating real-time 3-D visualization of neuronal activity, both flagged as potentially useful for next-gen BCI work.  
- A new ACS Central Science paper on “neural reaction fingerprints” for predicting chemical reactivity was shared (justanotheruser: pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00219); nmz787_ highlighted the companion open-source code repository (GitHub – jnwei/neural_reaction_fingerprint) for community experimentation.  
- Adrafinil dosing was discussed pragmatically: fenn recommended starting at ~100 mg to avoid unpleasant peripheral effects, while Solvaring settled on an initial 240 mg capsule after reviewing anecdotal reports.