• A newly commissioned 32-core, 256 GB DDR3 workstation (dual AMD 6367 sockets) is being configured for CAD work using ImplicitCAD in Haskell to accelerate open-source hardware development for “the future of humanity.”  
• A scanning-electron microscope is being restored; a newly acquired vacuum sensor is being mounted to test chamber vacuum quality, and participants proposed imaging RF standing-wave Lecher lines by freezing the wave during the slow raster scan.  
• The concept of “terrarium civilizations” was introduced as a sunlight-fed, closed-loop resilience metric that could replace the Kardashev scale; Merkle & Freitas’ “Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines” was cited as foundational reading.  
• A forensic technique for extracting ENF (electrical network frequency) signatures from audio recordings was shared (processed.pdf) as a weekend hacking project for signal-processing enthusiasts.  
• Cavium’s 384-core ARMv8 ThunderX 2U server was highlighted as the next target compute platform for open bio-hacking workloads, promising massive parallel throughput for simulation and data analysis.  
• Anecdotal reports described cognitive benefits from stacking the vasodilator nootropic nicergoline and the lipophilic thiamine dimer sulbutiamine with choline, prompting further interest in ergot-derived cognition enhancers.  
• DARPA announced Proposers Days (22 Feb McLean, VA; 2 Mar San Diego) for its new Pandemic Prevention Platform, explicitly inviting open-source and biotech teams to shape rapid-response outbreak countermeasures.  
• A Nature Communications paper revealed that visible light pulses (~0.5 mJ) trigger calcium-mediated vasodilation even in “naïve” mice lacking optogenetic constructs, complicating interpretation of opto-fMRI and neurovascular-coupling studies.  
• An eLife study in C. elegans showed that loss of α-spectrin and tau-like proteins causes axons to supercoil into plectonemes under load, modeling neurons as elastic rods and highlighting spectrin–microtubule torque balance as a mechanical safeguard.  
• A PNAS paper presented a fluorescent nanosensor array enabling real-time, high-resolution imaging of dopamine release from single cells, offering a new tool for neurotransmitter mapping and closed-loop neuromodulation experiments.