- A NASA technical report on historical aviation checklists was shared, highlighting a mechanical checklist on page 12 and prompting discussion on why cockpit controls remain manual despite automation advances.  
- JayDugger argued that persistent manual interfaces serve to maintain “basic airmanship,” because automation failures increasingly occur in rare, high-stakes situations where human skill must be flawless.  
- The group debated whether future autopilots could deliberately hand control back to pilots for “practice” in upcoming flight segments to keep human skills sharp.  
- A PLOS ONE paper was posted showing that methylphenidate (Ritalin) enhances NMDA-receptor response in the medial prefrontal cortex via the sigma-1 receptor, offering a new mechanistic explanation for its cognitive effects.  
- Participants noted that berberine, an herbal antidepressant, is also a sigma-1 agonist, and expressed surprise that the sigma receptor’s role is finally being clarified.  
- A biorxiv preprint on “Multiplexed confocal and super-resolution fluorescence imaging of cytoskeletal and neuronal synapse proteins” was circulated, with discussion of why a two-antibody labeling system was used alongside fluorescent ssLNA probes.  
- A Chemical & Engineering News article on pharmaceutical pricing pushback was linked, prompting a call for an automated “summarize this” bot for long articles.  
- A promotional video titled “Do Not Go Gentle. #GOBOLDLY” was praised for encouraging youth to pursue careers in bioscience rather than traditional cowboy tropes.  
- nmz787 reported successfully implementing “n-pulse mode” on a microcontroller, a step toward precise hardware control for bio-experiments.