- A Nature paper reported the first 4-week survival of extremely premature lambs in a pumpless, fluid-filled “artificial womb,” demonstrating normal lung maturation, brain myelination, and growth—raising prospects for human neonatal care.  
- MPEG-LA announced a voluntary patent pool for CRISPR-Cas9, prompting channel members to warn that the same licensing entity that aggressively enforced video-codec patents could stifle open genome-editing innovation.  
- BioViva is offering a $1.5 M “lifetime therapy subscription” (0.5 % equity) or $14 M for 16.8 % of the company, implying a >$90 M valuation for the early-stage longevity-therapy firm.  
- Discussion linked low-dose mifepristone (RU-486) and castration to lifespan extension in animal studies, alongside DEC2 mutations that let humans function on 4–6 h of sleep without deficits.  
- A pre-print on “breaking binocular redundancy” described a method to expand human color vision beyond the normal trichromatic range.  
- Harvard’s genome-sequencing price list was circulated, noting Genomix’s $200 whole-genome service and the continued fall in sequencing costs.  
- Members weighed logistics and costs of acquiring a used focused-ion-beam (FIB) microscope on eBay (~$5 k purchase plus ~$1.5 k transport and rigging), and floated a cloud-based “FIB-as-a-service” model where remote users control allocated regions of a shared sample.  
- The Human Brain Project announced a May workshop in Paris on collaborative hippocampal modeling, reinforcing Europe’s push for large-scale, open neural simulation.  
- DARPA’s new funding for “synthesizing a prototrophic human genome” was highlighted, with half-joking plans to pitch the agency on radical soldier enhancements like universal nutrition or reduced sleep.