- A paper claiming periodic mass-extinction events are tied to the Milky Way’s spiral-arm structure was dismissed as methodologically weak; critics noted the model was retro-fitted to extinction data by assuming an unverified mirror-image Orion spur symmetry.  
- Discussion pivoted to long-term planning horizons: participants weighed the utility of million-year planning for galaxy-scale computation against the practicality of thousand-year or shorter roadmaps.  
- Russell Hanson’s nanoCT synaptic-protein scanning project was highlighted as a near-term brain-uploading technology; the method promises to bypass electron-microscopy segmentation bottlenecks via high-resolution X-ray micro-tomography.  
- Recent optogenetics hardware review (IOP, 2017) was shared, summarizing scalable, multimodal, and wireless optical interfaces for neuroscience, alongside antibody-powered DNA nanomachines for in-vivo molecular imaging.  
- A cluster of papers on chemically modified mRNA (modRNA) was circulated, covering cardiac regeneration, telomere extension via TERT mRNA, and fluorescent RNA aptamers for live-cell imaging.  
- The “Lynx1 brake” on adult neuroplasticity was examined: Lynx1 deletion or acetylcholinesterase inhibition re-opens critical periods for visual and possibly language learning, with an ongoing clinical trial (NCT01584076) testing Donepezil for residual amblyopia.  
- Unpaywall.org—a browser extension that legally retrieves ~10 million free full-text research PDFs—was introduced as a tool for open-access literature mining.  
- A public-domain pledge for the Nanometer Pattern Generation System (NPGS) source code and documentation was noted, with escrow instructions for release upon the author’s retirement.  
- Speculative data-archaeology ideas were floated: using lunar “craters of eternal darkness,” gravitationally lensed light, or even dinosaur neural replay to reconstruct ancient star maps and test galactic-structure models.