- A new Science paper presents “Comprehensive single-cell transcriptional profiling of a multicellular organism,” offering a full single-cell atlas for an entire animal.  
- A Cell paper on “Distinct neural circuits for the formation and retrieval of episodic memories” was circulated, highlighting separate neural pathways for memory encoding versus recall.  
- Discussion of the claim that even a 3-neuron network exhibits “near-infinite functional reconfigurability” led to debate: biological neurons (rich receptor/signal diversity) vs. simple Hodgkin–Huxley models (far more constrained).  
- Nature paper “Cell diversity and network dynamics in photosensitive human brain organoids” was shared, showing light-sensitive human brain organoids as a model for studying neural circuit dynamics.  
- Boston Dynamics robot-abuse video (YouTube link) prompted half-serious warnings about “marching toward the robot wars.”  
- Ongoing technical exchange about ultra-high-throughput DNA printers: current single-nozzle inkjet limits (~3 MHz droplet rate), thermal management, and layout optimization strategies (Gray-code scheduling suggested to minimize reagent-switching overhead).  
- SemiSynBio consortium roadmap document (DNA-based storage focus) was circulated; one participant gained full member access through an Intel representative on the executive technical advisory board.  
- Neural Architecture Search paper (arXiv 1707.07012) noted for discovering compact, efficient CNNs with far fewer parameters and reduced compute.  
- Practical tooling discussion: frustration with MySQL’s datadir restrictions for a 65-million-row scimag dump, advice to switch to streaming Python CSV parsing or PostgreSQL for large datasets.