- Harvard’s Wyss Institute released a news item on “autonomously-growing synthetic DNA strands” based on Primer Exchange Reaction (PER) cascades, where hairpin DNA templates iteratively extend a primer to build long single-stranded DNA without external intervention.  
- The PER mechanism was compared to Peng Yin’s recent “proximity recording” method, in which overlapping DNA barcodes record nanoscale spatial relationships for ultra-high-resolution imaging, with potential applications to brain-uploading-scale connectomics.  
- DIY-level planar lipid bilayer kits (~€200) were highlighted for single-molecule electrophysiology teaching labs, letting students observe individual ion-channel currents; discussion thread on the diybio list includes feedback from one of the paper’s authors.  
- A U.S. federal court granted ISPs and search engines a blockade against Sci-Hub; participants noted that Sci-Hub’s Tor hidden service remains accessible and that commercial providers may quietly welcome the ruling as leverage for DRM deals with publishers.  
- Bill Faloon announced FDA and IRB approval for a South Florida “young blood” transfusion study targeting age-related frailty, framed as a formal trial of parabiosis-based rejuvenation.  
- Andrew Hessel is newly funded to pursue viral genome recoding as a stepping-stone to GP-Write; the channel debated which engineers (rather than academics) should be placed in charge of the GP-Write initiative.  
- Open-source hardware for science was re-circulated via the PLOS “Open Source Toolkit” collection, aggregating low-cost lab tools and designs.  
- Discussion of early-childhood education tools included proposals for gamified software with an API that unlocks computer access as a reward, plus suggestions to teach sign language (with a custom “bored” sign) and Chinese phonemes during the critical language-learning window.  
- A back-of-the-envelope calculation claimed that electron-beam scanning an adult brain at 5 nm³ resolution would generate ~1 yottabyte of data, prompting tongue-in-cheek investment advice in storage companies.