- A Nature paper on “acoustically targeted chemogenetics” was highlighted, describing a non-invasive method to control neural circuits using ultrasound-guided delivery of engineered receptors (link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-018-0258-2).  
- The upcoming “Ending Age-Related Diseases: Investment Prospects & Advances in Research” conference in NYC on 12 July 2018, featuring Aubrey de Grey, was announced.  
- A New York Times article on mitochondrial transplantation therapy for heart-attack patients was shared, sparking discussion about its broader applicability to metabolic disorders (link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/health/mitochondria-transplant-heart-attack.html).  
- Participants debated the persistence of legacy languages, with Fortran and COBOL still underpinning high-performance and mainframe systems, and IBM mainframes described as “marvelous pieces of technology” that pre-figured modern cloud architectures.  
- The open-access advocacy piece “The case against patents” (AEA Journal of Economic Perspectives) was circulated, arguing for the economic inefficiency of the patent system (link: https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.3).  
- Sci-Hub’s legal status and its role in open science were discussed, alongside a blog post analyzing why the site is illegal and what researchers can do about it (link: https://engineuring.wordpress.com/2018/07/07/why-sci-hub-is-illegal-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/).  
- LabSpend.com, a platform for tracking laboratory expenditures, was mentioned as a tool for open-source lab management.