- A new paper on “Atmospheric seasonality as an exoplanet biosignature” (http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aac171/meta) and a companion study on “Disequilibrium biosignatures over Earth history” (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/eaao5747.full) were shared as resources for detecting life on distant worlds through seasonal atmospheric changes.

- Research on dopamine type-2 receptors in boar sperm (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19074002) was highlighted, suggesting dopamine modulates sperm viability, capacitation, and motility—pointing to neurochemical control of reproductive biology.

- A SynBioBeta 2017 panel video on “The Future of DNA Synthesis” (https://synbiobeta.com/member-content/videos/panel-discussion-future-dna-synthesis-sponsored-molecular-assemblies-synbiobeta-sf-2017/) was noted as downloadable with youtube-dl, though participants judged its content to be largely non-novel.

- A microfluidic study titled “Measuring the growth force of invasive plant cells using Flexure integrated Lab-on-a-Chip (FiLoC)” (http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S2339547818500061) was introduced, capturing real-time force measurements of pollen tubes deflecting PDMS cantilevers during plant fertilization.

- Discussion of the NSA’s EternalBlue exploit (leaked by Shadow Brokers and used in WannaCry) served as a backdrop for broader security-clearance and hardware-repurposing anecdotes.

- Participants debated the mathematical meaning of Bessel functions of transcendental order, joking that such questions belong on PhD qualifying exams.

- nmz787 sought social motivation to continue coding an open-source electroporator project; kanzure and fenn offered tongue-in-cheek encouragement and demotivational memes as productivity hacks.

- A short video of the violet carpenter bee in flight (http://youtu.be/Do6JcMnnXjI?t=1m10s) and advanced Houdini 3D-graphics demonstrations (http://youtu.be/7Eg8BTQIYAo) were shared, with the latter highlighting upcoming node-based modeling workflows in Blender.