- A newly published paper reports carbon-nanotube bundles with tensile strength exceeding 80 GPa—more than ten times the 7 GPa of the best commercial carbon fiber and roughly 400 times that of low-yield structural steel (~271 MPa).  
- Participants noted that spider dragline silk (1.3 GPa) is dwarfed by these nanotube figures and voiced concern that such strong fibers could be weaponized as ultra-sharp garrote wires.  
- A Hackaday article was shared that documents a full reverse-engineering of the Ion Torrent DNA-sequencing sensor (PGM platform), including TEM cross-sections and X-ray CT scans; the author is now a professor at Ohio State.  
- Discussion touched on the possibility of a “remote PhD” program focused on computational quantum-chemistry and photochemistry, motivated by the above sequencing work and its relevance to electronic polymerase research.  
- NSF’s SemiSynBio program was reported to have awarded several million dollars in new grants this year; one participant plans to attend an upcoming meet-and-greet with the funded teams.  
- A brief debate questioned whether phosphoramidite chemistry should be dismissed for long oligo synthesis, given that 10 kb constructs are already commercially available.