- **Non-magnetic object manipulation via electromagnets**: A Nature news piece and an AIAA journal paper describe a technique that uses oscillating electromagnetic fields to induce motion in non-magnetic materials, potentially enabling contactless actuation or propulsion without ferromagnetic components.

- **Open-source protein-structure breakthrough**: A new 3-track neural network (detailed in a June 2021 bioRxiv preprint) claims state-of-the-art accuracy for predicting both protein folds and protein–protein interactions; the model and web service are accessible at Robetta (robetta.bakerlab.org).

- **Fast Grants retrospective**: Patrick Collison’s post-mortem on the $50 M “Fast Grants” program (run with a16z and others) summarizes lessons learned about rapid, low-overhead funding for COVID-19 research and its applicability to future high-risk science.

- **Trehalose as a bioreversible cryonics agent**: Discussion centers on engineering human cells to synthesize or import trehalose, a disaccharide used by tardigrades and other extremophiles, to enable vitrification at higher temperatures (e.g., dry ice) and reduce cryoprotectant toxicity; a 2018 Cell Death & Disease paper on trehalose-mediated neuroprotection is cited.

- **Tardigrade-inspired intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs)**: Participants speculate that IDPs can partially replace intracellular water during anhydrobiosis, but question whether this strategy scales to the complexity of mammalian proteomes.

- **Brainstem connectome insights**: A preprint presenting a synapse-level wiring diagram of the mouse brainstem highlights modular circuit motifs that may inform neural coding principles and future BCI architectures (figure 1a singled out as especially informative).