- A new 2.4-gram head-mounted two-photon microscope called Mini2P was highlighted; it can image hundreds-to-thousands of neurons in freely moving mice at depths unreachable by conventional fluorescence scopes. Links: Nature news article (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03395-z) and open-source hardware repo (https://github.com/kavli-ntnu/MINI2P_toolbox).

- Discussion of abandoned human embryos in U.S. fertility clinics led to broader bioethical questions: why frozen embryos are granted quasi-human status while cryopreserved adults are not, and whether a “doomsday vault” for embryos should exist for post-catastrophe repopulation.

- A pre-print proposing that extraterrestrial civilizations preferentially settle long-lived, low-mass (red-dwarf) stars was shared (https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.10656); participants critiqued the idea, noting that red dwarfs are already the easiest stars to search for technosignatures and that waiting for stellar close approaches merely delays rather than solves the Fermi paradox.

- Links to DIY gasification and fluidized-bed reactor resources were posted, including a 2011 mailing-list post on small-scale gasifiers (http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/gasification_lists.bioenergylists.org/2011-January/000305.html), a Hackaday project tag (https://hackaday.com/tag/fluidized-bed/), and the water–gas shift reaction Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water–gas_shift_reaction).

- A forgotten laser-cut press-fit construction toy/system named “GIK” was rediscovered via MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms archives (http://cba.mit.edu/projects/dma/assembled_assemblers/index.html and http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.05/people/patrik/pk_mas_863_2.4.htm), prompting reflection on the disappearance of early open-source hardware projects.