- Mechanical energy harvesting from walking is technically sufficient to keep a cellphone charged, but practical adoption is blocked by mundane issues like running wires from shoes to pockets and the high wear rate of both shoes and pants.  
- A Nature Communications paper (2011) on shoe-based energy harvesting was cited as evidence that the core technology has existed for over a decade.  
- A potato (Solanum tuberosum) was experimentally validated as a physical reservoir computer, using its internal ionic interactions and heterogeneous tissue to perform spoken-digit classification and gesture recognition with accuracy comparable to conventional reservoir systems.  
- Researchers have extended the “plant-as-computer” concept to leaves, modeling plant vascular networks with the FitzHugh–Nagumo equations to show that Boolean logic gates can be implemented by choosing electrode positions that exploit action-potential propagation.  
- Potato tubers also exhibit memory-like electrical behavior, suggesting that even simple plant organs can function as non-volatile memory elements.  
- Collectively, these studies argue that living plant tissues can serve as low-cost, biodegradable substrates for unconventional and distributed computing.  
- A 1968 Nobel Lecture by Har Gobind Khorana on synthetic nucleic acids and the genetic code was shared, highlighting foundational work relevant to modern synthetic biology and open-source bioengineering.