# Key Points from IRC Discussions

• Research on alcohol and creative problem solving was shared, showing that moderate intoxication can improve certain cognitive tasks, demonstrating interest in cognitive enhancement techniques.

• Medical hypnosis applications were discussed with references to emergency room use and France's dedicated medical hypnosis association (hypnose-medicale.com), highlighting alternative approaches to medical treatment.

• DARPA announced Gazebo (gazebosim.org) from the Open Source Robotics Foundation as the recommended simulation environment for its Robotics Challenge for Disaster Environments, showing the importance of open-source tools in advanced robotics development.

• DIY peptide synthesis was explored, with references to POGO (bioinformatics.org/pogo/) for DNA microarrays and oligonucleotide synthesis, indicating ongoing interest in democratizing biotechnology tools.

• The European Commission's "Horizon 2020" initiative was discussed for its proposal to make all research results openly available, alongside ALLEA's declaration supporting open science principles.

• Significant concerns about cell line contamination in scientific research were raised, noting that 20% of cell lines are improperly identified and HeLa cells frequently contaminate other cancer cell lines, potentially invalidating decades of research.

• Various privacy and security tools were discussed, including Tor exit relays, VPN hosting options, and phantomjs for web scraping, reflecting the community's interest in information freedom and digital privacy.