# Key Technical and Conceptual Highlights from #hplusroadmap IRC Logs

• Researchers discussed advanced organ preservation techniques, including machine perfusion technology that maintains organs outside the body, with interest in developing artificial blood substitutes and synthetic defined culture media as alternatives to donated human blood.

• The Blue Brain Project is developing sophisticated neural modeling infrastructure, having already assembled neocortical columns into planar hexagonal mosaics containing up to 1 million neurons, with plans to scale to a complete rat brain model with tens of millions of neurons.

• Participants explored immune system engineering concepts, including thymus transplantation to produce biocompatible white blood cells as a research platform for immune system augmentation, referencing SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) approaches.

• Dichloroacetate (DCA) was discussed as a potential cancer treatment, with references to testing on canine cancer and research papers on its effects on hypoxic HeLa cells.

• The community developed and improved "paperbot," a tool with Sci-Hub integration for retrieving academic papers, discussing technical implementation details of metadata extraction and proper Python coding standards.

• Emscripten and JSLinux were highlighted as significant JavaScript-based emulation technologies that enable C code recompilation to JavaScript and x86 emulation in browsers, demonstrating the evolution of web technologies toward supporting complex applications.

• The conversation included analysis of MakerBot's $400M acquisition, noting that early angel investors likely received approximately 100x returns, alongside mention of the RepRap Morgan receiving the $20,000 Gada Prize.