# Key Points from IRC Discussion

• Detailed economic analysis of mouse housing facilities revealed significant costs ($16k/day for 200 staff at $10/hour), with participants debating the actual cost of mouse feed (approximately $2.57 per mouse per year) and discussing how these resources could alternatively fund "millions of mouse years" of research.

• Participants noted a dramatic price reduction in knockout mice technology, with new genetic strains now available through Science Exchange for under $3,500, compared to previous costs of $100,000 per strain, though some facilities still demand royalties on downstream discoveries.

• Sleep optimization was discussed, with participants sharing experiences with melatonin, modafinil, and polyphasic sleep schedules, generally concluding that extreme approaches like the Uberman schedule proved impractical despite theoretical interest.

• Technical conversations about FPGA programming compared traditional hardware description languages with MyHDL (a Python library that converts Python code to VHDL/Verilog), alongside recommendations for affordable development boards like the DE0-nano and upcoming Snickerdoodle ($55).

• Bitcoin transaction methods were evaluated, with recommendations for Electrum wallet over blockchain.info (due to data accuracy issues), discussion of Coinbase's PayPal-like experience, and resources for anonymous purchases through privateinternetaccess.com.

• Open science resources were shared, including a new enzyme-free AQUA Cloning technique published in PLOS ONE, peer production literature, and O'Reilly's BioCoder publication focused on DIY biology and biotechnology.