# Summary of IRC Log from #hplusroadmap (Feb 25, 2016)

• Elizabeth Parrish, CEO of BioViva, was mentioned as potentially the first case of self-experimentation with gene therapy, having reportedly inserted genes for follistatin (for muscle growth) and telomerase (involved in aging regulation) at a clinic outside the US.

• A discussion about scientific publishing included references to high costs of academic publications (with examples of journals charging $16,999 for encyclopedia sets) and the Sci-Hub platform being described as "necessary, effective civil disobedience" for providing access to paywalled research.

• Participants discussed memory formation and retrieval mechanisms, sharing several papers on DNA methylation in memory formation, memory engram storage, and optogenetic stimulation of hippocampal engrams for memory recall.

• A conversation about advanced microscopy techniques covered Serial Block-Face Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and its applications for brain cell imaging, along with elemental mapping techniques like EDS, EELS, and PIXE that can detect different atoms/ions in biological samples.

• Apple's legal brief rejecting the FBI's proposed iPhone encryption backdoor was shared, alongside a discussion of Tor users' privacy expectations, highlighting ongoing tensions between privacy, security, and government surveillance.

• TensorFlow, Google's open-source machine learning library, was mentioned as being not just open source but also easy to use, though reportedly not yet as optimized as competing frameworks like Torch and Theano.