# IRC Log Summary - December 16, 2016

* A new paper on StackGAN was shared: "Text to Photo-realistic Image Synthesis with Stacked Generative Adversarial Networks" (arxiv.org/pdf/1612.03242v1.pdf), demonstrating advances in AI-generated imagery from text descriptions.

* Miami International Holdings announced an investment in LedgerX, a Bitcoin clearing startup, securing exclusive worldwide product licensing rights for digital currency derivatives.

* A research paper was shared about endocranial volume being heritable and associated with longevity and fitness in wild mammals (from Royal Society Open Science).

* Several innovative iGEM 2015 synthetic biology projects were discussed, including:
  - BostonU's work on regulating recombinases, integrases and saCas9 using conditional dimerization of split protein halves
  - Michigan's "aptapaper" freeze-dried cell-free paper-based transcription and translation for protein detection
  - Penn's cell-cell communication system using bioluminescence and photoreceptors
  - Stanford-Brown's DNA origami for space exploration and using Cas9 to increase transformation efficiency
  - Tufts' cellular penetration capability protein using modified Clostridium difficile toxin B for delivering Cas9-gRNA into cells

* A discussion about CAD tools took place, with participants comparing FreeCAD/CadQuery to BRLCAD for 3D modeling, noting stability issues with the former.