Most of that research is still in draft form and low-priority. However, the Atomicity project is a good, nearer project to keep an eye out for. We should have a public spec for that this summer.
But Atomicity skips all the explaining and arguing and just provides a new network for coordinating it all. These problems are not Bitcoin-protocol problems in the first place (mempools, trusted payments, scaling...) because they are ultimately not enforceable.
