I may have a solution to the memory problem; if

{if $link_category eq ""}

[li class="category" id="ls_category-{$link_shakebox_index}"][b][a href="{$category_url}" style='text-decoration:none;']{#PLIGG_MiscWords_Category#}[/a][/b]: [a href="{$category_url}"]{$link_category}[/a][/li]

{/if}

is inserted into the same loops mentioned before that creates the two columns design, then the catagory-> link appears at the top of the document. $link_category may not actually be the master category variable we need, but a suitable smarty assign code that turns catagory-> into catagory->science then we have the correct insertion code. We then merely need to find the correct master variable.

{php}

global $db, $main_smarty;

$new_variable= $db->get_var('some query here');

$main_smarty->assign('new_variable', $new_variable);

{/php}

is apparently a correct code to use, but it doesn't seem to actually work, so a little editing is needed.

Hopefully, this could be a breaking point, but we still need to work on it.