Extinctions, de-extinctions and other science stories of the week

Welcome to your weekly science update – a curated list of this week’s most interesting stories in science.

Batteries sold separately. Elon Musk wants to move his batteries out of his Tesla cars and into your home.

The coming mass-extinction. Study finds climate change could drive as many as 1 in 6 species to extinction.

Easing off extinction. Intriguing opinion piece argues the focus on extinction is harming efforts in nature conservation.

Let’s talk de-extinction. With the genome of the Woolly Mammoth fully sequenced, should we get ready for a real life Jurassic Park? Maybe not, but studying fossils and understanding why the mega-mammals went extinct could help us avoid an extinction catastrophe in our own times.

Questioning the science of psychology. Alarming questions raised about the reproducibility of psychology studies. The ability of a scientist to reproduce an experiment that another scientist has done in order to see if the same results can be achieved is an essential part of proving whether the results can be trusted.

More disappearing ice. Further evidence that the Antarctic ice is melting faster and faster. This time brought to us by gravitational satellite data.

Vatican stands up for science. Scientists and religious leaders make a joint call for action against climate change.

Ban on editing human embryos. The US National Institutes of Health reaffirms its ban on editing the DNA of human embryos following recent attempts in China.

3D printer saves lives. Tiny throat implants printed with a three-dimensional printer credited with saving the lives of three infants this week.

Sitting is the new smoking. Study says walking for two minutes every hour could off-set the health hazards of a sedentary lifestyle (let’s assume walking to your cigarette break doesn’t count).

Mission to Mercury ends with a bang. Did you know humankind had a spacecraft orbiting the planet Mercury for the last 4 years? The NASA mission to study the scorched planet came to an end this week.

Meanwhile, Cube-sats are all the rage. Companies are developing smaller spacecraft for use closer to Earth

Who needs teleportation… when you have total virtual immersion? A team at University of Pennsylvania has developed robots that take telepresence devices to the next level.

Full 6 DOF Testing from DORA on Vimeo.

Flying a drone with the power of your mind. Tech start-ups see commercial potential of brain-computer interface technology, allowing people to control machines with the power of our minds.

Defeating the drones. With public access and use of drones ready to go viral, authorities are thinking about how to police the skies. A timely topic as this week also saw the advent of drone vandalism

Author: David Gleicher is Senior Programme Manager, Science and Technology,at the World Economic Forum

Image: A woman looks up at a replica skeleton of 18 metres long (59 feet) Lessemsaurus dinosaur during a preparation for an exhibition at Roppongi Hills in Tokyo July 2, 2010. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao