Mind reading, a new dinosaur 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.

DARPA robotics challenge finals. The much anticipated final rounds will feature international teams competing to see who has the most advanced humanoid disaster response robot. You can stream the even live on the competition’s website.

The big biotech disrupter.  The heated debate around human genome editing with the CRISPR technology continues this week with informative features in Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine covering the possible implications and the history of this revolutionary technology.

CERN season 2. After two years shut-down for upgrades the particle accelerator at CERN commenced experiments this week at the highest energy levels every attempted. Data is already streaming in as scientists look for answers to questions like what is dark matter?  The day’s events and plenty of interesting content can be found on the site where CERN was live-blogging.

Life and death of a star. Wonderfully written story about what one of NASA’s most famous images, the pillars of creation, teach us about the enormous scale of the events we are observing out in the cosmos.

Your viral history in a drop of blood. New test is able to build a record of every virus that has ever infected you by studying your immune system’s repertoire of antibodies.

Moonshot for renewables. Scientists are calling for NASA Apollo programme-esque, “moonshot” funding and efforts to develop clean energy. Currently publicly-funded R&D on renewable energy is $6bn a year while fossil fuel subsidies are at $550bn a year.

Matchmaker, matchmaker. The National Cancer Institute in the US is trying out a new role – playing matchmaker between 1,000 cancer patients and the growing cadre of drugs that can target tumors by their genetic mutations, not just where they occur in the body.

Innovation infrastructure. What Silicon Valley can Learn from Seoul

A step back for mind reading.  Brain scans that can detect when someone is experiencing a memory or not, are hoped to have applications in a wide range of fields – from criminal law to medicine and marketing. But this recent study shows that these scans can be easily fooled.

Billion dollar biotech. Fascinating feature on the most successfully funded start-up in biotech

A New dinosaur discovered. Meet Regaliceratops, the triceratops’ crowned cousin.

A.I. ethics. Expert views on reducing societal risks from intelligent machines.

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

Image: A child touches the teeth of a model of a dinosaur at the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien in Vienna REUTERS/Herwig Prammer