(Oregon State University) In a perspective essay published this week in Nature Communications, scientists argue for more 'synthesis' research looking at the big picture of volcanology to complement myriad research efforts looking at single volcanoes.

(University of Science and Technology of China) Prof. Wu Yuen's team successfully prepared a kind of catalyst which is able to significantly accelerate oxygen evolution reaction, which help human get one step further in pursuing applicable hydrogen fuel.

(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Tropical Cyclone Trevor appeared to have a cloud-filled eye in visible imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite.

(Data Science Institute at Columbia) Two Columbia professors affiliated with the Data Science Institute are developing a machine-learning model that can more accurately estimate a Li-Ion battery's charge level. Current estimates of a battery's state of charge have error rates of five percent, whereas this team's model aims for an error rate of one percent.

(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Tropical Cyclone Trevor formed in the Coral Sea of the Southwestern Pacific Ocean on March 18. NASA's Terra satellite analyzed cloud top temperatures in the storm which gave an indication of the storm's strength. Trevor has already triggered warnings in Queensland, Australia.

(Chalmers University of Technology) Environmental damage costs society enormous amounts of money -- and often leaves future generations to foot the bill. Now, a new ISO standard will help companies valuate and manage the impact of their environmental damage, by providing a clear figure for the cost of their goods and services to the environment.

(Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) An international study co-led by researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) and Harvard University (USA) has developed a genetic map of the Iberian Peninsula covering the last 8,000 years.

(University of Texas at Arlington) Caroline Krejci, an assistant professor in the Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Arlington, will use a $299,310 grant from the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education program to explore how to solve the problem of inefficient shipping and storage through collaborative transportation and aggregation, opening avenues for cost savings and easier delivery.

(San Francisco State University) Climate change is often talked about in terms of averages, like the goal set by the Paris Agreement to limit the Earth's temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius. What such numbers fail to convey is that climate change will not only increase the world's average temperature, it will also intensify extreme heat waves that even now are causing harm. A recent review paper describes the potential impacts of these worsening events on people and wildlife.

(University of Groningen) The TMEM16 family of membrane proteins was hailed as representing the elusive calcium-activated chloride channels. However, the majority of the family members turned out to be scramblases, proteins that shuffle lipids between both sides of a lipid membrane, some also with non-selective ion conductance. A new study on proteins of the TMEM16 family, published in two back-to-back papers in the journal eLife, shows what the structures of these proteins reveal about their function.

(Princeton University) A new study from Princeton researchers uses mathematical modeling to explain how T cells, part of the body's key defenses against pathogens, expand to fight a new infection. The team found that the amount of T-cell expansion is related to the quantity of infectious material, or antigen, as well as the stickiness with which the T cell binds the antigen.

(Pensoft Publishers) During surveys in the Upper Guinea forest zone of Liberia and Guinea, scientists discovered snakes later identified as a new to science species. It belongs to the stiletto snakes, spectacular for their unusual skulls, allowing them to stab sideways with a fang sticking out of the corner of their mouths. The discovery, published in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution, is further evidence supporting the status of the region as unique in its biodiversity.

(Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies ) A Yale-led research team conducted an experiment that suggests microbes can specialize within plant species, which can promote plant species diversity and increased seed dispersal.

(University of Wisconsin-Madison) With a few genetic tweaks, a type of soil bacteria with an appetite for hydrocarbons shows promise as a biological factory for converting a renewable -- but frustratingly untapped -- bounty into a replacement for ubiquitous plastics.

(Southwest Research Institute) NASA has extended the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission for an additional year and a half. The constellation of microsatellites designed and built at Southwest Research Institute has made history over the last two years, penetrating thick clouds and heavy rains to accurately assess wind speeds and better understand hurricane intensification. Assessments confirmed that all eight spacecraft and their subsystems are healthy and ready to support two more years of operations.

(Cornell University) Using data on 77 North American migratory bird species from the eBird citizen-science program, scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology say that, in as little as four decades, it may be very difficult to predict how climate change will affect migratory bird populations and the ecosystems they inhabit. Their conclusions are presented in a paper published in the journal Ecography.