Through studies of birds, bats and insects, which outperform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and efficiency, researchers moving toward designing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards.

A new mathematical model, developed by a co-investigator on NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander mission, indicates that dust devils, water spouts, tornadoes, hurricanes and cyclones are all born of the same mechanism and will intensify as climate change warms the Earth's surface.

A new "lung on a chip" mimics fluid mechanics of human lungs on a plastic wafer, just larger than a quarter. It is allowing researchers to grow lung airway cells that act more like they're in the human body.