A new study explores the connection between protecting mature trees in national forests and objectives related to habitat conservation, forest resilience and climate change mitigation. "We suggest policy to keep existing forest carbon stores out of the… atmosphere and accumulate additional amounts while protecting habitat and biodiversity." The study, "Protect large trees for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and forest resilience," was published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice.

A multinational team of researchers has identified a new family of snakes, Micrelapidae, which live in East Africa and the Middle East. Kenyan researchers hope the news will aid efforts to raise awareness of snakes and their importance to the ecosystem, as it is common for people in Kenya to fear – and kill – snakes. Just three known species belong to the newly identified Micrelapidae family. The identification of a new snake family should be a source of pride for Kenyan people, he says.

A new review from the University of Colorado, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, has proposed that Alzheimer’s disease is a result of an evolutionary survival pathway used during times of scarcity and is driven by diet. Fructose and its metabolic byproduct, intracellular uric acid, reduce blood flow to the brain’s cerebral cortex, hippocampus and thalamus, enhancing foraging behavior by blocking non-essential activity, such as paying attention to time and recent memories.

Researchers have used laboratory simulations to recreate the conditions of early Earth and have discovered that the evolution of ancient proteins into all forms of life on the planet, including plants, animals, and humans, would not have been possible without specific amino acids. In the lab, the researchers mimicked primordial protein synthesis of 4 billion years ago by using an alternative set of amino acids that were highly abundant before life arose on Earth. They found ancient organic compounds integrated the amino acids best suited for protein folding into their biochemistry.

The review highlights the current technologies for commercially developing and growing microalgae, as well as the scientific and economic challenges to scaling production. While long studied as a source of biofuel thanks to their high lipid or fat content, algae are also attracting interest from researchers because of their potential to be a more efficient food source. In the paper, the UCSD authors describe the various scientific tools available to produce the most desirable traits for a commercially viable algal product.

The newly identified Micrelapidae family likely originated in Africa 50 million years ago, with some members traveling to Israel and its neighbors. A whole new family of snakes previously believed to belong to the largest snake family in the world was recently singled out as unique by scientists. The new family is called Micrelapidae, and its members Micrelaps. The Micrelapidae snake family diverged from the rest of the evolutionary tree of snakes some 50 million years ago.

Each and every organism present on Earth has amino acids. A new study describes the events that shaped why that ancestor got the amino acids that it did. In other words, life evolved on Earth because some amino acids were available and simple to synthesize in prehistoric settings. Others arrived via special delivery by meteorites, which brought a variety of components and completed a set of 10 “early” amino acids that helped life on Earth.

Researchers are now looking for different ways of growing nutritious foods to replace the ones whose cultivation is no longer as sustainable. One of these is algae.

Researchers and environmentalists have been observing Madagascar to discover new unknown species. Furthermore, the discovery of the bird's preferred habitat would be helpful for future researchers and locating the bird species in Madagascar. WWF said about 615 new species were uncovered in Madagascar from 1999 to 2010. The population of the rare songbird Dusky Tetrakas has insufficient data.

Since then, snake researchers around the world have tried to discover which family these snakes do belong to—to no avail.