Butterfly's Migratory Flight is Longest Ever Recorded in Butterflies

Previously known to migrate from Europe to the Afrotropics during the autumn, the fate of this butterfly species and its offspring remained unknown. A British Ecological Society funded study found that painted lady butterflies return from the Afrotropical region to recolonize in the Mediterranean in early spring, traveling an annual distance of 12,000 km across the Sahara Desert.

While the Palearctic-African migratory circuit is typically associated with birds, scientists from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a joint research center of the Spanish National Research Council and Pompeu Fabra University, in Barcelona, Spain, found that a butterfly species, the Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), endures annual trans-Saharan circuits like some birds do. Read more.

Severe Drought May Have Helped Hasten Ancient Maya’s Collapse

Chemical signatures from sediments in lake cores reveal that the centuries-long drought during the fall of Classic Maya civilization was worse than researchers had imagined.

For centuries, the Maya people relied on rain to keep them alive. But then, suddenly, the skies went dry.

At least, that’s what the latest research suggests. Read more.

Solar system born amid flood of ultraviolet light, say ASU astrophysicists

The sun is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Earth, on the other hand, is made mostly of oxygen packed into various compounds. So are its rocky planet neighbors. The giant planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, have compositions more like the sun’s, but still are notably different from it.

Here’s the puzzle. The sun and planets formed at the same time from the same cloud of gas and dust. But the material that made the planets had a composition different from the sun’s. How did that happen? Read more.

Future Quantum Processors Eye 28Si Isotope

CEA-Leti is claiming a breakthrough towards large-scale fabrication of quantum bits, or qubits, the elementary bricks of future quantum processors. They demonstrated on a 300 mm pre-industrial platform a new level of isotopic purification in a film deposited by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). This enables creating qubits in thin layers of silicon using a very high purity silicon isotope, 28Si, which produces a crystalline quality comparable to thin films usually made of natural silicon. Read more.

Fish accounted for surprisingly large part of the Stone Age diet

New research at Lund University in Sweden can now show what Stone Age people actually ate in southern Scandinavia 10,000 years ago. The importance of fish in the diet has proven to be greater than expected. So, if you want to follow a Paleo diet, you could quite simply eat a lot of fish. Read more.

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