Photo: piclax

Alternative medicine tends to elicit strong opinions. Some people swear by natural remedies while others insist that traditional medicine isn’t effective and, at worst, can be dangerous. Alternative treatments are gaining popularity in the U.S., where around 50 percent of people say they have used them, but despite the billions of dollars spent on these remedies each year only a third of them have ever been tested.

As USA Today reports, many American consumers cite distrust of big pharmaceutical companies as one of the main reasons they lean towards using traditional therapies. But a new book by Paul Offit, chief of infectious disease at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, argues that the alternative medicine industry is just as focused on profit and business as it is on healing.

In his book, Offit paints a picture of an aggressive, $34 billion a year industry whose key players are adept at using lawsuits, lobbyists and legislation to protect their market.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who has long fought for stricter regulation of supplements, says the alternative medicine industry is “as tough as any industry I’ve seen lobby in Washington. They have a lot of money at stake. They want to maximize their profits and they want as little regulation as possible.”

There’s even a Congressional Dietary Supplement Caucus, composed of legislators who look favorably on the industry.

Moreover, USA Today continues, only about one-third of alternative therapies have ever been tested for their safety and efficacy. In other words, the people selling those supplements, powders or teas can’t really say whether the treatments actually improve a patient’s ailments, and they can’t guarantee their products’ safety, either.   

For the most part, people are free to take whatever alternative therapies they want, but Offit wants consumers to know that they are contributing to a profit-driven industry and may be investing in nothing but empty promises, and in the worst case, could wind up in the hospital.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Ten Threatened and Endangered Species Used in Traditional Medicine 
Can Tattoos Be Medicinal? 

Image: LilyWhitesParty

Bullying has been around forever, but it’s taken on a whole new tenor in recent years. With a new set of tools to use, bullies are no longer just roughing kids up and taking their lunch money—they’re causing serious, permanent problems for bullied kids. From internet stalking and blackmail, to using chemical warfare in the form of food allergies, bullies today aren’t like they used to be.

In today’s New York Times, Catherine Saint Louis has a story about bullies using kids’ foods allergies against them. She spoke with Dr. Hement P. Sharma, the head of the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington:

Every few months, a child recounts being force-fed an allergen, Dr. Sharma said, adding, “Even if it’s just a child who feels singled out because of their food allergy, it compounds the emotional burden.”

Many kids, Saint Louis writes, don’t really understand how serious food allergies can be. This PSA from Food Allergy Research & Education, a nonprofit group, depicts how food bullying can seriously harm children:

In one study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, 251 families were polled about their children’s allergies, and the bullying they might have experienced. Over 30 percent of kids in the survey reported being bullied because of their allergies—bullying that frequently included threats from their classmates. The study also found that about half of the bullying goes unnoticed and unreported.

Many schools are aware that this is an issue. About 15 states, including Texas and Arizona, have specific guidelines for their cafeterias that tackle food bullying specifically.

From food to Facebook, bullies have seriously stepped up their game since the days of wedgies—so much so that several government organizations have started campaigns to address it. And now, not even the lunch room is safe.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Bullying Really Does Mess You Up Later in Life
Too Popular to Bother With Bullying

Photo: Hélène Courtois, Daniel Pomarède, R. Brent Tully, Yehuda Hoffman, and Denis Courtois.

“It is no exaggeration to say that almost everything we know about the universe today has grown out of the effort to see past the flat, 2-D appearance of the sky and discern the true depths behind it,” Discover News writes. In the 1920s, maps helped Edwin Hubble discern that the universe is expanding; they clued Fritz Zwicky in on the presence of dark matter in the 1930s; and they helped tease out details supporting the Big Bang Theory in the 1990s.

Now, a new map captures not only the 3D structure of the universe, but the positioning and movement of invisible dark matter, too. The University of Hawaii describes the significance:

The video captures with precision not only the distribution of visible matter concentrated in galaxies, but also the invisible components, the voids and the dark matter. Dark matter constitutes 80 percent of the total matter of our universe and is the main cause of the motions of galaxies with respect to each other. This precision 3-D cartography of all matter (luminous and dark) is a substantial advance.

The correspondence between wells of dark matter and the positions of galaxies (luminous matter) is clearly established, providing a confirmation of the standard cosmological model. Through zooms and displacements of the viewing position, this video follows structures in three dimensions and helps the viewer grasp relations between features on different scales, while retaining a sense of orientation.

To celebrate astronomer Brent Tully’s 70th birthday, Discover writes, he and his friends hosted a conference at which they revealed this and one other new map of the universe that the group created together.

One is the color coded one, above, which depicts the exact location of every galaxy out to a distance of 300 million light-years. But the even more amazing one–the one that truly made my head spin, as I hope it will do to yours–is the 3D video, which shows not only all the visible structures but also the unseen dark matter, and illustrates the dynamic behavior of the whole thing.

The video maps 100 million light-years, or, as Discover rephrases, 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. It shows the structures of galaxy clusters, thread-like dark matter and open patches of lonely space.

This is the structure and evolution of the cosmos laid bare, covering distances and times and velocities that are, in a fundamental way, beyond human comprehension. And yet they are not truly beyond the reach of the intellect, because Tully has brought it all into view, with a little help from his friends. Give him 17 minutes and he will give you the universe. Happy birthday to you, and to all of us.

Here, you can take that journey with Tully and the birthday crew:

More from Smithsonian.com:

A Guided Tour of the Universe 
A 3D Map of the Universe, No Glasses Required 

Photo: Doug Wheller

A coffee in hand as you pore over the news. A coffee in hand as you ride the subway to your co-working hub. A coffee to get the juices flowing while you brainstorm, sticking colorful Post-Its on the board. Ask nearly anyone in a creative profession the three things they can’t do without, and aside from a computer and smartphone, the top response is probably going to be coffee. But Maria Konnikova has some bad news for you, caffeine-loving creative professional: you’re doing it wrong.

Writing for the New Yorker, Konnikova surveyed the science of creative thinking:

Science is only beginning to unravel the full complexity behind different forms of creative accomplishment; creativity is notoriously difficult to study in a laboratory setting…

Still, we do know that much of what we associate with creativity—whether writing a sonnet or a mathematical proof—has to do with the ability to link ideas, entities, and concepts in novel ways.

Challenging problems can be cracked in different ways—through hard work and a systematic slog, or through a flash of creative insight. But if you’re waiting for your eureka moment, says Konnikova, you may want to lay off the coffee.

Caffeine “boosts energy and decreases fatigue; enhances physical, cognitive, and motor performance; and aids short-term memory, problem solving, decision making, and concentration,” says Konnikova. But to string together seemingly unconnected ideas to spur a creative insight, you need your brain to relax. Creativity, says Konnikova, “depends in part on the very thing that caffeine seeks to prevent: a wandering, unfocussed mind.”

Coffee can still play a role in your work flow, helping you to really get down to business when you know what needs to be done and all that’s left is to crack it out. But when you’re relying on that next flash of insight, trade out the double espresso for something that lets you relax and gets your mind wandering.

More from Smithsonian.com:

From Elephant Poop Coffee Comes Elephant Poop Coffee Beer
360-Year-Old Advertisement Extolls Coffee’s Virtues

Image: briancweed

Men say a lot of strange things when they encounter a woman they find attractive, most of which we will not print here. But one safe-for-work phrase is particularly strange: “hubba hubba.” Where did this odd little set of sounds come from, and how did it become associated with pretty ladies?

Like many expressions, the origin of “hubba hubba” is debated. Neatorama explains four of the most common theories, many of them beginning with the military. The first says that it came from the Chinese “ni hao pu hao,” and was picked up by Army Air Corps members while they were training with Chinese pilots in Florida during World War II. This version of history claims that the phrase spread through Bob Hope, the host of a weekly radio show broadcast from military bases. The problem with this theory that “hao pu hao” was completely mistranslated. It actually means “are you well,” but was mistranslated to “it is good under heaven when boy meets girl.”

The second military theory stays in the military but loses the Chinese. This one says the word “hubbub” was taken up by a military leader, who forced his troops to shout the words. The third military history says is that it’s a shortened and mutated version of the “hup hup hup” used by drill sergeants.

It might not be all soldiers’ faults though—other theories that Neatorama provides involve baseball (“haba haba” meaning “hurry hurry”) and television (one character on The Honeymooners used to say “hamina hamina” when confused or excited). The Honeymooners explanation doesn’t hold up to Oxford English Dictionary, however, as it point to 1944 as the first reference to the word, when in the journal American Speech the following sentence was published: “The inevitable fact is that the cry ‘Haba-Haba’ is spreading like a scourge through the land.”

But none of these get us to the sexual connotation of the word. For a theory on that we have to turn to Playboy, where Margaret Atwood suggests that “hubba hubba” actually came from the German word “hubsche,” which means beautiful. But linguist Anatoly Liberman, writing in the Oxford University Press’s Language blog, says that looking far beyond our borders for the origins of this word is fruitless:

Hubbub, as already mentioned, has come to English from Irish, so that hubba-hubba may be a loanword. Yet attempts to trace it to some foreign source (Chinese, Spanish, and Yiddish) carry no conviction and have been abandoned. In all probability, hubba-hubba is English.

So, as with many etymological mysteries, the origin is still pretty mysterious. And while the phrase is slowly fading into the distance when it comes to cultural relevance, it still pops up here and there. In 2004, New Zealand launched a safe sex campaign with the slogan “No Rubba, No Hubba Hubba.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Etymology of Food, Part I: Why Nothing Rhymes With Orange

The Etymology of Food, Part II: Meaty Stories

Photo: David Flores

Smell is chemistry, and the chemistry of old books gives your cherished tomes their scent. As a book ages, the chemical compounds used—the glue, the paper, the ink–begin to break down. And, as they do, they release volatile compounds—the source of the smell. A common smell of old books, says the International League for Antiquarian Booksellers, is a hint of vanilla: “Lignin, which is present in all wood-based paper, is closely related to vanillin. As it breaks down, the lignin grants old books that faint vanilla scent.”

A study in 2009 looked into the smell of old books, finding that the complex scent was a mix of “hundreds of so-called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released into the air from the paper,” says the Telegraph. Here’s how Matija Strlic, the lead scientist behind that study, described the smell of an old book:

A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness, this unmistakable smell is as much a part of the book as its contents.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Why Do Flowers Smell Good?
What Makes Rain Smell So Good?
Why Asparagus Makes Your Urine Smell

Photo: Alexi Kostibas

China’s pidan, or preserved eggs, go by many names: preserved egg, hundred-year egg, century egg, thousand-year egg, thousand-year-old egg, and millennium egg. You get the idea—these eggs look like they’ve been sitting around for years and years.

While their putrid-looking greenish-grey yolk and transparent, brown egg white may appear to be the furthest thing from appetizing to Western palettes, for the Chinese, these things are a common delicacy. But now, even Chinese consumers have a reason to avoid 1,000-year-old eggs. Thirty preserved egg companies are being shut down for using industrial copper sulphate, a toxic chemical, to expedite the egg-festering process. South China Morning Post reports:

Industrial copper sulphate usually contains high levels of toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and cadmium, so is banned for use as a food additive.

The eggs are usually preserved with baking soda, salt, and quicklime for about two months. The process turns yolks dark green and the egg white into a stiff, dark jelly. Using copper sulphate could significantly reduce the processing time while achieving the same effect.

For now, the companies—one of which produces 300,000 tons of preserved eggs per year—are on hiatus as investigations continue. One official remarked that nearly all the preserved egg companies used this chemical, and he doesn’t consider it such a big deal. ”There won’t be a problem if you don’t eat too many of them,” he told South China Morning Post.

In other Chinese cuisine news, Quartz reports, watch out for chewing on suspect pork knuckles and chicken legs in the country. Some of those chewy treats were sold more than a year past their expiration date after being washed with detergent to cover up their foulness.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Why Did Jewish Communities Take to Chinese Food?
China Acknowledges It Has a Problem With Pollution-Laden ‘Cancer Villages’

Photo: Jim Epler

In 2009, wildlife managers across Africa began finding hundreds of rhino carcasses with their horns sawed off. Since then, conservationists have struggled to get a handle on the escalating poaching crisis. Rhino horn can fetch a price exceeding its equivalent weight in gold on the Asian blackmarket, and efforts to stop the determined poachers from stripping rhinos of their valuable horns haven’t had much success so far.

Today, Discover argued that “legalizing the trade in rhino horns may be the best way to protect them from poachers.” The thinking goes like this:

Rhino horns can be cut or shaved without injuring the animals, and they grow back.

The increased supply from legal trade would likely bring prices down, reducing the incentive for poachers to continue slaughtering rhinos. [Conservation biologist Duan] Biggs believes the trade would protect rhinos — a portion of profits could be funneled into continuing to police poachers — and bring jobs to the surrounding areas. And if demand were to keep going up, areas that hold white rhinos could be expanded to grow the population. In the end, a tightly regulated legal horn trade might do the most good.

Now, this is by no means a new idea, nor is it a widely supported one. Officials in South Africa have been arguing the pros and cons of the rhino horn ban for over ten years. Last year, the Cape Times reported on a proposal to lift the 1977 ban in rhino products.

According to the Cape Times, the argument for a monthly, legal rhino horn sale regulated by the government includes:

• Payment would go to rhino owners rather than outlaws
• Horns would be genetically categorized, making their legal origins easily traceable
• The sustainable horn supply flooding the market would reduce incentive for traders to risk breaking the law 

But of course there were arguments against the ban too:

• Adding legal rhino horns to the market would only fuel demand
• Criminals would still launder illegal horns and pass them off as legal ones
• Farming rhinos in captivity would make this species akin to domestic livestock and “take the wild out of wildlife”
• This strategy has not worked in the past
• The countries responsible for driving most demand for rhino horn – namely, China and Vietnam – are notorious for their corrupt officials, which doesn’t bode well for enforcing a legal trade

It’s these last two point that is perhaps most convincing. China condones the legal sale of tiger skin and bones, so long as the animals were raised in captivity. But that has done nothing to quell demand for those products, and wild tigers continue to be poached. Conservationist Mark Jones explains in the Huffington Post:

Tigers have fared no better. China has a scheme for registering, labelling and selling the skins from tigers who have died on tiger farms. In spite of a domestic and international ban on the trade in tiger parts, particularly bones, China still allows tiger farmers to breed tigers and store the carcases of those who have died. Meanwhile, wild tigers remain on the brink of extinction with as few as 3,000 remaining in the wild whilst three times that number are estimated to be languishing on Chinese tiger farms.

And this same strategy has been tested a couple times for ivory, too, and it failed to stop elephants from being killed:

On the ivory front, CITES has sanctioned two ‘one-off sales’ of ivory from southern African stockpiles to China and Japan in recent years on the assumption that it will help control or reduce elephant poaching, but it hasn’t worked. Seizures of illegal ivory have risen markedly since the last legal ‘one-off sale’ took place in 2008, with at least 30 tonnes seized in 2011 alone, representing around 3,000 dead elephants. This is probably only 10% to 20% of the total illegal trade. Elephant massacres continue, with hundreds killed in parts of Central and West Africa earlier this year, threatening the survival of whole elephant populations.

In a blog published last year, Mike Watson, CEO of the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya, summed up the overall problem with legalizing the trade: 

“It might look and sound good on paper and the figures might make sense, but in reality regulating rhino horn and piecing it together at the continental and global level may well prove to be a challenge,” Watson said. “There are so many variables and unknowns that you’ll only know if it’s succeeding if you try it, and if it doesn’t succeed it could be a disaster,” he added.

Ultimately, reducing market demand would be a surefire way to ensure the survival of rhinos, elephants and countless other species, but conservationists are pushing against thousands of years of Chinese culture and tradition. “Until such a time as one reduces the market, we’ll be fighting an uphill battle,” Watson said.

In other words, stopping demand for illegal wildlife goods is the only surefire way to solve the poaching predicament currently threatening wildlife spanning from Asia to Africa. That requires governments to get serious about cracking down on poachers as well as sellers and buyers, and also start pointing out the obvious to their citizens: rhino horn won’t cure your cancer, but it will cause a species to go extinct, and land you in jail.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Investigation: China Covertly Condones Trade in Tiger Skin and Bones 
In Vietnam, Rhino Horn Is the Drug of Choice at Both Parties and Hospitals 

Just put it on one of the lines, no one’s gonna notice.

Exactly 236 years ago today the United States Congress signed the resolution that made the familiar stars and stripes the official American flag. That early flag looked quite different than the one we know today of course, with only 13 stars rather than 50. It wasn’t until August 21, 1959, when Hawaii officially joined as the 50th state of the United States of America, that we finally got those alternating rows of stars. But let’s say that the U.S. does pick up a new state—maybe one of the current unincorporated territories like Guam or American Samoa or Puerto Rico—as an official state. Where do you put that new 51st star? Sure, you could just tack it on the side. But who really wants an awkwardly asymmetric flag?

Well, one way to do it is to crowd source the design. When Puerto Rico voted for statehood, the internet was ready. Smithsonian’s Design Decoded covered the new designs:

Reddit users got started right away after Puerto Rico’s vote, and designs are popping up elsewhere across the Internet. The irregularity of the number makes for some interesting solution, probably the best one being a star-spangled Pac-Man eating star-spangled pac-dots.

But as clever as Reddit might be, there is probably a better way. From Inside Science we learn of a more elegant solution, devised by mathematician Skip Garibaldi, to organize the stars of the future United States:

Garibaldi had worked out his solution a few years ago, says Slate, and he didn’t just figure out how to make a 51-star flag. Rather, Garibaldi could make you a nice-looking flag with up to 100 stars—just in case America decides to go on an imperialistic spree.

To make a good American flag, you need your star pattern to fit in a rectangle. Then, you generally want the stars to be either horizontally or vertically symmetrical, says Slate.

With those rules in mind, the six flag patterns Garibaldi uncovered can be defined as follows:

Long: Alternating rows of even and odd numbers of stars, beginning and ending with the longer row. This is the pattern of our current 50-star flag.

Short: Like the previous pattern, but beginning and ending on the shorter row. This pattern has never been used on the American flag. Out of our six patterns, however, it’s the only one that’s viable for a hypothetical 71-star flag.

Alternate: Like the long and short patterns, but with the same number of odd and even rows, as in the 45-star flag.

Equal: Every row has the same number of stars, like the 30-star or 48-star flag.

Wyoming: The first and last rows have one more star than the interior rows. In addition to the 1890 flag, issued after Wyoming became a state, the 26-star, 32-star, and 37-star flags looked like this.

Oregon: The middle row has two fewer stars than all the other rows, as in the 33-star flag issued upon Oregon’s statehood. This only works for flags with an odd number of rows.

For a 51-star flag, all you really need, says Inside Science, is three rows of nine and three rows of eight.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Designing a 51-State Flag

Flag Day at the National Museum of American History

Image: godutchbaby

Menopause is a pretty weird thing, if you think about it. Suddenly, at a certain age, your body shuts down the ability to reproduce, resulting in symptoms like hot flashes, difficulty sleeping, reduced interest in sex and increased vaginal infections. The whole process seems like a pretty strange thing, especially if reproduction is a cornerstone of evolution. So why do we have it? Well, one recent study suggests that men may be to blame.

Research in the journal PLOS Computational Biology turned to some computer simulations to figure out why any species would set up a system to shut down reproduction long before death. After all, it’s hard to see how a genetic predisposition to sterility would be helpful.

The most common hypothesis out there about menopause is called the “grandmother hypothesis.” The premise here is that when we started living together in groups it became useful for the older females to stop having their own babies, and start helping the younger females raise theirs. But there’s a problem with that hypothesis, says Rama Singh, the lead author of the new study. The Los Angeles Times explains:

But the problem with the grandmother hypothesis, Singh added, is that it doesn’t explain how the mutation causing sterility in older women came to be so common in the first place.  Genes that suppress reproduction shouldn’t be able to thrive — if an individual can’t pass them to offspring, they should die out.

So Singh’s work suggested a different hypothesis. Men tend to prefer younger females as mates. They have for thousands of years. When Singh and his colleagues added that factor into their computer models they suddenly saw an increase of mutations that harmed the fertility of older women. After a while, these accumulating mutations stuck. The women still shared the longevity genes that their male counterparts had, so they were living just as long, but they no longer reproduced.

Of course, this whole thing is really hard to prove. The Los Angeles Times spoke with Cedric Puleston, who has also researched menopause but wasn’t involved in this study. While he said the work was “really compelling” he also noted that it wasn’t conclusive:

“[T]hat’s as far as you can go with this … although the paper provides a powerful argument in favor, it’s not proof that male mate choice caused menopause.  Showing that an explanation is compatible with reality is sometimes the best we can do.”

Now, humans aren’t the only species that has menopause. Some primates like rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees get it. And some other species further removed from our own might get it, like elephants and some whales, but no one is certain. For the most part, menopause is, as the authors put it “almost uniquely human” and we might have men to blame. But we might not. As the LA Times puts it, “thanks a lot, guys.” Maybe.

More from Smithsonian.com:

New Evidence That Grandmothers Were Crucial for Human Evolution

A tar sands mine in Alberta. Photo: Lou Gold

Alberta’s oil and gas industry* just had another “whoops” moment. On June 1st, officials spotted a major toxic waste spill in the northern part of the province, the Globe and Mail reports. All told, 2.5 million gallons of “produced water” – which contains hydrocarbons, sulfurous compounds, metals, oil and high levels of salt, a toxic mix for plants – spewed into wetlands and contaminated some tributaries. Trees in the area have already begun to turn brown, the Globe and Mail continues, and officials think the spill may have occurred months ago, before anyone noticed.

It comes amid heightened sensitivity about pipeline safety, as the industry faces broad public opposition to plans for a series of major new oil export pipelines to the U.S., British Columbia and eastern Canada.

Even after officials spotted the spill, both Alberta and the company responsible, Apache Corp, held off on publicly disclosing the information. It wasn’t until someone tipped off a local TV station that the news went public, over a week after the spill’s discovery. Officials told the Globe and Mail that they were waiting until they figured out how big the spill was to disclose the information to the public.

Environmental groups have long criticized the government for being slow to notify the public when things go wrong with the oil industry, the province’s financial lifeblood.

The spill, thought to be the largest in North America in recent years, is the third major leak in Alberta, the Globe and Mail writes, including one burst pipeline that spilled nearly one million gallons of oil in May 2012. 

Apache said in a statement that it has halted the leak and “taken steps to contain the release as the company continues to map, sample and monitor the impacted areas.”

An earlier version of this story suggested that the spill was near Alberta’s tar sands. It has been amended to reflect the fact that the spill did not occur near a tar sands operation. 

More from Smithsonian.com:

Oil Pipeline Spills Heavy Crude in Arkansas  
The World’s Worst Oil Spills 

The RoboRoach. Photo: Backyard Brains

Forget fruit flies and white mice – future biology students may experiment with cyborg cockroaches to learn about neurology, Mashable reports. The company Backyard Brains aims to inspire a “neuro-revolution,” giving amateurs and curious students the means to conduct their own neurological explorations.

The company founders pointed out to Mashable that 20 percent of all people living today will eventually be diagnosed with a neurological disorder. Therefore, inspiring and teaching potential future neuroscientists with hands-on learning tools like the RoboRoach benefits us all. 

[T]he RoboRoach, according to the creators, employs the same neuraltechnology used in treatments for Parkinson’s as well as the make-up in cochlear implants. Now, to be clear, the RoboRoach is not the answer to the diseases; but it’s meant to be a font of inspiration.

Surprisingly, roach neurons aren’t that different than human neurons, which makes the RoboRoach a good learning tool for all sorts of basic principles of neuroscience that could eventually foray into understanding more about our own species. Here’s how it works

Setting up the RoboRoach requires a bit of surgical maneuvering (including ice-water-induced anesthesia) and precision. Users will have to insert wires into the roach’s antennae and attach a temporary “backpack” to the bug’s thorax. The backpack communicates directly with the neurons (located in the roach’s antennae) via small electrical pulses, and by using an iPhone app, you can temporarily control the critter. By swiping left or right on your device, the roach’s neurons will fire, prompting it to “wall-follow” or turn. Cockroaches use their antennae to sense the proximity of walls or surfaces, so the signals trick the bug into thinking there is a wall on its right or left side.

RoboRoaches are available now for pre-order and the company is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to work out a few remaining kinks. Pledge $100 and you get your own starter kit, sans roach. Up that pledge to $150 and the team will throw in a dozen “well behaved” cockroaches, too.

Here’s a step-by-step RoboRoach DIY explanation from the makers: 

More from Smithsonian.com:

Why Cockroaches Meticulously Groom Their Antenna 
Cockroaches Have Evolved to Avoid Our Traps 

Photo: Klaus Hoffmeier

The at-home pregnancy test revolutionized the experience of pregnancy for women when it first debuted in 1978. Called the Early Pregnancy Test, or e.p.t., the first do-it-yourself kit cost $10 and took two hours to process results. The NIH writes:

Taking the test at home, noted a 1979 article in Family Planning Perspectives, both protected the privacy of a woman who might not want her doctor to know she is sexually active and gave women a new opportunity to take an active role in their own health care.

Now, an equivalent test is in the works for women who want to find out whether or not their already-confirmed pregnancy has ended. The Guardian reports:

Current tests for the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) can tell women if they may be pregnant before they have even missed a period, although they cannot confirm whether or not the hormone is falling or rising.

But the new tests developed in the US can do so, meaning it is possible to state whether a pregnancy is continuing or ending. For women who have ended pregnancies using the abortion pill, the semi-quantitative pregnancy test enables them to ascertain at home whether their pregnancy has ended, by showing that hCG levels are falling.

The test could benefit women in all different kinds of situations.  It could reassure women in the early stages of pregnancy that all is well, or alternatively confirm for women who have had an abortion or a miscarriage that their hormones are dropping back to normal with no further complications.

The new test is not commercially available yet, but the Guardian writes that researchers presenting at the Royal Society of Medicine conference in London reported that the tests may be available soon.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Doctors Used to Use Live African Frogs as Pregnancy Tests  
Easy Peasy Test Finds Serious Fetal Health Issues Earlier 

Image: Wikimedia

Image: United States Navy Historical Center

But there’s a curious picture in the Library of Congress that caught one librarian by surprise. It’s this one:

Image: Library of Congress

It looks a lot like an ironclad, but its sides are made of wood. “I’ve long admired the efficient design of the single or double turreted ironclads,” Gay Colyer writes. “In striking contrast, this vessel looked like a clumsy barge—a wood crate, too heavy for river travel.”

It turns out that these wooden ships were known at the time informally as “timberclads.” They were used as escorts to transport troops and supplies up and down the Mississippi. Normally, the Union would have used ironclads to do the job, but there were a shortage of those around and so one enterprising general bought three steamships and converted them into these clunky timberclads. “Gone were the white paint, glass pilot-house, and decorative railing. Now, five-inch thick bulwarks provided protection against small arms fire, and oak planking covered the paddle wheel,” Coyler writes.

There were only three timberclads ever made. One of them is the USS Tyler, which was 178 feet long and had six 8-inch guns. And while it might have had humble steamship beginnings, the Tyler wasn’t just a lowly transport crate. It fought in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, as seen in this image here:

Image: Library of Congress

So while the timberclads might look like weird, wooden boxes compared to their sleek ironclad cousins, they got the job done.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Civil War at 150

Civil War Battles

Maat Mons, on Venus. Image: NASA

Space is a crazy place. It’s full of incredibly hot stars, deep cold space, black holes and supernovae. Now add this fact to the list of crazy things about space: on Venus, it snows metal.

At the very top of Venus’s mountains, beneath the thick clouds, is a layer of snow. But since it’s so hot on Venus, snow as we know it can’t exist. Instead, the snow capped mountains are capped with two types of metal: galena and bismuthinite.

Markus Hammonds at Discovery explains:

As we now understand it, the snow on Venus’ surface is probably more similar to frost. On the lower Venusian plains, temperatures reach a searing 480°C (894°F). This is hot enough that reflective pyrite minerals on the planet’s surface are vaporized, entering the atmosphere as a kind of metallic mist, leaving only the dark volcanic rocks like basalt in the Venusian lowlands.

At higher altitudes, this mist condenses, forming shiny, metallic frost on the tops of the mountains. And Earth’s simmering sibling has plenty of high altitude terrain. Maxwell Montes, the tallest peak on Venus, stands at an altitude of 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) — 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) higher than Mount Everest.

Probably not the best place to take a vacation.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Transit of Venus
How to View the Transit of Venus