A crazy ant queen. Photo: Joe MacGown, Mississippi Entomological Museum

Since fire ants first invaded the U.S. through cargo ships docking in Mobile, Alabama, the aggressive pest has taken a firm hold in the South and Southwest. More than $5 billion is spent each year on medical treatment and fire ant control, according to Food and Drug Administration, and the ants cost an additional $750 million in agricultural damage.

Now, however, there’s a new ant on the block. The crazy ant – also an invader from South America – is displacing fire ants in the U.S. by gobbling them up. But this unprescribed cure is likely worse than the disease it’s treating. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Like fire ants, these South American invaders seem to be fond of electrical equipment. But unlike their stinging red counterparts, the tawny crazy ants create mega-colonies, sometimes in homes, and push out local populations of ants and arthropods.

Thus  far, the crazy ants are not falling for the traditional poisons used to eliminate fire ant mounds. And when local mounds are destroyed manually, they are quickly regenerated.

Though the crazy ants don’t deliver the same burning bite as fire ants, they do stubbornly make their nests in bathroom plumbing or in walls. So far, researchers haven’t documented any native animals preying on the crazy ants, so their colonies are allowed to run amok, sometimes growing 100 times the size of other species of ants living in the area.

This isn’t the first time one ant invader has been displaced by another. The Argentine ant arrived back in 1891, followed by the black ant in 1918. But the fire ant put an end to those two invasive species when it arrived a couple decades later. Now, the fire ant’s own day of invasive reckoning may have arrived, but rather than feel relieved, researches are worried. Southern ecosystems have had time to adjust to fire ants. Crazy ants—well, who knows what they’ll do?

More from Smithsonian.com:

Invasion of Flying Ants Is at Hand 
NYC Has Its Own Ant, the ManhattAnt

Photo: muffet

Pregnancy tests did not always come in an easy-to-use, sterile kit that provided almost immediate results. Less than a century ago, women had to rely upon frogs instead. In 1938, Dr. Edward R. Elkan wrote in the British Medical Journal:

The discovery of what is now known as the xenopus pregnancy test is based on experiments conducted by Hogben (1930, 1931), who observed that hypophysectomy produced ovarian retrogression, and the injection of anterior pituitary extracts ovulation, in the female South African clawed toad.

The African clawed frog, as its better known today, was imported around the world for its use in pregnancy tests. Doctors would ship urine samples to frog labs, where technicians would inject female frogs with a bit of the urine into their hind leg. The animals would be placed back into their tanks, and in the morning the technicians would check for tell-tale frog eggs dotting the water. If the female frog had ovulated, that meant the woman who provided the urine was pregnant and the pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, had kicked off ovulation in the frog. Researchers referred to this procedure as the Hogben test.

Among the 295 tests which I have done so far and in which 2,112 frogs were used I have not seen one clear positive that did not indicate a pregnancy. There were a few negative results which when repeated after a fortnight became positive, but I do not think that these can be regarded as failures.

Frogs were actually a great improvement on the previous means of testing whether or not a woman was pregnant.   Welcome History describes:

Prior to Xenopus, female mice and rabbits had been used, but these had to be slaughtered, dissected and carefully examined for ovarian changes. Because toads were reusable and could be conveniently kept in aquaria, Xenopus made pregnancy testing practical on a larger scale than before.

Thousands of the frogs were exported across the world from the 1930s to 1950s for use as pregnancy testers.

Immunological test kits finally replaced Xenopus in the 1960s and were rapidly taken up by private companies and feminist organisations offering diagnostic services directly to women. The first over-the-counter home test was sold in pharmacies in the early 1970s, but it resembled a small chemistry set and so was not user-friendly. It was not until 1988 that the first recognisably ‘modern’ one-step-stick hit the shelves.

But the frogs’ legacy lives on. African clawed frogs can be found living around many urban centers today, where they were likely released into the wild after hospitals no longer had use for them. Additionally, the imported frogs are common pets, and no doubt some of those pets wear out their welcome and get chucked into a local stream or pond.

In 2006, researchers realized that the frog may be carriers for the deadly amphibian chytrid fungus, which has caused the extinction and decline of around 200 amphibian species around the world. Now, research published in PLoS One shows for the first time that populations of African clawed frogs living in California carry the fungus. The frogs can carry the disease for long periods without being affected themselves, so researchers suspect that they may be the original vectors that introduced the fungus around the world—a sort of revenge for being used as egg-laying research subjects for all those years.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Three New Frog Species Face an Uncertain Future  
Crayfish Have Been Secretly Spreading a Deadly Frog Epidemic 

The Kepler satellite’s first photo, captured on April 8, 2009. Photo: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

It’s been just over four years since NASA’s exoplanet-hunting Kepler satellite switched on and began staring unwaveringly at the same patch of the universe, watching for the subtle dips of light caused by a far-off planet passing in front of its star. Where the ancient Greeks knew of five planets besides our own Kepler gave us thousands. Extrapolations from this tiny patch of sky gave us hints of billions more.

Originally designed to run for three-and-a-half years, Kepler has pushed on. But the satellite’s quest may be at an end. Sad news came out from NASA yesterday that one of the satellite’s reaction wheels, a device that keeps Kepler’s eye steady, has failed. There may still be a way to fix the broken wheel or concoct some other strategy to keep Kepler shooting straight. But without a steady gaze the satellite can no longer carry out its mission.

In the science press, the obituaries are already rolling out. Though many scientific experiments teach us something new about the world, few have been able to so clearly redefine our place in the universe as Kepler. Decades ago, the planets in our solar system were all we knew. Now, we’re practically swimming in them.

Kepler may be down (but not “out”), but that doesn’t mean the discoveries will stop. It will take years to sort through and analyze all the data the mission has already collected. And, follow up research using other satellites on Kepler’s exoplanet “candidates” could still yet unveil the marvels of the universe.

More from Smithsonian.com:

You Can’t Throw a Rock in the Milky Way Without Hitting an Earth-Like Planet
17 Billion Earth-Size Planets! An Astronomer Reflects on the Possibility of Alien Life
What if All 2,299 Exoplanets Orbited One Star?

The Hubble Space Telescope. Photo: NASA

Last year the National Reconnaissance Office—the U.S. government’s spy satellite program—surprised the world when it let on that it had two unwanted, Hubble-sized spy satellites just sort of sitting around. The Hubble Space Telescope, the great eye in the sky that has given us some of the best photographs in the universe, has a 7.9 foot-wide mirror. The NRO’s two leftover spy satellites also had 7.9 foot-wide mirrors. For satellites, the bigger the mirror the more detail in the photo.

Where Hubble was designed to look off into space, the spy satellites were meant to look down at us. Some rough calculations by UNC-Charlotte associate professor Greg Gbur (otherwise known as Dr Skyksull) let us known that this telescope would be able to see things that are just 5 inches across. With some computer processing, you could probably pick out things on the ground that are just 2.5 inches wide. From space.

But, the spy agency doesn’t want these satellites anymore, so they gave them to NASA. For the better part of a year, says Astronomy Now, NASA has been trying to figure out what exactly to do with these new satellites. Now, says Space.com, the idea is being floated that one of the satellites could be shipped to Mars.

Scientists have proposed sending one of the powerful telescopes to Mars orbit, where it could look both up and down, giving researchers great views of the Red Planet’s surface as well as targets in the outer solar system and beyond.

From orbit around Mars, says Space.com, researchers expect the satellite would be able to take photos that capture around 3.1 inches of the Red Planet per pixel. Such high-resolution imagery could help them build maps and study the planet in unprecedented detail.

But that’s just one possible future for the NRO’s leftover satellites. NASA might also use them to hunt for dark energy or search for exoplanets. Or use them for any one of a number of other projects. Trust us, NASA has plenty of ideas for what to do with two gigantic satellites.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Hubble Space Telescope’s Finest Photos

The Waldo Canyon fire was the most destructive in Colorado’s history. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory

Last year was one of the worst wildfire seasons in Colorado’s recent history. A series of destructive blazes drove tends of thousands of people from their homes and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.

Last year’s awful fire season was spurred by a dry winter and higher-than-average temperatures. Those same conditions are back, says Climate Central, and the western U.S. is at risk once more.

Drought conditions have encompassed nearly the entire Western half of the country, with the worst of it centered in the Southwest and into California, which received only about 25 percent of its average precipitation during the year-to-date. “We’re confident we’re going to see above-normal significant fire potential,” Sullens said.

From California to Colorado, he says, the early-summer fire risk is high. Indeed, California has already seen a big blaze.

Forecasters are also concerned about a high risk of large wildfires along the Pacific Coast from California northward to Washington, and inland into Idaho and Southwest Montana, where very dry conditions exist in areas that have an abundance of vegetation, or fuel, to support potential fires.

… Vilsack said the combination of the drought, an abundance of dead or weakened trees from an epidemic of mountain bark beetles, and a likelihood of another unusually hot and dry summer is “a combination that doesn’t bode well.”

In many places the spring fire season has been off to a slow start, says Andrew Freedman, but according to the federal government this “has no bearing on where we think this fire season is going to go.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Here’s What $110 Million in Fire Damage Looks Like
Australia is Burning, And It’s Only Going to Get Worse as the World Warms
Devastating Colorado Wildfires Most Recent in Decades-Long Surge
Fires Are Escaping Our Ability to Predict Their Behavior

Photo: Racchio

The U.S. military has a non-lethal toy straight out of dystopian science fiction. It is, literally, a pain gun. Known as “Active Denial Technology,” the pain gun shoots extremely high frequency microwaves from a truck hundreds of meters away. When these waves hit your skin, you feel like you’re being cooked alive. Last year, Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman volunteered to get shot by the non-lethal weapon:

When the signal goes out over radio to shoot me, there’s no warning — no flash, no smell, no sound, no round. Suddenly my chest and neck feel like they’ve been exposed to a blast furnace, with a sting thrown in for good measure. I’m getting blasted with 12 joules of energy per square centimeter, in a fairly concentrated blast diameter. I last maybe two seconds of curiosity before my body takes the controls and yanks me out of the way of the beam.

Here’s what it looks like to get shot, as experienced by Ackerman:

Former Navy SEAL Richard Machowicz took a turn, too, for his Discovery Channel show Future Weapons. He didn’t like it much, either.

The Active Denial pain ray is big and scary, sure. But it’s also mounted on a huge expensive truck, and thus, unlike tasers or rubber bullets, is not a thing you’ll likely see in real life right now. But that may soon change. According to New Scientist, Raytheon, the defense contractor behind the pain gun, is working on a portable version:

Raytheon is now building smaller versions for law enforcement or commercial maritime use – designed to be placed inside buildings, such as prisons, or mounted on ships for defence against, say, pirates. And soon there could be handheld versions of the pain ray. Raytheon has developed small experimental prototypes, one of which is about the size of a heavy rifle and is intended for police use.

As a non-lethal weapon, the pain ray is actually incredibly effective. The weapon causes a burning sensation so strong that it triggers “reflexive ‘repel’ reactions.” People just want to get out of the way. And, from the testing done so far, the pain gun has a low chance of doing any real damage. So far, 11,000 people have been shot, and only eight of them got burned. But these were all under proper testing conditions, not out in the field in the middle of a riot.

But as a non-lethal weapon, the pain gun has something rubber bullets and tasers and tear gas do not: it is invisible—people being shot by it will likely have absolutely zero idea what is going on, and in most cases the gun leaves no physical wounds.

This distinction, says New Scientist, got a plan to use the portable version of the device in a California prison shut down.

On the eve of going live, the trial was cancelled. It was not over health concerns, explains Chris Tillery of the NIJ’s Office of Science and Technology… The test was shut down, he says, because of an unexpected outcry in the media and elsewhere about the potential for abuse of the technology.

And this goes to the heart of the moral dilemma raised by a technology that can induce pain invisibly. It may be medically safe if used properly, but in the wrong hands, it could also be a tool of oppression and torture.

For now, says New Scientist, the potential to use the weapon in law enforcement is under review by the National Institute of Justice.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Sound Gun That Will Leave You Speechless
The Navy’s Future Is Filled With Laser Guns

Photo: sewitsforyou

Drop an S-bomb today in polite conversation, and heads will likely turn. But back in the ninth century, “shit” referred to excrement in a matter-of-fact, not a vulgar, way. In the new book Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, author Melissa Mohr explores how our opinion of this and other curse words have shifted over the years. In an interview with NPR, she delves into the history of “shit”:

It only really started to become obscene, I would say, during the Renaissance. … It basically involves increasing privacy. In the Middle Ages … when that word wasn’t obscene, people lived very differently. The way their houses were set up, there wasn’t space to perform a lot of bodily functions in private. So they would defecate in public, they had privies with many seats, and it was thought to be a social activity. That you would all get together on the privy and talk while you did this. … As the actual act became more taboo because you could do it in private now … the direct word became taboo.

The word itself likely arose from one or all of the Old English terms scite (dung), scitte (diarrhea) or scitan (to defecate). Middle English introduced schitte (excrement), schyt (diarrhea) and shiten (to defecate). Similar terms for the same thing eventually found their way into other languages as well, such as Sheisse (german), schijt (Dutch), skit (Swedish), skitur (Icelandic) and skitt (Norwgian).

As the Online Etymology Dictionary details, “shit” as a term related to excrement dates to at least the 1580s, though people had already adopted the term in reference for an “obnoxious person” by at least 1508.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Who Needs to Wash Their Twitter Mouth Out? A Map of Profanity on Twitter  
Sacred and Profaned 

The Petronius Rig in the Gulf of Mexico, operated by Chevron and Marathon Oil. Photo: Extra Zebra

Shell plans to drill more than two miles underwater in the Gulf of Mexico in pursuit of new sources of oil and gas. If successful, the Guardian reports, the project will rank as the world’s deepest offshore facility.

The move is being viewed in the oil industry as a demonstration of Shell’s confidence that its technology can deliver returns on expensive and risky offshore projects, despite a recent downturn in oil prices.

Although BP recently put its Gulf of Mexico project—called “Mad Dog Phase 2″—on hold, Shell is not alone in its endeavors in the Gulf. ExxonMobil is planning a $4 billion project in the region, as well.

Shell’s executive vice president, John Hollowell, told the Guardian that the new project demonstrates the company’s ongoing commitment to meet U.S. energy demands. “We will continue our leadership in safe, innovative deepwater operations,” he said. The Guardian:

The move comes despite ongoing controversy over offshore exploration – especially in the Gulf of Mexico, where in April 2010 a fire and explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and started a leak that took three months to cap. Last month BP said it had paid $25bn (£16bn) of the $42bn it has set aside to cover the damage caused by the spill.

Shell expects its new well to produce 50,000 barrels of oil per day once it reaches peak production. It estimates that the well, located in an oil field discovered eight years ago about 200 miles southwest of New Orleans, contains around 250 million barrels of recoverable oil total—just over three percent of the 6.9 billion barrels of oil the U.S. currently burns through each year.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Oil Pipeline Spills Heavy Crude in Arkansas 
Victims of the Oil Spill 

Photo: Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The U.S. government has decided to return looted national treasures to their respective countries. Mongolia will get a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar (a slightly smaller cousin to T. rex) skeleton back, and Cambodia will receive two life-sized 10th century Khmer statues called the Kneeling Attendants.

The reconstructed skeleton, which is 8 feet tall and 24 feet long, was unearthed in the Gobi desert in 1946 by a Soviet and Mongolian team, Reuters reports. In 2010, the skeleton arrived in the U.S. from the U.K. along with a customs document that falsely stated that the fossils originated in Britain and that they were only worth $15,000. 

Mongolia demanded that the U.S. return the T. bataar skeleton after it was auctioned for $1.05 million last spring by Floridian Eric Prokopi. Here’s how the auction house described the item:

This is an incredible, complete skeleton, painstakingly excavated and prepared, and mounted in a dramatic, forward-leaning running pose. The quality of preservation is superb, with wonderful bone texture and delightfully mottled grayish bone color. In striking contrast are those deadly teeth, long and frightfully robust, in a warm woody brown color, the fearsome, bristling mouth and monstrous jaws leaving one in no doubt as to how the creature came to rule its food chain. Equally deadly and impressive are the large curving claws, with pronounced blood grooves. The body is 75% complete and the skull 80%…

Because of the kerfuffle, the sale was eventually canceled. Charges have since been filed against Prokopi, and the skeleton was returned to Mongolia on Monday. An official from the U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement told Reuters that this “is one of the most important repatriations of fossils in recent years.”

Cambodia, likewise, will soon be reunited with its missing relics. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City received the two sandstone statues, which came as separate broken heads and torsos, as gifts in 1987 and 1992, Archaeology reports. But over the years, evidence mounted that the statues had been looted from Cambodia’s Koh Ker temple during the tumultuous Cambodian Civil War in the 1970s. Witnesses, Archeology writes, can remember seeing the statues in the temple up until 1970 but that they were gone by 1975.

According to the New York Times, the museum assured Cambodia in a letter last month that the statues will be returned as soon as appropriate transit arrangements can be sorted out, though no timeline has been set.

The Met’s decision reflects the growing sensitivity by American museums to claims by foreign countries for the return of their cultural artifacts. Many items that have long been displayed in museums do not have precise paperwork showing how the pieces left their countries of origin. In recent years, at the urging of the Association of Art Museum Directors and scholars, many museums have applied more rigorous standards to their acquisitions.

Cambodian officials have asked the Met to examine another two dozen artifacts that may have been looted, and, according to Reuters, the U.S. is also helping to return additional fossils to Mongolia.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Looters Destroy Dinosaur Nest Sites  
Looters Are Selling Artifacts to Fund War in Syria 

Photo: BenSpark

Having a child fall out of a roller coaster or flung out of the Tilt-A-Whirl ranks pretty high on the list of “parents’ worst nightmares.” So it’s a bit surprising that there’s not a huge body of a research on the risks of these rides. The first study to look at national rates of amusement park ride injuries to children just came out and reported that a total of 92,885 kids in the U.S. under the age of 18 wound up at the emergency room between 1990 to 2010 after an unfortunate encounter with a ferris wheel, merry-go-round or other ride. That’s around 4,400 kids, on average, each year.

In the context of total amusement park attendance, that’s not such a high number of injuries. An estimated 300 million people visit amusement parks each year in the U.S., according to a report published by CQPress. With that context, the rate of injuries children suffer at amusement parks seems much less alarming. The authors write:

In the case of amusement park rides, according to a study by the National Safety Council, nearly 280 million visitors rode 1.7 billion rides in 2009 and reported 1,181 injuries—or less than one injury for every million rides. The vast majority of these injuries are not considered to be serious; in fact, only about 6 percent of them required an overnight stay in a hospital.

Similarly, a 2005 report issued by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission did not find any statistically significant trends for mobile amusement park rides between 1994 to 2004. (This excludes rides at permanent amusement parks, however.)

But if that’s your kid in the hospital, even a relatively low rate of injury probably seems too high. Kids most often suffered injuries to their head or neck, followed by the arms. Soft tissue injuries were most common, followed by strains or sprains. (Only 10 percent of the incidences involved broken bones.) Children usually received these injuries by falling or else by banging into something or being hit by something while on a ride. Most of the injuries took place at permanent parks (as opposed to traveling fairs or mall rides).

The majority of the injuries weren’t serious enough to warrant overnight hospitalization. But the mom or dad whose kid just came crying off a roller coaster probably isn’t going to be reassured by that statistic, either.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Goodbye My Coney Island? 
Learning About Magnets, Acceleration and Electricity at the Amusement Park 

A funnel cloud in Texas. Photo: Charleen Mullenweg

For two years the majority of the continental U.S. has been plagued by drought, a confluence of natural cycles that have worked together to drive up temperatures and dry up the land. But for all the damage that has been done by the long-running drought, there’s been an upside as well. The lack of water in the atmosphere has also sent the U.S. toward a record low for tornadoes, says Climate Central‘s Andrew Freedman.

The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, Okla., estimates that, between May 2012 and April 2013, there were just 197 tornadoes ranked EF-1 or stronger on the Enhanced Fujita scale. That beats the previous 12-month low, which was 247 tornadoes from June 1991 and May 1992.

That’s the lowest recorded tornado activity since 1954, when scientists first really started keeping track. The number of deaths connected to tornadoes went down, too:

The U.S. did set a record for the longest streak of days without a tornado-related fatality — at 220 days — between June 24, 2012 and Jan. 26, 2013. And July 2012, which was the hottest month on record in the U.S., saw the fewest tornadoes on record for any July.

But the tornadoes didn’t just up and disappear, says Freedman in an August story. Rather, some of them just moved to Canada.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Don’t Blame the Awful U.S. Drought on Climate Change
Surviving Tornado Alley
Tornado Power: Green Energy of the Future?

Photo: Danielle Scott

This weekend, fans will gather for the 138th annual Kentucky Derby, North America’s favorite horse racing event. Fans will place bets for the likes of Black Onyx, Oxbow and Frac Daddy and cheer on the horses and their jockeys as they gallop around the track. But watching the races and enjoying the spring weather aren’t the Derby’s only draws. Traditional also calls for bountiful cups of icy mint juleps sipped alongside a hearty bowl of burgoo, a Kentucky favorite often served at the event.

In the mid-19th century, Kentucky’s Henry Clay was no stranger to the delights of the mint julep. The University of Kentucky provides a favorite recipe, straight out of Clay’s diary—the words of a true disciple of the drink:

The mint leaves, fresh and tender, should be pressed against a coin-silver goblet with the back of a silver spoon. Only bruise the leaves gently and then remove them from the goblet. Half fill with cracked ice. Mellow bourbon, aged in oaken barrels, is poured from the jigger and allowed to slide slowly through the cracked ice.

In another receptacle, granulated sugar is slowly mixed into chilled limestone water to make a silvery mixture as smooth as some rare Egyptian oil, then poured on top of the ice. While beads of moisture gather on the burnished exterior of the silver goblet, garnish the brim of the goblet with the choicest sprigs of mint.

As for burgoo, it’s a spicy stew made of beef, chicken, pork and veggies. Back in Clay’s days, however, burgoo could include a bit of whatever animal happened to be around, including venison, raccoon, squirrel, opossum or wild birds. That’s probably how it earned the appetizing nickname of “roadkill soup.”

While wild animals are probably lacking in most pots of burgoo today, each restaurant’s offerings do provide a unique culinary experience since no two places use the exact same blend of spices and ingredients. If you’d like to try and concoct your very own spin on burgoo, Epicurious has a recipe for Kentucky bourbon burgoo, or take your pick from the many other versions on offer.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Kentucky Derby’s Forgotten Jockeys
Kentucky – Cultural Destination 

Citizens of East Dennis, Massachusetts, filed this petition against the repeal of the Personal Liberty Laws in 1860. Photo: Massachusetts Archives and the Center for American Political Studies

Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, but throughout the 18th and 19th century, the state’s legislator fielded thousands of petitions calling for an end to lingering slavery, segregation and the uncertainty caused by legislation like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and by the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857. And among these documents were “some of the first petitions prepared, signed, and circulated by African-Americans in North American history,” says Daniel Carpenter, the director of Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies.

In order to make these documents more accessible, the center will catalogue, transcribe and digitize around 5,000 of the petitions, currently owned by the Massachusetts State Archives. The center aims to complete the project by June 2015.

The petitions speak to fear and anxiety in African American communities, even though slavery had already been abolished in the state. African Americans living around Boston feared re-enslavement, for example, or that their basic life freedoms would be limited by discriminatory regulations.

The Harvard Gazette continues:

Included in the thousands of petitions are first-person accounts of former slaves and free African-Americans seeking aid and full rights. 

“Any handwritten document from African-Americans in the 18th or 19th century is enormously valuable and quite rare,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. “So seeing these signed by black people demanding their full equality and freedom is quite exciting.”

Gates added that the petitions will help further illustrate differences in the African-American community at the time, something he tries to highlight in his teaching.

African American abolitionists Prince Hall, Thomas Paul, Charles Lenox Redmond and William Cooper Nell were among the signers, as were allies like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Greenleaf Whittier and Louisa May Alcott.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Designes for National Museum of African American History and Culture 
Holding on to Gullah Culture 

Photo: CERTs

Buying a green product—an energy-saving lightbulb or bird-friendly coffee—can give shoppers a feeling of satisfaction for doing a small part to help the environment. But green-certified product label don’t give everyone the warm fuzzies. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences found that some politically conservative shoppers actively avoid products that advertise their environmental friendliness.

The researchers conducted two studies to investigate how political ideology might influence a shopper’s choices. The researchers surveyed around 650 Americans ranging in age from 19 to 81. The interviewees answered questions about their political leanings, the value of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and their thoughts on the environment and on energy efficiency.

The results revealed that the more conservative a survey taker, the less likely he was to support energy-efficient technology. The researchers attributed this finding to the lower value that political conservatives place on reducing carbon emissions rather than on energy independence or reducing energy costs, both of which still appealed to this group of people.

In a second study, around 200 participants were given $2 to spend on either a compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb or an incandescent bulb. Before making their purchase, the researchers informed the participants that the CFL bulb reduce energy costs by 75 percent. Some of the CFL bulbs also included a “Protect the Environment” sticker on their box.

When the researchers placed the CFL bulbs at $1.50 and the incandescent bulb at just 50 cents, conservative participants but not liberal ones were less likely to buy it. However, when that more expensive CFL bulb did not include a “Protect the Environment” sticker, liberals and conservatives were just as likely to buy it.

In other groups of participants, the CFL and incandescent bulbs were both sold for 50 cents. In this case, conservatives bought the CFL more often than the incandescent bulb.

While energy efficiency and green labeling is a popular marketing strategy today, the researchers point out that in some cases this may work against the product and polarize potential customers. Instead, in order to attract political conservatives, providing a competitive price tag may be the surest way to promote purchases.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Greening the Mall
Documenting “The Last Green Spot Between New York and Philly”

Photo: WilliamNYC

It took a while for Americans to get comfortable with the idea of shopping for groceries online. The first ventures into online groceries through sites—like Webvan, founded in the 1990s, closed in 2001—flopped. But as consumers bought more books, movies, shoes, clothes, toys and everything else online, companies like New York-centric FreshDirect made web grocery shopping and delivery work.

Services like FreshDirect don’t just cut down on hassle of having to drive to the grocery store. New research shows that they can also be good for the environment. Ordering online cuts carbon emissions on average by half when compared with traveling to the store by car, the researchers found, especially when delivery trucks were filled to capacity. 

This is how a delivery truck can save on mileage when compared with personal vehicles driving to and from a store. Photo: Goodchild/Wygonik, UW

In their analysis, the researchers randomly sampled Seattle households. To calculate emissions, they included data such as the type of car families owned, the roadway type, the distance to the grocery store and the speed limit.

They found that grocery delivery trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less CO2 emissions than the corresponding number of personal vehicles would have. If households were targeted based upon established routes rather than individual delivery time requests, that figure jumped to 80 to 90 percent fewer emissions. This finding held true in both Seattle’s dense downtown and in the suburbs.

Nothing beats walking or riding a bike, however, for those shoppers living close enough to the grocery store to enjoy that option.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Shopping Gets Personal 
A Week Without Groceries