Rachel Feltman

Antimicrobial hygiene products are projected to make up a $1.4 billion industry in the US alone in 2014, with demand expected to rise 6% by 2017. But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans in December to review its regulation of such products, and a new research paper (pdf) says that they should indeed be more strictly regulated; they may not help to keep you healthy, and may even make you ill.

When considering how to spend your money, you’re likely to consider material purchases more valuable than experiences you have to pay for, such as a nice dinner out. But new research (paywall) shows that, after the fact, you’re more likely to value the experiences more highly  than objects you purchased on just about any measure.

Researchers have created artificially grown muscle that’s as strong and good at self-repair as the real thing. One day this could mean lab-grown replacements for permanently injured human muscle. But the advances are already being used to test the toxicity and effectiveness of new drugs.

Women tend to invest less than men, but when they do it, they do a better job.

Want to watch cyborgs compete in epic sporting events? A bionic battle is set to go down in October of 2016 at the first Cybathalon in Zurich—an Olympics specifically for athletes using technological prosthetics and enhancements.

It should go without saying that being humble makes you more likable than being arrogant. Previous research has indicated that the humble are more quickly integrated into new groups, and that people are more likely to accept and collaborate with them. But humility can help your love life as well.

While total virtual reality goggles may soon enter the mainstream, thanks to Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus Rift, it’s augmented reality glasses—which place digital images and information over real life objects directly in front of your eyeballs—that could one day truly integrate with your daily life. Virtual reality would allow you to escape your humdrum life; augmented reality promises to enrich it, instead.

There are a lot of birth-control options, but intrauterine devices (IUDs) are the most widely used worldwide.

One day we could have conductive materials that grow, evolve, and self-repair. Researchers at MIT have taken the first steps to creating them. A new study (paywall) describes “living materials” that combine bacterial cells with nonliving materials that can conduct electricity and emit different colors of light. The study is just a proof-of-concept, but researchers say that future applications could include cheaper, more efficient solar panels and biosensors.

You’ve probably heard that violent video games can make you more violent—and you’ve probably rolled your eyes at the news. But it’s more complicated than that: Playing violent video games can make Caucasian players have racist, intolerant thoughts. And it comes down to the race of the avatar in the game.

A New York startup wants to fill your home with internet-connected “smart” devices—and it just might.

Not everything needs to be connected to the internet. But for around the same cost as an app-enabled toothbrush, you can now preorder an equally connected air conditioner. And instead of nagging you to brush more, the Aros might actually save you some money.

Dressing down can surprisingly improve the way people perceive you, according to a group of new studies from Harvard Business School (paywall).

BT Conferencing is bringing Dolby Laboratories’ object-based sound, which played a prominent role in the Oscar-winning Gravity, into your business meetings. The two companies first released a conference-call service with similar Dolby sound engineering in 2013, but announced Friday that the service will expand to include a mobile app and a fully integrated conference phone.

We may have a better idea of what Apple’s rumored iWatch will be capable of, thanks to iOS8 screenshots made public by Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac. They show Healthbook, an iOS8 native app that will aggregate health and wellness information.

Could African countries with poor road infrastructure leapfrog right from donkeys to drones? They can and should, according to the man behind the Flying Donkey Challenge. The competition will support the development of drones that can be used to carry goods to market and deliver medication to remote villages. The goal is to have drones as affordable as motorbikes flying around the continent within a decade. The first leg of the challenge is now under way: Thirty-three teams from around the world have applied to take part in the first competition in November 2014.

Soft robotics is ready to enter the spotlight. These robots are built with soft materials like silicone and powered by the flow of fluids. This allows for unique kinds of movement, with the automatons often taking locomotive cues from the animal kingdom. As recently as 2010, when the video below was made, soft robots weren’t considered a field of study in their own right. But this month, a peer-reviewed journal, Soft Robotics, was launched just for them:

In the wearable computer market, trackers that promote exercise dominate. But one company is taking things in a different direction. The opposite direction, to be precise.

One of the many inefficient things about the US healthcare system is the way it does clinical lab tests. Patients typically need to go to a blood collection center that is separate from their doctor’s office, where they must give separate vials of blood for different tests, which are then shipped to separate labs. Results can take a long time to come back. Reporting formats—the units of measurement used, and even which results qualify as normal or abnormal—differ from one lab to another, which makes reading the results tricky, even for seasoned physicians. The costs, and the possibilities of error, are high.

A good mood really is contagious, even on social media. According to a new study, the mood of your Facebook updates is directly influenced by the moods of those in your newsfeed.

Tech giants such as Apple and Google are paying close attention to big pharma, and not because they’re moving into drug development. The legal battle between two pharmaceutical companies could have implications for the tech world.

When a contentious issue takes flight on Twitter, a general consensus on it starts emerging within hours, according to a new academic study. And within a few days, it’s easy to see what the majority opinion is.

Love them or hate them, GIFs rule the web—and a pair of graduate students at the MIT Media Lab want to turn them into a language. Travis Rich and Kevin Hu started a site that uses human brainpower to quantify the emotional content of animated GIFs (like the two below), as a side project. But their site, GIFGIF, is no joke.

Nature is gross, messy, and dangerous. If you pretend otherwise, you’re missing out on the best of the natural world—and probably making some bad decisions about the best way to live your life and run your business. That’s the premise of Mother Nature is Trying to Kill You, written by Dan Riskin of Animal Planet’s parasite-centric show Monsters Inside Me and released this week.