Rachel Feltman

What if you never had to live through a broken heart again? By approaching love as a treatable addiction, researchers are beginning to imagine drug regimens that could cure it. There are pills that could help you end an unhealthy relationship by dulling your romantic feelings, and ones that could end your grief in the wake of a bad breakup. But whether or not you’ll ever get an anti-love prescription from your doctor is another matter.

Grindr is full of romantics. Though the app is known for facilitating gay hook-ups, a recent survey of 18,600 of Grindr’s 7 million users found that 45% of them were actually looking for dates and relationships. The app is based on location, encouraging users to meet up with their matches right away. To many, this feature is synonymous with casual hookups. But CEO and founder Joel Simkhai says that isn’t true, or at least not the whole story.

Termites have a reputation for breaking buildings down, not constructing them. But that’s about to change. Harvard engineers have used the insects as inspiration for a new robot called the TERMES. One day, they say, it could complete simple construction tasks without any supervision.

Instead of getting wired from drinking soda, like the kids of the past, American children are now getting their caffeine fix from a new source: coffee. And specialty drinks filled with cream and sugar could be to blame.

How many gadgets does it take to comprehensively track your life? How about three fitness trackers, a camera on your chest, and three apps running night and day on your smartphone, plus a blood alcohol monitor? That’s what it takes for quantified-self guru Nicholas Felton—the author of nearly a decade of annual reports on the minutia of his own life, from restaurants visited to the time spent on work and play.

CVS is set to quit smoking, but don’t expect the drugstore to get all-around healthy. CVS Caremark announced last week that its retail stores would cut out all tobacco by Oct. 2014, citing a commitment to customer health. “Put simply,” president and CEO Larry J. Merlo said, “the sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose.”

The perfect ice for curling—arguably the quirkiest Olympic sport—is actually quite warm. According to mechanical engineer and amateur curler Rick Olson, the physics of curling ice is much cooler than the rink’s temperature.

Does the US spend too much on space exploration, or not enough? The percentage of US federal spending dedicated to NASA has dropped fairly consistently since the early 1990s—from 1.05% in 1991 to 0.48% in 2012—and that’s a far cry from the 4.41% it commanded in 1966. NASA estimates that for the $18 billion or so it costs to run, the “space economy” produces $180 billion in jobs, commercial goods and services. Whether or not that 10x return on investment is accurate, space programs still look like a bargain compared to other industries. These cost comparisons are the subject of a new Tumblr blog, and here are our favorites:

It may seem odd that a hugely successful online game like Flappy Bird would disappear before the internet had time to get tired of it. But the dramatic rise and fall of the game is less surprising when you consider how global and instantaneous breakout successes in the gaming world have become.

The age of the quantified athlete is upon us. Data-driven training is increasingly common in sports, and this year’s Olympics has no shortage of competitors who have—or should have—benefitted from fitness trackers and analysis.

If you’re an obese citizen of Brazil, you can get a discounted ticket to a World Cup game—and a complimentary one for your companion. The construction of a number of double-wide seats in FIFA stadiums comes as no surprise. After all, around half of the adult population of Brazil is now classified as overweight, and over 15% are obese. But why are those with body mass indexes (BMI) of 30 or more getting cheaper passes to a coveted sporting event? Because Brazil puts obese individuals in the same category as the elderly and those in wheelchairs.

A staggering 72% of Russians find homosexuality morally unacceptable, 2013 Pew Research Center data shows. In fact, it was one of only three “behaviors” that the majority of surveyed Russians found to be immoral—extramarital affairs and gambling were deemed unacceptable by 69% and 62% of responders, respectively. Forty-four percent of responders found abortion to be morally unacceptable.

If you bought your phone through less-than-legitimate channels, beware: Fake phones are often full of lead. Why? Lead and tin have been used to solder components onto circuit boards since the 1940s. The European Union adopted regulations restricting lead, mercury, cadmium, and other hazardous substances in all imported electronic devices in 2003, so most brands have adapted to make their devices compliant. But some counterfeiters—and even legitimate brands—are still eschewing the safety restrictions.

US drugstore chain CVS will by October 14 become the first in the US to stop carrying tobacco products nationwide, CVS Caremark Corp announced today. About time, you might think—drugstores, after all, are health and wellness centers, and we’ve known about the hazards of smoking since the 1960s. But the reason is probably just that cigarettes weren’t that profitable anymore.

Hearing good things about your favorite product’s competitor may actually increase your appreciation of the brand you already prefer, research shows. Harvard Business School behavioral scientist Francesca Gino writes at Scientific American that a quick flirt with a competing brand can be great news for the companies you frequent.

It’s hard to convey just how much I didn’t want a smartwatch one week ago.

Philadelphia, which has the highest obesity and poverty rates of the 10 largest cities in the US, is known for spearheading the fight against food deserts in the country, or areas where fresh produce isn’t available to buy in the near vicinity. But the $900,000 invested in new and improved grocery stores in the city may not be enough to curb obesity, a new study indicates (paywall). Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Penn State University report that an initial pilot study, which focused on the results from one of these grocery stores on the surrounding community, shows little effect. Without more research, they say, it’s difficult to know if these interventions are going to have any impact on obesity rates at all.

For many, Twitter has become a useful tool for increasing the scope and impact of their work. For others, it can be something of a mystery, with users feeling clueless as to how they might transition from one of the followers to one of the followed. Here are tips on how to maximize your Twitter influence without turning into a spambot, from computer scientist Randal Olson:

Caffeine is awesome, but it’s also a drug—and you’re probably addicted. Yeah, sure, you’ve heard it before, but research shows that you’re not listening. According to a new study, a significant number of caffeine users are dependent enough on the drug to have withdrawal symptoms when they don’t consume it, and have trouble cutting down even when they want to. This becomes dangerous when people need to cut down on caffeine use for reasons like heart disease or pregnancy—especially because the stimulant is largely unregulated.

Emoticons are meant to convey emotion over the web, but using them is a two-way street; when you throw a smiley into an email, you have to consider how it might be read, and not just how you meant it. In fact, according to a new study, emoticons in workplace email aren’t really meant to convey your emotions at all. They serve as juiced-up punctuation, indicating what tone your message is supposed to take. A happy emoticon doesn’t mean you’re happy, but it can mean that you want the recipient of your message to take what you’re saying as a positive thing.

The way we design and use the buildings we work in has a big impact on the bacteria that share the space with us. And understanding that connection will help architects create environments that are ideal on a microbial scale.

The latest strain of bird flu has cost Chinese poultry farmers around 20 billion yuan ($3.3 billion) since first reported in February of last year, according to the country’s agriculture ministry. This represents nearly 5% of the poultry industry’s expected annual revenue, which was $68.7 billion in 2012.

West Virginia might be the last great AOL holdout in the US. According to data collected from around 400,000 users of Unroll.Me, a service for canceling and consolidating email subscriptions, AOL is most popular as a mail service in West Virginia, where nearly 12% of Unroll.Me members still hear from the “You’ve Got Mail” guy every morning. By comparison, the average for Unroll.Me members in all 50 states was a mere 5.5%. West Virginia wasn’t alone; Florida, New Jersey, and Delaware all have an AOL user base over 10% .

Everything we eat is flooded with “virtual water,” or water used indirectly to produce food from cradle to grave. In fact, 70% of the world’s water consumption feeds the agriculture industry, and demand for fresh water is increasing at a rate of one trillion liters a year. The GRACE Communications Foundation wants people thinking more critically about the water in their food, and has released a report that includes the average global water footprints for some of our most beloved—and resource-hogging—foods.