“Charlie Brooker argues that TV has warped our expectations of romance with a toxic combination of Blind Date and rom-coms. Do ‘soulmates’ even exist? Warning: this episode contains traces of Dirty Den and suggestive swimwear.”

“He is more of a scumbag than I could have imagined.” — zappamannn

“Man, how we’ve changed. BTW, he’s referring to adults. When kids entered the internet formula, it all went to shit.” — NimbusFilms

“Though that future has not yet come to pass, things are starting to get exciting in the in-car technology space. Connected cars are hitting the consumer market in a price bracket that makes them a realistic option for many. One prediction sees ‘near saturation’ in the U.S. market in as little as four years’ time… “In 2015, however, there will be a much larger portion coming from China, Brazil, and Russia, as well as near saturation in developed markets like the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan.” So what can we expect from these connected cars? We’ve spoken to a major motoring manufacturer, a futurist, an automotive analyst and other industry experts to find out.” w/ photos

“A look at the many strange effects of placebos.”

“The honeymoon period in a marriage ends after just 14 months, a study into the lives of married couples has revealed. Researchers found a year and two months after walking down the aisle, couples stop saying ‘I love you’ as regularly as they did during their courtship. Around this time women are also likely to wear less make up and start plodding around the house in an unflattering dressing gown. But the romance dies for men too, this is said to also be the point they begin shaving less often and start leaving the door open when they go to the toilet. The 14 month point also sees couples beginning to argue more about things like money and future plans… and leaving to loo door open.” w/ photo

“The next step in the 3D printing revolution may be body parts including cartilage, bone and even skin. Three-dimensional printing is a technique for making solid objects with devices not unlike a computer printer, building up line by line, and then vertically layer by layer. While the approach works with polymers and plastics, the raw ingredients of 3D printing have been recently branching out significantly. The printers have been co-opted even to make foods, and do-it-yourself biology experiments dubbed ‘garage biotech’ – and has most recently been employed to repair a casting of Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker that was damaged in a botched robbery. But at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, the buzzword is bioprinting: using the same technique to artfully knock out new body parts.” w/ photo + video

“Sheep are considerably smarter than we have previously given them credit for, researchers from Cambridge University have claimed. Tests found sheep, which have historically been perceived as being dim-witted, are actually as smart as animals such as monkeys. Neuroscientist Professor Jenny Morton made the baa-rmy discovery after conducing a series of tests to test their logic and memory. These included giving sheep different colored buckets with one color containing food and seeing how many times they had to be presented with the buckets before knowing which contained food. It’s said the sheep were able to learn this after the same number of attempts as rodents and monkeys… and they weren’t just behaving like sheep, well they were, but you know what we mean.” w/ photo

“A study investigating a new treatment for gastrointestinal disease had an unexpected side effect: It reversed baldness. Scientists were testing a new chemical compound on mice genetically altered to overproduce a stress hormone known as corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF), which, among other effects, causes mice to lose their hair as they age. After five days of daily injections of a newly developed anti-stress hormone, the balding mice were returned to their habitats. Three months later researchers went to gather up the mice for follow-up studies, but their hair-less subjects were gone. “It was completely unexpected,” Jean Rivier, with the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., told Discovery News. “They couldn’t identify the mice except for their ear tags. That’s when they realized that they’d grown hair.” Follow-up studies on younger mice that hadn’t yet lost their fur showed the anti-stress hormone actually prevented hair loss. Rivier and colleagues have filed for a patent on the compound, known as astressin-B, and set up a company to begin raising money for development and testing.” w/ photo