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It’s been an intense election season, from a candidate’s momentous dropout to meme-generating debates to assassination attempts. And that’s just accounting for the things that did happen—not the ones that were made up but generated extensive attention, like fake celebrity endorsements, false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets, and conspiracy theories about the government’s hurricane-response efforts.

It’s anyone’s guess what else will transpire in the lead-up to Nov. 5. Yet misinformation will inevitably continue to spread—and you may encounter it in conversations with friends or family members. It can be helpful to have a plan for how to respond. “Most people who are passing along misinformation are doing it inadvertently—they heard something somewhere that they believed,” says Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of the podcast Pod Save America. “If you believe they actually want to know the truth, then you want to at least give them the opportunity to [understand] the correct information..

Forget about public restrooms: It turns out your own bathroom is teeming with viruses.

Researchers at Northwestern University studied two things that most people use everyday—their toothbrush and showerhead—to see what was living in each.

What they found was “quite surprising,” says Erica Hartmann, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern who led the study that focused on identifying virus species lurking in the bathroom. Most unexpected, she adds, was “how little we could identify that looked like something we had seen before. We found an incredible amount of diversity, which highlights how little we know and how much more we have to explore and discover.”

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But before you throw out your toothbrush or take apart your shower, keep in mind thatthe vast majority of viruses Hartmann and her team found were specific species known as bacteriophages, or viruses that almost exclusively infect bacterial cells and not human..

If you’re always on the lookout for the latest skincare gadget, you may have already tried facial rollers, sculpting wands, and dermaplaning devices. And you may be curious about the red-glowing masks that you’ve seen making the rounds on social media.

Red-light masks use low levels of light-emitting diode, or LED, to stimulate skin cells, says Dr. Jennifer Sawaya, a dermatologist at U.S. Dermatology Partners Scottsdale in Arizona. “Red light is a type of visible light that has been clinically shown to rejuvenate the skin.”

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Instagrammers and TikTokkers claim the masks—which, face it, do make you look like a character from a sci-fi film—can minimize wrinkles, smooth your complexion, and even improve acne. But these masks can be pricey, costing anywhere from $100 to thousands of dollars, and similar but stronger treatments are available at spas and dermatologists’ offices.

So, do at-home red light masks actually work? Sawaya says studies have shown ..

Despite all the recent hype from anti-aging evangelists and companies touting ways to extend life, human life expectancy is actually slowing down after accelerating in the previous century.

In a paper published in Nature Aging, researchers led by S. Jay Olshansky, professor of public health at the University of Illinois in Chicago, report that factors that have contributed to remarkable extensions of life expectancy in the 20th century are reaching the point of diminishing returns. Public-health interventions such as clean water and better sanitation and hygiene, as well as medical innovations like vaccines and advances in drug and surgical treatments, are approaching their optimal impact. For human life expectancy to extend much further beyond where it exists today, says Olshansky, entirely new strategies that focus on manipulating the biological processes of aging need to occur. And we aren’t there yet.

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A brief history of human life extension

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My bed and I spend less time together than the experts say we should. Most nights, my head hits the pillow around 11:00 pm, and I’m up—without an alarm—at 5:30 am. That six and a half hours of shuteye puts me behind the seven to nine hours the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society recommend for adults. Does it hurt me? Not so I can tell.

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I may be a bit of an outlier as far as the guidelines are concerned, but I am by no means alone. Our sleep needs change over the course of our lifetimes—from 17 hours a day as a newborn, to up to 12 hours as a schoolkid, to the seven- to nine-hour benchmark for adults. But those figures are just averages. Plenty of people, like me, get by on significantly less for their age, while others require a good bit more. What is it that makes some folks short sleepers, some folks long sleepers, and others smack-in-the-middle sleepers? A lot of things, as it turns out.

Your sex matters—a little

When i..