As NBC News reports, drug-resistant gonorrhea, HO41—the so-called sex superbug “confirmed” to have been found in Hawaii, and said to have traveled to California and Norway—is not the killer that the press made it out to be; in fact, HO41 has not made it beyond Japan, public officials say. Phew.

So how did the panic begin? It seems the media was quick to exploit the superbug, with the Associated Press, CNBC and the Daily Mail all reporting on the rare strain of gonorrhea and quoting a neuropathic doctor who suggested the new gonorrhea could be “a lot worse than AIDS in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect people more quickly.” A lot worse than AIDS?! Yeah, that’s quite the juicy (read: terrifying) soundbite.

Luckily, it was not to be. As NBC News confirms, the Hawaii cases, first discovered in May 2011, were actually H11S8, a different strain, resistant to a different drug; HO41 hasn’t been detected anywhere since 2009 in Japan, where it was found in a Japanese sex worker. Say it with me: phew.

Still, public health experts ware taking the opportunity to emphasize the threat of untreated gonorrhea, the germ is “wily and easily mutable,” says the NBC report, and lately there have been “signs that the bug is starting to outsmart [cephalosporins, the current treatment for gonorrhea], too.” Now there’s a new recommended treatment and the National Coalition of STD Directors, led by William Smith, has asked Congress for $54 million to bolster the U.S. public health infrastructure that monitors, diagnoses and treats gonorrhea.

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Bradley Cooper knows stubble.

Let it be known, guys: women like it rough. Your face, I mean. Geez.

According to a new study conducted by two University of New South Wales professors, Barnaby J. Dixson and Rob C. Brooks, women prefer men with heavy stubble over clean-shaven guys, guys with light stubble or full beards. So get your beard on, but … you know… not too much. (Note: 10 days of beard growth is considered “heavy stubble” in this study.) On the other hand, heterosexual dudes, when looking at other dudes, thought that a full beard or a heavy stubble looked best.

For the study, published in the May issue of the journal Evolution & Human Behavior, researchers showed photos of 10 smiling men to 177 heterosexual men and 351 women, who were then asked to rate the men by their looks. Each man’s facial hair was shown in four ways: clean-shaven, light stubble, heavy stubble, and full beard.

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• Wow, guys, this is huge. Danish researchers say a bacterial infection inside slipped spinal discs may be to blame in up to 40 percent of chronic back-pain cases. And what’s more, all that’s needed to cure the pain for good is an antibiotic. The study used patients who suffered herniated discs and found that 80 percent of those who took antibiotics three times a day for 100 days felt better; nothing improved for those on the placebo. The bacteria in question is called Proprione acne, which “normally live in hair follicles, on the gums and inside cheeks and may enter the bloodstream after the teeth are brushed and travel into the damaged disc,” according to Bloomberg.com. The discovery has been dubbed Nobel Prize-worthy by some experts. So, yeah, this is huge.

• Okay, so we know that the plastic surgery du jour for women is arm lifts, thanks to one very jacked FLOTUS, but what about guys? The Wall Street Journal reports that mustache transplants are all the rage in Turkey, particularly among visiting male tourists. The procedure involves removing clusters of hair follicles from hairy parts of the body and relocating them above the lip for a thicker ‘stache or on the face for a fuller beard.

• If you feel like exercise is more punishment than fun activity, you’re not alone: Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara told the New York Times that’s exactly how she feels. Which is why they ran the headline, “Sofia Vergara Hates to Exercise.”

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• We all know that cell phones are dirty little suckers. But hearing that your phone is swimming in germs and knowing with cold, hard facts how its germ count compares to, say, the germ count of a toilet seat are two different things. Which is why Mashable posted a jaunty little video yesterday (seriously, listen to that chipper music) to show how your phone’s germs-per-square-inch compare to those of the average toilet seat, kitchen counter, dog dish, express-checkout screen and doorknob. Warning: it’s one of those videos you sort of wish you didn’t watch but are too curious to abstain. Check it out below.

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I wasn’t especially close to my older sister when we were kids, and we really weren’t close as teenagers. In fact, it wasn’t until we began to have kids of our own that we truly became friends, calling each other, exchanging advice and tips, sharing stories of first words and first steps. So I never gave much thought to whether she influenced the way I grew up. But more and more studies say she did.

In one California study, psychologist Patricia Evans found that younger sisters whose older siblings are teen moms are five times more likely to also become teen moms. Evans was working in an ob/gyn clinic when she noticed how many pregnant clients were greeted by her fellow staffers with questions like, “Aren’t you Anna’s little sister?” The staffers recognized the young women from their previous trips to the clinic with Big Sis.

And Richard Rende, a psychiatry prof at Brown University, has done studies showing that older siblings have more influence over whether their younger siblings smoke or drink than parents do. Using devices that record study participants’ behavior, Rende has even shown that sibling pairs exhibit “shadow” behavior—they tend to smoke at the same times even when they’re apart. Bad news? If your older sibling smokes, you’re 25 percent more likely to smoke, too; if your older sibling drinks, you’re 36 percent more likely to drink. Good news? Little sibs also mimic positive behavior by their elders. So, Sister Nan, I guess I should thank you for my good habits, too.

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