Can cancer biopsies spread more cancer? Some patients, and a few doctors think so. 

Fine needle aspiration is a minimally invasive technique that uses a thin and hollow needle to extract a few cells from a tumor mass. Some contend that a biopsy can cause some cancer cells to spread and it has become a strongly-held belief, but is it true?

It came about because some people who got biopsies did have cancer spread but it was so rare that answers were difficult to find. A recent study of more than 2,000 patients by researchers at Mayo Clinics concludes it is a myth and that patients who received a biopsy had a better outcome and longer survival than patients who did not have a biopsy.

Hydrogen fuel cells may be the best option for powering zero-emission vehicles, Toyota will make them available in the United States in 2015, but those fuel cells require an electrocatalyst -- a platinum surface -- to increase the reaction rate, and the cost of the precious metal makes it hard for hydrogen fuel cells to compete economically with the internal combustion engine. 

Social attitudes are reinforcing the negative beliefs towards people who self harm, according to an analysis of the life stories of people who self-harm and who were also diagnosed with a personality disorder revealed that several spoke of being refused pain relief while being sutured by hospital staff. Others had met staff who thought they were immune to pain because they self-harmed.

An estimated 5% of adults have self-harmed with the aim of relieving psychological distress.

The was carried out by Dr. Jane Simpson from Lancaster University with Charlotte Morris, Mark Sampson and Frank Beesley from the NHS. The researchers said, “The responses of others had the potential to exacerbate distress and even trigger further self-harm.” 

Making sure school-aged kids get to sleep at a regular hour is often a struggle for parents but it’s well worth the effort. The researchers behind a new paper say that a good night’s sleep is linked to better performance in math and languages – subjects that are powerful predictors of later learning and academic success.

By studying the motions of different stellar populations in the disk of the Andromeda galaxy, researchers have deduced that Andromeda has had a more violent past than our Milky Way. 

The structure and internal motions of the stellar disk of a spiral galaxy hold important keys to understanding the galaxy's formation history. The Andromeda galaxy, called M31 by almost no one except the 2 percent of astronomers who like to insist on renaming and reclassifying things, is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way and the largest in what is called the Local Group of galaxies in our cosmic address. 

It won't exactly set off a Blu-ray versus HD-DVD cultural firestorm, but there is an alternative to 3-D printing. And it's better in many ways. 

Pop-up assembly relies on compression buckling. If that sounds like one of children's books, with the little structures that fold out when opened, that's because those are a good analog. Pop-up fabrication starts as a flat two-dimensional structure and 'pops up' into a more complex 3-D structure. Using a variety of advanced materials, including silicon, the researchers behind it have produced more than 40 different geometric designs, including shapes resembling a peacock, flower, starburst, table, basket, tent and starfish.

So why is it better than 3-D printing?