Each year prostate tissue samples are taken from over a million men around the world, in most cases using 12 large biopsy needles, to check whether they have prostate cancer.

Surely in 2014 something more modern can be developed, especially when 70 percent of men getting those don't have cancer, it's unnecessarily painful and is also costly to carry out.

A patient-friendly examination, which drastically reduces the need for biopsies, and may even eliminate them altogether, has been developed at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), together with AMC Amsterdam and will be presented at the European Association of Urology Congress in Stockholm next week.

Of the uncertainties facing climate modelers, climate feedbacks from decomposition by soil microbes are among the biggest. 

The dynamics among soil microbes allow them to work more efficiently and flexibly as they break down organic matter – spewing less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previously thought, according to a new study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the University of Vienna published in Ecology Letters.

The 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, where a group of gunmen killed 165 and injured 304 people, the May 2012 shooting of five people by a gunman in Seattle and the recall of four million cars by Toyota in 2009 and 2010 because of a faulty accelerator pedal show the power of social media - and the problems.

When the online community is creating and exchanging the news rather than official news channels, credibility is unknown and it can not only exaggerate the unfolding situation, but also turn it into misinformation, diverting attention from the real problems.

Anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills have been linked to an increased risk of death, according to a large study published in BMJ which shows that several anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs or hypnotic drugs (sleeping pills) are associated with a doubling in the risk of mortality.  

The findings are based on routine data but need to be interpreted cautiously.

The study accounted, where possible, for other factors such as age, smoking and alcohol use, other prescriptions and socioeconomic status. Crucially, the team controlled for contributing risk factors such as sleep disorders, anxiety disorders and other psychiatric illness in all participants.

American farmers lead the world in productivity coupled with environmental responsibility, producing far more food on far less land than was even imagined decades ago. If the world had America's efficiency in agricultural dematerialization, an area the size of Amazonia could be reverted back to its natural state.

The Moon formed nearly 100 million years after the start of the solar system, according to a paper based on measurements from the interior of the Earth combined with computer simulations of the protoplanetary disk from which the Earth and other terrestrial planets formed.

The team of researchers simulated the growth of the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) from a disk of thousands of planetary building blocks orbiting the Sun.

By analyzing the growth history of the Earth-like planets from 259 simulations, the scientists discovered a relationship between the time the Earth was impacted by a Mars-sized object to create the Moon and the amount of material added to the Earth after that impact.