Life from death: scientists have successfully created a beating heart in a lab from the protein "skeleton" of a dead heart. The breakthrough raises hopes that someday, other organs could be built in the same way. This bypasses the need for organ transplant candidates to have to wait for a donor. Details in the full article.

We know that you are already proud of the Cell Broadband Engine that can be found in PlayStation 3 units. Aside from providing you with the most exciting gameplay experience, the chip is also responsible for bringing about medical breakthroughs.

Today, we learned that Mayo Clinic and IBM decided to collaborate yet again to help improve medical imaging technology. At the heart of this project is the unassuming chip. Know more after the jump!

Even though video games have always gotten a bad rap for turning kids into couch potatoes, a group of physical therapists are using a video game console to help people get back on their feet.

According to Minnesota's WCCO-TV, physical therapists at the the Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis are using Nintendo's Wii home video game console in an experiment aimed at helping stroke victims recover.

"It is not designed to be used in therapy per se, but some of the games are very useful to activate the patient, then it is a matter of, from a research point of view, to try to develop these concepts to something that is dedicated, specialized for research... for rehab," said Sister Kenny Research Center director Lars Oddsson.

There are only a few hospitals around the U.S. trying this kind of therapy, but Oddsson says that the experiment's promising results could lead to a clinical study of the Wii's helpfulness as a physical therapy tool. WCCO-TV also noted that the Army has also started using the Wii for physical therapy.

"Love of money is the root of all evil" as the wise man once said, and while old proverbs like this tend to be taken as just another cliche, we picked up this study that sheds more light on this seeming universal truth - that to a certain degree, the idea of money makes people tend to think on more stand alone level, or in layman's terms, more selfishly.

"In our experiments, the people who are reminded of money really worked hard toward their own goals. But that might not be conducive to a good interpersonal relationship," said Kathleen Vohs of the Carlson, who led the study at the School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

To reach this conclusion, Kathleen's team conducted nine separate experiments at their university involving 50 students. These 50 were then split into 2 groups: A control group with no concept of money, and another group who were constantly fed the concept of money in the tests. From there, the study conducted multiple tests on the latter group involving games, screensavers, props, and word puzzles that dealt with the topic of money as the group answered questionnaires that did not have anything to do with the money.

After the questionnaire, the experimenters then gave both groups a difficult question to answer, and instructed the subjects that they could ask him for help if they couldn't answer the questions. The group test group subjected to money messages tended to struggle with the problems longer before asking for help.

In another test, both groups had a young "undergrad" walk in during the experiment, asking for help on coding several data sheets. Surprisingly, the control volunteered an average of 42.5 minutes to help the undergrad, while the money group provided only about 25 minutes of their time. Some participants didn't help at all.

One other test involved a simulated accident, with another student staged to walk in, and accidentally spill the pencils she was carrying. The money group participants were observed to pick up less pencils. The big suprise here is that the numbers weren't affected by factors like socioeconomic status or gender.

“cooperation really goes down the drain when money is an issue.” Kathleen says after this exercise, taking note that MBA students are trained to work in teams. "If the team has a sales goal, then to the extent that money is really a big topic to that team, you’re likely to see that cooperation is going to be reduced.”
 
As for our personal take, with Christmas just a little more than a month away, we're hoping you guys could take this article as a reminder of what's left to work on come this holiday season. 'Tis the season for giving, remember? Remember Scrooge's three visitors...