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Do you need a pulse to live? Not if you're a hunky HBO vampire, and not if you qualify to be a recipient of a new, prototypical mechanical heart. Two doctors in Texas have developed a device to replace a broken (as in malfunctioning) heart with two centrifugal pumps. During a radio report on WNYC's Morning Edition, Billy Cohn, MD, and Bud Frazier, MD, at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston described how they honed the technology by implanting the devices in young cows. After testing the devices on 38 calves, the doctors decided they were ready to implant a version of the machine into a human body. The patient, Craig Lewis, had a heart that was so damaged that he'd been given 12 hours left to live.

[After the jump, hearts that don't have a beat and songs that barely have a pulse.]

1. In the beginning, man created treadmills. These personalized conveyor belts allowed fitness-crazed humans to work out any time of the day or night in the comfort of their own homes. With treadmills, they could avoid workout obstacles like traffic, darkness, cold, snow, heat, pollution, unwashed clothes, angry dogs and angry neighbors. Finally, there were no excuses for missing a workout.

2. The humans soon found other uses for the treadmill. These alternative uses often served as excuses for missing a workout.
[After the jump, fast-forward to the treadmills of the future.]

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After suffering through a doubleheader of sports-related stress fractures in my 20s, I became a calcium-aholic. On top of putting skim milk in my coffee and cereal, cheese on my sandwich, yogurt in my smoothies and almonds on just about everything, I started eating more of the lesser-known calcium sources like kale, chickpeas, tofu and even sardines. It doesn't stop there: In order to bump my calcium intake up over 1,000 mg, which is the U.S. recommended daily allowance for women under 50, I also take a calcium supplement of 600 mg (plus vitamin D) at breakfast, and sometimes a second supplement at night. There was even a period--and I recognize the folly in this--during which I was popping those chewy chocolate-flavored supplements like they were Hershey's kisses. I take these precautions because I'm stressed out about my bones. The memory of my injuries, combined with my knowledge of the looming risk of osteoporosis (10 million Americans have it, and 80 percent of them are women), have made me think that I should be erring on the side of too much calcium.

However, a recent study has deflated my hopes that calcium supplements are the magic pill to prevent fractures and osteoporosis.

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Snap quiz: Your friend tells you she's participating in a fundraiser and asks you to donate money to her cause. You've got the funds, and you adore the friend. In which situation would you be more likely to pony up?

(a) Your friend is training for her first marathon with a group that raises money for cancer research.
(b) Your friend is hosting a masquerade charity ball to raise money for a children's after-school program.

[Find out which option most people choose, after the jump.]

Even those people who are tone deaf and so lacking in rhythm as to be unable to find the beat in a Katy Perry song have taken comfort that in a planet-wide dance-off, they'd outlast most other species on earth.

That admittedly and pitiably small consolation just went "Oh! Oh! Oh!" and shot across the sky-y-y-y. This was made clear in an article on the research of neurobiologists Aniruddh Patel and John Iversen in the Brain special issue of Discover magazine.  Patel explains to Discover that our sense of rhythm may have evolved from the brain development that allowed us to learn to speak. Therefore, Patel says, the only other animals that can boogie to a beat would be those that are advanced in "vocal learning," or the ability to mimic the sounds of others: parrots, an Asian elephant and Snowball the sulfur-crested cockatoo, a YouTube phenom whose dance moves and habits were studied by Patel and his team.

In their experiments with Snowball, the bird was videotaped reacting to music that was sped up and slowed down under a variety of circumstances (in isolation, with verbal encouragement, with another person). The videos showed that Snowball can not only synchronize his moves to different tempos, but can do it when no one else is in the room (although he danced the most when he had a human partner). This cockatoo loves mainstream pop like Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga, and he's a huge fan of the Backstreet Boys (wonder if he knows they're on tour this summer? I'd love to see him get pulled up on stage to lead the crowd in a dance to "Everybody").

What about the salsa-dancing retriever, you are undoubtedly wondering? When I shared this video with my husband, an enthusiastic freestyle dancer, he dropped the phone. Patel tells Discover that he suspects booty-shaking pets like this are reacting to cues from their human trainers, instead of innately responding to the beat. So for now, in this species-wide dance-off, the cockatoo is the true champion—at least from a scientific perspective.

But the story isn't over yet! Patel and Discover are looking for other examples of animals that can dance to a beat. If you have a video of an animal grooving in time to music, please send it to them at webmaster@discovermagazine.com.

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A few years ago, I learned a painful lesson about what not to wear while sightseeing in the summer. As part of my unofficial tour guide uniform for a friend's visit, I slipped into a pair of old Reef flip-flops. I misinterpreted the deep indentations (classic indications of overuse) as signs that they'd been comfortably broken in by a jungle trek in Thailand and a day of beach hopping around Nantucket. I figured they were the best things to wear to walk around town (what are flip-flops but topless sneakers, right?). That night, a throbbing pain in my right ankle kept waking me up. A podiatrist later diagnosed the pain as Achilles tendinitis, and recommended that I wear a soft cast...until Labor Day! My summer was officially a flop.

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For a few years now, we've been hearing from various Cassandras about a potential link between long-term use of cell phones and brain cancer. GQ's in-depth feature last February caused Wall Street deal makers to pause between calls, and last September, epidemiologist Devra Davis made readers think before dialing with her book Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family. Our own Dr. Oz covered the topic on his show in 2009 and wrote a helpful article about it in the March 2010 issue of O magazine. Now, as you've no doubt heard, the World Health Organization classified cell phones as "possibly carcinogenic" last week.

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At the therapist's office, the man with the clipboard has been replaced by a woman. That may not seem like a problem, but it is, as Benedict Carey, one of our favorite science reporters, concluded in a recent article in the New York Times. Carey reports that among mental health professionals, men earn only one in five of all master's degrees awarded in psychology, account for less than 10 percent of social workers under the age of 34, make up 10 percent of the American Counseling Association's membership and "appear to be declining among marriage and family therapists." The lack of male therapists presents an obstacle for men who are open to talking to a professional about their problems...but only if that person looks and sounds like them.

If this describes someone you love, you could tell him that, in terms of the research, a psychologist's gender makes little difference in the outcome of therapy. Or you could be a bit more useful. (Even if you don't agree with him, it's his belief that matters—you want him to get help, remember?).

To find out exactly what you can do, we followed up with one of Carey's sources for the article, Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor of psychology at the University of Akron, who is recognized as an authority on the psychology of men and masculinity.

Bad news for beachgoers: Jellyfish exist in every ocean on earth (some are as big as refrigerators), and all of them sting. This we learned from the National Science Foundation’s cheekily-titled report, “Jellyfish Gone Wild.” Fortunately, the vast majority of stings aren’t harmful—and some are barely noticeable. If you or your travel companion does feel the sting of a tentacle, Dr. Oz suggests two fast-relief remedies that can be found at a beach snack bar or in your bungalow’s kitchen. “When a jellyfish attacks, it implants thousands of tiny darts, called nematocysts, into your skin,” he writes in the May issue of O. “If you’re stung, fill a bucket with vinegar and soak the affected area for 15 to 30 minutes; the acetic acid in the vinegar stops the nematocysts from releasing more venom (if you don't have vinegar, Coca-Cola is a slightly less effective substitute by virtue of its phosphoric acid). Next, scrape the area with a credit card or knife edge to remove any clinging nematocysts.” Dr. Oz says that some people are allergic to jellyfish, so those experiencing hives or wheezing should seek emergency help ASAP.

Find more surprising first-aid fixes—for sunburns, bug bites, cuts, and prickly heat—here.