James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

"I wasn't depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ," Baghdassarian said. "But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."

1983: Apple releases the Lisa, the first commercial computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) – the advance that would finally make computers usable by people with no special training. It doesn’t sell well, but it does get Apple on the right development track, sparks the first of many brawls with perpetual rival Microsoft, and sets in motion the animus between Steve Jobs and John Scully that would frame the company’s history for a decade.

"The internet has allowed a lot of crooks, thieves and squatters to become millionaires. Normally, they wouldn't get a job washing dishes. I have a lot of problems with the internet and with identity theft. It has happened to me twice with my bank account, so I am not a big fan."

Jeremy insisted that the industry only caters to the over-18 crowd. "We don't want kids to watch porn," he told the crowd. Though if they do, he added, there are far worse influences out there – like video games. "[Studies have] found that violent video games are much bigger a negative influence on kids."

Two African drums stored at the United Campus Ministry in Durham have tested positive for anthrax, the state confirmed yesterday as it continues to investigate the nation's first known case of gastrointestinal anthrax.

The young woman with the disease, who attended a drum circle at the center, remains in critical condition, state Public Health Director Jose Montero said.

The state ordered the ministry, which serves but is not part of the University of New Hampshire, closed for further testing. As many as 30 drums are stored at the 15 Mill Road building.

August 13, 6:40 PM: I’m driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I’m reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there’s no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught.

I had intended to flee in broad daylight, but when you are going on the lam, there are a surprising number of last-minute errands to run. This morning, I picked up a set of professionally designed business cards for my fake company under my fake name, James Donald Gatz. I drove to a Best Buy, where I bought two prepaid cell phones with cash and then put a USB cord on my credit card – an arbitrary dollar amount I hoped would confuse investigators, who would scan my bill and wonder what gadgetry I had purchased. An oil change for my car was another head fake. Who would think that a guy about to sell his car would spend $60 at Oil Can Henry’s?

I already owned a couple of prepaid phones; I left one of the new ones with my girlfriend and mailed the other to my parents – giving them an untraceable way to contact me in emergencies. I bought some Just for Men beard-and-mustache dye at a drugstore. My final stop was the bank, to draw a $477 cashier’s check. It’s payment for rent on an anonymous office in Las Vegas, which is where I need to deliver the check by midday tomorrow.

A biologist walks into a sushi bar and orders some tuna. What does he get? Escolar, a nasty fish with buttery flesh that can cause bizarre episodes of diarrhea, accompanied by a waxy intestinal discharge.

It’s not a joke. It happened five times to the same scientists during a brief research project. The results of that study were published Wednesday in PLOS One.

“A piece of tuna sushi has the potential to be an endangered species, a fraud or a health hazard,” wrote the authors. “All three of these cases were uncovered in this study.”

The team of researchers from Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History ordered tuna from 31 sushi restaurants and then used genetic tests to determine the species of fishes in those dishes. More than half of those eateries misrepresented, or couldn’t clarify the type of fish they were mongering. Several were selling endangered southern bluefin tuna.

No, really.

"Rockstar Games is proud to be a major sponsor of Movember, the annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men's health issues, specifically prostate cancer. Grow a rugged moustache and send us a photo by the end of Movember for an opportunity to be immortalized as a character in Rockstar Games' next action-adventure, Red Dead Redemption."

Read the details here.

If you're unclear on how your 'stache ties into fighting prostate cancer, check the bullet points more closely. Right after Rockstar asks you to register with your email so that you can be kept abreast of developments relating to their upcoming Western action game, there's this:

"Tell your friends and family and get them to sponsor you and raise money for men's health charities."

Residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel.

The bodies of thousands of rabbits are fuelling a heating plant in central Sweden, local newspapers say.

The city of Stockholm has an annual cull of thousands of rabbits to protect the capital's parks and green spaces.

The rabbits, not native to Sweden, are mainly the offspring of pets released by owners, and are said to be destroying parks in the capital.

Since they have no natural predators, the city administration of Stockholm employs hunters to kill the rabbits.

GEEKY computer game fans are set to become an army of ogling pervs thanks to a giveaway of night-vision goggles with an edition of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The high-spec, see-in-the-dark gear has led the game to be dubbed Modern Warfare 2: Peeping Tom Edition.

Hordes of joy-pad junkies are rubbing their hands in anticipation and some have already admitted they will use the
goggles for “stealth dogging” and to spy on gay cruising spots.

While many people scour Craigslist to see if Starbucks or Bed, Bath and Beyond might be seeking additions to their cheery teams, the poster of this ad is searching for an altogether more adventurous type, proudly announcing "Astronaut Needed (Northern Alberta)." Is that the cough of a million scoffs I hear? Perhaps. But this is truly an interesting opportunity, to say the least. Just look at the first, enticing sentence of the ad: "Astronaut needed for experimental flight to Titan."

Perhaps you might be concerned that this ad was not, in fact, placed by NASA. Please, let me put your mind into horizontal mode. The advertiser assures all applicants that he has been "working on this project for near 40 years." Indeed, the only reason he is seeking an Armstrong for his flight is that he himself seems to have weaker limbs now that the years have passed.

You might also be wondering what kind of craft will shuttle you into orbit. Well, again, I can be your Xanax. The advertiser declares that his secret craft is "the result of my professional experience and imagination while serving the U.S. military in advanced aeronautics as a scientist." You see, this man is a veritable expert in his field. This spaceship enjoys "a revolutionary propulsion system and its fuselage is fabricated with the most advanced material."

© 2009 Valve Corporation, all rights reserved. Valve, the Valve logo, Half-Life, the Half-Life logo, the Lambda logo, Steam, the Steam logo, Team Fortress, the Team Fortress logo, Opposing Force, Day of Defeat, the Day of Defeat logo, Counter-Strike, the Counter-Strike logo, Source, the Source logo, Valve Source and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.

Tyrannosaurus rex -- the most fearsome predator ever to have trod the Earth -- had a pint-sized precursor, remarkably similar in appearance but no heavier than a human being, according to a new report from a team of scientists. The creature was what Austin Powers might call T. rex's Mini-Me.

The new animal, based on a single fossil smuggled out of China and eventually sold to a private collector, has been named raptorex. It lived 125 million years ago in a lake-dotted region of northern China.

A new ghostshark species has been identified off the coast of Southern California, and it’s darker and weirder than any shark we know.

The purplish black ancient relative of the modern shark comes packed with a suite of odd features that give its taxonomical family the name chimaera, after the mythical beast made from the parts of many animals.

Boeing announced yesterday that it successfully defeated a ground target using its Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) aircraft, marking the ship's first air-to-ground, high-power laser engagement. If the news sounds like something out of science-fiction, think again: Boeing has actually mounted a fully-loaded laser cannon on an airplane. This means that the military could potentially have access to a weapon that can annihilate the enemy without the collateral damage caused by rockets and bombs.

"During the test, the C-130H aircraft took off from Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., and fired its high-power chemical laser through its beam control system while flying over White Sands Missile Range, N.M," Boeing announced in this press release. "The beam control system acquired the ground target -- an unoccupied stationary vehicle -- and guided the laser beam to the target, as directed by ATL's battle management system. The laser beam's energy defeated the vehicle."

Scanning the hardy Blues News, I initially mistook the headline ‘Peregrine Glove’ to be a most peculiarly-named videogame. Instead, it’s one of those totally, gloriously, ridiculous batshit controllers that occasionally make an inevitably doomed play to replace or augment the venerable keyboard. This experimental hand-wrapping has the autocue-based blessing of one of the world’s top DoTA players, so perhaps this time PC gaming controls really will be revolutionised…

Using a technique known as transformation optics, the researchers have revealed a way to alter the pathway of light waves that could eventually allow them to create portals that are invisible to the human eye.

Pushing the laws of refraction and reflection to the limit, the team from Hong Kong University and Fudan University in Shanghai, describe the concept of a “a gateway that can block electromagnetic waves but that allows the passage of other entities”.

The gateway uses transformation optics and a "superscatterer" made from photonic crystals to create an 'optical illusion', forcing light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation into complicated directions to hide the portal.

MSI launched the MSI X320 last night. It looks an awful lot like a MacBook Air. It has a 13.4 inch, 1366 x 768 display and it’s super thin and light, measuring less than an inch thick, and weighing about 2.9 pounds. But unlike the MacBook Air, the MSI X320 runs on an Intel Atom Z520 CPU which means two things: It won’t exactly be a speed demon, and it’ll be a lot cheaper than the Air.

How much cheaper? Laptop Magazine reports that the X320 will retail for between $700 and $900.

Now, normally I would say that this machine falls outside of Liliputing’s scope. I’ve always been interested in small, cheap laptops. And with a starting price of $700, the X320 isn’t exactly an impulse buy. But you can totally slide it between your cheeks. I can't stop!

Specifically, the price is a clear $299.99 — a price at which the current Pro 60 GB model occupies. Unless Microsoft suddenly decides to keep all three SKUs by cutting the price of the Pro to $250, it seems that the rumor will prove true.

The new study, led by Ruth Barr, a psychiatrist at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, looked at the effects of nicotine on patients' cognitive function, such as planning and memory in social and work settings. According to Dr. Barr, improvement cognitive function is the most critical need for those suffering from the disease. She states, "We know that patients that do better in the long term are those with good cognitive function rather than improvement in any other symptom."

Prior to the study only beneficial effects of nicotine being used to overcome smoking withdrawal symptoms were used. The new study, involved dosing the patients with nicotine. Describes Dr. Barr, "(W)e would ask participants to go without a cigarette for 12 hours and then provide a single dose of nicotine and measure cognitive function."

Intriguingly rather than just showing less symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, patients also showed improvement in brain function, including less impulsive behaviour and better levels of attention, both of which are unrelated to nicotine withdrawal. Dr. Barr says more research is needed, stating, "We don't yet know whether these effects persist or not and if those improvements have any impact on daily life, for example, remembering shopping lists or conversations."

Valve's Gabe Newell appears to have recently conducted a focus group with deaf individuals in order to learn more about sign language and how it can be applied to games, notably the upcoming Half-Life 2: Episode 3. Why? To help develop Alyx's character, and further the animation technology implemented in the Half-Life games.

Nearly everyone has heard the old saying that cameras–particularly TV cameras–"add ten pounds" to their subjects. Some people use it as a convenient excuse for those (real) ten extra pounds, but others believe that this claim has actual technical merit. There's a lot of confusion over how to explain this phenomenon, and whether it even exists in the first place, so I set out to investigate. Do modern cameras still make us look fatter?

I went into this story based on something I was taught as an undergraduate–that video is what adds 10 pounds, not still photos, because of the type of pixels involved. Photographs are shot in square pixels and usually displayed on square pixel screens (your computer monitor, or occasionally printed out in square pixels), so they're not susceptible to this mysterious fattening phenomenon.

Video meant for the TV screen, however, isn't shot in the same way. Both NTSC and PAL pixels are rectangular (or non-square), and I was told that this is the reason why people look wider on TV. After all, if their images are being stretched horizontally, why wouldn't they? After digging around a bit, I learned that I wasn't the only one taught this at some point in my life.

Everyone who signs this petition disagrees with your approach and your smug attitude. The undersigned agree not to purchase your game at full retail value. We instead will either choose to A.) not purchase MW2. B.)Purchase only in used form allowing no revenue for you. C.)Import from a cheaper country. This may not seem like much of a threat, but the internet is a large place and your wallets may seem a little lighter come Christmas time. Thank you.

When using the CPI/RPI, the (average) value in 2008 of £45 from 2002 is $96.91 [£58.73].

Malaria appears to have originated in chimpanzees and jumped over to humans at some point in the last two million years, bucking the leading theory that the disease had evolved along with humans.

After gathering blood samples from nearly 100 chimpanzees in central Africa, researchers uncovered eight new strains of the parasite that causes chimp malaria. By comparing genes from the new chimp strains to genes from human malaria, scientists discovered that like HIV, our malaria bug is a gift from chimpanzees.

“The conventional wisdom on malaria is that this is a disease that has been in humans since the dawn of humanity,” said infectious disease expert Nathan Wolfe of Stanford University, who co-authored the paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “In fact, what we found was really quite surprising to us: There is a tremendous diversity of these parasites in chimpanzees, and it’s a diversity that completely encompasses a much more limited diversity in human malaria.”

The same blue food dye found in M&Ms and Gatorade could be used to reduce damage caused by spine injuries, offering a better chance of recovery, according to new research.

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp.

The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue.

Extensive research shows the dangers of distracted driving. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, and the likelihood that they will crash is equal to that of someone with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, the point at which drivers are generally considered intoxicated. Research also shows that hands-free devices do not eliminate the risks, and may worsen them by suggesting that the behavior is safe.

A 2003 Harvard study estimated that cellphone distractions caused 2,600 traffic deaths every year, and 330,000 accidents that result in moderate or severe injuries.

Yet Americans have largely ignored that research. Instead, they increasingly use phones, navigation devices and even laptops to turn their cars into mobile offices, chat rooms and entertainment centers, making roads more dangerous.

Adobe will make available via open source the company's OSMF (Open Source Media Framework) and Text Layout Framework. Formerly part of the "Strobe" project, OSMF allows for software-based media players to be built based on the Flash platform. Individuals could, for example, add new functionality around the Flash Player. Text Layout Framework allows users to "to do all the things you want to do with text to make it really cool" on the Flash platform, said McAllister. Sophisticated typography capabilities can be added to Web applications.

Danish vulnerability tracking vendor Secunia said that the version on the the Adobe site offers includes at least 14 security vulnerabilities that have been patched by the company in the last two months. It noticed Adobe was offering an outdated Reader when users of its Personal Software Inspector (PSI) utility started complaining when the tool said they were running a vulnerable version, even though they had just downloaded the PDF viewer.