Contrary to popular belief, the lives of gamers aren't necessarily all lame and depressing. In fact, recent studies from the US National Institute of Mental Health shown that depressed people pwn less than non-depressed people in video games that test spatial memory. Depression has been associated with a shrunken hippocampus, a part of the brain that influences spatial memory performance. USNIMH researchers have developed a video game based on scenes from Duke Nukem where players navigate around a virtual town trying to hit up as many landmarks as possible in a limited amount of time. The depressed players averaged at 2.4 locations in comparison to "healthy" players with 3.8 locations. Players suffering from deeper depressions yielded lower scores -- an indicator that these tests may someday lead to quantitatively measuring different levels of depression. Of course, it's hard to quantify how much a continued lack of Duke Nukem Forever might have tainted these results.

[Thanks, Matthew S.]

The mere mention of the word brings back visions of the original first-person-shooters to grace our now-antiquated machines, and now the US Navy is getting real personal with a realized version of the pixelated railgun we all love and adore. Presumably ripped straight from the (admittedly lacking) storyline of Quake, an 8-Megajoule railgun has been officially created, fired, and deemed worthy of flanking our naval ships, which should strike fear in the hearts of anyone wishing us harm. The gun was showcased this week at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, Virginia, and utilizes massive quantities of electricity rather than gunpowder to propel "nonexplosive projectiles at incredible speeds." The weapon is powerful enough to equal the damage inflicted by a Tomahawk cruise missile, and the device's project director compared the impact to hitting a solid object "going 380 miles-per-hour in a Ford Taurus." Moreover, the railgun touts a 200 to 250 nautical-mile range, compared to the 15 nautical-mile range that current five-inch guns sport now. Interestingly, the weapon should "only" cost around $1,000 per shot once loaded onboard, which is chump change compared to the cool million that vanishes each time a cruise missile is deployed, and if everything goes as planned, we'll be seeing a 32-Megajoule prototype in June, with a 64-Megajoule rendition adorning our ships by 2020.

[Via Slashdot]

Sure, mechanical sentries and AirSoft turrets are novel, but there's nothing like whipping out an electromagnetic pistol to show folks you mean business. The Gauss GP-219 looks like it came straight from level 5 of Duke Nukem 3D, and rocks a PIC microcontroller, dual coils with "precision pulsing" to fire steel projectiles, twin infrared sensors to assist in positioning, and even a laser sight to keep your enemies pegged. Powered by an NiCd battery pack, this bad boy also features a bar display to track "capacitor bank charge progress," battery and fault LED indicators, and is "completely silent" when fired. The wildest part about this science-fiction dream come true is how effective it actually is, so be sure to click on for a few more pictures, and hit the read links for all the nitty gritty and even a few live action videos.

Read - Gauss Pistol GP-219
Read - Pistol whipping in action, Nukem-style

What better to control a ginormous army of robot overlords than a notebook ripped straight from the confines of a science fiction control lab? To get those 'bots a-marchin', just boot up the NEC TYPE-NO1, load the commands (stored on your USB Pocket Rocket, of course), and unleash your best impression of an evil dictator's laugh. NEC has teamed up with Takara to create the presumably mad scientist-approved machine, which sports all the token stickers, labels, and even wallpapers that make this device so similar to those seen laying around Duke Nukem laboratories. Beneath the facade is a LaVie G type L laptop, sporting a 15.4-inch WXGA display, 1.6GHz AMD Mobile Sempron 3200+ processor (Turion 64 X2 TL-50), 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 80-100GB hard drive, dual-layer DVD burner, 802.11a/b/g, and the likely dangerous "FeliCa" port. Flanked on the side is the very necessary "Emergency Button," which apparently shuts down the machine in case of unexpected intruders. The highly secretive TYPE-NO1 can be reserved starting today, and considering that they'll be limited to 300 units, you should probably make haste if you plan on throwing down your ¥145,530 ($1,231) to ¥174,510 ($1,476).

[Via Akihabara News]