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A study the microplastics titled "Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood" has been published in the journal Environmental International.

Scientists have detected microplastic particles in human blood in almost eighty percent of tested participants. They took blood samples from 22 anonymous, healthy adults, of which 17 contained plastic particles. PET plastic, which is typically used in drink bottles, was detected in half of the samples taken, and the researchers found polystyrene in a third of the participants' samples.

In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has formed a new team to create contingency plans if Russia decides to use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The new team is named the "Tiger Team" and consists of national security officials tasked with creating plans in case Russia uses chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons to attack Ukraine. The team is also creating playbooks detailing the U.S. response if Russia is to enter a NATO country. The team was formed only four days after the invasion began, on February 28th.

Elon Musk has finally confirmed when the long-awaited Cybertruck will enter production and become available.

Musk answered questions at Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory during its opening ceremony, stating that Tesla will be increasing the production of its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles. He also said that Cybertruck development is due to finish in 2022, with production beginning in 2023, with Musk saying, "we want to complete the development of Cybertruck this year and be ready for production next year."

The Cybertruck was originally revealed in 2019 with promises of availability in 2021. Since then, the Cybertruck has suffered delays, affecting over a million people with pre-orders. In contrast, other electric models such as GMC's Hummer EV and Rivian's R1T have become available for purchase, and Ford prepares its competitor in the F-150 Lightning.

Pavel Zavalny, the chairman for the Congression energy committee has announced that the Kremlin is open to accepting cryptocurrency as payment for Russia's natural resources.

Zavalny announced at a press conference on Tuesday that Russia is open to accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for natural resources such as natural gas. The chairman explained that the payment method would depend on the buyers preference and will also depend on the current relations between Russia and that country. The recent comments from the chairman come after Russia's President Vladimir Putin requested all "unfriendly" countries trading Russian natural gas to pay for it rubles.

AMD is gearing up to its next-gen RDNA 3 GPU architecture, and during GDC 2022 we've got game developer Arkake Studios -- the team behind DEATHLOOP -- presenting at GDC 2022 with a talk called "A Guided Tour of Blackreed: Rendering Technologies in Deathloop".

In this chat, Arkane talked about the graphics engine advancements in DEATHLOOP, with the end of it addressing AMD's next-gen FSR 2.0 upscaling technology.AMD Developer Technology Engineer Lou Kramer talked about the comparisons between the edges of the wooden pattern being better-reconstructed in FSR 2.0 (Quality Mode, shifting from 1440p to 4K) that it evended up looking even better than native 4K... with TAA... and sharpening enabled.

But when it came to DEATHLOOP, we saw Kramer talking about the input sources of FSR 2.0 into the game -- including color buffer, depth buffer, and motion vectors -- DEATHLOOP also provides exposure textures for input, but FSR 2.0 can also compute one of those on its own.

AMD has been steadily ramping into the unleashing of its new FSR 2.0 (FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0) technology, but now the company has announced at GDC that DSR 2.0 is "fully supported" on Xbox.

In a new post on the AMD community website, the company explains: "Additionally, for developers, we're happy to announce at GDC today that FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 will also be fully supported on Xbox and will be available in the Xbox GDK for registered developers to use in their games. Though for gamers, we do not have a timeline today of when you can expect to see any Xbox games with FSR 2.0".

It's not just the Xbox that gets that juicy new FSR 2.0 technology, but the first game with FSR 2.0 is DEATHLOOP. AMD took the time at Game Developers Conference (GDC 2022) to announce another FSR 2.0-powered title: Forspoken, which is developed by Luminous Productions. FSR 2.0 will be dropping in October 2022, with AMD also teasing "along with many other AMD FidelityFX technology effects".

AMD's new Radeon Adrenalin 22.3.2 drivers have been released, with support for Ghostwire: Tokyo and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.

If you've got a Radeon RX 6900 XT, Radeon RX 6800 XT, or Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card and were wanting to play Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, then you will enjoy up to 23% more performance, up to 21% more performance, and up to 20% more performance at 4K on those GPUs, respectively.

There's the usual bug fixes, with some issues squashed in Cyberpunk 2077 on the Radeon RX 570, issues with Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin on the RX 6900 XT, and more. You can read more about that below, and download the new AMD Radeon Adrenalin 22.3.2 drivers right here (539MB download).

NVIDIA just unveiled its next-gen Hopper GPU architecture, AMD just teased its next-gen FSR 2.0 upscaling technology, and now Intel has detailed its upcoming XeSS upscaling tech at the Game Developers Conference (GDC 2022).

Intel had its software engineers discuss its new XeSS technology, saying that upscaling and anti-aliasing should be fixed as a single issue. Both older games and previous-gen GPUs would see performance improvements and quicker implementation with spatial upscalers.

On the other side, games that have ray tracing and other high-end graphics technologies that are only supported with the very latest GPU architectures, will obviously see bigger improvements in performance and IQ through temporal upscalers. As for GPU support, Intel plans to support as many GPUs as it can with XeSS -- supporting all GPUs that support Shader Model 6.4+ and DP4a instructions -- so most GPUs should be fine.

Intel has its own NUC systems with powerhouse specs inside, but GIGABYTE has just outdone the NUC with its new BRIX Extreme Mini-PC.

The new GIGABYTE BRIX Extreme Mini-PC packs Intel's latest 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" mobile CPU, HDMI 2.1 display connectivity, super-fast USB 4 connectivity, enthusiast-grade 2.5GbE networking, Wi-Fi 6E, and so much more. GIGABYTE offers the Intel 12th Gen Core Mobile CPUs with the Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processors up for grabs.

There's an integrated Intel Iris Xe GPU with 96 execution units, a high-performance hydro-cooling system that keeps the BRIX Extreme Mini-PC nice and cool, and just 24dB of noise under operation. Storage wise you've got the option for a 2.5-inch SSD or HDD, while an upgrade kit provides you with a M.2 2280 slot (as well as a second LAN connection, and RS232 port).

We are only a few days out from NVIDIA's new flagship GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card launching, and with it will be a beefy new PCIe 5.0-ready 16-pin power connector.

But don't worry: you'll get a 16-pin to 3 x 8-pin PCIe power adapter, so you can plug your existing PSU cables into a turbocharged GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. But there aren't any PSUs on the market with high-end 16-pin PCIe power connectors just yet, which is why there will be a power adapter included.

The power adapter will provide 450W of power on its own, with the PCIe interface providing another 75W we have 525W total. This means we should expect custom variants of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti to have a maximum TDP of 500W, up from the 400W on the custom RTX 3090 cards.

Microsoft's new DirectStorage API isn't living up to its full potential just yet, but a future version could help supercharge data streaming and loading speeds on M.2 drives.

DirectStorage aims to revolutionize data throughput on consoles and PC. The basic gist of the tech is to help streamline how game data is decompressed and loaded from SSDs storage into hardware like graphics cards.

The API's end goal is to stream data from an SSD directly to a GPU's VRAM memory pool for decompression and allow GPU data to completely bypass the CPU. This would theoretically result in a significant IO performance boost that would lead to benefits like faster in-game loading times.

Luminous Productions is leveraging both Microsoft's and AMD"s next-gen APIs and tools for its new game Forspoken, creating an experience that fully leverages the might of enthusiast PC hardware.

Luminous Productions just put out an extremely technical GDC 2022 presentation that breaks down Forspoken's new advanced technologies. The devs give a closer look at DirectStorage and how it enables ultra-fast loading on Forspoken on PC.

Forspoken is one of the first games to utilize Microsoft's powerful DirectStorage tech, a new DirectX 12 API that promises to supercharge loading speeds. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding. Forspoken loads in just 1 second on PC using DirectStorage in tandem with a high-speed M.2 NVMe SSD.

A new Witcher game has been announced by CD Projekt RED with a mysterious medallion. Now the developer gives more clues on what to expect from the game.

The School of the Lynx could help kick off the new Witcher saga, as CD Projekt confirms the medallion is a lynx and not a cat.

"Ok, some mysteries should not be so mysterious. I can confirm that the medallion is, in fact, shaped after a lynx,"CDPR's communication director Robert Malinowski tells Eurogamer.

343 Industries has had no issues identifying what's next for the Halo franchise; things like TV shows, books, and big game beats are as stark and as readily apparent as porn.

Everyone wants to work with Halo, and rightly so--it's one of the most enduring franchises in games history. But 343 Industries is pretty selective on who gets to collaborate with Halo, whether it be promos or marketing deals to big transmedia deals.

Spotting the right opportunity isn't hard, though--once 343i sees the right thing, it's so naked that it's hard to un-see it. "It's kind of like porn. You know it when you see it," 343i's Frank O'Connor tells The Washington Post.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation, or the Central Bank of Russia has reportedly been hacked by the international hacking collective Anonymous.

The Anonymous TV Twitter account took announced on March 24 that the Anonymous collective has "hacked the Central Bank of Russia" and has taken control of 35,000 files that contain "secret agreements". The Twitter post states that Anonymous will be releasing the large quantity of files in 48 hours, but didn't mention what the contents of the documents.

Anonymous announced at the end of February that it would be launching operations against the Russian Federation and that it will be targeting the Russian government. At the beginning of March a hacker group affiliated with Anonymous called "NB65" successfully hacked the Control Center of the Russian Space Agency "Roscosmos" and took control over the Kremlin's own spy satellites. Roscosmos denied claims of its control center being hacked.

One of Russia's top diplomats has warned that Russia holds the right to press the nuclear button if it feels threatened by NATO.

In a new report from SkyNews, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, explained Russia's President Vladimir Putin may push the nuclear button if he feels as if Russia is facing an "existential" threat. Polyanskiy was asked if he believes it is the right thing for Putin to threaten nuclear war if Russia was provoked, and he said, "I don't think it's the right thing to be saying. But it's not the right thing to threaten Russia and to try to interfere."

One of the first sites captured by Russia during of its invasion of Ukraine was the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and other nuclear sites have since been targeted.

The laboratory was located near the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant and used to monitor radiation levels from nuclear waste. The European Union-funded lab was an attempt to handle radioactive waste more effectively, allowing for on-site analysis of waste samples and the packaging used to dispose of the radioactive waste.

The lab also contained radionuclides, unstable atoms that can emit large amounts of radiation, which Russian forces have reportedly taken. The State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management reported that "highly active samples and samples of radionuclides that are now in the hands of the enemy, which we hope will harm itself and not the civilized world."

A study on the breakthrough titled "Spelling interface using intracortical signals in a completely locked-in patient enabled via auditory neurofeedback training" has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers from the University of Tubingen in Germany developed a brain-computer interface to allow a man fully paralyzed from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to communicate verbally. The 37-year-old man, known as patient K1, had a microelectrode device implanted into his brain, which used custom computer software to translate his brain signals.

Assistive communication devices for ALS typically involve eye-tracking or facial muscles that are still functional. Stephen Hawking, who also suffered from ALS, moved his cheek muscle to control the device that allowed him to communicate once his condition worsened to the state of almost complete paralysis.

Stan went to an undisclosed location after being sold previously but has since been found.

Stan is the name of the most expensive Tyrannosaurus rex remains ever sold, fetching $31.8 million at auction in October 2020. The remains have now made their way to Abu Dhabi, the second-most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) behind Dubai, where they will be featured at the 2025 grand opening of a Natural History Museum, according to the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism.

Stan is nearly 40-foot-long (12 meters), and its whereabouts were unknown to even the Black Hills Institute (BHI) in South Dakota, the previous owner, for the past two years following the sale. Pete Larson, the president and founder of BHI, says he is "super, super happy" to know Stan is going on public display, and that "it couldn't be any better. Stan's going to be in a museum and millions of people will see Stan and researchers will have access to Stan's skeleton."

America's "doomsday plane" isn't the only one able to take to the skies in the event of nuclear war.

Both the U.S. and Russia can keep their heads of state and important military officials safe and capable of issuing commands in case of nuclear war with their respective "doomsday planes." The U.S. has a modified Boeing 747, a Boeing E-4B with the callsign Nightwatch, while Russia has the Russian-made Ilyushin II-80 aircraft. Also known by the callsign Maxdome, or sometimes Camber, the Ilyushin II-80 builds off the Ilyushin II-86 model with some key differences.

Some differences include the lack of cabin windows and a baffle blocking the cockpit windows to protect the plane's occupants from electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) or nuclear explosions. Other additions include various SATCOM and very-low frequency (VLF) antennae and sensors mounted atop the fuselage for increased communication ability and has two large electrical generator pods to accompany its engines.