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Comparison of bone graft materials. Part I. New bone formation with autografts and allografts determined by Strontium-85

Comparative Study

. 1981 Jun;52(6):291-6.

doi: 10.1902/jop.1981.52.6.291.

J T Mellonig, G M Bowers, R C Bailey

PMID:

7021791
DOI:

10.1902/jop.1981.52.6.291

Comparative Study

J T Mellonig et al.

J Periodontol.

1981 Jun.

. 1981 Jun;52(6):291-6.

doi: 10.1902/jop.1981.52.6.291.

Authors

J T Mellonig, G M Bowers, R C Bailey

PMID:

7021791
DOI:

10. 1902/jop.1981.52.6.291

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to obtain a direct comparison of the bone forming abilities of autogenous osseous coagulum, autogenous bone blend, freeze-dried bone allograft, and decalcified freeze-dried bone allograft. Defects were created in the calvaria of 35 guinea pigs. The graft materials were placed in porous nylon chambers and implanted into the defects. Empty nylon chambers served as the controls. Three days prior to sacrifice, each animal received an injection of 85Sr. The animals were killed in groups of five at 3, 7, 14, 21 28, 35, and 42 days. At sacrifice, a small section of ilium was removed from each animal. The samples were recovered, weighed, and the uptake of 85Sr into new bone determined. An osteogenic index was obtained by dividing cpm/mg for each sample by cpm/mg of ilium. It was concluded that in this model system decalcified freeze-dried bone allograft is a graft material of high osteogenic potential while autogenous bone blend and osseous coagulum were of less potential, and freeze-dried bone allograft even less.

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Compare Part D Plans — A Step-by-Step Guide

How do you compare Part D plans? This is one of the questions we get asked most frequently, and frankly, it is one of the most important questions to have an answer for, as prescription drug costs can be the most expensive part of going on Medicare.

Before you compare Part D plans, the first thing you need to do is understand what Part D is and how it works. Here’s a five-point rundown that tells you everything you need to know about Part D and how it works.

Part D is the part of Medicare that covers prescription drugs.
Part D plans are sold through private insurance companies, but they are approved annually by CMS (Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and must meet certain minimum standards put forth annually by CMS.
You must be in a valid enrollment period to sign up for a Part D plan. These occur when you turn 65 (or first go on Medicare), when you lose other coverage (i.e. group coverage), or during the annual election period (October 15-December 7 annually).
It is prudent to compare Part D plans periodically, as the plans change annually, as do your medications, needs, etc.
Part D plans vary drastically in terms of premium, deductible and co-pay structures. Also, many plans have certain pharmacy networks that provide preferred pricing. Therefore, it is imperative to compare Part D plans based on what medications you take and where you plan to purchase those medications.

How to Compare Part D Plans

Once you know the basics regarding Part D and how it works, you can take the necessary steps to compare plans. This allows you to make an informed choice. The plans can vary considerably. Also, everyone’s medications are different, so what is good for your neighbor, yoga partner or even spouse may not be right for your situation.

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There are several options for comparing plans. First, you can call Medicare at 1-800-MEDICARE. The Medicare representative will ask for information including your zip code, medication names and dosages, and preferred pharmacy. From this information, they can go through the options that would give you the lowest annual costs for prescriptions. This information can be immensely helpful in saving you money on prescriptions. The only downside is that, during high volume times of the year, there can be long wait times to speak to a Medicare representative.

The second way to compare Part D plans – and probably the easiest – is to run the Part D comparison yourself on Medicare.gov. The Medicare site can be a little overwhelming, but all of the information you need to make a thorough comparison can be found there. Below, we’ve listed step-by-step instructions on how to conduct your own Part D comparison:

Go to Medicare’s website, Medicare.gov.
Click the “Find Plans” tile (may have to scroll down a bit) on the right hand side.
Either log in or continue without logging in. (Note: if you log in, your medications will get saved in their system for future comparisons in future years)
Select “Drug Plan (Part D)” and enter your zip code. If your zip code spans more than one county, you’ll also need to select your county.
Answer the two questions on the next page and click “Continue to Plan Results”.
Enter the names and dosages of your medications and add them to your list. Then, click “My Drug List is Complete”.
Select your preferred pharmacy from the list of pharmacies close to or in your zip code. You can expand the mile radius if you don’t see your preferred pharmacy in the list. Click “Continue to Plan Results”.
Check the box for “Prescription Drug Plans” and click “Continue to Plan Results”.
On the next screen, you will see “Original Medicare” listed first. You can ignore that. Then, under “Prescription Drug Plans”, you will see the plans that are available to you. They are listed in order of lowest estimated annual cost, which takes into account premiums, deductibles and co-pays for the medications you listed at the pharmacy you chose.
You can select three plans and click “Compare Plans”. Or you can click on a specific plan name and find more info about that plan. You can also enroll directly through the Medicare website or by calling the plan directly.

If you want to see a visual guide in how to compare Part D plans, this video may help: Video Walkthrough of Medicare Part D Comparison.

Why Should I Compare Part D Plans?

Put simply, you should compare because it may save you money. Rather than just picking a plan that your neighbor or spouse has, or has your medications on the formulary, or has a low premium, comparing based on overall annual costs allows you to pick a plan that will give you the lowest annual cost over the course of a year based on your specific needs.

Over the last 14+ years, we have seen clients save anywhere from $10/year to $40,000/year, depending on medication costs, simply by choosing the correct Part D plan.

Medicare Part D plans change each year. In some years, these changes are minimal – maybe the premium changes slightly or new medications are added/dropped from the list of covered drugs. But, it is advantageous to stay “on top” of these changes and make a change to your Part D coverage if it is financially advantageous to do so. Keep in mind that, with Medicare Part D, you get an initial election period to pick a plan that is 7 months long. It is the month you turn 65 and three months on either side of that month.

If you have questions about comparing Part D plans or want to talk to someone by phone, feel free to contact us at 877.506.3378.

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Carbon footprinting of universities worldwide: Part I—objective comparison by standardized metrics | Environmental Sciences Europe

Research
Open Access
Published: 11 March 2021

Eckard Helmers
ORCID: orcid. org/0000-0003-1562-349X¹,
Chia Chien Chang² &
Justin Dauwels³

Environmental Sciences Europe
volume 33, Article number: 30 (2021)
Cite this article

11k Accesses
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Abstract

Background

Universities, as innovation drivers in science and technology worldwide, should be leading the Great Transformation towards a carbon–neutral society and many have indeed picked up the challenge. However, only a small number of universities worldwide are collecting and publishing their carbon footprints, and some of them have defined zero emission targets. Unfortunately, there is limited consistency between the reported carbon footprints (CFs) because of different analysis methods, different impact measures, and different target definitions by the respective universities.

Results

Comprehensive CF data of 20 universities from around the globe were collected and analysed. Essential factors contributing to the university CF were identified. For the first time, CF data from universities were not only compared. The CF data were also evaluated, partly corrected, and augmented by missing contributions, to improve the consistency and comparability. The CF performance of each university in the respective year is thus homogenized, and measured by means of two metrics: CO₂e emissions per capita and per m² of constructed area. Both metrics vary by one order of magnitude across the different universities in this study. However, we identified ten universities reaching a per capita carbon footprint of lower than or close to 1.0 Mt (metric tons) CO₂e/person and year (normalized by the number of people associated with the university), independent from the university’s size. In addition to the aforementioned two metrics, we suggested a new metric expressing the economic efficiency in terms of the CF per $ expenditures and year. We next aggregated the results for all three impact measures, arriving at an overall carbon performance for the respective universities, which we found to be independent of geographical latitude. Instead the per capita measure correlates with the national per capita CFs, and it reaches on average 23% of the national impacts per capita. The three top performing universities are located in Switzerland, Chile, and Germany.

Conclusion

The usual reporting of CO₂ emissions is categorized into Scopes 1–3 following the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting Standard which makes comparison across universities challenging. In this study, we attempted to standardize the CF metrics, allowing us to objectively compare the CF at several universities. From this study, we observed that, almost 30 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992), the results are still limited. Only one zero emission university was identified, and hence, the transformation should speed up globally.

Introduction

This contribution discusses and evaluates the sustainability of the institutions that are the origin of sciences: the universities. We like to hypothesize that particularly universities emphasizing sustainability actions might inspire scientists engaged in sustainability research, and will qualify engineers engaged in seeking sustainable practise. Hence, it should be essential to develop sustainable universities from every point of view. The institutional sustainability of a university has been quantified and evaluated by a variety of research attempts, like as, e.g., sustainability contents in university education [1]. In this article, however, we understand and analyse university sustainability as a technical term, with respect to CO₂-equivalent emissions of campuses.

Universities began to pick up sustainability problems early: The COPERNICUS University Charter for Sustainable Development in 1993 is seen as “a response to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (in 1992) and marked a breakthrough in raising consciousness within the European universities” [2]. Following this, several international networks were founded to foster sustainable development at higher education institutions (HEI) by conferences, awards, etc. (e.g., the ISCN International sustainable campus network, [3]. Often sustainability in higher education institutions (HEI) has been interpreted as a management attempt (e.g., [4]) rather than a quantitative effect.

Analysing the ecological footprint of higher education institutions (HEI)

Quantifying the environmental impact of a university often suffers from the problem that consumption and impact data are not recorded regularly and/or without sufficient depth of data. This problem has been alleviated by the method of Environmentally Extended Input Output Analysis (EEIOA) operating with financial data provided by the universities purchasing departments (e.g., [5]). Financial data are then converted by certain factors resulting in land footprints (for six different land types available, see [6]). Emissions such as CO₂ are converted into a certain value of land consumption. EEIOA requires much recalculation, and accordingly, it comes with an additional uncertainty [7]. We stay away from this method and quantify a direct consumption-based CF. Although the CF is just one metric, it is the most discussed aspect of a university’s ecological footprint. Less commonly, other footprints have been quantified like the nitrogen impact of a campus [8].

University carbon footprinting: global status quo

In the scientific community, there is a broad discussion about the necessity and the potential of universities to become “carbon–neutral” (e. g., [9]). Nevertheless, only a small minority of universities are currently recording and publishing comprehensive carbon inventories, while those published in local languages may not be easily available for international comparison (e.g., the one from the University of Potsdam [10], is published in German). Clearly, university carbon footprinting is most institutionalized in USA, where almost 1,000 HEIs have registered to use the Stars Reporting Tool [11]. Around half of these institutions are being rated based on their performance in emissions and documentation. Stars [11] is listing just one university from outside North America with a gold award, the university college of Cork (Ireland), which has been included in this investigation. The gold award in this grading system indicates that all data necessary to compile a full GHG (greenhouse gas) emission inventory have been submitted. The biggest advantage of reporting systems such as Stars [11] certainly is the attempt to make data internationally comparable, transparent, and available which is essentially needed when transforming and tracking the global economy towards a more climate friendly situation or preferably towards zero carbon emissions, while this target so far may miss a commonly agreed definition [12]. To enable a transparent international inter-comparison, Stars [11] is for example reporting basic specifications of university campuses (CO₂e emissions by sector, no. of students and staff, the energy intensive space of a campus, etc.). Because the system is “self-reporting”, no critical evaluation may be expected. The publication of standardized raw emission data, however, generates an important kind of transparency.

Outside such carbon reporting schemes, there are plenty of sustainability initiatives established among HEIs worldwide, some of them institutionalized like university rankings. However, many of these initiatives mainly focus on management aspects, climate action in general, and scientific activity around sustainability subjects, thus serving as advertisement and marketing platforms within the global competition for students and projects (e.g. [13, 14]).

In Europe, most universities that publish complete carbon footprints seem to be located in Great Britain. In fact, the British government encourages HEIs to report CFs [15]. In Germany, there seems to be a few universities only quantifying their institutional CO₂ emissions in detail like the University of Potsdam [10] and the dedicated zero carbon emission Leuphana University Lüneburg [16], which describes itself as being the “first climate-neutral university worldwide without purchasing certificates” [17]. Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (UCB), although marketed as a “Zero emission university” [18], did not publish a complete carbon balance so far, this is presented here for the first time.

A literature search for universities publishing CFs from Scandinavia and France failed, as also, for example, in the “motherland” of the Kyoto protocol, Japan. This investigation is not meant as a quantitative report on universities publishing CFs worldwide; however, it aims to deliver an overview on activities, current methodology, and the magnitude of CFs caused by universities worldwide. Nevertheless, we believe that the map in Fig. 1 delivers a representation of university activities worldwide. Presently, there is an agglomeration of such activities in western Europe and particularly in North America, besides these two regions, there are a few universities scattered worldwide that are particularly engaged on this field.

Fig. 1

Locations and carbon footprint (CF) performances of 20 universities fully rated allowing a relative comparison and ranking 1–20 in total CF performance Table 1. The lowest CF/best performance each found for constructed area (green), per capita (red), and per expenditures (blue) is given the same column height, these three minimum CFs are marked by an asterisk (ETH Zürich, University of Lüneburg). In each category, the relative column heights correspond to the absolute values, as shown in Fig. 3. For calculation of the CF performances, see Appendix: Table 3 and Fig. 7. Carbon offsets specified for three universities (see Fig. 3a–c) not considered here. The absolute CFs of Leuven University are shown numerically as an example. Mt = metric tons

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GHG protocol corporate accounting and reporting standard

Almost all universities who report CO₂ emissions are following a scheme given by the “GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard” [19]. Although the allocation of impacts due to this scheme is simple (Scope 1: impacts caused by internal infrastructure, Scope 2: purchased energy; Scope 3: everything other, usually upstream activity impacts), many universities partly deviate from this scheme and apply individual allocations. On top of that, the single most important impact (energy consumption) usually belongs to Scope 2; however, big universities are running their own power plants (here: University College of Cork, Monash University, University of Cape Town, and Yale University) shifting energy production impacts to Scope 1. Many universities today have photovoltaic (PV) installations, such as the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld, and the Leuphana University Lüneburg, respectively, which is relocating a part of their energy production impact from Scope 2 to Scope 1. Additionally, if the university operates its own car vehicle fleet, these impacts as well belong to Scope 1. When using external vehicles on business trips; however, it is a Scope 3 impact. As a whole, it is challenging to compare university carbon impacts based on separation into Scopes 1–3 due to the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard. Therefore, we base our comparison on impact categories instead of Scopes.

In this way, we were able to quantify the CFs of 20 universities worldwide more precisely than known before with three independent CF parameters, identifying some of the most carbon-efficient universities. Such objective and detailed comparison had not yet been conducted in the literature, and is the main contribution of this study. Kennedy and Sgouridis [12] suggested a more rigorous emission classification scheme which would more precisely allow defining (zero) emission targets, however, the structure of publicly available data does not allow the application of such schemes here.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In «Materials, methods and purpose» section, we first describe the strategy of data collection, evaluation and completion. In «Results and discussion» section, we compile an overview of worldwide university CFs using three independent metrics, next, we analyse inter-correlations between the metrics, and compare the significance of university CFs relative to the national CFs. Finally, we present options to approach net zero carbon emissions, and offer concluding remarks.

Materials, methods, and purpose

This survey started by analysing scientific papers published on university CFs worldwide. It turned out; however, that the scientific literature contains only a limited number of studies with often very different methodology in data collection and interpretation. As a result, a valid quantitative description of the status quo in university carbon footprinting is difficult to conduct. Accordingly, for this study, next to scientific sources, university reports were additionally consulted. Many universities, however, only published (small) parts of their impacts or just total amounts, so we had to limit ourselves to the most detailed reports. From those universities periodically publishing CO₂ emissions, the most recent reports were analysed, in addition to the most recent reports providing detailed data about the university operations, such as budget information. Finally, this analysis yielded CF data of 22 universities worldwide, 18 of them reporting a detailed impact record (Fig. 2). It was impossible to collect data from just 1 year: Some universities report yearly, some publish every few years, while others only published their CO₂ emissions once. The period of collected data is between 2008 and 2018 (see Table 1). While it is easy to identify more US and British universities publishing carbon emission data, this is not the case for universities in other regions of the world. We scanned the literature and internet resources until we were able to cover all continents.

Fig. 2

Distribution pattern of partial carbon emission impacts at 18 universities worldwide: energy consumption (red/orange/yellow), mobility impacts (blue/green/white), and other impacts. University (U) specifications and full names are listed in Table 1, abbreviations listed in Fig. 3 caption. Note: electricity and heat may be listed twice in case the university received it from internal plus external sources. Results in numerical form are available in Appendix: Table 2

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Table 1 Specifications, data sources and structure, and performance of universities covered

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We directly adopted CO₂e emissions as they were reported by the universities. In contrast, we calculated all CO₂e emissions from Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (Germany) based on the collected energy and material consumption data. Also, we quantified the mobility impacts of Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld from commuting and travelling data. Following the same method, we quantified mobility data for 5 universities which did not report them (see Table 1). For the University of Potsdam, we quantified the CO₂e emissions by freshwater consumption (extrapolated from the wastewater impact). The CO₂e factors for all consumptions and activities considered this way are reported in the Appendix.

It is an essential focus of this study to estimate the performance of universities worldwide in reducing their CF. In this context, the question arose which impacts comprehensively describe university performance in CO₂ emission limitation/reduction, and, respectively, which essential impacts are to be considered. Even after filtering those universities with satisfying documentation, it turned out that often different impacts had been measured (Fig. 2). Several scientific studies deliver statistics on which impacts were quantified how often (e.g., [20, 21]), however, without a critical quantitative assessment. This study intends to investigate the main contributing impacts towards a university’s CF, and, on the other hand, to identify impacts that may be dropped as such impacts are negligible or are similar across all universities.

The 18 universities reporting a detailed carbon impact record quantified 28 single impact categories that we decided to consider (others were removed, see Table 1 and below). For better clarity, we condensed the 28 impact categories into 16 impacts areas (Fig. 2), from which we can infer those emission impacts mostly relevant for a university’s CF. After collecting, sorting, revising, and complementing the impacts, in the next step, we relate the CO₂e emissions to the size of a university. In this way, we obtained size-normalized CFs, allowing us to compare universities independent from their size.

University CFs have been evaluated in the scientific literature so far in two ways: in terms of per constructed/built area and per capita. We apply the term “constructed enclosure area” (or, simplified, “floor”) in this publication as an umbrella term to cover the different terms and definitions of the building floor area found in the respective countries (see explanations below Table 1). King’s College seems to be the first university additionally relating its CF to an economic factor, the university income, reporting a decrease from 140 to 30 kg CO₂e/1,000 British Pounds between 2005 and 2019 [22]. We follow this idea, but suggest to modify the quantification method. We believe that university expenditures have a stronger impact on the CF than university income, since most expenditures directly impact the CF, while parts of the income may be saved. A linear relationship between household carbon footprints and total household expenditure has been reported in [23]. Consequently, we collected data on university expenditures of 20 universities in this study. After subtracting the respective salary payments, we related the resulting expenditures (the procurement related spending) to the respective amount of emitted CO₂e. We converted expenditures to US $, consequently, we are able to apply purchasing power parity (PPP) and currency fluctuation correction with factors provided by [24], we refer to the Appendix for more details.

Results and discussion

Emission impacts to consider

Energy impacts

Undoubtedly, the biggest part of a university’s carbon impact is the energy consumption in terms of electricity and heat production (red and yellow colours in Fig. 2). The percentages of energy consumption (the four related impacts taken together) ranges from 8.6% (Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld) to 76.8% (Minnesota State University Mankato), with an average of 52.1% (Fig. 2). Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld has the lowest percentage of energy consumption in its overall CO₂ emissions due to access to 100% renewable energy production. As an analogy, a university campus behaves similarly to the Life Cycle impact of an electric car, which is largely influenced by the availability of renewable electricity to charge the car in the use phase [25].

The fact that all universities report different groups of (energy-related) impact statistics prevents a more in-depth analysis of the energy sector. Some differentiate energy sources and/or fuels; others only report summarized units. We do not know exactly the purpose of the energy sources, e.g., gas might be consumed for either heating, cooling, or even cooking. Ultimately, the university ends up with a total amount of CO₂ emission computed by aggregating all energy consumptions. The university may consider how the mixture of energy sources can be optimized with respect to costs and emissions. The absolute CO₂ emissions of every single impact can be calculated by multiplying the percentages reported in Appendix: Table 2 with the overall CO₂ impact of the university listed in Table 1.

Mobility

The second set of impacts of relatively high importance is found in the area of mobility. Similar to the energy sector (see above), the reporting method of mobility-related impacts is very heterogenous among the universities considered in this study: two universities (KH Leuven and KU Leuven, Belgium) only report the total emissions due to transport activities (see Fig. 2), while the other universities specified up to five different emission impacts due to mobility (see Appendix: Table 2).

The 18 universities that are providing the most detailed data (see Fig. 2) exhibited between 22.2% (University of Melbourne) and 90.8% (Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld) mobility impacts. With an average of 45.3%, mobility impacts are almost as important as the energy consumption for the overall CO₂ emissions. Within mobility impacts, an average 27.7% of the overall university carbon impacts is due to commuting. Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld with its remote campus location reaches the highest percentage with 83.8% commuting impact within the overall campus impact. As there are a lot of more students than staff (Table 1), student commuting alone makes up 67.8% of the overall campus CF at Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (Fig. 2). Given the relative importance of this impact, it is surprising that 4 of the 18 universities did not consider student commuting in CF quantification which is why we had to estimate and add it (for details, see the Appendix). Without these added impacts, it would not have been a fair CF inter-comparison within our set of universities. Only questionnaires among students and staff can derive detailed traffic mode statistics for a precise commuting impact estimation. When calculating the missing commuting impacts of four universities, we could partly resort to questionnaire results we found in the reports, alternatively, we analysed the specific traffic situation around a campus. The city of Zürich, as for example, is operating an excellent public transportation system and there are almost not parking spots available near ETH Zürich campus. Accordingly, we assumed 100% arrival by public transportation to ETH campus (for details, see Appendix). Universities in a very remote location (like Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld) will always have to struggle with relatively high commuting impacts. In the future, politicians should take this location factor into account when deciding for certain locations to establish or enlarge a university. Those decisions are very important to impact the way towards a climate-neutral society.

Next to commuting, there is a lot of business transportation at and caused by university campus activities: The universities covered in this investigation quantified the impacts of campus vehicles (can be buses, business cars, or trucks), and domestic and international business trips (some report them condensed in one impact). Between 2.7% (University of Cape Town) and 55.9% (ETH Zürich) of the overall campus CF was caused by business transportation alone. Universities reporting detailed transportation impact data revealed a particularly high impact of international business travelling, caused by flying (up to 17.4% of the overall campus CF at Monash University, Melbourne). Accordingly, it is essential to consider the impact of air travelling, which is why we estimated and added this impact to that of Minnesota State University Mankato. Due to lack of data availability (number of professors), we could not estimate the air travelling impact at Tongji university (Shanghai) and Universiti Teknologi (Johor Bahru, see Table 1).

Smaller impacts

All further recorded impacts (freshwater and wastewater consumption, office supplies like paper, chemicals, gases, and detergent consumption, and waste disposal) result in just 0.14–14.9% (average: 2.6%) of the overall university CF (Fig. 2 and Appendix: Table 2). We condensed several impact subcategories reported by the universities. Paper and offices supplies’ consumption is the most important factor here, whereas the variation between the universities is substantial: Duquesne University (Pittsburgh) is reporting that 0.04% of its CF is caused by offices supplies, while KU Leuven publishes an amount of 14.8% for this contribution (see Fig. 2 and Appendix: Table 2). 0.1–1.3% (on average: 0.4%) of the overall CFs was caused by freshwater consumed and wastewater generated. The consumption of chemicals, gases, and detergents adds another 0.01–1.3% (on average: 0.5%) to the overall CFs of the universities. Most universities reported several impacts due to waste disposal, such as liquid, solid, laboratory and paper wastes, and composting impacts. Altogether, these result in 0.1–4% (on average: 2.7%) of the overall university CFs (Fig. 2 and Appendix: Table 2).

Impacts suggested to omit

Apart from the aforementioned impacts that are essentially to be covered, there are other impacts in which we believe can be omitted to limit data complexity and ensure fair comparability. First, there is food, and its impact has been often reported (e.g., [26, 27]). However, humans need food independent to location or occupation. Although there are quite some local diet differences, we do not think that university CFs differ significantly in diet provision, particularly, in the light of the increasing fast food consumption among students, even in Asian countries (e.g., [28]). On the other hand, it can be the policy of a university to provide healthy and low CF food with little or no meat, or to integrate a responsible food consumption into the education for a sustainable development [29]. University canteens, however, are operated by external private companies at some campuses (like at Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld and NTU Singapore), which result in limited data availability, and hence cause a lack in policy attempts to make food consumption more sustainable. The biggest argument against considering food consumption as part of university carbon footprinting is the fact that students and university personal consume only part of their daily meal in the university, typically only lunch.

One study quantified the mobility behavior in the students’ private time (vacation travelling, [30]). Due to personal data protection policies, private mobility behavior can usually not be regularly recorded.

De Montfort University (Leicester) considered the impact of travels made by visitors to the university. Including such travels may jeopardize the standardized comparison between universities: large universities tend to organize more scientific conferences as they have more resources than small universities. Also, third parties may be (co-)organizing conferences held on university campuses, which brings up the question who is responsible for the impact. Therefore, we decided not to consider this impact in the present study.

Generally, as confirmed in this overview, university CF quantification today emphasizes the use phase impact of a university. Occasionally, we came across impact elements which lay outside the use phase, but are not clearly separated from it, for example, yearly investments in the buildings structure or IT architecture (as for example reported by the King’s College and De Montfort University), partly called procurement impacts (e.g., [26]). Although infrastructure investments were often considered in university impact assessment [20], we believe use phase impacts and embodied impact assessment should be separated like it is common in Life Cycle Assessment (e.g., [31]). Embodied impacts of universities will be separately discussed in Part II of this project presentation (in preparation).

Acquisition of furnishings and IT architecture (servers, computers, and WLAN systems) cannot be clearly assigned to either the use phase or embodied impacts. On one hand, a university will purchase such infrastructure every year; on the other hand, it may be in use for many years. For the benefit of comparability, we have removed related procurement impacts. Additionally, almost all universities worldwide will be working with quite similar IT technology (central data servers and personal computers), almost every student today owns a notebook or tablet produced from only a few companies worldwide. Accordingly, we believe that the related impacts would not significantly distinguish universities from each other. This might change in the future when green(er) information technology becomes increasingly available for purchase [32, 33].

The life-cycle perspective, on the other hand, is considered in this study in the way that we based carbon impact calculations on input data which included supply chains, as far as possible (see Appendix). This refers to the impact calculations of our own universities (UCB Birkenfeld and NTU Singapore) but also to impacts of other universities which we supplemented (mostly commuting, see Table 1).

Resulting university carbon footprints and their interpretation

Universities physically consist of buildings, and buildings and construction together account for 39% of energy-related CO₂ emissions in the world [34]. Accordingly, there are plenty of initiatives worldwide targeting to decrease the energy consumption of buildings, measured in terms of per m² [34]. Square meters is accordingly an established functional unit in carbon footprinting of households [35], as it is as well the per-capita measurement of impacts from households [36].

The most detailed study available so far reported individual CFs for 42 buildings of Carleton university campus in Canada [37], ranging from 10 to 200 kg CO₂e/m², and from 0.01 to 7.4 Mt CO₂e/capita and year, respectively, which is quite similar to the ranges which we observed in our international comparison (Fig. 3 a + b). Based on current literature review, there is no study on any area-related international university CF comparison (kg CO₂e/m² and year), and hence, this study should be the first one (see Fig. 3a).

Fig. 3

Detailed university CF results per year for constructed area (a), per capita (b), and expenditures (c). Notes: 2C is based on university expenditures without salaries and has been corrected for purchasing power parity (PPP)—for details, we refer to the Appendix: Fig. 6. Offsets: three of the universities covered are compensating CO₂ emissions by purchasing carbon credits or producing a surplus of renewable energy. Mt = metric tons. U = University. Universities are named in the graphs with respect to the cities they are located. Some have deviating/completing names: UM College Park MD = University of Maryland. U Mankato MN = University of Minnesota. U Melbourne, Australia = Monash University. U Brisbane = University of Queensland. U Pittsburgh PA = Duquesne University. DeMU Leicester = De Montfort University. NTU = Nanyang Technological University. UCB = Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld. UAM = Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa. Tongji University Shanghai (3c) based on research budget only

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The results of all three CF units span one order of magnitude (Fig. 3a–c). Relating the carbon impacts to PPP-corrected university expenditures is smoothing the results considerably: As an example, University of Cape Town generates an outlier with 1,067 kg CO₂e/1000 $ without PPP correction which is almost halved after PPP correction (Fig. 3c, also see Appendix: Fig. 6 for more details). We suggest to establish this economic CF factor as an additional unit expressing how efficient a university is decreasing its CF related to budget. Specifically, a budget might be invested to purchase carbon offsets (see below). This would quickly improve the CF of a university in terms of its kg CO₂e/1000 $ record. Also, a university can generally decide to invest into carbon-efficient products and services (e.g., [38]), which can be more expensive, but would also reduce the CF in terms of the kg CO₂e/1000 $ record.

Among the university CFs discussed in the literature, the CF per capita is the one most frequently reported. In a few cases, the per capita CF has been related to university students only (e. g., [30, 39]) instead of to the entire university population (students plus staff). Relating the CF to students alone would reduce the functions of a university to teaching alone. We believe that university research is having the same relevance, and it is performed largely by the scientific university staff, only to a smaller part by students. The technical and administration staff is supporting both functions of a university. Concluding, we see decisive reasons to base the university CF on the entire university population (staff plus students).

We found 0.73–8.17 (average: 2.41) Mt CO₂e/capita and year among 22 universities covered (see Fig. 3b). This order of magnitude has been confirmed by earlier studies: for example, the carbon emissions per staff and student amounted to around 1–3 Mt CO₂/capita and year among 20 British HEIs, with an upward trend between 2005/06 and 2009/10 [21]. In a recent review, Mendoza-Flores et al. [40] reported 0.29–6.51 (average: 1. 80) Mt CO₂/capita and year among 15 universities worldwide covering the years 2007–2017, however, that is without the corrections and amendments, we are applying in this study. Li et al. [30] published unusually high CF numbers in terms of Mt CO₂e/person and year, ranging from 3.84 (China) to 7–10 (Japan, Europe), arriving at 20 Mt CO₂e/person and year in USA, which cannot be explained by the fact that they related the CF to students alone.

While the two CF parameters kg CO₂e/m² (Fig. 3a, mean: 2.36) and kg CO₂e/1000 $ expenditures (Fig. 3c, mean: 248) both exhibit a linear distribution of results, the per capita parameter displays an agglomeration of 11 from 22 universities around 1 Mt CO₂e/person and year (see Fig. 3b). This number today seems to indent a university working carbon efficiently. However, whether or not a university consumes green electricity has an enormous impact on this result which we are illustrating with the following example. NTU (Singapore) ends up with a CF of 3.4 Mt CO₂e/person and year (Fig. 3b), based on an electricity consumed with a CF of 0.5 kg CO₂e/kWh. In case NTU would have access to the same green electricity that the ETH Zürich is consuming (0.013 kg CO₂e/kWh, [41]), NTU’s CF per capita would decrease from 3.4 to 1.35 Mt CO₂e/person and year, As a result, it would belong to the group of universities with the lowest CF in this investigation. However, there is no such green electricity in sufficient quantity available in Singapore. In such a situation, buying carbon offsets might be the option to decrease the university’s CF (see below).

Finally, we assign an overall score in carbon performance to each of the 20 best documented universities. The carbon footprint of the best performer in each of the three categories is set to 1.0, and then, the three category records are summarized for the respective university. The best possible score (lower scores are better) in this way is 3. 0; ETH Zürich reaches a 3.53 as this university performs best in two of the three impacts and is No 9 in the per capita CF (see Fig. 3). Table 1 reports the results of this overall carbon performance score (3.53–21.44) establishing a ranking of the 20 universities. This overall carbon performance score is visualized as well in Fig. 1. Carbon offsetting measures, undertaken by three universities, were not considered at this point, but are discussed below.

Global distribution of university CF performances

Appendix: Fig. 7 graphically depicts the overall scores in carbon performance. It is headed by a group of three: ETH Zürich (Switzerland), University of Talca (Chile), and Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany). Seven more universities belong to the top 10 performers: TU Johor Bahru (Malaysia), University of Cork (Irland), Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa (UAM) in Mexico City, Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (Germany), King’s College London (Great Britain), University of Potsdam (Germany), and Nanyang Technological University of Singapore. Interestingly, in this group of top 10 performers, there are small and big universities, spreading across eight countries and three continents (Europe, Asia, and South America).

Figure 1 allows to search for a possible global correlation of CFs with, for instance, geographical latitude, based on the assumption that universities in warm countries would need to consume more electricity because of air-conditioning. There is no such trend visible (see Fig. 1). Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa (UAM) in Mexico City, a university in a tropical climate, is having one of the best carbon performances (taking aside the CF related to expenditures, Fig. 1). Also Nanyang Technological University with its tropical location exhibits a relatively well carbon performance altogether (see Fig. 1).

Instead of with latitude, the per capita CFs correlate with the national CFs per capita (see below). Accordingly, universities in Australia and the USA exhibit the highest CFs (see Fig. 1). Europe, on the other hand, shows a striking number of low CF universities. One reason can be infrastructure: Other than in USA, in Europe, most buildings do not have air conditioning. Another reason is availability of green energy: in Germany and Switzerland, for example, institutions can opt for 100% green electricity.

Correlation between the parameters investigated

Intercorrelations were investigated each between the following parameters: kg CO₂e/1000 $ expenditures, Mt CO₂e/person, kg CO₂e/m², aggregated carbon performance, the number of staff plus students, and constructed enclosure area. From 12 correlation combinations investigated, there were just two exhibiting a correlation: the CF per capita and year related to the number of students and staff, and, respectively, the CF per capita and year related to the constructed enclosure area of the respective universities (see Fig. 4). The very low degree of intercorrelation, however, should not come as a surprise given the enormous heterogeneity in the distribution pattern of partial university carbon emissions (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 4

University population (students plus staff, a) and constructed enclosure area (b) both related to Mt CO₂e/capita and year. Coefficient of determination in graph A calculated excluding Yale University. The box (graph A) includes 10 universities reaching a per capita carbon footprint of lower than or close to 1.0 Mt CO₂e/person and year. Mt = metric tons

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Although these correlations are weak (see Fig. 4), universities seem to face difficulty in achieving a low per capita CF when growing in size. The problems of larger universities are most obvious when correlating the per capita CF with constructed enclosure areas (see Fig. 4b). We believe that this is due to the fact that larger universities are running infrastructure which is absent in smaller universities. For example, NTU (Singapore) is operating extended sports facilities including a swimming area, while such infrastructure is not available at the much smaller Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (Germany).

Correlation between university population and Mt CO₂e/person spent (Fig. 4a) exhibited further peculiarities. First, we have excluded Yale University from the correlation, because Yale is generally enrolling, due to local university politics, a particularly low number of students. While the 20 universities investigated (excluding Yale) have enrolled 2.4–17.2 (average: 6.2) times more students than staff employed, Yale enrolls just 0.8 times the number of students compared to number of staff available. Perhaps surprisingly, a high number of students-to-staff ratio does not automatically result in an advantageous capita-related CF: while University of Tetovo (Macedonia) with 16.2 × more students than staff exhibits 0.9 Mt CO₂e/person, the Minnesota State University in Mankato with its 17.2 × more students than staff ends up with a three times higher footprint (2.9 Mt CO₂e/person, see Fig. 3b). Vice versa, De Montfort University Leicester (GB) with its students-to-staff ratio of only 5. 4 is placed in the top group with around 1 Mt CO₂e/person.

Astonishingly, however, the correlation between University population and Mt CO₂e/person spent (Fig. 4a) points to a group of universities maintaining a low per capita CF of up to or near 1.0 Mt CO₂e/person, independent to the size of university population (see the box added in Fig. 4a). In other words, the ETH Zürich, Kings College London, University of Potsdam, and De Montfort University Leicester successfully reached around 1.0 Mt CO₂e/person and year although being relatively large with 20,000–30,000 students enrolled. Vice versa, the five universities in this comparison with the highest enrollment numbers (39,383–47,000 students, Tongji University Shanghai [China], the University of Maryland [USA], University of Leuven [Belgium], and the Universities of Brisbane and Melbourne [Australia]) all belong to the group of universities with the highest CF in terms of Mt CO₂e/person.

University CFs relative to national per capita CFs

On average, university CFs per capita resulted in 23% of the national per capita footprints (range: 12 – 37%, Fig. 5). National per capita carbon emissions, as published by the EU commission, comprise emissions from fossil fuel use, industrial processes and product use [42]. These are consolidated in the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) providing past- and present-day anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants by country, including energy and manufacturing facilities, and road networks [43]. Accordingly, EDGAR data are in principle comparable to our determination of university CFs which are dominated by energy use and mobility. However, whereas EDGAR summarizes national emissions, we have based our university impact quantification on use phase plus supply chains. A part of the supply chains (e.g., vehicle production) may reach beyond the country in which the university is located.

Fig. 5

University CFs per capita and year relative to national per capita footprints (the latter for 2015, taken from [42], areas shown for Australia, USA, and European countries with universities covered in this investigation (Mt = metric tons)

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When it comes to the carbon footprint of workplaces, economy sectors are compared with varying degree of energy intensity. The EU commission [44] emphasized that 70% of all workforce produces less than 12% of all CO₂ emissions, including the sectors of construction, wholesale, retail trade, and other services. More specifically, Eurostat [45] reports that the sector of scientific research and development services in the EU28 spent just 12 kg CO₂ per inhabitant, and all education services spent 100 kg CO₂ per inhabitant, respectively, both domestic plus imported emissions for the year 2017. The overall GHG emission footprint in the European countries covered in our investigation, however, amounts to 10 Mt CO₂e/capita in 2017 (calculated from [42]). Because we considered commuting and business travel within the universities’ CF, we might also compare the overall mobility impact of Europeans: 1.8 Mt CO₂e/capita in 2017 [42], and 0.8 Mt CO₂e/capita of it being related to travelling with cars and trains (calculated from [46]. The latter emissions plus the education and research/development sector emissions amounts to 0.91 Mt CO₂e/capita in 2017, equivalent to 9.1% of the overall per capita GHG emissions in Europe, and close to the 12% CF per capita, we quantified for European universities relative to the national impacts (Fig. 5).

University per capita CFs correlate with the national CFs (Fig. 5), which is to be expected: while emissions from electricity production often dominate the national CFs [42], this is as well the case for emissions from electricity consumption of universities. Universities are connected to the national electricity grid, as long they do not separate themselves by operating their own power plants.

Europe exhibits a striking number of low CF universities (see Table 1), as the 10 European universities studied here have on average just 12% CF per capita compared to the national per capita CFs (as well averaged). On the other hand, this investigation lacks representativity and may be biased: we did not specifically search for carbon-efficient universities, but for universities publishing sufficient data necessary for a full evaluation. However, universities with good documentation may be just the universities successful in carbon emission minimization, and therefore publishing their success. In other words, we would not have (any) data from those universities not interested or not engaged in CF optimization.

Given the relatively high magnitudes of per capita university footprints (see Fig. 5), saving energy/reducing CFs within universities would conversely decrease the respective national footprints: at German universities, for example, there are 2.9 million students enrolled [47]. Adding around 10% university staff results in 3.2 million people, equivalent to 3.85% of the national population [48]. There are nations with higher numbers: college enrollment alone makes up roughly 5.6% of the entire US population (based on data from [49]). Hence, transforming universities into carbon-efficient institutions should be handled as a high-priority national endeavour.

Relating the CF to research orientation of universities

It may be expected that research oriented universities might show higher carbon footprints than universities that are less research active, due to the more complex infrastructure and more staff members necessary to support research activities. However, this is not reflected in the results here: The university of Lüneburg as a research oriented HEI is among the leading institutions when it comes to its carbon footprints (Figs. 1, 3 and Table 1). Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld, which may be regarded as less research oriented, even displays a slightly weaker carbon record (see Figs. 1, 3 and Table 1). Both represent relatively small campuses. The expectation that research activities increase the footprints is also not confirmed for big institutions. The nine universities in this study with the lowest CF (performance ranks 1–9, see Table 1) include five research oriented HEIs with between 18,464 and 31,377 students, among them the ETH Zürich and the King’s College London as top research universities (Table 1), the latter two each operating a medical department with its very high infrastructure costs and impacts.

The critical factors for attaining a low carbon footprint on a university campus are as follows. It needs dedicated low-energy building technology and access to renewable energy (e.g., University of Lüneburg and Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld, Germany), as well as continuous investments and resources necessary to optimize energy consumption and reduce emissions. Not by chance, the ETH Zürich published its first CO₂-emission report already in 2004 which included a historical analysis back to 1990 [50], while the King’s College London is recording CO₂ emissions since 2005 [51], and is running a program to stimulate carbon-efficient behavior by distinguishing sustainability champions [52].

Approaching zero emissions: carbon offsetting

Reducing CO₂ emissions by a small fraction is no longer sufficient to reach a long-term stable climate globally. Many institutions and technologies will have to try to reach zero emissions. The European Commission has accepted this challenge and is aiming for climate neutrality by the year 2050 [53]. The term “zero emissions”, however, needs to be defined: carbon neutrality, for example, would require (net) zero CO₂ emission in the global economy, and technically, it is a hypothetical concept today: there is not a single IPCC concept achieving it [54]. In contrast, “net zero carbon emissions can be achieved by balancing any remaining CO₂ emissions by CO₂ removals of exactly the same amount” (Rogelj et al. 2015, note: net zero GHG emissions should be targeted instead of just CO₂). Monash University (Melbourne) seems to embrace this concept in its “Net zero initiative” [38]. It intends to reach zero carbon emissions in 2030 by implementing zero energy buildings, establishing renewable electricity plants and halving energy consumption. However, a net zero concept today can only work with an excess of green energy production or when combined with another compensation mechanism.

The much smaller Leuphana University Lüneburg is demonstrating this: by maximum employment of modern building technology and highly sophisticated green energy management (e.g., a high-temperature aquifer thermal energy storage), the university produces a surplus of energy and can thus almost completely offset its own GHG emissions (recalculated after [16], see Appendix).

Leuphana University Lüneburg even claims to have several 1,000 Mt of negative CO₂e emissions per year [16]. However, when recalculating the balances more conservatively (not assuming hydropower electricity to be spent, not neglecting commuting and business trips, and quantifying the offset CO₂e earnings due to feeding in the surplus renewable electricity into the net more realistically with respect to the average German carbon footprint, for more details, see Appendix), then the university can certainly compensate its emissions. We found Leuphana university having the third lowest aggregated carbon performance (see Table 1), without considering the offsets. Because of its very low overall CF, even the 100% renewable energy consumption of this campus makes up to 30.7% of its overall CF. However, when considering the energy offsets earned by Leuphana University Lüneburg (after recalculation, see Appendix), then the CFs reach very low numbers, almost approaching zero Fig. 3a–c). Leuphana University Lüneburg thus can be treated as the only zero (carbon) emission university in this investigation.

Consuming 100% renewable electricity alone, however, does not qualify universities to become zero emission entity today, although this misunderstanding has been noticed in the statements of two universities in this investigation [18, 38]. It goes back to the definition of zero carbon buildings having zero net CO₂ emissions from energy use [12]. Also energy producers in Germany actually mark their green electricity production as emitting 0. 0 g CO₂/kWh, this way ignoring upstream emissions (e.g., [55]). In contrast, even renewable electricity production has a carbon footprint today (e.g., PV electricity production comes with around 50–80 gCO₂e/kWh, according to [56]). This impact needs to be compensated. The above reduced definition of “zero emission” also ignores impacts caused by people working in buildings.

Carbon emission compensation (“offsetting”) can be implemented with the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) allowing the use of compensation mechanisms through flexible application of the Kyoto Protocol [57]. Other than Udas et al. [9] state, CDM may open a standard way to become carbon–neutral. Several universities are already on this way: University of Maryland, also planning to reach zero carbon emissions, reported an offset of around 50,000 Mt CO₂e due to purchasing carbon credits [58]. Monash University (Melbourne) reported an 18,883 Mt CO₂e offset as follows: «Car fleet fuel consumption was offset with permanent biodiverse native forests planted by a greenhouse friendly approved abatement provider” [59]. Further universities covered in this investigation have announced to start a carbon offset program (e.g., the University of Queensland, see [60]).

How expensive is the compensation of CO₂e emissions? An international pollutant valuation review resulted in monetarized impacts of 27–164 (average: 77) $/Mt of CO₂ [61]. The purchase of voluntary certificates for CO₂ compensation is more reasonable with 5–80 (average of five commercial programs: 27.3) €/ Mt of CO₂ [62]. Given the 2,696 Mt CO₂e emitted by the Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld in 2017, it would need an investment of 73,601 € to fully compensate its emissions and reach net zero, equivalent to just 0.8% of expenditure (without salaries) made in 2017. To compensate its 32,869 Mt CO₂e emission, the ETH Zürich would have to buy carbon certificates for 897,324 €, equivalent to only 0.17% of its expenditures (without salaries) made in 2017. The question arises why this is not done yet at universities.

Limitations and strengths of this investigation

While emissions from energy consumption and business travels can be exactly measured, the questionnaires on which quantification of commuting impacts is based deliver relatively weak estimations: only a fraction of students and staff out of the whole population is participating in such exercise, and the student generations are interchanging quickly which can continuously modify their habits. However, so far, there has been no alternative available for quantification of commuting emissions.
University CFs from single (budget) years are subjected to meteorological changes causing a bias to the data. Universities seeking to manage their CF should, therefore, quantify the meteorological influence. Schwartzkopf and Urban [63] provided weather-normalized data for Minnesota State University (Mankato), exhibiting an up to 15% of meteorological influence on heating energy consumption, for example.
Next to the influence of weather conditions, the emissions of specific years might be biased by university growth and opening of new buildings. Metha et al. [64] have developed a method quantifying these influences.
This investigation provides a status quo in worldwide university CFs based on 1-year university data in the period of 2008–2018. Thus, we hereby only see snapshots in the long-term carbon performance of these universities. Instead, a long-term longitudinal study would be more appropriate, but data are often lacking for such endeavour.
Almost all universities documenting CFs set themselves goals for CF reduction. As universities started at different years in managing and decreasing their CFs, this should not cause an additional bias.
Missing impacts had to be estimated for a couple of universities resulting in lower data precision. However, even a not so precise estimation of impacts like commuting improves the accuracy of the university CF compared to when omitting the respective impact. Consequently, this enabled a more harmonized inter-university CF comparison.

Conclusions

Although already initiated in 1993, the process of eco-impact reduction seems to be still in its infancy among universities worldwide. Several hundred universities have started to document climate relevant emissions, developing plans to minimize them. An even smaller number of universities are publishing their emission records. However, emissions of important sources such as commuting are often not included. It also turned out that published emission budgets need critical reviewing, not only because they may be incomplete, but also because budgets may be based on unrealistic assumptions and uncommon definitions.

Universities can actually reach zero carbon emissions, proven by Leuphana University in Germany, which achieves this goal through maximum use of modern technology and on-site surplus renewable energy production. However, maximum use of technology means a particular high upstream carbon impact due to the materials incorporated. This can implicate extended pay-back times and change the carbon performance, an effect which has not yet been quantified for universities.

Besides modern technology, low or even zero carbon emissions can be achieved by purchasing carbon certificates. We believe that both pathways will need to be combined.

Moreover, we realized that almost every university in the world, independent of its climate zone, its focus and profile, can reach very low carbon footprints, based on the political will, necessary investments granted and the creativity needed from their researchers. Smaller and universities in urban areas can go achieve low CFs more easily because of less infrastructure and mobility impacts. The availability of a green energy supply, however, is generally a crucial factor. Based on the expected worldwide transition towards increasing renewable energy production in the coming decades [65], carbon footprints of energy provision might need a new way of quantification [66, 67].

This is in no way a criticism on certain universities for having a higher CF than others. All universities considered in this overview are to be commended in the way that they quantify and publish (parts of) their CF, hence are thus among the leading universities worldwide in this regard. Obviously, the majority of worldwide universities do not publish any or any useful impact data. As universities are innovation drivers in science and technology, and thus are willing to accept their responsibility to support the transformation towards a sustainable world, this should change and become a much broader movement.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets supporting the research are included in the Appendix.

Abbreviations

Mt:: Metric tons
CF(s):: Carbon footprint(s)
HEI(s):: Higher education institution(s)
NTU:: Nanyang Technological University
UCB:: Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld
GHG:: Greenhouse gases
kWh:: Kilowatt hour
GWh:: Gigawatt hour
CO₂e:: CO₂-equivalent emissions quantifying a global climate change impact (here: carbon impact)

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Acknowledgements

We cordially thank Frank Gemeinhardt for Fig. 1 preparation, Karsten Swarat for translation from Malayan, Adela Irmene Ortiz Lopez and Marcia Vasquez Sandoval for providing additional data of their universities, Kira Cloos for data digging, and Andreas Schaffer for his support. Viola Helmers kindly commented on this manuscript and located PPP conversion factors. This manuscript benefitted very much from improvements kindly suggested by three reviewers. Sincere thanks to Christoph Frick (Umwelt-Campus Company GmbH) and to Andreas Doll for providing comprehensive UCB buildings consumption data. E.H. would like to thank Associate Vice president Prof. Subodh Mhaisalkar for supporting a research stay at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Dedicated to Prof. Dr. habil. Michael Schlaak — a great motivator in university sustainability research.

Funding

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The project received funding from Nanyang Technological University Singapore.

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Dep. of Environ. Planning and Technology, University of Applied Sciences Trier, Umwelt-Campus, PO box 1380, 55761, Birkenfeld, Germany

Eckard Helmers
Energy Research Institute (ERI@N), Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

Chia Chien Chang
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

Justin Dauwels

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EH conceived the original idea, collected and analysed the data, and wrote and revised the manuscript. CCC and JD corrected and completed the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Eckard Helmers.

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Appendix

Impacts were quantified in most cases from process data obtained from the German/international GEMIS/ProBas databases, which generally consider upstream effects [68, 69].

Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (UCB), University of Applied Sciences Trier (Germany)

UCB: Energy

The campus is provided with electricity and heat by a neighbouring combined heat and power plant (CHP) burning waste wood. This plant is owned by the regional electricity company, which also provides 100% renewable electricity to the campus. We quantified the electricity impacts with a matching impact specified by GEMIS [70]: 18 g CO₂e/kWh. The campus purchased electricity with an impact of 22.94 Mt CO₂e this way.

PV electricity is additionally provided by campus-own CdTe-moduls having an impact of 0.024 kg CO₂/kWh. (impact factor provided by [71]). Additionally there is electricity produced by monocrystalline PV, calculated with 0.061 kg CO₂e/kWh [70]. This way the campus indirectly emitted 1.3 Mt CO₂e.

The district heating system loaded by the above CHP plant provides heat with an impact factor of 0.065 kg CO₂e/kWh [70] resulting in an impact of 206.5 Mt CO₂e. Heat is as well produced by a campus-own solar collector (0.025 kg CO₂e/kWh, [70]) adding 0.35 Mt CO₂e.

UCB: Water, wastes and office material

Freshwater consumption is considered with a conversion factor of 0. 381 kg CO₂/m³ [72] causing 3.27 Mt CO₂. A campus-own rainwater collection unit added freshwater with an impact of 0.33 kg CO₂/m³ [73], another 0.51 Mt CO₂ were brought about this way. Wastewater disposal was considered based on 0.254 kg CO₂/m³ [72] adding 3.8 Mt CO₂ to the CF of the campus. All solid wastes were quantified with a conversion factor of 0.0218 kg CO₂/kg, just composting material with 0.006 kg CO₂/kg [74], resulting in an impact of 1.41 Mt CO₂.

Office material was converted to CO₂ impacts as follows: envelopes and paper with a factor of 1.28 kg CO₂/kg [72], toner with a factor of 4.8 kg CO₂/kg [75], respectively. Taken together, both resulted in an impact of 9.7 Mt CO₂.

UCB: Mobility impact assessment

Input data used for mobility impact modelling were taken from different sources. Carbon footprint for international flight km were taken from the German federal “process based basic data for environmental management systems”, resulting in 153 g CO₂/km including supply chain [76].

CF when using personal cars were quantified during full LCA modelling resulting in 268,5 g CO₂e/km [25]. CFs of public buses and trains have been researched in the literature resulting in averages of 120,9 g and 68,9 g CO₂e/PKM, respectively [25]. Business trips caused an impact of 177.1 Mt CO₂e, internal business cars added another 10.7 Mt of CO₂ at Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld.

Commuting

Detailed quantification of commuting impacts is based on questionnaires. First of all, it is essential to estimate how many days/weeks a year students visit the university. This was quantified as being 36 weeks/year on average at Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld, which was applied as well on other universities.

A questionnaire at Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld in 2015 delivered the following numbers:

16,06% of the students live on campus. They drive home once a week by car (180 km per weekend).
The rest of the students commute 3 days a week from home to university driving 66. 66 km/day (43.6% by train, 6.5% by bus, 33.9% by car), due to the questionnaire.
There are lectures on 30 weeks in a year; additionally the students need to arrive for 20 written exams per year, resulting in 110 days of commuting to the campus per year (→ 7,326 km of commuting/student x year with the above mix of transport).
Among the staff, 36% commute by train, 3.9% by bus, 60.1% by car. Driving impacts were calculated based on the same distances applied for the students. 184 working days were calculated per year.

Student commute results in an impact of 1,826.8 Mt CO₂e, while the commuting impact of the staff amounted to 431.5 Mt CO₂e at Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld.

Commuting of students for foreign universities were calculated considering the number of places available for students to live on campus.

ETH Zürich (Switzerland)

Only recently that ETH Zürich has opened around 900 student rooms. Before this, there were no student dorms so far at ETH campus. Accordingly, most students (19,707) have to commute daily for which we assume only half of the distance (30 km) per day compared to Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (UCB), because UCB is a rural site which requires longer distances for staff and students to travel, while e.g. the ETH Zürich is located in a metropolitan area.

Based on an excellent public transportation network available in the Zürich area (mostly train and tram), most students will travel using such transportation (→ 68,9 g CO₂e/PKM, see [25]). 110 × 30 × 68.9 g CO₂/km × 19.707 → 4,481 t CO₂e. This number exhibits that the 1,714 t CO₂ mentioned as spent for commuting, but without specification in detail, obviously means staff commuting [41].

University of Cape Town (South Africa)

UCT offers 6000 places in student dorms [77], hence the remaining 20,000 students need to commute. As 44% (8800) use their cars [27], student commuting CF was calculated by: 8,800 × 110 × 30 × 268.5 g/km → 7,797 Mt CO₂e. 38% commute via a shuttle service (mini bus): 20,000 × 0.38 × 110 × 30 × 120.9 g CO₂e/km→ 3,235 t. Students commuting together: 11,032 Mt CO₂e.

King’s College London (Great Britain)

[22] reported that 75.5% of the students commute with public transport, most of all by trains. Accordingly the commuting carbon impact was quantified as (comparably to the above universities in metropolitan areas): 110 days × 30 km x (31.377 × 0,755) × 68.9 g/ CO₂e PKM → 5,386 Mt CO₂e.

Monash University, Melbourne (Australia)

The number of places in student dorms was not available in the internet, however, it was mentioned that there are many of such dorms in a distance of 10–65 km off campus(es). Therefore an average distance of 30 km a days was assumed for half of the students, travelled by train/tram: → 31,623 × 110 days × 30 km × 68. 9 kg CO₂/km → 7,190 CO₂ for student commuting.

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru (Malaysia)

It was not possible to figure out the number of professors as the data is not available online. Accordingly we could not estimate the business flight activity. Commuting impacts, however, have been included [78].

Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany)

Based on [16] the consolidated CF of the university is composed of its electricity production (296 Mt CO₂e), heat production (2,036 Mt CO₂e), freshwater and paper consumption (50 Mt CO₂e), commuting impacts (3,694 Mt CO₂e), business travelling (1517 Mt CO₂e), resulting in 7,593 Mt in total.

Calculation of offsets: Due to [16] the aquifer thermal energy storage installation results in additional savings of 2,424 t CO₂e/y which obviously corresponds with the excess thermal energy delivered to the neighbourhood. Additionally the university feeds in excess electricity into the network. [16] quantified the production impact based on hydropower (5 g CO₂e/kWh). We believe this should more realistically be based on the PV electricity production available (80 g CO₂e/kWh). [16] quantified the outside electricity CF saved based on electricity generation by coal fired power plants (821–921 g CO₂e/kWh), we quantify it based on the German electricity production impact specified by the German federal environmental agency [79] for the year 2015, which is 575 g CO₂e/kWh. Based on 8.65 GWh surplus electricity production of the university [16], this results in an electricity offset of 4,282 Mt CO₂e. Together with the surplus in heat production this results in an offset of 6,706 Mt CO₂e which has been confronted to the 7,593 Mt of CO₂e emissions.

Currency conversion and expenditure related CF quantification (PPP correction)

University expenditures were taken from financial university reports [74,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96].

The expenditures of the Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld (UCB) and Universidad Autononma Metropolitana (UAM) in Mexico-City were provided by the university administrations.

Currency conversion factors were applied relative to the individual year of study. Singapore $ were converted to US $ according to [97], Malayan Ringgit were converted to US $ according to [98]. All other currencies were converted to US $ according to [99]. Dividing the carbon emissions (Mt CO₂e emitted/y, Table 1) of the respective universities by the university expenditures in US $ resulted in the CFs displayed in Appendix: Fig. 6 (left: without, right: with PPP correction), as well as in the CFs displayed in Fig. 3c. For PPP correction, university expenditures were corrected before division applying the factors provided by [24], specific to the respective year.

Fig. 6

Carbon footprints based on university expenditures without and with purchasing power parity (PPP) correction

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Numerated partial carbon impacts of universities covered (supplementing Fig.

See Table 2.

Table 2 Distribution pattern of partial carbon impacts at 18 universities worldwide (reproducing Fig. 2 in numerical form)

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Normalized carbon footprint (CF) performances

See Table 3 and Fig. 7.

Table 3 Normalized carbon footprint (CF) performances. The lowest yearly CF each found for constructed area, per capita, and per expenditures (see Fig. 3 a–c) is set to 1.0

Full size table

Fig. 7

Normalized carbon footprint performances. The plots display the data of Appendix: Table 3. The best performer in the categories A-C is set to 1.0 (marked by an asterisk). Without the offsets specified in Fig. 3a–c for three universities. The columns shown here are displayed on the world map in Fig. 1. CF = Carbon footprint. U = University. Universities are named with respect to the cities they are located. Some have deviating/completing names: UM College Park MD = University of Maryland. U Mankato MN = University of Minnesota. U Melbourne, Australia = Monash University. U Brisbane = University of Queensland. U Pittsburgh PA = Duquesne University. DeMU Leicester = De Montfort University. NTU = Nanyang Technological University. UCB = Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld. UAM = Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa. Tongji University Shanghai: CF performance/expenditures based on research budget only

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Bottleneck Calculator and PC Build Compare

CPUAgent has built the best way to compare gaming PC setups. We filter for everything that matters and show which computers will run which games.

You can’t buy a more powerful gaming platform than a tricked-out desktop PC. Here’s everything you need to know, part by part, to pick the right killer gaming system

Looking for cheap computers for Apex Legends, Red Dead Redemption, Fortnite, Minecraft, or even the Sims? Click the options below, narrow your choice and use our charts to find the best PC deal.

The best gaming PCs let you enjoy the latest AAA games the way they were meant to be played, whether you’re ripping and tearing through Doom Eternal or scaring yourself silly in Resident Evil 3.

And why wait for the PS5 and Xbox Series X? With the right gaming PC, you can enjoy features such as ray tracing, 4K and 60 fps gaming and fast SSD load times right now. Building a PC is a great option for those who want to tweak things exactly the way they see fit, but there are tons of great pre-built gaming PC options that give you great performance out of the box for a reasonable price.

But while gaming PCs are a great way to enjoy the latest games at blistering settings with minimal hassle, there’s plenty you need to know before plunking down upwards of thousands of dollars for one. And with so many models to choose between from the top PC makers, finding the right PC for your budget can get overwhelming.

That’s where we come in. We regularly research, test and review the hottest gaming desktops out there to help you find the very best gaming PC for your needs.

Buying yourself the best gaming PC as a prebuilt system can be the best place to start when you’re getting into PC gaming, or when you’ve hit a wall trying to upgrade your current system. Sure, building your own rig can be immensely satisfying, but simply buying a complete gaming PC will take all the stress out of a homebrew project and give you somewhere to turn if, heaven forbid, anything goes wrong.

While part of the innate beauty of the gaming PC is the potential for upgrading components to boost performance, that capacity is finite. There exists a tipping point where it’s no longer cost effective to keep upgrading and a rebuild becomes necessary. And that’s where buying the best gaming PC you can afford starts to make a lot of sense.

Getting a good deal on a pre-built gaming PC can take just as much research as putting together a great high-end PC build. Some system builders will try to saddle you with a bundle that charges a premium for things you may not need, like overclocking, RGB, a monitor, or a keyboard and mouse. Even if you do need these things, there’s often a good chance that you get something better for less.

A specs-sheet balance of price and performance is our top priority. Ideally, your gaming PC will have one of the best graphics cards and the best CPUs for gaming, though that’s not always financially possible. But you can’t skimp on one and go overboard on the other; an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti is only worth having if it’s paired with a top-flight processor that can take advantage of its power. Then there’s the support. After sale support is where a good system builder becomes a great system builder and is where it can really make sense to buy a pre-built machine.

All power players ponder how to build a gaming PC at some point or another and whether it’s worth it. That’s great option if choices and DIY don’t scare you — it’s sometimes the only way to get the exact configuration you want — or if you think it’ll be fun. But it generally doesn’t work out to be a way to save money over an identical ready-to-ship model.

It may be cheaper than getting a premium custom built model from a company like Origin PC, Falcon Northwest, Digital Storm and the like, but the flip side is that it’s nice to have someone else do the overclocking iterations, stability testing and burn-in runs. There are few things more frustrating than gearing up and sitting down to play the latest AAA only to have it crap out during the opening cut scene with only yourself to blame.

The other high-level decision you may confront is desktop vs. laptop, especially since 17-inch gaming laptops with desktop-class CPUs and GPUs like the Alienware Area-51m and Acer Predator Helios 700 deliver desktop-level performance with convenience similar to an all-in-one. An all-in-one with a really fast, gaming-optimized display. Though big laptops like these usually support upgrades, its usually not as cheap or easy to do it as it is with even the least-expensive desktop.

Choosing the best PC for your gaming experience is all about trade-offs. Every game uses system resources — processor (aka CPU), graphics processor (GPU), memory (RAM), storage — differently, and often horribly inefficiently. You can’t even count on resource usage to be consistent across a specific game genre, such as first-person shooter (FPS), platformer or simulation, because optimization levels can vary wildly. Gaming (and content-creation) PCs are the angry toddlers of consumer electronics: They’re loud, willful and require constant supervision. And just when you think they’re under control, they veer off into crazy-town.

Intel versus AMD CPUs: Unless you’re buying a custom build or doing it yourself, you really don’t get to choose comparable configurations to mix and match. The manufacturers tend to choose the configurations based on what they think will be popular at given price levels. Pick your preferred graphics card and then see what CPU options are on offer within your budget. AMDs tend to have slower clock speeds — they have higher base clocks and lower boost clocks — but better multicore performance for the same money. If your favorite games are old, they probably don’t take advantage of more than four cores (if that), and will likely give you the power you need from Intel’s fast individual cores. However, AMD’s most recent processors have significantly closed the single-core-performance gap with Intel and almost all support overclocking (only Intel’s K series do).

Unless you have unlimited funds, the price tag will also play a role in your decision. If you’re looking for a decent computer with basic to mid-level specs, you can expect to pay around $699. If you are willing to spend $1,000 or so, you can certainly find a solid tower with mid-to-high level specs. And if you’re feeling flush and ready to drop $1,500 or more, you’ll be able to buy a very high-end system with top-notch specs like multiple GPUs and a minimum of two drives (either hard or solid state).

BMW Part Number Price Comparison for Windows & Mac

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Comparison of the two main parts of the horror game Outlast

Outlast

Outlast was first released in 2013 on PC (Windows) and in 2014 on the console (PS4 and Xbox One). This game is developed by Red barrels, founded in 2011 and based in Montreal, Canada. Outlast is undoubtedly one of the most popular games in its genre (survival horror). It received high critical acclaim and many positive reviews.

Outlast, 2013

Synopsis of the first part of Outlast: the protagonist, journalist Miles Ulsher, goes to the Mount Massive Clinic to report on illegal experiments being carried out at the clinic. Once there, he is faced with horrific scenes, including corpses, mutilated bodies, encounters with strange, sometimes indifferent, sometimes hostile characters. Now his main task is to survive and escape from the Mount Massive clinic.

Miles is armed with a night vision camera that sometimes runs out of batteries. They can be looted, but they are rare, so the night vision mode sometimes has to be removed. The reporter also has a notebook with him, in which he makes notes during the game.

A distinctive feature and, perhaps, the main element of the forcing atmosphere and fear in the game is the fact that the main character, controlled by the player, does not have the ability to defend against NPCs or attack them. In other words, he wanders, afraid to take an extra step, because danger can wait anywhere, and he will not have the opportunity to fight back, the only way is to run. The same trend continues in the second part of the game.

Outlast 2

I’ll say in advance that between the two named parts there is another one called Outlast: Whistleblower, which is an addition to the first. In this article, this game will not be covered, since it is not a full-fledged part, and its actions take place within the walls of the same hospital as in the first part.

So, Outlast 2 tells us about the story of a journalist named Blake Langermann, as well as his wife Lynn and school love Jessica ( spoiler : the latter died many years ago). Blake and Lynn travel to an Arizona village to investigate the murder of a pregnant woman. On the way, the helicopter crashes, after which Lynn is carried away by the locals. Blake, armed with a camera, goes in search of her, and along the way he learns more and more about this strange, frightening settlement, trying to survive and save his wife.

Sometimes Blake is «thrown» into a distorted past that shows us his most traumatic high school story (with Jessica). The distortions are represented by some dangerous entities or phenomena that reflect Blake’s bad associations with those events.

As in the previous part, in Outlast 2 the main character cannot resist any of the attackers or attack himself, he films what is happening on the camera and loots batteries, as well as bandages for self-healing. In addition, Blake can use the camera’s built-in microphone to listen in on distant NPC conversations, tracking their movements. Another interesting addition to the camera: when viewing recorded GG videos shot in a marked place, in the background we can hear Blake’s comments, which in «real life» he does not voice.

Comparison

It’s time to compare Outlast and Outlast 2.

Here are some criteria that reflect the difference in these games:

1. The plot of . The first part tells us about a man who finds himself in difficult conditions at the behest of his own curiosity and desire to make a scandalous report. GG is forced to go through a large number of rooms and corridors of the clinic, go unnoticed and keep his sanity. Along the way, hostile, mutilated people, closed doors and an aggravating environment await him. Outlast 2 begins with a reporter team flying in a helicopter. The initiators are Blake and Lynn, a husband and wife who flew to Arizona to investigate the cause of the murder of a pregnant woman in the area. The helicopter crashes, Lynn is dragged away by the locals, Blake is left alone and the worst begins.

2. The goal of the main character. In the first part of the game, the hero’s goal is clear and simple — to stay alive and get out of the Mount Massive clinic. In the second part, in addition to the obvious, the hero also tries to find and save his wife, who is being held by the villagers.

3. Ending (beware, spoilers! ). For the protagonist, Outlast ends not in the best way — he is killed by special forces. But, unexpectedly for the owner of the clinic and the soldiers, Miles turns out to be the carrier of the Walrider, the main project of the Murkoff laboratory, and, judging by the sounds, the Walrider begins to kill all the people nearby. What happened next, history is silent. Outlast 2, in turn, ends completely unexpectedly and incomprehensibly. After an agonizing birth, Lynn dies, leaving Blake alone in the church with the newborn and Daddy Knot. The latter says that with the birth of a child, paradise was destroyed and commits suicide, after which Blake, with a child in his arms, tries to leave the village, but he again has a hallucination where he and Jessica pray at school. Did everything really die, or did Blake manage to get out after another hallucination? Unfortunately, this story remains unfinished.

4. Gameplay. Management in both parts is carried out from the first person. Neither in one nor in the other part of the main character has the ability to defend and attack. The set of improvised items in the first part of the game is limited to a camera, loose batteries and a notepad. The main tasks of the player: moving around the clinic, solving simple puzzles. Sometimes he has to hide under beds or in closets to escape his pursuers. As for the second part, bandages used for self-healing, as well as a microphone built into the camera, have replenished the range of subjects. Sliding and crawling were added to the movements, as well as a limitation on the endurance of the protagonist and the need for healing.

Overall, both games are decent games in their genre and continue to scare more and more players. Despite the fact that Outlast is more recognized, I personally would prefer the second part. Firstly, because of the graphics, which gives developers the opportunity to depict disgusting mutilated bodies and other hard-hitting details in more detail. Secondly, the plot itself seemed to me more interesting and varied. In addition to the two warring camps of religious fanatics who have gone, in parallel the game tells us about the story of Blake and Jessica, which also keeps the player in suspense and drags on more and more.

Well, we are waiting for the release of the third part of The Outlast Trials, which promises to be cooperative, and, judging by the trailer, it will be no less frightening than the previous two games in the Outlast series.

Comparing two versions of a workbook using the Spreadsheet Comparison Tool

Office for Business Spreadsheet Compare 2013 Spreadsheet Compare 2016 Spreadsheet Compare 2019 Spreadsheet Compare 2021 More. ..Less

If other users have permission to edit your book, then after opening it, you may have questions «Who changed it? And what exactly changed?» Microsoft’s Spreadsheet Compare tool can help you answer these questions by finding changes and highlighting them.

Important: Spreadsheet Compare is only available with Office Professional Plus 2013, Office Professional Plus 2016, Office Professional Plus 2019, or Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.

Open the spreadsheet comparison tool.
In the bottom left pane, select the items you want to include in the book comparison, such as formulas, cell formatting, or macros. Or just select option Select All (Select all).
On the Home tab select item Compare Files (Compare files).
In the File Compare dialog box, in the » » line, select an older version of the book. In addition to selecting files saved on your computer or on the network, you can also enter a web address that leads to a book saved on the site.
In the dialog box «File comparison» in the «C» line to the desired version.

Note: You can compare two files with the same name if they are stored in different folders.

In two adjacent parts of the table, each sheet from both files is compared, starting from the leftmost one. If a sheet is hidden in a workbook, it is still shown and compared in the spreadsheet comparison tool.

If the content does not fit in the cells, select Resize Cells to Fit .

Different types of differences are highlighted using cell fill color or text font color. For example, cells with entered values (not formulas) are highlighted with green shading in adjacent parts of the table and green font in the results area. In the lower left part there are symbols explaining the meanings of colors.

Other ways to work with comparison results

If you want to save the results or analyze them in another application, export them to an Excel file or copy and paste them into another program such as Microsoft Word. You can also get a more accurate view of each worksheet, with cell formatting similar to what you see in Excel.

You can export the results to an Excel file that is easier to read. Select Home > Export Results (Home > Export results).

To copy the results and paste them into another program, select Home > Copy Results to Clipboard .

To display cell formatting from the book, select Home> Show Workbook Colors (Home> Show Book Colors).

Other reasons to compare books

The Spreadsheet Compare tool can be used not only to compare the contents of worksheets, but also to find differences in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code. The results are displayed in a window so that the differences can be viewed in parallel.

list of the best and worst parts of the

series

Game series

09/15/2021

It’s time to evaluate all the games in the line and find out: which one is the most worthy?

Far Cry (2004)

The original Far Cry, developed by Crytek and published by Ubisoft, is a radical departure from what the series is today. The first game told about a soldier named Jack Carver, who was looking for a journalist on a mysterious island filled with mercenaries and bloodthirsty mutants — the offspring of evil experiments.

At one time, Far Cry simply blew the roof off gamers. The unpredictable, cunning AI and open levels combined to give players tons of tactical space to take on AI opponents. Do you want to “quietly” go to the mercenary camp, laying the soldiers with a machete along the way? Not a bad idea, as well as killing enemies one by one from afar or running over everyone in a jeep while dodging bullets. Maybe today all this is cliched and boring, but back in 2004, such a decision breathed new life into the FPS genre.

It’s a pity that it’s much more difficult for today’s average gamer to return to the original, especially considering how much the series has evolved under Ubisoft’s leadership.

buy

Far Cry: Instincts (2005)

The Xbox-exclusive port of the original Far Cry had to go through a series of compromises to make it to consoles. Chief among them is the rejection of sandbox elements, which makes the gameplay feel more linear than in the PC version. The result is still a good game, but with reduced features.

Far Cry Vengeance (2006)

The only game on the list that deserves serious criticism is the Wii-exclusive remake of Far Cry: Instincts. Let’s be honest — Vengeance turned out to be useless. Like the Wii ports of many games, it had interesting controls, but the ugly visuals and silly AI made it the most unfortunate way to experience the Far Cry series.

Far Cry 2 (2008)

The White Crow series is both loved and hated by many. Not everyone liked the controversial mechanics of weapon wear and malaria, because of which the gamer feels powerless in some aspects of the game. Dirty visual styling, mediocre weapons, and endless enemy respawns are flaws that keep players reluctant to replay Far Cry 2.

At the same time, it is worth paying tribute to the bold and bold story that will surely stand the test of time, even if all other elements of the game will sink into oblivion.

buy

Far Cry 3 (2013)

What is real madness? The answer to this question comes from the notorious pirate Vaas, who has become one of the most memorable antagonists in video games due to his psychopathic unpredictability and eloquence. The character perfectly embodies the very essence of Far Cry as a series, where each game raises the bar of insanity to give players an incredible adrenaline rush and at the same time make (with mixed success) feel responsible for all the terrible things done by the heroes under their control.

Far Cry 3 has a strange storyline, but this story allows you to experience something that other games in the series have not experienced before.

Although parts 4 and 5 improved small gameplay elements, Far Cry 3 was the game that corrected the main flaws of the «two» in its time. Thrilling gunfights, a fantastic open world survival system — from burning marijuana fields to torturing friends for their own survival — Far Cry 3 struggles to balance crazy combat with explosive storytelling. Combining the most characteristic features of the Far Cry series, the «troika» becomes the best in this celebration of the bloody mess.

buy

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (2013)

For all the fascination of the storyline, Far Cry is often trashy to some extent — but in a good way. And in Blood Dragon, this trashiness reached its peak. More of a collection of 80s movie references than a full story, Blood Dragon mixes Terminator, RoboCop, Tron and Predator into something completely fun and… exciting!

buy

Far Cry 4 (2014)

The Indian/Nepal-inspired kingdom of Kirat gave us the most beautiful visual setting in the series. And breaking through the massive gates of the enemy camp on the back of an elephant, firing back from an assault rifle, is an incredible feeling.

If you value FPS for storytelling, then Far Cry 4 is perfect for you. The protagonist Ajay Gail, who went home to fulfill his mother’s dying errand, evokes strong sympathy, and the story, although sometimes chaotic, is attractive. In addition, in Kyrat you will face one of the most striking villains of the series — Pagan Ming.

buy

Far Cry Primal (2016)

Primal has become an essential game for the cycle. After more than a decade of running and shooting around the world, Far Cry might seem monotonous to some. But Primal was completely different: she threw us back in time and made us … a caveman.

Joseph Seed and his crazy family are nowhere near Vaas or Pagan Ming from the previous installments, but the random skirmishes that you can «run into» while exploring the world are some of the best in this part. And, of course, the fans’ favorite murder weapon is the shovel.

buy

Far Cry: New Dawn (2019)

The game was released at the beginning of 2019, and no, this is not the sixth part, but a continuation of the events of Far Cry 5. The gamer will visit familiar places, but after 17 years. The main antagonists are the twins Mickey and Lou, who lead a gang of raiders. The player will also see familiar characters — for example, Joseph Sid, Helper and others.

The game itself has absorbed, according to users, all the worst that the Far Cry series has. These are long sweeps of outposts, boring collection of resources, and many uninteresting quests. In fact, it is difficult to call a full-fledged New Dawn game — rather, it is a major DLC for the fifth part.

Nevertheless, the game does not pretend to be something revolutionary. Players and critics gave it average marks (mostly 7 out of 10), played it for a while and forgot about it.

Buy

Far Cry 6 (2021)

Far Cry 6 was announced in 2021, and the developers willingly shared the details of the project. The next issue of the series takes gamers to the fictional country of Yara (the prototype of which was Cuba), where they have to fight a local dictator who oppresses his people.

How exactly to fight is up to the players: Far Cry 6 offers a huge selection of weapons, vehicles and assistants; among the latter there are such exotic animals as a tame crocodile, as well as a charming dachshund named Chorizo.

Far Cry 6 combines the atmosphere of a sunny tropical country where civil war is raging, the ability to play a co-op campaign, impressive variability in completing tasks, as well as beautiful graphics and excellent performance on PC and next-generation consoles. Much indicates that this part, if not on a par with the great Far Cry 3, then at least come close to it.

Buy

All parts of the video game, the history of the series

Today, God of War is a respected and well-known gaming franchise, and its protagonist Kratos is one of the most recognizable characters in video game history. But how did she achieve this status? What games does it include? How has God of War changed over the years? The IgroRay online store answers all questions and tells the story of the legendary series.

History of the God of War video game series

God of War (2005)

This story began in 1999. It was then that Santa MonicaStudio was founded, which became the birthplace of the God of War. The company worked for Sony and was preparing to start developing games for the PlayStation 2 platform. To do this, the employees created their own Kinetica engine, which made it possible to use the full potential of the platform to display a large number of highly detailed models.

The first game on the new engine was the eponymous racing arcade Kinetica (2001), which did not gain much success with the public. After that, the Santa Monica Studio team began to think in which game the engine’s capabilities could be fully implemented.

As a result, the choice fell on the action genre. One of the authors of the game, game designer David Yaffe, spoke in an interview about the main sources of inspiration for the game — they were the Onimusha action series based on Japanese mythology, and the mixture of action and puzzle Ico. The original idea that formed the basis for the development of God of War was something like this: «We want to make a game like Onimusha, but based on Greek legends.»

However, the developers chose a free approach to the ancient heritage — they started not so much from the myths themselves, but from their spectacular Hollywood adaptations, like the 1981 Clash of the Titans. For the authors of God of War, it was important to convey not the text, but the spirit of ancient stories full of battles, heroism, tragedy and passion.

This is how the story of Kratos, the Spartan commander and favorite of Ares, the god of war, appeared. Trying to raise the perfect soldier, Ares killed Kratos’ family. This became a fatal mistake of the celestial: the inconsolable warrior declared war on Olympus and sets off to take revenge on the offender.

This bloody confrontation is brought to life with the help of the mechanics of the Hack’n’Slash genre. Kratos fights simultaneously against entire crowds of mythical creatures — from minotaurs and jellyfish to huge monsters and legendary heroes acting as bosses.

The main weapon of Kratos is the famous Blades of Chaos, chained to the wrists of the warrior. They allow the player to cover a huge distance with blows and, by driving in different combinations, simultaneously shred several enemies at once. Along the way, the hero also receives new types of weapons and several magical abilities bestowed by the gods at once — Zeus’ lightning and Poseidon’s storms help Kratos break through the legions of enemies that stand in his way. But they will not give victory without a deep study of the mechanics of the battle: the game from SantaMonica Studio turned out to be truly hardcore and in places furiously complex.

Still, the main advantage of the combat system of the original God of War is its cinematic nature. The game uses a system of fixed cameras — the player sees each battle from the most epic angle chosen by the developers. Locations, character models and animations are as detailed as possible. The game also uses the QTE system popular at the beginning of the 2000s: critical moments like opening gates and finishing off monsters are made in the form of a small attention game: the player needs to press the controller buttons indicated on the screen in the correct order.

This approach to game design culminates in boss battles. These are battles with enemies of a truly titanic size that force the player to use all their combat skills. The reward for the effort is an extremely spectacular and bloody animation of the massacre of the monster at the end of the fight.

However, in addition to combat, God of War’s gameplay also consists of level exploration and puzzle solving. Most critics and players consider this aspect of the game to be the most controversial. Here the love of spectacle fails the God of War: for example, not being able to control the camera, it is easy to miscalculate when making a jump.

However, these small flaws did not prevent the God of War from gaining wide success with both the public and the gaming press. The game has a Metacritic rating of 94 out of 100, and sales (4.6 million copies) allowed it to enter the list of the eleven best-selling projects on the PlayStation 2 platform. God of War won several Game of the Year awards, and made Kratos the idol of millions. At the beginning of the 2000s, this was a breakthrough — then gaming was still considered mostly a child’s activity, and the main mascots of Sony at that time were the animal Crash from Crash Bandicoot and the dragon Spyro from the game of the same name. The emergence of a brutal revenge game in this pantheon, not shy of sex scenes and ultra-violence, has become a symbol of the coming changes in the industry.

God of War II (2007)

There was no doubt in Santa Monica Studio that God of War would be successful for a second. Even the end credits of the first game ended with the message: «Kratos will return.»

And the God of War really returned to the PlayStation 2 at the very end of the console’s life cycle. The main task of God of War II was to improve the ready-made ideas of the first part and bring the resulting formula to perfection.

The development team, led by game designer Corey Barlog, turned out to be a success. Although the style of the game, the control system, and even the arsenal of techniques available to the player have not received radical changes, all gameplay elements began to work more clearly and smoothly. Kratos has several new weapons that diversify the fight. Magic has become more powerful, which gave a reason to use it more often. Mastering all available tools has become a necessity. The fights in God of War II are some of the toughest in the franchise. Often, battle arenas are filled with deadly traps. For an experienced gamer, they become an additional way to deal with enemies, but for an inattentive player they pose a great danger.

The sequel also saw work done on bugs in the design of the puzzles. Platforming and puzzles have become clearer and more balanced — a fixed camera no longer interferes with coping with the most intricate tests, and the quick wit tests themselves have become more diverse.

Finally, everything that was done excellently in the first part, remained as such and doubled in number. Kratos is confronted by a noticeably expanded bestiary of opponents and twice as many bosses as in the 2005 game. Among these fights, the fight with the revived statue of the Colossus stands out — it was remembered by many and became a kind of symbol of the series for a long time.

Passions ran high in the plot as well. This time, the ruler of Olympus, the Thunderer Zeus, becomes the enemy of Kratos. As befits an ancient tragedy, the situation changes from bad to worse: the game abruptly ends on the apocalyptic scene of the assault on the abode of the gods by angry titans. How this story ended, the players found out only three years later.

God of War II was the swan song of the PlayStation 2. The game was released four months after the release of the next generation console, PlayStation 3. Despite this, the game became a bestseller (4.24 million copies) and won many prestigious awards.

The late release also made it possible to achieve maximum graphics quality: although Godof War II is made on the same Kinetica engine as the first part, it looks much better.

However, on the consoles of the old generation, the God of War became a bit crowded. The game rarely delivered the promised 60 FPS on PS2. Everyone understood: Kratos would return again, but this time on PlayStation 3. That’s exactly what happened – however, at first the first two parts that were included in the God of War Collection (2009) reached the new platform).

Mobile God of War

While Santa Monica Studio was preparing the final part of the trilogy, third-party developers kept the interest in the franchise alive with small prequel games. It was decided that only the main installments of the series would be released on home consoles. Therefore, offshoot games had to move to mobile platforms.

The first game of this type was God of War: Betrayal (2007) for mobile phones, which turned the game into a 2D side-scrolling action game. It was followed by God of War: Chains of Olympus (2008) and God of War: Ghost of Sparta (2010) for the PlayStation Portable.

Of course, none of these games can compete with the main games in the series, neither in variety nor in entertainment. However, they fulfill another important task: bringing the God of War franchise to mobile platforms as authentically as possible. In addition, fans of the universe can learn a lot of interesting information from the plot of these small games: for example, Chains of Olympus reveals the details of the first meeting between the titan Atlant and Kratos, and Ghost of Sparta tells the story of the family of an invincible Spartan.

God of War III (2010)

Perhaps the most incredible fact about God of War III is that this game is developed on the Kinetica engine, like the first two parts. Of course, when ported to PlayStation 3, it was greatly improved. In addition to various additional effects, the processing power of the console made the picture many times more beautiful: now up to 50 enemies can be on the screen at the same time (in the old parts, a maximum of 15), and the Kratos model consists of 20,000 polygons (5,000 in God of War II). The characters were no longer conventional, and the blood became visually similar to the real one, which made the inspired ultra-violence of the game even more spectacular and terrifying.

Meanwhile, the gameplay has changed little. Perhaps the main innovation of Godof War III is the ability to switch between different types of weapons and magic right during a combo. Now the most sophisticated players have the opportunity to turn ancient battles into a graceful dance of death a la Devil May Cry.

However, the main task for Santa Monica Studio was not innovation, but the completion of the story of Kratos. And it turned out to be truly legendary: battles with bosses turned into massacres on a universal scale, and the revenge of the insane Kratos turned into a catastrophe threatening to destroy the whole world. In the third part of God of War, players will face off against the most famous heroes and gods of ancient myths, from Hermes and Hades to Hercules and Zeus.

The calculation of Santa Monica Studio for a strong storyline turned out to be correct: the game received extremely positive reviews from critics and instantly became a worldwide hit. God of War III received numerous awards (including for advanced graphics solutions) and became the ninth game in the list of the most successful bestsellers on PlayStation 3. In 2015, a remaster of the third part of the adventures of Kratos was released on PlayStation 4.

God of War: Ascension (2013)

The end of the original trilogy didn’t mean the end for the God of War franchise. However, the Sony Santa Monica team did not immediately decide to move to a new stage in the development of the series.

God of War: Ascension is an «in-house» game for fans of the franchise and the universe. Nominally, it doesn’t change much in the series. The main gameplay novelties are the ability to charge the Blades of Chaos with natural energies, effective against different types of enemies, as well as an overall increase in the difficulty of battles. The plot, meanwhile, tells the backstory of Kratos and contrasts the hero with interesting, but little-known characters from Greek myths, such as vengeful furies.

The main innovation of the game was the addition of a multiplayer mode. Godof War: Ascension has both competitive PvP battles and co-op missions in which two players defeat various monsters.

However, as it turned out, the public had had enough of the series in its current form. God of War: Ascension received generally positive, but low scores by Sony Santa Monica standards, with an average Metacritic score of 80 out of 100. The online modes didn’t live up to expectations either: the lobbies quickly emptied out. The developers realized that it was time to radically change the approach to the franchise.

God of War (2018)

Sony understood that in order to successfully rethink the legendary franchise, you need to find someone who understands it in detail. Not surprisingly, their choice fell on game designer Cory Barlog, who led the development of God of War II and left Santa Monica Studio during the development of the third part of the franchise.

The new head of the team brought a lot of new ideas. First, he chose a Scandinavian setting for the game. Secondly, he defended Kratos — many developers offered not to touch the history of the Spartan and come up with a new protagonist. However, Cory Barlog, who became a father shortly before the start of work on the game, managed to prove that you can still tell a fresh story about a warrior known for his bloodthirstiness.

Indeed, the plot of God of War (2019) has abandoned its former megalomania and the desire to shock. Instead, it turned into a drama. Despite the absence of a number in the title, God of War is a direct continuation of the general plot, which does not cancel the events of previous games in the series. Kratos has grown old, trying to forget about his past sins and protect his young son Atreus from the cruel temptations.

In keeping with the change in narrative tone, the gameplay has also undergone a radical overhaul. The action in the fourth game in the main series is less massive but more polished — each weapon feels different and the animations are more believable than ever. The camera is no longer hovering over the battlefield, but is attached to Kratos’ shoulder.

However, this does not mean that the game is not cinematic. She simply changed the method: God of War is «shot» in one shot — the game works without loading screens and smoothly moves the virtual camera without sharp cuts.

In general, God of War has become more like a large-scale role-playing game. Kratos can complete additional tasks, get new equipment and freely travel around the world. He does not do this alone: he is accompanied by his son, the demigod Atreus, who not only actively participates in the plot, but also helps his father in battle.

These drastic changes have made God of War (2018) the most unusual game in the series. All creative risks, fortunately, were justified: the game was received extremely warmly by critics and ordinary gamers. It has won countless Game of the Year awards and is the highest rated game in the already successful series (94 out of 100 on Metacritic). Sales of the adventures of Kratos and his son also exceeded all expectations — over 10 million copies, thanks to which the game became the fourth best-selling project in the history of PlayStation 4. Based on God of War (2018), a novel and several comics have already been released.

What is the future of the franchise? Unknown. Corey Barlog does not reveal secrets, but hints that, perhaps in the future, Kratos will visit Egypt or the ancient Mayan civilization. Whatever the employees of Sony Santa Monica decide, one thing is clear: the God of War will return, and his return will be, as always, legendary.

You can buy God of War for any platform in our online store at the lowest price with delivery or pickup!

The best games of the Assassin’s Creed series — top 10 Assassin’s Creed games on PC, PS4, Xbox One

On the occasion of the release of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, we decided to remind you of our top 10 best parts of the series. We selected all of them based on the results of voting within the editorial office. Join the discussion and write in the comments whether you agree with this top or not!

Tenth place was taken by two games that scored the same number of points — Rogue and Revelations. Either one or the other is a great historical adventure, and they ended up in such a low position only because they are not able to compete on equal terms with the next nine games.

Revelations tells about the elderly Ezio Auditor, the protagonist of Assassinʼs Creed 2 and Brotherhood, who was thrown into the Ottoman Constantinople of the 16th century. The game was criticized for being too modest in the number of innovations, but nevertheless, if you are a fan of the series and have not yet played it, you should not miss it. And that’s why.

First, Revelations was a powerful finale to the story of Ezio, the most important character in the series. Secondly, it was full of various plot tasks: Ezio had to stage the action of a gypsy curse, yell songs in a bad voice, disguised as a minstrel, and engage in many similar exciting activities. Also, players appreciated the flashback missions with Altair from the first game.

Rogue is notable for the fact that you have to play it as a renegade. Shay Patrick Cormac, a former assassin, hunts down members of the brotherhood, former comrades. However, both the goals and even the means of the Templars and the Assassins are in many ways similar, so the plot about changing sides at the barricades is interesting and logical.

The setting of Rogue is also good — the expanses of the North Atlantic during the Seven Years’ War of 1756-1763. The game benefited from sea adventures, sailing in Assassin’s Creed is traditionally at its best. A significant part of Cormac’s missions is the disruption of assassination operations, tasks to protect victims from assassination attempts have refreshed the familiar gameplay quite well. And the hunt is on for the hero himself, the unexpected attacks of the killers give a completely new experience for the series.

Author: Alexey Korsakov.

With Assassin’s Creed 3, even the most dedicated fans of the series, it became clear that the Assassin’s saga wanders somewhere in the wrong direction. Perhaps the only thing that the game was not scolded for was naval battles, which later became the basis of Assassinʼs Creed IV: Black Flag. Otherwise, many changes were at least ambiguous and were received with hostility.

Instead of the historical sights of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we got a wild frontier and the future megacities of America in the very beginning. Not bad, but how can they compare with the grandeur of, for example, the Colosseum? A dubious emphasis on hunting was also not accepted by many, and Connor, after the most charming Ezio, seemed like a walking closet.

By the way, it’s a problem with the plot. It would seem that Desmond’s adventures in modern times are coming to an end, so the heat of passion is extremely high, and the American Revolution was also chosen as the setting. There were so many things to tell and show, but instead we run a couple of chapters for the Indian boy through the forests and fields and … play a little for the eagle, yeah, very exciting. It’s amazing how Ubisoft managed to turn even the biggest battles into faded productions that you don’t believe at all.

Is it true that Assassinʼs Creed 3 remaster looks worse than the original?

By the full-fledged third part, the AC series has grown to such an extent that the developers themselves seem to have ceased to understand what they want from it. At the same time, it cannot be said that Assassin’s Creed 3 turned out to be a directly terrible game. But if I went through the previous parts in one breath (yes, even Revelation), then I abandoned this one at the last chapter, even if there was very little left before the finale. And since then I haven’t touched the series.

Clear proof that Assassin’s Creed 3 can kill even the strongest love of the Assassin saga. And this is not an exaggeration.

Author: Nikita Kazimirov.

Assassins of Victorian London — it even sounds cool! London, covered in industrial smog, has become an excellent backdrop, which Ubisoft has always done best. But, perhaps, the main achievement of Syndicate was the ability to switch between the twins Jacob and Evie — and this brought at least something new to the gameplay.

Acrobatics has become more comfortable and, more importantly, increased the pace. For example, you can now climb buildings with the help of a grappling hook, as if stolen by the twins from Batman. And there was also a place for developing your own gang, crafting and a huge number of tasks — we saw all this in previous games in the series, and in Syndicate these activities are implemented just as well.

This game did not take a higher position due to artificial intelligence, which has become much more stupid since the last, «Paris» part of Assassin’s Creed. Enemies, allies, NPCs from the street crowd — all the inhabitants of London are monstrously stupid and passive.

However, annoying shortcomings can be forgiven for the carefully modeled London of the 19th century, for the missions during the First World War and for the opportunity to communicate with Churchill, Conan Doyle and Karl Marx.

Author: Alexey Korsakov.

I’ve written quite a bit about Odyssey on Kanobu and have said enough about why it’s a great game, even though it has nothing to do with the RPG genre that many people try to attribute it to. Here, it seems to me, it is necessary to explain why this wonderful game took only the seventh place in our top.

Largely because Ubisoft did something in Odyssey that you can’t do in an open world game — it preferred quantity over quality. She did it consciously, because (and this, of course, is not a secret) Odyssey is a service game. It will take a VERY long time to play. That is why there are many times less detailed quests in it than all these “take the letter — kill — clear the fort”. Therefore, the dialogues in it are completely meaningless — for such a huge number of NPCs it is simply unrealistic to write good texts. And that’s why it has such a big world where you can run from one city to another for ten real minutes — you can even press a button while riding a horse, and the hero will get to the right place himself, and at that time you will calmly drink tea. Game service!

Why everyone who calls Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey a role-playing game is wrong

I really wish Ubisoft would prioritize quality over quantity in the next game.

Author: Denis Knyazev.

It was Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood that marked the transition of the series to an annual release and the beginning of its gradual decline. It’s funny, but it’s still a great game. It correctly develops all the advantages of the already ingenious second part, gets rid of some shortcomings and introduces elements without which it will no longer be possible to imagine the AU in the future.

Most importantly: Brotherhood fully revealed the concept, in fact, the brotherhood, and not the brave lone killers, as we saw Altair and Ezio. Yes, we have been shown before how big the order of assassins is, but it was in this part that we were finally able to fully manage it. The mechanics of hiring recruits and sending them on missions around the world was simple enough, but it still did its job — to create a sense of an organization of global importance. Subsequently, more than one game adapts such a gameplay feature.

I don’t want to draw attention to the excellent implementation of the historical setting, because we all know that even the worst parts of Assassin’s Creed are famous for just the study of the chosen era. Let me just say that the focus on one Rome (there are other cities too, but they are found only in separate missions) allowed the developers to roam in full. You will remember the future capital of Italy forever, I assure you.

It was also Brotherhood who introduced multiplayer into the series, which will cling to a few more of the following parts. Compared to its predecessor, the 2010 edition of the AC has become more eventful, diverse, coherent and simply more interesting. In it, the mechanics have not yet begun to stagnate, but the game ends exactly at the moment when it just starts to get boring.

And how it ends! Brotherhood’s ending is one of the most striking examples of cliffhangers in the gaming industry. Alas, “bright” is not a synonym for the word “best”, and Revelation has clearly demonstrated this.

Author: Nikita Kazimirov.

You remember all those memes about graphical bugs at the start of Unity, right? That’s the only reason for the fifth place. At the same time, the game itself was remembered for many successful innovations and incredible Paris. The detailing of the city and the realism of the models caused — at least at that time — pure, sincere delight.

Main quests were now Hitman-style challenges with multiple solutions. Assassins had never known such variability, such freedom in improvisation.

In addition, Unity seems to be the first to take a big step towards the role-playing game. This was indicated, say, by detailed character customization. Weapons, equipment, camisoles, gloves, over the knee boots — all this was displayed on the main character’s model, had a set of parameters, and therefore fussing with the assassin’s gear could take an indecently long time.

The setting of the French Revolution was convincingly worked out, historical characters constantly flashed in the frame, and on the streets it was possible to participate in dozens of random events. Of the side activities, one should separately note the magnificent detective investigations — it was not for nothing that the main character was familiar with the famous Parisian detective Vidocq.

Author: Alexey Korsakov.

If this were my personal top, I would swap Origins and Odyssey, because these games are basically the same, only Odyssey is bigger, better, more beautiful and develops the ideas laid down in Origins. But the result of the editorial vote is this, so I will look at the «Egyptian» Assassinʼs Creed from a different angle and explain why, despite my opinion, it still deserves to take such a high position.

Context: Ancient Egypt in Assassin’s Creed: Origins

Myths of Ancient Egypt in Assassin’s Creed: Origins

Origins successfully reinvented the series — so successfully that it’s rather hard to return to the first parts now, they lack freedom, and the way the quests are built is confusing. Origins’ move toward The Witcher 3 proved to be incredibly important for the series. I can say all I want that this is still not a real role-playing game (and it is), but being on the border of this genre is also normal, for Origins this concept — with a million quests and question marks on the map — works great.

The chosen setting works even better for her, because this is the first game about assassins that jumped so far — into the ancient world — and told about how the brotherhood of assassins was born in the first place. After that, Odyssey will deviate even further from the original idea of the series, both in gameplay and in the story, so that «Origins» is, in fact, the last game at the moment that is directly related to the assassins. For some fans, I’m sure it’s very important.

Author: Denis Knyazev.

In 2007, Assassin’s Creed was surprising, because there was not much in the games before its release. For example, normally done parkour mechanics and such freedom in moving around the world. The first part turned out to be weak in terms of plot and content, but they still played it — due to the fact that the main character can climb anywhere and run across the rooftops from one end of the city to the other without stopping.

Over time, you memorized all the streets and lanes, ran only on proven paths, caught the flow and stopped stumbling. In short, it was cool to play for the elusive and incredibly agile medieval assassin — and this is a good reason to return to Assassin’s Creed even today.

Now it’s hard to believe, because the parkour in the same Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Assassin’s Creed: Origins does not stand out from the rest of the mechanics at all. It has been greatly simplified, and now all these jumps from roof to roof and climbing walls are just another animation while moving. Previously, it was necessary to really look for ledges for which the hero could cling, and now he easily climbs onto a perfectly flat statue of Zeus.

In 2007, he played a much more important role — he helped to escape from the guards of another Templar, whom Altair had just pierced in the neck with a hidden blade. Yes, the first part of «Credo» was more than any other game in the series about stealth, not about action. Of course, you can fight with opponents in it, because the famous combat system, tied to counterattacks, appeared exactly there, but it doesn’t make any sense — it still won’t work to kill all the enemies. And it is better after killing the target to hide from the pursuers on the roofs. It is this concept that the first part of the series still attracts.

First published in What Assassin’s Creed Has Become.

Author: Denis Knyazev.

Assassin’s Creed 3 once made a revolution almost more powerful than the one that happened in Origins — it gave players the opportunity to go to sea on a ship. Yes, just for a few missions, but the mechanics, which simply could not be presented in the series before, were so liked by the players that Ubisoft seemed to have no choice. Whether she wanted to create Black Flag next or not, whether other settings were considered for the fourth part, it doesn’t matter anymore. Players needed naval battles — and they got them.

Black Flag minimized land-based mechanics such as chases and eavesdropping that had become routine and focused on naval gameplay and ship management. Of course, the game retained all the elements by which the series was recognized at that time — forts, and treasure hunting, and not very logical stealth. But this, compared to previous games, was not enough — and most of the time, if you wanted it, you could spend at sea.

Spectacular battles with other pirates, robbing small vessels, searching for treasures at the bottom of the sea, dangerous weather conditions — this is why Black Flag is still called one of the best Assassin’s Creed. In our top, however, she took second place, because the first one is a game whose success Ubisoft has not been able to repeat so far.

Author: Denis Knyazev.

The second part of Assassin’s Creed is remembered by many as «the same Assassin’s Creed about Italy» and as «the best part of the series». This, in general, is normal — in the sequel, Ubisoft really did a lot of things right, while still not having time to introduce a billion unnecessary things that have little to do with the game about assassins.

First of all, AC2 was remembered for its excellent, very atmospheric setting. Italy, several rather different cities at once (among which, of course, Venice stands out) and almost complete freedom of action. When I went through the second part, I just walked around the locations for a lot of time — they were so cool. In most open world games, the situation is fundamentally different — there you want to skip places between missions as quickly as possible. In AC2, everything was done in such a way that it was really interesting to walk around the city.

Plus, again, a normal combat system. Fighting became both easier and more interesting, plus there were two hidden blades and you could wave them as you please. In part, however, this broke the balance, because the game could only be completed with these blades. Painfully, they were imbovy (and comfortable!).

True, there is something to scold the game for. For example, for a very idiotic breakdown of the plot into parts — two chapters, the twelfth and thirteenth, were simply cut out of the plot and then sold as DLC. They are not that they were very important for understanding what is happening, but still dishonest. Fortunately, this only affected console players — the game was released on the PC already with «sewn» additions, and it was possible to go through the story without such giant gaps in the narrative. Yes, everything was fine in the re-release. Except for the creepy faces, of course.

On the whole, Assassin’s Creed 2 is a completely logical and very high-quality sequel that fits perfectly into the «Ubisoft scheme» — first to release an unfinished original with cool ideas and features, and then bring everything to mind in a sequel. AC2 has made a qualitative leap in general in everything, from graphics to story, so the game is still loved and appreciated by many. Well, the «best in the series» is also called — and this, believe me, is not at all because of nostalgia.

Author: Alexey Egorov.

Which part of Assassin’s Creed do you think is the best?

Comparison of decimal fractions — how to do it right? rules and examples

The concept of decimals

Before we tell you how to compare decimals, let’s remember the basic definitions, types of fractions and the difference between them.

The fraction is a number in mathematics where a and b are numbers or expressions. In fact, this is just one of the forms in which a number can be represented. There are two recording formats:

plain — 1/2 or a/b,

decimal — 0.5.

In an ordinary fraction, it is customary to write the dividend above the line, which becomes the numerator, and below the line there is always a divisor, which is called the denominator. The bar between the numerator and denominator means division.

In decimal, the denominator is always 10, 100, 1000, 10000, etc. Basically, decimal is what you get when you divide the numerator by the denominator. It is written on a line separated by commas to separate the integer part from the fractional part. Like this:

0.1

2.53

9.932

End decimal is when the number of digits after the decimal point is exactly defined.

Infinite decimal is when the number of digits after the decimal point is infinite. For convenience, mathematicians agreed to round these figures to 1-3 after the decimal point.

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Properties of decimal fractions

The main property of decimal fraction sounds like this: if one or more zeros are added to the decimal fraction on the right, its value will not change. This means that if your fraction has a lot of zeros, you can simply discard them. For example:

0.600 = 0.6

21.10200000 = 21.102

Ordinary and decimal fractions are old friends. Here’s how they are related:

The integer part of the decimal is equal to the integer part of the mixed fraction. If the numerator is less than the denominator, then the integer part is zero.

The fractional part of a decimal fraction contains the same digits as the numerator of the same fraction in ordinary form, if the denominator of the ordinary fraction is 10, 100,1000, etc.

The number of digits after the decimal point depends on the number of zeros in the denominator of an ordinary fraction, if the denominator of an ordinary fraction is 10, 100,1000, etc. That is, 1 digit is a divisor of 10, 4 digits is a divisor of 10000.

Math courses at Skysmart online school will help you improve your grades, prepare for tests, VLOOKUP and exams.

Rule for comparing decimals

To compare two decimals, you must first compare their whole parts. If the integer parts are equal, we continue to look for the first mismatched bit. The larger fraction is the one with the larger corresponding digit.

This is how the topic of comparing decimal fractions was revealed from the first line ? But that’s not all — let’s move on.

Decimal comparison algorithm

Check that both decimals have the same number of decimal places (digits) to the right of the decimal point. If not, then add (remove) the required number of zeros in one of the decimal fractions.

Compare decimals from left to right. Whole parts with whole parts, tenths with tenths, hundredths with hundredths, etc.

When one of the parts of a decimal fraction is greater than the other, this fraction can be called a larger one.

Let’s put the rule into practice. Let’s compare decimals: 15.7 and 15.719.

How we solve:

Let’s add the required number of zeros in the first decimal fraction to equalize the number of digits to the right of the decimal point: 15.700 and 15.719.

Compare decimals from left to right.

Integer part with integer part: 15 = 15. Integer parts are equal.

Tenths with tenths: 7 = 7. Tenths are also equal.

Hundredths with hundredths: 0 < 1. Since the hundredths of the second decimal is larger, the fraction itself is larger: 15.

Part comparison: Please click the green button to continue.

Comparison of bone graft materials. Part I. New bone formation with autografts and allografts determined by Strontium-85

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Carbon footprinting of universities worldwide: Part I—objective comparison by standardized metrics | Environmental Sciences Europe

Abstract

Background

Results

Conclusion

Introduction

Analysing the ecological footprint of higher education institutions (HEI)

University carbon footprinting: global status quo

GHG protocol corporate accounting and reporting standard

Materials, methods, and purpose

Results and discussion

Emission impacts to consider

Energy impacts

Mobility

Smaller impacts

Impacts suggested to omit

Resulting university carbon footprints and their interpretation

Global distribution of university CF performances

Correlation between the parameters investigated

University CFs relative to national per capita CFs

Relating the CF to research orientation of universities

Approaching zero emissions: carbon offsetting

Limitations and strengths of this investigation

Conclusions

Availability of data and materials

Abbreviations

References

Acknowledgements