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Frustrated magnetic skyrmions and antiskyrmions could enable novel spintronic applications
by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Skyrmions and antiskyrmions with different topological numbers in a frustrated magnet. Credit: Xichao Zhang
The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three theoretical physicists for their discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter, which highlights the role and significance of topology in understanding the physical world. In the field of magnetism, topology is also directly related and fundamental to the physics of an exotic magnetic texture, the magnetic skyrmion.
Magnetic skyrmions are nanoscale magnetic structures with topological quantum numbers, which exist in a number of materials and can be controlled by methods such as electric current and others. Due to their nanoscale size and topologically protected stability, magnetic skyrmions hold great promise in spintronic applications such as magnetic memory and logic computing devices. In order to manipulate magnetic skyrmions for information processing, it is essential to fully understand their dynamics.
Recently, a team of researchers from China and Japan has studied the magnetic skyrmions in frustrated magnets and revelled the exotic dynamics of frustrated magnetic skyrmions, which is totally different from that of magnetic skyrmions in common ferromagnetic materials. They found the helicity locking-unlocking transition of frustrated magnetic skyrmions by including dipole-dipole interactions in their theoretical model, which is an energy term usually negligible for common ferromagnetic skyrmions. In the frustrated magnets, the dipole-dipole interaction plays an important role in the helicity (rotational mode)-orbit (translational mode) coupling of the skyrmion, especially at low temperature. In addition, the researchers show that the current-controlled skyrmions and antiskyrmions dynamics with locking-unlocking helicity in frustrated magnets can enable novel spintronic applications such as the helicity-based information storage devices.
The discovery are reported this week in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen researcher Xichao Zhang, and PhD student Jing Xia, and four others from Shenzhen University, China, Shinshu University, Japan, and the University of Tokyo, Japan.
"Helicity is a degree of freedom of frustrated magnetic skyrmions," says Xichao Zhang, a researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and the first author of the study. "In conventional ferromagnetic materials, the helicity of a skyrmion cannot be effectively controlled, while we find it is possible to control the skyrmion helicity by utilizing the helicity locking-unlocking transition in frustrated magnetic materials." Zhang adds that the control of helicity can lead to novel spintronic applications such as the helicity-based skyrmionic memories.
"Our study also shows the interactions between frustrated skyrmions and antiskyrmions, which are problems of both theoretical and practical significance," explains Yan Zhou, associate professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and the corresponding author of the study. Zhou says it is also possible to build logic computing devices based on skyrmions and antiskyrmions, and his group is pursuing this currently.
"We can use frustrated skyrmions as a binary memory utilizing two stable Bloch-type states, where the helicity can be switched by applying current," says Motohiko Ezawa, lecturer of the University of Tokyo, and the other corresponding author of the study.
Frustrated magnets point towards new memory
More information: Zhang, X. et al. Skyrmion dynamics in a frustrated ferromagnetic film and current-induced helicity locking-unlocking transition, Nature Communications 8, 1717 (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01785-w
Journal information: Nature Communications
Provided by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Citation: Frustrated magnetic skyrmions and antiskyrmions could enable novel spintronic applications (2017, November 27) retrieved 19 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2017-11-frustrated-magnetic-skyrmions-antiskyrmions-enable.html
Unlocking the potential of magnetic skyrmions
Magnetic skyrmions found to hold the potential of storing electronic data
Magnetic nanoknots evoke Lord Kelvin's vortex theory of atoms
Neutron scattering clarifies the arrangement of skyrmions in material
Researchers make a breakthrough toward the next generation of memory devices

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Hallowell's Highway Committee held a meeting Thursday to probe why officials shortened a Water Street sidewalk project without public notice.
HALLOWELL — The co-owner of a Chinese restaurant said Thursday she wanted granite boulders outside the building left in place in order to maintain the "feng shui" of the area.
It was a concession that some local and state officials agreed to in cutting short a new downtown sidewalk as part of the landmark Water Street reconstruction project. Some property owners and a city councilor, though, say the change was made without adequate public notice and upended their understanding of the project.
Annie Huang, co-owner of the Lucky Garden with her husband, Tony, told members of the city's Highway Committee on Thursday morning that the boulders prohibiting the sidewalk have cultural importance. The committee is looking into the sidewalk change because some residents say they are frustrated with the change after being led to believe that the sidewalk would connect the State Boat Landing to Granite City Park. Former Councilor Alan Stearns said the decision — which was made with little council briefing and no council action — also flies in the face of two previous council actions.
Huang, who previously has declined to comment to the Kennebec Journal, said at Thursday's meeting that the boulders were placed according to feng shui, a Chinese belief pertaining to design that promotes balance and energy flow.
She said the feng shui would be thrown off if the boulders were moved back into the lot and that the boulders are a barrier from traffic on Water Street, and losing the parking spots by moving the rocks into the parking lot would affect their customers' experience. Huang also said a sidewalk might not be necessary through her property because the sidewalk on the other side provides adequate access to the boat landing.
The Highway Committee, chaired by Councilor Lisa Harvey-McPherson and filled out by Councilors Michael Frett and Lynn Irish, met Thursday morning to discuss the controversial stretch of omitted sidewalk on the east side of Water Street. City Manager Nate Rudy, Mayor Mark Walker, Maine Department of Transportation Project Manager Ernie Martin and Lucky Garden abutter Jon Lund also spoke during the meeting.
Before the meeting, Harvey-McPherson and Walker had cited "religious and cultural reasons" for not moving the granite boulders, without further explanation.
The restaurant owners first expressed displeasure in February with plans to move the boulders into their parking lot to Rep. Charlotte Warren, who was not at the meeting, and Walker. The decision to stop the sidewalk was confirmed by Rudy on March 24 after a meeting between city officials, state officials and restaurant owners on March 21.
Transportation department officials said Rudy made the final decision, while Rudy maintains that he was not aware at the time that he was the decision-maker, and the department usually involved the council when changes were made.
The sidewalk extension is mentioned in two documents from 2014 and 2016, but the documents have wiggle room that could omit the sidewalk.
During his comments confirming timelines with the committee, Walker also shouldered some responsibility for the stopped sidewalk not being decided on by the council. He said Rudy got "slammed" with the responsibility.
On Thursday, Martin, the state transportation project manager, echoed his previous comments that the decision ultimately fell to the city. He said a decision was made by the property owner and confirmed by the city, and the department moved forward because the city added the sidewalk to the project.
Walker has asserted that he briefed the council in March and in April vaguely about the meetings at which the sidewalk issue was decided, but said on Thursday that he spoke personally with Harvey-McPherson. Councilors have agreed that the briefings were vague, while some were unaware of them altogether.
"I did not bring the whole issue to the Highway Committee and I did not brief the whole council on the details," Walker said.
Rudy, who has been Hallowell's city manager since June 2016, said at Thursday's meeting that he was not clear on his role, despite the transportation department's assertions.
Rudy told the Kennebec Journal previously that did not intend to circumvent the council, but said the decision warranted council action, like previous changes to the project.
Walker also referenced confusion about his role, sparked by his prior representation of the restaurant as a lawyer. He said some transportation department employees believed he was the restaurant's lawyer throughout the Water Street project.
Lund said he was unaware of discussions regarding the Lucky Garden property. He said he accepted an offer for some of his land because it was being taken to build a sidewalk and the omission of that portion of the sidewalk has hurt his property's value.
"As far as I'm concerned, the change … reduced the value of my property over what I expected it would be," he said.
Martin said the Department of Conservation is looking to update the Boat Landing in the near future, with the transportation department handling some portions of the project. He said there would be "plenty of opportunity" to look at a sidewalk as part of that project. He said that decision would ultimately fall to the city and the transportation department already has the rights to build a sidewalk.
Harvey-McPherson said she would prepare a report detailing the testimony from Thursday's meeting prior to the City Council's next meeting on Monday. This was the current committee's last meeting, as Irish and Harvey-McPherson will not be councilors after Jan. 2.


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State rep candidates stake out solutions to budget impasse
At Feb. 29 forum, Welch calls for more revenue while Harris calls for cutting waste
by Michael Romain March 1, 2016
A volunteer grabs questions from the audience during a community forum on Feb. 29. | William Camargo/Staff Photographer
Chris Welch answers questions during a community forum in Broadview, on Feb. 29. Welch, the incumbent state representative of the 7th District is up against Chris Harris. | William Camargo/Staff Photographer
During a Feb. 29 candidates forum in Broadview — hosted by the Forest Park civic group Vox 60130 and co-sponsored by Wednesday Journal, the Forest Park Review and the Village Free Press of Maywood — state Rep. Emanuel "Chris" Welch (7th) and his opponent, former Forest Park commissioner Chris Harris, outlined two distinct approaches to tackling Springfield's current budget impasse.
The state has been without a budget for more than eight months, a reality that has fallen hardest on the state's poorest residents and the social safety net — in the form of child-care subsidies, college tuition assistance, social services and other resources — designed to provide a floor of relief. The budget impasse has also translated into credit downgrades for the state itself and the many public institutions like colleges and universities that are heavily dependent on state aid.
In an often tense, heated exchange between the two men, each laid the state's fiscal mess at the feet of leadership, with Welch speaking sharply against Gov. Bruce Rauner and Harris largely condemning House Speaker Michael Madigan.
"We need a budget. Our state needs and deserves a budget. It's irresponsible what the governor is doing. The governor is hijacking our state and holding middle-class families hostage with his 'turnaround' agenda," said Welch, referencing the series of business-friendly reforms — such as weakening labor unions, freezing property taxes, instituting term limits and redrawing legislative districts — that Rauner has tied to budget negotiations.
Welch added that if the budget negotiations were in the hands of the General Assembly's rank-and-file members, the state might have reached a solution by now. He also couched his argument for re-election in terms of continuity, noting that by winning another term, he'd be up for chairmanships on key committees.
Harris presented himself largely as a challenge to the decades-long rule of House Speaker Madigan, whom Harris has faulted for his heavy-handed control of the legislature and his role in many of the state's structural problems, such as the ongoing pension crisis.
"I'm not saying, 'Yes sir, Mr. Speaker.' Should you agree with the speaker on everything? Shouldn't you have your own thoughts? I'm going down there to represent the 7th District, not Michael Madigan," said Harris. "I'm going down there to … think about what's best for our community, not what [Madigan] says every time."
"Mike Madigan didn't help me with my law degree and Mike Madigan didn't help me get elected in 2012," countered Welch. "I vote for what I believe in."
Each candidate offered different approaches to rectifying the state's fiscal crisis. Harris said that, if elected, he would work to propose a forensic audit, which is often used to determine fraud and other forms of financial abuse and waste. He also noted that he would look to make necessary budget cuts before he'd consider raising taxes.
"Raising taxes is lazy government," he said. "Before you raise taxes, you should exhaust all options."
Welch, who insisted that the state should be seeking opportunities to raise revenue instead of enacting harsh austerity measures, advocated for a surcharge tax on millionaires and a progressive tax structure — as opposed to the flat income tax that the state currently maintains.
During a heated exchange about campaign literature, Harris condemned 15 mailers that he said have been sent out by Welch's campaign so far that have attributed statements made by Rauner to him. Harris said the attacks could be traced to Madigan's Democratic machine and its thousands of dollars in financial support to Welch.
"[The quotes on those mailers are] nothing I ever said," Harris stated.
Welch said he based the Rauner-related mailers on statements Harris made on his Facebook page before running for state representative — such as a quote about taxes being a last resort. He also condemned a Rauner-related conservative super PAC's decision to support Harris by, for instance, circulating newspapers attacking his candidacy and promoting Harris'.
"All of our mailers have citations and you can go to Mr. Harris' Facebook page before he announced he was running for state representative, where he was talking like Chris Harris and not candidate Harris. He was probably telling the truth more so than than he is now," Welch said. "That is, he wants to make sure cuts are maintained. I don't support making more cuts."
Harris, who noted that, by law, he hasn't been able to directly contact the PAC, argued that his research suggests that the PAC's founder, Dan Proft, may be more motivated by a vendetta against Welch than active support of Harris' candidacy.
CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com
8 replies on "State rep candidates stake out solutions to budget impasse"


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Elin Simonsson
Abandon the Text
What would happen if we abandoned printed text in museum spaces and exhibitions? Could it drive us to be more inventive? Might we create spaces that are more enjoyable?
The written printed word is a method of communicating that dominates most museum spaces. Text is simply a very effective way to express something, whether factual information or a narrative thread. But more often than not, the spaces that museums and exhibitions occupy are not ideal for reading. As a visitor, you will most likely be standing, probably surrounded by other people, general busyness and noise. So is it time for us to abandon the text?
Creating the feeling of a past world. Photography Nick Rochowski
I want you to imagine a museum space without any written printed words. No text labels, exhibition panels or descriptive captions. If you are in the business of making exhibitions, you might think it's a radical idea, or at least a very impractical one. But the process of coming up with alternative ways to encourage audiences to understand and feel could force us to be more creative when making experiential spaces. It could drive us to make spaces that better cater for people whose learning preferences are more geared towards experiencing, listening, doing and seeing, and that don't interrupt people's experiential flow with panels and labels that you feel you should probably stop and read.
Explore without the interruption of labels. Dove Cottage, Wordsworth Grasmere. Photography Gardner Gareth
To convey ideas and understanding, and to stimulate responses, we would have to use other types of media and interpretive solutions. Scenic graphics, set works, theatricality, images, sound and AV can create atmosphere, but can also play an important part in getting across vital information. Say, for example, that we want people who come to an exhibition to appreciate that the place we today call Britain has not always been what we see today. During its deep past, going back hundreds of thousands of years, it was often radically different. Without using any text, we can conjure up an idea of these worlds by using scenic graphics, reconstruction images, set works, CGI footage, film and sound to set the scene of a different time. This set up is both atmospheric and immersive, but can also work hard to get content across by visually communicating what Britain was like in this deep past. Climate and landscape shift and change over time, sometimes dramatically. Sometimes it was incredibly cold, with large ice sheets covering most of the land, at other times, it was much warmer with lions and other exotic (at least to us today) animals roaming the land. Printed or projected maps show us that the shape of this island has changed constantly. Sometimes it wasn't even an island. Images, sounds, audio descriptions and diagrams interpret collections and give them meaning and context.
The process of making interpretive spaces without information text would most likely lead us to create a very different kind of space. One that borrows from theatre and performance design, and that is more geared towards evoking emotion, encouraging us, even forcing us, to explore with all our senses, where design plays an important role in choregraphing an intuitive journey, naturally guiding us and directing our attention.
We recently worked with Wordsworth Grasmere to transform Dove Cottage, the former home of Romantic poet William Wordsworth. During the years he lived here with his young family, he wrote some of his most well-known and celebrated poetry. When you step into the cottage today, it feels incredibly special and we wanted to capture this feeling, creating an environment to be experienced, that evoked the feeling of an intimate lived-in home. Interpretive labels or panels would only break this magic.
Before you enter, a film starts to paint a picture – you know who lived here and get a sense of their lives. Throughout the cottage, you discover subtle clusters of things, fragments that speak of ordinary human experiences. A few crumbs on a plate, a nearly empty cup of tea, an open book left on a bed. A guide is present, but also lets you explore on your own. You hear fragments of sounds, as if coming from the next room or from outside – children playing or muffled conversations with a neighbour. You don't need the printed words to understand what's going on in here, nor do you need to understand absolutely everything that is around you to appreciate the value of the place.
So when you sit down to plan your next exhibition or interpretive museum project, perhaps consider whether you should abandon the text. It could drive you to come up with some exciting creative solutions.
Elin leads Nissen Richards Studio's interpretation and audience engagement across a wide range of projects, including heritage sites and museums, in the UK and internationally.
She is an experienced leader of engagement, content and visitor experiences within museums, heritage, nature and culture settings, with an interest in challenging how we think about creating experiences for audiences.
Elin trained as an Archaeologist at University College London and is currently a Trustee of Essex Wildlife Trust.
A Celebration of the Real-world Museum


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پیاده سازی سیستم مدیریت زیست محیطی در صنعت معادن : یک کلید برای دستیابی به تولید پاک کننده
Environmental management system implementation in the mining industry: a key to achieving cleaner production
Journal : International Journal of Mineral Processing, Volume 64, Issue 1, February 2002, Pages 19–41
- محیط زیست - بهره وری - نظارت زیست محیطی
This article examines the business practicality of integrating an environmental management system (EMS) into mining and related operations, describes how it can contribute to cleaner production (CP) in the industry, and provides guidelines to facilitate implementation. An EMS, which is the component of the overall management system that includes organizational procedures, environmental responsibilities, and processes, can help a mining company comply with environmental regulations, identify technical and economic benefits, and ensure that corporate environmental policies are adopted and followed. To date, a number of multinational (mining) corporations—namely, the companies with economical and technological flexibility—have implemented comprehensive EMSs at sites, the key in such cases being the formation of working partnerships with administrative bodies and international organizations. A number of other mine sites worldwide, however, despite having important environmental management practices such as audits and policies in place, have received insufficient assistance and/or simply lack the requisite resources to integrate an effective EMS into operations. The article sketches a series of guidelines for mining companies keen on adopting comprehensive EMSs at sites, and argues that to facilitate widespread EMS implementation throughout the industry, expanded inputs are needed from governments, international environmental organizations, educational facilities, and the companies themselves. More specifically, regional governments must provide assistance to the more resource-deficient operations, local universities must provide the necessary EMS educational assistance to local miners and finance environmental technology demonstration projects, and international organizations must help disseminate valuable EMS information to mine managers and technical staff.
There is a burgeoning literature that examines in detail the business practicality of integrating an environmental management system (EMS) into industrial operations. In short, an EMS, which is the component of the overall management system that includes organizational procedures, environmental responsibilities, and processes, helps an industry comply with environmental regulations, identify technical and economic benefits, and ensure that environmental policies are adopted and followed (Barrow, 1999). Unlike the conventional stand-alone environmental auditing and review processes, which tend only to assess the environmental situation of an enterprise at the time at which they are carried out, an EMS ensures that an organization's environmental targets and objectives are being effectively pursued. In fact, an EMS links audits, reviews, and other important environmental management processes through a network of management actions, procedures, documentations, and records, and is designed with the purpose of promoting continuous environmental improvement. In the case of mining and allied operations, which are typically confronted with serious environmental complications and face the challenge of having to satisfy a diverse group of stakeholder demands, the implementation of an EMS is a necessary step toward achieving industrial cleaner production (CP). Several mines worldwide (see, e.g. WMC, 2001, Homestake Mining, 2001 and Delta Gold, 2001) already have a comprehensive EMS in place, and in many cases, management credits it as being a principal factor behind industrial environmental improvements (see, e.g. Cambior, 2000 and Noranda, 2001). Further, it has helped to put many of these operations in a better position to anticipate problems with waste and avoid costly environmental cleanup. Some mining companies (see, e.g. Falconbridge, 2000 and Rio Tinto, 2001) have even gone one step further by obtaining international EMS certification—in most cases, that of the International Standards Organization (ISO), ISO 14001—at selected properties, which requires that specific procedures be in place for environmental monitoring, assessment and measurement purposes. The majority of mines that have implemented a comprehensive EMS, certified or uncertified, are owned wholly or partly by multinational corporations, which have the financial and technological flexibility to ascertain its precise application and potential business benefits, and have the means to readily integrate it into industrial operations. What tends to be overlooked, however, is the fact that a number of other mining properties already have in place important system elements and management procedures that would allow for the convenient incorporation of environmental issues and eventual implementation of an EMS. For example, many sites have an environmental officer that is responsible for ensuring compliance with set environmental regulations. In addition, at a number of mines, environmental audits, impact appraisals and reviews are conducted periodically to assess environmental performance. Multinational mining companies have already taken these and other existing environmental elements, along with newly developed environmental strategies, and have designed and implemented comprehensive EMSs at properties around the globe. The remaining companies, due to a shortage of financial, technological, and informational resources, have not, and therefore require assistance for effective EMS design and integration. An increased input from governmental groups, educational facilities, and international organizations, however, could help management of these properties design comprehensive EMSs, and hence contribute to prolonged CP in what has long been perceived as one of the world's most polluting industries. The purpose of this paper is to examine in detail the applications and potential benefits of a mining EMS, and to provide guidance to facilitate its implementation. The paper begins by providing a general overview of the utility of EMSs in industry. Next, the paper discusses the business practicality of integrating an EMS into mining and related industrial operations, and outlines guidelines for implementation. A discussion is then presented that profiles some of the steps taken by the Canadian and Australian governments to facilitate improved environmental management in their mining industries, along with some of the recent efforts made by individual Canadian and Australian companies to implement EMSs at mines. The paper concludes by prescribing some recommendations that could improve the overall quality of existing mining EMSs, and which would further assist other mine properties in implementing practical EMS designs.
While the aims of this paper have been to discuss the benefits to implementing a mining EMS, to provide guidance to facilitate implementation, and to present practical accompanying case study material, it is important to clarify that in order to make widespread mining EMS implementation a reality, a number of key areas must be further researched. It is suggested here that with increased government effort, expanded mining industry partnerships with international agencies, and increased input from academic and government research units, even the smallest, most resource-deficient mining operations would be in improved positions to implement comprehensive EMSs. First, it is imperative that the methods and techniques used for disseminating vital EMS information to Junior mining companies are improved. "Junior mining", generally, is used as a label for the smaller exploration and mineral processing corporations and operations of developed countries that are heavily influenced by mineral price fluctuations, and are recognized as the most financially volatile and high-risk portion of the industry. It is therefore particularly challenging for these parties, which lack both the money and resources to anticipate environmental change, to implement leading-edge environmental practices. Though selected administrative groups—namely governmental bodies, mining associations and mining institutes—in large mineral producing nations such as Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the United States have successfully communicated to multinational corporations the merits of a mining EMS, and in turn have facilitated and initiated implementation, at the same time, they have neglected to reach these small- and medium-sized mining companies, many of which already have important environmental management tools in place, but obviously lack the finances, educational material and technological know-how to design and implement an effective EMS. This group must be equipped with the requisite educational, informational, and technological assistance to achieve higher levels of environmental performance. Significant environmental improvements can be made at these operations if EMSs are implemented, and governments must bridge information, technologic, and economic gaps, and provide Junior mining operations with the means—namely information and training—to design EMSs. Incentives such as tax breaks, levies, payback schemes, and interest-free loans can be provided to these operations. A second recommendation, which is applicable to mines of all sizes, is for mine management to place greater emphasis on developing and implementing high-quality (mining) EMS training programs. An integral part of any EMS is training because for the system to work as designed, staff must understand their jobs and how their positions impact the environment. Within an EMS, mine management must be trained on a continual basis to ensure that the most up-to-date information is disseminated to each employee. Training could range from education on safety standards, to updates on regulations. Familiarizing employees with environmental issues best prepares the operation to deal with occurrences as they arise. The action plan can involve using the tools provided to further prevent environmental hazards, or can simply mean that the employee contacts officials, fire departments, or advisory bodies. As long as individuals are prepared, however, the chances of any uncontrollable problem occurring are minimized. It is therefore imperative for top management to commit to the design and continual improvement of an in-company EMS program that involves the participation of all staff members (though it is impractical to assume that mining companies, individually, are capable of improving the quality of their EMS training programs without outside input). There could be merit in forging additional partnerships with both local authoritative bodies and international agencies, which have the means of disseminating valuable CP information, and are equipped with professionals capable of designing practical EMS training programs. Further, these bodies have the knowledge and capabilities of financing demonstration and dissemination programs in important areas such as policy-making, health and safety, environmental technology, and database management, which, in the end, could serve to improve the quality of any existing mining EMS. A final recommendation is that governments and the industry itself should encourage wider participation from academic research units in mining EMS research. Given that so many mining academic research units exist, the majority of which already have environmental management research programs in place, it would be beneficial to the industry if EMS research were incorporated into research agendas. Emphasis should be placed on EMS training, environmental technology implementation, coursework, environmental auditing practices, and education. In fact, it is suggested that universities offer the following four types of coursework options (adapted from Van Berkel, 2000): 1. Orientation or introductory courses—quintessentially, courses that emphasize the basic principals of mining environmental management, environmental protection and regulatory compliance. 2. Environmental integration and disciplinary courses—courses that emphasize the particular facets of environmental management including, inter alia, training, technology use, auditing and assessment. These courses can be tailored to the requirements of the EMS. 3. Specialist environmental courses—since the EMS mandates that certain personnel undertake specialist environmental management tasks (e.g. reporting, documentation, auditing, etc.), coursework can be designed to train engineers, managers and scientists in these areas. 4. Environment relevant interdisciplinary project work—establishing "hands-on" training courses, whereby trainees engage in fieldwork or are trained outside of the classroom in the "industrial environment", gaining first-hand experience about various EMS responsibilities. Mines could provide local units with grants to either expand existing departments or to conduct stand-alone studies in exchange for this EMS training and research. This would create a win–win scenario, since mines would receive relevant EMS educational material, and universities would obtain funding for research. In conclusion, it has been argued in this paper that implementation of an EMS is a key to achieving CP in the mining industry, since it helps an operation comply with environmental regulations, identify technical and economic benefits, and ensure that corporate environmental policies are adopted and followed. An EMS features a series of organizational procedures, environmental responsibilities, and processes that, unlike stand-alone environmental management processes, which tend only to assess the environmental situation of an enterprise at the time at which they are carried out, effectively ensure that a mine's environmental targets and objectives are attained. Although to date, it has been mainly the large mining companies that have implemented EMSs at sites, with increased government effort, expanded mining industry partnerships with international agencies, and increased input from academic and government research units, even the smallest mining operations would be in excellent positions to implement comprehensive EMSs.
ارزیابی زیست محیطی استراتژیک برای توسعه پایدار : بررسی یک دهه از تحقیقات دانشگاهی
عوامل مهم در شناسایی و ارزیابی جنبه های زیست محیطی در زمینه EMS : تجارب در سازمان های سوئدی
سیستم های EMS بین المللی : ایالات متحده آمریکا : گذشته، حال و آینده
تصویب سیستم مدیریت زیست محیطی توسط سازمانهای استرالیایی : قسمت 1 : دلایل، مزایا و موانع
سیستم های EMS بین المللی : کشورهای اسکاندیناوی


text:
Laura Osnes, Corey Cott, and Stars of Bandstand Celebrate Spirit of '45 Day
The company welcomed Purple Heart recipient Luke Gasparre and America's longest working "Rosie the Riveter," Elinor Otto.
Allison Stock
Laura Osnes, Corey Cott, Elinor Otto, Luke Gasparre, and Beth Leavel grab a photo after a performance of Bandstand.
(© Allison Stock)
Broadway's Bandstand celebrated Spirit of '45 Day on August 11 in their home at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. The company honored Purple Heart recipient Luke Gasparre and America's "longest working Rosie the Riveter," Elinor Otto. After the performance, they were welcomed to the stage by star Corey Cott for a special salute and bow.
Directed by Andy Blankenbuehler, who took home this year's Best Choreography Tony Award, Bandstand features music by Richard Oberacker and a book and lyrics by Robert Taylor and Oberacker. The cast is led Cott and Tony Award nominee Laura Osnes alongside Tony Award winner Beth Leavel, Joe Carroll, Brandon J. Ellis, James Nathan Hopkins, Geoff Packard, and Joey Pero.
Set in the smoke-filled, swing-fueled nightclubs of 1945, the musical tells the against-all-odds story of singer and songwriter Donny Novitski (Cott) and his band of mismatched fellow World War II veterans. When a national radio contest to find America's next big swing band offers a chance at instant fame and Hollywood fortune, Donny must whip his wisecracking gang of jazzers into fighting shape. Teaming up with the beautiful young war widow Julia (Osnes) as their singer, they struggle to confront the lingering effects and secrets of the battlefield that threaten to tear them apart.
Spirit of '45 Day is observed on the second weekend in August, coinciding with the anniversary of August 14, 1945, the surrender of the Japanese army and the end of World War II.
Bandstand runs through September 17.
For tickets and more information, click here.
Tagged in this Story
Corey Cott


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Author Chris Voss has a wealth of knowledge that he brings to this topic and this book. Not only is he a 24 year veteran of the FBI, he is also a preeminent practitioner and professor of negotiating skills having taught at University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, Harvard University, MIT's Sloan School of Management, and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. He is the founder and principal of The Black Swan Group, a consulting firm that provides training and advises Fortune 500 companies through complex negotiations.
One aspect of Chris' background that makes this manual feel all the more cogent is the fact that he is a former international hostage negotiator for the FBI, which among other aspects of his experience offers a new, field-tested approach to high-stakes negotiations, both in business and personal issues. He uses his own strengths to write this book with opening each chapter with a personal experience in negotiations – many of which sound like episodes from a Liam Neeson film!


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Goalkeeper comeback and USA transition: U21 prepares for second half of season
Daley Hoyles January 8, 2023 3 min read
Mark Zimmerman told the U21s to get back to training. (Archive photo: Bopp)
New Year's New Luck? 1. The U21 footballers at FC Köln are back on the training ground from Thursday. Coach Mark Zimmerman hopes the brief shutdown will unleash new strength in his team. However, one player got injured in the first session. Changes have also been made to the team.
"The time without football was long enough, at least for the winter." Mark Zimmerman, coach of the U21 soccer team 1. FC Köln, is excited. The 48-year-old recharged her batteries during the short Christmas break – and hopes to do the same with her supporters.
The coach now has about a month to prepare his team for the first match in the Regionala West. A tough away game begins at Rot-Weiss Oberhausen on February 4th (2pm). The U21s will be the clear outsiders in sixth place. "But it wasn't a bonus game," Zimmerman insists, "and we gambled on this opportunity. The remaining 14 games are fundamental for us." After just 20 points from the previous 20 games, Cologne need three points in the fight for relegation. A win.
Tryouts for the U21s
Winter preparations will this time take place entirely in Cologne. A year ago, the U21s traveled to Marbella in Spain for a short training camp in January. But FC's tight budget didn't allow for such a trip this time. For the same reason, there shouldn't be any outside newcomers – although a strong finisher with just 27 goals in the first half of the season is badly needed.
After all, the U21s currently have an attacking player with Benny Reddsic. The 20-year-old, who can play on the attacking flanks, last played for FC Dallas and has been out of contract since January 1. The 1.78m tall winger holds US and Bosnian citizenship and has already played for both countries' youth national teams. Redgic has made six short appearances in America's top division, MLS, and is expected to stay with the U21s until next weekend. Zimmermann wants to see the potential new signing in the first friendly in Oberliga Baumberg on January 14 (2:30pm). A duty must then be decided upon.
Voyage to America before Return — Roloff
Meanwhile, another player from America, Gabriel Segal, has already left the club. The 21-year-old arrived at Geißbockheim from Stanford in the summer, but the striker struggled with the transition. Segal never outgrew the role of a backup player. According to GEISSBLOG, he has now decided to return to the US and has moved to MLS team New York FC.
Jonas Urbic's loan to Regensburg is also having an impact on the U21s. The 19-year-old was a regular keeper for the regional league side and made 13 appearances in the first half of the season. Cologne will be short-staffed between the posts throughout the season, with Tobias Trattner and Gavin Digilatis. So reinforcement is necessary. As GEISSBLOG has learned from multiple sources, Julian Roloff is slated to take over the vacant goalkeeper position. The 21-year-old left FC a year ago to join Canadian Premier League club Cavalry FC. However, the 1.92 meter giant was used there only four times. No official confirmation on Roloff personnel from FC yet.
At the start of practice Thursday, Zimmerman had to digest the first bad news. Yusuf Ornek is in the unit with a syndesmosis injury and is at risk of being out for weeks. Michael Oskan is rehabilitating after a meniscus injury. Leon Waldminghaus started with the doubles on Friday and Luka Schlags will join the team on Monday after an operation.
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PUBG loot locations - where to find the best loot on all maps
Where to find the best loot in PUBG, on every map.
Guide by	Chris Tapsell, Staff Writer
Updated on 24 May 2021
PUBG loot can be found all over the place, but spend some real time with the game and you'll quickly realise some places are consistently better than others.
The best PUBG loot locations, despite the ever-changing nature of flight paths and reachable drop zones, tend to stay the same, and normally have the same sort of thing in common between them: lots of loot, lots of players, lots of chances to get killed before you've even started.
Here, we'll discuss the best loot locations in PUBG for all four maps.
This page is part of our guides to each of PUBG's maps. For more, head to our dedicated pages on Sanhok, Erangel and Miramar, Vikendi or look at all of the best PUBG loot locations in one place.
The best PUBG loot locations on Erangel
The best PUBG loot locations on Miramar
The best PUBG loot locations on Sanhok
The best PUBG loot locations on Vikendi
PUBG: Xbox One X vs Xbox One Early Access Frame-Rate Test!
PUBG loot locations - where to find the best loot on Erangel
Loot in PUBG is generated at random, but according to certain rules - so you could go to a place known for high quantities of great loot and come away with nothing great, or you could go somewhere average and get something amazing. In other words, it's a game of odds, and generally if you play according to the odds you'll come out on top.
We'll start with Erangel's loot, breaking it down into sections, from high-quality high-risk through to low-quality low-risk locations, and then do the same for Miramar just below. Do note, of course, that things like the relative "risk" of a location varies from game-to-game of course - Miramar's Hacienda, for instance, is high risk because it's popular and regularly under the flight path, but that doesn't mean there won't be the odd game where it's far enough from the flight path for you to race there early and loot in relative safety!
Military Base:
Loot quality: Very High
Loot quantity: Very High
Risk: Very High
The Military Base, on Erangel's smaller, southern island, has the most consistent amount of high-quality, military-grade loot. Military grade means things like level 3 helmets and body armour, plentiful scopes and attachments, medical gear and assault rifles.
It's almost always busy, but it's so huge that your whole squad could loot it and not notice another one doing the same. Aim for the three long buildings in a U-shape for dense amounts of loot that's easy to work your way through. If you can get here from a flight path that's quite far away, say via fast vehicle like bike, then it's an incredible place to loot in peace - but just be wary of "bridge trolls" waiting to ambush you on the way to the mainland.
Loot quality: High
Loot quantity: High
The School - the big, central square-shaped building by Rozhok - is massively popular, and thus massively dangerous, because it's dead central positioning almost always puts it within landing distance of a drop from the plane.
The loot isn't military-grade, but there's probably a full squad's worth there - if it's at the edge of parachute distance then fighting it out with (and hopefully defeating) one other player or squad is a great way to set yourself up for a very strong push into the late game. Lots of level 2 gear, good weapons and attachments and medical loot, too.
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The nearby "puzzle" buildings to the east (that look like jigsaw pieces on the map) are a great place to break out to, as is Rozhok. Just be wary of how open you are in the fields around it!
Pochinki:
Stop landing here! Unless you want to practise, warm up, or die quickly that is. Pochinki has good loot and loads of it, but it's always packed, it's very hard to know where other teams are (and so very easy to be killed by them) because of the sheer number of places to hide, and it's just generally an all round death zone.
Great for practise though, or emergency looting if you're travelling through and short of gear later on, but there are other similar options with slightly lower risk and slightly higher reward that aren't far away. It's fine to go for it, just don't expect it to be safe, ever.
Hospital (plus Georgopol crates and southern buildings):
Risk: High
The Hospital-Georgopol-crates area is all sort of connected. The best place is probably the Hospital - the H-shaped building just south of the town - as there are vast quantities of loot that's just below military-grade packed into its various corridors here, enough to kit out a full squad.
The containers, or creates, to the east of the town is the next best place to go. The handful of warehouses are the place to start, then work your way through the containers - and most importantly onto the top of them - to hoover up lots more good loot. Again, a squad can pretty much stock up here.
Finally the buildings - on the south coast, not the northern one, which can be surprisingly frustrating in terms of loot-to-time-spent-looting ratio - are also full of good quality gear. You start to learn the interal structure of these houses quite quickly and can turn it into a very quick procedure with some practice. The lowered risk for all of these areas comes from the fact that they're out on the west coast, meaning less frequently under the busy flight path.
Mini power in the foreground, and the main Mylta Power in the background.
Mylta Power (and mini Power):
Risk: Medium
A personal favourite, the east coast's Mylta Power is a go-to drop when it's on the edge of the flight path. Thanks to its positioning, a path close to Mylta Power is also close to the Military Base, Mansion, Prison and Novorepnoye, which are all more popular options - and often distract players away from the Power plant.
The loot here is occasionally military grade, although there's not quite as much of it. If you're dropping here directly aim for the roof of the large rectangular green building, clean that out, then go to the warehouses around it to finish off the sweep.
Mini Power is a great little spot nearby. A single, unsual power plant structure with some outhouses around it, the very top floor often houses sniper equipment and we've frequently found level 3 gear here too. Normally only enough for one or two players though, so it should be coupled with a visit elsewhere (like the main Power plant!) if you're in a squad. Be wary of rogue players though - we frequently find one or two stragglers turn up as we loot ourselves.
"Novo," or Novorepnoye crates:
Novo is a funny one - it's right in the corner of the map so can leave you a bit stranded, but there's always access to boats which can be very useful when used well (to sneak into the late game). The shipping containers (crates) are the best spot, so start with the warehouses there, then go through (and over the top of) the containers. Loads of loot here, but the houses nearby aren't so good, and be wary of both Military Base players and bridge trolls as you leave.
Prison, Mansion and Shelter:
Loot quantity: Medium
We've bundled these together as they're all nearby, and all small, dense, self-contained areas that are popular but solid options for looting, especially if you commute there from a more distant flight path to give yourself a safety buffer before anyone else arrives.
They generally have enough loot to kit out two people, or spread a bit thin between a full squad, and are popular. You'll often be battling it out with another squad, which can slow you down but also leave you in a great spot if you come out on top.
Medium-grade towns (Primorsk, Rozhok, Quarry, Ferry Pier, Water Town, north Georgopol, Zhorki, Severny, Lipovka, Yasnaya Polyana):
Various "other towns" not specifically mentioned so far can often blur into one. They generally have loads of loot at a decent standard, but it can take a while to actually get it because it's so spread out between large numbers of buildings.
Their popularity is heavily dictated by the flight path - generally they're very popular if they're right underneath it, and much less so if further away from the plane. Very solid options and not at all to be ignored, especially if you feel you can get there quickly and safely, and have enough time to either grab a vehicle or get to the safe zone when you're done.
Settlements, shacks, villages and buildings:
The more you play, the more you'll familiarise yourself with these assorted clusters of buildings around the map, and will probably have your own names for them amongst squads. Having a few "go-to" options that you repeatedly visit is a good way to get really familiar with your surroundings and increase your chances of winning face-offs with other rogue squads nearby.
The loot is normally servicable, if a little sparse. A mix of level 1 and 2 gear with some kind of "long" gun in each cluster, mixed with some SMGs and Shotguns. You can get by on these if you have to, but ideally only when you have to.
The best PUBG loot locations on Erangel.
The best PUBG loot locations on Miramar.
The best PUBG loot locations on Sanhok.
The best PUBG loot locations on Vikendi.
PUBG loot locations - where to find the best loot on Miramar
The exact same principles apply for Miramar loot as they do for Erangel loot. Frequent flight-path locations with good loot are high-risk, high-reward. Places further out or less known are a better option, and smaller settlements are normally okay for last resorts but you should try to do better if possible. Let's dive in to the specifics! Again, starting with the highest risk going to the lowest.
Hacienda del Patrón (otherwise known as the murder house)
An absolute death trap but great fun and full to the brim with weapons, scopes, and level 3 gear. The works. If you fancy a shoot-out with a chance at the best stuff, go for it.
The issue is this is bang in the middle of the map, so there are almost always people here, and it's now so well-known that often you can bike across half the map at top speed and still find someone waiting to pick you off as soon as you walk in the door. Its deadliness is particularly prominent because of how small it is. Imagine Erangel's School, only more condensed, with better loot.
Pecado Casino and Gym:
Basically an alternative to Hacienda, this is another death trap right in the middle of the map with great loot and loads of people in one tiny area.
Use these two places to warm up or to practise your combat skills, but you should really avoid them in games you're trying your best to win, unless you can be the first to arrive there from a distant flight path - but you'll have to be rapid if you do. Note that some reckon the Gym building is actually better for loot than the more popular and well-known Casino.
Prison:
The Prison has probably the best loot in the game, and loads of it, especially in the main prison building (the one with broken down walls as points of entry and, you know, the prison cells inside).
The issue is it's right in the bottom left corner of the map, and on an island of its own. That means it's hard to reach, it's popular when it is in reach because suddenly everyone wants to take their chance to go there, and it's also a nightmare if you get bad luck with a circle appearing at the other end of the map.
There are vehicles to be found though, and there's nothing like tearing into the third circle at the last minute with level 3 gear to put the fear of god into campers.
Campo Militar (Military Base):
Very similar to the Prison, only more spread out. Tonnes of loot but it's often either too far away to be worth it, or too popular once it's in reach.
It's great for a squad, but not so much for a single player, as the loot is just so spread out, despite its quantity and military quality. Of the two, the Prison is better in our opinion, and also a little more fun, too.
Los Leones:
A bit of a Pochinki, this one - not a lot of point in landing here outside of practise or the fun of early shoot-outs, because there are other places just as risky but with better loot nearby, or indeed less risky with the same quality of loot.
The abunance of high-rise buildings means you're exposed when travelling, and enemies could be absolutely anywhere. It's vastly popular and slow to loot - but, all that said, there is a way to do it right.
Land in the warehouses to the south, and aim for the brown-brick ones that have an upper floor on the inside and some rooms within. These warehouses generally have good automatic rifles and even up to level 3 gear in them if you're lucky, too. They're less popular than the main town and faster to loot, and there's good access to vehicles and roads nearby to make an escape to a safer spot once you're done.
Ladrilleria:
Risk: Low
Why does nobody land here?! Maybe they will now - this is a personal favourite, perhaps because we've had some good luck or perhaps because it's a hidden gem.
Ladrilleria, we find, really varies in quality and quantity of loot. The small, fenced-off outside area has sometimes had four M416's and a load of ammo and level 2 gear lying around, and sometimes been full of nothing but pistols.
It's almost always empty though, and the bonus is that it's right by a couple of those good brown-brick warehouses across the road, there's a town just to the north, and almost always vehicles by that road too. It doesn't always pay off, but if you're going for a safer run then we like our odds here.
Minas Generales:
Similar to Ladrilleria, this place, we've found, can be weirdly quite for such a central location. Our guess is that people are distracted by the shiny Hacienda, Pecado, and Los Leones hubs nearby and just overlook it.
There's a huge amount of good but not incredible loot here, enough for a full squad, with the Graveyard nearby for overspill if you need to top up. The bases of the large mining machines tend to have some of the best stuff, with decent gear on top of them, and normally some real treats inside the more administrative, multi-floor buildings in the area.
It can be a bit slow to work through is the only issue, and whoever wins out at palces like Pecado and Hacienda nearby will be a threat.
Medium-grade towns (Impala, Puerto Paraiso, Los Higos, El Pozo, Monte Nuevo, San Martin, Power Grid, La Cobreria, etc.):
Just like the medium-grade towns in Erangel, these places have large amounts of decent loot, but how safe they are depends on how nearby the plane is at the start of the game. If it goes right over the top, there's normally somewhere better to go nearby.
If it's far away though, they make very solid options, especially when you're sure no one else landed in the area. The issue is the time it takes to clear them out due to how spread out the loot is, but if you have time then the quality is actually good. Keep an eye on the clock and use them situationally, and you'll do well.
Concrete structures - a hidden gem:
Loot quantity: Low to Medium
It's a specific type of building that you need to bear in mind here: the pair of concrete structures, one half-finished, without a roof in just a regular rectangular shape, and the other with two floors, one interior staircase and an accessible roof.
Believe it or not these actually house military-grade, level 3 gear on the regular - we've frequently been fully kitted out in Level 3 chest and backpacks with snipers or M416s from raiding just one or two of these. There isn't a huge quantity of loot in them though - normally one or two ARs, some shotguns and backpacks, and then the good stuff like helmets, armour and sniper equipment.
There's a fantastic route you can do to raid several of these, coupled with some of the above red-brick warehouses, in quick succession: land on the western edge of Los Leones, where you'll see a couple of these complexes nestled together. Work your way south through them and then across the road to the south again, where there are multiple warehouses and more of these complexes too - it gets busy though, so beware, but the loot is often superb!
Settlements, villages and warehouses:
Loot quality: Medium
Loot quantity: Low
It can sometimes feel like loot is harder to come by here than on Erangel, but don't discount the various small settlements, houses and warehouses that are around. Learn the shape of them - the long ranches with a staircase and balcony at each end, the two types of warehouse, the square houses, and so on - and if you can sweep them quickly and move onto others nearby, you can do surprisingly well.
The issue is that Miramar, uniquely, is quite hard to get around at any kind of speed, thanks to its tricky terrain. If you're going for smaller settlements then, try to pick some with lots of others nearby that you can work through. If you're out in the sticks with no roads and cars nearby, you're in for a bit of a miserable game.
PUBG update #29 is live: here's our guide to the latest PUBG patch notes for update 29 to get you up to speed. Meanwhile, we've dedicated pages on the Sanhok map, Erangel map and Miramar map and Vikendi map, too. If you're after some broader advice, our list of PUBG tips and tricks, PUBG weapon damage stats and the best weapons and best PUBG loot locations can help.
PUBG loot locations - where to find the best loot on Sanhok
Camp Alpha, Bravo and Charlie:
The classic Military Camp situation, only there are three of them on Sanhok. These are located in the east, west and south of the island and, although they're slightly different inside, all contain similar kinds of loot to a similar degree - and a similar level of risk.
The strange, modular-looking buildings are quite easy to navigate quickly, but it's incredibly rare you'll reach one of these without anyone else joining you, so be prepared for a fight - albeit maybe a slightly smaller one than on other maps thanks to them being split into three.
Paradise Resort:
The Paradise Resort is Sanhok's version of the Hacienda or School, being a big, obvious central point that's reachabale from any flight path. The loot, in our experience, usually isn't worth the risk as a result, which a high quantity of good but rarely exceptional loot being outweighed by the sheer number of people who land there, especially on such a condensed map.
Bootcamp:
This one might as well be another military camp, carrying similar buildings and loot quality and quanity. There's plenty to grab here, and you're less desnely packed in with enemies like you would be at Paradise Resort, but it's still very central and as a result, very high risk. Escape into the nearby hills to the east, just as you would to the hills north of Erangel's Military Base, if you do manage to do well here. Just don't linger for too long as the rest of the match's players close in around you.
Ruins:
The density of the loot here - maybe not the highest amount in the world, but it's very close together - combined with the quanity of it makes Ruins a great spot for looting, even in a squad. It's high risk, because it's an interesting place that naturally draws crowds, but usually worth it.
Do be aware that it's easy to get lost or disorientated beneath the ruins here though, and as a result quite easy to get flanked, too, but if you're up for maybe one quick skirmish before a quieter midgame with great loot, this is a nice one to try.
Quarry:
Loads of good, if not exceptional, loot here, in an area that's nice and easy to navigate.
We've often found it to be surprisingly quiet - maybe one or two passers-by - in our games, but do be aware that you're very exposed, on all sides, as you work your way through looting the quarry. Do it well and you'll come out really well equipped, and there's enough decent-quality loot for a full squad, but avoid the temptation to stay too long.
Mongnai:
Nowhere is safe on Sanhok, of course, but Mongnai is one of the least dangerous places you can loot a decent quality of gear for yourself or maybe one partner.
It's a kind of conconut farm, up in the north-east norner of the map, which keeps it away from many flight paths and the attention of those in search of an instant fight. Not loads of loot here, but we've found some great quality stuff in our visits when we're looking for a stealthier game.
Cave:
There are a lot of guns here, but you'll probably only find enough supplementary gear for a duo. It's relatively quiet on most games, but busy when there's a direct flyover as people like to try and glide down through the big hole in the ceiling.
The density of loot is great - there's a medium amount of it but it's all very close together, meaning you can sweep it and come out well equipped pretty quickly. There's also usually a jetski you can hop on for a cool escape if you fancy it, too.
Ban Tai:
Not loads of loot here, but usually enough for two of you and it's usually very quiet - your might face a race to land first but after that initial scramble with one other player, it's yours to loot safely, and if you come up short it's only a short trip to Camp Charlie nearby.
You can also head out onto the water with a boat if one spawns nearby, giving you an easy route up through the centre of the island to the rest of the match. Nice if you want a secluded, low-key early drop!
Other towns and general settlements on Sanhok:
There are loads of other settlements on Sanhok all around the island, but all of them, if they're within flight range, carry a significant risk, just simply because of the size of the map.
Loot on this map in general is high in quantity and density, as it was built to be a fast-paced setting compared to the others - and you'll come out of any town in very good shape - if you survive.
PUBG loot locations - where to find the best loot on Vikendi
Secret Loot Cave:
This used to be a place where you could get crate-only level gear with relative ease, until it was patched once the secret became an open one.
Now, it's still a good spot, but it's more akin to the Cave on Sanhok or underground bunkers on Erangel in terms of quality and quantity. To get in, you need to ram the rocks with a vehicle or throw a grenade at it to destroy them. It's fun, at the very least, and often still worth the effort!
Cosmodrome:
People mistake the Cosmodrome for a military camp level of loot quality, when in reality it's not quite that good. It's still got plenty of gear, but it's more spread out amongst the buildings and lower floor of the main cosmodrome.
Avoid scrambling around in the tower for too long, as there's actually not much there and it's too spread out. This ones best for when it's further from the flight path so it's less busy, too.
Dobro Mesto:
This is our go-to spot for top-tier loot on Vikendi, thanks to the main large building here in particular, where we've frequently come out with full level 3 equipment across the board after a quick run.
There's also the rest of the surrounding town to help pad you out, easily enough for a full squad or two, too. It'll be a nightmare when under the flight path but it's great if you can get there first and relatively unopposed.,/p>
Dino Park:
Dino Park's loot is a bit spread out, and it's easy to waste time going from one small snack shack to another, but the actual quality and amount is decent for a solo or duo run, especially given we've often gone there and faced no opposition at all. You'd think a theme park would attract crowds, but this is actually our choice of quieter spot for solo runs.
Castle:
Buckets of loot but at a risk: it's easy to get lost in its many corridors and basements, it's hard to escape safely thanks to the obvious roads off the mini island, and it's directly under the flightpath.
All that said, there is so much loot here, so if it looks relatively quiet when you're parachuting down, go for it. You'll come out with more ammo than a level 3 backpack can carry.
Villa:
Every new PUBG map's got to have a villa, hasn't it? This one is most like the Paradise Resort on Sanhok: several large buildings with plenty of loot in, but there are so many people landing here - right under the flight path, and obvious like the School - that it's rarely worth it for anything but a fun hot drop, in our opinion.
Volnova:
A massive town filled with loot, but without quite as centralised a focal point as Dobro Mesto with its big main building. That means it takes longer to sweep the loot, and there's more risk of being spotted going from one house to the next, so you'll need to be careful.
That said, the sheer size of the town makes it possible for you to get in and out without even being noticed, and it's not as central as other spots, meaning you've got a better chance if you can land here quietly at the end of a nice long drop.
Winery and Abbey:
These are best taken as a nice one-two, starting at the Winery in the far south and then working inland to the Abbey. They both have plenty of loot, abd put together they have tonnes of it, and they're also pretty tranquil in our experience too. Vikendi's equivalent of the Prison-Mansion combo on Erangel, only seemingly quieter, for now.
Other towns and settlements on Vikendi:
Vikendi, being a smaller map, has plenty of loot just about everywhere, just like Sanhok. You'll never be short of it, but most named towns here are hotly contested because the maps reduced size, and are often fairly unremarkable.
Loot wherever you like, basically, but if you're searching a fairly central town like Podvosto or Goroka, you're going to have company, and you're probably not going to have the payoff you'd get from a different, more specialised spot nearby instead anyway. Our recommendation is to avoid these places where you can get bogged down in firefights and stick to the wider, more niche spots instead, but it's up to you!
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Chris Tapsell
Staff Writer	| ChrisTapsell
Chris Tapsell is Eurogamer's Reviews Editor and most decorated Football Manager. He used to write guides, and will send you links to his favourite spreadsheets if you ask him about League of Legends or competitive Pokémon.
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Home News>> World >> British Holocaust savior honored by Czech Republic
British Holocaust savior honored by Czech Republic
By Vida
Sir Nicholas Winton, a man who displayed the same heroic feat as Oskar Schindler, was awarded Czech Republic's highest honor for rescuing Jewish children from the Holocaust.
Last Tuesday, Winton arrived at the Prague Castle and presented himself before Czech President Milos Zeman. Winton then received the Order of the White Lion, the highest order of the Czech Republic. Winton received the award at the astonishing age of 105.
What could be a higher reward for Winton was the presence of the children he saved.
One survivor is Ruth Halova, now 86. Halova was more or less 11 years old at that time when she was carried in the Kindertransport and saved from the Holocaust. Halova was overcome with emotion and joy as she met the man who saved her.
Asaf Auerback was another life that Winton saved. Auerback was also present at the ceremony and remembers the moment he and his brother boarded the train Auerback was moved after he saw the man who made his life to continue possible.
Under the Munich Agreement signed in 1938, the Nazis annexed parts of Czhechoslovakia.
On December of 1938, Winton arrived in Prague for a planned holiday in Switzerland. However, he opted to change his plans and attended to the refugee turmoil in Czechoslovakia. In the following months, Winton arranged for eight trains to transport children from Nazi- infiltrated Czechoslovakia to the safe grounds of the United Kingdom. The operation was knows as Kindertransports that saved more than 600 children, majority of them Jewish.
Winton played a vital role in securing the children's permits for the British government. He also secured families who would adopt and take care of the children.
Despite Winton's efforts, not all the children who boarded the Kindertransport survived. The last train was forced to return to Czechoslovakia when the war broke out, leaving more than 200 children victims of the Holocaust.
Every soul saved was still better than none at all.
Winton was delighted that the children he saved are going about with their lives, and some were present in the ceremony to express their gratitude.
Winton's story is among the many others who reflects humanity's empathy in the darkest moments of our history.


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Peregrine Falls Peregrine Falls
By Mark Anthony Brennan
Peregrine Falls are comparable to great guitar/drums power duos such as Death From Above 1979 or the Black Keys — they're certainly heavy enough, and they have the chops, too, what with the pedal-heavy Kenton Loewen pounding on his drums and Gordon Grdina blasting out chords and chugging with the best of them. But their debut self-titled album sees the pair drawing upon influences outside of rock/metal, and that's what really makes the record special.
"The Machinist," for instance, is frenzied jazz-rock, whereas Grdina's guitar work on "Ornette" could be better described as mathy (although the tune is no less frantic). The keys in the more contemplative "Gaza" lend it a psychedelic air, while you get a funky groove in "Finger Lakes." Then there's a distinctive Eastern flavour that crops up in several tracks, perhaps most emphatically amidst the drone on "Demon Sparrow."
Although Grdina and Loewen are perhaps better known for their work with Dan Mangan, the Vancouver musicians' exuberant performances here show they're clearly enjoying themselves as Peregrine Falls. In fact, each of them chew up the scenery so much on their respective instruments that it's a good thing they're only a duo — there'd be no room for anyone else. (Drip Audio)
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When people talk about "Breaking Bad," they focus on Walter White. This, of course, makes sense. Though Tony Soprano will always remain the quintessential antihero for a decade of TV dominated by them, "Breaking Bad" has actually pulled us along for the ride, showing each exacting step on the path of Walt's corruption. With the impending premiere of its final eight episodes, it's too early to know for certain what the legacy of "Breaking Bad" will be, but it's probably safe to say that the process of giving your audience a problematic but sympathetic protagonist, and slowly turning him into a character many now likely root against, will be the narrative gambit the show remains known for. But the focus on the character Bryan Cranston has created does do one disservice: We don't talk enough about "Breaking Bad's" setting, an element so intrinsic to the show's nature that it's on par with any of the characters' trajectories.
It's not that people don't write about the fact that "Breaking Bad" is set in New Mexico, in the desert of the American Southwest. They mention it all the time, but it's mostly as some aside in a post otherwise for another purpose (air date news like "Walt and Jesse return to the desert on August 11th...") or a brief description in a recap of how a shot of the sun accentuated this or that scene. One of the only notable exceptions I've come across is a recent New Yorker post by Rachel Syme, in which she discusses the power of "Breaking Bad's" setting from her perspective as a longtime New Mexico native. And yet, without the desert "Breaking Bad" doesn't work. The desert is pivotal for the creation — and, possibly, the destruction — of Walter White.
Setting is naturally always an important identity of a show, but for a lot of the other great shows of our time it came from a place of logic. "Mad Men" couldn't really take place anywhere besides Manhattan for historical and factual purposes; same goes, more or less, for "The Sopranos." "Breaking Bad" doesn't seem beholden to that same stricture — there are suburban dads and meth dealers all over the country. Having settled on New Mexico, however, Gilligan chose a setting that became part of the fabric of the show, the desert becoming a governing characteristic aesthetically, thematically and metaphorically.
It's telling that Gilligan singled out the potential with cinematography. "Breaking Bad's" cinematography has always been singular and occasionally experimental, deploying tricks like frequent time lapses of desert sunrises or cars zipping down isolated highways or around isolated gas stations, and wide shots of an unforgiving landscape looking down on the tiny silhouettes of two characters.
This type of innovation shows up at the beginning of the pilot. "Breaking Bad" doesn't open with a shot of suburbia or of Walt, but of three still, silent shots of desert landscape, and then the sudden intrusion of the absurdity of Walt's pants floating gently through the air with an ambient backing sound, then the RV roaring through and disrupting the initial revery. All the cinematic treatment cultivates a sense of the desert as both an alien landscape and a pure and ancient place only thrown out of balance by the violent intrusion of Walt and his machinations. Five seasons on, hindsight suggests there was an implicit suggestion from the get-go: This is the place that allowed Walter White to be born, but he is a visitor passing through, and it could also be the place that will ultimately destroy him.
As an icon, the desert has a double identity. Its barrenness suggests a blank space for you to fill up with your own stories and myths, an emptiness to be written upon. At the same time, it is loaded up with associations and symbolism in a way so extreme that perhaps only a visual this dried-out and uninhabited could hold it all. In America alone, there are plenty of visions of the desert. Going back to the country's Christian roots, there's a biblical resonance, a landscape that was both origin story and a place requiring an Exodus. The religious connotations are heightened in contemporary times with homegrown American faiths like Mormonism coming to thrive in places like Utah and Nevada. The other side of that coin is the capitalistic vision, the Manifest Destiny of a frontier to be taken and mined and added to a nascent continental empire. Religion and capitalism both have plenty of their own claims to transcendence, so the connective tissue here is the classic American iconography of the Wild West: the untamed desert of the frontier as a place of new beginnings, the nation's literal building blocks of gold and oil physical manifestations of some unidentifiable potential the West is supposed to hold for self-reinvention.
That last idea has lived on in a hundred highway songs and countless depictions of East Coast dwellers envisioning California as an end point where you can start over, but Walter White is stuck on the road in between those points. It's a desert with drug cartel activity, with trains barreling through with massive quantities of methylamine, with a horizon that's still as open or empty as you choose to see it; in other words, it still feels as wild as those classic American myths. "This is the West," a man in a dark hotel room tells Walt as he buys a gun in Season 4, before going on to explain that nobody is going to fault him for shooting a man in self-defense.
Gilligan has recently called "Breaking Bad" a postmodern western, which gets at the way the desert's double identity has produced two major effects for "Breaking Bad." Throughout, the show reappropriates classic western imagery and signifiers, always ushered in by the eerie twang of the brief intro credits. The setting is now the suburbs rather than a Wild West town surrounded by ranches, but the neighborhood roads and parking lots of "Breaking Bad" feel as vacant as the dusty path outside of an old-time saloon. They aren't bandits hijacking a train, but there are drug dealers siphoning out its methylamine. The locales convey a sense of dread, like an attack is always looming (particularly in Season 3 with the Salamanca twins), so that when Jesse shoots Gale or Walt execute's Gus' street-level thugs or when Todd shoots the child at the train tracks, the bursts of violence feel like a darker version of the pressure release that would come at the end of a slow-building western.
Ironically, this violence never really directly comes out of any of the show's numerous meetings out in the desert. Those become more verbal and emotional showdowns, and they happen frequently. While the show usually follows an implicit criticism of Walt's insecurities regarding his masculinity, they do allow him a Wild West-esque show of bravado in the "Say my name" exchange with Declan in Season 5. Even there, though, there's a twist: This man is not an outlaw or frontier man in the classic sense, but a high school teacher and suburban dad having assumed the persona of an archetype.
This all connects to the first strand of meaning produced by "Breaking Bad's" desert setting. While on paper these descriptions would suggest the show carries a bunch of baggage by playing with all this old iconography, in reality the sparseness of its setting allows for and mirrors its narrative's relatively direct minimalism. In comparison to a dense ensemble drama like "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad" has anywhere from seven to nine truly central characters at any one moment, and all of them revolve around what is essentially the straight line of Walt's descent. The show's visual and narrative leanness have accentuated its raw, visceral moments. Taking a cue from the sands that open the series, "Breaking Bad" has often featured a specific palette of drab coloration: drained, pale brush, the nondescript taupe of Walt's wardrobe, the '70s brown of the RV, the anemic greens of the Aztek. Every bit of violence stands out as all the more striking in comparison, the stream of blood as Gus slits Victor's throat with the box cutter or the gore of Gus himself getting his face blown off all the more vivid against the sandy pallor that serves as the show's typical backdrop.
Like "The Sopranos" or "Mad Men," there is actually certain logic to "Breaking Bad's" setting; if it were set in an urban center like Los Angeles or New York, it's more likely that Walt would've been found out or just shot early on. Naturally, there is a degree of hyperreal TV dramatization to the fact that those things haven't happened yet (well, aside from Hank's revelation at the end of last season), but the emptiness of the desert allows for a suspension of disbelief. Its barren landscape and the process of Walt unleashing the darker urges of his personality have a mutually primal nature. Everything in "Breaking Bad" is laid bare, the action so often occurring in broad daylight in arid stretches of dirt and sand. It would seem that the desert allowed for us to believe a character like Walt not only logically, but thematically, that the harshness of his home yielded such an uncompromising narrative. The raw power of the desert's unforgiving expanse was akin to that of a man with his back up against the wall.
There's another history to the American desert. It isn't one where unexplored corners promise the birth of a new self, or one in which there's a certain individualistic fascination with a willed lawlessness. It's one where things go to die and be buried, which is of course the other side of classic desert symbolism: Deserts are ancient, the sources of things, but also dead and abandoned, the sands eventually blowing over and erasing history.
Recently "Breaking Bad" has incorporated a literary reference. The first teaser for the final eight episodes gives no direct hints as to what's to come, featuring shots of familiar locations from the show, primarily desert landscapes, devoid of people, as we hear a voice-over of Walt reciting the Percy Bysshe Shelly poem "Ozymandias." That poem describes a fallen monument to an ancient power in an "antique land," working around to a conclusion describing the claim to glory ("And on the pedestal these words appear:/'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!') and how time has eaten away at whatever empire once stood there ("Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away."). In the teaser, the reading grows increasingly sinister until peaking with the command "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" before leveling out again, the sobered closing lines read against the image of Walt's Heisenberg hat dirty and solitary on the desert ground. This teaser has been accompanied with posters with the tag line "Remember My Name." Walt demanding that his legacy remain, and trying to show his mastery. Both messages have an underlying desperation that suggests the legend of Heisenberg will, like Ozymandias, stand lost and isolated in the dust.
"One of the main ways we view the show is as a portrait of decay," Gilligan told Entertainment Weekly last year. At first glance, this doesn't make much sense; much of the show has focused on Walt's increasing power. And yet, this is another one that goes all the way back to the pilot. While struggling to capture the interest of his high school chem students, Walt gives a broad lecture about the nature of chemistry: "That's all of life. It's the constant. It's the cycle. It's solution ... dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation." Of course, back then the aha symbolism moment would rest on that last beat, the idea that we would be watching Walt transform, famously, from Mr. Chips into Scarface. But the word "decay" precedes "transformation," and lately Gilligan has stated he believes that the truth is that there was always something dark in Walt, waiting to be called out. The rotting gives way to the transformation, which in turn gives way to more rotting. The final dissolution, the end of the cycle.
The emptiness of the desert remains the organizing principle for it all. It's the place where American iconography and history go to get swept under in nuclear waste burials and towers of old cars alike, yes, but it is also where they get strangely mutated. "Breaking Bad" takes archetypes and associations and lets them run amok, and eventually everything starts to go wrong. A lot of people get killed. Out with the rest of the country's waste, Walter White becomes an amalgam of discarded stories, becomes the character we now know, and exposes the ugliness lying underneath some of these classic American images.
Sometimes our stories seem to say that cities are where everything happens. "Breaking Bad" challenges that notion -- it shows you the madness that can occur out in the middle of the American landscape, and does it by showing these archetypal American ideas and characters and people going off the rails in a setting as simultaneously overloaded and vacant as the desert. The abandoned warehouse, the forsaken parking lot, the milquetoast suburban man —"Breaking Bad" is occupied by things that want you to think they're faceless, and yet within have our most disturbing urges catalyzing.
While the desert provides a blank expanse for all this to occur, it is an engine of decay itself. It is the source of things, and it is where things end up. It's strange and unending enough to let the stories of "Breaking Bad" unfold, but also unforgiving and ageless enough that it doesn't ultimately care. We don't yet know how "Breaking Bad" will end. Perhaps the only justice visited upon Walt will be the implication that his story, his name, will eventually be forgotten as easily as if he had never broken bad at all. Maybe his actions, with all of their violent consequences, will come to mean nothing in terms of a legacy. Ozymandias, the Wild West, Walter White — each cedes to dust and time in its way. Eventually the desert swallows it all.