I enjoyed this trip for the opportunity to witness the Cranes (鹤) returning from Wood Buffalo National Park, some with their young of the year. I wondered, at the changing skies of Saskatchewan, often the vivid oranges and pinks of a sunset made me pause, but it was the clouds of feathers as ducks, geese, and cranes lifted off fields and lakes in numbers so numerous, they blocked out the sky at times, that blew my mind.

The desire to travel and explore is strong within the human condition. We might think we must journey “away” to enjoy a holiday, and sometimes we do. But other times, a simpler exploration, digging deeply into landscapes and cultures that we think we know, reveals the best sights.

I grew up in Saskachewan when cranes were fighting back from extinction, and I wasn’t a birdwatcher. But, returning with Eagle-Eye Tours as a bird-loving RCGS Travel Ambassador, I wondered at the conservation successes that allowed us to find these rare birds reliably.

My favourite memory from the trip is of an old farmer driving a large truck who slowed down for our group, standing in the middle of a road, excitedly watching a flock of cranes. Rather than scolding us for blocking traffic, he invited us into his backyard for a better view! He explained how he’s been providing quiet reserves for many years as the birds stop to rest and feed before flying south to Texas. It’s moments like this that make the travel special, and companies like Eagle-Eye Tours craft itineraries (行程) that allow these unexpected discoveries.

I enjoyed sharing these experiences with other nature lovers on the Royal Canadian Geographical Society branded trip and look forward to doing it again in October 2024.

As the Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Jessica Pels is responsible for managing the content of one of the world’s largest young women’s media brands. Pels has ambitiously navigated her career to the top role relatively quickly, but the path she took wasn’t traditional.

Pels learnt ballet as a child and found her way to New York City dancing for a summer, but eventually gave up dance when she knew she “wasn’t good enough to be a star”. She didn’t give up her dream of working in the big city, though. Pels attended a film school at New York University and as a sophomore (大学二年级), got her first internship at The New Yorker. After graduation in 2008, many brands were in a hiring freeze.

But Pels was not affected. She got a job doing communications for a charity.

Six months into her first job, Pels got a job at Glamour Magazine to work for the Editor-in-Chief Cindy Levy. She would turn this first assistant role into her career, and finally found her way to Cosmopolitan, where she became the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history.

Reflecting on her career and the worst advice she’s ever received, Pels said it was “to say yes to everything”. It was a habit she had to learn to break. And while she acknowledges the importance of seizing opportunities, she doesn’t think that strategically saying “no” would have been a damage to her career.

She remembers the conversation with her boss Kate Lewis that changed her perspective on over- committing. “I had just started at Marie Claire as the digital director, and she said, I worry you’re going to burn out because you’re saying yes to everything and you are acting in such an aggressive way, and you need to take a step back and prioritize. ‘And that really changed my life. I thought that was an incredible career moment.”

Laughter comes in many forms, from a polite and quiet laugh to a great hearty laugh. Scientists are now developing an AI system to recreate different laughs in proper social contexts. The team behind the laughing robot Erica said that the system could improve natural conversations between people and an AI robot. “We think that one of the important functions of conversational AI is empathy(共情),” said Dr Koji Inoue, the lead author of the research. “So we decided that one way a robot can empathize with its users is to share their laughter.”

The team have set out to teach their AI system the art of conversational laughter. They gathered training data from more than 80 daily dialogues between male subjects and the robot that was initially operated by four actresses remotely. The dialogue data was grouped into social laughs (where polite or embarrassed laughter isn’t involved) and laughter of joy. Based on the audio files, the algorithm(算法) learned the basic characteristics of social laughs, which tend to be softer, and merry laughs, with the aim of mirroring these inappropriate situations.

“Our biggest obstructor in the work was identifying the actual cases of shared laughter because as you know, most laughter is actually not shared at all,” said Inoue. “We had to carefully decide exactly which laughs we could use for our analysis and we couldn’t just assume that any laugh can be responded to. It was really not easy work.” The team said laughter could help create robots with their own distinct character although it could take more than 20 years before it would be possible to have a casual chat with a robot like we would with a friend.

“One of the things we’d keep in mind is that a laughing robot or algorithm will never be able to understand you or the meaning of laughter,” points out Prof. Sandra Wachter of the Oxford Internet Institute. “But with their development, they might get very good at tricking you into believing they understand what’s going on.”