【推荐3】Healthcare professionals in four Canadian provinces can now prescribe (开处方) their patients passes to National Parks thanks to a new program, PaRX, which stresses the health benefits of spending time in nature in helping to manage physical and mental health.

PaRx was founded by the B. C. Parks Foundation in November 2020 and was officially supported by Parks Canada last month. Health professionals who register (注册) with the program can offer their patients a Parks Canada Discovery Pass, making it the country’s “first national nature prescription program”. The Parks Discovery Pass typically costs about $57 per adult per year.

“We’re really asking doctors to prioritize patients who live close to Parks Canada sites so they’ll have more access and can make it part of their everyday lives, and also those for whom the cost of a pass might be a barrier to nature access,” said Melissa Lem, president-elect of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Studies have shown that spending time in nature has a range of health benefits—from lowering blood pressure and improving heart health to reducing stress and anxiety. PaRx recommends that patients spend at least two hours per week in the great outdoors, and at least 20 minutes each time, to get the most benefit.

The program is currently available in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. It will eventually spread to every province.

PaRx also has benefits outside of the national parks, with many gardens offering free admission to visitors who show their prescriptions.

“There’s almost no medical condition that nature doesn’t make better. Rediscovering nature and then realizing how important it is to us has really shown that nature-health connection,” Lem said.

【推荐1】A MAGICAL PLACE

Theme parks? I just love them. In a month or so, the UK’s finest will throw their gates open for the new season to thrill us with their engineered delights. As usual, I will be the first person inside. Yes, I may be a digital enthusiast, but to me there is nothing as irresistible or as thrilling as the full-on experience of spending a day in someone else’s imagination.

Dr. Carissa Baker, assistant professor in theme parks and storytelling at the University of Central Florida, argued in 2018 that theme parks are gatherers and tellers of stories. Their distinct narratives start before you enter the park, are played out in what you experience there, and continue after you’ve left. How do they do it? Some believe it’s down to creative direction and narrative system design. But I call it like I see it: they use all the psychological tricks in my social psychology textbooks to get us to feel and act in the way that the people behind the scenes foretell.

Everything in theme parks is manipulated(操纵). Everything is accounted for. Whereas in the digital world, designers infer what we feel, these theme parks digest these emotions. A famous example is Disneyland’s Main Street USA, which you walk down on first entering the park: the sets have been designed with forced perspective so the buildings appear taller and grander than they really are. Techniques like this are everywhere to be seen in the squares of Renaissance Italy and Georgian England to make the buildings seem bigger than they were. The mythical Main Street is made to feel larger and more impressive, which gets visitors excited when they enter the park—we are the hero of Disneyland’s narrative. Now that’s a powerful trick.

The digital world is nowhere near as magical as these places are. Yes, digital designers can create something out of nothing with mathematics and electricity, but their best attempts are only shortcuts in two-dimensional space. All they have in their toolboxes are sight and sound. But in theme parks, digital is out of place. Yes, behind the scenes there are data machines that are trying to track us to make our experiences better and more personal. Except for one or two notable examples, digital tech isn’t being used to enhance our time at the park in any practical way. It just gets in the way. And perhaps that is why I love theme parks. Because when I’m there, I want to be propelled(推动) by someone else’s vision, and give over to the feeling.

The next killer app isn’t on your device. It’s in the places that thrill us and compel us to keep our phones in our pockets so we can truly experience them.

【推荐2】Online services that use computers to interview job seekers were increasingly used by companies during the coronavirus health crisis. But the technology raises questions about whether a machine can correctly or fairly judge a person’s personality and reactions in front of a camera.

Dana Anthony is one job seeker who has experienced such interviews. One was for a part-time job at Target last year. The day after the interview, she got an email informing her that she was not chosen.

Anthony said she did not know why she was removed from consideration so quickly. She had no sense of how the interview had gone. She said this is because she received no human feedback during the process.

Her rejection email from Target stated: “We’re unable to provide specific feedback regarding your application.” Anthony was rejected for another job in December after completing another online interview.

One interview system is run by a business called HireVue, one of the leading companies in the field. In the past, the Utah-based HireVue used artificial intelligence(AI) methods to judge a job-seeker’s personality and job skills. It did this by observing the expressions on a person’s face during the interview.

But after facing intense criticism about the scientific effectiveness of its claims and the possibility of unfairness, HireVue announced earlier this year that it would stop using that method. However, the company’s AI-based system still considers speech and word choices when rating a candidate’s personality and skills.

HireVue helped create a market for “on-demand” video interviews. Companies using the services include stores Target and Ikea, technology companies like Amazon, and banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Companies in the oil and travel industries, and even school systems, have used them.

HireVue chief Kevin Parker said its systems, which turn speech into text to make verdicts on job skills, can perform better than human interviewers.