【推荐3】What is life? Like most great questions, this one is easy to ask but difficult to answer. The reason is simple: we know of just one type of life and it’s challenging to do science with a sample size of one. The field of artificial life-called ALife for short — is the systematic attempt to spell out life’s fundamental principles. Many of these practitioners, so-called ALifers, think that somehow making life is the surest way to really understand what life is.

So far no one has convincingly made artificial life. This track record makes ALife a ripe target for criticism, such as declarations of the field’s doubtful scientific value. Alan Smith, a complexity scientist, is tired of such complaints. Asking about “the point” of ALife might be, well, missing the point entirely, he says. “The existence of a living system is not about the use of anything.” Alan says. “Some people ask me, ‘So what’s the worth of artificial life?’ Do you ever think, ‘What is the worth of your grandmother?’”

As much as many ALifers hate emphasizing their research’s applications, the attempts to create artificial life could have practical payoffs. Artificial intelligence may be considered ALife’s cousin in that researchers in both fields are enamored by a concept called open-ended evolution (演化). This is the capacity for a system to create essentially endless complexity, to be a sort of “novelty generator”. The only system known to exhibit this is Earth’s biosphere. If the field of ALife manages to reproduce life’s endless “creativity” in some virtual model, those same principles could give rise to truly inventive machines.

Compared with the developments of Al, advances in ALife are harder to recognize. One reason is that ALife is a field in which the central concept — life itself — is undefined. The lack of agreement among ALifers doesn’t help either. The result is a diverse line of projects that each advance along their unique paths. For better or worse, ALife mirrors the very subject it studies. Its muddled (混乱的) progression is a striking parallel (平行线) to the evolutionary struggles that have shaped Earth biosphere.

Undefined and uncontrolled, ALife drives its followers to repurpose old ideas and generated novelty. It may be, of course, that these characteristics aren’t in any way surprising or singular. They may apply universally to all acts of evolution. Ultimately ALife may be nothing special. But even this dismissal suggests something：perhaps, just like life itself throughout the universe, the rise of ALife will prove unavoidable.

【推荐1】1. One question every coach has beard in their coaching career is this.

“Why isn’t my kid playing?”

The stupidity of many “win-at-all-cost” coaches in youth sports is neatly matched by that of “play-my-kid-or-else” parents at the high-school level.

When the games start to count, the main reason why your kid isn’t playing is simple:

“They’re just not good enough.”

“He/she just isn’t fast enough.”

“He/she just isn’t strong enough.”

Good coaches, however, are not usually that blunt. They are very skillful in not telling what you and I would consider the “truth”. The thing is that many kids know what they’re good at, and what they’re not good at. When it comes to football, for instance, most of the middle-schoolers or freshmen already know the one or two kids who are good enough to play on the varsity team or to catch the eye of a college admissions officer. Their parents do not.

The rest play because they enjoy it, need the discipline, want to belong to a team, have dreamed of it since they were five or six, are trying to make their parents happy, need a varsity sport on their college application, or some combination of the factors above. Some of them don’t possess much athletic skill, but make up for it by practicing, by getting stronger and quicker, and with on-field effort.

Far too many children today are living in a world where they never learn “no”. They don’t know how to handle disappointment and failure. Nor do they know how to react and move on when they don’t get their own way.

It’s awful when your kid isn't playing. Been there, done that. No reasonable parent wants to see their child hurt. But no one escapes this life unhurt, emotionally if not physically. When these kids move on in life, they are going to get rejected when they apply for college, fail to get the job they want, and taste failure and disappointment on multiple fronts.

Coaches should try to make sure everyone gets some playing time. But that should never come at the expense of other kids who are more talented, try harder or spend more time practicing. No child should ever go out for any team thinking they’re going to be guaranteed a spot or playing time, no matter how loudly their parents complain.

In that sense, sports are a true mirror of life. No one is guaranteed “playing” time in life. For the most part, hard work, effort, planning and desire is rewarded. The benefits can be wonderful. But it’s good to be prepared when it doesn't work out that way.

【推荐2】In the digital age, we rely on technology such as social media to try to build interesting and varied lives. Social networking sites are designed and promoted to make us believe enthusiastically that they are able to open up new experiences for us. There are constant notifications (通知) and updates, urging us to log in to find out what is new.

But if we do not use the technology wisely, we can end up becoming trapped in a cycle of social media FOMO, a sign of deeper unhappiness. FOMO, or fear of missing out, is the fear that exciting or interesting events are happening somewhere else and that we are not able to take part.

People who experience high levels of FOMO have been found to be more likely to give in to urges to compose and check text messages while driving, as well as to use Weibo, TikTok, etc more often directly after waking, while going to sleep and during meals.

When it comes to lasting happiness, it is best not to give in to FOMO, but rather to deal with the cycle of desires that fuel it. Hard as it is, it is better to work toward facing the fearful reality that we cannot experience everything we might like than to get caught in a cycle of checking behaviors that only cause anxiety.

If we have become used to using social media as part of our attempts at living interesting lives, we must admit that it is not easy to change our approach. But change is almost always worthwhile in the long run.

The fact that FOMO is so common in our digital age is a sign that there is something wrong with the way we are pursuing happiness and that we are not as happy as we might think we are. It should warn us that, in our eagerness to use digital technology to try to make ourselves happier, we may unintentionally bring on exactly the opposite result.

【推荐1】Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).

How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?

【推荐2】When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn’t sit quietly. Back in 1983, two scientists, Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants pump through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, VOCs for short.

Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked. It’s a plant’s way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Apparently. Because we can watch the neighbours react.

Some plants pump out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They pump out perfumes designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was lunching now becomes lunch.

In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors. The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking, stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.

Does this mean that plants talk to each other? Scientists don’t know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so, in effect, was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to “overhear” the cry. So information was exchanged, but it wasn’t a true, intentional back and forth.

Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago, imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate(亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There’s a whole lot going on.

【推荐3】California has lost half its big trees since the 1930s, according to a study to be published Tuesday and climate change seems to be a major factor (因素).

The number of trees larger than two feet across has declined by 50 percent on more than 46, 000 square miles of California forests, the new study finds. No area was spared or unaffected, from the foggy northern coast to the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the San Gabriels above Los Angeles. In the Sierra high country, the number of big trees has fallen by more than 55 percent; in parts of southern California the decline was nearly 75 percent.

Many factors contributed to the decline, said Patrick McIntyre, an ecologist who was the lead author of the study. Woodcutters targeted big trees. Housing development pushed into the woods. Aggressive wildfire control has left California forests crowded with small trees that compete with big trees for resources (资源).

But in comparing a study of California forests done in the 1920s and 1930s with another one between 2001 and 2010, McIntyre and his colleagues documented a widespread death of big trees that was evident even in wildlands protected from woodcutting or development.

The loss of big trees was greatest in areas where trees had suffered the greatest water shortage. The researchers figured out water stress with a computer model that calculated how much water trees were getting in comparison with how much they needed, taking into account such things as rainfall, air temperature, dampness of soil, and the timing of snowmelt (融雪).

Since the 1930s, McIntyre said, the biggest factors driving up water stress in the state have been rising temperatures, which cause trees to lose more water to the air, and earlier snowmelt, which reduces the water supply available to trees during the dry season.

【推荐1】Returning to a book you’ve read many times can feel like drinks with an old friend. There’s a welcome familiarity — but also sometimes a slight suspicion that time has changed you both, and thus the relationship. But books don’t change, people do. And that’s what makes the act of rereading so rich and transformative.

The beauty of rereading lies in the idea that our bond with the work is based on our present mental register. It’s true, the older I get, the more I feel time has wings. But with reading, it’s all about the present. It’s about the now and what one contributes to the now, because reading is a give and take between author and reader. Each has to pull their own weight.

【推荐2】A trial project by the Montreal Children’s Hospital suggested that the use of medical hypnosis (催眠) can reduce pain and anxiety in patients. The project also resulted in a reduction in the amount of medicines used to perform medical-imaging (医学影像) procedures.

“During the examination children don’t move. It works perfectly. It’s amazing,” said Johanne L’Ecuyer, a medical-imaging technologist at the hospital.

The project was inspired by a French team from Rouen University Hospital Centre where examinations are done under hypnosis instead of general anesthesia (麻醉).

A French medical-imaging technologist—also a hypnotist—was invited to train a few members in the medical-imaging department of the children’s hospital. In all, 80 examinations were conducted for the project between January and September, 2019, focusing on the imaging procedures that would cause anxiety.

Hypnosis is not a state of sleep: It is rather a modified (改变的) state of consciousness. The technologist will guide the patient to this modified state—an imaginary world that will disassociate itself more and more from the procedure that follows.

“The technologist must build up a story with the patient,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. “The patient is left with the power to choose what he wants to talk about. Do you play sports? Do you like going to the beach? We establish a subject that we will discuss throughout the procedure.”

Everything that happens next during the procedure must be related to this story—an injection (注射) becomes the bite of an insect; the heat on the skin becomes the sensation of the sun and a machine that rings becomes a police car passing nearby.

“The important thing is that the technologist associates what is happening outside the patient’s body with what the patient sees in his head,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. “It requires creativity on the part of the technologist, imagination, a lot of patience and kindness.”

The procedure appealed to the staff a lot when it was introduced in January. “It spread like wildfire that someone from France was here to train the technologists,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. She added that she had a line of staff at her door wanting to take the training

【推荐3】Dating in the workplace is, if not a taboo, certainly a conundrum-not only for businesses, but also for the employees who find themselves falling for a co-worker. [1]         Should it be allowed? Would it be authoritarian to ban it? Should employees inform their bosses of office relationships, or should they conceal them? Is requiring so-called “love contracts” to be signed by both parties before initiating a relationship even realistic?

[2]        Most people spend 30 to 45 hours in the office each week-and with team-bonding activities, work celebrations and Friday drinks, it’s normal for colleagues to build a bond with one another, especially if they find that they have more things in common than just their employer.

From the company’s point of view, however, couples at work are a serious risk factor which must be mitigated. Without a proper dating policy in place, claims of sexual harassment and accusations of favoritism become a significant risk. It’s not necessary to ban office romance (though you are certainly allowed to): but you do need to have clear rules in place, to ensure you’re doing all you can to head off any potential issues. Ask, for example, that all employees who embark on a relationship have a sit-down, be it casual or formal, with HR. [3]      

As for employees, there are two things to consider when you find yourself romantically interested in one of your colleagues: first of all, is it worth it? [4]         Regardless of how your employer feels, office romance can be quite complicated-not only because you’ll most likely be the target of gossip, but also because your work environment will be affected if the relationship does not work out. And secondly, what is your company’s dating policy? If they have a zero-tolerance policy, do not risk your job or assume you will be able to keep your relationship on the down low. In the vast majority of cases, it’s simply not possible.

Attitudes towards office romance are certainly changing, with more companies reassessing zero-tolerance policies and opting for a more casual approach to how their employees connect with one another. That said, however, office romance is still a complex issue, and it should be treated with gravitas.