2 . Lining up to board a plane has become an evident indicator of how our society has commodified (使商品化) the very act of waiting. The more you pay, the sooner you can get on the plane and the less likely you will have to check a bag. It’s not just airlines, it’s also museums, online purchases and amusement parks where VIP status can help you avoid lines. When did the act of waiting get such a bad reputation?

The very act of waiting can enhance our appreciation of something. We enjoy the anticipation like a child waiting for Christmas or summer vacation. Perhaps the person waiting in line to see his favorite singer perform in concert relishes the night more because of the time invested in getting into the venue.

As our world has sped up, this desirable balance between instant and delayed satisfaction conflicts with the current expectations of many people. When we denigrate (诋毁) the act of waiting, we risk losing an important part of our shared humanity. Having to wait is taken as a sign of being less well off or “not in the game”. It encourages privileged impatience and disdain (鄙视) for those who are caught waiting.

But the capacity to wait is a foundational part of a civilized society and thus an important skill to have. If we lose our ability to stand in line or to wait our turn, we suffer from the stress of a changing world. If we label people who wait as “losers”, we release strong urges to grab what’s ours at any cost with no concern about those we leave behind. We see the people in line as “other”, not like us, and that dehumanization (非人化) is dangerous.

Of course, we should not have to wait patiently for everything. For example, there are times when injustice deserves immediate action. Asking people to wait can be a calculated obstacle to change. In a larger context though, all of us are supposed to understand the act of waiting not only as a necessary evil but also as an important function which allows us to participate fully in life alongside our fellow travelers.

3 . Eiffel Tower Guided Climb Tour by Stairs

Most visitors ride the elevator at the Eiffel Tower, but travelers with a sense of adventure prefer to take the stairs. Climb the 704 steps to the second viewing platform of the Eiffel Tower on this guided tour and be rewarded with splendid views of the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Seine River, and the Champs. Get a good workout by climbing up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower. Choose a ticket to the summit and take the lift to the very top.

● Meet your guide and fellow Eiffel Tower climbers at the meeting point, then join the queue for Eiffel Tower tickets. It can take up to 90 minutes at peak times, but your guide will keep you entertained while you wait with fun facts about the tower.

● Next, follow your guide up the stairs to the second floor viewing platform, a total of 674 steps! Make a stop along the way to learn about Gustave Eiffel and the history of the tower, then enjoy views of the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame Cathedral.

● Your tour ends on the second floor. If you booked the Summit Access tour, ride the elevator up to the summit. If you booked the combo (套餐) tour with a Seine River cruise, your guide will provide tickets that can be used at any time.

● For a full refund (退款), you must cancel at least 24 hours before the experience’s start time.

● Any changes made less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time will not be accepted.

● This experience requires good weather. If it’s canceled due to poor weather, you’ll be offered a different date or a full refund.

5 . A recent study, led by Professor Andrew Barron, Dr. HaDi MaBouDi, and Professor James Marshall, illustrates how evolution has fine-tuned honey bees to make quick judgments while minimizing danger.

“Animal lives are full of decisions,” says Professor Barron. “A honey bee has a brain smaller than a sesame (芝麻) seed. And yet it can make decisions faster and more accurately than’ we can. A robot programmed to do a bee’s job would need the backup of a supercomputer.”

Bees need to work quickly and efficiently. They need to make decisions. Which flower will have a sweet liquid? While they’re flying, they face threats from the air. While landing, they’re vulnerable to potential hunter, some of which pretend to look like flowers.

Researchers trained 20 bees to associate each of the five different colored “flower disks” with their visit history of reward and punishment. Blue flowers always had sugar juice. Green flowers always had a type of liquid with a bitter taste for bees. Other colors sometimes had glucose (葡萄糖). “Then we introduced each bee to a ‘garden’ with artificial ‘flowers’. We filmed each bee and timed their decision-making process,” says Dr. MaBouDi. “If the bees were confident that a flower would have food, they quickly decided to land on it, taking an average of 0.6 seconds. If they were confident that a flower wouldn’t have food, they made a decision just as quickly. If unsure, they took on average 1.4 seconds, and the time reflected the probability that a flower had food.”

The team then built a computer model mirroring the bees’ decision-making process. They found the structure of the model looked very similar to the physical layout of a bee brain. “AI researchers can learn much from bees and other ‘simple’ animals. Millions of years of evolution has led to incredibly efficient brains with very low power requirements,” says Professor Marshall who co-founded a company that uses insect brain patterns to enable machines to move autonomously, like nature.

7 . My wife and I had decided on Ireland for our first big family trip. It’s been about a hundred years since my Irish ancestors left County Carlow for Canada. I’m so-so on U2 (a famous Irish-rock band). Irish pubs in Ontario don’t inspire me much. The most “Irish” thing about me is a ginger(姜黄色) beard and an occasional drink. My excitement for this trip was firmly rooted in the opportunity to drive on the “wrong” side of the road for a couple of weeks.

We arrived in Dublin from the overnight flight with our two kids. After picking up our rental car, we headed west. Wherever we went, I felt an undeniable sense of closeness with strangers. It wasn’t just the faces that looked like they were pulled out of my family’s photo albums. I felt at ease with the simple way of expression here, too and the shared appreciation for a self-deprecating(自嘲式的) joke.

I’ve recently learned the word “anemoia” means missing a time or a place you’ve never known. For me, the word describes the kind of longing I encountered on this trip. I’ve never experienced a longing to know Ireland or even my family’s history beyond a couple of generations. But during an hour-long trip to Inishmore Island, with the North Atlantic waves knocking us about, I felt a desire to repair the connection to my ancestors.

One day on the island, when the rain got worse, we chose a tour bus to take us to Dun Aonghasa, a 3,000-year-old stone fort(堡垒). As I walked around, I started to feel excited. By the time we entered the innermost ring of the fort, I was swimming in enthusiasm for our trip. Dun Aonghasa was full of meaning I couldn’t understand but sensed was valuable to me. For the first time in my life, I could personalize something ancient. I felt that I belonged. Yes, Ireland had many memorable things. But it was a pile of rocks that gave me the ancestral awakening I needed.

8 . When wind blows through a bigleaf maple (大叶枫), paper-thin, wing-like seeds called samaras gently spin towards the ground. The fruit’s tissue allows the wind to guide it further away from the tree. Inspired by the seeds, researchers designed a tiny, winged microchip, no larger than a grain of sand, that is powerful enough to monitor environmental pollution and airborne disease.

Called the microflier, the microchip has no motor to push it forward in the air but instead was designed to catch the wind. To perfect the microchip’s flying capability and shape, scientists took inspiration from the forms of various airborne seeds. The research team improved various designs until the microfliers flew slowly and more steadily than nature’s samara seeds. The slower falling rate allows the microchip to keep flying for longer, which gives it more time to collect data and monitor air pollutants and airborne diseases.

To perfect the microflier’s flight, researchers took inspiration from children’s pop-up books to create the three-dimensional wings. Usually, electronic microchips are flat, two-dimensional objects, but something flat won’t take flight. To make the 3-D shape, John A. Rogers and his team built a stretched rubber base that the microchip rests on. The wings pop into flight mode when the rubber base is relaxed.

The chip gathers data with sensors across its surface that can sense and monitor pH levels, test for heavy metals or chemicals, and track air pollution. An antenna (天线) on the microflier then sends all the collected data to a computer or phone. Rogers and his team are planning to test out the electronic chips soon by dropping thousands of the chips in a field. The microfliers will change color depending on the number of heavy metals present in the field where they land. A drone will then fly over the area and take photos of the microflier’s colors, allowing researchers to map out the pollutants.

Rogers and his team also designed the microchips to break down over time to prevent environmental pollution.

9 . Winter 2024 Story Contest

OUR WINTER CONTEST is open to all fiction and nonfiction writers. Entries must be previously unpublished, no longer than 15,000 words, and must not have been previously chosen as a winner, finalist, or honorable mention in another contest.

Narrative winners and finalists have gone on to win Whiting Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Atlantic prize, and have appeared in collections such as Best American Short Stories, Best American Non-required Reading and many others.

As always, we are looking for works with a strong narrative drive, characters we can respond to, and language, situation, and insight that are intense and total.

We welcome and look forward to reading your pages.

Awards: First Prize is $2,500, Second Prize is $1,000, Third Prize is $500, and up to ten finalists will receive $100 each. All entries will be considered for publication.

Submission Fee: There is a $27 fee for each entry. With your entry, you’ll receive three months of access to Narrative Backstage at no cost.

Timing: The contest closes on March 31,2024, at midnight, Pacific Standard Time.

Judging: The contest will be judged by the editors of the magazine. Winners and finalists will be announced to the public by April 30,2024. All writers who enter will be informed by email of the judges’ decisions, which will be final. Please make sure info@narrativemagazine.com is in your address book and your email settings permit messages from www.narrativemagazine.com.

Submission Guidelines: Please read our Submission Guidelines for contributions formatting and other information.

10 . This story is part of Nature’s 10, an annual list produced by the world’s leading science journal Nature, exploring individuals who contributed to the key developments in science. On the 2023 list published, the journal included a non-human entity — ChatGPT, for the first time.

ChatGPT and related software can help to brainstorm ideas, enhance scientific search engines and identify research gaps in the literature, says Marinka Zitnik, who works on AI for medical research at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Models trained in similar ways on scientific data could help to build AI systems that can guide research, perhaps by designing new molecules or simulating cell behaviour, Zitnik adds.

But why include a computer program in a list of people who have shaped science in 2023? ChatGPT is not a person. But actually, it and other generative artificial-intelligence (AI) programs are changing how scientists work. They have also rekindled debates about the limits of AI, the nature of human intelligence and how best to regulate the interaction between the two. That’s why this year’s Nature’s 10 has a non-human addition.

Interestingly, Nature’s list also includes one of its creators. Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist and cofounder of OpenAI, the organization that created ChatGPT, is one of the minds at the forefront of generative artificial intelligence. He saw this company as an opportunity to develop general artificial intelligence that could outperform humans and develop its own consciousness.

Sutskever believes that artificial intelligence’s potential is too great for models to be available to anyone who wants to use them, and he was among the first to realize that the systems that scientists like his mentor, Geoffrey Hinton, had begun to develop would begin to show their actual capabilities as computing power increased. In recent months, he devoted his efforts toward creating a method to direct and control artificial intelligence systems that are more intelligent than humans.