Last year my summer holiday was spoiled by my bringing along a modern convenience that was too convenient for my own good: the iPad. Instead of looking at nature, I checked my e-mail. Instead of paddling a small boat, I followed my Twitter feed（推特简讯）. Instead of reading great novels, I stuck to reading four newspapers each morning. I was behaving as if I were still in the office. My body was on vacation, but my head wasn't.

    So this year I made up my mind to try something different: withdrawal from the Internet. I knew it wouldn't be easy, since I'm bad at self-control. But I was determined. I started by giving the iPad to my wife.

    The cellphone signal at our house was worse than in the past, making my at tempts at cheating an experience in frustration （沮丧）. I was trapped, forced to go through with my plan. Largely breaking away from e-mail, Twitter and my favorite newspaper websites, I had few ways to connect to the world except for the radio—and how much radio can one listen to, really? I had to do what Ihad planned to do all along: read books.

    This experience has had a happy ending. With determination and the strong support of my wife, I won in my vacation struggle against the Internet, realizing finally that it was I, not the iPad, that was the problem. I knew I had won when we passed a Star bucks and my wife asked if I wanted to stop to use the Wi-Fi.“I don't need it,” I said．

    However, as we return to post-vacation life, a harder test begins: Can I continue when I'mback at work?

    There are times when the need to know what's being said right now is great. I have no intention of giving up my convenience completely. But I hope to resist the temptation to check my e-mail every five minutes, which leads to checking my Twitter feed and a website or two.

    I think a vacation is supposed to help you rest your brain to become more productive. Here I hope this one worked.

Mini Book Excerpts (节选)

    Biography

    When Salinger learned that a car park was to be built on the land, the middle-aged writer was shocked and quickly bought the neighboring area to protect it… The townspeople never forgot the rescue and came to help their most famous neighbor.

    J. D. Salinger: A Life by Kenneth Slawenski (Random House, $ 27)

    Mystery

    “You're a smart boy. Benny's death was no accident, and you're the only one who saw it happen. Do you think the murderer should get away with it?” The boy was staring stubbornly at his lap again.

    A thought suddenly occurred to Annika, “Did you... You recognized the man in the car, didn't you?”

    The boy hesitated, twisting his fingers. “Maybe,” he said quietly.

    Red Wolf by Liza Marklund (Atria Books, $ 25.99)

    Short Stories

    She wants to say to him what she has learned, none of it in class. Some women are born stupid, and some women are too smart for their own good. Some women are born to give, and some women only know how to take. Some women learn who they want to be from their mothers, some who they don't want to be. Some mothers suffer so their daughters won't. Some mothers suffer so their daughters won't.

    You Are Free by Danzy Senna (Riverhead Books, $ 15)

    Humor

    Do your kids like to have fun? Come to Fun Times! Do you like to watch your kids having fun? Bring them to Fun Times! Fun Times's “amusement cycling” is the most fun you can have in the United States right now. Why spend thousands of dollars flying to Disney World when you can spend less than half to that within a day's drive in most cities?

    Happy And Other Bad Thoughts by Larry Doyle (Ecco, $ 14.99)

    An international team of researchers from the University of Oxford have found that the way people use the Internet is closely tied to the seasonal movements in the natural world. Their online species searches follow the patterns of seasonal animal migrations (迁徙).

    Migratory birds (候鸟) flood back to where they reproduce every spring. That migratory behavior is accompanied by some human behavior. "In English-language Wikipedia (维基百科), the online searches for migratory species tend to increase in spring when those birds arrive in the United States," said the lead author John Mittermeier.

    And not just birds. Mittermeier and his team surveyed nearly 2.5 billion Wikipedia search records, for 32,000 species, across 245 languages. They also saw variable search rates for insects, horsetails and flowering plants. Seasonal trends seemed to be widespread in Wikipedia behavior for many species of plants and animals.

    This finding suggests new ways to monitor changes in the world's biological diversity. It also shows new ways to see how much people care about nature, and which species and areas might be the most effective targets for conservation.

    Mittermeier is encouraged by the search results. He commented, "I think there's a concern among conservationists (生态环境保护者) that people are losing touch with the natural world and that they're not interacting with native species anymore. And so in that sense, it was really exciting and quite unexpected for me to see people's Wikipedia interest closely related to changes in nature."

    Richard Grenyer, Associate Professor from the University of Oxford, says search data is useful to conservation biologists, "By using these big data approaches, we can direct our attention towards the difficult questions in modern conservation: which species and areas are changing, and where are the people who care the most and can do the most to help."

    The traditional tent cities at festivals such as Glastonbury may never be the same again. In a victory of green business that is certain to appeal to environmentally-aware music-lovers, a design student is to receive financial support to produce eco-friendly tents made of cardboard that can be recycled after the bands and the crowds have gone home.

    Major festivals such as Glastonbury throw away some 10,000 abandoned tents at the end of events each year. For his final year project at the University of the West of England, James Dunlop came up with a material that can be recycled. And to cope with the British summer, the cardboard has been made waterproof.

    Taking inspiration from a Japanese architect, who has used cardboard to make big buildings including churches, Mr. Dunlop used cardboard material for his tents, which he called Myhabs.

    The design won an award at the annual New Designers Exhibition after Mr. Dunlop graduated from his product design degree and he decided to try to turn it into a business.

    To raise money for the idea, he toured the City's private companies which fund new businesses and found a supporter in the finance group Mint. He introduced his idea to four of Mint's directors and won their support. Mint has committed around ￡500,000 to MyHab and taken a share of 30 per cent in Mr. Dunlop's business. The first Myhabs should be tested at festivals this summer, before being marketed fully next year.

    Mr. Dunlop said that the design, which accommodates two people, could have other uses, such as for disaster relief and housing for the London Olympics.

    For music events, the cardboard houses will be ordered online and put up at the sites by the Myhab team before the festival-goers arrive and removed by the company afterwards. They can be personalized and the company will offer reductions on the expense if people agree to sell exterior(外部的) advertising space.

    The biggest festivals attract tens of thousands of participants, with Glastonhury having some 150,000 each year. Altogether there are around 100 annual music festivals where people camp in the UK. The events are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious.

    Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is gaining global popularity. According to a government white paper, TCM has been introduced in 183 countries and regions around the world.

    Westerners' understanding of TCM, however, may be limited to acupundure，cupping and massage (针灸，拔罐和按摩). For instance, the purple, injury-like marks left on US.swimmer Michael Phelps' back from cupping for the purpose of relaxing his muscles and reducing pain became the center of attention during the Rio Olympics in 2016.

    As a matter of fact, Chinese herbs play a more important role in getting rid of diseases and keeping the body in good condition in the TCM treatment system than physical treatment. It is therefore disheartening to know that-while 103 World Health Organization member countries have given approval to the practice of acupuncture，not many recognize Chinese herbal medicine TCM falls far behind Western medicine owing partly to the slow development of Chinese herbs.

    Herbs, are made into pills, powder and soup, and the kind of herbs uscd1 their quality and quantity, and the processing of the ingredients jointly determine the effectiveness of the prescription. Compared with Western medicine, which has standardized drug production processes and treatment methods, TCM lacks standardization, with the chemical composition and functions of its medicines being unclear and their effects being unstable. Fortunately, standardization has improved in recent decades, with an increasing number of factories producing patented TCM drugs.

    Another factor that has prevented the development of TCM prescription drugs is the lack of creativity, While Western medicine-making companies come up with new products every year, TCM drug producers tend to make medicines according to prescriptions handed down from the past. Chinese chemist Tu You your's winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her research into malaria(疟疾）treatment may drive creativity to some extent in China's TCM industry. However, the current state of affairs cannot be changed within a short time.

It's widely recognized that play-based learning significantly benefits the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional health of children. Recent research suggests that certain board games, such as Chutes and Ladders and Monopoly, can further contribute to enhancing their mathematical abilities.

A team of researchers from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, Chile, reached this conclusion after a comprehensive analysis of 19 studies conducted between the years 2000 and 2023. With the exception of one study, all focused on the correlation between board games and the development of math skills.

In these studies, children aged between 3 and 9 engaged in board games under the watchful eyes of teachers or trained adults. The structured 20-minute gaming sessions were held twice weekly for a duration of approximately six weeks. In some of the studies, one group of children (the intervention group) played board games that were centered around numbers, while another group (the control group) played games that did not necessitate mathematical skills. In other instances, both the intervention and control groups indulged in number-based games, but they were assigned different games, such as Monopoly and Dominoes.

The mathematical proficiency of the children was evaluated both at the beginning and the end of each study. The researchers were particularly interested in observing improvements in four pivotal areas: the ability to name numbers and exhibit basic numerical understanding, for instance, recognizing that "nine is greater than three." They also monitored the children's progress in addition and subtraction, as well as their burgeoning interest in mathematics.

The findings of this study were published in the academic journal Early Years on July 6, 2023. The results indicated that engaging in board games positively influenced the children's math skills in more than half of the four key areas examined. Moreover, nearly a third of the children in the intervention groups outperformed their counterparts in the control groups on math assessments.

The researchers are optimistic that their findings will encourage the development of new board games specifically tailored for educational purposes in classrooms. In the meantime, consider enhancing your own mathematical skills by organizing a board game night with family and friends this summer—it all adds up to a fun and educational experience!