When guests check in, their iphones check out

When booking a weeklong yoga retreat, Amanda Levy signed up for a special package. Called "digital detox," it promised a 15% discount if Ms. Levy, a sales executive at a San Francisco social-networking company, would agree to leave her digital devices behind, or leave them at check-in.

With hotels, resorts, and travel companies, a small but growing number are rolling out "unplugged" and "digital detox" packages to entice (заманити) people who need a push to take a break from their screens.

Marketing the deals on Twitter, Facebook many hotels are offering discounts.

Typically, the hotels ask travelers to leave their electronic devices upon check-in. In return, concierges provide them with old-fashioned diversions, from board games to literary classics. (Most, but not all, also take away TV sets and telephones from "detox" rooms.)

The programs are tied to Americans' seeming inability to detach their eyes and ears from their cellphones, e-readers, tablets and laptops - even when on vacation. According to a recent survey of more than 2,000 people by American Express, 79% of travelers expect to remain connected all or some of the time on their next vacation.

For many, the goal is to stay in touch with friends and family. Still, among those planning to check email, 68% say they will do so - daily or more frequently - for work, up from 58%.

"Technology has freed us up in many ways," says Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist from New York City and author of "CrazyBusy." "But there are unintended consequences." In some cases, he says, users "become addicted without knowing it. It's the new cigarette."

Technology "has really enriched some of our relationships. But there are times when it can turn into a time-waster.

detox – детоксикація, курс лікування від залежності

ТЕКСТ22

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NEW EVIDENCE SUGGESTS STONE AGE HUNTERS FROM EUROPE DISCOVERED AMERICA

New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.

A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological breakthroughs for several decades - and are set to add substantially to our understanding of humanity's spread around the globe.

Professor Dennis Stanford and Professor Bruce Bradley, the two leading archaeologists who have analysed all the evidence, are proposing that Stone Age people from Western Europe migrated to North America by travelling (over the ice surface and/or by boat) along the edge of the frozen northern part of the Atlantic. They are presenting their detailed evidence in a new book - Across Atlantic Ice.

At the peak of the Ice Age, around three million square miles of the North Atlantic was covered in thick ice for all or part of the year.

However, the seasonally shifting zone where the ice ended and the open ocean began would have been extremely rich in food resources – migrating seals, sea birds, fish and the now-extinct northern hemisphere penguin-like species, the great auk (гагарка).

Stanford and Bradley have long argued that Stone Age humans were quite capable of making the 1500 mile journey across the Atlantic ice - but till now there was comparatively little evidence to support their thinking.

ТЕКСТ23

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INTREPID INTERPRETERS

At the European Commission in Brussels, they have a joke about the work interpreters do — "Languages," they say, "have nothing to do with interpretation, but it helps to know them." Translating languages, especially in a political context, involves far more than mere linguistic ability.

To work in an international organization, such as the United Nations or the European Commission, you need to be accredited by one of the various international translators' or interpreters' associations. To achieve this, you must undergo rigorous and lengthy training, either at an accrediting organization’s own school, or on a post-graduate соurse at university.

But a qualification in languages is not the only route into the job. At the European Commission, for example, a recent intake of trainee interpreters included several with degrees in subjects like economies', linguistics, philosophy, law and, of course, languages.

Most important is their ability to manipulate their own language. With this skill, and a lot of practice, they will be able to clearly communicate information or messages in another language.

At London's University of Westminster, candidates get offered a place on the interpreters course, if they can show that they have "lived a bit", in the words of one lecturer. Young people who have just left university often lack sufficient experience of life.

The University also looks for candidates who have lived for a long time in the countries where their acquired languages are spoken. They are also expected to have wide cultural interests and a good knowledge of current affairs. This broad range of interests is essential in a job which can require interpreting discussions of disarmament on Monday, international fishing rights on Tuesday, multi-national finance on Wednesday, and the building and construction industry on Thursday.

It's also a job with its own risks and excitement. Interpreters are needed in war zones as well as in centers of international diplomacy, like the UN.

Intrepid – безстрашний

ТЕКСТ24

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MAYA CULTURE COLLAPSE

Decline and eventual "Collapse" of the Mayan civilization has been attributed to wars, famine, natural calamity, disruption of trade routes, popular unrests and more, but the real reason is still a mystery.

From the magnificent ruins they left behind, archaeologists and scientists have learned much of the warlike and highly complex Maya society. The Maya developed a unique society that boasted a rather complex social, political and scientific structure. Mayan research into the fields of mathematics, astronomy and the measurement of time is truly astonishing.

Their hieroglyphic script was made possible for modern scholars to interpret, thanks to a Russian soldier Yuri Knorosov, who, luckily for us, was an epigrapher. (In the Vaults of Berlin’s Library at the end of the World War II he found a manuscript, ordered by a Spaniard priest Miguel De Anda in the XVI century to try to understand the Mayan religion).

How could one of the ancient world's great civilizations simply dissolve?

Early speculation centered on sudden catastrophe, perhaps volcanism or an earthquake or a deadly hurricane. Or perhaps it was a mysterious disease, untraceable today - something like the Black Death in medieval Europe or the smallpox that wiped out Native American populations at the dawn of the colonial age. Modern researchers have discarded these one-event theories, however, because the collapse extended over at least 200 years, "There isn't any single factor that everybody agrees on", says M. Rice.

Scholars have looked instead at combinations of afflictions in different parts of the Maya world, including overpopulation, Warfare, environmental damage, drought, and famine. "You come away feeling that anything that can go wrong did", says Rice.

ТЕКСТ25

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WHAT DO PEOPLE MOST REGRET?

When people sit back and take stock of their lives, do they regret the things that failed, such as a romance that foundered, the wrong career path chosen, bad grades in school? Or do they most regret what they failed to try?

A small but growing body of research points to inaction – failing to seize the day – as the leading cause of regret in people’s lives over the long term.

Regret is a “more or less painful emotional state of feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, or mistakes,” says University of Michigan psychologist Janet Landman.

The group, which included retired professors, undergraduates and staff members at Cornell University, listed more than 200 missed educational opportunities, romances and career paths, as well as failing to spend more time with relatives, pursue a special interest or take a chance.

Studies suggest that regrets about education are overwhelmingly the biggest. “Not getting enough education, or not taking it seriously enough, is a common regret even among highly educated people,” says Janet Landman.

Tied for a distant second place are regrets about work or love. People talk about having gotten into the wrong occupation, marrying too young, or that they wish their parents had never divorced, or there were fewer conflicts in their family, or that their children had turned out better.

Many people also express regrets about themselves. They may wish they had been more disciplined or more assertive or had taken more risks.

According to Janet Landman, young women are more likely to report family oriented regrets than young men. But by middle age men are more likely than women to regret not spending enough time with their families.

And what do middle-aged women regret? Marrying too early and not getting enough education.

ТЕКСТ26

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