Ireland has had a very difficult history. The problems started in the 16th century when English ruler tried to conquer(征服) Ireland. For hundreds of years, the Irish people fought against the English. Finally, in 1921, the British government was forced to give independence to the south of Ireland. The result in that today there are two “Irelands”. Northern Ireland, in the north, is part of the United Kingdom. The Republic of Ireland, in the south is an independent country.

    In the 1840s the main crop, was affected by disease and about 750,000 people died of hunger. This, and a shortage(短缺) of work, forced many people to leave Ireland and live in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada. As a result of these problems, the population fell from 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.6 million in 1851.

    For many years, the majority of Irish people earned their living as farmers. Today, many people will work on the land but more and more people are moving to the cities to work in factories and offices. Life in the cities is very different from life in the countryside, where things move at a quieter and slower pace.

    The Irish are famous for being warm-hearted and friendly. Oscar Wilde, a famous Irish writer, once said that the Irish were “the greatest talkers since the Creeks”. Since independence, Ireland has revived(复兴) its own culture of music, language, literature and singing. Different areas have different styles of old Irish songs which are sung without instruments. Other kinds of Irish music use many different instruments such as the violin, whistles, etc.

    Some of the most famous universities in America are urging students to consider the idea of putting off college for a year. It's called a “gap year.” And while it's been common and popular in Australia and the U.K. for decades, the concept is now starting to gain significant steam here in America.

    Why? A growing number of high school seniors are tired of riding the academic conveyor belt from preschool all the way to university. They're burnt out. Or not quite ready. Or they want to explore a few interests before deciding what to study in college, they're volunteering in New Orleans or teaching in Thailand. They're starting the great American novel, or working for a short time to help figure out what they want to do with their lives.

    Understandably, that makes a lot of parents nervous. But a gap year does not mean that a student will remain degree-less forever. While there are no formal studies on the number of students who don't finally go to college after the gap year, evidence from admissions officers across the country says very few actually leave college without finishing their courses. Taking a gap year can actually make kids more focused and ready for future academic life. In fact, Harvard University believes so much in the gap year that it encourages every student it admits to consider a year off before matriculation (入学).

    The reason behind higher education's support of the gap year is clear: Better-prepared students mean higher completion rates. And it's completion that matters. Parents should remember that getting a kid into college is only half the battle. According to the College Board, three out of five students who enter a public four-year college don't manage to obtain a degree within five years. And nearly 30 percent of all students who enter college don't return after the gap year. Considering the fact that this year's average price at a four-year private college is about $ 23,712 per year, it's a pretty expensive place to play around.

    Generations of Americans have been brought up to believe that a good breakfast is one of life's essentials. Eating breakfast at the start of the day, we have all been told again, is as necessary as putting gasoline in the family car before starting a trip.

    But for many people the thought of food as first thing in the morning is by no means a pleasure. So despite all the efforts, they still take no breakfast. Between 1977 and 1983, the latest year for which figures are available, the number of people who didn't have breakfast increased by 33 percent-from 8.8 million to 11.7 million-according to the Chicago-based Market Research Corporation of America.

    For those who feel pain or guilt about not earing breakfast, however, there is some good news. Several studies in the last few years indicate that, for adults especially, there may be nothing wrong with not taking breakfast. “Going without breakfast does not affect performance,” said Arnold E. Bender, former professor of nutrition（营养）at Queen Elizabeth College in London, “nor doegiving people breakfast improve performance.”

    Scientific evidence linking breakfast to better health or better performance is surprisingly inadequate, and most of the recent work involves children, not adults. “The literature,” says one researcher, Dr. Ernesto Pollitt at the University of Texas, “is poor.”

    A lifetime of active exercise will let you keep the body of a 20-year-old well into your 70s, scientists have found.

    The physical decline (衰退) thought to be an unavoidable part of ageing is actually the result of not exercising enough, according to the research, which found that regular cyclists kept the muscles, lungs, and even the immune system (免疫系统) of people years younger. Besides, many serious health problems could be prevented if people became more active, researchers insist.

    Janet Lord, a leading researcher, said, “Our findings prove the false belief that ageing automatically makes us weaker. We now have strong evidence that encouraging people to do regular exercise throughout their lives can solve the problem that we are living longer but not healthier.”

    She looked at 125 cyclists aged 55 to 79 who had been exercising regularly for 25 years and compared them with 75 ordinary people of a similar age and 55 people aged 20 to 36. On a series of physical measures, the cyclists showed no difference from people much younger in their immune systems and making T cells.

    Now Professor Lord aims to discover how much exercise people need to do to stay young. “You needn't work out a lot. It may be intensity (强度) that helps—like going up and down the stairs ten times a day.”

    While there is no magic method of staying mentally and physically fit in later life, the benefits of keeping active can never be ignored, whatever your age or state of health.

    We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea, or by reasoning.

    We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else. Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV or read newspapers or magazines is passive. We are used to passive learning, and it's not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers. Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious problem. It makes us tend to accept what we are told even when it is little more than hearsay and rumor.

    Did you ever play the game Rumor? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn't show it to anyone. Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person. That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game. The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it. Then the two written statements are compared. Typically, the original message has changed.

    That's what happens in daily life. The simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words changes the story. Then, too, most people listen to improve on it, stamping(打上标记) it with their own personal style. Yet those who hear it think they know.

    This process is also found among scholars and authors: A statement of opinion by one writer may be re-stated as fact by another, who may in turn be quoted by yet another; and this process may continue, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the interpretation he placed upon those facts.

    Your teenage best friend could be good for your long-term mental health, according to a new study published in the journal Child Development According to the findings, teenagers aged 15 to 16 who had a close friendship rather than a larger group of friends they were less close to had a greater sense of self-worth by the time they were 25 years old. Those people with a very close best friend were also less likely to experience depression and social anxiety, the study found.

    "Close friendship strength in mid-adolescence predicted relative increases in self-worth and decreases in anxiety and depressive symptoms by early adulthood, "the authors, led by Rachel K, Narr, a postdoctoral student focused on clinical psychology at the University of Virginia, wrote.

    A past research has suggested that adolescent friendships are important. Friendships during the teenage years predict academic success and improved mental health. But the new research further explores the type of friendships teenagers have. "My hunch(预感)was that close friendships compared to broader friendship groups and popularity may not function the same way," Narr told Quartz. "Being successful in one is not the same as being successful in the other."

    Many study participants did not continue to have a close relationship with their high-school best friend, leading the researchers to wonder what exactly was responsible for the mental health benefits. They suspected that the skills and ability to build such a friendship may be more important than the friendship itself.

    And as the researchers point out, those skills are not necessarily brought to bear in the world of social media. "As technology makes it increasingly easy to build a social network of shallow friends, focusing time and attention on developing close connections with a few individuals should be a priority," study co-author Joseph Allen said in a statement.