The Lost Rules of Etiquette

        Etiquette, or good manners, used to be the glue that held society together.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}Sadly, these days it has mostly gone by the wayside. This list is several best rules of etiquette that have now disappeared.

Opening the Door

        In days gone by, a gentleman would always open doors for ladies.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}This has now almost entirely disappeared and it is pot entirely the fault of the men. I have seen women laugh at men for opening a door for them. They seem tobe confusing manners with chauvinism(大男子主义)．

Writing Thank-You Notes

        In days gone by, whenever a personreceived a gift, they would write a thank-you note as soon as possible.  {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Parents would sit children down after a birthday or Christmas and coach them in theirfirst thank-you note. It is a shame that gift giving has now become a virtualobligation and the idea of a thank-you note would be laughed at.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

        We seem to have completely lost theconcept of correct timing when it comes to parties these days.

{#blank#}5{#/blank#} After all, aparty normally has a guest of honor-this is usually the oldest woman present.It was considered extremely rude in the past to leave a party before the guestof honor-and once the guest of honor left, it was a signal to all that theyshould begin their own preparations to leave.

A. Arriving on Time.

B. Leaving at the Right Time.

C. People leave with various excuses.

D. It enabled people  to get on well with each other.

E. This rule was true even if the giverwas a relative.

F. It could be the lady they weredriving, or a stranger.

G. We've thrown away the concept of aguest of honor at will.

British Women Writers in different periods of time

The English Renaissance

    The English Renaissance began in the later part of the fifteenth century and lasted until the 1660s. Among the most famous women writers of this period is Aphra Behn, who is seen as the first professional woman writer in English. She wrote a number of plays that dealt with topics such as racism and slavery. A good example is Oroonoko published in 1688. Aphra Behn's works include also the plays The Amourous Prince, The Town Fop, The Dutch Lover and her only tragedy, Abdelazer.

The neoclassical period

    Among the well-known women in Bristish literature during the neoclassical period, from 1660 to the end of the eighteenth century, is Anne Finch. She wrote poetry and tried to express all that she saw and experienced. Two other women are recognized for their contribution to neoclassical British literature: Mary Astell and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Mary Astell was a philosopher and a feminist writer. She is best known now for her theories on the education of women.

The Romantic period

    Jane Austen is one of the most famous women writers that worked during the Romantic period (1798-1832). Her works include several novels, most of which focus on marriage as a way for young women to secure social standing and economic security. Her most famous novels are Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Another famous woman writer from the English Romanticism is Mary Shelley. She is the author of Frankenstein, History of Six Weeks Tour and The Last Man.

The Victorian period

    The Victorian period, between the 1830s and 1900, was the time when the Bronte sisters, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell lived and wrote. Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte and Anne Bronte produced many British literary classics. Charlotte's novels include Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette and The Professor. Mary Anne Evans adopted the male pen name George as she wanted to set herself apart from the feminine genre of cookbooks and domestic moral tales. Her most famous novel is The Mill on the Floss published in 1860.

    Zebra crossings－the alternating dark and light stripes on the road surface－are meant to remind drivers that pedestrians may be trying to get across. Unfortunately, they are not very effective. A 1998 study done by the Department of Traffic Planning and Engineering at Sweden's Lund University revealed that three out of four drivers maintained the same speed or even speeded up as they were approaching a crossing. Even worse, only 5% stopped even when they saw someone trying to get across.

    Now a mother-daughter team in Ahmedabad, India has come up with a clever way to get drivers to pay more attention－a 3-D zebra crossing with an optical illusion (视错觉).

    Artists Saumya Pandya Thakkar and Shakuntala Pandya were asked to paint the crosswalks by IL&FS, an Indian company that manages the highways in Ahmedabad. The corporation was looking for a creative solution to help the city's residents to cross the busy accident-prone  (易出事故的) roads safely. Thakkar and Pandya, who had previously seen images of 3-D zebra crossings that gave drivers the illusion of logs(原木)of wood on the streets in Taizhou, China, decided to test if a similar way would work in India.

    Sure enough, in the six months that the 3-D crosswalks have been painted across four of the city's most dangerous highways, there have been no accidents reported! The artists say that while it may appear that the zebra crossing could cause the drivers to brake suddenly and endanger the vehicles behind, such is not the case. Because of the way the human eye works, the illusion is only visible from a distance. As they get closer, the painting looks just like any other ordinary zebra crossing. The creators hope that their smart design will become increasingly common throughout India and perhaps even the world. So let's look forward to it.

根据短文内容，选择最佳答案，并将选定答案的字母标号填在题前括号内。

    The cultures of the East and the West really distinguish each other a lot. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    The origin of the eastern cultures is mainly from two countries: China and India. Both of the two cultures are developed by rivers—the Yellow River in China and the Hindu River in India. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

When the two mother rivers gave birth to the Eastern culture, another famous culture was brought up on the Mesopotamian Plain-the Mesopotamian Civilization. This civilization later on developed into the cultures of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Like the Chinese culture, the European culture also crossed waters. When the British settled down in America, their culture went with them over, the Atlantic Ocean. So the American culture doesn't distinguish from the European culture a lot.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Take the language system for example. In the East, most languages belong to the pictographic language while the Western languages are mostly based on the Latin system. Other causes like human race difference counts as well. But what's more, due to the far distance and the steep areas between the East and West, the two cultures seldom communicate until recent centuries. So they grew up totally in their own ways with almost no-interference (干扰)from the other.

The differences are everywhere. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} But different cultures make the world of 21st century more colorful. The cultural gap should not be the obstacle to the civilization of human being. It ought to be the motivation of our going farther.

    Do you like shopping? Or does the thought of wandering round the shops fill you with terror? For some of us, shopping is an enjoyable way of spending our spare time and our money. For me, it's something I would rather avoid. Thank goodness for the Internet! It's more convenient to buy CDs, electrical items, and even food from the comfort of your sofa. But that's not the only reason: price is an important factor. We can buy goods and services cheaper online. But sometimes the problem is knowing what to buy. This has led to a type of shopping called “showrooming”.

    Showrooming is something I've done. I will go to a shop to see, touch and try out products but then go home and buy them online at a knock-down price. I'm not alone in doing this. Research by a company called Foolproof found 24% of the people showroomed at Christmas in 2013.

    Amy Cashman, Head of Technology at TNS UK, says the reasons for this new shopping habit are that people are lacking time, lacking money and they want security about the products they are buying. She explains that consumers are not only shopping online at home but they are using the Internet in store or on their smart phones to shop around.

    But does this mean technology will kill shops? Certainly shops will change. They will have to offer more competitive prices or encourage people to buy more by giving in-store discounts or free gifts.

    We mustn't forget that buying in a shop means you can get expert advice from the sales assistant and you can get good aftercare. It's good to speak to a real human rather than look at a faceless computer screen, but at least by showrooming, you get the best of both worlds.

Though known for being violent, six-foot-long Humboldt squid (鱿鱼) in the Pacific Ocean, are good communicators,

It is not news that the squid can rapidly change the color of their skin-making different patterns for communication something other squid species are also known to do.

Bot it is totally dark where the Humboldt squid live, more than one thousand feet below the ocean surface. So their pattern is invisible. Instead, a new study suggests that they create backlighting for the patterns by making their bodies glow, like the screen of an ereader.

"Right now, what blows my mind in there's probably squid talking to each other in the deep ocean and they're probably sharing all sorts of cool information." said Ben Burford, a graduate student at Stanford University.

Burford and his fallow researchers studied deep-water recordings made by remotely operated vehicles off the California coast. They found the squid make around 30 different patterns, some of which are only used around other squid, suggesting they're used for communication, The squid also appear to reorder the patterns, almost like words in a sentence.

"That's really exciting because then you can say a whole lot more based on their arrangement," Burford said. "So, they could for instance say, hey, that fish over there is mine, and I'm the ruling squid."

The findings could change the way scientists think about bioluminescence (生物荧光), which is used by many deep-sea animals to attract prey or a mate.

"We generally think of deep: sea stuff as having very simple displays because it's a low-light environment," said Mike Vecchione, a zoologist from the National Museum of Natural Museum of Natural History. "This turns some of our ideas about bioluminescence almost around upside down."

The deep ocean is a challenging place to study, so Vecchione said there may be much more complexity to discover.