Which of the following works was not written by Oscar Wilde？

A、

B、

C、

D、

Which of the following writers is the greatest English critical realist novelist who showed the misery of the common people?

A．Jane Austen.

B．Charles Dickens.

C．Emily Bronte.

D．Oscar Wilde.

Which of the following sentence is wrong about Mayo and village life in Ireland?

A．Mayo is a very wild county.

B．In villages around Ireland coming to the pub is a primary entertainment.

C．It's very easy for you to feel part of the crowd.

D．Because of the wild environment, you should go to bed early at night.

A、A ideal husband

B、Vera

C、De profundis

D、None of the above

A.Friedrich Nietzche’s assertions: God is dead

B.Arther Schopenharuer’s and Henry Bergson’s philosophical ideas of irrationality.

C.Oscar Wilde’s idea of Art for Art’s Sake.

D.Freudian-Jungian psycho-analysis

A、An ideal husband

B、Vera

C、De profundis

D、Sphinx

ACID RAIN: What's the Solution?

One of the wildest regions in the U.S., far from civilization, is the Adirondack area of northern New York State. For years this isolated spot has had the reputation of being one of best fishing spots in the U.S.

As a boy 30 years ago, Bill Marleau first through the Adirondack wilderness near his small cabin on Woods Lake. Thousands of sportsmen have stayed at his father's lodge nearby.

But now Bill's 134 hectares (335 acres) of lakefront land have only scenic value. Gone are those huge trout that used to swim in the turbulent, nutrientrich water a short distance from his doorstep. Gone from the cool nights are the sounds of thousands of frogs and toads.

And gone are the birds that once fed on those water creatures.

Occasionally Bill sees a lone fisherman fruitlessly cast his bait into the empty waters of old lake. "I just don't have the heart to tell," he said. "This old lake's dead. It was killed years ago by acid rain." What is acid rain?

Acid rain is a popular term for precipitation in the form. of rain, sleet, snow or hail that is more acidic than normal. Acid rain is produced when atmospheric moisture combines with pollutants from power plants, factories and automobiles.

When fossil fuels such as coal and oil are burned, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide are produced. These two gases react with the water and oxygen in the atmosphere to form. droplets of weak sulfur and nitric acid.

Carried by prevailing winds and weather conditions, clouds containing these droplets travel hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometers from the source of the pollutants. Recently scientists found that acid rain now affects huge areas of the North Hemisphere.

Power plants and factories in the heavily industrialized regions of Ohio and Indiana are believed to be the source of the acid rain that killed Woods Lake along with hundreds of others in New York State and eastern Canada. Acid haze over Alaska is believed to come all the way from Japan. And precipitation as acid as vinegar that falls on Scotland and Scandinavia probably originates in England.

How Acidity Is Measured

Scientists measure the acidity of rain in pH units. A pH scale from 0 to 14 is used. Depending upon its chemical composition, a solution is either acidic, alkaline (basic), or neutral. Distilled water, which has a pH of 7, is neutral. Substance with pH values less than 7 are acidic, while those over 7 are alkaline.

Normal rain water with a pH of 5.6 is slightly acidic. But after reacting with industrial pollutants, particularly sulfur dioxide, the pH of rain quickly drops.

When acid rain falls to Earth, much of it ends up in lakes and ponds. In addition to failing directly into a lake, acid rains runs off land into streams and rivers that eventually flow into lakes and ponds. Once acid rain gets into them, its effects can be deadly.

Studies started in 1975 in the Adirondacks indicate that salamanders and frogs are the first to die when the pH is lowered. Normally the pH of a lake is 8,0 slightly alkaline. When the pH drops to 7, the eggs of salamanders and frogs fail to hatch. At pH 6.6 snails begin to die.

Bacteria that decompose leaf matter die too, and the leaf matter collects on the lake bottom. As the acidity continues to drop, ail the major food chains in the lake become affected. In time all the fish die.

Eventually primitive, oxygenconsuming plants nearly choke out all other aquatic greenery. Algae and fungal growth that thrive in an acidic environment move in and cover the entire bottom of the now destroyed lake.

Looking like blue vinegar, the lake is now an entirely changed ecosystem. It contains no life expect the fungal and algal growth and a few surfacedwelling water bugs.

&n

A．Y

B．N

C．NG

1 Oscar Wilde said that work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. If so, Americans are now among the world's saddest refugees. Factory workers in the United States are working longer hours than at any time in the past half-century. America once led the rich world in cutting the average working week—from 70 hours in 1850 to less than 40 hours by the 1950s. It seemed natural that as people grew richer they would trade extra earnings for more leisure. Since the 1970s, however, the hours clocked up by American workers have risen, to an average of 42 this year in manufacturing.

2 Several studies suggest that something similar is happening outside manufacturing: Americans are spending more time at work than they did 20 years ago. Executives and lawyers boast of 80-hour weeks. On holiday, they seek out fax machines and phones as eagerly as Germans bag the best sun-loungers. Yet working time in Europe and Japan continues to fall. In Germany's engineering industry the working week is to be trimmed from 36 to 35 hours next year. Most Germans get six weeks' paid annual holiday~ even the Japanese now take three weeks. Americans still make do with just two.

3 Germany responds to this contrast with its usual concern about whether people's aversion to work is damaging its competitiveness. Yet German workers, like the Japanese, seem to be acting sensibly: as their incomes rise, they can achieve a better standard of living with fewer hours of work. The puzzle is why America, the world's richest country, sees things differently. It is a puzzle with sinister social implications. Parents spend less time with their children, who may be left alone at home for longer. Is it just a coincidence that juvenile crime is on the rise?

4 Some explanations for America's time at work fail to stand up to scrutiny. One blames weak trade unions that leave workers open to exploitation. Are workers being forced by cost-cutting firms to toil harder just to keep their jobs? A recent study by two American economists, Richard Freeman and Linda Bell, suggests not. When asked, Americans actually want to work longer hours. Most German workers, in contrast, would rather work less.

5 Then, why do Americans want to work harder? One reason may be that the real earnings of many Americans have been stagnant or falling during the past two decades. People work longer merely to maintain their living standards. Yet many higher-skilled workers, who have enjoyed big increases in their real pay, have been working harder too. Also, one reason for the slow growth of wages has been the rapid growth in employment-- which is more or less where the argument began.

6 Taxes may have something to do with it. People who work an extra hour in America are allowed to keep more of their money than those who do the same in Germany. Falls in marginal tax rates in America since the 1970s have made it all the more profitable to work longer.

7 None of these answers really explains why the century-long decline in working hours has gone into reverse in America but not elsewhere (though Britain shows signs of following America's lead). Perhaps cultural differences--the last refuge of the defeated economist—are at play. Economists used to believe that once workers earned enough to provide for their basic needs and allow for a few luxuries, their incentive to work would be eroded, like lions relaxing after a kill. But humans are more susceptible to advertising than lions. Perhaps clever marketing has ensured that "basic needs"--for a shower with built-in TV, for a rocket-propelled car--expand continuously. Shopping is already one of America's most popular pastimes. But it requires money--hence more work and less leisure.

8 Or try this, the television is not very good, and baseball and hockey keep being wiped out by strikes. Perhaps Wilde was right. Maybe Americans have nothi

A．confined to the manufacturing industry.

B．a traditional practice in some sectors.

C．prevalent in all sectors of society.

D．favoured by the economists.