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 British 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.

Visitors to the grounds of New College at England’s Oxford University pass under an iron gate with the advice: Manners make the man. Even after an appropriate update to: Manners make the person, it’s thought-provoking(引人深思的)—especially to today’s Americans.

When we think about what makes the person—it’s more likely the degree, the job, the salary. Since when do we count manners as a measure of success?

We do know that these would make life nicer, if more tolerable. Nevertheless, we forget or overlook our manners. So it seems, does everyone else—including, unluckily, our children.

As a university president, one of my great joys is to visit our campuses and see our students though we’re separated by different generations, interests, and, of course dressing, each student tells me something within the first few minutes that we meet: whether he or she has been taught manners. I sense this in different ways: through her words or her gestures, in the way she listens or how he refers to friends and faculty, how she greets and says goodbye, how he responds when an elderly person enters the room.

In the absence of manners, however, I make some allowances. For instance, the many ethnic(种族的)groups that students represent often have different explanations of what makes up good manners. In other cases, some students may reject what they’ve learned to break from their parents and be accepted by other students. Whether students are being different or openly opposing, a recent experience I had with them tells me that there’s some hope for reviving and good manners.

Good manners don’t just guarantee acceptance. Good manners open doors to deeper connections and more meaningful roles in our society. Good manners are gentle signals that show we care about one another and allow us to relate to another person in a thoughtful way but at a respectable distance.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa was not leaning when it was built in 1173 and it was straight like a pole. It started to shift direction soon after construction because of poor foundation in addition to the loose layer of subsoil(底土). At the beginning, it leaned to the southeast before the shaky foundation started to shift leaning towards the southwest. After the period of structural strengthening in the beginning of 21st century, now the Leaning Tower of Pisa leans at an angle of 3.97 degrees.

In 1178, the shift in direction was observed for the first time when the construction had progressed further to the third floor. The tower was very heavy for the three-meter foundation that was built on a weak area of land.

For compensating(补偿) the leaning position, the builders started to construct the upper floors with one side higher than the other one. This caused the tower to lean in the other direction. This unusual structure led to the tower being actually curved. In spite of these efforts, the tower kept on leaning.

The government of Italy started to plan a prevention of the complete collapse of the tower in 1964. However, a request was put forward by the authorities to keep the leaning position because of the tourism industry of the region.

After nearly two decades of careful planning by engineers, historians and mathematicians, the stabilization efforts for the Leaning Tower of Pisa started in 1990. The tower was closed for the general public and the people living nearby moved away. For reducing the total weight of the tower, its seven bells which represented the seven musical notes were removed. The tower was reopened for the general public on December 15, 2001.

In May 2008, after removing another 70 metric tons of earth, the engineers announced that the tower had been finally stabilized and it would remain stable for at least 200 years.

a. People noticed the tower began to shift its direction.

b. The repair work was carried out last time.

c. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was repaired for the first time.

d. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was built.

e. The tower was opened to the visitors again.

f. The government started to make a plan for the tower.

Artificial intelligence can ide ntify skin cancer in photographs with the same accuracy as trained doctors, say scientists. The Stanford University team said the findings were "incredibly exciting" and would now be tested in clinics. Eventually, they believe using AI could revolutionize healthcare by turning anyone’s smart-phone into a cancer scanner.

The AI was repurposed from software developed by Google that had learned to spot the difference between images of cats and dogs. It was shown 129,450 photographs and told what type of skin condition it was looking at in each one.

It then learned to spot the hallmarks of the most common type of skin cancer: carcinoma, and the most deadly: melanoma(黑色素瘤). Only one in 20 skin cancers are melanoma, yet the tumor(肿瘤) accounts for three-quarters of skin cancer deaths.

The experiment, detailed in the journal Nature, then tested the AI against 21 trained skin cancer doctors. One of the researchers, Dr Andre Esteva, told the BBC News website: "We find excitedly, in general, that we are on par with excellent skin cancer doctors."

However, the computer software cannot make a full diagnosis, as this is normally confirmed with a tissue biopsy(活检). Dr Esteva said the system now needed to be tested alongside doctors in the clinic. "The application of AI to healthcare is, we believe, an incredibly exciting area of research that can be leveraged to achieve a great deal of societal good," he said. "One particular route that we find exciting is the use of this algorithm on a mobile device, but to achieve this we would have to build an app and test its accuracy directly from a mobile device." Incredible advances in machine-learning have already led to AI beating one of humanity's best Go players.

And a team of doctors in London have trained AI to predict when the heart will fail.