【正文】 s too shocked to speak. From head to toe, he was covered with deep red bruises. ... It was the best day of my life. 24. What did the writer think of Mr. Milton’s plan to jump from the diving board? A. Crazy. B. Disappointing. C. Heroic. D. Confused. 25. In Paragraph 3, Mr. Milton is described as “a tiny, stick figure” because he was __________. A. tired after swimming B. very small and thin C. very far away D. sure to be broken 26. Why did Mr. Milton suddenly start swinging his arms and legs during the dive? A. He thought it was the best way to slow his fall. B. He lost his confidence and started to panic. C. He was signalling the crowd for help. D. He wanted to show his courage. 27. Which of the following sentences from the passage is an example of a fact? A. He hit the water at over six hundred miles an hour. B. The impact was so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. C. He just bounced off it, about fifteen feet back into the air. D. He was brought to shore by two passing fishermen in a rowboat C Like people, plants experience stress. And also, like people, the response to that stress can determine success. Bad environmental conditions, such as drought, flood, heat and other stresses, affect yields(產(chǎn)量 ) more than crop pests and diseases. We are trying to find a way to equip plants with the ability to tolerate environmental stress and maintain high yields, said Stephen Howell, a professor of geics and cell biology. Plant cells produce proteins (蛋白質(zhì) ) and ship them to different parts of the cell. Under normal conditions, these proteins are folded into their normal, healthy structures as they are produced. When a plant is under stress, its cells produce poorly folded or unfolded proteins. Then a builtin system senses this and “sets off an alarm in the cell,” said Howell. In response to the alarm, another protein (IRE1) starts working and creates a different process which activates (激活 ) the stress response genes whose products bring about defensive measures that help the plant survive. “As it turns out, responses that are activated under stress conditions actually inhibit the growth of plants,” said Howell. “This allows them to preserve their energy to survive the stress conditions.” For plants in the wild, this response is a help for survival, he said. In production of agriculture crops, however, this response reduces yields. “You don’t want crop plants to stop growing,” Howell said. “You want them to continue to grow and produce even though they are under stress.” With the new understanding of this stress response, the next step may be to silence the alarm system, said Howell. “What may be important is to disable some of these stress responses. That may make the plant more productive under stress conditions.” 28. According to the text, an alarm in the plant cells is caused by ______. A. the folded proteins B. the changed proteins C. the defensive measures D. the stress response genes 29. The energy preserved in the plants under stress conditions ______. A. helps the plants to survive B. helps to maintain high yields C. keeps the plants growing D. helps to produce proteins 30. The underlined word “inhibit” in Paragraph 5 can be replaced by “______”. A. prevent B. start C. continue D. promote 31. How does Howell intend to make crop plants maintain high yields under stress conditions? A. By making crop plants keep more energy. B. By making crop plants stop growing. C. By making the alarm system stop working. D. By making the alarm system respond quickly. D Once when I was facing a decision that involved high risk, I went to a friend. He looked at me for a moment, and then wrote a sentence containing the best advice I’ve ever had: Be bold and brave — and mighty (強大的 ) forces will e to your aid. Those words made me see clearly that when I had fallen short in the past, it was seldom because I had tried and failed. It was usually because I had let fear of failure stop me from trying at all. On the other hand, whenever I had plunged into deep water, forced by courage or circumstance, I had always been able to swim until I got my feet on the ground again. Boldness means a decision to bite off more than you can eat. And there is nothing mysterious about the mighty forces. They are potential powers we possess: energy, skill, sound judgment, creative ideas — even physical strength greater than most of us realize. Admittedly, those mighty forces are spiritual ones. But they are more important than physical ones. A college classmate of mine, Tim, was an excellent football player, even though he weighed much less than the average player. “In one game I suddenly found myself confronting a huge player, who had nothing but me between him and our goal lin