영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

John Rawls proposed an unusual thought experiment to determine what principles of justice a society ought to adopt. Imagine a group of rational people gathered to design the basic rules of their future society, but placed behind what he called a veil of ignorance, a condition under which ①none of them knows their own race, gender, wealth, talents, or social position in advance. Since no one can predict whether they will be born into privilege or poverty, each person has a strong incentive to choose rules that ②protect the worst-off members of society, rather than rules that merely favor whichever group they happen to belong to. Rawls argued that rational people placed in this position would not gamble on inequality; instead, they would favor arrangements that guarantee basic liberties for everyone and permit unequal outcomes only when those outcomes actually ③benefit the least advantaged. Justice, on this view, is what ④impartial reasoning produces once self-interest is ⑤maximized.

As efforts to ①curb greenhouse gas emissions intensify, industries unable to eliminate carbon dioxide from their processes have turned to a technology known as carbon capture and storage. This technology involves separating carbon dioxide from the exhaust of power plants before it is released into the atmosphere, then transporting the captured gas for underground injection. Once injected into porous rock formations, the gas is trapped beneath layers of impermeable rock that prevent it from escaping into the air. Proponents argue that carbon capture and storage functions as a bridge technology, allowing heavy industries to keep operating while more sustainable alternatives are ②developed. For instance, cement and steel production, both of which release carbon dioxide as an ③unavoidable byproduct of chemical reactions, are considered prime candidates for this approach. However, critics contend that the technology remains prohibitively ④cheap and that building pipelines requires investments few companies make voluntarily. Despite such concerns, many governments continue funding pilot projects, convinced that this technology will play an ⑤indispensable role in reaching emission targets.

Emissions trading, a market-based mechanism for curbing greenhouse gases, allows governments to set an overall limit on carbon output while letting firms trade permits within that limit. Under this system, known as cap-and-trade, companies that cut emissions more cheaply than required can sell surplus allowances to firms facing higher reduction costs. Proponents argue that _______________, since abatement shifts toward whoever can achieve it most economically. Critics, however, contend that trading schemes frequently allocate too many permits, a flaw that has historically depressed carbon prices and blunted incentives to invest in cleaner technology. For example, early phases of several regional markets granted allowances so generously that permit prices collapsed, leaving polluters with little pressure to change their practices. Consequently, many economists now advocate combining trading with a price floor, a minimum permit price that keeps the market from collapsing during weak demand, thereby preserving the cost-effectiveness for which trading is valued.

For patients born with a single faulty gene, the disease has traditionally been treated indirectly, managing symptoms for a lifetime rather than addressing the genetic error itself. Gene therapy attempts something more ambitious: delivering a corrected copy of the gene directly into a patient's cells, often using a disabled virus as a delivery vehicle. Once inside the nucleus, the corrected gene can begin producing the protein the patient's body had always lacked, in some cases reversing symptoms that medication alone had never been able to touch. Early trials were haunted by serious setbacks, including cases in which the delivery virus triggered a dangerous immune reaction or inserted the new gene in a location that disrupted other essential genes. _______________.

A single fertilized egg eventually gives rise to every cell type in the human body, from neurons to bone, a feat that has fascinated biologists for more than a century. Embryonic stem cells retain much of that original versatility, capable in principle of developing into almost any tissue, _______________. Because harvesting these cells traditionally required destroying a human embryo, the research provoked ethical objections fierce enough to slow funding and legislation in several countries for years. A breakthrough arrived when scientists discovered that ordinary adult skin cells could be reprogrammed into a state resembling embryonic versatility without ever touching an embryo. These induced pluripotent cells have not entirely erased the ethical debate, but they have opened a path for stem cell research that far more scientists and funding agencies are willing to support.

When sociologist Émile Durkheim studied suicide rates across different societies, he noticed something puzzling: rates rose not only during economic depression but also during sudden prosperity. (B) Decades later, Robert Merton extended the concept to explain deviance within stable societies, proposing that anomie also arises when a culture insists that everyone pursue identical goals while denying many people the legitimate means to achieve them. (A) He concluded that both crises share a common feature, the collapse of shared norms, a state Durkheim called anomie, arguing that rapid social change can strip away the moral guidelines that regulate human desire. (C) Faced with this gap between aspiration and opportunity, some individuals conform, but others turn to innovation, ritual, retreat, or rebellion.

A biosensor works by pairing a biological component, such as an enzyme or antibody, with an electronic device that converts a biological reaction into a signal a computer can read. (A) Engineers are now racing to extend the same principle to detect subtler targets, from cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream to trace contaminants in drinking water, though the central challenge remains doing so reliably outside a controlled laboratory. (B) When the target molecule, whether glucose in blood or a trace of a pathogen, binds to the biological component, it triggers a small measurable change that the device translates into a readable number. (C) This design has already transformed diabetes management, letting patients monitor blood sugar continuously through a small sensor worn under the skin rather than pricking a finger several times a day.

Imagine a distant planet identical to Earth in every visible respect, except that the clear liquid its inhabitants call "water" is not H2O but a different compound, XYZ, that happens to look, taste, and behave exactly the same. (A) Even though the two speakers hold identical thoughts and mental images when they use the word, their statements refer to two different substances, because the underlying chemical composition fixes what a word ultimately picks out. (B) When an Earthling and a Twin Earthling each say the word "water," they seem to mean the same thing, since neither could tell the substances apart without a chemistry lab. (C) Philosopher Hilary Putnam used this scenario to argue that the meaning of a word is not determined solely by what happens inside a speaker's head.

In some cases, nature alone is simply too slow, and human ingenuity is called on to speed things along. When an oil tanker ruptures and crude spreads across open water, cleanup crews increasingly reach not only for skimmers and floating booms but also for something far smaller: bacteria that eat oil. ( ① ) Certain naturally occurring microbes possess enzymes capable of breaking hydrocarbon molecules apart, using the carbon as an energy source and gradually converting a toxic slick into carbon dioxide and harmless byproducts. ( ② ) Bioremediation, as this approach is called, works far more slowly than mechanical cleanup, often taking months rather than days. ( ③ ) But it can reach contamination trapped in soil or sediment that skimmers and booms can never reach. ( ④ ) Scientists have learned to accelerate the process by adding nutrients that help native microbial populations multiply faster, or in some cases by introducing engineered strains selected specifically for their appetite for a particular pollutant. ( ⑤ ) Because the method relies on living organisms rather than heavy machinery, it also tends to leave a far gentler footprint on the surrounding ecosystem than excavation or chemical treatment ever could.

Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask a far deeper question about identity itself. The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. ( ① ) If every plank of a wooden ship is replaced one by one over many years, is the vessel that eventually results still the same ship it once was? ( ② ) Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to erase the ship's identity. ( ③ ) The puzzle grows far sharper, however, once a second twist is introduced: suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, built exactly as the original once stood. ( ④ ) Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim to being the genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. ( ⑤ ) Whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or some deeper thread, no single answer has ever fully satisfied everyone who has taken up the question.