영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Desalination, the process of ①removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water scarcity. Most modern facilities rely on reverse osmosis, a technique in which seawater is ②forced through membranes whose microscopic pores block salt while letting water molecules pass. Because this method consumes far less energy than the thermal distillation once dominant in the industry, it has become the preferred choice for large-scale plants. Nevertheless, desalination remains an inherently costly and environmentally burdensome solution, a fact often overlooked amid enthusiasm for ending water shortages. For instance, the process generates a concentrated byproduct called brine, which, when discharged without adequate dilution, can raise local salinity to levels that ③harms marine life. Pumping seawater through membranes at high pressure also ④demands substantial electricity, so plants powered by fossil fuels can worsen the emissions that intensify drought. Therefore, engineers increasingly argue that desalination should be ⑤treated not as a stand-alone remedy but as one component of a broader conservation strategy.

Consider a village green shared freely by every herder in the community, where each individual may graze as many animals as they wish without paying any fee. From the perspective of any single herder, adding one more animal to the shared pasture brings a clear personal ①loss, since the extra income belongs entirely to that herder alone. The cost of the additional grazing, however, is spread thinly across every herder who uses the green, so no single individual bears more than a tiny fraction of the ②damage. Because this calculation favors adding more animals for every rational herder, the shared pasture is gradually ③overgrazed until it can no longer support any animals at all, harming the very community whose rational members caused the collapse. Philosophers use this scenario to illustrate a troubling gap between what benefits an individual in the short term and what preserves a shared resource in the ④long term, a gap that voluntary self-restraint alone rarely ⑤closes.

Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings, promising ①convenience in exchange for a quick scan of one's face. Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform ②less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones, a gap that can lead to wrongful identification with serious real-world consequences. Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was ③detained based on a flawed match. Until these systems can prove equally reliable for everyone, critics argue, deploying them at all represents a form of quiet ④discrimination dressed up as ⑤inefficiency.

Standard economic theory assumes that money is fungible, meaning that a dollar earned as salary is functionally ①identical to a dollar received as a tax refund or won in a lottery. In practice, however, people routinely sort their finances into separate mental accounts, treating money differently depending on its source or intended purpose. A household that would never dip into its retirement savings to pay for a vacation might nonetheless spend an unexpected bonus on that very trip without ②hesitation, even though both sums are, in strictly financial terms, equally available for either purpose. This ③compartmentalization can produce decisions that appear ④consistent when viewed through a purely rational lens: the same individual who diligently saves a portion of every paycheck may simultaneously carry high-interest credit card debt, effectively paying more to borrow than they earn on their savings. Mental accounting is not always harmful, however; by assigning specific categories to specific funds, individuals can also impose useful ⑤discipline on their spending, preventing money earmarked for essential needs from being diverted toward impulsive purchases.

Many large companies now rely on artificial intelligence to screen job applications before a human ever sees them. These systems promise efficiency, scanning thousands of resumes in seconds and ranking candidates according to patterns drawn from previous hiring decisions. However, this reliance on historical data creates a troubling risk. If a company's past hiring favored a particular group, the algorithm may learn to treat that pattern as a marker of success and quietly reproduce it, even when no one intended discrimination. Unlike a human interviewer, the system offers no explanation for its choices, which means that _______________. Some researchers argue that fairness cannot be added afterward; it must be built into the system's design from the very beginning.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. (A) However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed much faster. (B) Historical evidence offers some comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. (C) A factory worker displaced this year, therefore, cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now.

Imagine rewriting a bacterium's code the way a programmer edits a line of software, and much of what synthetic biology promises begins to make sense. (A) Critics note that biological systems rarely behave as predictably as electronic circuits, since a gene inserted into a new cell can interact with existing pathways in unexpected ways; even so, as the catalog of standardized parts keeps expanding, engineers are gaining confidence to design increasingly complex systems. (B) Because these circuits are built from interchangeable parts rather than designed from scratch each time, a circuit tested in one lab can often be reused, with minor adjustments, in an entirely different application. (C) Researchers in this field assemble standardized genetic parts into circuits that can be inserted into a cell, instructing it to perform a task that no natural organism would carry out.

Loss aversion does not only influence individual financial choices; it also shapes how information is presented and interpreted in everyday transactions, a phenomenon that marketers and policymakers have learned to exploit deliberately. (A) For example, a retailer who frames a price reduction as "avoid losing a $10 discount by ordering today" typically generates a stronger customer response than one who simply advertises "get a $10 discount," even though both messages describe an identical saving. (B) In other words, the manner in which a choice is presented can activate the same psychological aversion to loss that governs decisions about resources already possessed, meaning that framing itself carries real economic weight. (C) This effect is not confined to retail settings, however; negotiators, too, often treat concessions as losses rather than as steps toward mutual gain, which makes compromise feel more costly than it objectively is.

This is a decision, in short, that no single person should be allowed to make alone. The discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology gave scientists a tool precise enough to correct a single mistaken letter in the human genome, raising hope for curing inherited diseases that have resisted treatment for generations. ( ① ) Yet the same precision that makes CRISPR so promising also makes it dangerous in the wrong hands. ( ② ) Editing a gene in a sperm, egg, or early embryo does not simply change one patient. ( ③ ) It alters the genetic code passed down to every future generation. ( ④ ) Scientific organizations around the world have therefore drawn a careful line, permitting gene editing to treat disease in existing patients while banning any edit that would be inherited by their descendants. ( ⑤ ) Critics worry, however, that this line will become harder to enforce than it is to draw.

These institutions frequently begin the process with what Goffman termed a mortification of self, removing personal possessions and erasing markers of prior status so that recruits can be rebuilt according to institutional expectations. Socialization is the lifelong process through which individuals absorb the norms, values, and roles that allow them to function within a society. ( ① ) Most of this process unfolds gradually and is barely noticed by the people experiencing it. ( ② ) Resocialization, by contrast, refers to a deliberate and often abrupt process in which an individual is stripped of a previous identity and trained to adopt a new set of norms, typically within what sociologist Erving Goffman called a total institution, such as a military academy, prison, or monastery. ( ③ ) While resocialization can help individuals adapt to demanding new roles, critics note that total institutions can also produce lasting psychological strain. ( ④ ) This strain often results from severing the very social ties that once anchored a person's sense of self. ( ⑤ )