영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Why do people often overvalue objects they have partly ①built themselves, even when the finished product is objectively inferior to something they could have simply purchased? This puzzle, which researchers ②named after a furniture retailer famous for selling items that require home assembly, challenges the standard economic assumption that value is determined solely by an object's inherent qualities. In a series of experiments, participants who ③assembled a plain storage box were willing to pay nearly as much for their own imperfect creation as they were for a professionally built version, despite being fully aware of its flaws. Labor, it seems, functions as a kind of psychological investment: once effort has been ④pour into a task, individuals become reluctant to judge the outcome objectively, because doing so would require admitting that their effort was partly ⑤wasted.

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 ①eat oil. Certain naturally occurring microbes possess enzymes capable of ②breaking hydrocarbon molecules apart, using the carbon as an energy source and gradually converting a toxic slick into carbon dioxide and harmless byproducts. Bioremediation, as this approach is called, works far more slowly than mechanical cleanup, often ③taking months rather than days, but it can reach contamination trapped in soil or sediment that skimmers and booms can never reach. Scientists have learned to accelerate the process by adding nutrients ④that help native microbial populations multiply faster, or in some cases by introducing engineered strains selected specifically for their appetite for a particular pollutant. Because the method relies on living organisms rather than heavy machinery, it also tends ⑤leave a far gentler footprint on the surrounding ecosystem than excavation or chemical treatment ever could.

Military researchers have developed weapons systems capable of identifying and engaging targets without a human pressing the final button, a prospect that has ①alarmed arms control experts for over a decade. Advocates within defense agencies argue that autonomous systems can react faster than any human operator and may even ②reduce casualties by removing fear and fatigue from split-second decisions. Human rights organizations counter that removing a person from the final decision strips away moral responsibility at the exact moment it matters most, since a machine cannot be held ③accountable in any meaningful sense. Diplomatic negotiations toward an international treaty have repeatedly ④succeeded, partly because military powers disagree on how to define autonomy precisely enough to regulate it. Meanwhile, the underlying technology continues to ⑤advance regardless of whether the diplomacy meant to govern it keeps pace.

A single fertilized egg eventually gives rise to every cell type in the human body, from neurons to bone, a feat that has ①fascinated biologists for more than a century. Embryonic stem cells retain much of that original ②versatility, capable in principle of developing into almost any tissue, which is why researchers have long viewed them as a promising raw material for repairing damaged organs. Because harvesting these cells traditionally required destroying a human embryo, the research ③eliminated 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 ④willing to ⑤support.

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.

Economists traditionally measured a community's wealth in terms of factories, income, or infrastructure, yet sociologists increasingly point to a less visible resource: social capital, the networks of trust and reciprocity that allow people to cooperate for mutual benefit. Robert Putnam popularized the concept by documenting a decline in civic participation, a trend he captured in the phrase bowling alone. Communities rich in social capital tend to enjoy lower crime and more effective local government, because neighbors who know and trust one another can coordinate informally without relying entirely on formal institutions. However, _______________. For this reason, researchers increasingly distinguish between bonding capital, which strengthens ties within a single group, and bridging capital, which connects otherwise separate communities.

When engineers design the software that controls a self-driving car, they face a question philosophers have debated for decades: should a crashing vehicle protect its own passenger, or minimize total harm even at the passenger's expense? Surveys reveal an uncomfortable contradiction: most people say a car should be programmed to save the greater number of lives, yet the same people admit they would never buy a vehicle designed to sacrifice its own owner. This suggests that _______________. Manufacturers, regulators, and philosophers must instead agree on transparent rules before autonomous vehicles are allowed to make such decisions.

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.

Turning this tide has proven far harder than creating it, and not merely for scientific reasons. Every time an antibiotic kills off a population of bacteria, a handful of cells carrying a random mutation that resists the drug are left behind to multiply without competition. ( ① ) Repeated over decades, across hospitals, farms, and households worldwide, this simple process of natural selection has produced strains of bacteria that survive treatments once considered reliably effective. ( ② ) The pharmaceutical industry, meanwhile, has slowed the pace at which new antibiotics reach the market, since a drug meant to be taken for only a week or two rarely earns back the enormous cost of developing it. ( ③ ) Researchers are therefore searching in unconventional places, screening soil microbes and ocean sediment for molecules that kill bacteria through new mechanisms. ( ④ ) Even genetic databases are now mined for such molecules, ones resistant strains have not yet learned to evade. ( ⑤ ) Some scientists have also revived an older approach, using viruses that infect only bacteria to hunt down resistant strains with a precision no broad-spectrum drug could ever match.

That trajectory has continued to accelerate ever since, each new generation of vaccine technology arriving faster than the one before it. When a country physician named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, he set in motion a medical revolution without fully understanding why it worked. ( ① ) For nearly two centuries afterward, vaccine development proceeded largely by trial and error, weakening or killing a pathogen and testing whether the resulting preparation could train the immune system without causing disease itself. ( ② ) This method produced genuine successes, eventually eliminating smallpox worldwide and reducing diseases such as polio and measles. ( ③ ) Each new vaccine, however, still required years of laboratory work with no guarantee of success. ( ④ ) Advances in molecular biology eventually allowed researchers to isolate a single protein from a pathogen's surface rather than using the whole organism, producing vaccines with fewer side effects and a more predictable safety profile. ( ⑤ ) The most recent shift, toward delivering genetic instructions rather than proteins themselves, represents the latest chapter in a story that began with an eighteenth-century doctor's curiosity about a puzzling immunity among dairy workers.