영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

문제 1

For decades, most vaccines worked by ①injecting a weakened or inactivated version of a pathogen, coaxing the immune system into recognizing an enemy it had never truly fought. mRNA vaccines take a fundamentally different route, ②delivering only a short genetic instruction wrapped in a protective lipid capsule, one that tells the body's own cells how to manufacture a single harmless piece of a virus's outer surface protein. Once those cells display the fragment, the immune system learns to recognize it as foreign and ③builds a defense, without ever having encountered the actual pathogen. Because the vaccine contains no live virus and cannot alter a cell's own DNA, developers can redesign the genetic instructions within weeks whenever a pathogen ④mutating, rather than starting the years-long process required for traditional vaccines. This speed, first proven on a global scale during a recent pandemic, has convinced many researchers that the same platform could eventually ⑤be adapted to fight diseases far beyond infectious illness, including certain cancers.

문제 2

A plastic bag that fully decomposes within months rather than lingering for centuries sounds almost too convenient to be real, yet certain bioplastics on the market ①do exactly that under the right conditions. Unlike conventional plastic, derived almost entirely from petroleum, many bioplastics are ②synthesized from renewable feedstocks such as corn starch or sugarcane, sometimes with the help of bacteria engineered to produce plastic-like polymers as a byproduct of their metabolism. Not every bioplastic biodegrades quickly, however, and some marketed as eco-friendly break down only in industrial composting facilities ③that reach conditions rarely found in a backyard compost heap or the open ocean. Critics point out that growing crops for bioplastic production can compete with food crops for farmland and water, ④complicating the assumption that a biological origin automatically makes a material more sustainable. Researchers are now exploring bioplastics made from agricultural waste and algae instead of dedicated crops, hoping to ⑤sidestepping this competition for land while preserving the benefits that first made bioplastics appealing.

문제 3

It would be alarming ① to believe that anything sufficiently large or obvious appearing within our field of vision will automatically capture our attention, yet decades of research into inattentional blindness suggest otherwise. When people are absorbed in a demanding task, such as counting how many times a ball is passed between players, they frequently fail to notice an unexpected and conspicuous ② event unfolding in plain sight, even something as unlikely as a person in a costume walking through the scene. This failure does not stem from a defect ③ in the eyes, which register the stimulus perfectly well, but from the fact that conscious perception depends heavily on where attention has been directed. Policymakers ought to take this finding more seriously than they currently do, because it implies that simply placing a warning sign within someone's visual range offers no guarantee ④ that it will be consciously registered. Designing safer environments, therefore, requires accounting for the limits of attention itself, not merely assuming that visibility alone ensures ⑤ awareness.

문제 4

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.

문제 5

A printer that once produced only plastic prototypes can now deposit living cells layer by layer to build a structure that begins to ①resemble actual tissue. Bioprinting adapts the logic of conventional 3D printing, replacing plastic filament with a ②specialized ink made of living cells suspended in a gel that supports their survival while the shape sets. Printing a flat patch of skin or a simple blood vessel has already moved from laboratory curiosity to early clinical testing, since these tissues are thin enough for nutrients to reach every cell by ③diffusion. Printing a solid organ such as a kidney remains a far greater challenge, because internal cells ④thrive without their own blood supply, and no printer yet exists that can build a network of vessels fast enough to keep them alive. Researchers are therefore focusing on hybrid strategies, printing a rough scaffold and then allowing the tissue to mature and grow its own vasculature over ⑤time.

문제 6

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.

문제 7

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.

문제 8

Every time a smartphone connects to a cell tower or a Wi-Fi network, it quietly records a data point that can later be pieced together into a detailed map of where its owner has been. (A) Companies often argue that anonymized data cannot be traced back to individuals, yet researchers have repeatedly shown that a handful of location points is enough to identify a specific person. (B) Most users agree to this tracking without reading the fine print, assuming that a single company's database poses little threat. (C) The real danger, however, emerges when location data from multiple sources is combined, revealing a person's home, workplace, and daily route.

문제 9

Ordinary evidence cannot help here, since any proof gathered through the senses would itself be generated by the same simulation being tested. Suppose a mad scientist removed a living brain from its body, placed it in a vat of nutrient fluid, and connected its neurons to a supercomputer capable of generating perfectly realistic sensations. ( ① ) The brain would experience a full and convincing world, complete with a sky, a body, and other people, without ever suspecting that none of it existed outside the simulation. ( ② ) This scenario, unsettling as it sounds, raises a genuinely difficult question for anyone confident in their own perception: how could a person ever prove that they are not that very brain right now? ( ③ ) Some philosophers conclude that absolute certainty about the external world is simply unattainable. ( ④ ) Others argue, however, that the mere possibility of deception, however vivid, is not sufficient reason to abandon our everyday trust in what we perceive. ( ⑤ ) Ordinary caution, after all, can never fully settle which side is correct.

문제 10

Confined in this controlled setting, the organisms grow far faster than they ever would in the wild. Long before humans learned to drill for oil, microorganisms had already mastered the art of converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into stored chemical energy. ( ① ) Modern biofuel research borrows this ability, cultivating algae or engineered bacteria in large tanks. ( ② ) There, they can be coaxed into producing oils and sugars that can be refined into fuel usable in existing engines. ( ③ ) Unlike crops grown for corn-based ethanol, which compete directly with food production for arable land, many algae strains can thrive in shallow ponds, wastewater, or even coastal seawater unsuitable for conventional agriculture. ( ④ ) Engineers have also learned to tinker with the metabolic pathways of these organisms, boosting oil yield far beyond what any wild strain would naturally produce on its own. ( ⑤ ) Despite this progress, producing biofuel at a cost competitive with fossil fuel remains difficult, since harvesting and processing the organisms consumes a substantial share of the energy the fuel itself will eventually provide.