영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

The ecological footprint, a widely cited measure of how much biologically productive land and water a population ①require to sustain its consumption, has become one of the most familiar tools for communicating humanity's environmental impact. By ②converting diverse activities, from driving to eating meat, into a single unit of land area, the measure allows policymakers to grasp whether a lifestyle exceeds what the planet can regenerate. This simplicity, however, is also the source of its most persistent criticism. Because the footprint aggregates dissimilar impacts, such as carbon emissions and water scarcity, into one composite figure, it can obscure important differences among problems ③that require distinct policy responses. A region might reduce its footprint by lowering carbon emissions while simultaneously ④depleting a local aquifer, yet the aggregate number could still appear to improve, concealing damage that demands urgent attention. Furthermore, the method assumes that all bio-productive land is roughly interchangeable, ⑤treating a hectare of forest as equivalent to a hectare of farmland, even though the two provide markedly different ecological functions.

Imagine rewriting a bacterium's code the way a programmer edits a line of software, and much of what synthetic biology ①promises begins to make sense. 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 ②carry out. 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 ③minor adjustments, in an entirely different application. Critics note that biological systems ④always behave as predictably as electronic circuits, since a gene inserted into a new cell can interact with existing pathways in unexpected ways, occasionally producing results no engineer intended. Even so, as the catalog of standardized parts keeps expanding, engineers are gaining ⑤confidence to design increasingly complex systems.

People often recognize, in calm reflection, that their future selves will be tempted to abandon a goal they currently value. Rather than relying solely on willpower at the critical moment, they may choose to _______________, a strategy known as precommitment. By making certain choices costly, inconvenient, or impossible to reverse, individuals can protect a long-term goal from a short-term impulse that has not yet arisen. Similarly, someone determined to finish a project might publicly announce a deadline, transforming private intentions into a commitment that carries social consequences if broken. What unites these examples is a simple insight: because future desires cannot always be trusted, the wisest moment to act may be now.

Conventional industrial zones typically operate as isolated facilities, each purchasing raw materials independently and disposing of waste without regard for neighboring plants, even when one factory's discarded byproduct could serve as valuable input for another. An eco-industrial park _______________. A power plant's surplus heat, for example, might be piped to a nearby greenhouse, while a food processing facility's organic waste could be converted into biogas that powers another factory's equipment. Such exchanges require companies to coordinate schedules and share information they might otherwise regard as proprietary, a level of cooperation rarely achieved without deliberate institutional support. Local governments therefore often play a coordinating role, mapping which industries could exchange resources and providing incentives for companies willing to participate. Consequently, eco-industrial parks have come to be seen as a model capable of reducing both waste disposal costs and raw material expenses simultaneously.

Imagine two travelers preparing for the same trip: one refuses to fly after watching news coverage of a recent plane crash, while the other books a flight without hesitation. Statistically, air travel remains far safer than driving the same distance by car, yet vivid, emotionally charged images tend to dominate human judgment more powerfully than dry statistics ever could. This tendency, in which people estimate how likely an event is based on _______________, quietly shapes countless everyday decisions. News broadcasts that repeatedly feature rare disasters can leave viewers convinced that such events are common, even though official records clearly show the opposite. Advertisers and politicians alike exploit this pattern, knowing that a single striking anecdote often persuades audiences more effectively than pages of careful statistics ever manage to.

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. 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. _______________. Researchers are therefore searching in unconventional places, screening soil microbes, ocean sediment, and even genetic databases for molecules that kill bacteria through mechanisms resistant strains have not yet learned to evade. 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.

Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings. (A) Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones. (B) Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. (C) Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was detained based on a flawed match.

The scarcity effect operates with particular force when a deadline, rather than a fixed quantity, defines the limitation. (A) A countdown timer displayed beside an online offer, for instance, creates a constant visual reminder that the opportunity to purchase is steadily disappearing, prompting many shoppers to decide before they have fully considered the purchase. (B) Because the clock continues ticking regardless of the shopper's readiness, the pressure to act quickly can override the more deliberate evaluation that a purchase might otherwise receive. (C) Retailers have accordingly found that adding an explicit deadline, even an artificial one that resets shortly afterward, reliably increases the speed and frequency of purchase decisions.

주어진 문장: This is not because they expect the price to recover, but because selling would force them to confront the possibility of having made a clear mistake. When people face a difficult decision, they often weigh not only the expected outcome of each option but also how painful it would feel to discover later that a different choice had been better. ( ① ) This anticipation of future regret, rather than the size of the potential loss itself, frequently becomes the dominant factor shaping the final decision. ( ② ) Investors, for example, sometimes continue holding a declining stock rather than selling it. ( ③ ) Researchers have found that people feel sharper regret over losses that resulted from taking action than over identical losses that resulted from doing nothing, which helps explain why so many individuals default to inaction whenever a decision feels uncertain. ( ④ ) Ironically, this strategy of avoiding regret can itself produce outcomes that are later regretted even more deeply than the ones it was originally designed to prevent. ( ⑤ )

The secret lies not in the cotton plant itself but in a borrowed piece of bacterial DNA. A cotton plant that manufactures its own insecticide sounds like science fiction, yet it has been growing in fields around the world for decades. ( ① ) Scientists achieved this by isolating a gene from a soil bacterium that produces a protein toxic to specific insect pests but harmless to humans. ( ② ) That gene is then inserted into the plant's own genome so that every cell manufactures the protective protein. ( ③ ) Other genetically modified crops carry a gene that allows them to survive direct exposure to a particular herbicide, letting farmers spray a field to kill weeds without harming the crop growing among them. ( ④ ) Supporters point to yield increases and reduced pesticide spraying documented across millions of hectares, while critics worry about weeds and insects evolving resistance to these built-in defenses over time, much as bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. ( ⑤ ) Regulatory agencies in most countries now require extensive testing before a genetically modified crop reaches the market, evaluating everything from its nutritional content to its potential effects on nearby ecosystems.