영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Desalination, the process of removing dissolved salts from seawater to produce fresh water, has increasingly been adopted by coastal regions facing chronic water ①scarcity. Most modern facilities rely on reverse osmosis, a technique in which seawater is forced through membranes whose microscopic pores block salt while letting water molecules pass. Because this method ②consumes 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 ③concentrated byproduct called brine, which, when discharged without adequate dilution, can raise local salinity to levels that harm marine life. Pumping seawater through membranes at high pressure also demands substantial electricity, so plants powered by fossil fuels can ④alleviate the emissions that intensify drought. Therefore, engineers increasingly argue that desalination should be treated not as a stand-alone remedy but as one component of a ⑤broader conservation strategy.

Philosophers sometimes ask their students to imagine a creature physically identical to an ordinary human being in every measurable respect, one that walks, talks, laughs, and even cries out in apparent pain when injured, yet that has no inner conscious experience whatsoever. This imagined being, commonly called a philosophical zombie, behaves ②completely differently from a conscious person, since every neuron fires in precisely the same pattern, but there is supposedly nothing it is like to be that creature from the inside. Defenders of the argument claim that because such a zombie is at least ①conceivable without any logical contradiction, consciousness itself cannot be fully explained by physical processes alone. Critics respond that mere conceivability ③proves very little about what is genuinely possible in the real world, and that our intuition about zombies may simply ④reflect the limits of imagination rather than a real gap in ⑤nature.

A cricket contains, gram for gram, roughly as much protein as beef, yet requires a small fraction of the land, water, and feed needed to raise cattle. This efficiency has drawn growing attention from researchers looking for ways to feed a global population that continues to climb while arable land remains essentially fixed. Insects also convert feed into body mass with remarkable efficiency, since they are cold-blooded and therefore spend far less energy regulating body temperature than a cow or pig must. _______________. Food companies have responded by grinding insects into a flour that disappears into protein bars, pasta, and baked goods, letting consumers benefit from the nutrition without ever having to look an insect in the eye.

Blockchain technology was originally promoted as a way to remove the need for trusted middlemen. In theory, this design distributes power away from any single institution and toward the network as a whole. In practice, however, _______________, controlling enough computing power or currency to influence outcomes that were supposed to be decided collectively. Whether decentralization can survive this concentration of power remains one of the technology's most unresolved questions.

A striking proportion of individual investors believe their own stock-picking ability to be above average, a statistical impossibility given that only half of any population can genuinely outperform the rest. This tendency, known as overconfidence bias, leads investors to trade more frequently than a more cautious assessment of their own skill would justify. Paradoxically, then, the very confidence that motivates investors to act decisively often undermines the outcomes they are trying to achieve, since ___________ frequently produces worse results than a more modest, diversified strategy.

Medieval philosophers told the story of a hungry donkey placed exactly midway between two identical, equally fragrant piles of hay, with no factor whatsoever tipping the balance toward either option. (A) Because the donkey is assumed to be a perfectly rational creature that always chooses the option supported by the strongest reason, it supposedly finds itself with no rational basis for choosing one pile rather than the other. (B) Paralyzed by this perfect symmetry, the donkey starves to death precisely because it can find no reason to move in either direction. (C) Critics of the story point out that real animals, and real humans, rarely face situations of such flawless symmetry, since even a tiny, arbitrary preference is usually enough to break the tie in practice.

A liver no longer has to sit inside a human body to be studied closely. (A) Unlike flat cultures grown on a plastic dish, which lose many of the cues that guide normal development, organoids let cells interact in three dimensions much as they would inside the body, yielding tissue that behaves in strikingly realistic ways. (B) This fidelity has made organoids invaluable for testing how a drug affects human tissue before any patient is exposed, and some laboratories have even grown organoids from a single patient's own cells, raising the possibility of trialing a treatment on a miniature copy of that patient's organ. (C) By coaxing stem cells to organize themselves within a nutrient-rich gel, scientists can now grow miniature three-dimensional structures called organoids, which reproduce much of the architecture and function of a real organ.

주어진 문장: Even so, long-term monitoring in several cities indicates that combining both approaches lowers total infrastructure costs more effectively than relying on either strategy alone. As cities have expanded across landscapes once covered with absorbent soil, impervious surfaces have turned stormwater from a resource that recharges groundwater into a hazard that floods streets and carries pollutants into waterways. ① Green infrastructure, which mimics the hydrological functions that natural landscapes once performed, offers planners a way to treat the city as a sponge rather than a rigid drainage pipe. ② Rain gardens, shallow depressions planted with deep-rooted vegetation, are designed to capture runoff from rooftops, allowing it to filter slowly through soil before reaching underground aquifers. ③ Permeable pavement, made of porous materials that let water pass directly through, serves a similar purpose along sidewalks, where asphalt would remain impenetrable. ④ For example, cities that replaced pavement with permeable alternatives have reported notable reductions in flooding during storms that once overwhelmed sewers. However, engineers caution that green infrastructure cannot entirely replace conventional pipes in dense cores, where heavy runoff still requires structural reinforcement. ⑤ Consequently, municipalities now regard green and gray infrastructure as complementary systems, each compensating for the other's limitations. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

주어진 문장: In practice, however, building such extensive networks demands years of planning and substantial financial resources. As solar and wind power expand rapidly across national grids, engineers face a challenge that receives far less public attention than the construction of the generating facilities themselves. ① Unlike conventional power plants, which can adjust their output to match demand at almost any moment, solar panels and wind turbines generate electricity only when sunlight or wind is available, producing supply that fluctuates constantly. ② This intermittency means that grid operators must balance supply and demand even when renewable output suddenly drops, such as when clouds cover a solar farm or wind speeds fall. ③ One proposed solution involves large-scale battery storage systems, which absorb surplus electricity generated during periods of high output and release it later when generation declines. Another approach relies on expanding transmission networks across wider regions, so that electricity generated in a sunny area can be redirected to places experiencing a shortfall. ④ Grid operators must therefore invest in infrastructure capable of accommodating this variability, rather than assuming renewable sources can simply replace fossil fuels without adjustment. ⑤ Without such investment, integrating renewable energy could paradoxically undermine the very reliability that modern electricity grids are expected to provide. ① ② ③ ④ ⑤

Critics on the other side argue instead that a state limited to bare protection cannot address deeper inequalities that arise naturally in any free market. Political philosophers have long debated how much authority, if any, a government may legitimately claim over free individuals. ( ① ) Robert Nozick imagined a hypothetical starting point in which people live without any state at all, each relying on private arrangements to protect their own person and property. ( ② ) He argued that a minimal state, limited strictly to enforcing contracts and protecting citizens from violence, theft, and fraud, could arise gradually through a series of voluntary exchanges, without anyone's rights ever being violated along the way. ( ③ ) Critics on one side, the anarchists, insist that even this minimal government inevitably violates the rights of those who never consented to join it. ( ④ ) Nozick's thought experiment therefore sits at the center of an unresolved argument about where legitimate political authority actually begins. ( ⑤ )