영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Sociologist Mark Granovetter challenged a common assumption when he found that job seekers were more likely ①to hear about new opportunities from casual acquaintances than from close friends and family. This finding, ②published as the strength of weak ties, rests on a structural insight: close friends tend to belong to the same tight social circle and therefore already share most of the same information, whereas casual acquaintances typically move in different circles and can act as bridges to information a person would otherwise never ③encounter. Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise separate networks, ④transmitting novel information more efficiently than the redundant, overlapping ties within a tightly bonded group. Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, ⑤informing research on how innovations spread and how epidemics travel through a population.

A cluster of neurons smaller than a pea can now spontaneously ①organizing itself into layered structures that mimic, in miniature, the architecture of a developing human brain. Grown from stem cells coaxed to follow the same developmental cues that guide an embryo, these brain organoids have begun ②firing electrical signals in patterns that faintly resemble the activity recorded in an infant's brain. For researchers studying disorders such as autism or schizophrenia, this offers something long unavailable: a living model of human brain development that can be ③observed and manipulated directly, without ever touching an actual patient. Because organoids lack sensory organs, a body, or any connection to the outside world, most neuroscientists argue that the structures cannot generate anything ④resembling subjective experience, however brain-like their electrical activity may appear. Even so, the pace at which these organoids are growing more complex has convinced some ethicists that the field would benefit from ⑤establishing clear boundaries now, before the science outruns the conversation about what it means.

Imagine a teleportation device that scans every atom in your body, transmits that information to a distant station, and ①reconstructs an exact physical duplicate there, while destroying the original body in the process. From the traveler's point of view, stepping into the machine and stepping out on the other side would feel utterly seamless, complete with continuous memories and a sense of ②having simply walk through a door. Philosophers, however, are troubled by a version of the same device that malfunctions: instead of destroying the original, it leaves the original body intact while still ③creating a perfect duplicate elsewhere. Now two people exist, each with identical memories and an equally strong claim ④to being the original traveler, and there is no principled way to say that one of them is the real continuation of the person who entered the machine. This malfunction reveals that memory and psychological continuity alone cannot fully ⑤settle what personal identity actually requires.

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a now-famous thought experiment not to describe an actual laboratory procedure, but ①to expose an absurdity hidden within a leading interpretation of quantum mechanics. Imagine a cat sealed inside a closed box together with a radioactive atom, a Geiger counter, and a vial of poison gas ②rigged to break open the instant the atom decays. Because the atom's decay is governed by genuine quantum randomness, standard quantum theory describes the atom, before anyone looks, ③as existing in a superposition of having decayed and not having decayed at the same time. If the theory is applied consistently to the entire box, the cat itself would have to ④be considered simultaneously alive and dead until an observer opens the lid and looks inside. Schrödinger intended this image to sound obviously ridiculous, using the cat's absurd fate to question whether the act of observation truly determines physical reality, or whether the mathematics is simply being pushed further than it ⑤ever meaning to go.

When individuals face uncertainty about how to behave, they frequently look to the actions of others for guidance, ①assuming that a behavior adopted by many people is more likely to be correct or appropriate than one adopted by few, a tendency known as social proof. This reliance on collective behavior can be remarkably efficient, since it allows individuals ②to benefit from the accumulated judgment of a crowd without having to gather and evaluate every relevant fact themselves. However, social proof can also lead entire groups astray when the initial signal that ③trigger imitation is itself unreliable or coincidental. A restaurant that happens to attract a long line early in the evening may continue attracting customers throughout the night simply because passersby ④interpret the queue as evidence of superior quality. Financial markets exhibit an analogous pattern: investors who observe others buying a particular asset often join the buying themselves, ⑤reasoning that so many participants cannot all be mistaken.

Cognitive load theory begins from the premise that working memory, the mental workspace in which incoming information is temporarily held and manipulated, can accommodate only an ①unlimited number of novel elements at any given moment, in stark contrast to the comparatively vast capacity of long-term memory. When instructional materials introduce more interacting elements than this narrow workspace can simultaneously process, learners experience what theorists call cognitive ②overload, a condition under which comprehension deteriorates and errors multiply regardless of how motivated the learner might be. Because much of this burden arises not from the intrinsic difficulty of the subject matter itself but from the manner in which information is presented, instructional designers can substantially ③reduce unnecessary strain by eliminating redundant explanations, aligning visual and verbal elements so that learners need not mentally integrate scattered sources, and gradually ④withdrawing guidance as competence develops. Ignoring these principles, by contrast, risks ⑤overwhelming novices with demands that exceed their processing capacity, however well-organized the underlying content may be.

Desalination, the process of removing 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 forced 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, _______________. For instance, the process generates a concentrated 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 worsen 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 broader conservation strategy.

Working memory refers to the mental workspace in which information is temporarily held and manipulated while a person performs a cognitive task. Such tasks include solving an arithmetic problem, following a rapid conversation, or holding a phone number in mind before dialing it. (A) Subsequent research, however, revealed that Miller's estimate was somewhat generous, since it failed to account for the complexity of the material being remembered. Nelson Cowan later argued that when rehearsal strategies are prevented and attention is tightly controlled, genuine capacity hovers closer to four items rather than seven. (B) This discrepancy suggests that what earlier studies had measured was not raw storage capacity itself but a hybrid quantity inflated by clever strategies. Contemporary psychologists therefore distinguish between the fixed limit of working memory and the flexible techniques that allow individuals to transcend that limit. (C) In the mid-twentieth century, the psychologist George Miller proposed that this workspace could accommodate roughly seven discrete items. His claim proved so influential that it became widely known as the magic number seven.

There is also a quieter cultural cost that rarely appears in productivity reports. Sensors buried in the soil now report moisture levels in real time, drones survey entire fields for signs of disease within minutes, and automated systems adjust irrigation without a farmer ever walking the rows. ( ① ) For large operations with the capital to invest, these tools have measurably increased yields while reducing water waste. ( ② ) Smaller family farms, however, often cannot afford the upfront cost of this equipment. ( ③ ) Some worry that the gap between high-tech and traditional operations will only widen as the technology advances further. ( ④ ) Generations of farming knowledge, passed down through direct observation of soil, weather, and crops, risk being replaced by dashboards and automated alerts. ( ⑤ )

Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask a far deeper question about identity itself. The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple question. ( ① ) If every plank of a wooden ship is replaced one by one over many years, is the vessel that eventually results still the same ship it once was? ( ② ) Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too small to erase the ship's identity. ( ③ ) The puzzle grows far sharper, however, once a second twist is introduced: suppose a careful collector gathered every discarded plank and reassembled them into a second vessel, built exactly as the original once stood. ( ④ ) Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim to being the genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. ( ⑤ ) Whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or some deeper thread, no single answer has ever fully satisfied everyone who has taken up the question.