영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a curved function, ①differing sharply from the assumptions of classical economic models. In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts ②increase, so the psychological difference between earning zero and one hundred dollars feels far greater than between earning one thousand and eleven hundred. A parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve ③bend in the opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger. This tendency, ④known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why a shopper barely notices a ten dollar increase on a two thousand dollar purchase. Researchers illustrate this curvature with graphs ⑤shaped like an S turned sideways, sloping gently near the center and flattening toward both extremes.

When people evaluate their personal contribution to water scarcity, they often consider only the water that flows directly from household taps, overlooking a far larger quantity ①consumed indirectly through the goods they purchase. The water footprint, a concept that extends this narrow view, measures the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services an individual or a nation consumes. Central to this concept is the notion of virtual water, the water ②embedded invisibly within a product, from irrigating cotton fields to livestock ③raised for meat. For instance, producing a kilogram of beef can require several thousand liters of water, whereas a kilogram of vegetables typically demands a fraction of that amount. Nations that import water-intensive goods rather than ④producing them domestically are importing virtual water from regions that may face severe shortages. Critics caution, however, that focusing exclusively on aggregate volume can mislead policymakers, since a liter of water drawn from a region suffering drought ⑤carry far greater consequences than one drawn from a water-abundant area.

Scientists have long searched for a way to describe, in a single coherent framework, the outer limits within ①which human activity can safely continue without destabilizing the planet's fundamental systems. The concept of planetary boundaries, ②introduced by earth-system researchers, identifies nine interconnected processes, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen pollution, each ③possessing a threshold beyond which abrupt and irreversible change becomes likely. Unlike conventional environmental limits, often defined locally, these boundaries are framed at a planetary scale, ④reflecting the idea that the Earth functions as a single interdependent system rather than a collection of isolated regions. Crossing one boundary, proponents argue, does not merely damage the system involved but can also destabilize others, since climate, oceans, and land are bound together by feedback loops that transmit disturbance across the system. Some philosophers have likened this framework to a ship's safe operating margin, within which passengers may move freely without risking the vessel's stability. Critics, however, contend that the boundaries ⑤is drawn with more confidence than the data can support.

For decades, most vaccines worked by injecting a ①weakened or inactivated version of a pathogen, coaxing the immune system into recognizing an enemy it had never truly fought. mRNA vaccines take a fundamentally ②different route, delivering 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 ③foreign and builds 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 ④redesign the genetic instructions within weeks whenever a pathogen mutates, rather than starting the years-long process required for traditional vaccines. This speed has convinced many researchers that the same platform could eventually be adapted to fight diseases far beyond infectious illness, ⑤excluding certain cancers.

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.

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.

Conventional industrial zones typically operate as ①isolated 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 ②valuable input for another. An eco-industrial park reorganizes this arrangement by clustering diverse companies within a single area and encouraging them to exchange materials, energy, and water through a practice known as industrial symbiosis. A power plant's ③surplus 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 ④proprietary, 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 ⑤increasing both waste disposal costs and raw material expenses simultaneously.

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a now-famous thought experiment not to describe an actual laboratory procedure, but to 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 rigged 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, as 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 be 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 _______________.

Philosopher Robert Nozick asked his readers to imagine a machine capable of producing any experience they desired, from writing a great novel to falling in love, all indistinguishable from reality once they were plugged in. Neuroscientists would simply stimulate the brain to generate a lifetime of perfectly satisfying experiences. If pleasure and the avoidance of pain were truly all that mattered, as classical hedonism claims, then everyone should rush to connect themselves permanently to such a machine. Yet when people actually consider the offer, most hesitate, and many refuse outright. Nozick took this reluctance as evidence that _______________.

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 exactly as a conscious person would, since every neuron fires in precisely the same pattern. Defenders of the argument claim that because such a zombie is at least conceivable without any logical contradiction, consciousness itself cannot be fully explained by physical processes alone. Critics respond that _______________.