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.

Two patients diagnosed with the same disease and prescribed the same medication can respond in ①strikingly different ways, one recovering quickly while the other experiences little benefit or even harmful side effects. Precision medicine starts from the observation that this variation often traces back to differences buried in each patient's genome, differences that determine how ②efficiently a body absorbs, breaks down, or responds to a given drug. By sequencing a patient's DNA before treatment begins, doctors can increasingly predict which medication is likely to work best and at what dose, replacing a strategy once described as one-size-fits-all with something closer to a ③tailored fit. This approach has proven especially valuable in cancer treatment, where tumors from two patients with the same diagnosis may carry entirely ④identical genetic mutations that respond to entirely different drugs. Widespread adoption still faces real obstacles, since genetic sequencing remains ⑤expensive in many regions and few doctors have been trained to interpret the flood of genetic data such tests now produce.

City governments increasingly market dense networks of surveillance cameras as a straightforward safety upgrade, promising ①faster emergency response and lower crime rates. In many cases, the technology delivers exactly what it promises, helping investigators identify suspects within hours rather than weeks. Yet the same infrastructure that catches criminals also creates a ②permanent record of where ordinary, law-abiding citizens go about their daily lives. Once a camera network exists, its purpose can quietly ③shrink, from tracking traffic accidents to monitoring political protests, often without new public debate or explicit approval. Civil liberties groups argue that a city should decide how much surveillance it wants before the cameras go up, not years ④afterward when the infrastructure is already impossible to remove. Convenience installed today, in other words, can quietly become ⑤control tomorrow.

Factories that once employed hundreds of workers on an assembly line now run with a ①fraction of that staff, as robotic arms handle tasks that used to require human hands. Economists have long debated whether this shift destroys jobs or simply transforms them. Historical evidence offers some ②comfort: previous waves of automation eventually created new categories of work that no one had predicted. However, critics point out that earlier transitions unfolded over generations, giving workers ③ample time to retrain, whereas today's robots are being deployed at a pace that leaves little room for adjustment. A factory worker displaced this year cannot simply wait for a new industry to emerge decades from now. For this reason, many economists argue that the real ④challenge is not the robots themselves, but the ⑤sluggish speed at which society is expected to adapt to them.

As more schools shift toward digital textbooks and online assignments, a student without reliable internet access at home faces a disadvantage that has little to do with talent or effort. Some policymakers initially treated internet access as a convenience, comparable to cable television, rather than as infrastructure essential to modern life. That assumption is increasingly being reconsidered, particularly as _______________. Closing this divide will require more than simply distributing devices.

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. 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. 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, _______________. 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.

Biodegradable plastics have been promoted as a promising solution to plastic waste, since they are designed to decompose into natural substances rather than persist for centuries. Manufacturers derive these materials from renewable resources such as corn starch, blending them with additives that accelerate microbial breakdown once discarded. However, _______________. For example, a bag labeled biodegradable may take years, not the weeks advertised, to break down in a landfill or ocean, where temperature and microbial activity remain low. In addition, when mixed with conventional plastics in recycling streams, they can contaminate the process, weakening the quality of materials produced afterward. Some engineers therefore compare biodegradable plastics to a bridge that leads nowhere unless paired with infrastructure that completes the journey. Ultimately, realizing their genuine potential requires not only technological refinement but also facilities capable of providing the precise conditions decomposition demands.

Imagine a teleportation device that scans every atom in your body, transmits that information to a distant station, and reconstructs an exact physical duplicate there, while destroying the original body in the process. (A) 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 creating a perfect duplicate elsewhere. (B) Now two people exist, each with identical memories and an equally strong claim to being the original traveler, and there is no principled way to decide which one is the real continuation of the person who entered the machine. (C) 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 having simply walked through a door.

As private companies develop the technology to mine asteroids for rare metals and water, a legal question once confined to science fiction has suddenly become urgent: who, if anyone, owns the resources of outer space? (A) Some governments have already passed domestic laws granting their own companies rights to material mined in space, a move other nations view as a unilateral attempt to settle a shared question. (B) Existing international treaties state that no nation may claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, but they say remarkably little about whether a private company may extract and sell what it finds there. (C) Supporters of space mining argue that new resources could ease shortages on Earth, while critics warn that treating space as an open frontier for extraction risks repeating past mistakes.

Several cities have already reported cases in which an innocent person was detained based on a flawed match. Facial recognition software has moved rapidly from airport security lines into shopping malls, schools, and even private apartment buildings, promising convenience in exchange for a quick scan of one's face. ( ① ) Proponents note that the technology can unlock doors, catch shoplifters, and speed up identity checks far faster than any human guard could manage. ( ② ) Independent studies, however, have repeatedly found that many commercial systems perform less accurately on women and people with darker skin tones. ( ③ ) This gap can lead to wrongful identification with serious real-world consequences. ( ④ ) Until these systems can prove equally reliable for everyone, critics argue, deploying them at all represents a form of quiet discrimination dressed up as efficiency. ( ⑤ )