영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

For much of the twentieth century, memory researchers assumed that once a memory ①had been consolidated—transformed from a fragile, short-term trace into a stable, long-term representation—it remained essentially fixed, immune to further modification unless the underlying neural circuitry was physically damaged. This assumption, however, was overturned by a body of research demonstrating that the act of retrieval itself ②can destabilizing a previously consolidated memory, ③rendering it temporarily susceptible to alteration before it is, in a sense, filed away again. During this narrow window, ④which typically lasts only a few hours, the memory can be strengthened, weakened, or even subtly distorted by new information encountered in the interim, after which it must undergo a second round of stabilization, a process now widely referred to as reconsolidation. Consequently, what we experience as a stable recollection may actually be a continuously revised construction, reshaped every time it ⑤is summoned into conscious awareness and returned to storage.

Philosopher Robert Nozick asked his readers ①to 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, and the person floating in the tank would have no memory of ever ②choose to enter it. If pleasure and the avoidance of pain were truly all that mattered, as classical hedonism claims, then everyone ③should 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 ④that human beings care about more than the quality of their internal sensations. People also want to actually be a certain kind of person, and to ⑤maintain genuine contact with a reality beyond their own mind.

The human gut hosts trillions of microorganisms ①whose combined genetic material outnumbers that of the human genome itself many times over. Once dismissed as passive hitchhikers, these bacteria are now understood ②to actively shape digestion, regulate immune responses, and even influence the production of chemicals that affect mood and behavior. A microbiome disrupted by antibiotics, poor diet, or chronic stress can leave the gut lining more permeable than it should be, ③allowing substances to leak into the bloodstream that would normally stay contained. Researchers studying this connection have found that transplanting gut bacteria from a healthy donor into a patient can, in some cases, relieve symptoms of certain digestive disorders that conventional medication ④had failed to treat. Still, scientists caution that the microbiome varies enormously between individuals, which means a treatment that restores balance in one person's gut may ⑤does little for someone else's.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively ①simple question. 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? Most people's first instinct is to answer yes, since each individual replacement seems too ②small to erase the ship's identity. The puzzle grows far ③duller, 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. Two ships would then exist side by side, each with an equal claim to being the ④genuine one, and no obvious way to decide between them. Philosophers return to this old story again and again, not because they care about timber, but because it forces us to ask whether identity depends on continuous material, continuous form, or some deeper thread that neither one can fully ⑤explain.

Prospect theory proposes that the subjective value of money is not a straight line but a curved function. In the domain of gains, the function bends downward as amounts increase. A parallel pattern appears among losses, where the curve bends in the opposite direction, yet sensitivity still fades as the amount grows larger. This tendency, known as diminishing sensitivity, explains why _______________. Understanding this curvature allows economists to predict decisions that a simple, linear model of value could never anticipate.

Sociologist Mark Granovetter challenged a common assumption when he found that job seekers were more likely to hear about new opportunities from casual acquaintances than from close friends and family. (A) Weak ties, precisely because they connect otherwise separate networks, transmit novel information more efficiently than the redundant, overlapping ties within a tightly bonded group. (C) This finding, published 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. (B) Granovetter's insight has since been applied well beyond job searches, informing research on how innovations spread and how epidemics travel through a population.

Long before humans learned to drill for oil, microorganisms had already mastered the art of converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into stored chemical energy. (A) Modern biofuel research borrows this ability, cultivating algae or engineered bacteria in large tanks where they can be coaxed into producing oils and sugars that can be refined into fuel usable in existing engines. (B) Unlike crops grown for corn-based ethanol, which compete directly with food production for arable land, many algae strains can thrive in shallow ponds, wastewater, or even coastal seawater unsuitable for conventional agriculture. (C) Engineers have also learned to boost oil yield through genetic tinkering, yet producing biofuel at a cost competitive with fossil fuel remains difficult, since harvesting and processing the organisms consumes a substantial share of the energy the fuel itself will eventually provide.

A single fertilized egg eventually gives rise to every cell type in the human body, from neurons to bone, a feat that has fascinated biologists for more than a century. (A) Because harvesting these cells traditionally required destroying a human embryo, the research provoked ethical objections fierce enough to slow funding and legislation in several countries for years. (B) 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, opening a path for stem cell research that far more scientists and funding agencies are now willing to support. (C) Embryonic stem cells retain much of that original versatility, 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.

He termed the resulting gap cultural lag, describing the friction that appears when institutions have not yet caught up with new technological realities. Sociologist William Ogburn observed that when a society undergoes technological change, its material culture, meaning tools and inventions, tends to advance faster than its nonmaterial culture, meaning norms, laws, and values. ( ① ) The rise of the automobile, for instance, transformed daily mobility long before traffic laws, insurance systems, and urban planning fully adapted to the risks it introduced. ( ② ) A contemporary example can be found in genetic testing, which now allows individuals to learn detailed information about inherited disease risk well before most legal systems have settled questions about its use. ( ③ ) Cultural lag theory reminds us that technological progress is not automatically matched by social progress. ( ④ ) The resulting gap can produce confusion or exploitation until laws and customs eventually adjust to new material conditions. ( ⑤ )

This puzzling inconsistency is not, as it turns out, a matter of chance. Two patients diagnosed with the same disease and prescribed the same medication can respond in strikingly different ways, one recovering quickly while the other experiences little benefit or even harmful side effects. ( ① ) Precision medicine starts from the observation that this variation often traces back to differences buried in each patient's genome. ( ② ) These differences determine how efficiently a body absorbs, breaks down, or responds to a given drug. ( ③ ) 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 tailored fit. ( ④ ) This approach has proven especially valuable in cancer treatment, where tumors from two patients with the same diagnosis may carry entirely different genetic mutations that respond to entirely different drugs. ( ⑤ ) Widespread adoption still faces real obstacles, since genetic sequencing remains expensive in many regions and few doctors have been trained to interpret the flood of genetic data such tests now produce.