영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Long before humans learned to drill for oil, microorganisms had already mastered the art of ①converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into stored chemical energy. Modern biofuel research borrows this ability, cultivating algae or engineered bacteria in large tanks where they can be ②coaxed into producing oils and sugars that can be refined into fuel usable in existing engines. Unlike crops grown for corn-based ethanol, which compete directly with food production for arable land, many algae strains can ③thrive in shallow ponds, wastewater, or even coastal seawater unsuitable for conventional agriculture. Engineers have also learned to tinker with the metabolic pathways of these organisms, ④boosted oil yield far beyond what any wild strain would naturally produce on its own. Despite this progress, 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 ⑤provide.

Traditional economic models predict that a rational individual offered any positive sum of money, however small, should ①accept it without hesitation, since even a modest gain is preferable to receiving nothing at all. When the proposer offers a division perceived as ②unfair, such as retaining ninety percent of the sum for themselves, the second participant frequently rejects the offer entirely, leaving both parties with nothing rather than accepting an outcome viewed as insulting. This behavior indicates that individuals value fairness as an end in itself, sometimes willingly ③sacrificing material gain to punish perceived exploitation. Neuroscientific investigations complement this finding, revealing that unfair offers activate brain regions associated with ④pleasure and negative emotion, suggesting that the rejection of unfairness is not merely a calculated strategic move but also an emotionally driven response. Such evidence challenges the assumption that economic actors pursue only their own material self-interest, demonstrating instead that considerations of equity can ⑤override the straightforward pursuit of maximum individual gain.

A cotton plant that manufactures its own insecticide sounds like science fiction, yet it has been growing in fields around the world for ①decades. Scientists achieved this by isolating a gene from a soil bacterium that produces a protein ②toxic to specific insect pests but ⑤harmless to humans, then inserting that gene into the plant's own genome so that every cell manufactures the protective protein. Other genetically modified crops carry a gene that allows them to survive direct exposure to a particular herbicide, letting farmers spray a field to kill weeds without harming the crop growing among them. Supporters point to yield increases and ③reduced pesticide spraying documented across millions of hectares, while critics worry about weeds and insects evolving resistance to these built-in defenses over time, much as bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics. Regulatory agencies in most countries now require ④minimal testing before a genetically modified crop reaches the market, evaluating everything from its nutritional content to its potential effects on nearby ecosystems.

When a country physician named Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had caught cowpox seemed immune to smallpox, he set in motion a medical revolution without fully ①understanding why it worked. For nearly two centuries afterward, vaccine development proceeded largely by trial and error, weakening or killing a pathogen and testing whether the resulting preparation could train the immune system without causing disease itself. This method produced ②genuine successes, eventually eliminating smallpox worldwide and reducing diseases such as polio and measles, but each new vaccine still required ③seconds of laboratory work with no guarantee of success. Advances in molecular biology eventually allowed researchers to isolate a single protein from a pathogen's surface rather than using the whole organism, producing vaccines with ④fewer side effects and a more predictable safety profile. The most recent shift, toward delivering genetic instructions rather than proteins themselves, represents the latest chapter in a story that began with an eighteenth-century doctor's curiosity about a ⑤puzzling immunity among dairy workers.

Long before cognitive scientists possessed the tools to observe the brain directly, Donald Broadbent proposed an influential model suggesting that the human capacity to process incoming sensory information _______________. According to this filter theory, multiple channels of stimulation, such as competing voices in a crowded room, are initially registered at a shallow, physical level, but only one channel is selected for further, meaning-based analysis while the rest are blocked from advancing beyond that early filter. Although later researchers challenged the rigidity of this early selection mechanism, pointing to instances in which unattended information, such as one's own name, nevertheless breaks through and captures awareness, the core insight that attention imposes a genuine processing limit rather than a mere matter of willpower has remained remarkably durable. This basic bottleneck principle continues to inform contemporary explanations of why multitasking so reliably degrades performance on demanding tasks.

City governments increasingly market dense networks of surveillance cameras as a safety upgrade. Yet the same infrastructure that catches criminals also creates a permanent record of where ordinary citizens go about their daily lives. Once a camera network exists, its purpose can quietly expand, often without new public debate. Civil liberties groups argue that _______________.

Philosopher Robert Nozick devised a thought experiment to test a simple hedonist assumption: that pleasure and the avoidance of pain are all that ultimately matter to human beings. (A) If the hedonist assumption were correct, then everyone should rush to connect themselves permanently to such a machine, since it could deliver a lifetime of perfectly satisfying experiences. (B) Yet when people actually consider the offer, most hesitate and many refuse outright, a reluctance Nozick took as evidence that human beings care about more than the quality of their internal sensations. (C) He asked 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.

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. (A) 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. (B) Imagine a cat sealed inside a closed box together with a radioactive atom and a vial of poison gas rigged to break open the instant the atom decays. (C) 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.

Loss aversion does not only influence individual financial choices; it also shapes how information is presented and interpreted in everyday transactions, a phenomenon that marketers and policymakers have learned to exploit deliberately. (A) For example, a retailer who frames a price reduction as "avoid losing a $10 discount by ordering today" typically generates a stronger customer response than one who simply advertises "get a $10 discount," even though both messages describe an identical saving. (B) In other words, the manner in which a choice is presented can activate the same psychological aversion to loss that governs decisions about resources already possessed, meaning that framing itself carries real economic weight. (C) This effect is not confined to retail settings, however; negotiators, too, often treat concessions as losses rather than as steps toward mutual gain, which makes compromise feel more costly than it objectively is.

Imagine a man locked inside a room who does not understand a single word of Chinese, yet who possesses a giant rulebook written entirely in English, and who uses it to answer notes slipped in through a slot. (A) This scenario was designed to challenge the assumption that a computer running a sophisticated program truly understands language simply because it produces convincing output. (B) Yet the man inside understands nothing at all; he is merely manipulating shapes according to formal rules, without grasping their meaning. (C) From the perspective of a native speaker reading the responses, the room seems to understand Chinese perfectly.