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.

When anthropologists first began systematically studying societies far removed from their own, many unconsciously judged unfamiliar customs against the standards of their home culture, a tendency now ①known as ethnocentrism. Cultural relativism emerged as a corrective principle, ②holding that a society's practices should be understood within their own cultural context rather than measured against an outside standard presumed to be universal. Anthropologist Franz Boas argued that no culture possesses an inherently superior set of values, and that apparent oddities, once ③examined closely, typically serve coherent functions within their own social systems. Cultural relativism transformed fields ranging from anthropology to international development, ④encouraged researchers to suspend quick judgment and seek local meaning before drawing conclusions. Critics caution, however, that taken to an extreme, the principle risks ⑤excusing practices that cause genuine harm.

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.

Suppose you meet a quiet, ①gentle man who speaks softly, tends a small garden, and organizes his bookshelf with meticulous care. Asked whether he is more likely a florist or a truck driver, most people ②instinctively choose florist, since his personality matches the stereotype so neatly. This judgment, however, ignores a crucial fact: truck drivers vastly ③trail florists in almost every country, which means that, statistically, he is far more likely to belong to the larger group regardless of how well he fits the flower-shop image. Relying on resemblance to a familiar category rather than on underlying numerical proportions, known among researchers as representativeness, leads people to overlook these base rates almost ④automatically. Even trained professionals, who should know better, often fall into the same trap when a vivid description feels more ⑤convincing than plain statistics.

Behavioral economists have long observed that people tend to feel the pain of losing something more ①intensely than the pleasure of gaining an equivalent amount, a tendency known as loss aversion. Consider an investor who refuses to sell a declining stock, clinging to the hope that its price will eventually ②recover, even when all available evidence indicates that selling and reinvesting elsewhere would be more rational. Such behavior, though it appears ③rational from a purely economic standpoint, becomes understandable once we recognize that the investor is trying to avoid the sharp discomfort associated with realizing a loss. Similarly, consumers often demand a much ④higher price to give up an item they already own than they would be willing to pay to acquire the same item in the first place. As a result, loss aversion frequently pushes individuals toward decisions that ⑤minimize potential regret over losses rather than toward outcomes that maximize their overall welfare.

The ancient puzzle known as the ship of Theseus asks a deceptively simple 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 small to erase the ship's identity. 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. 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. 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 _______________.

Devices that translate brain activity directly into digital commands have moved from laboratory experiments to real medical use. As the technology improves, some developers envision a future in which these interfaces extend beyond restoring lost function toward enhancing healthy minds. This prospect raises a philosophical question: if a device can alter memory, mood, or decision-making, _______________. Neuroethicists argue that mental privacy may need to be recognized as a fundamental right before this technology becomes widespread.

The rejection of unfair offers in the ultimatum game raises an intriguing evolutionary question. (A) One explanation suggests that a willingness to punish unfairness, even at a personal cost, may have conferred long-term advantages within small communities where reputation and repeated interaction mattered greatly. (B) If punishing unfairness is costly in the short term, why would such a tendency have persisted across generations rather than being eliminated by more narrowly self-interested behavior? (C) An individual known to reject unfair offers discourages others from proposing unfair terms in future interactions, ultimately securing fairer treatment over the course of a lifetime.

Emissions trading, a market-based mechanism for curbing greenhouse gases, allows governments to set an overall limit on carbon output while letting firms trade permits within that limit. (A) Under this system, known as cap-and-trade, companies that cut emissions more cheaply than required can sell surplus allowances to firms facing higher reduction costs. Proponents argue that this flexibility lets society reach a given environmental target at the lowest overall cost, since abatement shifts toward whoever can achieve it most economically. (B) Consequently, many economists now advocate combining trading with a price floor, a minimum permit price that keeps the market from collapsing during weak demand, thereby preserving the cost-effectiveness for which trading is valued. (C) Critics, however, contend that trading schemes frequently allocate too many permits, a flaw that has historically depressed carbon prices and blunted incentives to invest in cleaner technology. For example, early phases of several regional markets granted allowances so generously that permit prices collapsed, leaving polluters with little pressure to change their practices.

Robert Merton refined this framework by distinguishing manifest functions, the intended and openly recognized consequences of a social practice, from latent functions, unintended consequences that nonetheless help sustain the system, such as schools serving not only to educate but also to provide childcare that allows parents to work. Structural functionalism approaches society as a complex system of interdependent parts, each contributing to the overall stability and smooth operation of the whole, much as organs contribute to the survival of a biological body. ( ① ) Sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that institutions such as the family, education, religion, and government each perform necessary functions, socializing new members and transmitting values. ( ② ) Removing or weakening any one institution, in his view, threatens the equilibrium of the entire system. ( ③ ) Critics have long charged that functionalism, by emphasizing stability and equilibrium, struggles to explain social conflict and rapid change. ( ④ ) It tends to interpret persistent inequality as somehow functional for society rather than as a problem requiring correction. ( ⑤ )