영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Émile Durkheim insisted that sociology could become a genuine science only if it ①identified a distinct subject matter that could not be reduced to individual psychology. He termed this subject matter social facts, ②defining as ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that exist outside any single individual yet exert a coercive influence over that individual's behavior. Language, currency, legal codes, and religious ritual all ③qualify as social facts, since a person is born into these systems already fully formed and must conform to them regardless of personal preference. Durkheim insisted that social facts should be studied as things, meaning they must be ④examined empirically through observable patterns such as statistics. His study of suicide rates exemplified this method, showing that rates varied systematically according to variables such as religious affiliation and marital status, patterns that could not ⑤be explained by individual psychology alone.

The discovery of CRISPR gene-editing technology gave scientists a tool precise enough ①to correct a single mistaken letter in the human genome, raising hope for curing inherited diseases that have resisted treatment for generations. Yet the same precision that makes CRISPR so promising also makes it dangerous in the wrong hands. Editing a gene in a sperm, egg, or early embryo does not simply change one patient; it alters the genetic code ②passed down to every future generation, a decision no single person should ③allow to make alone. Scientific organizations around the world have therefore drawn a careful line, ④permitting gene editing to treat disease in existing patients while banning any edit that would be inherited by their descendants. Critics worry, however, that this line will become harder to enforce than it ⑤is to draw.

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a now-famous thought experiment not to describe an actual laboratory procedure, but to ①conceal 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 ②superposition 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 ③simultaneously alive and dead until an observer opens the lid and looks inside. Schrödinger intended this image to sound obviously ④ridiculous, using the cat's absurd fate to question whether the act of observation truly determines physical reality, or whether the mathematics is simply being pushed ⑤further than it was ever meant to go.

For patients born with a single faulty gene, the disease has traditionally been treated ①indirectly, managing symptoms for a lifetime rather than addressing the genetic error itself. Gene therapy attempts something more ambitious: delivering a corrected copy of the gene directly into a patient's cells, often using a ②reinforced virus stripped of its ability to cause illness as a delivery vehicle. Once inside the nucleus, the corrected gene can begin producing the protein the patient's body had always lacked, in some cases ③reversing symptoms that medication alone had never been able to touch. Early trials were haunted by serious ④setbacks, including cases in which the delivery virus triggered a dangerous immune reaction. Refined delivery methods have since made the treatment considerably ⑤safer, and regulators in several countries have now approved gene therapies for a small but growing number of rare inherited disorders.

Metacognition, broadly defined as the capacity to monitor and evaluate one's own cognitive processes, is often treated as a ①reliable guide to what we actually know, yet a growing body of evidence suggests that the correspondence between subjective confidence and objective accuracy is far weaker than intuition would suggest. Individuals routinely ②overestimate how thoroughly they have understood a passage of text immediately after reading it, a phenomenon partly attributable to the fluency with which the material was processed rather than to any genuine grasp of its underlying structure. Because rereading familiar material tends to feel ③effortless, learners frequently mistake that ease of processing for durable comprehension, a misattribution that can lead them to ④continue further study prematurely. This gap between perceived and actual mastery, sometimes labeled the illusion of knowing, has practical consequences for education, since students who trust their ⑤inflated self-assessments are less likely to seek out the more effortful, retrieval-based strategies that would otherwise consolidate their learning.

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 consumed indirectly through the goods they purchase. The water footprint, a concept that extends this narrow view, _______________. Central to this concept is the notion of virtual water, the water embedded invisibly within a product, from irrigating cotton fields to livestock raised 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 producing 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 carries far greater consequences than one drawn from a water-abundant area.

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.

Consider a student who genuinely intends to study for tomorrow's exam yet, when the evening actually arrives, chooses to watch another episode of a favorite show instead, promising herself she will surely study harder next week. (A) Behavioral economists note that this preference weakens considerably once both options are pushed into the future, which is why planning a diet starting next month feels effortless compared with skipping dessert tonight. Such inconsistency helps explain why gym memberships go unused and retirement accounts remain underfunded, despite people's stated intentions. Recognizing this pull toward the present, therefore, allows individuals and institutions to design commitments that quietly protect long-term goals from short-term temptation. (B) People do not necessarily fail to understand that the future reward matters more; rather, whatever happens right now simply feels disproportionately more urgent and vivid than anything scheduled for later. (C) This pattern, in which the pull of an immediate pleasure overwhelms the value of a distant benefit, appears again and again across ordinary life, from postponed exercise to delayed savings.

Hyperbolic discounting has direct implications for how retirement savings programs ought to be designed. (A) If employees are asked at the moment of hiring whether they wish to increase their contribution rate at a specific point in the future, many agree readily, since the sacrifice feels distant and therefore painless. (B) When that future date eventually arrives, however, the automatic increase proceeds smoothly precisely because the decision was locked in before the immediate discomfort of a smaller paycheck became salient. (C) This design, sometimes described as committing one's future self in advance, effectively exploits the very inconsistency that hyperbolic discounting predicts, turning a psychological weakness into a practical advantage.

The practical consequence of this precision has been a dramatic acceleration in the pace of genetic research itself. Bacteria have been cutting up invading viral DNA for billions of years, long before any scientist thought to borrow the trick for use in a laboratory. ( ① ) The CRISPR-Cas9 system, as it is now known, relies on a short guide RNA that matches a specific DNA sequence, leading a scissor-like enzyme called Cas9 directly to that exact location in the genome. ( ② ) Once Cas9 arrives at the target site, it slices both strands of the DNA helix, and the cell's own repair machinery rushes in to mend the cut, often introducing a small change in the process. ( ③ ) By supplying the cell with a template during this repair step, scientists can direct that machinery to insert a specific new sequence. ( ④ ) This goes well beyond merely disabling the original gene. ( ⑤ ) What once required years of painstaking work to alter a single gene can now, with a properly designed guide RNA, be accomplished within days.