Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

[EX Q]: Paragraph: "It is less surprising that neither story discussed costs, given that so few stories do. But sample costs could have been obtained by calling any of the numerous medical marijuana outlets in states where it is legal. Both stories did a decent job of quantifying the benefits.This story provided more details, though, including the differences in patient experiences between the three different concentrations of marijuana. It also repeated this important bit of information: ""There was also no difference in the quality of life or mood scores that participants reported when they were on any of the four treatments."" The story also does a great job of pointing out that the treatment duration of five days in each dosage phase is too short to judge utility for chronic pain, which is a long-term affliction. Neither story actually quantified the harms, but they both noted there were side effects. This story did a better job, though, by noting that the only dose that seemed to work also seemed to produce the most side effects and by raising the issue of long-term safety concerns. It also was the only story to answer the question that readers surely would have when reading about an illegal narcotic being used as medicine. Did these patients feel high as a result? This story says that most did not. Because of the additional information and context, the rating here is satisfactory. This story, unlike the competing WebMD piece, establishes in the first sentence — even in the first three words — that this was ""a small study."" It then discusses the limitations of the study at several points. The second sentence says, ""The pain reduction was ""modest"" – less than 1 point on an 11-point scale for the strongest marijuana – and patients reported no overall difference in their quality of life based on what they smoked."" The writer elegantly and succinctly described the study design — a complex randomized cross-over trial with double blinding and delved into an important feature of the study, that the subjects in retrospect may have been able to detect during which phase of their experience they inhaled placebo versus the most potent drug. This story avoids disease mongering, and, in fact, goes beyond that to note how few people actually suffer from the type of chronic pain that was the subject of the study: ""About 1 to 2 percent of adults in the U.S."" The story quotes two outside experts, one of whom is completely independent from the study and the journal, Dr Andrea Hohmann. Beyond that, we would bet that the reporter spent more time interviewing Dr. Mark Ware, the lead researcher, or at least asked tougher questions. Because Ware is more measured in this story than in the WebMD story. He even goes so far as to say, ""What about long-term safety issues?"" he asked. ""These need to be considered before the drug becomes prescribable."" As with the WebMD story, it would have been nice to see who funded the research. Unlike the WebMD story, this one did not point out the conflicts of interest of Dr. Henry McQuay. This story talks about a range of treatment options and even has the study’s lead author suggesting, that ""these patients should also be getting behavioral and physical therapy."" Strangely, neither story we reviewed pointed out that marijuana is illegal in most states and in Canada, where the study took place. The story could have, at a minimum, mentioned which states have medical marijuana laws or talked about whether any other countries currently allow cannabis to be sold in pill form the way it was used in this study. The story alludes to the fact that this study ""supports a limited number of trials that have suggested marijuana may be helpful for people suffering from chronic pain,"" indicating that the treatment is not very novel at all. It would have been nice to see more context around that. The WebMD story provides a little more information in this regard. If the news release is to be believed, ""This is the first trial to be conducted where patients have been allowed to smoke cannabis at home and to monitor their responses, daily"". That could have been made clear. The story goes well beyond the release. Here’s the release." Claim: Pot may provide some chronic pain relief: study
[EX A]: The story did a great job evaluating the evidence, providing outside voices, discussing alternatives to marijuana smoking, and presenting both the benefits and the potential harms. It could have done a better job discussing possible costs, availability and conflicts of interest. From the headline to the last sentence, this report avoided overstatement of the applicability of the potential benefit and used clear incisive language that left the reader with a good understanding of the study and its implications. This topic lends itself to jokey, pun-filled writing, but this story played it straight. Chronic pain can ruin lives, and a breakthrough with an alternative approach would be important news. As this story makes clear, until some larger studies with fewer limitations are undertaken, we are far from the point where marijuana can be considered a safe and effective treatment for chronic pain.

[EX Q]: Paragraph: A University of Iowa study shows the state’s contribution to the Gulf dead zone spiked 47 percent to 618 million pounds in 2016, based on five-year running annual averages. “Just based on water quality data, I think we can say we’ve not made much progress over the past 20 years in terms of nitrogen,” said Chris Jones, a research engineer at the UI’s IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. Environmentalists say the study raises new questions about the effectiveness of Iowa’s approach to improving water quality and its reliance on voluntary ag compliance. “We’ve been pouring state and federal money into cutting nutrient pollution for decades, and this highlights the fact that the voluntary approach is not working,” said Jennifer Terry, executive director of the Iowa Environmental Council. “We’re not headed in the right direction. ... We need to follow the lead of other states and pass some environmental laws that will actually reduce loads and result in cleaner water,” Terry said. The Des Moines Register reports that the news comes as Iowa marks the five-year anniversary of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a plan designed to cut by 45 percent the nitrogen and phosphorus levels that leave Iowa and feed Gulf hypoxia — or the dead zone. Oxygen levels within the zone are so low that marine life can no longer survive, threatening the Gulf’s seafood industry. Most of the nutrient losses come from farming, although the strategy also targets losses from urban wastewater and industrial operations. Last year, Iowa invested $420 million in those water quality improvements, including helping farmers plant cover crops, build terraces and tackle other conservation practices that hold nutrients in place. But farmers expanding their drainage tile systems — along with increasing hog, cattle and chicken feeding operations, which provide manure to fertilize crops — likely outweigh those conservation efforts, UI scientists say. The nutrient reduction practices “being implemented are a tiny, tiny portion of what needs to be done, and it’s occurring in a system that’s changing,” Jones said. “We appreciate all that is being done with nutrient management and conservation farming. Unfortunately, we’re just impacting too few acres with too few practices,” added Larry Weber, executive associate dean for UI’s College of Engineering. Jones wrote the study with Weber and Keith Schilling, another UI research engineer. Increased nutrient pollution in water creates problems for people and animals beyond the dead zone. High phosphorus levels can lead to toxic algae blooms that can befoul lakes, rivers and streams, potentially killing pets and making people ill. And the federal government limits the amount of nitrates in drinking water to 10 milligrams per liter. Higher levels can be fatal to babies under 6 months old. Increased levels translate to higher costs for utilities for nitrate removal. “We need a dramatic increase, a rapidly-scaled up increase in conservation practices and more funding,” said Cindy Lane, the Iowa Environmental Council’s water program director. Schilling said the study shows that targeting nutrient reduction investment in Iowa can have a significant impact downstream. “Iowa has a dominant role in this Gulf hypoxia issue,” Schilling said. “Let’s invest the resources here, where we really need it. “If we solve Iowa, we solve the Gulf,” he said. The UI study gives Iowans new information in the fight to reduce the nitrogen levels that flow from the state into the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, which make their way to the Gulf of Mexico. Looking at Iowa Department of Natural Resources data from 23 monitoring stations, the study shows Iowa on average over the past 18 years contributed 29 percent of the total nitrogen headed to the Gulf from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river basin. The river basin is a massive watershed that includes all or part of 31 states. Iowa’s nitrogen impact was even greater in other watersheds. The state averaged 45 percent of the nitrogen levels going into the Upper Mississippi River basin, and 55 percent of the nitrogen going into to the Missouri River basin. “When you look at the entire Missouri (River) watershed, our land comprises 3.3 percent of the total area ... and Iowa contributes nearly 12 percent of the water,” Jones said. But “we contribute 55 percent of the nitrate,” he said. “The way that pencils out is that the amount of water coming from Iowa has seven times more nitrates than the rest of the Missouri River watershed,” Jones said. If Iowa’s contributions were removed, the Missouri River would have little nitrogen contributions in some years. “We really need to take seriously the Missouri River’s contribution as a driver for Gulf hypoxia,” Jones said. The growing concentration of livestock feeding operations in western Iowa might account for Iowa’s large contribution to the Missouri River nitrate levels, the scientists said. “People tend to dismiss livestock influences, but maybe there’s more to it than people give credit it for,” Schilling said, adding that it would require more study to determine the impact. Iowa’s nitrogen levels, based on running five-year annual averages, have been above the 2003 value for 10 consecutive years, the study says. The scientists say 2003 was the first year the five-year rolling average could be calculated, with data that starts in 1999. The goal of the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force, made up of federal, state and tribal leaders, “will be very difficult to achieve if nitrate retention cannot be improved in Iowa,” the report said. The task force, with Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig as chairman, seeks to reduce the dead zone to 1,900 square miles by 2035. The deadline was extended from 2015. Last year, the dead zone set a record, which, at 8,776 square miles, was more than four times the goal size. The report says about 90 percent of Iowa’s nitrogen levels “can be sourced to the 72 percent of the state’s land area that is in crop cultivation.” Iowa, an agriculture powerhouse, is a national leader in corn, soybean, pork, egg and beef production. “This intense production of carbohydrates and protein has resulted in the state being a leading contributor” to the nitrogen loads and Gulf hypoxia, the report said. Naig said farmers understand the important role they play in improving water quality and are scaling up efforts across the state “as we move from demonstration projects to larger, watershed-scale implementation projects. “We recognize that there is still a lot of work to be done, but we are on the right path,” said Naig, who adds farmers are working with more than 250 partners in 65 rural and urban demonstration projects. The UI scientists doubt that increased cropping is the reason for the increased nitrogen impact. Iowa’s cropped area has increased only 4 percent over the past 18 years, while other states’ farmed land has climbed 21 percent, particularly in Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Kansas. About 85 percent of Iowa’s acres are farmed, making it the fifth-highest in the nation, based on the 2012 U.S. Agriculture Census, so there are few acres left that can be brought into production compared with other states. “Iowa’s decline in the share of the region’s soybean area was especially pronounced, dropping from 18.6 percent in 1999 to 14.5 percent in 2016,” the report said. “One would expect our (nitrogen) contributions relative to the other areas would be diminished,” Jones said. “But the opposite has occurred.” Jones said it’s led the scientists to consider other factors. The scientists doubt that Iowa farmers are using significantly more fertilizer. “When we look at nitrogen sales data, it might change a little year over year. But on a per acre basis, that hasn’t changed a lot since 1990,” he said. And with little increase in corn and soybean acres, the scientists speculate that Iowa’s increased nitrogen levels could be coming from more drainage tiles. Or farmers could be using more manure as fertilizer from animal feeding operations. Without Iowa, the Gulf’s overall nitrate loads would have declined 43,400 tons over 18 years, based on five-year running annual averages, the scientists’ data show. Instead nitrate loads grew by 52,000 tons. “It’s pretty clear these loads from the Ohio basin have to be declining,” Jones said. “A lot that is coming from Indiana.” That state’s high level of cover crop adoption by farmers could be the reason, he said, and should be studied. Cover crops such as cereal rye slow the rate of water runoff, reduce erosion and improve soil fertility. Iowa also needs to honestly discuss the impact that drainage tiling has on nitrogen losses, Jones said. Iowa doesn’t collect data on how much underground drainage runs through the state, although officials estimate about 9 million acres are drained through tile. Environmentalists believe the number is much higher. Underground drainage tile helps improve yields by quickly removing excess water from fields. Iowa’s tiling system consists of a network of drainage lines that feed into large pipes. The massive network, first constructed in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, turned once swampy lands into some of the nation’s most productive farmland. But water quickly carried away by the tiling system misses cleansing that would naturally occur by filtering through soil or the roots of trees, shrubs and grasses in riparian buffers along streams. Des Moines Water Works unsuccessfully sued drainage districts in three north Iowa counties in 2015, claiming underground tiles funneled high levels of nitrates into the Raccoon River, a source of drinking water for 500,000 central Iowa residents. “We acknowledge that it’s important to track implemented conservation, and we encourage that,” Jones said. “But we also need to have the courage to talk about these things that drive the system in the other direction.” Terry said Iowa is “one of the most heavily tiled states in the nation,” and its 110-year-old law regulating the practice does little to protect water quality. ___ Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com Claim: Study: Iowa nitrogen pollution in the water is getting worse.
[EX A]: Nitrogen pollution flowing out of Iowa to the Gulf of Mexico has grown by close to 50 percent over nearly two decades, a new report shows, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to stem nutrients entering the state’s waterways.

[EX Q]: Paragraph: They’ve stopped companies that quickly launched home-testing kits until they can show their products can accurately detect the virus. For now, the only way Americans can get tested is at hospitals, clinics or drive-thru sites, with a doctor’s order. After a botched rollout, testing in the U.S. has ramped up thanks to high-volume testing machines and new rapid tests. Last week, federal officials said total tests topped 1.4 million, and labs are processing nearly 100,000 tests daily. That’s the threshold many experts say is needed to track the virus. Still, testing continues to be constrained by shortages of medical supplies like gloves, masks and swabs. And the widespread drive-thru testing proposed for parking lots at chains like Walmart, Walgreens and Target has barely gotten off the ground. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is aggressively pushing new options onto the market. FASTER RESULTS Genetic tests are the gold standard for detecting COVID-19 infections. New, quicker ones are replacing the original laboratory tests that have to be manually mixed and developed. The idea behind both tests is the same: chemical solutions are used to isolate the virus from the patient sample, grab its genetic material and then reproduce it millions of times until it’s detectable with a computer. New rapid tests such as the one by Abbott Laboratories automate the process, cutting the time from four to six hours to about 15 minutes. “Essentially all of the reactions are squeezed into a little cartridge, so it’s a very nice, self-contained system.” said Dr. Bobbi Pritt, lab director at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota The cartridges from Abbott and other companies run on small, portable electronic machines found in thousands of U.S. hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices. That’s expected to increase testing beyond large universities, government and commercial labs. Abbott said it plans to begin shipping 50,000 tests per day this month. U.S. officials said they’d go first to remote areas with less access to labs. For now, only a health care professional can order a coronavirus test. Under current guidelines, priority is given to people with COVID-19 symptoms who fall into several high-risk groups, including hospitalized patients, health care workers and the elderly. “If you’re not sick, you don’t need to be tested,” has been the mantra for weeks. DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME Accurately testing for coronavirus involves several steps, including carefully swabbing the nose or throat to collect a sample, placing it in a sterile tube, storing it below 46 degrees Fahrenheit and then shipping it to a lab within three days. Health officials warn a number of things could go wrong if consumers try to swab, store and ship their own samples, potentially resulting in testing errors and undetected infections. The FDA is talking to companies working on at-home kits, but they’ll be required to show that their results are comparable to those of people under professional care, agency spokesman Jeremy Kahn said in a statement. Many of the proposed at-home tests aren’t like home pregnancy tests — they won’t provide instant results. The samples still need to go to a lab. After several companies began shipping test kits last month, the FDA quickly intervened. No home tests have been approved and the products sent to U.S. consumers were frauds, regulators said. Several companies were caught off guard including San Francisco startup Nurx, which initially built its business around prescribing birth control drugs via brief online consultations. On March 20, the company announced plans to ship 10,000 testing kits to customers for $181 each. Within 24 hours, the FDA warning went out and Nurx’s plan was off. UPCOMING OPTIONS Simpler, cheaper blood tests could also have a role in tracking the virus — and possibly expanding testing to the home. The FDA is permitting companies  to launch certain types of finger-prick tests that can detect whether people may have recently been infected. Instead of detecting the virus itself, these tests detect proteins called antibodies that the immune system generates to fight COVID-19. Public health experts hope that mass screening with antibody tests could eventually help track how the virus spreads and who might have built up immunity. “We have this massive epidemic on our hands and if we really want to control it through testing we need to have it more readily available and on a repeated basis — potentially every week to know who is truly positive and negative,” said Harvard University’s Dr. Michael Mina. Because the blood test is easy to perform and can be developed in 15 minutes — without laboratory equipment — some companies think it could become a viable home-testing option. Scanwell Health is seeking approval for a home test using one developed by Chinese manufacturer Innovita and deployed by the Chinese government. People who meet criteria through an online questionnaire would receive a test kit in the mail, take a blood sample and scan the test with a smartphone app. Next is an online consultation with a health professional who will deliver and interpret the results. “The entire testing process happens within the home— nothing needs to be shipped back,” said Scanwell executive Dr. Jack Jeng. ___ AP business writers Tom Murphy in Indianapolis and Anne D’innocenzio in New York contributed to this report. ___ Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Claim: No COVID-19 testing at home yet but quicker options coming.
[EX A]:
Home testing for the new coronavirus may sound like a good idea, but U.S. regulators say it’s still too risky.