TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given a question, along with a context passage. The passage will not have a direct answer to the question, but can include some information and a clue for the answer. Assuming you can only obtain information about one entity in the passage, your job is to determine whether information from the passage can be used to answer the question. Indicate your choice as `a` for Yes or `b` for No.
PROBLEM: Question: In what city did Steinmetz earn his B.S. degree? Passage:Steinmetz is a specialist in the areas of cosmology, the formation and evolution of galaxies and computational astrophysics. Steinmetz has a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from the Saarland University (1988) and a M.S. in Physics from the Technical University of Munich (1991). He received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1993 at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. For his thesis "On the formation and evolution of galaxies" he was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and at the Department for Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1996 he joined the faculty of Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Since 2002 he has been the director of the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam (AIP) and professor at University of Potsdam. He also holds a position of adjunct professor at Steward Observatory.


SOLUTION: b

PROBLEM: Question: Which French naval officer who commanded raids from Isle de France against British merchant ships joined the French navy first? Passage:During the Napoleonic wars, Île de France became a base from which the French navy, including squadrons under Rear Admiral Linois or Commodore Jacques Hamelin, and corsairs such as Robert Surcouf, organised raids on British merchant ships. The raids (see Battle of Pulo Aura and Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811) continued until 1810 when the British sent a strong expedition to capture the island. The first British attempt, in August 1810, to attack Grand Port resulted in a French victory, one celebrated on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. A subsequent and much larger attack launched in December of the same year from Rodrigues, which had been captured a year earlier, was successful. The British landed in large numbers in the north of the island and rapidly overpowered the French, who capitulated (see Invasion of Isle de France). In the Treaty of Paris (1814), the French ceded Île de France together with its territories including Rodrigues and Seychelles to Great Britain. The island then reverted to its former name, 'Mauritius'.


SOLUTION: b

PROBLEM: Question: Why did the Nok culture die off about 200 AD on the Jos Plateau? Passage:The Nok culture thrived from approximately 1,500 BC to about 200 AD on the Jos Plateau in north and central Nigeria and produced life-sized terracotta figures that include human heads, human figures, and animals. Iron smelting furnaces at Taruga, a Nok site, date from around 600 BC. The Nok culture is thought to have begun smelting iron by 600-500 BC and possibly some centuries earlier. Kainji Dam excavations revealed iron-working by the 2nd century BC. Evidence of iron smelting has also been excavated at sites in the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria in what is now Igboland: dating to 2,000 BC at the site of Lejja (Uzomaka 2009) and to 750 BC and at the site of Opi (Holl 2009). The transition from Neolithic times to the Iron Age apparently was achieved indigenously without intermediate bronze production. Others have suggested that the technology moved west from the Nile Valley, although the Iron Age in the Niger River valley and the forest region appears to predate the introduction of metallurgy in the upper savanna by more than 800 years. The earliest iron technology in West Africa has also been found to be contemporary with or predate that of the Nile valley and North Africa, and some archaeologists believe that iron metallurgy was likely developed independently in sub-Saharan West Africa.


SOLUTION:
b