TASK DEFINITION: You are given a background paragraph that describes one or more causal or qualitative relationships such as a relationship in economics or a scientific law and a story that makes use of the concepts or the relationship described in the provided paragraph. You are also given a question about the story that requires an understanding of the relationship described in the background paragraph and the story. You need to come up with an answer to the given question; the answer will be a span from either the question or the story. In order to correctly answer the given question, you need to understand the relationship mentioned in the background paragraph and should be able to use it to understand that in the story. Your answer can not consist of any word that is not mentioned in any of these: the background paragraph, the story, or the question. You can directly copy and paste a span from the story or the question while answering the given question.
PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Besides anthropogenic productivity of the land, the biodiversity of degraded land also declines, as previously mentioned.[12] With less biodiversity, this ecosystem is less adaptable to when disasters strike it[11][8] It has a smaller available food supply, in terms of plants, for animals, who then may die out or more likely may relocate. Proof of this decline is that presently 15-20% of Tibetan Plateau species are now considered endangered; and now because of this animal and plant absence, the soil quality of these degraded lands is very poor.[1] It does not hold the necessary nutrients, such as water, nitrogen, and carbon, essential to either supporting life or inviting life back to that land.[6] As a result of such carbon and nitrogen loss in the Tibetan Plateau, $8,033/ha and $13,315/ha were respectively lost in economic terms. Soils are further weakened by dust storms whose frequency increases because of degradation.[11][4] Erosion of soil becomes a bigger problem, since no longer are there as many plants to anchor in the soil. In the northern Chinese province alone, 400 million are affected every year with an associated 54 billion yuan of annual economic loss due to grassland degradation. 
Story: The extensive grazing in Tibet lead to carbon and nitrogen loss, subject to desertification, while Nepal adopted a different approach to food production, putting nature and biodiversity first. 
Question: Which country experiences a higher level of desertification?

SOLUTION: Tibet.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Storing large volumes of data – When storing XML to either file or database, the volume of data a system produces can often exceed reasonable limits, with a number of detriments: the access times go up as more data is read, CPU load goes up as XML data takes more power to process, and storage costs go up. By storing XML data in Fast Infoset format, data volume may be reduced by as much as 80 percent. 
Story: Odis had a busy day storing XML. At 8 AM, he stored 202 Gigabytes to the database. At 9 AM, he stored 302 Gigabytes to the database. At 10 AM, he stored 402 Gigabytes to the database. At 11 AM, he got breakfast. At 12 PM, he stored 502 Gigabytes to the database. At 1 PM, he stored 602 Gigabytes to the database. At 2 PM, she went to sleep to finish storing XML later on that night. 
Question: What time did access times go up: 9 AM or 2 PM?

SOLUTION: 9 AM.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Saturated hydrocarbons are given the general name of alkanes . The name of specific alkanes always ends in – ane . The first part of the name indicates how many carbon atoms each molecule of the alkane has. The smallest alkane is methane. It has just one carbon atom. The next largest is ethane with two carbon atoms. The chemical formulas and properties of methane, ethane, and other small alkanes are listed in the Table below . The boiling and melting points of alkanes are determined mainly by the number of carbon atoms they have. Alkanes with more carbon atoms generally boil and melt at higher temperatures. 
Story: Two sisters Mary and Beth were into sciences. Beth studied physics, while Mary studied chemistry and especially alkanes. They were very devoted to studying. 
Question: Which sister studied more about the melting points of alkanes?

SOLUTION:
Mary.