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: When was the town Ottwalt lived in while writing for an exile magazine founded? Passage:In 1933, Ottwalt and his wife, Waltraut, left Germany and went into exile in Denmark, then, by way of Czechoslovakia, ended up in the Soviet Union. Living in Moscow, Ottwalt wrote for the German exile magazine Internationale Literatur (published by Johannes R. Becher) and was an editor at Vegaar Bibliothek. He also wrote for the Deutsche Zentral Zeitung. In 1936, he and his wife were ensnared in the Stalinist purges and arrested by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. He was charged with suspicion of espionage, sentenced to forced labor and deported to a gulag near Archangelsk. His wife was sentenced to forced labor in Kotlas. She was deported back to Germany in January 1941 and didn't learn about his death until January 1958, when the Soviet Red Cross informed her that her husband had died on 24 August 1943.


SOLUTION: b

PROBLEM: Question: How many years did the Great Depression last? Passage:Originally from New Brunswick, Harrison graduated from Nova Scotia Agricultural College in 1922, and, in 1924, from the Ontario Agricultural College with a B.Sc. in agriculture. He earned an MSc in plant pathology from Macdonald Campus of McGill University a year later. A doctoral degree he started at the University of Toronto in 1929 was abandoned due to the Great Depression. He established a herbarium of mycological specimens where he was employed for many years at the Kentville Research Station (now the Atlantic Food and Horticulture Research Centre); most of his collections are now housed at the Canadian National Mycological Herbarium. His early research concerned the fungal infestation of plants, such as that of Colletotrichum lindemuthianum on beans (Phaseolus). Working with John Frederick DeWitt Hockey, they made many contributions to the control and prevention of diseases of horticultural crops. They were among the first to use the sticky slide spore trap to estimate the densities of fungal spores.


SOLUTION: b

PROBLEM: Question: What is the maximum width of the channel that the tropical storm moved northward toward? Passage:On June 19, a tropical disturbance was detected between Swan Island and the Honduran coast. However, surface data in the vicinity did not indicate a closed circulation until 12 UTC on June 20. At 14 UTC that day, an Air Force reconnaissance plane located near 24°N 84°W reported gale-force winds of (). At the time, this was taken to indicate that a tropical storm had formed about northwest of Swan Island. Reanalysis by the Hurricane Research Division in 2013, however, determined that a tropical storm formed farther northwest, near 19°N 86°W. Squally weather, and winds of moderate tropical storm force, was reported in connection with the tropical storm as it moved generally northward, toward the Yucatán Channel. Little strengthening occurred over the next two days, until after 12 UTC on June 22. At that time, a period of rapid deepening commenced: within 24 hours, the cyclone increased its winds from to . At the same time, its track made a sharp bend toward the northeast, threatening the Florida peninsula. While no central pressure was recorded, Hurricane Hunter aircraft flew into the storm on June 23 and reported winds of at 2015 UTC. As with most early reconnaissance data, such readings are suspect; however, based upon the reconnaissance measurement, the storm was originally listed in the Atlantic hurricane database as a Category 3 hurricane. Later, reanalysis lowered this estimate to , equal to Category 2 on the modern Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, due primarily to the absence of corroboration. After peaking late on June 23, the storm quickly lost intensity.


SOLUTION:
b