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: During late adulthood, the risk of developing diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer continues to rise. Most people also have a decline in strength and stamina. Their senses may start failing, and their reflex time typically increases. Their immune system also doesn’t work as well as it used to. As a result, common diseases like the flu may become more serious and even lead to death. The majority of late adults develop arthritis, and as many as one in four develop Alzheimer’s disease. 
Story: Mike is a doctor with a local hospital. Today, he is seeing two patients, patient A and patient B. Patient A is in early adulthood, but patient B is in late adulthood. Mike needs to find the differences between the patients to come up with recommendations for them. 
Question: Which patient would have lower reflex time, patient A or patient B?

SOLUTION: patient A.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: People protect areas that might flood with dams. In dire situations, they use sandbags ( Figure below ). Dams are usually very effective, but high water levels sometimes cause a dam to break. In that case, flooding can be catastrophic. Flood waters can also overflow a dam. People may line a river bank with levees to protect against floods. These are high walls that keep the stream within its banks during floods. Flood protection in one location sometimes causes problems elsewhere. For example, a levee in one location may just force the high water upstream or downstream. This will lead to flooding in a different location. Sometimes water gets so high that the river must be allowed to flood. 
Story: Two villages experienced flooding this spring. Berg village used many sandbags to protect from the dam overflowing. Creek village didn't use any sandbags, they were caught by surprise. 
Question: Which village was less affected by the dam overflowing?

SOLUTION: Berg.

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: Bob had a busy day storing XML. At 1 PM, he stored 15 Gigabytes to the database. At 2 PM, he stored 25 Gigabytes to the database. At 3 PM, he stored 35 Gigabytes to the database. At 4 PM, he got dinner. At 5 PM, he stored 45 Gigabytes to the database. At 6 PM, he stored 55 Gigabytes to the database. At 7 PM, he went to sleep to finish storing XML tomorrow. 
Question: What hour did access times go up: 2 PM or 7 PM?

SOLUTION:
2 PM.