TASK DEFINITION:  You are given a background paragraph that describes one or more causal or physical relationships, such as a relationship in economics, scientific law, or nature. You need to come up with a fictional story that makes use of the concepts or the relationship described in the provided paragraph. Make sure that your story does not repeat the relation in the given paragraph (e.g., by avoiding verbatim copies of the given paragraph). Start by reading the background paragraph, and determine what relationship(s) are in the paragraph. Write a story that involves the relationship(s) that you determined are in the background paragraph. Try to use your own words as much as possible and not repeat the background paragraph. Feel free to make up places and events as long as they tie back to the background paragraph in a way that you can ask a question about.
PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Pulmonary fibrosis (literally "scarring of the lungs") is a respiratory disease in which scars are formed in the lung tissues, leading to serious breathing problems. Scar formation, the accumulation of excess fibrous connective tissue (the process called fibrosis), leads to thickening of the walls, and causes reduced oxygen supply in the blood. As a consequence patients suffer from perpetual shortness of breath.[1].

SOLUTION: Air pollution is a big problem in large industrial cities. New York has its share or air pollution. John is a doctor who works for a New York hospital. Today, he is seeing two patients, patient A and patient B. His diagnosis revealed that patient A has pulmonary fibrosis, but patient B does not have pulmonary fibrosis.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Serpentine soils (media with low concentrations of nutrients and high concentrations of heavy metals) can be a source of abiotic stress. Initially, the absorption of toxic metal ions is limited by cell membrane exclusion. Ions that are absorbed into tissues are sequestered in cell vacuoles. This sequestration mechanism is facilitated by proteins on the vacuole membrane.Chemical priming has been proposed to increase tolerance to abiotic stresses in crop plants. In this method, which is analogous to vaccination, stress-inducing chemical agents are introduced to the plant in brief doses so that the plant begins preparing defense mechanisms. Thus, when the abiotic stress occurs, the plant has already prepared defense mechanisms that can be activated faster and increase tolerance.

SOLUTION: In a greenhouse, a botanist has just finished planting two of the same kind of plant. Plant A was placed in a pot of standard soil, and plant B was planted in some serpentine soil. The botanist is planning on taking care of both plants equally so he can see which type of soil is better for growing a plant.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: You generally can’t see, smell, taste, hear, or feel radiation. Fortunately, there are devices such as Geiger counters that can detect radiation. A Geiger counter, like the one pictured in the Figure below , contains atoms of a gas that is ionized if it encounters radiation. When this happens, the gas atoms change to ions that can carry an electric current. The current causes the Geiger counter to click. The faster the clicks occur, the higher the level of radiation.

SOLUTION:
Marie is walking through the garbage dump when she spots two old drums that are used to store waste materials. Curious about what these drums contain, Marie reads the stickers on the side of each one. Drum P says "nuclear waste" on the side, and drum X says "sulfuric acid" on the side.