TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph and a claim, classify it this way: If the claim contradicts the evidence present in the paragraph, classify the claim as '0'. If the claim has multiple supporting *AND* contradicting evidences, classify the claim as '1'. If the claim has supporting evidence and the paragraph is in overall favor of the claim, then classify the claim as '2'.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: TruthOrFiction.com contacted Madison’s great-aunt, Jan        Kuhn, who confirmed that this story was true. Madison is        Madison Lehman. Her parents are Keith and Ty Lehman. They live        near Mansfield, Ohio. She said Madison has been diagnosed with Berkets non-Hodgkin lymphoma,        stage 4 and that she had large abdominal tumors and cancer in the bone        marrow. Madison was being given chemo therapy and as of 5/31/08 her        tumors were shrinking. Jan asked for continued prayer for Madison whom she described as “Adorable        with long blonde spiral curls and huge bright blue eyes.” Updated 5/41/08   Comments Claim:  A prayer request for a 4-year old girl who has        been diagnosed with “non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, stage 4.”  The email        says her father works for a temp service, the mom works part time at a        family-owned business, and that they do not have insurance.   

SOLUTION: 2

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Ishikawa only heard his voice, bellowing from his fire engine as he sped towards the sea to try to evacuate people before the wave struck. As the truck raced past, Ishikawa heard her son call out to her grandson, telling the boy to evacuate to higher ground. Then he was gone. She is haunted by what happened and tormented by what might have been. “I blame myself over and over again, asking myself why I didn’t stop him,” said Ishikawa, 65, as she sat in the spartan shelter where she has lived since that day. Small towns across Japan’s northeastern coast are rebuilding but far from healing three years since a massive earthquake set off a tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people. In Rikuzentakata, where one in 10 residents died, nearly everyone lost a friend or family member on March 11, 2011. The resilience of Rikuzentakata’s tsunami survivors was embodied by a lone surviving tree, dubbed the “miracle pine”. But the tree died last year and a replica stands in its place. Around 5,000 people, a quarter of the town’s population, are still in temporary shelters with their lives on hold. Many like Ishikawa have chosen to suffer alone rather than seek support. Ishikawa’s voice cracked as she described how her husband placed a scarf around their son’s neck when they found him in a makeshift morgue. “He looked so cold,” she said. After finding him, she went back to the rubble to search for the bodies of her mother and younger brother. There were days in the wake of the disaster when her mind was completely blank, Ishikawa said. Then her blood pressure spiked and she was taken to a hospital. Her doctor urged her to see a counselor but she declined. “No stranger can understand what is in my heart. I must bear this alone,” she said, tears running down her face. Survivors can find it especially difficult to seek help in a country that still stigmatizes mental illness and prizes stoicism, experts say. “Japanese hesitate to use mental health support - not only mental health support, but support in general,” said Tsuyoshi Akiyama, the chairman of the disaster support committee set up by the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology. Most of the debris has been cleared in Rikuzentakata, leaving only an overgrown field where the town once stood. Dump trucks and bulldozers barrel down the town’s few paved roads, sending clouds of yellow dust into the air. After sunset, there is only silence. Some residents say they believe in ghosts and a few taxi drivers say they refuse to pick up passengers after dark after some claimed to have seen apparitions. The sound of the ocean is faint, and many survivors say they avoid the seaside at night. Mental health professionals say resentment has also built among the survivors because some have managed to get their lives back on track faster than others. “In the first year, there is a collective feeling of working together, of overcoming this together,” said Ayako Sato, a psychologist hired by the Rikuzentakata city board. “In the second year, everyone wants to help each other because everyone suffered a loss in the disaster. But by the third year, you start to see a rift in living standards. People drift apart,” Sato said. Takeshi Kanno, 63, is a pillar of the Rikuzentakata village of Kesencho, which lost all of its homes to the disaster. While Kanno built a relief camp at the Buddhist temple above the town, his youngest son, a volunteer firefighter, searched for bodies in the debris below. “He was young and reliable and everyone depended on him. This became a massive burden,” said Kanno. “He didn’t sleep and collapsed from exhaustion.”  Kanno’s son has since been hospitalized and has not spoken or left his room in nearly a year, he said. A photo of his 28-year-old son hangs on the wall of the log cabin Kanno built after the disaster. The photo, taken in 2012, shows a young, slender man smiling as villagers line up before a drum performance. Some of that sense of community has disappeared, Kanno said. There are no comprehensive statistics on the depth of the tsunami’s psychological impact on survivors. Rikuzentakata’s city hall so far counts three disaster-related suicides. A study funded by Japan’s health ministry found that more than a quarter of children aged between 3 and 5 in the disaster zone exhibited signs of distress that needed professional help. Some daycare centers don’t celebrate Mother’s Day or Father’s Day anymore because so many children lost at least one parent. Rikuzentakata mayor Futoshi Toba lost his wife in the tsunami. He says the city must do what it can to help its residents heal as it rebuilds. “There are people who feel better when they speak to someone, and then there are those who feel more traumatized when they remember the past,” Toba said. “What we have to do is to keep rebuilding and share the town’s progress with the residents to keep up hope.” Claim: Japan's tsunami survivors suffer in silence three years after disaster.

SOLUTION: 2

PROBLEM: Paragraph: As much as we shampoo it, style it, cut it, and fret over it, hair continues to be a mystery to us. We speculate on its nature, especially its propensity for sprouting in our middle years in places we didn’t want it to, even as it disappears from locations where we would much rather it had stayed put. We wonder if it continues to grow after we die. (It doesn’t.) And we worry that shaving or cutting it will make hair grow back thicker or darker or coarser. Shavers and clippers take heart: in your quest for tonsorial perfection, you are not creating a larger problem for yourself through your efforts. Cutting does not stimulate new growth. (If it did, those going bald would be shaving afflicted areas to encourage regrowth of what they’re losing.) This belief probably stems from the perception that short hair seems to be tougher than longer hair. Hair expert Philip Kingsley recommends thinking of a bamboo cane: a long cane flexes easily, but the same cane cut short feels harder and tougher. Another reason for the belief resides with the naturally finer ends of uncut hair: compare the end of a long-lived hair with that of a hair recently cut or shaved, and you’ll see the one is thicker than the other. That could lead the less-than-careful to conclude that the whole of the hair’s shaft became thicker as a result of the hair’s being cut (which it didn’t) rather than to realize that shaving or cutting results in a blunt termination, whereas natural outgrowth concludes in a tapering. The part of the hair we style is already dead. The living sections lie below the surface of the scalp. Cutting or shaving the extreme end of the dead section isn’t going to have an impact on the parts that are alive. Go forth to shave and trim as much as you like — you will not be affecting the intrinsic nature of your hair. Other mistaken hair beliefs include: My hair is gray, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night As men’s have grown from sudden fears. For most, the greying process is a gradual progression which takes place across a span of years, but for some it can occur at an accelerated rate or at a very early age. Hair loss conditions such as alopecia areata can also cause all of the still-pigmented hairs on a head to fall out, leaving only the grey hairs (which are more resistant), resulting in a dramatic and seemingly “overnight” change. Yet, when a person whose hair would have gone grey quickly anyway is subjected to horrible news, this coincidence is seized upon as evidence that the horrible news caused the early greyness. (Former first lady Barbara Bush is often pointed to as an example of the “grey overnight from shock” group. In 1953, when she was 28, her 3-year-old daughter, Robin, died of leukemia. During the months-long battle to save the child, Mrs. Bush’s hair became white.) Claim: Shaving makes your hair grow back in thicker, faster, and fuller.

SOLUTION:
0