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: In the U.S., the majority of electricity is produced by burning coal or other fossil fuels. This causes air pollution, acid rain, and global warming. Fossil fuels are also limited and may eventually run out. Like fossil fuels, radioactive elements are limited. In fact, they are relatively rare, so they could run out sooner rather than later. On the other hand, nuclear fission does not release air pollution or cause the other environmental problems associated with burning fossil fuels. This is the major advantage of using nuclear fission as a source of energy. 
Story: An alien passing by Earth in a UFO to write a report on two random cities so that his government can better understand what the people of Earth are like. He first flies over Nillmar, a city in France, which uses burns coal as its main production of electricity. After observing Nillmar, the alien flies over to Springfield, a city in the United States, that decided to use nuclear power to fuel itself. After taking his notes, the alien leaves and is eager to report back to his superiors about what he discovered. 
Question: Which city will need to change its method of electricity production sooner?

SOLUTION: Springfield.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: As Figure above shows, the distance between particles is much smaller for the solid and liquid states than for the gas state. In the solid state, particles are fixed in place, while particles are more free to move in the liquid and gas states. The particles in the solid and liquid states “stick together,” but in the gas state, they move freely about the container. In general, it requires energy to separate individual particles. If we want to make a solid adopt a liquid form, we can add energy in the form of heat, increasing the temperature of the substance. Conversely, if we want to convert a substance from a gas to a liquid or from a liquid to a solid, we remove energy from the system and decrease the temperature. Pressure also plays an important role in changes of state, which will be discussed later on. We will study these difference in greater detail in the chapter States of Matter. 
Story: Thomas and Alexander are freshman students in an introductory chemistry laboratory course at their local college. In this week's experiment, both Thomas and Alexander will be starting their experiments with liquid water. They both follow different experimental protocols, and at the end of the experiment Thomas discovers ice in his reaction flask, while Alexander discovers steam in his reaction flask. 
Question: Which person created a substance with particles that have less distance between them than they did originally?

SOLUTION: Thomas.

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: Joel had a busy day storing XML. At 5 PM, he stored 11110 Gigabytes to the database. At 6 PM, he stored 22220 Gigabytes to the database. At 7 PM, he stored 33330 Gigabytes to the database. At 8 PM, he got dinner. At 9 PM, he stored 44440 Gigabytes to the database. At 10 PM, he stored 55550 Gigabytes to the database. At 11 PM, he went to sleep to finish storing XML tomorrow. 
Question: What time did CPU load go up: 7 PM or 11 PM?

SOLUTION:
7 PM.