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.

[EX Q]: Background Paragraph: To determine the concentration of an acid in an aqueous solution, an acid-base titration is commonly performed. A strong base solution with a known concentration, usually NaOH or KOH, is added to neutralize the acid solution according to the color change of the indicator with the amount of base added.[7] The titration curve of an acid titrated by a base has two axes, with the base volume on the x-axis and the solution's pH value on the y-axis. The pH of the solution always goes up as the base is added to the solution. 
Story: Due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere more an more carbon dioxide is mixing with ocean water - thus increasing the acidity of the world's oceans. Rob is a climate scientist. He is measuring the acidity of the Atlantic ocean and the Pacific Ocean. To determine ocean water acidity he performed an acid-base titration. His conclusion is that Atlantic Ocean's acidity reached higher level than Pacific Ocean's acidity. 
Question: In the Pacific Ocean's acidity test would the y-axis be higher or lower than Atlantic Ocean's acidity test?
[EX A]: lower.

[EX Q]: 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 must have decreased the temperature of their reaction?
[EX A]: Thomas.

[EX Q]: 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: Samuel had a busy day storing XML. At 5 PM, he stored 223 Gigabytes to the database. At 6 PM, he stored 334 Gigabytes to the database. At 7 PM, he stored 445 Gigabytes to the database. At 8 PM, he got dinner. At 9 PM, he stored 556 Gigabytes to the database. At 10 PM, he stored 667 Gigabytes to the database. At 11 PM, he went to sleep to finish storing XML tomorrow. 
Question: What time did storage costs go up:  9 PM or 8 PM?
[EX A]:
9 PM.