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.

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: Carl had a busy day storing XML. At 1 PM, he stored 1000 Gigabytes to the database. At 2 PM, he stored 2000 Gigabytes to the database. At 3 PM, he stored 3000 Gigabytes to the database. At 4 PM, he got dinner. At 5 PM, he stored 4000 Gigabytes to the database. At 6 PM, he stored 5000 Gigabytes to the database. At 7 PM, he went to sleep to finish storing XML tomorrow. 
Question: What time did storage costs go up:  3 PM or 7 PM?
3 PM.

Background Paragraph: Biodiversity is determined by many things, and one of them is abiotic stress. If an environment is highly stressful, biodiversity tends to be low. If abiotic stress does not have a strong presence in an area, the biodiversity will be much higher.This idea leads into the understanding of how abiotic stress and endangered species are related. It has been observed through a variety of environments that as the level of abiotic stress increases, the number of species decreases. This means that species are more likely to become population threatened, endangered, and even extinct, when and where abiotic stress is especially harsh. 
Story: Italy had two distinct regions. Northern region where the animals are exposed to a lot of abiotic stress, and the southern region, where the animals experience almost no abiotic stress. 
Question: Which region had fewer endangered species?
southern.

Background Paragraph: The Hawaiian Islands ( Figure above ) are in the central Pacific Ocean. The islands are volcanoes that increase in age from southeast to northwest. The youngest island is the Big Island of Hawaii at the southeast end of the chain. The volcanoes get older through Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau Islands through the northwest. The Kilauea volcano on Hawaii has been erupting almost continuously since 1983. There are also eruptions at an underwater volcano called Loih. 
Story: Tom and Brad were good friends but lived far away from each other. Tom lived in Hawaii so he visited all the islands and the volcanoes frequently. Brad lived on the East Coast, and he never visited The Hawaiian Islands. 
Question: Which friend lived closer to the older Hawaiian volcanoes?

Tom.