Background: Soil is well developed in the forest as suggested by the thick humus layers, rich diversity of large trees and animals that live there. In forests, precipitation exceeds evapotranspiration which results in an excess of water that percolates downward through the soil layers. Slow rates of decomposition leads to large amounts of fulvic acid, greatly enhancing chemical weathering. The downward percolation, in conjunction with chemical weathering leaches magnesium (Mg), iron (Fe), and aluminum (Al) from the soil and transports them downward, a process known as podzolization. This process leads to marked contrasts in the appearance and chemistry of the soil layers. Paragraph: Two students learned about soils in school. Brad had to study forest soils, while his colleague Frank had to study grasslands. They both did a good job and received A's for their efforts and accumulated knowledge. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which student read less about slow rates of decomposition?
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Answer: Frank

Background: "There is now unequivocal evidence that biodiversity loss reduces the efficiency by which ecological communities capture biologically essential resources, produce biomass, decompose and recycle biologically essential nutrients... There is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions through time... Diverse communities are more productive because they contain key species that have a large influence on productivity and differences in functional traits among organisms increase total resource capture... The impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change... Maintaining multiple ecosystem processes at multiple places and times requires higher levels of biodiversity than does a single process at a single place and time." Paragraph: The government of Ecuador has been actively pushing to increase biodiversity. They have been quite successful in their pursuit. Moreover, the citizens of Ecuador are receptive about the idea of increased biodiversity. On the contrary, the Government of Oman was not very active in increasing the biodiversity of their country. As a result, Oman, at present, is not very biodiverse. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which place would have more stable ecosystem functions, Ecuador or Oman?
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Answer: Ecuador

Background: Fish mortality is a parameter used in fisheries population dynamics to account for the loss of fish in a fish stock through death. The mortality can be divided into two types: Natural mortality: the removal of fish from the stock due to causes not associated with fishing. Such causes can include disease, competition, cannibalism, old age, predation, pollution or any other natural factor that causes the death of fish. In fisheries models natural mortality is denoted by (M).[1] Fishing mortality: the removal of fish from the stock due to fishing activities using any fishing gear.[1] It is denoted by (F) in fisheries models. Paragraph: Two lakes had been stocked with fish two years before.Blue lake had an abundant fish stock because nobody fished there, but Green lake was open for fishing. Blue lake had some polution and disease problems. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which lake had a lower fishing mortality last year?
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Answer:
Blue