Problem: Modern history:

Around the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, the Meiji era was marked by the reign of the Meiji Emperor. During this time, Japan started its modernization and rose to world power status. This era name means "Enlightened Rule". In Japan, the Meiji Restoration started in the 1860s, marking the rapid modernization by the Japanese themselves along European lines. Much research has focused on the issues of discontinuity versus continuity with the previous Tokugawa Period. In the 1960s younger Japanese scholars led by Irokawa Daikichi, reacted against the bureaucratic superstate, and began searching for the historic role of the common people . They avoided the elite, and focused not on political events but on social forces and attitudes. They rejected both Marxism and modernization theory as alien and confining. They stressed the importance of popular energies in the development of modern Japan. They enlarged history by using the methods of social history. It was not until the beginning of the Meiji Era that the Japanese government began taking modernization seriously. Japan expanded its military production base by opening arsenals in various locations. The hyobusho (war office) was replaced with a War Department and a Naval Department. The samurai class suffered great disappointment the following years.

What did Irokawa Daikichi act out against?
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A: bureaucratic superstate

Problem: Hokkien:

In general, Hokkien dialects have 5 to 7 phonemic tones. According to the traditional Chinese system, however, there are 7 to 9 "tones",[citation needed] more correctly termed tone classes since two of them are non-phonemic "entering tones" (see the discussion on Chinese tone). Tone sandhi is extensive. There are minor variations between the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou tone systems. Taiwanese tones follow the patterns of Amoy or Quanzhou, depending on the area of Taiwan. Many dialects have an additional phonemic tone ("tone 9" according to the traditional reckoning), used only in special or foreign loan words.

When is the extra tone 8 used?
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A: unanswerable

Problem: Charleston, South Carolina:

By 1840, the Market Hall and Sheds, where fresh meat and produce were brought daily, became a hub of commercial activity. The slave trade also depended on the port of Charleston, where ships could be unloaded and the slaves bought and sold. The legal importation of African slaves had ended in 1808, although smuggling was significant. However, the domestic trade was booming. More than one million slaves were transported from the Upper South to the Deep South in the antebellum years, as cotton plantations were widely developed through what became known as the Black Belt. Many slaves were transported in the coastwise slave trade, with slave ships stopping at ports such as Charleston.

What year did the legal importation of slaves end?
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A: 1808

Problem: Videoconferencing:

One of the first demonstrations of the ability for telecommunications to help sign language users communicate with each other occurred when AT&T's videophone (trademarked as the "Picturephone") was introduced to the public at the 1964 New York World's Fair two deaf users were able to communicate freely with each other between the fair and another city. Various universities and other organizations, including British Telecom's Martlesham facility, have also conducted extensive research on signing via videotelephony. The use of sign language via videotelephony was hampered for many years due to the difficulty of its use over slow analogue copper phone lines, coupled with the high cost of better quality ISDN (data) phone lines. Those factors largely disappeared with the introduction of more efficient video codecs and the advent of lower cost high-speed ISDN data and IP (Internet) services in the 1990s.

In what decade were more efficient ways of using sign language via video-telephony developed?
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A:
1990s