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 need to come up with a question about the story that requires an understanding of the relationship described in the background paragraph. The generated question should not be answerable without both the background and story. Write a question about the story that requires a relationship in the background paragraph to answer. Check whether your question requires both the background paragraph and the story to answer. If your question can be answered by only one of these, try to rewrite your question so that it requires both. Note that "flipping" a word in the question can give rise to a new question where the answer will be different from the original question. Often, "flipping" a word gives rise to flipping the direction of the relationship, for example, from "increase" to "decrease."
PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Alpine tundra occurs at high enough altitude at any latitude. Portions of montane grasslands and shrublands ecoregions worldwide include alpine tundra. Large regions of alpine tundra occur in the North American Cordillera, the Alps and Pyrenees of Europe, the Himalaya and Karakoram of Asia, the Andes of South America, and the Eastern Rift mountains of Africa.Alpine tundra occupies high-mountain summits, slopes, and ridges above timberline. Aspect plays a role as well; the treeline often occurs at higher elevations on warmer equator-facing slopes. Because the alpine zone is present only on mountains, much of the landscape is rugged and broken, with rocky, snowcapped peaks, cliffs, and talus slopes, but also contains areas of gently rolling to almost flat topography.Averaging over many locations and local microclimates, the treeline rises 75 metres (245 ft) when moving 1 degree south from 70 to 50N, and 130 metres (430 ft) per degree from 50 to 30N. Between 30N and 20S, the treeline is roughly constant, between 3,500 and 4,000 metres (11,500 and 13,100 ft).
Story: Pete and Laura were learning about Earth's vegetation. Laura read about savannas and subtropical vegetation, while Pete read about alpine tundras.

SOLUTION: Which person read less about montane grasslands?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: When the temperature of reactants is higher, the rate of the reaction is faster. At higher temperatures, particles of reactants have more energy, so they move faster. As a result, they are more likely to bump into one another and to collide with greater force. For example, food spoils because of chemical reactions, and these reactions occur faster at higher temperatures (see the bread on the left in the Figure below ). This is why we store foods in the refrigerator or freezer (like the bread on the right in the Figure below ). The lower temperature slows the rate of spoilage.
Story: A scientist is observing two chemicals react. The reaction is very slow and he wants to find a way to speed up the reaction. One day the labs air conditioner breaks, increasing the heat, in the lab and he notices the reaction is happening significantly faster than usual.

SOLUTION: Will the chemicals the scientist used react faster or slower if you decrease the temperature?

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: Roger had a busy day storing XML. At 4 PM, he stored 22211 Gigabytes to the database. At 5 PM, he stored 33322 Gigabytes to the database. At 6 PM, he stored 44433 Gigabytes to the database. At 7 PM, he got dinner. At 8 PM, he stored 55544 Gigabytes to the database. At 9 PM, he stored 66655 Gigabytes to the database. At 10 PM, he went to sleep to finish storing XML tomorrow.

SOLUTION:
What time did access times go up: 4 PM or 10 PM?