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 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.
PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: In the U.S., the majority of electricity is produced by burning coal or other fossil fuels. This causes air pollution that harms the health of living things. The air pollution also causes acid rain and contributes to global warming. In addition, fossil fuels are nonrenewable resources, so if we keep using them, they will eventually run out. The main advantage of nuclear energy is that it doesn't release air pollution or cause the other environmental problems associated with the burning of fossil fuels. On the other other hand, radioactive elements are nonrenewable like fossil fuels and could eventually be used up.
Story: Thorn county used fossil fuels for their energy needs, while Plant county used nuclear power. They both polluted the environment in different ways.
Question: Which county released more air pollution?

SOLUTION: Thorn.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: The classical explanation of gravity is that a force of attraction acts at a distance between two objects and the magnitude of the force is directly proportional to each of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects. The objects move toward each other due to this force of attraction. Einstein's new concept of gravity states that matter (mass) causes the space around the matter to curve and also distorts time. A straight line through this curved space would also be curved in order to be a straight line.
Story: Rob is an amateur astronomer. Recently, he detected four asteroids, asteroid A, asteroid B, asteroid C, and asteroid D. Asteroid A and asteroid B are of the same mass, but asteroid A is farther from the earth than asteroid B. Asteroid C and asteroid D are at the same distance form the earth, but asteroid C has more mass than asteroid D. He also figured out that all of these asteroids have less mass than earth.
Question: In clssical theory, if Rob needs to find out the object with stronger gravitational pull, which one would he choose, earth or asteroid A?

SOLUTION: earth.

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Air pollution is harmful to human beings and other living things. About 22 million people die from air pollution each year. Breathing polluted air increases the risk of developing lung diseases such as asthma and lung cancer. Breathing bad air also increases the chances of dying from other diseases. Children are most likely to be affected by air pollution. That's because their lungs are still developing and growing. Children also take in more air for their size than adults do. Some air pollutants damage the environment as well as the health of living things. The type of damage depends on the pollutant. Air pollution can also harm the environment.
Story: Michael and Thomas are brothers whose careers have taken them to different cities. Michael lives in Beijing, where the levels of air pollution are fairly high due to the extensive manufacturing industry. Thomas, on the other hand, lives in Seattle, which has low levels of air pollution thanks to government initiatives and culture attitudes in the region.
Question: Who has a higher risk of developing asthma?

SOLUTION:
Michael.