TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given a question, along with three passages, 1, 2, and 3. Your job is to determine which passage can be used to answer the question by searching for further information using terms from the passage. Indicate your choice as 1, 2, or 3.
PROBLEM: Question: How old was First King Carol when the Romanian War of Independence began? Passage 1: is the best-known of Sanrio's fictional characters, created in 1974. Hello Kitty is drawn simply with a trademark red bow. Registered in 1975, Hello Kitty is now a globally known trademark. Hello Kitty has been marketed in the United States from the beginning and has held the position of U.S. children's ambassador for UNICEF since 1983. The brand rose to greater prominence during the late 1990s when several celebrities such as Mariah Carey adopted Hello Kitty as a fashion statement. New products featuring the character can be found in virtually any American department store and Hello Kitty was once featured in an advertising campaign of the retail chain Target. The character got her first Massively Multiplayer Online Game produced by Sanrio Digital and Typhoon Games entitled Hello Kitty Online which was released worldwide, including the United States, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Passage 2:The idea of a national cathedral first emerged following the Romanian War of Independence (18771878), which was mainly fought between the Russian and Ottoman Empires. The church was to symbolise the victory of Orthodox Christians over the Ottoman Muslims. The idea was shelved for lack of consensus on design, location and funding. The Unification of the Romanian Principalities in 1859, entailed a unitary organization of church structures in Moldavia and Wallachia within the Holy Synod (1872), thus the assembly of hierarchs increased to 12 members, including: the Primate Metropolitan (chairman), the Metropolitan of Moldavia and their suffragan bishops of Ramnic, Buzau, Arges, Roman, Husi and Lower Danube (Galati) and one auxiliary vicar-bishop for every diocese. The old Metropolitan Cathedral had proved overcrowded, especially during the national holidays, such as the Proclamation of the Kingdom of Romania and the crowning of the First King Carol I (10 May 1881), when none of the over one hundred churches in Bucharest were able to receive those who would have wanted to participate in the official service. Therefore, at King Carol I's desire, Romania's Assembly of Deputies and the Senate voted in favour of the Law no.1750 on the construction of the Cathedral Church in Bucharest, promulgated by King Carol I on 5 June 1884.
Passage 3:Born Shirley Fishman in Brooklyn, New York, she attended Abraham Lincoln High School. Her teacher, Leon Friend, arranged for guest lectures by commercial and fine artists. Shirley Fishman had the opportunity to study with three of them: Chaim Gross, Moses Soyer, and Raphael Soyer. Gross influenced her early sculptural work, which features squat figures with thick limbs. While attending Brooklyn College, where she earned her B.A. in 1944, she met Leonard Gorelick (19222011), a fellow student. They married in 1944 and shared an enthusiasm for art and culture. Leonard Gorelick was an orthodontist and later a collector of cylinder seals. He combined his interests by investigating the authenticity of cylinder seals through the use of dental technology, especially electronmicroscopy. Shirley Gorelick earned an M.A. at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1947. That year, she studied for several weeks with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown. For a short time in the late 1950s, she was a student of the painter Betty Holliday and, in the early 1960s, learned printmaking in the Long Island studio of Ruth Leaf.

SOLUTION: 2

PROBLEM: Question: For how many years did the age last before which the languages split? Passage 1:A vast number of artifacts have been discovered from ancient Mesopotamia depicting explicit heterosexual sex. Glyptic art from the Sumerian Early Dynastic Period frequently shows scenes of frontal sex in the missionary position. In Mesopotamian votive plagues from the early second millennium BC, the man is usually shown entering the woman from behind while she bends over, drinking beer through a straw. Middle Assyrian lead votive figurines often represent the man standing and penetrating the woman as she rests on top of an altar. Scholars have traditionally interpreted all these depictions as scenes of ritual sex, but they are more likely to be associated with the cult of Inanna, the goddess of sex and prostitution. Many sexually explicit images were found in the temple of Inanna at Assur, which also contained models of male and female sexual organs, including stone phalli, which may have been worn around the neck as an amulet or used to decorate cult statues, and clay models of the female vulva.
Passage 2:In 1998, Helmut Rix put forward the view that Etruscan is related to other members of what he called the "Tyrsenian language family". Rix's Tyrsenian family of languagescomposed of Raetic, anciently spoken in the eastern Alps, and Lemnian, together with Etruscanhas gained acceptance among scholars. Rix's Tyrsenian family has been confirmed by Stefan Schumacher, Norbert Oettinger, Carlo De Simone, and Simona Marchesini. Common features between Etruscan, Raetic, and Lemnian have been found in morphology, phonology, and syntax. On the other hand, lexical correspondences are rarely documented, due to the scant number of Raetic and Lemnian texts, and, above all, due to the very ancient date at which these languages split, because the split must have taken place before the Bronze Age. The Tyrsenian family, or Common Tyrrhenic, in this case is often considered to be Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe. Several scholars believe that the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula. Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that the Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan piratesque or commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples.
Passage 3:He had hoped to redshirt during the 2011 season, which was his freshman year, so that he could add size. He played in 2011 as a true freshman and got off to a modest start. Lockett only recorded four receptions for 50 yards, three rushes for nine yards, one kickoff return for ten yards, and two punt returns for a total of 13 yards in his first five games through October 8. Things started to turn around on October 15 when he posted a 100-yard return of a kickoff for a touchdown against Texas Tech. Over the ensuing weeks, he earned numerous Big 12 Conference honors for the 2011 team, including becoming a two-time Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Week. His first Player of the Week recognition came on October 24 after he produced a 251-yard all-purpose yards performance on October 22 against Kansas in the Governor's Cup that included posting a 97-yard kickoff return touchdown while becoming the first player in school history to return kickoffs for touchdowns in consecutive games and having a career-high five-reception 110-yard receiving day. His other Player of the Week recognition that season came on November 7 after a 315-yard all-purpose yard November 5 game against Oklahoma State that included an 80-yard kickoff return and three rushes for 84 yards as well as three receptions for 32 yards and a touchdown. Due to what was at first an undisclosed injury, he did not play in the final three games of Kansas State's regular season. Later, the injury was determined to be a lacerated kidney. In the four games before the injury, he had at least three receptions and 125 all-purpose yards in each game.

SOLUTION: 2

PROBLEM: Question: What year was the song that "Ishe Komborera Africa" was selected to replace written? Passage 1:Following Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the British Empire, the new Rhodesian authorities started to crack down on African liberation movements. One of their considerations was to ban performance of "Ishe Komborera Africa" in African schools and public performance of it often made people liable for arrest by the British South African Police. The District Commissioner for Gutu abolished the Gutu African Council after its leader opened a meeting by singing "Ishe Komborera Africa" in the District Commissioner's presence. The Commissioner also had the leader arrested but he was released without charge. Following the Southern Rhodesian general election, 1980, after Zimbabwe Rhodesia returned to British control as Southern Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union party won to become the first government of an independent Zimbabwe. After this, "Ishe Komborera Africa" was selected to replace the official "God Save the Queen" of Southern Rhodesia and the unofficial "Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia" of Rhodesia as the national anthem of an independent Zimbabwe as it was a symbol of black African struggles and solidarity against apartheid systems in South Africa and Namibia. At the Zimbabwean independence ceremony, the Union Jack was lowered to "God Save the Queen" and the new flag of Zimbabwe was raised to "Ishe Komborera Africa" in Salisbury.
Passage 2:Villa de San Agustin de Laredo was founded in 1755 by Don Tomas Sanchez while the area was part of a region called Nuevo Santander in the Spanish colony of New Spain. Villa de San Agustin de Laredo got its name from Laredo, Cantabria, Spain and in honor of Saint Augustine of Hippo. In 1840, Laredo was the capital of the independent Republic of the Rio Grande, set up in rebellion to the dictatorship of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and brought back into Mexico by military force. In 1846, during the MexicanAmerican War the town was occupied by the Texas Rangers. After the war the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ceded the land to the United States. A referendum was taken in the town, which voted overwhelmingly to petition the American military government in charge of the area to return the town to Mexico. However, this petition was rejected, and in response the bulk of the population moved over the river into Mexican territory to found the new town of Nuevo Laredo.
Passage 3:The explorer-geographer David Thompson, working as head of the North West Company's Columbia Department, became the first European to explore the Inland Empire (now called the Inland Northwest). Crossing what is now the CanadaUS border from British Columbia, Thompson wanted to expand the North West Company further south in search of furs. After establishing the Kullyspell House and Saleesh House trading posts in what are now Idaho and Montana, Thompson then attempted to expand further west. He sent out two trappers, Jacques Raphael Finlay and Finan McDonald, to construct a fur trading post on the Spokane River, which flows west from Lake Coeur d'Alene to the Columbia River, and trade with the local Indians. This post was established in 1810, at the confluence of the Little Spokane and Spokane rivers, becoming the first enduring European settlement of significance in what later became Washington state. Known as the Spokane House, or simply "Spokane", it was in operation from 1810 to 1826. Operations were run by the British North West Company and later the Hudson's Bay Company, and the post was the headquarters of the fur trade between the Rocky and Cascade mountains for 16 years. After the latter business absorbed the North West Company in 1821, the major operations at the Spokane House were eventually shifted north to Fort Colville, reducing the post's significance.

SOLUTION:
1