Problem: Patty was a runner and liked hiking so she spent a lot of time outdoors. Her friend Fay sealed up her home and spent most of her time indoors. Both friends lived in an area with moderate to high levels of air pollution and attended a seminar where they learned more about the impact of air pollution on human health. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which friend was exposed to more indoor pollution? Hint: Recall that air pollution is due to chemical substances and particles released into the air mainly by human actions. When most people think of air pollution, they think of the pollution outdoors. But it is just as easy to have indoor air pollution. Your home or school classroom probably doesn't get much fresh air. Sealing up your home reduces heating and cooling costs. But this also causes air pollution to stay trapped indoors. And people today usually spend a majority of their time indoors. So exposure to indoor air pollution can become a significant health risk.

A: Fay

Problem: Sarah and Lydia are two sisters that have been learning how to farm since they were kids. After graduating college, they both started their own farms and have been working on their own for several years now. At a family get together, Sarah mentions that her farm is experiencing soil salination. Lydia finishes swallowing her bite of cake and remarks that her farm has never experienced that before. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Who will be able to grow more plants? Hint: Soil piping is a particular form of soil erosion that occurs below the soil surface. It causes levee and dam failure, as well as sink hole formation. Turbulent flow removes soil starting at the mouth of the seep flow and the subsoil erosion advances up-gradient. The term sand boil is used to describe the appearance of the discharging end of an active soil pipe.Soil salination is the accumulation of free salts to such an extent that it leads to degradation of the agricultural value of soils and vegetation. Consequences include corrosion damage, reduced plant growth, erosion due to loss of plant cover and soil structure, and water quality problems due to sedimentation. Salination occurs due to a combination of natural and human-caused processes. Arid conditions favour salt accumulation. This is especially apparent when soil parent material is saline. Irrigation of arid lands is especially problematic. All irrigation water has some level of salinity. Irrigation, especially when it involves leakage from canals and overirrigation in the field, often raises the underlying water table. Rapid salination occurs when the land surface is within the capillary fringe of saline groundwater. Soil salinity control involves watertable control and flushing with higher levels of applied water in combination with tile drainage or another form of subsurface drainage.

A: Lydia

Problem: Two neighboring lands experienced different climates. In Iceland, the actions of its people lead to a loss of animal and plant species. Denmark tried to keep the environment untouched as they understood its importance and the climate was unaffected. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which country experienced less species extinction? Hint: Biodiversity loss is the extinction of species (plant or animal) worldwide, and also the local reduction or loss of species in a certain habitat. The latter phenomenon can be temporary or permanent, depending on whether the environmental degradation that leads to the loss is reversible through ecological restoration / ecological resilience or effectively permanent (e.g. through land loss). Global extinction has so far been proven to be irreversible. Even though permanent global species loss is a more dramatic phenomenon than regional changes in species composition, even minor changes from a healthy stable state can have dramatic influence on the food web and the food chain insofar as reductions in only one species can adversely affect the entire chain (coextinction), leading to an overall reduction in biodiversity, possible alternative stable states of an ecosystem notwithstanding. Ecological effects of biodiversity are usually counteracted by its loss. Reduced biodiversity in particular leads to reduced ecosystem services and eventually poses an immediate danger for food security, also for humankind.[1]

A: Denmark

Problem: This year thee comets would be of interest, comet A, comet B, and comet C. Comet A and comet B would enter the inner solar system. But comet C would not enter the inner solar system. Moreover, comet A is categorized as a bright comet, but comet B is categorized as a faint comet. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which comet's dust would reflect sunlight, comet A or comet C? Hint: A comet tailand comaare features visible in comets when they are illuminated by the Sun and may become visible from Earth when a comet passes through the inner Solar System. As a comet approaches the inner Solar System, solar radiation causes the volatile materials within the comet to vaporize and stream out of the nucleus, carrying dust away with them. Separate tails are formed of dust and gases, becoming visible through different phenomena; the dust reflects sunlight directly and the gases glow from ionisation. Most comets are too faint to be visible without the aid of a telescope, but a few each decade become bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.

A:
comet A