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: Another major cause of extinction is global warming , which is also known as global climate change. During the past century, the Earth's average temperature has risen by almost 1C (about 1.3F). You may not think that is significant, but to organisms that live in the wild and are constantly adapting to their environments, any climate change can be hazardous. Recall that burning fossil fuels releases gasses into the atmosphere that warm the Earth. Our increased use of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, is changing the Earth's climate. Any long-term change in the climate can destroy the habitat of a species. Even a brief change in climate may be too stressful for an organism to survive. For example, if the seas increase in temperature, even briefly, it may be too warm for certain types of fish to reproduce.
Story: In Greenland there is a species of bird that thrives in cold climates. After years of burning fossil fuels the global average temperature has increased by 4 degrees F and during the mating season for this bird the temperature is on average 7 degrees higher. This is much warmer than the bird is used to and they begin to reproduce less.

SOLUTION: Will a chance in climate have a positive or negative effect on a species that is climate sensitive?

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: Odis had a busy day storing XML. At 8 AM, he stored 202 Gigabytes to the database. At 9 AM, he stored 302 Gigabytes to the database. At 10 AM, he stored 402 Gigabytes to the database. At 11 AM, he got breakfast. At 12 PM, he stored 502 Gigabytes to the database. At 1 PM, he stored 602 Gigabytes to the database. At 2 PM, she went to sleep to finish storing XML later on that night.

SOLUTION: What time did access times go up: 1 PM or 11 AM?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Another major cause of extinction is global warming , which is also known as global climate change. During the past century, the Earth's average temperature has risen by almost 1C (about 1.3F). You may not think that is significant, but to organisms that live in the wild and are constantly adapting to their environments, any climate change can be hazardous. Recall that burning fossil fuels releases gasses into the atmosphere that warm the Earth. Our increased use of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, is changing the Earth's climate. Any long-term change in the climate can destroy the habitat of a species. Even a brief change in climate may be too stressful for an organism to survive. For example, if the seas increase in temperature, even briefly, it may be too warm for certain types of fish to reproduce.
Story: Two students studied for the biology exam. Ken studied about global warming, while Hank studied about Earth's oceans.

SOLUTION:
Which student learned less about the increasing use of oil?