Q: Background: Conifers have many uses. They are important sources of lumber and are also used to make paper. Resins, the sticky substance you might see oozing out of a wound on a pine tree, are collected from conifers to make a variety of products, such as the solvent turpentine and the rosin used by musicians and baseball players. The sticky rosin improves the pitcher's hold on the ball or increases the friction between the bow and the strings to help create music from a violin or other stringed instrument. Paragraph: Two neighboring towns, Pine town and Willow town, used different types of woods for lumber et al. Willow town used hardwoods, while Pine town used softwoods. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which town used fewer conifers to make the solvent turpentine?
A: Willow

Q: Background: Protozoa generally feed by engulfing and digesting other organisms. As consumers, they have various roles in food chains and webs. Some are predators. They prey upon other single-celled organisms, such as bacteria. In fact, protozoa predators keep many bacterial populations in check. Other protozoa are herbivores. They graze on algae. Still others are decomposers. They consume dead organic matter. There are also parasitic protozoa that live in or on living hosts. For example, the protozoan that causes malaria lives inside a human host. For their part, protozoa are important food sources for many larger organisms, including insects and worms. Paragraph: Reed started studying protozoa and was more interested in the predatorial behaviors of protozoa, while Brad wanted to know more about other types of protozoa, suck as grazers and decomposers. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which person learned less about protozoa keeping bacterial populations in check?
A: Brad

Q: Background: A plant's first line of defense against abiotic stress is in its roots. If the soil holding the plant is healthy and biologically diverse, the plant will have a higher chance of surviving stressful conditions.The plant responses to stress are dependent on the tissue or organ affected by the stress. For example, transcriptional responses to stress are tissue or cell specific in roots and are quite different depending on the stress involved.One of the primary responses to abiotic stress such as high salinity is the disruption of the Na+/K+ ratio in the cytoplasm of the plant cell. High concentrations of Na+, for example, can decrease the capacity for the plant to take up water and also alter enzyme and transporter functions. Evolved adaptations to efficiently restore cellular ion homeostasis has led to a wide variety of stress tolerant plants.Facilitation, or the positive interactions between different species of plants, is an intricate web of association in a natural environment. It is how plants work together. In areas of high stress, the level of facilitation is especially high as well. This could possibly be because the plants need a stronger network to survive in a harsher environment, so their interactions between species, such as cross-pollination or mutualistic actions, become more common to cope with the severity of their habitat.Plants also adapt very differently from one another, even from a plant living in the same area. When a group of different plant species was prompted by a variety of different stress signals, such as drought or cold, each plant responded uniquely. Hardly any of the responses were similar, even though the plants had become accustomed to exactly the same home environment.Rice (Oryza sativa) is a classic example. Rice is a staple food throughout the world, especially in China and India. Rice plants experience different types of abiotic stresses, like drought and high salinity. These stress conditions have a negative impact on rice production. Genetic diversity has been studied... Paragraph: Danny owned two parcels of land. parcel A had a soil with high salinity levels, while parcel B had a rich and healthy soil. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Which parcel had more plants which presented altered enzyme functions?
A: parcel B

Q: Background: Rain dissolves fertilizer in the soil. Runoff carries it away. The fertilizer ends up in bodies of water, from ponds to oceans. Nitrogen is a fertilizer in the water. Since there is a lot of nitrogen, it causes algae to grow out of control. Pictured below is a pond covered with algae ( Figure below ). Algae use up carbon dioxide in the water. After the algae die, decomposers break down the dead tissue. The decomposers use up all the oxygen in the water. This creates a dead zone. A dead zone is an area in a body of water where nothing grows because there is too little oxygen. There is a large dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico ( Figure below ). The U.S. states outlined on the map have rivers that drain into the Gulf of Mexico. The rivers drain vast agricultural lands. The water carries fertilizer from these areas into the Gulf. Paragraph: Bobby and Kenny are two prolific farmers from Arkansas who have ponds located down stream from their farm sites. Bobby recently received a large order of potatoes from a neighboring city. Because of this order, Bobby has dramatically increased the amount of fertilizer he is using on his farm. Kenny mainly grows tomatoes, which are not in season right now, so his use of fertilizer is currently low. Over the past month there has been a large amount of rain falling on both Bobby and Kenny's farms. Given the paragraph above, please answer correctly the following question: Who will ultimately cause more oxygen to be used up in the ponds near their farm?
A:
Bobby