Question:
Passage: Almost his sole champion in the years after his death was his brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan. Primarily an illustrator, as well as a scholar and archaeologist, Pullan trained with Alfred Waterhouse in Manchester, before joining Burges's office in the 1850s. In 1859, he married Burges's sister. Following Burges's death in 1881, Pullan lived at The Tower House and published collections of Burges's designs, including Architectural Designs of William Burges (1883) and The House of William Burges (1886). In his preface to Architectural Designs Pullan expressed the hope that illustrated volumes of his brother-in-law's work "would be warmly welcomed and thoroughly appreciated, not only by his professional brethern, but by all men of educated taste in Europe and America." This hope was not to be fulfilled for a hundred years but Burges's work did continue to attract followers in Japan. Josiah Conder studied under him, and, through Conder's influence, the notable Japanese architect Tatsuno Kingo was articled to Burges in the year before the latter's death. Burges also received brief, but largely favourable, attention in Muthesius's Das Englische Haus, where Muthesius described him as "the most talented Gothicist of his day".
From the later twentieth century to the present a renaissance has occurred in the study of Victorian art, architecture and design and Crook contends that Burges's place at the centre of that world, as "a wide-ranging scholar, an intrepid traveller, a coruscating lecturer, a brilliant decorative designer and an architect of genius," is again appreciated. Crook writes further that, in a career of only some twenty years, he became "the most brilliant architect-designer of his generation," and, beyond architecture, his achievements in metalwork, jewellery, furniture and stained glass place him as Pugin's only "rival [.] as the greatest art-architect of the Gothic Revival.".

Passage: In the early nineteenth century, the original Norman castle had been enlarged and refashioned by Henry Holland for the 1st Marquess, the 3rd Marquess's great-grandfather. The 2nd Marquess occupied the castle on visits to his extensive Glamorgan estates, during which he developed modern Cardiff and created Cardiff Docks as the outlet for coal and steel from the South Wales Valleys, but did little to the castle itself, beyond completing the 1st Marquess's work.
The 3rd Marquess despised Holland's efforts, describing the castle as having been "the victim of every barbarism since the Renaissance", and, on his coming of age, engaged Burges to undertake rebuilding on a Wagnerian scale. Almost all of Burges's usual team were involved, including Chapple, Frame and Lonsdale, creating a building which John Newman describes in Glamorgan: The Buildings of Wales as the "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."
The central block of the castle comprises the two storey banqueting hall, with the library below. Both are enormous, the former to act as a suitable reception hall where the Marquess could fulfil his civic duties, the latter to hold part of his vast library. Both include elaborate carvings and fireplaces, those in the banqueting hall depicting the castle itself in the time of Robert, Duke of Normandy, who was imprisoned there in 1126–1134. The fireplace in the library contains five figures, four representing the Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew and Assyrian alphabets, while the fifth is said to represent Bute as a Celtic monk. The figures refer to the purpose of the room and to the Marquess, a noted linguist. The decoration of these large rooms is less successful than in the smaller chambers; much was completed after Burges's death and Girouard considers that the muralist, Lonsdale, "was required to cover areas rather greater than his talents deserved."The central portion of the castle also included the Grand Staircase. Illustrated in a watercolour perspective prepared by Axel Haig, the staircase was long thought never to have been built but recent research has shown that it was constructed, only to be torn out in the 1930s, reputedly after the third Marchioness had "once slipped on its polished surface." The staircase was not universally praised in the contemporary press; the Building News writing that the design was "one of the least happy we have seen from Mr Burges's pencil...the contrasts of colour are more startling than pleasing." The Arab Room in the Herbert Tower was the last room on which Burges was working when he fell ill in 1881. Bute placed Burges's initials, together with his own and the date, in the fireplace of that room as a memorial. The room was completed by Burges's brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan.

Passage: Another major influence in his work was the rise of interest in vernacular architecture. By the time Douglas moved to Chester, the black-and-white revival using half-timbering was well under way, and Douglas came to incorporate this style in his buildings in Chester and elsewhere. The black-and-white revival did not start in Chester, but it did become Chester's speciality. The first Chester architect involved in the revival had been Thomas Mainwaring Penson, whose first work in this genre was the restoration of a shop in Eastgate Street in the early 1850s. Other early Chester architects involved in the revival were T. A. Richardson and James Harrison and it came to be developed mainly by T. M. Lockwood and by Douglas. Part of Douglas's earliest work for the Grosvenor family, the entrance lodge to Grosvenor Park, used half-timbering in its upper storey; this is the first known use by Douglas of black-and-white. Other vernacular motifs were taken from earlier styles of English architecture, in particular, the Tudor style. These include tile-hanging, pargetting and massive brick ribbed chimney stacks. In this style, Douglas was influenced by the architects Nesfield and Shaw. Douglas also used vernacular elements from the continent, especially the late medieval brickwork of Germany and the Low Countries.A characteristic of Douglas's work is his attention to both external and internal detailing. Such detailing was not derived from any particular style and Douglas chose elements from whichever style suited his purpose for each specific project. His detailing applied particularly to his joinery, perhaps inspired by his experience in his father's workshop, and was applied both to wooden fittings and to the furniture he designed. A further Continental influence was his use of a Dutch gable. The most important and consistently used element in Douglas's vernacular buildings was his use of half-timbering, which was usually used for parts of the building. However, in the cases of Rowden Abbey and St Michael and All Angels Church, Altcar, the entire buildings were timber-framed.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: During the first years of the new century, Ravel made five attempts to win France's most prestigious prize for young composers, the Prix de Rome, past winners of which included Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet and Debussy. In 1900 Ravel was eliminated in the first round; in 1901 he won the second prize for the competition. In 1902 and 1903 he won nothing: according to the musicologist Paul Landormy, the judges suspected Ravel of making fun of them by submitting cantatas so academic as to seem like parodies. In 1905 Ravel, by now thirty, competed for the last time, inadvertently causing a furore. He was eliminated in the first round, which even critics unsympathetic to his music, including Lalo, denounced as unjustifiable. The press's indignation grew when it emerged that the senior professor at the Conservatoire, Charles Lenepveu, was on the jury, and only his students were selected for the final round; his insistence that this was pure coincidence was not well received. L'affaire Ravel became a national scandal, leading to the early retirement of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré, appointed by the government to carry out a radical reorganisation of the Conservatoire.Among those taking a close interest in the controversy was Alfred Edwards, owner and editor of Le Matin, for which Lalo wrote. Edwards was married to Ravel's friend Misia; the couple took Ravel on a seven-week Rhine cruise on their yacht in June and July 1905, the first time he had travelled abroad.By the latter part of the 1900s Ravel had established a pattern of writing works for piano and subsequently arranging them for full orchestra. He was in general a slow and painstaking worker, and reworking his earlier piano compositions enabled him to increase the number of pieces published and performed. There appears to have been no mercenary motive for this; Ravel was known for his indifference to financial matters. The pieces that began as piano compositions and were then given orchestral dress were Pavane pour une infante défunte (orchestrated 1910), Une barque sur l'océan (1906, from the 1905 piano suite Miroirs), the Habanera section of Rapsodie espagnole (1907–08), Ma mère l'Oye (1908–10, orchestrated 1911), Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911, orchestrated 1912), Alborada del gracioso (from Miroirs, orchestrated 1918) and Le tombeau de Couperin (1914–17, orchestrated 1919).

Passage: In 1905 a scandal erupted in French musical circles over the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome. Fauré's pupil Ravel had been eliminated prematurely in his sixth attempt for this award, and many believed that reactionary elements within the Conservatoire had played a part in it. Dubois, who became the subject of much censure, brought forward his retirement and stepped down at once. Appointed in his place, and with the support of the French government, Fauré radically changed the administration and curriculum. He appointed independent external judges to decide on admissions, examinations and competitions, a move which enraged faculty members who had given preferential treatment to their private pupils; feeling themselves deprived of a considerable extra income, many of them resigned. Fauré was dubbed "Robespierre" by disaffected members of the old guard as he modernised and broadened the range of music taught at the Conservatoire. As Nectoux puts it, "where Auber, Halévy and especially Meyerbeer had reigned supreme ... it was now possible to sing an aria by Rameau or even some Wagner – up to now a forbidden name within the Conservatoire's walls". The curriculum was broadened to range from Renaissance polyphony to the works of Debussy.Fauré's new position left him better off financially. However, while he also became much more widely known as a composer, running the Conservatoire left him with no more time for composition than when he was struggling to earn a living as an organist and piano teacher. As soon as the working year was over, in the last days of July, he would leave Paris and spend the two months until early October in a hotel, usually by one of the Swiss lakes, to concentrate on composition. His works from this period include his lyric opera, Pénélope (1913), and some of his most characteristic later songs (e.g., the cycle La chanson d'Ève, Op. 95, completed in 1910) and piano pieces (Nocturnes Nos. 9–11; Barcarolles Nos. 7–11, written between 1906 and 1914).

Passage: With the encouragement of his parents, Ravel applied for entry to France's most important musical college, the Conservatoire de Paris. In November 1889, playing music by Chopin, he passed the examination for admission to the preparatory piano class run by Eugène Anthiome. Ravel won the first prize in the Conservatoire's piano competition in 1891, but otherwise he did not stand out as a student.   Nevertheless, these years were a time of considerable advance in his development as a composer. The musicologist Arbie Orenstein writes that for Ravel the 1890s were a period "of immense growth ... from adolescence to maturity."
In 1891 Ravel progressed to the classes of Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, for piano, and Émile Pessard, for harmony. He made solid, unspectacular progress, with particular encouragement from Bériot but, in the words of the musical scholar Barbara L. Kelly, he "was only teachable on his own terms". His later teacher Gabriel Fauré understood this, but it was not generally acceptable to the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire of the 1890s. Ravel was expelled in 1895, having won no more prizes. His earliest works to survive in full are from these student days: Sérénade grotesque, for piano, and "Ballade de la Reine morte d'aimer", a mélodie setting a poem by Roland de Marès (both 1893).Ravel was never so assiduous a student of the piano as his colleagues such as Viñes and Cortot were. It was plain that as a pianist he would never match them, and his overriding ambition was to be a composer. From this point he concentrated on composition. His works from the period include the songs "Un grand sommeil noir" and "D'Anne jouant de l'espinette" to words by Paul Verlaine and Clément Marot, and the piano pieces Menuet antique and Habanera (for four-hands), the latter eventually incorporated into the Rapsodie espagnole. At around this time, Joseph Ravel introduced his son to Erik Satie, who was earning a living as a café pianist. Ravel was one of the first musicians – Debussy was another – who recognised Satie's originality and talent. Satie's constant experiments in musical form were an inspiration to Ravel, who counted them "of inestimable value".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Lithuania had a centuries long tradition of statehood following the coronation of Mindaugas the King of Lithuania.
After the last Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, Lithuania was annexed by the Russian Empire. During the 19th century, both the Lithuanians and the Poles attempted to restore their independence. Lithuanians rebelled during the 1830 November Uprising and the 1863 January Uprising, but their first real opportunity arose when both Russia and Germany were weakened during World War I.In 1915, Germany occupied western parts of the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Germany conceived the geopolitical strategy of Mitteleuropa – a regional network of puppet states that would serve as a buffer zone – and agreed to allow the Vilnius Conference, hoping that it would proclaim that the Lithuanian nation wanted to detach itself from Russia and establish a closer relationship with Germany. However, this strategy backfired; the conference, held on 18–22 September 1917, adopted a resolution that an independent Lithuania should be established and that a closer relationship with Germany would be conditional on Germany's formal recognition of the new state. On 21 September, the 214 attendees at the conference elected a 20-member Council of Lithuania to codify this resolution. The German authorities did not allow that resolution to be published, but they did permit the Council to proceed. The Vilnius Conference also resolved that a constituent assembly be elected "in conformity with democratic principles by all the inhabitants of Lithuania".

Passage: The Treaty of San Stefano was signed on 3 March 1878 by Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It was to set up an autonomous Bulgarian principality spanning Moesia, Macedonia and Thrace, roughly on the territories of the Second Bulgarian Empire, and this day is now a public holiday called National Liberation Day. The other Great Powers immediately rejected the treaty out of fear that such a large country in the Balkans might threaten their interests. It was superseded by the Treaty of Berlin, signed on 13 July, which provided for a much smaller state only comprising Moesia and the region of Sofia, leaving large populations of ethnic Bulgarians outside the new country. This significantly contributed to Bulgaria's militaristic foreign affairs approach during the first half of the 20th century.The Bulgarian principality won a war against Serbia and incorporated the semi-autonomous Ottoman territory of Eastern Rumelia in 1885, proclaiming itself an independent state on 5 October 1908. In the years following independence, Bulgaria increasingly militarized and was often referred to as "the Balkan Prussia". It became involved in three consecutive conflicts between 1912 and 1918—two Balkan Wars and World War I. After a disastrous defeat in the Second Balkan War, Bulgaria again found itself fighting on the losing side as a result of its alliance with the Central Powers in World War I. Despite fielding more than a quarter of its population in a 1,200,000-strong army and achieving several decisive victories at Doiran and Monastir, the country capitulated in 1918. The war resulted in significant territorial losses and a total of 87,500 soldiers killed. More than 253,000 refugees from the lost territories immigrated to Bulgaria from 1912 to 1929, placing additional strain on the already ruined national economy.

Passage: The inner German border was never entirely sealed in the fashion of the border between the two Koreas and could be crossed in either direction throughout the Cold War. The post-war agreements on the governance of Berlin specified that the Western Allies were to have access to the city via defined air, road, rail and river corridors. This was mostly respected by the Soviets and East Germans, albeit with periodic interruptions and harassment of travellers. Even during the Berlin Blockade of 1948, supplies could be brought in by air – the famous Berlin Airlift. Before and after the blockade, Western civilian and military trains, road traffic and barges routinely passed through East Germany en route to Berlin.
The border could be crossed legally only through a limited number of air, road, rail and river routes. Foreigners were able to cross East German territory to or from West Berlin, Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Czechoslovakia. However, they had only limited and very tightly controlled access to the rest of East Germany and faced numerous restrictions on travel, accommodation and expenditure. Lengthy inspections caused long delays to traffic at the crossing points. Westerners found crossing the inner German border to be a somewhat disturbing experience; Jan Morris wrote:
Travelling from west to east through [the inner German border] was like entering a drab and disturbing dream, peopled by all the ogres of totalitarianism, a half-lit world of shabby resentments, where anything could be done to you, I used to feel, without anybody ever hearing of it, and your every step was dogged by watchful eyes and mechanisms.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Van der Weyden's depiction of the Magdalen is based on Mary of Bethany, identified by the time of Pope Gregory I as the repentant prostitute of Luke 7:36–50. She then became associated with weeping and reading: Christ's mercy causes the eyes of the sinner to be contrite or tearful. Early Renaissance artists often conveyed this idea by portraying contemplative eyes, associating tears with words, and in turn weeping with reading. Examples can be seen in 16th-century works by Tintoretto and Titian which show the Magdalen reading, often with her eyes averted towards her book (and presumably away from a male gaze), or looking up to the heavens or, sometimes, glancing coyly towards the viewer. Writing in "The Crying Face", Mosche Barasch explains that in van der Weyden's time the gesture of averting or concealing the eyes became a "pictorial formula for crying".
By the medieval period, reading became synonymous with devotion, which involved withdrawal from public view. Van der Weyden's placement of the Magdalen in an interior scene reflects the increasing literacy of domestic or laywomen in the mid-15th century. The increased production of devotional texts showed that noble women of the period routinely read texts such as a psalter or book of hours in the privacy of their homes. Whether the Magdalen herself was a reader, by the 17th century she was firmly established as such in the visual arts. Because the Magdalen was present at Christ's death and subsequent resurrection, she was seen as the bearer of news—a witness—and hence directly associated with the text.The Magdalen imagery further draws on the idea of Christ as the word, represented by a book, with the Magdalen as the reader learning of her own life story in a moment of reflection and repentance.  Her devotion to reading reflects her traditional status as the piously repentant harlot, as well as a prophetess or seer.  According to legend, the Magdalen lived the last 30 years of her life as a hermit in Sainte-Baume and is often shown with a book, reading or writing, symbolizing her later years of contemplation and repentance. By the 13th century she acquired the imagery of a once-shamed woman who, clothed in long hair, now hid her nakedness in exile and "borne by angels, floats between heaven and earth".The Magdalen's ointment jar was common in the lexicon of art in van der Weyden's period. Mary of Bethany may have used a jar when she repented of her sins at Christ's feet in her home; by the Renaissance, the image of the Magdalen was of the woman who bathed Christ's feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. She signified the "sacrament of anointing (Chrism and Unction)" by pouring precious spikenard on Christ's feet at his tomb.

Passage: Van Eyck gives Mary three roles: Mother of Christ, the personification of the "Ecclesia Triumphans" and Queen of Heaven, the latter apparent from her jewel-studded crown. The painting's near miniature size contrasts with Mary's unrealistically large stature compared with her setting. She physically dominates the cathedral; her head is almost level with the approximately sixty feet high gallery. This distortion of scale is found in a number of other van Eyck's Madonna paintings, where the arches of the mostly gothic interior do not allow headroom for the virgin. Pächt describes the interior as a "throne room", which envelopes her as if a "carrying case". Her monumental stature reflects a tradition reaching back to an Italo-Byzantine type – perhaps best known through Giotto's Ognissanti Madonna (c. 1310) – and emphasises her identification with the cathedral itself. Till-Holger Borchert says that van Eyck did not paint her as "the Madonna in a church", but instead as metaphor, presenting Mary "as the Church". This idea that her size represents her embodiment as the church was first suggested by Erwin Panofsky in 1941. Art historians in the 19th century, who thought the work was executed early in van Eyck's career, attributed her scale as the mistake of a relatively immature painter.The composition is today seen as deliberate, and opposite to both his Madonna of Chancellor Rolin and Arnolfini Portrait. These works show interiors seemingly too small to contain the figures, a device van Eyck used to create and emphasise an intimate space shared by donor and saint. The Virgin's height recalls his Annunciation of 1434–36, although in that composition there are no architectural fittings to give a clear scale to the building. Perhaps reflecting the view of a "relatively immature painter", a copy of the Annunciation by Joos van Cleve shows Mary at a more realistic proportion scale to her surroundings.Mary is presented as a Marian apparition; in this case she probably appears before a donor, who would have been kneeling in prayer in the now lost opposite panel. The idea of a saint appearing before laity was common in Northern art of the period, and is also represented in van Eyck's Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele (1434–36). There, the Canon is portrayed as if having just momentarily paused to reflect on a passage from his hand-held bible as the Virgin and Child with two saints appear before him, as if embodiments of his prayer.

Passage: The woman's hands are crossed tightly as if in prayer, and positioned so low in the painting as to appear to be resting on the frame. They are rendered as tightly compressed into a small area of the picture; it is likely van der Weyden did not want them to result in an area of high tone that might distract from the description of her head. Her slender fingers are minutely detailed; van der Weyden often indicated the social position of his models through his rendering of their face and hands. The sleeve of her dress extends beyond her wrists. Her fingers are folded in layers; their intricate portrayal is the most detailed element in the painting, and echoes the pyramidal form of the upper portion of the painting.Her eyes gaze downward in humility, in contrast to her relatively extravagant clothes. The piety of her expression is achieved through motifs common to van der Weyden's work. Her eyes and nose are elongated and her lower lip made fuller by the use of tone and pronounced finish. Some vertical lines around these features are emphasised, while her pupils are enlarged and her eyebrows slightly raised. In addition the contours of her face are highlighted in a manner that is slightly unnatural and abstract, and outside the usual spatial constraints of 15th-century human representation. This methodology was described by art historian Erwin Panofsky: "Rogier concentrated on certain salient features—salient both from a physiognomical and psychological point of view—which he expressed primarily by lines." Her high forehead and full mouth have been seen as suggestive of a nature at once intellectual, ascetic, and passionate, symbolic of "an unresolved conflict in her personality". Panofsky refers to a "smouldering excitability".The sitter is unknown, although some art historians have speculated on her identity. On the grounds of similarity of facial features, writer Wilhelm Stein suggested in the early 20th century that she might be Marie de Valengin, the illegitimate daughter of Philip the Good of Burgundy. However, this is a contentious assertion and not widely held. Because her hands are shown as resting on the painting's lower frame, art historians generally accept that this was an independent portrait, rather than a devotional work. It is possible that it was intended as a pendant to a picture of the woman's husband, however no other portrait has been suggested as a likely companion.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: On the eve of the first day of school, Brady and McKenzie celebrate the day they met and reminisce about the summer, while they watch Brady's favorite movie, Wet Side Story, the 1960s musical film that they got stuck in during the events of Teen Beach Movie. Mack dismisses Brady's fear that their relationship will change when they begin school. Mack then notices she lost the necklace she received while in Wet Side Story's universe.
At school, Brady and Mack reunite with their respective friends, Devon and Alyssa, who are surprised by their new relationship due to their opposite personalities. Brady and Mack are surprised by how differently they act at school. Later, in class, Brady is working on surfboard designs, but hides them when Mack asks him what he is doing. Brady becomes defensive when Mack meets a handsome boy named Spencer Watkins. Mack works on a "Save The Beach" dance, despite Brady's attempts to see her. Struggling with a college application, Brady works on a surfboard instead and accidentally forgets about a college fair that he was to attend with Mack, upsetting her to the point that they break up.
In the Wet Side Story universe, Lela and Tanner notice Mack's washed-up necklace and journey into the ocean, winding up on the same beach as Mack and Brady, who are still mad at each other. Mack and Brady tell Lela and Tanner that they are in the future, exciting them. Mack and Brady do not tell them they are film characters, choosing instead to show them that the real world is not as great as it seems, in hopes that they will return to their own world. Meanwhile, the characters in Wet Side Story are confused without Lela and Tanner.

Passage: Thirteen-year-old identical twin sisters Sam and Emma Stanton are opposites growing up in Evanston. Sam is a star  soccer player and a Tomboy; however, she wants to attract boys. Emma is a Girly girl who enjoys fashion and make-up, but she wants to be better at sports. Their dad Jerry, one of the Soccer coaches, is pressured by his wife Denise to pick Emma for the Hurricanes Co-ed team. Just as Jerry is about to pick Sam for his team after Round 2 of Soccer Tryouts is over, the Buzzards coach Willard Holmes picks Sam. But Sam is not thrilled to join a team which hasn't won in years and Emma finds it difficult to please her dad so the girls come up with a scheme to switch places in soccer so each can be on the team they prefer. As a result, Sam learns about letting others share the spotlight and Emma and Jerry finally become closer. Their mom catches them and the girls have to go back to their original teams. When everyone else is mad at them Sam and Emma both decided to quit soccer, but Jerry refuses to let them give up the sport. Denise becomes the Buzzards new coach to prove her husband wrong and actually gets the team into the finals. Along the way Emma realizes her skill as a goalie and becomes a better athlete. At the finals the Hurricanes regular goalie Richie gets injured while blocking a kick and is replaced by Emma. At 20 seconds left Sam kicks the ball into the goal, and it is blocked by Emma, tying the game. The Buzzards and the Hurricanes become co-champions of the Youth soccer league organisation tournament. Sam gets a date with Greg. Richie goes on a date with Emma. Jerry learns to treat his daughters equally and that winning isn't everything.

Passage: At Middlebury College in 1969, four young friends, Annie MacDuggan, Elise Elliot, Brenda Morelli, and Cynthia Swann, are graduating. Excited for the future and the potential it holds, the girls enthusiastically make a champagne toast celebrating their graduation as well as their friendship. As graduation gifts, valedictorian Cynthia presents the girls with matching Bulgari pearl necklaces. As the graduates take a commemorative picture of the four of them (presumably for the last time), Cynthia makes Annie, Brenda and Elise promise that they will always be there for each other throughout the remainder of their lives.
In the present time, the four friends eventually lose touch with one another, as evident when Cynthia is tearfully gazing at the picture of the four of them on that graduation day. Now wealthy and living in a luxurious penthouse, she gives her maid her own Bulgari pearl necklace (matching the three she gave to her friends on graduation day), and has the maid mail letters to them. She later walks outside on the balcony of her penthouse in a floor length fur coat, a cigarette and a drink, and then commits suicide by jumping to her death after learning through the tabloids that her ex-husband Gil (whom Cynthia made wealthy through her connections, according to narrator Annie) married his much younger mistress the day before.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: It is implied that, in the future, all plant life on Earth has become extinct. As many specimens as possible have been preserved in a series of  enormous, greenhouse-like geodesic domes, attached to a large spaceship named "Valley Forge", forming part of a fleet of American Airlines space freighters, currently just outside the orbit of Saturn.
Freeman Lowell, one of four crewmen aboard, is the resident botanist and ecologist who carefully preserves a variety of plants for their eventual return to Earth and the reforestation of the planet. Lowell spends most of his time in the domes, both cultivating the crops and attending to the animal life.
The crew receives orders to jettison and destroy the domes (with nuclear charges) and return the freighters to commercial service. After four of the six domes are jettisoned and blown up Lowell rebels and opts instead to save the plants and animals on his ship. Lowell kills one of his crew-mates who arrives to plant explosives in his favorite dome, and his right leg is seriously injured in the process. He then jettisons and triggers the destruction of one of the remaining domes, trapping and killing the remaining two crewmen.
Enlisting the aid of the ship's three "drones" (service robots), Huey, Dewey and Louie (named after Donald Duck's nephews), Lowell stages a fake premature explosion as a ruse and sends the Valley Forge careening towards Saturn in an attempt to hijack the ship and flee with the last forest dome. He then reprograms the drones to perform surgery on his leg and sets the Valley Forge on a risky course through Saturn's rings. Later, as the ship endures the rough passage, Drone 3 (Louie) is lost, but the ship and its remaining dome emerge relatively undamaged on the other side of the rings.
Lowell and the surviving drones, Huey and Dewey, set out into deep space to maintain the forest. Lowell reprograms Huey and Dewey to plant trees and play poker. Lowell begins speaking to them constantly, as if they are children.

Passage: A man is trying to escape from the titular Cube. Upon entering a trapped room, he is sprayed with a liquid that rapidly melts his entire body. The rooms in the Cube are being monitored from a remote observation room by two technicians, Eric Wynn and Dodd, who are unaware of who their employers are. The pair are shown playing chess during work, whereupon Wynn demonstrates mental calculator abilities which he uses to predict Dodd's moves. Wynn has also a hobby of drawing comics that portray him and Dodd as superheroes.
Wynn and Dodd are ordered to record the dream of a subject, Cassandra Rains. In her dream, Wynn sees Rains captured while walking in a forest with her daughter. Rains wakes up in the Cube and meets the other occupants: one of them, Robert Haskell, has the same tattoo on his forehead as the soldier who captured her. However, Haskell, like everyone else, only knows his own name and has no recollection of his former life or how he got there. According to what Wynn and Dodd know, everyone in the Cube faced a death sentence and volunteered to partake in psychological experiments instead. Rains' consent form, however, is not found in her file. The captives venture through the Cube, testing each room for traps by throwing a boot in it: most of them are killed anyway until only Rains and Haskell remain.

Passage: In the 2040s, a Martian research base, Tantalus Base outpost, is created. The eight person crew, who have been stationed there for six months, are only nineteen hours from the completion of their research mission. The spacecraft Aurora is inbound from Earth and will collect the team by lander. Mars scientist Marko Petrović has found samples that may point to life on the planet. Without revealing his discovery, he devises a ruse for a last sojourn on the surface. Crewmate Richard Harrington drives Petrović in a solar powered rover to the spot where he had found the sample. After he obtains soil with the biological agent present, a fissure swallows Petrović.
Captain Charles Brunel and crewmate Lauren Dalby plan to explore the pit to retrieve Petrović's body. Dalby remains at the pit but disappears before the team can return with equipment. Brunel authorizes Vincent Campbell to explore the pit and he finds a fungus-like life that grows in the fissure. Dalby and Petrović reappear at the main outpost, but the Martian bacteria has mutated them into fast, aggressive, zombie-like creatures with blackened skin and no trace of their original personalities. Harrington dies from a power drill attack by one of the zombies and later revives as one himself. The remaining crew hold off the zombies while Brunel and Campbell return. Brunel is also fatally injured and reanimates, which provides the crew with new insight into the symptoms: thirst, memory loss and aggression.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Aging 1970s rocker Danny Collins cannot give up his hard-living ways – but then his manager, Frank Grubman, uncovers a 40-year-old undelivered letter to him from John Lennon. After reading the letter, Danny decides to change his way of life. He travels to New Jersey to attempt to connect for the first time with his grown son, Tom Donnelly, whom he sired from a casual relationship with a woman who died 10 years before. Tom has a wife, Samantha and seven-year old daughter, Hope.
Seeking a new start, Danny forswears touring and checks into a Hilton hotel in New Jersey, much to the delight of the young staff. He begins to woo the hotel manager, Mary.
Tom initially rejects the father he believes abandoned him, but Danny persists, getting Hope, who has ADHD, into an exclusive school for children with special needs. He learns Tom has what doctors say may be terminal leukemia, inherited from his mother, and begins to attend doctor's visits with him. Tom's dislike of his father gradually gives way to the need for his support.
Inspired by his feelings for Mary and his happiness at having a family, Danny begins to write new songs. He books a one-night performance at a small club. When the audience demands he play his old material, however, Danny loses his nerve and gives a rote performance. Ashamed, he resumes doing drugs, damaging his relationship with Mary and his family. Tom confronts him, causing Danny to angrily reveal Tom's leukemia diagnosis, something Samantha had not been aware of. Tom, feeling betrayed, tells Danny never to bother his family again.

Passage: Lennon was born on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia (née Stanley) (1914–1958) and Alfred Lennon (1912–1976). Alfred was a merchant seaman of Irish descent who was away at the time of his son's birth. His parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John "Jack" Lennon, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. His father was often away from home but sent regular pay cheques to 9 Newcastle Road, Liverpool, where Lennon lived with his mother; the cheques stopped when he went absent without leave in February 1944. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, but Julia, by then pregnant with another man's child, rejected the idea. After her sister Mimi complained to Liverpool's Social Services twice, Julia gave her custody of Lennon. In July 1946, Lennon's father visited her and took his son to Blackpool, secretly intending to emigrate to New Zealand with him. Julia followed them – with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins – and after a heated argument, his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. In one account of this incident, Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her. According to author Mark Lewisohn, however, Lennon's parents agreed that Julia should take him and give him a home. A witness who was there that day, Billy Hall, has said that the dramatic portrayal of a young John Lennon being forced to make a decision between his parents is inaccurate. Lennon had no further contact with Alf for close to 20 years.Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence, Lennon lived at Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton, with Mimi and her husband George Toogood Smith, who had no children of their own. His aunt purchased volumes of short stories for him, and his uncle, a dairyman at his family's farm, bought him a mouth organ and engaged him in solving crossword puzzles. Julia visited Mendips on a regular basis, and when John was 11 years old, he often visited her at 1 Blomfield Road, Liverpool, where she played him Elvis Presley records, taught him the banjo, and showed him how to play "Ain't That a Shame" by Fats Domino. In September 1980, Lennon commented about his family and his rebellious nature:.

Passage: While Lennon and Starr remained consistently friendly during the years that followed the Beatles' break-up in 1970, his relationships with McCartney and Harrison varied. He was initially close to Harrison, but the two drifted apart after Lennon moved to the US in 1971. When Harrison was in New York for his December 1974 Dark Horse tour, Lennon agreed to join him on stage, but failed to appear after an argument over Lennon's refusal to sign an agreement that would finally dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership. Harrison later said that when he visited Lennon during his five years away from music, he sensed that Lennon was trying to communicate, but his bond with Ono prevented him. Harrison offended Lennon in 1980 when he published an autobiography that made little mention of him. Lennon told Playboy, "I was hurt by it. By glaring omission ... my influence on his life is absolutely zilch ... he remembers every two-bit sax player or guitarist he met in subsequent years. I'm not in the book."Lennon's most intense feelings were reserved for McCartney. In addition to attacking him with the lyrics of "How Do You Sleep?", Lennon argued with him through the press for three years after the group split. The two later began to reestablish something of the close friendship they had once known, and in 1974, they even played music together again before eventually growing apart once more. During McCartney's final visit in April 1976, Lennon said that they watched the episode of Saturday Night Live in which Lorne Michaels made a $3,000 offer to get the Beatles to reunite on the show. The pair considered going to the studio to make a joke appearance, attempting to claim their share of the money, but were too tired. Lennon summarised his feelings towards McCartney in an interview three days before his death: "Throughout my career, I've selected to work with ... only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono ... That ain't bad picking."Along with his estrangement from McCartney, Lennon always felt a musical competitiveness with him and kept an ear on his music. During his career break from 1975 until shortly before his death, according to Fred Seaman, Lennon and Ono's assistant at the time, Lennon was content to sit back as long as McCartney was producing what Lennon saw as mediocre material. Lennon took notice when McCartney released "Coming Up" in 1980, which was the year Lennon returned to the studio. "It's driving me crackers!" he jokingly complained, because he could not get the tune out of his head. That same year, Lennon was asked whether the group were dreaded enemies or the best of friends, and he replied that they were neither, and that he had not seen any of them in a long time. But he also said, "I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: On October 1, 2007, Columbia Records released the triple CD retrospective album Dylan, anthologising his entire career under the Dylan 07 logo. As part of this campaign, Mark Ronson produced a re-mix of Dylan's 1966 tune "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine", which was released as a maxi-single. This was the first time Dylan had sanctioned a re-mix of one of his classic recordings.The sophistication of the Dylan 07 marketing campaign was a reminder that Dylan's commercial profile had risen considerably since the 1990s. This first became evident in 2004, when Dylan appeared in a TV advertisement for Victoria's Secret lingerie. Three years later, in October 2007, he participated in a multi-media campaign for the 2008 Cadillac Escalade. Then, in 2009, he gave the highest profile endorsement of his career, appearing with rapper will.i.am in a Pepsi ad that debuted during the telecast of Super Bowl XLIII. The ad, broadcast to a record audience of 98 million viewers, opened with Dylan singing the first verse of "Forever Young" followed by will.i.am doing a hip hop version of the song's third and final verse.In October 2008, Columbia released The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 – Tell Tale Signs as both a two-CD set and a three-CD version with a 150-page hardcover book. The set contains live performances and outtakes from selected studio albums from Oh Mercy to Modern Times, as well as soundtrack contributions and collaborations with David Bromberg and Ralph Stanley. The pricing of the album—the two-CD set went on sale for $18.99 and the three-CD version for $129.99—led to complaints about "rip-off packaging" from some fans and commentators. The release was widely acclaimed by critics. The abundance of alternative takes and unreleased material suggested to one reviewer that this volume of old outtakes "feels like a new Bob Dylan record, not only for the astonishing freshness of the material, but also for the incredible sound quality and organic feeling of everything here.".

Passage: Bob Dylan released his album Together Through Life on April 28, 2009. In a conversation with music journalist Bill Flanagan, published on Dylan's website, Dylan explained that the genesis of the record was when French film director Olivier Dahan asked him to supply a song for his new road movie, My Own Love Song; initially only intending to record a single track, "Life Is Hard," "the record sort of took its own direction". Nine of the ten songs on the album are credited as co-written by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter.The album received largely favorable reviews, although several critics described it as a minor addition to Dylan's canon of work. Andy Gill wrote in The Independent that the record "features Dylan in fairly relaxed, spontaneous mood, content to grab such grooves and sentiments as flit momentarily across his radar. So while it may not contain too many landmark tracks, it's one of the most naturally enjoyable albums you'll hear all year."In its first week of release, the album reached number one in the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S., making Bob Dylan (67 years of age) the oldest artist to ever debut at number one on that chart. It also reached number one on the UK album chart, 39 years after Dylan's previous UK album chart topper New Morning. This meant that Dylan currently holds the record for the longest gap between solo number one albums in the UK chart.On October 13, 2009, Dylan released a Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart, comprising such Christmas standards as "Little Drummer Boy", "Winter Wonderland" and "Here Comes Santa Claus". Dylan's royalties from the sale of this album will benefit the charities Feeding America in the USA, Crisis in the UK, and the World Food Programme.The album received generally favorable reviews. The New Yorker commented that Dylan had welded a pre-rock musical sound to "some of his croakiest vocals in a while", and speculated that Dylan's intentions might be ironic: "Dylan has a long and highly publicized history with Christianity; to claim there's not a wink in the childish optimism of 'Here Comes Santa Claus' or 'Winter Wonderland' is to ignore a half-century of biting satire." In USA Today, Edna Gundersen pointed out that Dylan was "revisiting yuletide styles popularized by Nat King Cole, Mel Tormé, and the Ray Conniff Singers." Gundersen concluded that Dylan "couldn't sound more sentimental or sincere".In an interview published in The Big Issue, journalist Bill Flanagan asked Dylan why he had performed the songs in a straightforward style, and Dylan responded: "There wasn't any other way to play it. These songs are part of my life, just like folk songs. You have to play them straight too.".

Passage: Dylan began 1973 by signing with a new label, David Geffen's Asylum Records (and Island in the UK), when his contract with Columbia Records expired. On his next album, Planet Waves, he used the Band as backing group, while rehearsing for a tour. The album included two versions of "Forever Young", which became one of his most popular songs. As one critic described it, the song projected "something hymnal and heartfelt that spoke of the father in Dylan", and Dylan himself commented: "I wrote it thinking about one of my boys and not wanting to be too sentimental."Columbia Records simultaneously released Dylan, a collection of studio outtakes (almost exclusively covers), widely interpreted as a churlish response to Dylan's signing with a rival record label. In January 1974, Dylan returned to touring after seven years; backed by the Band, he embarked on a North American tour of 40 concerts. A live double album, Before the Flood, was on Asylum Records. Soon, according to Clive Davis, Columbia Records sent word they "will spare nothing to bring Dylan back into the fold". Dylan had second thoughts about Asylum, miffed that while there had been millions of unfulfilled ticket requests for the 1974 tour, Geffen had sold only 700,000 copies of Planet Waves. Dylan returned to Columbia Records, which reissued his two Asylum albums.
After the tour, Dylan and his wife became estranged. He filled a small red notebook with songs about relationships and ruptures, and recorded an album entitled Blood on the Tracks in September 1974. Dylan delayed the release and re-recorded half the songs at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis with production assistance from his brother, David Zimmerman.Released in early 1975, Blood on the Tracks received mixed reviews. In the NME, Nick Kent described "the accompaniments [as] often so trashy they sound like mere practice takes." In Rolling Stone, Jon Landau wrote that "the record has been made with typical shoddiness." Over the years critics came to see it as one of Dylan's greatest achievements. In Salon.com, Bill Wyman wrote: "Blood on the Tracks is his only flawless album and his best produced; the songs, each of them, are constructed in disciplined fashion. It is his kindest album and most dismayed, and seems in hindsight to have achieved a sublime balance between the logorrhea-plagued excesses of his mid-1960s output and the self-consciously simple compositions of his post-accident years." Novelist Rick Moody called it "the truest, most honest account of a love affair from tip to stern ever put down on magnetic tape.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: In 1714 Farrukhsiyar, the Mughal emperor, appointed Asif Jah I to be Viceroy of the Deccan, with the title Nizam-ul-Mulk (Administrator of the Realm). In 1724, Asif Jah I defeated Mubariz Khan to establish autonomy over the Deccan Suba, named the region Hyderabad Deccan, and started what came to be known as the Asaf Jahi dynasty. Subsequent rulers retained the title Nizam ul-Mulk and were referred to as Asif Jahi Nizams, or Nizams of Hyderabad. The death of Asif Jah I in 1748 resulted in a period of political unrest as his sons, backed by opportunistic neighbouring states and colonial foreign forces, contended for the throne. The accession of Asif Jah II, who reigned from 1762 to 1803, ended the instability. In 1768 he signed the treaty of Machilipatnam, surrendering the coastal region to the East India Company in return for a fixed annual rent.In 1769 Hyderabad city became the formal capital of the Nizams. In response to regular threats from Hyder Ali (Dalwai of Mysore), Baji Rao I (Peshwa of the Maratha Empire), and Basalath Jung (Asif Jah II's elder brother, who was supported by the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau), the Nizam signed a subsidiary alliance with the East India Company in 1798, allowing the British Indian Army to occupy Bolarum (modern Secunderabad) to protect the state's capital, for which the Nizams paid an annual maintenance to the British.Until 1874 there were no modern industries in Hyderabad. With the introduction of railways in the 1880s, four factories were built to the south and east of Hussain Sagar Lake, and during the early 20th century, Hyderabad was transformed into a modern city with the establishment of transport services, underground drainage, running water, electricity, telecommunications, universities, industries, and Begumpet Airport. The Nizams ruled their princely state from Hyderabad during the British Raj.After India gained independence, the Nizam declared his intention to remain independent rather than become part of the Indian Union. The Hyderabad State Congress, with the support of the Indian National Congress and the Communist Party of India, began agitating against Nizam VII in 1948. On 17 September that year, the Indian Army took control of Hyderabad State after an invasion codenamed Operation Polo. With the defeat of his forces, Nizam VII capitulated to the Indian Union by signing an Instrument of Accession, which made him the Rajpramukh (Princely Governor) of the state until 31 October 1956.

Passage: Pulakeshin II conquered the eastern Deccan, corresponding to the coastal districts of modern Andhra Pradesh in 616, defeating the remnants of the Vishnukundina kingdom. He appointed his brother Kubja Vishnuvardhana as Viceroy in 621. Thus the Eastern Chalukyas were originally of Kannada stock. After the death of Pulakeshin II, the Vengi Viceroyalty developed into an independent kingdom and included the region between Nellore and Visakhapatnam.After the decline of the Badami Chalukya empire in the mid-8th century, territorial disputes flared up between the Rashtrakutas, the new rulers of the western deccan, and the Eastern Chalukyas. For much of the next two centuries, the Eastern Chalukyas had to accept subordination towards the Rashtrakutas. Apart from a rare military success, such as the one by Vijayaditya II(c.808–847), it was only during the rule of Bhima I (c.892–921) that these Chalukyas were able to celebrate a measure of independence. After the death of Bhima I, the Andhra region once again saw succession disputes and interference in Vengi affairs by the Rashtrakutas.The fortunes of the Eastern Chalukyas took a turn around 1000. Danarnava, their king, was killed in battle in 973 by the Telugu Choda King Bhima who then imposed his rule over the region for twenty-seven years. During this time, Danarnava's two sons took refuge in the Chola kingdom. Choda Bhima's invasion of Tondaimandalam, a Chola territory, and his subsequent death on the battlefield opened up a new era in Chola–Chalukya relations. Saktivarman I, the elder son of Danarnava was crowned as the ruler of Vengi in 1000, though under the control of king Rajaraja Chola I. This new relationship between the Cholas and the coastal Andhra kingdom was unacceptable to the Western Chalukyas, who had by then replaced the Rashtrakutas as the main power in the western Deccan. The Western Chalukyas sought to brook the growing Chola influence in the Vengi region but were unsuccessful.Initially, the Eastern Chalukyas had encouraged Kannada language and literature, though, after a period of time, local factors took over and they gave importance to Telugu language. Telugu literature owes its growth to the Eastern Chalukyas.

Passage: The Vijayanagara Empire (also called Karnata Empire, and the Kingdom of Bisnegar by the Portuguese) was based in the Deccan Plateau region in South India. It was established in 1336 by Harihara I and his brother Bukka Raya I of Sangama Dynasty. The empire rose to prominence as a culmination of attempts by the southern powers to ward off Islamic invasions by the end of the 13th century. It lasted until 1646, although its power declined after a major military defeat in the Battle of Talikota in 1565 by the combined armies of the Deccan sultanates. The empire is named after its capital city of Vijayanagara, whose ruins surround present day Hampi, now a World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India. The writings of medieval European travelers such as Domingo Paes, Fernão Nunes, and Niccolò Da Conti, and the literature in local languages provide crucial information about its history. Archaeological excavations at Vijayanagara have revealed the empire's power and wealth.
The empire's legacy includes many monuments spread over South India, the best known of which is the group at Hampi. Different temple building traditions in South and Central India came together in the Vijayanagara Architecture style. This synthesis inspired architectural innovation in Hindu temples' construction. Efficient administration and vigorous overseas trade brought new technologies such as water management systems for irrigation. The empire's patronage enabled fine arts and literature to reach new heights in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Sanskrit, while Carnatic music evolved into its current form. The Vijayanagara Empire created an epoch in South Indian history that transcended regionalism by promoting Hinduism as a unifying factor.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Gauguin was foremost a painter; he came to ceramics around 1886, when he was taught by the French sculptor and ceramist Ernest Chaplet. They had been introduced by Félix Bracquemond who, inspired by the new French art pottery, was experimenting with the form. During that winter of 1886–87, Gauguin visited Chaplet's workshop at Vaugirard, where they collaborated on stoneware pots with applied figures or ornamental fragments and multiple handles.
Gauguin first visited Tahiti in 1891 and, attracted by the beauty of Tahitian women, undertook a set of sculptural mask-like portraits on paper. They evoke both melancholy and death, and conjure the state of faaturuma (brooding or melancholy); imagery and moods later used in the Oviri ceramic. Gauguin's first wood carvings in Tahiti were with a guava wood that quickly crumbled and have not survived.
He completed Oviri in the winter of 1894, during his return from Tahiti, and submitted it to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts 1895 salon opening in April the following year. There are two versions of what ensued: Charles Morice claimed in 1920 that Gauguin was "literally expelled" from the exhibition; in 1937 Ambroise Vollard wrote that the piece was admitted only when Chaplet threatened to withdraw his own works in protest. According to Bengt Danielsson, Gauguin was keen to increase his public exposure and availed of this opportunity by writing an outraged letter to Le Soir, bemoaning the state of modern ceramics.At the outset of 1897, Vollard addressed a letter to Gauguin about the possibility of casting his sculptures in bronze. Gauguin's response centred on Oviri:
I believe that my large statue in ceramic, the Tueuse ("The Murderess"), is an exceptional piece such as no ceramist has made until now and that, in addition, it would look very well cast in bronze (without retouching and without patina). In this way the buyer would not only have the ceramic piece itself, but also a bronze edition with which to make money.
Art historian Christopher Gray mentions three plaster casts, the fissured surfaces of which suggest that they were taken from a prior undocumented wood carving no longer extant. One was given to Daniel Monfreid and now belongs to the Musée départemental Maurice Denis "The Priory" in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Another version in plaster, with the surface finish of wood, was kept by Gustave Fayet, and subsequently formed part of the collection of his son, Léon. The third version was kept by the artist who made the casts. A number of bronzes were produced, including the version placed on Gauguin's grave at Atuona, cast by the Fondation Singer-Polignac and erected 29 March 1973.

Passage: Oviri (Tahitian for savage or wild) is an 1894 ceramic sculpture by the French artist Paul Gauguin. In Tahitian mythology, Oviri was the goddess of mourning. She is shown with long pale hair, and wild eyes, smothering a wolf with her feet, while clutching a cub in her arms. Art historians have presented multiple interpretations—usually that Gauguin intended it as an epithet to reinforce his self-image as a "civilised savage". Tahitian goddesses of her era had passed from folk memory by 1894, yet Gauguin romanticises the island's past as he reaches towards more ancient sources, including an Assyrian relief of a "master of animals" type, and Majapahit mummies. Other possible influences include preserved skulls from the Marquesas Islands, figures found at Borobudur, and a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in central Java.
Gauguin made three casts, each in partially glazed stoneware, and while several copies exist in plaster or bronze, the original cast is in the Musée d'Orsay.  His sales of the casts were not successful, and at a low financial and personal ebb he asked for one to be placed on his grave. There are only three other surviving comments of his on the figure: he described the figure as a strange and cruel enigma on an 1895 presentation mount of two impressions of a woodcut of Oviri for Stéphane Mallarmé; he referred to it as La Tueuse ("The Murderess") in an 1897 letter to Ambroise Vollard; and he appended an inscription referencing Honoré de Balzac's novel Séraphîta in a c. 1899 drawing. Oviri was exhibited at the 1906 Salon d'Automne (no. 57) where it influenced Pablo Picasso, who based one of the figures in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon on it.

Passage: William Etty was born in 1787 in York, the son of a miller and baker. He showed artistic promise from an early age, but his family were financially insecure, and at the age of 12 he left school to become an apprentice printer in Hull. On completing his seven-year indenture he moved to London "with a few pieces of chalk-crayons in colours", with the aim of emulating the Old Masters and becoming a history painter. Etty gained acceptance to the Royal Academy Schools in early 1807. After a year spent studying under renowned portrait painter Thomas Lawrence, Etty returned to the Royal Academy, drawing at the life class and copying other paintings. In 1821 the Royal Academy exhibited one of Etty's works, The Arrival of Cleopatra in Cilicia (also known as The Triumph of Cleopatra). The painting was extremely well received, and many of Etty's fellow artists greatly admired him. He was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828, ahead of John Constable. He became well respected for his ability to capture flesh tones accurately in painting and for his fascination with contrasts in skin tones.
Following the exhibition of Cleopatra, Etty attempted to reproduce its success, concentrating on painting further history paintings containing nude figures. He exhibited 15 paintings at the Summer Exhibition in the 1820s (including Cleopatra), and all but one contained at least one nude figure. In so doing Etty became the first English artist to treat nude studies as a serious art form in their own right, capable of being aesthetically attractive and of delivering moral messages. Although some nudes by foreign artists were held in private English collections, Britain had no tradition of nude painting, and the display and distribution of nude material to the public had been suppressed since the 1787 Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice. The supposed prurient reaction of the lower classes to his nude paintings caused concern throughout the 19th century. Many critics condemned his repeated depictions of female nudity as indecent, although his portraits of male nudes were generally well received. (Etty's male nude portraits were primarily of mythological heroes and classical combat, genres in which the depiction of male nudity was considered acceptable in England.) From 1832 onwards, needled by repeated attacks from the press, Etty remained a prominent painter of nudes but made conscious efforts to try to reflect moral lessons in his work.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: A young idealistic schoolteacher named Ruth Kirke is transporting a group of war orphans from South China to Calcutta when their steamship Tollare is torpedoed and sunk in the Pacific. Along with sailor Timothy Blake, they are the only passengers to survive the enemy attack. They are picked up by the steamship Westonia and taken to San Francisco, where immigration officials inform Ruth that the orphans will be held until a $500 bond is posted for each child.
With no money of their own, Ruth and Timothy go to the home of Commodore Thomas Spencer Holliday, the wealthy owner of their sunken cargo ship, who perished during the torpedo attack. When they appeal for financial assistance for the orphans, the commodore's family refuses. Desperate to help the children, Timothy tells the commodore's family that Ruth and the commodore were married aboard the Tollare before it was attacked. With the children's future at stake, Ruth reluctantly goes along with the deception.
Ruth, Timothy, and the eight orphans move into the Holliday mansion, where they soon meet the commodore's grandson, Thomas Spencer Holliday III. When a sceptical Tom questions Ruth about how she became his grandmother, Ruth explains that her Christian mission was destroyed in a Japanese bombing raid, and that she was sent south with eight European children, entrusted with their safety. Along the way, they encountered a dying Chinese woman, and Ruth agreed to care for her child as well. Moved by her personal story and her beautiful singing voice, Tom is soon smitten with the young woman.

Passage: In April 1942 in the Philippines, an American motor torpedo boat is destroyed by Japanese planes. The survivors, among them Ensign Chuck Palmer, make their way ashore on Cebu. Their commander orders them to split up. Chuck pairs up with Jim Mitchell and reaches Colonel Benson on Leyte, only to be told that he has been ordered by General Douglas MacArthur to surrender his forces soon.
Chuck helps Jeanne Martinez, a Frenchwoman married to a Filipino planter, get medical assistance for a pregnant woman. Jeanne pleads with Chuck to stay and fight, but he buys an outrigger canoe and recruits a crew of Air Corps soldiers in a desperate, but unsuccessful attempt to sail to Australia. When the boat founders, the crew is rescued by Miguel, a member of the Filipino resistance. The Americans evade capture and Chuck eventually meets Jeanne again, as well as her husband Juan, a secret supporter of the resistance movement.
Chuck is ordered to stay in the Philippines to help set up a network to gather intelligence on the Japanese. Later, Juan is beaten to death in front of Jeanne in an attempt to find out where the guerrillas are hiding out. Jeanne joins the resistance and is reunited with Chuck at Christmas 1943. They begin to fall in love.
After three years of fighting, Chuck, Jeanne, Jim and the rest of their band are trapped in a church by a Japanese patrol. Just when it looks as if they will be wiped out, squadrons of American planes appear overhead and explosions are heard, announcing the liberation of the Philippines is underway. The Japanese leave to face this greater threat.

Passage: The end of Patience Camp was signalled on the evening of 8 April, when the floe suddenly split. The camp now found itself on a small triangular raft of ice; a break-up of this would mean disaster, so Shackleton readied the lifeboats for the party's enforced departure. He had now decided they would try, if possible, to reach the distant Deception Island because a small wooden church had been reportedly erected for the benefit of whalers. This could provide a source of timber that might enable them to construct a seaworthy boat.At 1 p.m. on 9 April, the Dudley Docker was launched, and an hour later all three boats were away. Shackleton himself commanded the James Caird, Worsley the Dudley Docker, and navigating officer Hubert Hudson was nominally in charge of the Stancomb Wills, though because of his precarious mental state the effective commander was Tom Crean.The boats were surrounded by ice, dependent upon leads of water opening up, and progress was perilous and erratic. Frequently the boats were tied to floes, or dragged up onto them, while the men camped and waited for conditions to improve. Shackleton was wavering again between several potential destinations, and on 12 April, rejected the various island options and decided on Hope Bay, at the very tip of Graham Land. However, conditions in the boats, in temperatures sometimes as low as −20 °F (−29 °C), with little food and regular soakings in icy seawater, were wearing the men down, physically and mentally. Shackleton therefore decided that Elephant Island, the nearest of the possible refuges, was now the most practical option.On 14 April, the boats lay off the south-east coast of Elephant Island, but could not land as the shore consisted of perpendicular cliffs and glaciers. Next day the James Caird rounded the eastern point of the island, to reach the northern lee shore, and discovered a narrow shingle beach. Soon afterwards, the three boats, which had been separated during the previous night, were reunited at this landing place. It was apparent from high tide markings that this beach would not serve as a long-term camp, so the next day Wild and a crew set off in the Stancomb Wills to explore the coast for a safer site. They returned with news of a long spit of land, seven miles (11 km) to the west. With minimum delay the men returned to the boats and transferred to this new location, which they later christened Cape Wild.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: The Palace of Westminster, the medieval royal palace used as the home of the British parliament, was largely destroyed by fire on 16 October 1834. The blaze was caused by the burning of small wooden tally sticks which had been used as part of the accounting procedures of the Exchequer until 1826. The sticks were disposed of carelessly in the two furnaces under the House of Lords, which caused a chimney fire in the two flues that ran under the floor of the Lords' chamber and up through the walls.
The resulting fire spread rapidly throughout the complex and developed into the biggest conflagration in London between the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz of the Second World War; the event attracted large crowds which included several artists who provided pictorial records of the event. The fire lasted for most of the night and destroyed a large part of the palace, including the converted St Stephen's Chapel—the meeting place of the House of Commons—the Lords Chamber, the Painted Chamber and the official residences of the Speaker and the Clerk of the House of Commons.
The actions of Superintendent James Braidwood of the London Fire Engine Establishment ensured that Westminster Hall and a few other parts of the old Houses of Parliament survived the blaze. In 1836 a competition for designs for a new palace was won by Charles Barry.  Barry's plans, developed in collaboration with Augustus Pugin, incorporated the surviving buildings into the new complex. The competition established Gothic Revival as the predominant national architectural style and the palace has since been categorised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, of outstanding universal value.

Passage: After two rainy summers in 1664 and 1665, London had lain under an exceptional drought since November 1665, and the wooden buildings were tinder-dry after the long hot summer of 1666. A fire broke out at Thomas Farriner's bakery in Pudding Lane a little after midnight on Sunday 2 September. The family was trapped upstairs but managed to climb from an upstairs window to the house next door, except for a maidservant who was too frightened to try, who became the first victim. The neighbours tried to help douse the fire; after an hour, the parish constables arrived and judged that the adjoining houses had better be demolished to prevent further spread. The householders protested, and Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Bloodworth was summoned, who alone had the authority to override their wishes.
When Bloodworth arrived, the flames were consuming the adjoining houses and creeping towards the paper warehouses and flammable stores on the riverfront. The more experienced firemen were clamouring for demolition, but Bloodworth refused on the grounds that most premises were rented and the owners could not be found. Bloodworth is generally thought to have been appointed to the office of Lord Mayor as a yes man, rather than by possessing requisite capabilities for the job. He panicked when faced with a sudden emergency and, when pressed, made the oft-quoted remark, "Pish! A woman could piss it out", and left. After the City had been destroyed, Samuel Pepys looked back on the events and wrote in his diary on 7 September 1666: "People do all the world over cry out of the simplicity [the stupidity] of my Lord Mayor in general; and more particularly in this business of the fire, laying it all upon him."
Pepys was a senior official in the Navy Office by then, and he ascended the Tower of London on Sunday morning to view the fire from a turret. He recorded in his diary that the eastern gale had turned it into a conflagration. It had burned down several churches and, he estimated, 300 houses and reached the riverfront. The houses on London Bridge were burning.

Passage: Radical rebuilding schemes poured in for the gutted City and were encouraged by Charles. If it had been rebuilt under some of these plans, London would have rivalled Paris in Baroque magnificence (see Evelyn's plan on the right). The Crown and the City authorities attempted to establish "to whom all the houses and ground did in truth belong" to negotiate with their owners about compensation for the large-scale remodelling that these plans entailed, but that unrealistic idea had to be abandoned. Exhortations to bring workmen and measure the plots on which the houses had stood were mostly ignored by people worried about day-to-day survival, as well as by those who had left the capital; for one thing, with the shortage of labour following the fire, it was impossible to secure workmen for the purpose. Apart from Wren and Evelyn, it is known that Robert Hooke, Valentine Knight, and Richard Newcourt proposed rebuilding plans.
With the complexities of ownership unresolved, none of the grand Baroque schemes could be realised for a City of piazzas and avenues; there was nobody to negotiate with, and no means of calculating how much compensation should be paid. Instead, much of the old street plan was recreated in the new City, with improvements in hygiene and fire safety: wider streets, open and accessible wharves along the length of the Thames, with no houses obstructing access to the river, and, most importantly, buildings constructed of brick and stone, not wood. New public buildings were created on their predecessors' sites; perhaps the most famous is St Paul's Cathedral and its smaller cousins, Christopher Wren's 50 new churches.
On Charles' initiative, a Monument to the Great Fire of London was erected near Pudding Lane, designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, standing 61 metres (200 ft) tall and known simply as "The Monument". It is a familiar London landmark which has since given its name to a tube station. In 1668, accusations against the Catholics were added to the inscription on the Monument which read, in part:
The inscription remained until after the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 when it was removed in 1830 following a successful campaign by City Solicitor Charles Pearson.Another monument marks the spot where the fire stopped: the Golden Boy of Pye Corner in Smithfield. According to the inscription, it was evidence of God's wrath on the City of London for the sin of gluttony that the fire started at Pudding Lane and stopped at Pye Corner.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: The core of the site covers about 6.5 square kilometres (2.5 sq mi) and includes remains of some 70 monumental structures positioned around a dozen plazas. Takalik Abaj has 2 ballcourts and over 239 known stone monuments, including impressive stelae and altars. The granite used to make monuments in Olmec and early Maya styles is much different from the soft limestone used in the Petén cities. The site is also noted for its hydraulic systems, including a temazcal or sauna bath with a subterranean drainage, and Preclassic tombs found in excavations from the late 1990s onwards by Drs. Marion Popenoe de Hatch, Christa Schieber de Lavarreda and Miguel Orrego, from the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes.
The structures at Takalik Abaj are spread among four groups; the Central, North and West Groups are clustered together but the South Group is located about 5 km (3.1 mi) to the south. The site is naturally defensible, being bordered by steep ravines. The site is spread over a series of nine terraces, which vary in width from 140 to 220 metres (460 to 720 ft) and have faces varying in height from 4.6 to 9.4 metres (15 to 31 ft). These terraces are not uniformly oriented, instead the direction of their retaining faces depends upon the lie of the local terrain. The three main terraces supporting the city are artificial, with over 10 metres (33 ft) of fill being used in places.When Takalik Abaj was at its greatest extent, major architecture in the city covered an area of approximately 2 by 4 kilometres (1.2 by 2.5 mi), although the area occupied by residential construction has not been determined.
The Central Group occupies Terraces 1 to 5, which were artificially levelled. The group contains 39 structures arranged around plazas that are open on the north and south sides. The Central Group was first occupied in the Middle Preclassic and contains a concentration of more than 100 stone monuments.
The West Group consists of 21 structures on Terrace 6, which was also artificially levelled. The structures are arranged around plazas that were left open on the east side. Seven monuments have been found in this group. The West Group is bordered by the rivers Nima on the west and the San Isidro on the east. A notable find in the West Group was the discovery of some jade masks there. The West Group was occupied from the Late Preclassic through to at least the Late Classic.

Passage: After Quiriguá's pivotal victory over Copán in 738, K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat rebuilt the main group in the image of Copán itself. Thus, the acropolis, palace, and ballcourt all lie at the southern end of the Great Plaza. The ceremonial centre is laid out around three plazas, the northernmost is the Great Plaza. This plaza measures 325 m (1,066 ft) from north to south and is the largest plaza in the whole Maya region. At the southern end of the Great Plaza is the Ballcourt Plaza, surrounded on three sides by structures associated with the acropolis. The Acropolis Plaza is a fully enclosed plaza within the acropolis itself. The area to the west of the Ballcourt Plaza was probably the riverside docking area and there is evidence that the southern part of the Great Plaza was a marketplace. A number of ceramic-lined wells have been excavated close to the site core, these were all built in the 8th century and although some continued in use into the 9th century, none are known to have been built that late.
1A-1 is an enormous platform forming the northern part of the Great Plaza. It measures 100 by 85 metres (328 by 279 ft) and rises 0.5 metres (20 in) above the level of the southern part of the plaza. It forms the northern portion of the Great Plaza, being built by K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat when he extended the plaza northward. The platform was built from river cobbles and was paved with stone slabs. Platform 1A-1 supported the stelae A, C, D, E and F and Zoomorph B. The platform was built in two phases over about 20 years.
1A-3 is a large mound marking the northern edge of the Great Plaza. It originally measured 82.5 by 20 metres (271 by 66 ft) and was 7 metres (23 ft) high. A 63-metre (207 ft) wide stairway climbed the southern face of the structure from the plaza. The structure was later extended to the north but this second phase of construction was never finished.
The acropolis is the largest architectural complex at Quiriguá, it lies at the southern limit of the ceremonial centre of the city. It is a complex construction, with new buildings and features being added over time. Construction of the acropolis began in 550 and continued through to 810 when the site was abandoned. The acropolis was a palace complex used primarily as an elite residence and for administrative purposes. The acropolis complex includes structures 1B-1, 1B-2, 1B-3, 1B-4, 1B-5 and 1B-6. Excavations of the acropolis encountered the fallen remains of corbel arches, but none are still standing.

Passage: Tak'alik Ab'aj (; Mayan pronunciation: [takˀaˈlik aˀ'ɓaχ] (listen); Spanish: [takaˈlik aˈβax]) is a pre-Columbian archaeological site in Guatemala. It was formerly known as Abaj Takalik; its ancient name may have been Kooja. It is one of several Mesoamerican sites with both Olmec and Maya features. The site flourished in the Preclassic and Classic periods, from the 9th century BC through to at least the 10th century AD, and was an important centre of commerce, trading with Kaminaljuyu and Chocolá. Investigations have revealed that it is one of the largest sites with sculptured monuments on the Pacific coastal plain. Olmec-style sculptures include a possible colossal head, petroglyphs and others. The site has one of the greatest concentrations of Olmec-style sculpture outside of the Gulf of Mexico.Takalik Abaj is representative of the first blossoming of Maya culture that had occurred by about 400 BC. The site includes a Maya royal tomb and examples of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions that are among the earliest from the Maya region. Excavation is continuing at the site; the monumental architecture and persistent tradition of sculpture in a variety of styles suggest the site was of some importance.Finds from the site indicate contact with the distant metropolis of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico and imply that Takalik Abaj was conquered by it or its allies. Takalik Abaj was linked to long-distance Maya trade routes that shifted over time but allowed the city to participate in a trade network that included the Guatemalan highlands and the Pacific coastal plain from Mexico to El Salvador.
Takalik Abaj was a sizeable city with the principal architecture clustered into four main groups spread across nine terraces. While some of these were natural features, others were artificial constructions requiring an enormous investment in labour and materials. The site featured a sophisticated water drainage system and a wealth of sculptured monuments.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Mesopropithecus is a genus within the sloth lemur family (Palaeopropithecidae), which includes three other genera: Palaeopropithecus, Archaeoindris, and Babakotia. This family in turn belongs to the infraorder Lemuriformes, which includes all the Malagasy lemurs.Mesopropithecus was named in 1905 by Herbert F. Standing using four skulls found at Ampasambazimba. He noted that the animal had characteristics of both Palaeopropithecus and the living sifakas (Propithecus). In 1936, Charles Lamberton defined Neopropithecus globiceps (based on one skull from Tsirave) and N. platyfrons (based on two skulls from Anavoha).  He thought that Neopropithecus was a separate, intermediate genus between Mesopropithecus and Propithecus.  In 1971, paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall merged N. platyfrons into N. globiceps and Neopropithecus into Mesopropithecus.Until 1986, Mesopropithecus was only known from cranial (skull) remains from central and southern Madagascar, and because these are similar to teeth and skulls of living indriids, particularly those of Verreaux's sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi), Mesopropithecus was often assigned to the family Indriidae.  For example, in 1974, Tattersall and Schwartz labeled Mesopropithecus as a sister group to sifakas.  With the discovery of an associated skeleton of M. dolichobrachion near Ankarana in 1986, it became clear that Mesopropithecus shared distinct traits with sloth lemurs.  Unlike the indriids, but like the sloth lemurs, they had elongated forelimbs and other adaptations for arboreal suspension (hanging in trees), linking them most closely to family Paleaeopropithecidae.  A comparison of these morphological traits between the sloth lemurs and indriids suggest that Mesopropithecus was the first genus to diverge within the sloth lemur family.

Passage: Based on studies of morphology, the bluebuck has historically been classified as either a distinct species or as a subspecies of the roan antelope. After its extinction, some 19th-century naturalists began to doubt its validity as a species, with some believing the museum specimens to be small or immature roan antelopes, and both species were lumped together under the name A. leucophaeus by the English zoologist George Robert Gray in 1821. The Austrian zoologist Franz Friedrich Kohl pointed out the distinct features of the bluebuck in 1866, followed by Sclater and Thomas, who rejected the synonymy in 1899.In 1974 the American biologist Richard G. Klein showed (based on fossils) that the bluebuck and roan antelope occurred sympatrically on the coastal plain of the southwestern Cape from Oakhurst to Uniondale during the early Holocene, supporting their status as separate species. In 1996 an analysis of mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bluebuck specimen in Vienna showed that it is outside the clade containing the roan and sable antelopes. The study therefore concluded that the bluebuck is a distinct species, and not merely a subspecies of the roan antelope as was supposed. The cladogram below shows the position of the bluebuck among its relatives, following the 1996 analysis:.

Passage: By the 18th century, the menagerie was open to the public; admission cost three half-pence or the supply of a cat or dog to be fed to the lions. By the end of the century, that had increased to 9 pence. A particularly famous inhabitant was Old Martin, a large grizzly bear given to George III by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1811. An 1800 inventory also listed a tiger, leopards, a hyena, a large baboon, various types of monkeys, wolves and "other animals". By 1822, however, the collection included only a grizzly bear, an elephant and some birds. Additional animals were then introduced. In 1828 there were over 280 representing at least 60 species as the new keeper Alfred Copps was actively acquiring animals.After the death of George IV in 1830, a decision was made to close down the Menagerie. In 1831, most of the stock was moved to the London Zoo which had opened in 1828. The last of the animals left in 1835, relocated to Regent's Park. This decision was made after an incident, although sources vary as to the specifics: either a lion was accused of biting a soldier, or a sailor, Ensign Seymour, had been bitten by a monkey. The Menagerie buildings were removed in 1852 but the Keeper of the Royal Menagerie was entitled to use the Lion Tower as a house for life. Consequently, even though the animals had long since left the building, the tower was not demolished until the death of Copps, the last keeper, in 1853.In 1999, physical evidence of lion cages was found, one being 2x3 metres (6.5x10 feet) in size, very small for a lion that can grow to be 2.5 meters (approximately 8 feet) long. In 2008, the skulls of two male Barbary lions (now extinct in the wild) from northwest Africa were found in the moat area of the Tower. Radiocarbon tests dated them from 1280–1385 and 1420–1480. During 2011 an exhibition was hosted at the Tower with fine wire sculptures by Kendra Haste.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.