TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given a question, along with three passages, 1, 2, and 3. Your job is to determine which passage can be used to answer the question by searching for further information using terms from the passage. Indicate your choice as 1, 2, or 3.
PROBLEM: Question: What country is it perceived that Marcos went on a diplomatic mission to in 1417? Passage 1:He first appears in Constantinople in 1401, qualified as an oikeios of the emperor. In 1417 he was possibly sent on a diplomatic mission to the Venetians in the Morea. In 1422 and again in 1429 he was sent by Emperor John VIII Palaiologos as an envoy to the Ottoman Sultan Murad II. At the time he had the relatively lowly rank of protovestiarites, but was quickly promoted to protostrator and then to the senior rank of megas stratopedarches, which he held already during his mission in 1430 to Pope Martin V. During his return from the mission to the Pope, on orders from the Emperor, he raised Thomas Palaiologos to the rank of Despot in the Morea. He led two more missions abroad, one in 1433 to Pope Eugene IV, and one in 1438 to Venice.
 Passage 2:Truman had acceded to the presidency in April 1945 after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Defeating attempts to drop him from the ticket, Truman won the presidential nomination at the 1948 Democratic National Convention. The Democratic convention's civil rights plank caused a walk-out by several Southern delegates, who launched a third-party "Dixiecrat" ticket led by Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. The Dixiecrats hoped to win enough electoral votes to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives, where they could extract concessions from either Dewey or Truman in exchange for their support. Truman also faced a challenge from the left in the form of former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who launched the Progressive Party and challenged Truman's confrontational Cold War policies. Dewey, who was the leader of his party's moderate eastern wing and had been the 1944 Republican presidential nominee, defeated Senator Robert A. Taft and other challengers at the 1948 Republican National Convention.
 Passage 3:The 2nd World Water Forum held in The Hague in March 2000 raised some controversies that exposed the multilateral nature and imbalance the demand and supply management of freshwater. While donor organizations, private and government institutions backed by the World Bank, believe that freshwater should be governed as an economic good by appropriate pricing, NGOs however, held that freshwater resources should be seen as a social good. The concept of network governance where all stakeholders form partnerships and voluntarily share ideas towards forging a common vision can be used to resolve this clash of opinion in freshwater management. Also, the implementation of any common vision presents a new role for NGOs because of their unique capabilities in local community coordination, thus making them a valuable partner in network governance.


SOLUTION: 1

PROBLEM: Question: Did Strings second album 2 have any hits in the United States? Passage 1:The Akademisches Kunstmuseum (English: Academic Museum of Antiquities ) was founded in 1818 and has one of the largest collections of plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures in the world. At this time collections of plaster casts were mainly used in the instruction of students at art academies. They were first used in the instruction of university students in 1763 by Christian Gottlob Heyne at University of Göttingen. The Akademisches Kunstmuseum in Bonn was the first of its kind, as at this time collections at other universities were scattered around universities libraries. The first director was Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, who also held a professorship of archaeology. His tenure was from 1819 until his retirement in 1854. He was succeeded by Otto Jahn and Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, who shared the directorship. From 1870 to 1889 Reinhard Kekulé von Stradonitz, nephew of the famous organic chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, was the director. In 1872 the museum moved to a new building that was formerly used by the department of anatomy. The building was constructed from 1823 to 1830 and designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Hermann Friedrich Waesemann. Other directors of the museum were Georg Loeschcke (from 1889 to 1912), Franz Winter (from 1912 to 1929), Richard Delbrück (from 1929 to 1940), Ernst Langlotz (from 1944 to 1966), Nikolaus Himmelmann (from 1969 to 1994) and Harald Mielsch (since 1994). All directors, with the exception of Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl held a professorship of archaeology at the university.
 Passage 2:Penzias was born in Munich, Germany, the son of Justine (née Eisenreich) and Karl Penzias, who ran a leather business. His grandparents had come to Munich from Poland and were among the leaders of the Reichenbach Strasse Shul. At age six, he and his brother Gunther were among the Jewish children evacuated to Britain as part of the Kindertransport rescue operation. Some time later, his parents also fled Nazi Germany for the U.S., and the family settled in the Garment District of New York City in 1940. In 1946, Penzias became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1951 and after enrolling to study chemistry at the City College of New York, he changed majors and graduated 1954 with a degree in physics, ranked near the top of his class.
 Passage 3:In 1990 the band signed with EMI Records and released their debut album, Strings. Their initial experiments with synthesised sounds and rhythms were not immediately recognised, although Strings sold 20,000 copies during its first week after release. Two years later the band released their second album, 2, which included the critically acclaimed single "Sar Kiye Yeh Pahar". The song was first aired on MTV Asia, and led the band to widespread fame. After the release of 2, the quartet disbanded to focus on their studies and careers. In 2000 Maqsood and Kapadia released Duur, which revived the band's popularity, and followed it with Dhaani in 2003. This album included the single "Najane Kyun", which was part of the soundtrack for the Hollywood film Spider-Man 2. Following Junoon and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Strings went to India (where they found remixes of one of their early songs playing in clubs). In 2008 Strings released their fifth album, Koi Aanay Wala Hai, with the singles "Yeh Hai Meri Kahani" and "Aakhri Alvida" (included on the soundtracks for Bollywood's Zinda and Shootout at Lokhandwala). The album was co-produced by Bollywood actor John Abraham, and was successful in Pakistan and India.


SOLUTION: 3

PROBLEM: Question: How old was James's grandfather when he was born? Passage 1:The son of Thomas Butler, 6th Earl of Ossory and his wife Emilia (née van Nassau-Beverweerd), and grandson of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, Butler was born in Dublin and was educated in France and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford. On the death of his father on 30 July 1680 he became Baron Butler in the English peerage and Earl of Ossory by courtesy. He obtained command of a cavalry regiment in Ireland in 1683, and having received an appointment at court on the accession of James II, he served against the Duke of Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685. Having succeeded his grandfather as Duke of Ormonde on 21 July 1688, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Garter on 28 September 1688. In 1688 he also became Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin and Chancellor of the University of Oxford.
 Passage 2:Snyder was born in Kankakee, Illinois, the daughter of Idelle (Bonham) and John Marshall Snyder, Sr., a director of research. She opened in Jules Feiffer's comedy, Knock Knock, and went on to win the Clarence Derwent Award for the "most promising female [actor] on the metropolitan scene" for the 1975–76 season. She won Best Actress in the 1977–78 season in the annual awards given by the Outer Critics Circle for her role in Fifth of July. From 1978–1983, she was a regular on the ABC soap opera, One Life to Live, playing a hooker with a heart of gold, Katrina Karr. She appeared in the Lanford Wilson play, Angels Fall, in 1982, which was nominated for a Tony Award, and in Wilson's Book of Days at the Signature Theater in 2002.
 Passage 3:In March 1996, a group of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported that they had serendipitously produced the first identifiably metallic hydrogen for about a microsecond at temperatures of thousands of kelvins, pressures of over , and densities of approximately . The team did not expect to produce metallic hydrogen, as it was not using solid hydrogen, thought to be necessary, and was working at temperatures above those specified by metallization theory. Previous studies in which solid hydrogen was compressed inside diamond anvils to pressures of up to , did not confirm detectable metallization. The team had sought simply to measure the less extreme electrical conductivity changes they expected. The researchers used a 1960s-era light-gas gun, originally employed in guided missile studies, to shoot an impactor plate into a sealed container containing a half-millimeter thick sample of liquid hydrogen. The liquid hydrogen was in contact with wires leading to a device measuring electrical resistance. The scientists found that, as pressure rose to , the electronic energy band gap, a measure of electrical resistance, fell to almost zero. The band-gap of hydrogen in its uncompressed state is about , making it an insulator but, as the pressure increases significantly, the band-gap gradually fell to . Because the thermal energy of the fluid (the temperature became about due to compression of the sample) was above , the hydrogen might be considered metallic.


SOLUTION:
1