• A few commented examples illustrating semantic relation matching in Webclopedia

Question 201: What was the name of the first Russian astronaut to do a spacewalk?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• The launch of the U.S. "Discovery" space shuttle on which a Russian cosmonaut is to make the first flight was postponed from January 20 to February 3 because of malfunctions in the craft's engines, TASS learned from reliable sources in the Russian space business on Monday. 35 year-old Sergey Krikalyov is the first Russian cosmonaut to fly on board the U.S. space shuttle, according to a U.S.-Russian agreement.
  [Score: 373.56177; 01/18/94; FBIS3-56397]
• Among the honored guests of the air show are Col-Gen of Aviation Petr Deynekin, commander in chief of the Russian Air Forces; Valentina Tereshkova, first woman astronaut; Vladimir Kuzmin, general director of MAPO [Moscow Aviation Production Association]; and Mikhail Simonov, general designer of the ANPK [Aviation Scientific Production Complex] "OKB Sukhoy" [Sukhoy Experimental Design Bureau].
  [Score: 331.5144; 03/15/94; FBIS3-23675]
• On March 18, 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov left his ``Voskhod II'' capsule and remained outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.
  [Score: 324.26236; 03/06/89; AP890306-0206]
• Jean-Loup Chretien of France and Soviet cosmonaut Alexander Volkov began their spacewalk at 12:57 p.m.
  [Score: 323.6641; 12/09/88; AP881209-0160]
• US astronaut Jeff Hoffman walking out on Saturday from the space shuttle Endeavour on the first of five spacewalks to repair the Hubble telescope.
  [Score: 323.1452; 93/12/06; FT934-4132]

Trec9 results: 1 0 1 1 0 30 (4.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Leonov

Question 202: Where is Belize located?
Qtargets: I-EN-CONTINENT&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-WORLD-REGION&S-PROPER-NAME, C-AT-LOCATION (0.5)

• But leaders of Caricom - set up in 1973 and consisting of English-speaking countries in the Caribbean basin, Belize in Central America and Guyana in South America - have rejected the US criticism.
  [Score: 245.91438; 93/08/18; FT933-8084]
• Visitors to Belize in Central America should exercise caution to avoid becoming crime victims, says a travel advisory from the State Department.;
  [Score: 245.91438; 91/11/03; SJMN91-06308096]
• Colombia should have been listed as being in South America, Oman in the Middle East, Belize in Central America, Mexico in North America and Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean.
  [Score: 245.91438; 08/14/90; LA081490-0154]
• Mr Ismael Garcia, Belize's ambassador to Central America, has concluded that there is now an opportunity for meaningful co-operation in trade and agriculture.
  [Score: 241.07327; 92/09/22; FT923-1582]
• CENTRAL AMERICA's dirty wars have left Belize with one of the world's least known refugee problems: Belize has absorbed in 10 years an influx of foreigners equivalent to one-fifth of its population.
  [Score: 237.69383; 92/09/22; FT923-1583]

Trec9 results: 6 5 1 0 1 20 (27.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: south of Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula A: in Central America A: in the Central American isthmus A: in the Caribbean A: Belize is both Caribbean and Central American A: between the Caribbean and Central America A: in the Caribbean Basin A: central America A: Gulf of Honduras, bordered by Belize A: neighbouring Guatemala A: Central American country of Belize A: In Central America A: Honduras -- next door to Belize

Question 203: How much folic acid should an expectant mother get daily?
Qtargets: I-EN-MASS-QUANTITY

• "One or two milligrams of folic acid a day probably won't hurt, providing there is no pernicious anemia (the symptoms of which may be masked by taking folic acid)," said Dr. Richard Wright, senior staff cardiologist at St. John's Hospital and Health Center, Santa Monica, emphasizing that the concept needs further study.
  [Score: 250.1607; 04/17/90; LA041790-0018]
• He recommends two milligrams a day of folic acid, which is a member of the B vitamin family.
  [Score: 244.96786; 04/17/90; LA041790-0018]
• Also, the term "good source" is based on the RDA of 400 micrograms daily for a pregnant woman.
  [Score: 242.08092; 06/14/90; LA061490-0026]
• ``Supplements of 30 milligrams of ferrous iron are recommended daily during the second and third trimesters'' for the general population of pregnant women, the study said.
  [Score: 226.79886; 06/06/90; AP900606-0155]
• They were on the road with me all during Irene and saw their mother go to 96 pounds.
  [Score: 204.03625; 10/05/90; LA100590-0145]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 400 micrograms

Question 204: What type of bridge is the Golden Gate Bridge?
Qtargets: S-NP, S-NOUN
Qargs: bridge, type

• Unlike the state's nine other toll bridges, the Golden Gate Bridge does not come under the purview of the State Department of Transportation.
  [Score: 414.78992; 91/06/01; SJMN91-06153001]
• The Seto Ohashi Bridge, consisting of six suspension bridges in the style of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, will be formally connected to that Californian symbol in a sister bridge ceremony scheduled for Tuesday.
  [Score: 399.03125; 04/03/88; AP880403-0006]
• To keep the city's main bridges open, authorities closed the Golden Gate Bridge to pedestrians early Thursday and massed along the on-ramps to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which protesters closed for periods on Tuesday and Wednesday.
  [Score: 339.881; 91/01/18; SJMN91-06018206]
• To keep the city's main bridges open, authorities closed the Golden Gate Bridge to pedestrians early Thursday and massed along the on-ramps to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which protesters closed for periods on Tuesday and Wednesday.;
  [Score: 339.881; 91/01/18; SJMN91-06018161]
• Golden Gate officials said the precautions were taken at the request of the California Highway Patrol after it learned the planned demonstration at the Federal Building would move to the Golden Gate and Bay bridges.;
  [Score: 290.25955; 91/01/17; SJMN91-06017207]

Trec9 results: 2 1 0 0 0 30 (7.6%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: suspension bridge

Question 205: What is the population of the Bahamas?
Qtargets: Q-POPULATION, I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Mr Ingraham's charges of 'impropriety' are unlikely to excite the 245,000 people of the Bahamas.
  [Score: 395.28323; 93/01/14; FT931-15230]
• no answer
• The Virgin Islands' population is 106,000, and Puerto Rico has 3.3 million people.
  [Score: 355.9102; 09/18/89; AP890918-0035]
• That island, which includes the Bahamas capital city of Nassau, is the most populated with an estimated 135,000 people.
  [Score: 354.57056; 09/19/89; AP890919-0002]
• Paul commands the powerful Dessalines Battalion that backs up police in this capital city with a population of 1 million.
  [Score: 309.5348; 03/14/88; AP880314-0214]

Trec9 results: 1 0 1 0 0 31 (4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 245,000 people

Question 206: How far away is the moon?
Qtargets: I-EN-DISTANCE-QUANTITY

• Instead, when it gets about 450 miles off the ground - the moon is 240,000 miles away - it will turn to face the ground and start taking pictures.
  [Score: 266.08038; 93/09/28; FT933-678]
• And in November, when high tides are again expected with the full moon and perigee occurring one day apart, the moon's perigee will be about 300 miles farther away than this month.
  [Score: 264.31052; 10/06/89; AP891006-0107]
• While it only takes three days to go to the moon 250,000 miles away, a round-trip journey to Mars at least 35 million miles away would take a minimum of 14 months.
  [Score: 262.86365; 07/21/89; AP890721-0011]
• ``With a 28-power telescope you can see it on the moon 250,000 miles away.
  [Score: 259.5985; 04/25/90; AP900425-0013]
• The perigee in September, for example, found the moon 1,500 miles farther away.
  [Score: 258.3277; 10/06/89; AP891006-0107]

Trec9 results: 6 3 2 1 0 21 (25.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 250,000 miles away A: 230,000 miles A: over 221,000 miles from Earth A: about 240,000 miles away A: 238,855 miles away

Question 207: What is Francis Scott Key best known for?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Francis Scott Key

• As they run, Ray and the others carry a replica of the 15-star flag that flew over Fort McHenry when it was being bombarded by the British in 1814, inspiration for Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner.
  [Score: 1000.0; 91/06/26; SJMN91-06178292]
• More than a century before the Watergate scandal engulfed the Nixon White House, a lurid sex scandal resulted in the death of the son of Francis Scott Key, who wrote ``The Star-Spangled Banner.''
  [Score: 1000.0; 05/17/90; AP900517-0014]
• Composer Francis Scott Key's handwriting was strong and clear and is still easy to read, even with a few fold marks on it and a couple of words crossed out.
  [Score: 1000.0; 91/09/01; SJMN91-06245191]
• Of course, when Francis Scott Key wrote that line, as well as the others that precede and follow it, he kept the lyrics much simpler: "O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave."
  [Score: 1000.0; 91/04/16; SJMN91-06107135]
• On Sept. 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote his famous poem ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812.
  [Score: 1000.0; 09/04/89; AP890904-0154]

Trec9 results: 7 1 2 2 3 18 (28.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: to pen the national anthem A: the man associated with the national anthem A: to write ``The Star-Spangled Banner.'' A: wrote his famous poem ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' A: Francis Scott Key wrote the national anthem A: the anthem's composer A: Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner A: Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner"

Question 208: What state has the most Indians?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-STATE-DISTRICT

• ``What's so exciting about these dates is that until now we have had no evidence to suggest that the earliest Indians might have hunted elephants in the Maine region,'' said archaeologist Bruce Bourque of the Maine State Museum.
  [Score: 225.97052; 12/20/90; AP901220-0134]
• Dean Crist, president of Stop Treaty Abuse, the group that created the beer, said his home state of Wisconsin and perhaps 40 other states are having disputes over treaties giving Indians rights to fish, hunt game and use other natural resources.
  [Score: 224.71951; 04/29/88; AP880429-0157]
• State police want permission to send three investigators onto the Ganienkah land for one hour, but the Indians, like other Mohawks in northern New York, claim federal or state authorities have no jurisdiction on their land.
  [Score: 222.38278; 04/01/90; AP900401-0071]
• The Guatemalan Indians, along with Mixtec Indians from Mexico's Oaxaca state, are at the bottom rung of the immigrant-laborer community in Southern California.
  [Score: 219.06485; 04/15/90; LA041590-0039]
• Ironically, the impoverished Utah Indians live on top of a large oil and natural gas field that generates millions of dollars of royalties for state, county and tribal governments.
  [Score: 215.50435; 08/27/90; LA082790-0045]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)

Question 209: Who invented the paper clip?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• The paper clip, weighing a desk-crushing 1,320 pounds, is a faithful copy of Norwegian Johan Vaaler's 1899 invention, said Per Langaker of the Norwegian School of Management.
  [Score: 380.86053; 10/09/89; AP891009-0048]
• Reichman apparently used a paper clip to unlock his handcuffs and then fled.
  [Score: 300.2281; 07/28/88; AP880728-0146]
• 'The BCCI charges might have appeared to many Americans to have involved big money, but it would have been the equivalent to taking the paper clips for Adham,' said an Arab former banking official yesterday.
  [Score: 293.14905; 92/07/30; FT923-10566]
• Schott, who counts paper clips, really aggravated the visiting Pirates when playoff tickets were allotted.
  [Score: 289.6495; 10/05/90; LA100590-0187]
• His pianist had promised in the dressing room of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall to insert a paper clip in the score of a devilishly complex work by Franz Liszt for two pianos.
  [Score: 288.5051; 08/26/90; AP900826-0023]

Trec9 results: 4 6 0 1 1 21 (22.6%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Norwegian Johan Vaaler's 1899 invention

Question 210: How many dogs pull a sled in the Iditarod?
Qtargets: I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Cheering crowds and a blaring siren greeted Joe Runyan on Wednesday when he and 11 dogs pulled into this historic gold mining town to claim the 17th annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
  [Score: 678.5915; 03/15/89; AP890315-0246]
• In Anchorage, Alaska, 75 mushers and more than 1,400 dogs began their trek to Nome in the 19th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. . . .
  [Score: 664.19; 91/03/03; SJMN91-06063021]
• A record 75 mushers and more than 1,400 dogs began their trek Saturday from downtown Anchorage to Nome under sunny skies in the 19th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.;
  [Score: 637.9037; 91/03/03; SJMN91-06063022]
• Some 1,500 dogs started the Iditarod, which has never been completed in less than 11 days.
  [Score: 607.952; 91/03/09; SJMN91-06069081]
• In 1977, she moved to Eureka with two objectives: To form a kennel of at least 100 dogs and build a team to run the Iditarod.
  [Score: 589.7189; 04/29/90; LA042990-0190]

Trec9 results: 13 5 1 1 0 13 (48.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 12 to 20 eager dogs A: nine A: at least five dogs A: 13 dogs A: 18 dogs A: 11 dogs

Question 211: Where did bocci originate?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• Papa Z did take time to play a little bocce, as a member of the Los Gatos Bocci Ball Association.
  [Score: 241.11865; 91/09/07; SJMN91-06251052]
• Mark R. Bocci, an attorney for Austria and his parents, John and Perla Austria, said several other cases against Bike had been settled out of court without disclosure of payments.
  [Score: 237.34622; 10/10/89; AP891010-0091]
• On trial are reputed Genovese ``consigliere,'' or No. 3 leader, Louis A. ``Bobby'' Manna, 59, of Jersey City; his alleged deputy, restaurateur Martin ``Motts'' Casella, 71, of Secaucus; Richard ``Bocci'' DeSciscio, 42, of Bayonne, termed an enforcer for the group; Rocco J. Napoli, 42, of Secaucus; John Derrico, 27, of Hoboken; and Frank ``Dipsy'' Daniello, 67, of Hoboken.
  [Score: 236.24753; 02/27/89; AP890227-0196]
• Also at the restaurant were Genovese associates Richard ``Bocci'' DeSciscio, 42, of Bayonne and restaurant-owner Martin ``Motts'' Casella, 71, of Secaucus, the indictment said.
  [Score: 235.44148; 06/29/88; AP880629-0075]
• Also convicted were Martin A. ``Motts'' Casella, Richard ``Bocci'' DeSciscio, union official Rocco J. Napoli and former Hoboken police Lt. Frank ``Dipsy'' Daniello.
  [Score: 227.04134; 06/26/89; AP890626-0116]

Trec9 results: 1 0 0 0 0 32 (3%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: ancient Roman game

Question 212: Who invented the electric guitar?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• Electric guitars made Mr. Fender, a tinkerer and inventor by nature, a millionaire.;
  [Score: 340.71124; 91/03/22; SJMN91-06082216]
• The plot follows the young radical Einstein's adventures through the invention of the electric guitar and a love affair with Marie Curie.
  [Score: 332.09543; 05/28/89; LA052889-0191]
• Adolph Rickenbacker was a Swiss immigrant who patented the first solid-body electric guitar in 1935, the forerunner of today's electric guitars.
  [Score: 295.217; 04/09/89; LA040989-0082]
• If Beck and Clapton and Page invented the modern rock guitar, it was Hendrix who embraced their various innovations and wrapped them up in one all-encompassing onslaught.
  [Score: 281.73907; 91/12/13; SJMN91-06348260]
• While Mr. Fender did not invent the electric guitar, he did revolutionize and perfect it.
  [Score: 253.25452; 91/03/22; SJMN91-06082216]

Trec9 results: 0 0 1 0 0 32 (1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Adolph Rickenbacker

Question 213: Name a flying mammal.
Qtargets: I-EN-ANIMAL

• The 5{-inch flying mammal bat turned up early last week on the balcony of a Coral Gables office and was handed over to specialists.
  [Score: 335.3907; 09/03/88; AP880903-0123]
• The only weapon that worked was a tennis racquet, but smashing a bat creates possible exposure to rabies and disease carried by the flying mammals.
  [Score: 288.25977; 08/26/88; AP880826-0015]
• Found with the teeth were fossils of many early ancestors to mammals, turtles, crocodiles, flying reptiles and birds, several of which have yet to be identified, Hunt said.
  [Score: 287.89728; 05/19/89; AP890519-0063]
• Bats, the only mammals that can fly, account for nearly a quarter of all known species of mammals.
  [Score: 284.6701; 91/10/29; SJMN91-06303030]
• They will study the diet of sea turtles and the distribution of flying fish, and monitor the population of fish, mammals and birds.
  [Score: 276.93842; 07/29/89; LA072989-0035]

Trec9 results: 7 0 1 0 1 24 (22.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: bat A: Bats

Question 214: How many hexagons are on a soccer ball?
Qtargets: I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Its 60 carbon atoms are arranged in a regular cage whose sides consist of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons - just like a soccer ball (which usually has the hexagons coloured black and the pentagons white).
  [Score: 687.21326; 94/06/18; FT942-2497]
• "The 21 hexagons represent each person that died," Valdes said.
  [Score: 545.91437; 12/14/90; LA121490-0003]
• United Parcel Service is betting 888 tiny black hexagons will ease the organized chaos of delivering 12 million packages a day.
  [Score: 542.5328; 10/09/90; AP901009-0230]
• The proposed memorial consists of 21 tall, marble-covered hexagons that resemble obelisks.
  [Score: 539.6591; 07/16/89; AP890716-0040]
• Dennis has appreciably aided the chipping on one wall by frequently lining up 15 soccer balls on the dirt and kicking them one at a time against the wall.
  [Score: 331.0089; 11/08/90; LA110890-0222]

Trec9 results: 21 1 1 0 0 10 (66.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 20 A: 20 hexagons

Question 215: Who is the leader of India?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• Also Friday, PLO leader Yasser Arafat said he and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India were trying to help bring peace to Afghanistan, United News of India reported.
  [Score: 306.63937; 03/10/89; AP890310-0184]
• Speakers will include Takeshita and President Raul Alfonsin of Argentina today and, in the course of debate, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India, President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, Afghan leader Najib and others.
  [Score: 306.60034; 06/01/88; AP880601-0132]
• Suraj Prakash Malhotra, a local leader of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's Congress Party, and Gajjan Singh, a state leader of the Communist Party of India, were among the victims in a series of attacks, Press Trust of India said.
  [Score: 289.30215; 03/11/89; AP890311-0097]
• He defeated his nearest rival, Raj Mohan Gandhi, grandson of Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi by 197,000 votes, United News of India said.
  [Score: 289.23615; 11/29/89; AP891129-0079]
• He defeated his nearest rival, Raj Mohan Gandhi, grandson of Indian independence leader Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi by 197,000 votes, United News of India said.
  [Score: 286.0053; 11/29/89; AP891129-0042]

Trec9 results: 9 3 5 1 2 13 (38.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi A: Gandhi A: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India A: Narasimha Rao A: Mr. Narasimha Rao A: Jawaharlal Nehru, the Hindu leader A: Indian Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh A: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi A: Jawaharlal Nehru

Question 216: What is the primary language of the Philippines?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-LANGUAGE
Qargs: Philippines

• "Sayang" is the word for Jimmy Ongpin's death in Tagalog, the Philippine language.
  [Score: 296.93878; 02/29/88; WSJ880229-0009]
• Language: English Article Type:BFN [Station commentary] [Excerpts] Bilateral trade, economic and business ties between Malaysia and the Philippines are set to grow at a steady pace from now on with the Malaysian prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed's official four-day visit to the Philippines which began on Thursday.
  [Score: 248.36884; 02/07/94; FBIS3-28470]
• As they did when the Philippines was a colony of the U.S., teachers for the most part teach in English, even though it is a foreign language for most Philippine children.
  [Score: 242.17241; 10/27/89; WSJ891027-0091]
• Language: English Article Type:BFN [Excerpts] The visit of the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohamed ends more than three decades of chilly relationship between Malaysia and the Philippines.
  [Score: 240.57869; 02/09/94; FBIS3-28657]
• Language: English Article Type:BFN [By Grace Q. Bangaoil] [Excerpts] The Philippine economy grew by 2.3 percent in 1993 but fell short of the 2.5 percent downscaled target by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA).
  [Score: 238.72588; 02/09/94; FBIS3-28656]

Trec9 results: 3 2 1 0 1 26 (13.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: English A: Filipino A: English is widely-spoken

Question 217: What is the habitat of the chickadee?
Qtargets: S-NP, S-NOUN
Qargs: habitat

• While the overwhelming bulk of the program involves summer breeding habitat in the Canadian prairies, as well as the Upper Midwest of the United States, wintering habitat in the United States also is important.
  [Score: 250.87373; 06/06/88; AP880606-0251]
• In the Coachella Valley, for example, the California Nature Conservancy worked with developers and environmentalists to pioneer a mitigation/habitat protection plan that is now being used as a national model to allow human and wildlife habitats to coexist.
  [Score: 250.69814; 12/02/90; LA120290-0119]
• F. Dale Robertson said most of the new habitat areas will range from 1,000 to 2,000 acres in size, and will serve as protection for nesting owls as well as providing ``stepping stones'' between larger areas, totaling more than 1.6 million acres, already protected as owl habitats.
  [Score: 246.81929; 12/12/88; AP881212-0118]
• F. Dale Robertson, chief of the Forest Service, said Monday that most of the new habitat areas will range from 1,000 to 2,000 acres in size, and will serve as protection for nesting owls as well as providing ``stepping stones'' between larger areas, totaling more than 1.6 million acres, already protected as owl habitats.
  [Score: 246.15442; 12/13/88; AP881213-0023]
• Collins said six priority regions have been identified, prairie habitat, the Central Valley of California, the lower Mississippi Valley, the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic Coast from South Carolina to Maine and the eastern Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.
  [Score: 232.4079; 06/06/88; AP880606-0251]

Trec9 results: 4 1 0 1 0 27 (14.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: mature trees with large insect populations A: meadows

Question 218: Who was Whitcomb Judson?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Whitcomb Judson

• This year is the 100th birthday of the flashlight (by England's Bristol Electric Lamp Co.), the aluminum boat (by Switzerland's Escher Wyss & Co.) and the zipper (by Whitcombe L. Judson).
  [Score: 82.5; 12/31/90; AP901231-0168]
• This year is the 100th birthday of the flashlight (by England's Bristol Electric Lamp Co.), the aluminum boat (by Switzerland's Escher Wyss & Co.) and the zipper (by Whitcombe L. Judson).;
  [Score: 82.5; 91/01/10; SJMN91-06010225]
• no answer
• The two-part movie, to air at an undetermined date this spring, will also feature John Shea, Dabney Coleman and Bruce Weitz, ABC spokeswoman Laurel Whitcomb said Tuesday.
  [Score: 15.721619; 02/17/88; AP880217-0046]
• Indeed, each day the students launch enthusiastically into a 10-minute chorus of poems and songs, ranging from "Little Orphan Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, to the Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln, and the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King Jr., as soon as they finish the morning Pledge of Allegiance.
  [Score: 15.48327; 07/30/90; LA073090-0053]

Trec9 results: 6 0 0 0 0 27 (18.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: the zipper (by Whitcombe L. Judson)

Question 219: What is the population of Japan?
Qtargets: Q-POPULATION, I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Partly because of such sentiments, officials acknowledge difficulty in annually recruiting 20,000 new soldiers from Japan's population more than 120 million people.
  [Score: 399.0997; 10/07/90; AP901007-0007]
• Japan's population is 123 million.
  [Score: 398.97363; 10/05/89; WSJ891005-0100]
• The Central Intelligence Agency estimates its population of more than 23 million people is growing by 4.4 percent a year _ eight times as fast as the population of Japan, for example.
  [Score: 361.7686; 01/16/90; AP900116-0014]
• The Central Intelligence Agency estimated that its population of more than 23 million people is growing by 4.4 percent a year _ eight times as fast as the population of Japan, for example.
  [Score: 361.7686; 01/12/90; AP900112-0270]
• no answer

Trec9 results: 3 2 1 1 1 25 (14.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 122 million people A: 120 million A: 122.74 million A: 120 million people A: 123 million A: 123,622,541 people A: 122 million

Question 220: Who is the prime minister of Australia?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• Prime Minister Bob Hawke of Australia linked Libya to the rioting and said Australia could not stand by as a friendly country's government is undermined by what he called a non-democratic process.
  [Score: 378.96054; 05/25/88; AP880525-0307]
• Prime Minister Bob Hawke of Australia had charged ``there is no doubt about a Libyan connection in Vanuatu'' following reports in the Australian news media that Libyan-trained activists were involved in Monday's violence.
  [Score: 377.5019; 05/19/88; AP880519-0239]
• Prime Minister Paul Keating of Australia will pay an official visit to Vietnam shortly.
  [Score: 375.30682; 04/06/94; FBIS4-5249]
• Said Prime Minister Bob Hawke of Australia, ``Even those like myself who have been at odds with Margaret Thatcher on particular issues have admired her courage and tenacity of purpose.
  [Score: 375.30682; 11/22/90; AP901122-0100]
• PRIME MINISTER Paul Keating of Australia yesterday stepped up efforts to win the support of voters in marginal seats by offering ADollars 600m (Pounds 285.7m) in federal funds to assist a financially embarrassed state Labor government.
  [Score: 375.30682; 93/02/18; FT931-8729]

Trec9 results: 16 7 3 3 1 3 (65%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Robert Hawke A: Bob Hawke A: Paul Keating

Question 221: Who killed Martin Luther King?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• Hinckley also said he knew that at one time Lane had represented James Earl Ray, who killed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
  [Score: 646.3825; 04/21/89; AP890421-0113]
• Hinckley also acknowledged that he knew that at one time Lane had represented James Earl Ray, who killed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
  [Score: 646.3825; 04/21/89; AP890421-0086]
• In a bizarre allegation, Anderson said the same photo analysts also concluded that a picture of three hobos near the shooting scene taken shortly after the killing appear to show Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt and James Earl Ray, the killer of Martin Luther King Jr.
  [Score: 629.7791; 11/02/88; AP881102-0243]
• -- Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were killed in 1968, before the Nixon presidency.
  [Score: 607.4071; 03/19/92; WSJ920319-0131]
• The new rewrite of James Earl Ray's book, "Who Killed Martin Luther King?", contains jacket blurbs from Martin Luther King III, Andrew Young and Carl Rowan.;
  [Score: 552.3167; 91/12/06; SJMN91-06341079]

Trec9 results: 5 4 1 0 1 22 (22.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: James Earl Ray A: James Earl Ray, the killer of Martin Luther King A: King assassin James Earl Ray A: Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray

Question 222: Who is Anubis?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Anubis

• Other personages are apparently Mason's own creations: KaKro (Brian Foster), an orotund, justice-meting vulture in a pearl collar and feathers and Drumrock (Keith Coleman), a leering, prancing, purple-headdressed spinoff of the Egyptian god Anubis.
  [Score: 1000.0; 02/24/90; LA022490-0036]
• no answer
• Among some magical sights in Tom Cairns' production are two haunting scenes in which Anubis rows the souls back and forth across the waters of the underworld.
  [Score: 12.441329; 94/10/26; FT944-13808]
• We have no doubts that your intentions were good, and that you thought that by describing Anubis Warpus as a "punk" store, you were helping our business . . .
  [Score: 11.435959; 91/07/08; SJMN91-06190131]
• New on the block is Anubis Warpus, which seems to be a supply depot for punks -- a place where punks can buy the outfits they need in order to hang out up the street, near the Metro transit center.
  [Score: 11.420708; 91/06/24; SJMN91-06176121]

Trec9 results: 2 1 0 2 0 28 (9.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Egyptian god

Question 223: Where's Montenegro?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-COUNTRY, C-AT-LOCATION (0.5)

• Yugoslavia (Serbia/Montenegro) [FRY--Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] was on Wednesday again unjustly accused of violating the human rights of ethnic Albanians in Serbia's southern province of Kosovo-Metohija.
  [Score: 249.46333; 03/11/94; FBIS3-8527]
• In a letter to his Montenegrin counterpart Miodrag Lekic, Andreatta said Italy had upheld also Montenegro's request for permission to export aluminium and use the proceeds for humanitarian imports.
  [Score: 245.87094; 02/02/94; FBIS3-30341]
• Montenegro, Yugoslavia's smallest republic and one of its poorest, has been particularly hard hit by the country's economic problems and a decline in living standards.
  [Score: 245.59679; 01/13/89; AP890113-0105]
• Montenegro, Yugoslavia's smallest republic and one of its poorest, has been particularly hard hit by the protracted national economic crisis, characterized by a 250 percent inflation rate, a $21 billion foreign debt and 12 percent drop in living standards in 1988 alone.
  [Score: 245.59679; 01/13/89; AP890113-0171]
• [Correspondent] Neither Montenegro, Macedonia [The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia -- FYROM], or Kosova were mentioned at all in Milosevic's draft constitutions.
  [Score: 245.59679; 04/28/94; FBIS4-55028]

Trec9 results: 8 4 4 1 0 16 (35.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Yugoslavia A: one of six Yugoslav republics A: Yugoslav Republics of Serbia and Montenegro A: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia/Montenegro) A: part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia A: Montenegro and Serbia to remain part of Yugoslavia A: Yugoslavia comprising Serbia and Montenegro A: Yugoslavia-consisting just of Serbia and Montenegro A: Yugoslav republic of Montenegro A: in Yugoslavia

Question 224: What does laser stand for?
Qtargets: Q-ABBREVIATION-EXPANSION
Qargs: laser

• "Laser" stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation."
  [Score: 782.6255; 08/21/89; WSJ890821-0062]
• ``Laser'' stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
  [Score: 782.6255; 01/21/89; AP890121-0161]
• The laser, the size of a grain of sand, emits a pulse of light every 120 picoseconds, or trillionths of a second.
  [Score: 500.0; 02/26/91; WSJ910226-0035]
• The video is based on the same concert in Nice that HBO broadcast live last summer, but the new, edited laser version offers much more of the vitality and charm of the show itself than the HBO special.
  [Score: 257.80258; 12/15/90; LA121590-0079]
• Last summer, when the transaction first was announced, IBM had expected to fetch about $2.3 billion for its laser printer, typewriter and keyboard operations, which are based in Lexington, Ky.
  [Score: 169.59692; 01/07/91; WSJ910107-0108]

Trec9 results: 11 2 3 0 0 17 (39.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation A: light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation

Question 225: Who is the Greek God of the Sea?
Qtargets: I-EN-SPIRITUAL-BEING&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• Weather vanes actually date back to the first century B.C. The earliest documented weather vane, according to the Jensens' research, was one of the Greek sea god, Triton.
  [Score: 424.03857; 91/03/16; SJMN91-06076021]
• Six moons of Neptune discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 have been named after water nymphs and the children and lovers of the mythological Greek sea god Poseidon, an astronomy organization said Friday.;
  [Score: 414.62045; 91/09/28; SJMN91-06272014]
• Named after Pluto, the Greek God of the underworld, plutonium is the most long-lived radioactive by-product of a nuclear reactor; it remains poisonous for at least 500,000 years.
  [Score: 384.098; 04/15/94; FBIS4-67966]
• Among the ugliest pieces revealed Monday were a bas-relief slab painted in dull gold depicting what looked like the Greek god Poseidon riding a sea monster.
  [Score: 383.53778; 06/21/88; AP880621-0063]
• "Fish will occupy us right up to the end of negotiations unless the god of the sea, Poseidon, helps us and that would be a miracle," said Greek European Affairs Minister Theodoros Pangalos, who is chairing the negotiations.
  [Score: 354.69604; 02/23/94; FBIS3-39812]

Trec9 results: 5 2 1 0 1 24 (19.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Poseidon

Question 226: Where is the Danube?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-STATE-DISTRICT, I-EN-PROPER-COUNTRY, I-EN-US-REGION&S-PROPER-NAME, = I-EN-PROPER-PLACE (0.5), I-EN-PLACE (0.33)

• The state secretary also briefed the NRSR commission on findings acquired thus far about the impact of the Gabcikovo hydroelectric project on the level of underground water in Zitny Ostrov [Rye Island, area along the Danube in southern Slovakia], on water supply in the system of Danube branches, and on improving navigation on the Danube. [passage omitted] At their meeting yesterday, members of the NRSR commission also discussed a reply to a letter from Andras Pap, chairman of the Hungarian Parliament's committee dealing with the hydroelectric project.
  [Score: 257.1624; 01/31/94; FBIS3-50414]
• The Slovak Foreign Ministry reiterated its willingness to continue talks with Budapest on the division of the Danube's waters between the Gabcikovo derivation canal on Slovakia's territory and the Danube's old course, in a note extended to the Hungarian Embassy today, the ministry told CTK.
  [Score: 256.2016; 05/11/94; FBIS4-55381]
• THE ROMANIAN government yesterday confirmed that 'tens of ships' displaying Commonwealth of Independent States' flags were passing up the Danube towards Serbia in apparent contravention of United Nations sanctions.
  [Score: 254.80736; 92/08/11; FT923-8531]
• ``We were told we were to have the reception camps ready by Sunday night, and we worked through the night and driving rain storms to meet that obligation,'' said Wolfgang Schmidt, director of the Red Cross camp in Vilshofen, across the Danube from Austria.
  [Score: 254.80736; 09/05/89; AP890905-0043]
• Mr Hurd, who is on a four-day visit to the Balkans, said Britain would provide three of the eight patrol boats which the Western European Union agreed last month to deploy on the Danube in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.
  [Score: 251.00557; 93/06/04; FT932-5383]

Trec9 results: 20 8 4 0 0 1 (76.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: near Nagymaros, Hungary A: in both Hungary and Czechsolovakia A: near Allmendingen, about 15 miles southwest of Ulm A: Bratislava A: Romania A: Yugoslavia A: Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia A: in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia A: southern Slovakia A: Bulgaria and Romania A: in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania A: in eastern Romania and southern Ukraine A: Western Europe

Question 227: Where does dew come from?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• Summing up a debate about labour legislation, Jimmy Airlie, the AEEU's national officer in Scotland, ended by quoting from the Mask of Anarchy by Percy Bysshe Shelley: 'Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number - Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you.'
  [Score: 237.10838; 93/09/08; FT933-4623]
• Shake your chains to earth like dew
  [Score: 237.10838; 05/11/90; LA051190-0059]
• John Dew's Bielefeld production hardly supports that verdict.
  [Score: 233.5723; 93/11/10; FT934-9570]
• James Edward Dew, a San Diego computer analyst, got a church charter by mail and took in 48 co-workers and friends, 25 of them "ordained," as members.
  [Score: 233.2974; 09/28/88; WSJ880928-0123]
• Sidney T. Dew and Antonio B. Solis, Specs.
  [Score: 233.2974; 02/26/90; AP900226-0137]

Trec9 results: 1 0 1 1 0 30 (4.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: out of air if the air were cooled

Question 228: What is platinum?
Qtargets: Q-DEFINITION
Qargs: platinum, metal|substance

• ``For one reason or another, platinum always was a desired metal in Japan.''
  [Score: 200.0; 06/04/88; AP880604-0205]
• There is little demand from Japan, where platinum is the favorite precious metal, and platinum output has increased in South Africa, the leading producer, he said.
  [Score: 200.0; 09/27/90; WSJ900927-0024]
• SafraBank sent her papers for a $22,100 loan, bringing the total cost of the platinum, fees, interest, and commission to more than $32,000.
  [Score: 150.0; 01/24/92; WSJ920124-0124]
• However, he said, there is an ore body called UG2 that yields about one ounce of rhodium for every 4.6 ounces of platinum.
  [Score: 63.281254; 07/05/90; WSJ900705-0033]
• He said that because platinum is the more volatile of the two metals, it tends to trade at a premium to gold in bull markets and at a discount in bear markets.
  [Score: 30.000002; 12/18/91; WSJ911218-0105]

Trec9 results: 0 0 2 3 2 26 (5.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: precious metal A: white metal

Question 229: Who is the fastest swimmer in the world?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• Moorhouse, meanwhile, had entered the Games as an underdog after failing to record a fast time this year, and was unable to repeat anything like his best - 61.49secs - trailing home last in 62.33secs. Hungarian swimmer Norbert Rozsa's current world record of 61.33secs looked vulnerable, but survived.
  [Score: 319.9906; 92/07/27; FT923-11036]
• After two years in the wake of one of the best swimmers in the world, Nicole Williamson might finally get some attention.
  [Score: 313.3512; 03/31/90; LA033190-0147]
• All right Michael Chang, youngest U.S. Davis Cup player of the modern era, how do you feel about good old Placentia, Calif., your hometown, the city that has given the sports world Olympic swimmer Janet Evans from El Dorado High School and you, now the world's 30th-ranked tennis player at age 16, from Valencia High?
  [Score: 300.51288; 02/06/89; LA020689-0048]
• Ex-Cal swimmer Matt Biondi, who holds the world mark in the 100-meter freestyle, decided not to enter the Spring Nationals and will instead use his exemption as a member of the U.S. team at the worlds to qualify for future national teams based on his times at Perth.;
  [Score: 297.3617; 91/03/31; SJMN91-06091208]
• When the race was over, Housman's time was 14 minutes 53.59 seconds, which was 1.17 seconds under Soviet swimmer Vladimir Salnikov's world record of 14:54.76.
  [Score: 297.12277; 12/21/89; LA122189-0119]

Trec9 results: 16 6 3 2 0 6 (62.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Hungarian swimmer Norbert Rozsa A: Swimmer Jon Sieben of Australia A: Janet Evans A: Evans A: Tom Jager and Mike Barrowman A: Wang A: Mary T. Meagher of the US in 1981 A: Sanders A: Hansen A: Mike Barrowman A: Melvin Stewart A: Catherine Ball in 1968

Question 230: When did the vesuvius last erupt?
Qtargets: C-DATE, C-TEMP-LOC-WITH-YEAR, C-DATE-RANGE, C-YEAR-RANGE, = C-TEMP-LOC (0.5)

• Vesuvius last erupted in 1944.
  [Score: 430.93127; 07/18/89; AP890718-0007]
• Masked gunmen bound and gagged unarmed guards early Saturday at Herculaneum, a Roman city destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., and stole hundreds of treasures, news reports said.
  [Score: 325.7232; 02/03/90; AP900203-0132]
• Pompeii was buried under ash and stone after Mount Vesuvius erupted Aug. 24, A.D. 79, killing thousands of residents of the city.;
  [Score: 325.7232; 91/08/30; SJMN91-06243033]
• National Geographic CH60 Excavations at Herculaneum reveal the devastation caused by Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D.; (box) Friday Talk Shows; 9 a.m.
  [Score: 309.368; 91/07/12; SJMN91-06194004]
• A 15th century painting by Francesco Raibolini, three 17th century compasses with ivory cases, and Francesco Netti's 1800 ``Procession of Penance During the 1794 Eruption of Vesuvius'' also were recovered.
  [Score: 309.01212; 07/26/88; AP880726-0108]

Trec9 results: 23 1 2 0 2 5 (74.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 1944

Question 231: Who was the president of Vichy France?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• Justice Minister Albin Chalandon compared the president's relationship with the French to that of Marshal Philippe Petain, head of the Vichy France government that collaborated with the German occupation in World War II.
  [Score: 375.25513; 02/15/88; AP880215-0006]
• In 1945, the former premier of Vichy France, Pierre Laval, was executed.
  [Score: 341.17853; 10/09/89; AP891009-0153]
• In opposing a judicial reopening of the great questions of Vichy, President Mitterrand would also have been echoing the policy of France since the Liberation.
  [Score: 340.36288; 93/07/24; FT933-12325]
• Along came the Academy Award winning "Z" about the Greece of the colonels, "The Confession," set in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, "State of Siege," set in Uraguay, "Special Section," about Vichy France, and "Missing," set in Pinochet's Chile.
  [Score: 336.71872; 06/25/89; LA062589-0188]
• In a July 4 obituary, The Associated Press erroneously said that Jean Leguay, a police official in the Vichy France wartime regime, was detained briefly in 1979 when he was charged with aiding the Nazis in the deportation of French Jews.
  [Score: 336.40143; 08/28/89; AP890828-0117]

Trec9 results: 5 4 1 5 2 16 (27.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Marshal Philippe Petain A: Pierre Laval

Question 232: Who invented television?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• With all these advantages, one cannot help but wonder whether - had TV been invented by Caxton and printing by John Logie Baird - seers would not now be predicting the demise of TV and an explosion of printed communications.
  [Score: 350.93445; 94/11/07; FT944-11346]
• These days, of course, it's television news -- the business that Murrow literally invented while at CBS -- that's in flames.
  [Score: 317.778; 07/30/90; LA073090-0100]
• Bruch invented the Phase Alternation Line (PAL) color television system 20 years ago.
  [Score: 317.23294; 05/06/90; AP900506-0087]
• Parker's television receiver glows in nearly every American home today, and in the Hall of Fame he joins William D. Coolidge, who invented the vacuum tube; Vladimir Zworykin, who developed the cathode ray tube used for television pictures and Philo T. Farnsworth, who developed the scanning, contrast and focusing systems for television.
  [Score: 315.40182; 03/19/88; AP880319-0164]
• An electrical engineer, Takayanagi achieved the first television transmission in Japan in 1926 and developed the main component of a television camera in 1933 only months after it was invented by Vladimir K. Zworykin in the United States.
  [Score: 310.87518; 07/24/90; AP900724-0085]

Trec9 results: 5 4 1 3 2 18 (25.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Charles Francis Jenkins A: Louis W. Parker A: Vladimir Zworykin A: Philo T. Farnsworth

Question 233: Who made the first airplane?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-COMPANY, I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, = I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• Business hasn't even been that brisk for the ultralight maker, Jackson Manufacturing Co. of Edgeley, which built its first ultralight airplane a year ago and has sold two so far, sales manager Gene Hanson said.
  [Score: 332.5381; 03/01/88; AP880301-0265]
• The strike, which began at 12:01 a.m. yesterday, is the first in 12 years at Boeing, the world's leading airplane maker and the nation's biggest industrial exporter.
  [Score: 328.0531; 10/05/89; WSJ891005-0014]
• The two are part of a team attempting to prove that Gustave Whitehead made the first powered airplane flight in history on Aug. 14, 1901, more than two years before the Wright brothers flew in North Carolina.
  [Score: 317.9179; 05/30/89; AP890530-0219]
• His destination is Kitty Hawk, N.C., where Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful heavier-than-air airplane flight in 1903.
  [Score: 314.2303; 08/21/90; AP900821-0094]
• "She was his princess," said Tarrel, who noted that her grandmother was born in 1903, the year the Wright Brothers made their historic first airplane flight.;
  [Score: 296.86987; 91/08/05; SJMN91-06218028]

Trec9 results: 4 1 3 3 0 22 (18.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: the Wrights A: Wright brothers

Question 234: Who made the first airplane that could fly?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-COMPANY, I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, = I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• The two are part of a team attempting to prove that Gustave Whitehead made the first powered airplane flight in history on Aug. 14, 1901, more than two years before the Wright brothers flew in North Carolina.
  [Score: 372.0846; 05/30/89; AP890530-0219]
• His destination is Kitty Hawk, N.C., where Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful heavier-than-air airplane flight in 1903.
  [Score: 362.52002; 08/21/90; AP900821-0094]
• While others in Orange County are developing some of the world's most sophisticated high-tech aerospace equipment, Carl Gage and Lyle Piccard of Costa Mesa are building flying machines based on technology developed more than 100 years before the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane.
  [Score: 358.72562; 11/16/89; LA111689-0222]
• In 1926, Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first men to fly an airplane over the North Pole.
  [Score: 311.44867; 05/02/88; AP880502-0222]
• She won it for flying the first solar-powered airplanes designed by Paul MacCready of Pasadena.
  [Score: 307.5425; 10/05/89; LA100589-0116]

Trec9 results: 7 1 2 0 1 22 (25.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Gustave Whitehead A: Wright brothers A: Orville and Wilbur Wright

Question 235: How many astronauts have been on the moon?
Qtargets: I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Naval Academy graduate ... carrier and test pilot ... only one of the seven original Mercury astronauts to walk on the moon ... first American in space, a 15-minute suborbital flight in 1961 ... grounded for several years by an ear disorder ... commanded Apollo 14 moon landing ... several banking, real estate and other business interests have made him a Houston millionaire.
  [Score: 593.99646; 06/28/89; AP890628-0217]
• Since then, 12 Americans have walked on the moon and, in all, 208 astronauts have been aboard 57 U.S. space flights.
  [Score: 593.6144; 10/31/88; AP881031-0265]
• Twenty years after Neil A. Armstrong made his ``giant leap for mankind'' on the moon, he and his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts said Friday they are disappointed man has not taken even one small step on Mars.
  [Score: 593.464; 06/09/89; AP890609-0125]
• By contrast, NASA's plans for 2020 foresee three astronauts making a brief visit to Mars, with a dozen others in orbit or on the moon.
  [Score: 580.74146; 07/18/90; WSJ900718-0133]
• The voices of 13 astronauts narrate a composite voyage to the moon, assembled from rarely seen NASA footage taken during the nine manned Apollo flights and underscored by the quietly ethereal guitar lines of art rock composer Brian Eno.
  [Score: 580.45087; 01/23/90; LA012390-0149]

Trec9 results: 0 1 0 2 0 30 (3%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 12

Question 236: Who is Coronado?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Coronado

• "Mostly we hope it (the toll) will help with some of the traffic issues," said Jacqueline Wilson, deputy Coronado city clerk.
  [Score: 1000.0; 10/12/90; LA101290-0056]
• Municipal Judge Jose Coronado said he found Bach guilty, but deferred sentencing for 30 days, ``during which time I'm hoping both parties get together and work out something agreeable to both.''
  [Score: 800.0; 06/20/89; AP890620-0174]
• Jones, 37, director of public services for Coronado, a city of 26,000 next to San Diego, will take over the post June 17.
  [Score: 700.0; 91/05/17; SJMN91-06138012]
• I realized I could facilitate thousands of people reaching the peninsula of Coronado, one of the loveliest bodies of land in the world.
  [Score: 600.0; 08/02/89; LA080289-0107]
• The seller is Park at Coronado, a San Diego-based limited partnership whose general partners include George Codling, Alan Greenway, Malin Burnham and Thomas James.
  [Score: 600.0; 09/26/89; LA092689-0060]

Trec9 results: 2 0 1 1 1 28 (8.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: explorer

Question 237: Name one of the major gods of Hinduism?
Qtargets: I-EN-SPIRITUAL-BEING&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• The mosque in Ayodhya that has figured in the recent violence was built in 1528, after the destruction of a 4th-Century temple that commemorated the birthplace of Rama, a greatly revered god of Hinduism.
  [Score: 371.31262; 11/25/90; LA112590-0063]
• The 2,600-year-old epic tells the story of the warrior-king Rama, an incarnation of a major Hindu god, Vishnu.
  [Score: 362.28558; 07/31/88; AP880731-0024]
• "I remember my father worshipping them," says Mr. Vidyaraj, "and singing songs in praise of Shiva {a major Hindu god}."
  [Score: 360.18; 12/31/91; WSJ911231-0097]
• Union official Karam Chand Pardesi testified that ending the epic now would distort the image of Rama, who is an incarnation of the major Hindu god Vishnu.
  [Score: 354.6928; 07/29/88; AP880729-0152]
• Mahashivaratri day is celebrated as the birthday of Lord Shiva, one of the three major gods in the Hindu pantheon.
  [Score: 326.753; 02/17/88; AP880217-0051]

Trec9 results: 6 3 5 0 1 18 (28.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Brahma A: Lord Shiva A: Vishnu

Question 238: What does the abbreviation OAS stand for?
Qtargets: Q-ABBREVIATION-EXPANSION
Qargs: OAS

• Since the 30 September 1991 military coup that forced Aristide into exile, Canada has played an important part in efforts by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations to mobilize support for President Aristide and his restoration through diplomatic means.
  [Score: 937.4589; 01/25/94; FBIS3-58828]
• -- to support the efforts under the Organization of American States (OAS) auspices to develop and implement a regional inter-American agreement on essential chemicals.
  [Score: 937.4589; 02/15/90; AP900215-0167]
• Today, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Bern Niehaus expressed his support for the OAS to be in charge of organizing an American summit scheduled for next November to strengthen this organization and discuss North-South cooperation.
  [Score: 843.75; 02/07/94; FBIS3-32371]
• Ms. Tutwiler said that at the Organization of American State foreign ministers meeting this week, Nicaragua stood alone in defending Noriega and opposed sending an OAS commission to Panama to resolve the political crisis there.
  [Score: 523.8457; 06/09/89; AP890609-0135]
• The OAS statement encouraged U.S. officials but as time passed, the number of countries willing to take a strong stand against Noriega steadily diminished.
  [Score: 505.00803; 08/25/89; AP890825-0022]

Trec9 results: 3 0 0 0 0 30 (9.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Organization of American States

Question 239: Who is Barbara Jordan?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Barbara Jordan

• Former congresswoman Barbara Jordan hasagreed to serve as special counsel on ethics for Gov.-elect Ann Richards.
  [Score: 1000.0; 12/06/90; AP901206-0088]
• Former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan, hospitalized after nearly drowning, talked politics over breakfast Wednesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.
  [Score: 1000.0; 08/03/88; AP880803-0154]
• Sporting a ``Where was George?'' button and flashing a broad smile, former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan left a hospital Monday, more than a week after she nearly drowned in her swimming pool.
  [Score: 1000.0; 08/08/88; AP880808-0089]
• Former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan was ``vastly improved'' and giving the thumbs-up sign to her hospital nurse Sunday following a near-drowning in her swimming pool.
  [Score: 1000.0; 07/31/88; AP880731-0003]
• Former Rep. Barbara Jordan, hospitalized since she nearly drowned Saturday, is ``well rested, alert and in good spirits,'' a spokeswoman says.
  [Score: 1000.0; 08/03/88; AP880803-0006]

Trec9 results: 8 1 1 0 0 23 (26.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: former U.S. Rep. A: Former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan A: a former member of Congress

Question 240: How many years ago did the ship Titanic sink?
Qtargets: I-EN-TEMPORAL-QUANTITY

• An inquiry will be held into the conduct of a steamship captain who was criticized for not coming to the aid of the Titanic when it sank 78 years ago, the government said Monday.
  [Score: 338.04297; 07/09/90; AP900709-0061]
• An inquiry will be held into the conduct of a steamship captain who was censured for not helping the Titanic when it sank 78 years ago, the government said today.
  [Score: 338.04297; 07/09/90; LA070990-0108]
• The sunken battleship was discovered and photographed by the robot called Argo, the same device that was used four years ago to find the wreck of the Titanic, the British passenger liner that sank in 1912 after striking an iceberg.
  [Score: 325.97253; 06/22/89; AP890622-0115]
• The sunken battleship was discovered and photographed by the same remote-controlled robot that Ballard used four years ago to find the wreck of the Titanic, the British passenger liner that sank in 1912 after striking an iceberg.
  [Score: 325.97253; 06/22/89; AP890622-0157]
• Argo and his master, expedition leader Dr. Robert Ballard, also discovered the sunken Titanic four years ago.
  [Score: 304.69806; 06/13/89; AP890613-0049]

Trec9 results: 11 0 0 1 3 18 (35.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 78 Years A: Seventy seven A: 78 years ago A: 75 years A: 76 years ago

Question 241: What is a caldera?
Qtargets: Q-DEFINITION
Qargs: caldera,

• The observatory, on the rim of Kilauea's summit caldera, or lava lake, is operated by the U.S. Geological Survey.
  [Score: 1000.0; 11/25/90; LA112590-0024]
• Lava also can flow over the volcano's crater, or caldera, Okamura said.
  [Score: 1000.0; 07/05/90; AP900705-0198]
• As experts maintain, to comprehensively survey and prospect Ukraine's oil and gas promising regions (the Dnieper-Donetsk caldera, Transcarpathian arch, shelves of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov), at least three to four seismic stations, three specialized stations with 10 vibration generators and other sophisticated equipment will be necessary to lay out the fields and pinpoint their deposits of carbohydrates.
  [Score: 750.0; 06/07/94; FBIS4-39507]
• Mammoth Lakes -- with about 4,700 permanent residents and thousands of tourists -- is located inside the Long Valley caldera, a volcanic crater 19 miles long and 9 miles wide.
  [Score: 750.0; 91/04/20; SJMN91-06111037]
• Medicine Lake, a recreational lake, sits at an elevation of 6,674 feet on the floor of the volcano's four-by-seven-mile crater, called a caldera.
  [Score: 750.0; 11/18/88; AP881118-0127]

Trec9 results: 5 0 1 0 0 27 (16.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: large volcanic crater A: a crater A: crater A: volcanic crater A: lava lake

Question 242: What was the name of the famous battle in 1836 between Texas and Mexico?
Qtargets: S-PROPER-NAME

• By far the most popular destination is the Alamo, site of a 1836 battle in which 189 Texas patriots died at the hands of the Mexican army of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.
  [Score: 306.05197; 10/15/90; AP901015-0247]
• With blazing cannons and bloody sabres, the heroes of the Alamo relive on a giant new screen this week the fateful 13-day siege that inspired Texas to win its independence from Mexico in 1836.
  [Score: 209.37285; 02/24/88; AP880224-0271]
• no answer
• Their mission -- besides getting a free trip to Florida -- was to link arms in a legal battle against "that greedy Tinseltown" of the West Coast, which "wants the name Hollywood all to itself."
  [Score: 193.12189; 03/01/89; LA030189-0050]
• But many analysts are betting on a battle between two well-heeled investment groups from Monterrey, a city 150 miles south of the Texas border in Mexico's capitalist heartland.
  [Score: 187.56921; 10/24/91; WSJ911024-0013]

Trec9 results: 13 1 1 4 0 14 (44.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Alamo A: battle of the Alamo A: the Battle of San Jacinto

Question 243: Where did the ukulele originate?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• Clyde Sproat, 60, a Hawaiian cowboy singer and ukulele player from Kapaau, Hawaii.
  [Score: 243.7345; 05/24/88; AP880524-0171]
• Taking ukuleles to Hawaii sounds about as misplaced as shipping coals to Newcastle.
  [Score: 240.21945; 03/12/90; AP900312-0121]
• Akaka, 71, pastor emeritus of Hawaii's oldest church, the Kawaiahao Church in downtown Honolulu, and among few clergymen of original Hawaiian descent, strums the ukulele himself.
  [Score: 234.58868; 04/20/88; AP880420-0257]
• Young was born in Toronto and received a ukulele as a Christmas gift at age 13.
  [Score: 232.22534; 11/02/90; AP901102-0198]
• The manager of Kansas City radio station KMBC offered him a job as an announcer and ukulele player.
  [Score: 230.6431; 10/28/89; LA102889-0015]

Trec9 results: 4 2 0 0 1 26 (15.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: from Portugal

Question 244: Who invented baseball?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• In popular myth, baseball was invented in Cooperstown by Abner Doubleday.
  [Score: 358.7926; 10/03/90; AP901003-0007]
• Abner Doubleday's ``invention'' of baseball in a Cooperstown, N.Y., cow pasture has been debunked as a popular myth.
  [Score: 337.09314; 10/04/90; AP901004-0041]
• The New York Times said that a newly discovered newspaper report and box score show that other teams were already playing baseball in New York City a year earlier than when Cartwright supposedly invented the game in 1846.
  [Score: 313.33234; 10/03/90; AP901003-0007]
• The commission considered lengthy testimony from a number of sources, but its conclusion was based largely on the recollections of a man named Abner Graves, an elderly mining engineer, who reported that baseball had been "invented" by Doubleday between 1839 and 1841.
  [Score: 296.8376; 08/05/90; LA080590-0188]
• Porter wants Cooperstown pilgrims to know that Cooper put the town on the map a decade before reputed baseball inventor Abner Doubleday created the sport in Cooperstown.
  [Score: 286.77576; 06/21/89; AP890621-0227]

Trec9 results: 5 1 1 1 0 25 (18.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Abner Doubleday A: Doubleday

Question 245: Where can you find the Venus flytrap?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• Reid was on several television shows in the 1970s, including the short-lived ``Richard Pryor Show,'' but it was his role as disc jockey Venus Flytrap on ``WKRP in Cincinnati'' that made him famous.
  [Score: 379.37372; 07/17/89; AP890717-0188]
• Possibly, when compared to an Iowa boy's wish "never to be a fly in a Venus Flytrap," or another Midwestern lad who wishes only that "my dad would get out of jail."
  [Score: 364.23672; 08/13/89; LA081389-0028]
• Other studies also found highly reflective features on Venus' mountains, but scientists debated whether the brightness was from volcanic metallic minerals or simply artificial brightness created by rough landscape.
  [Score: 294.62186; 05/19/88; AP880519-0177]
• The Magellan spacecraft has found sand dunes on Venus despite low wind and little loose sediment on the planet.
  [Score: 289.2663; 10/11/90; AP901011-0043]
• The lull in the spacecraft's $744 million mission was necessary because Earth, the sun and Venus were lined up in a way that hindered communication between Magellan and controllers at National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
  [Score: 288.84546; 11/10/90; AP901110-0079]

Trec9 results: 5 2 1 0 1 24 (19.8%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: in the Carolinas A: in North Carolina

Question 246: What did Vasco da Gama discover?
Qtargets: S-NP, S-NOUN

• In 1524, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama _ who had discovered a sea route around Africa to India _ died in Cochin, India.
  [Score: 601.7843; 12/12/88; AP881212-0227]
• In 1524, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama - who had discovered a sea route around Africa to India - died in Cochin, India.
  [Score: 601.7843; 12/17/90; AP901217-0168]
• Expo '98's theme will be East meets West, its hero _ Vasco da Gama.
  [Score: 527.00195; 12/31/89; AP891231-0018]
• The world fair will happen as planned because much more than being an occasion to wave the Vasco da Gama flag, more even than providing a platform for ecological correctness, Expo '98 is the excuse for a significant urban facelift that Lisbon can no longer delay.
  [Score: 527.00195; 94/10/28; FT944-13121]
• A strong man could have rowed around the world more than once in the time it took Giacomo Meyerbeer to finish his opera about the explorer Vasco da Gama.
  [Score: 527.00195; 09/23/88; WSJ880923-0159]

Trec9 results: 3 2 0 0 0 28 (12.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: sea route around Africa to India A: sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope

Question 247: Who won the Battle of Gettysburg?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-COUNTRY, I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION, I-EN-AGENT (0.5)

• But the tone was a bit different in Britain's press when the Union won the Battle of Gettysburg: President "Frankenstein's" . . . "thirst for war {had} not yet been quenched by the blood of a few thousands of his countrymen."
  [Score: 601.10754; 02/11/88; WSJ880211-0089]
• ``If the Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War, then Pickett's charge was the turning point of the Battle of Gettysburg,'' said Kim Holien, a historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
  [Score: 378.27332; 06/26/88; AP880626-0067]
• Gen. George Sykes and Maj. Gen. John Buford Jr., who both commanded Union troops at the Battle of Gettysburg.
  [Score: 377.09033; 04/02/90; AP900402-0209]
• The man who built the home, George Eustice, was a Civil War veteran who fought with the Wisconsin Volunteers at the Battle of Gettysburg, according to Pat Snar at the Gilroy Historical Museum.;
  [Score: 366.08075; 91/01/29; SJMN91-06029097]
• The kickoff Friday of the 125th anniversary observance of the Battle of Gettysburg thrilled Allen Nelson for a very personal reason: His father fought in it.
  [Score: 365.38217; 07/01/88; AP880701-0184]

Trec9 results: 7 1 0 0 0 25 (22.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: the Army of the Potomac A: Union forces A: the Union

Question 248: What is the largest snake in the world?
Qtargets: I-EN-ANIMAL

• Reticulated pythons are the world's largest snakes, reaching lengths of up to 36 feet.
  [Score: 383.73615; 12/08/88; AP881208-0148]
• The seventh large python snake found slithering around the same neighborhood has officials puzzled, but not panicked.
  [Score: 290.9621; 12/08/88; AP881208-0148]
• The amazing Amazon, the widest, wettest and, so National Geographic now affirms, the longest river in the world (4,007 miles, 51 longer than the Nile), boasts the longest snake, the most venomous viper, the biggest rat, beetle and ant, along with razor-toothed piranhas that can reduce a Brahman steer to raw bones in minutes and electric eels delivering 640 volts, enough to drive a Metro-North commuter train.
  [Score: 278.4803; 02/29/88; AP880229-0246]
• But the rats, mice and hamsters were safe in their cages, and the only snake in evidence was an intimidatingly large boa that had wrapped itself around the neck of a bare-chested man who was strutting around the grounds as if he were Father Earth.
  [Score: 264.3423; 04/23/90; LA042390-0004]
• Often I'd see what appeared to be the head of a snake poking out of the water, only to be told it was a snake bird -- a semi-aquatic bird whose head resembles a bushmaster when the bird comes up for air.
  [Score: 254.97647; 10/21/90; LA102190-0039]

Trec9 results: 6 1 1 1 0 24 (21.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Reticulated pythons

Question 249: Where is the Valley of the Kings?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• Tutankhamen reigned from 1333 to 1323 B.C. His tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor in 1922.
  [Score: 339.5138; 02/24/90; AP900224-0064]
• Romer lives in Italy but also has a home in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
  [Score: 339.5138; 12/23/88; AP881223-0186]
• The short answer is that he was well respected but out of work in 1909, when Lord Carnarvon hired him to dig in the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank of the Nile opposite Luxor.
  [Score: 335.20667; 92/12/05; FT924-3688]
• Two of the most famous tombs in the Valley of the Kings _ Seti I and Tutankhamun _ are endangered but remain open to the public.
  [Score: 331.66766; 12/16/88; AP881216-0221]
• From Earl's Court in London and Swaffham in Norfolk it is a long way to the Valley of the Kings.
  [Score: 327.7061; 92/12/05; FT924-3688]

Trec9 results: 8 6 4 4 0 11 (40.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Egypt A: Luxor, Egypt A: Luxor A: on the West Bank of the Nile opposite Luxor

Question 250: Where did the Maya people live?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• But many of the visitors to the Tikal ruins don't realize that more than 3 million Maya live in Guatemala today -- more than are found in the other Central American countries and Mexico put together.
  [Score: 384.8424; 91/02/10; SJMN91-06041234]
• Sixteen-hundred years later, at least 6 million Maya lived in what in some ways resembled Southern California: a flourishing megalopolis of city-states, with few breaks among their overlapping suburbs.
  [Score: 374.0503; 10/14/90; LA101490-0183]
• Maya lived with her mother, her brother and Sanches at the Prince George Hotel on Manhattan's East Side, where the city houses 463 homeless families, or about 2,600 people.
  [Score: 317.26294; 04/08/88; AP880408-0163]
• Maya Rao, a university teacher who has lived in New Delhi for many years, described New Delhi's monsoon this way:
  [Score: 311.7407; 07/20/88; AP880720-0271]
• In Whittington's case, the people he felt he was letting down were about 50,000 Mayan Indians who live around the village of Yajalon, or "mountain of green" in local Mayan dialect, in southeast Mexico near the Guatemalan border.
  [Score: 290.9172; 11/20/90; LA112090-0120]

Trec9 results: 7 7 3 0 5 11 (37.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: in the Yucatan Peninsula A: Guatemala A: from the Yucatan to the Nicaraguan frontier A: in Punta de Chimino A: in Guatemala

Question 251: How many people live in Chile?
Qtargets: Q-POPULATION, I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• In Chile, 38 percent of the 12 million people live below the poverty line, according to Ernesto Tironi of the Economic Commission for Latin America.
  [Score: 460.08057; 04/24/89; AP890424-0251]
• Other bombs blew out at least two electricity towers near Santiago, blacking out several cities in central Chile including the capital, where 4.5 million people live.
  [Score: 420.5744; 11/26/89; AP891126-0013]
• Although the election is certain to bring radical changes to the political life of Chile's 12 million people, much of the free-market economic program crafted by Pinochet's administration is expected to remain intact.
  [Score: 407.7545; 12/07/89; AP891207-0188]
• According to the forecasts of specialists, the aerospace exhibition in Chile will be visited by more than 600,000 people, including 3,000 marketing agents and merchants specializing in the aviation business.
  [Score: 393.91882; 03/15/94; FBIS3-23675]
• Police said 15 bombs exploded Wednesday night, causing a brief electrical blackout along a 1,370-mile stretch of the narrow country, including Santiago, the capital city where more than 4 million of Chile's 12 million people reside.
  [Score: 393.05774; 10/05/89; AP891005-0175]

Trec9 results: 10 6 0 4 2 11 (43.6%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 12 million people A: 12 million

Question 252: When was the first flush toilet invented?
Qtargets: C-DATE, C-TEMP-LOC-WITH-YEAR, C-DATE-RANGE, C-YEAR-RANGE, = C-TEMP-LOC (0.5)

• The first patent for a flush toilet was issued in England in 1775 to Alexander Cummings, Kula said.
  [Score: 358.95105; 04/13/90; AP900413-0141]
• In 1981, Thais bought only 200,000 flush toilets; last year, they bought 1.4 million.
  [Score: 325.6953; 06/12/91; WSJ910612-0152]
• Cortez had testified he was awakened by the sound of a toilet flushing on Jan. 14, 1988, went into the bathroom and was immediately arrested by waiting police after officers found a bag of cocaine in the bowl.
  [Score: 316.6036; 02/23/89; AP890223-0196]
• Residents as well as owners of small businesses and restaurants who switch to the ultra low-flush toilets after Oct. 1 can receive a rebate for half the cost of the new toilet, up to $75.;
  [Score: 304.81946; 91/10/19; SJMN91-06293124]
• One of the two British companies still making hard toilet paper abandoned production of it Wednesday with a ceremonial final flush down an 1890 toilet at London's Science Museum.
  [Score: 301.14514; 10/18/89; AP891018-0115]

Trec9 results: 4 6 0 1 1 21 (22.6%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: in 1775

Question 253: Who is William Wordsworth?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: William Wordsworth

• A steady ascent from the tourist village where the poet William Wordsworth lived led to Grisedale Tarn; it provided, in blazing sun, a collective swimming pool below the mighty bulk of the mountain Helvellyn.
  [Score: 1000.0; 92/06/27; FT922-460]
• Krusoe exposes the students to model nature writers as disparate as Romantic poet William Wordsworth and contemporary environmental activist Edward Abbey.
  [Score: 1000.0; 07/20/89; LA072089-0106]
• Picturesque Lake Windermere, which inspired poets William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and Samuel Coleridge, is this country's largest lake.
  [Score: 1000.0; 06/01/89; AP890601-0291]
• In 1802, William Wordsworth wrote a poem, "The Leech Gatherer," which poignantly tells of the overharvesting of medicinal leeches.
  [Score: 1000.0; 09/21/89; WSJ890921-0082]
• We'd recently visited Dove Cottage, where William Wordsworth lived with his family.
  [Score: 200.0; 01/01/89; LA010189-0051]

Trec9 results: 3 0 4 1 1 24 (14.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: English poet A: the English romantic A: poet

Question 254: What is California's state bird?
Qtargets: I-EN-ANIMAL

• Here you'll find a quail guzzler, which stores rainwater to aid California's state bird during the hot summer months.
  [Score: 397.61087; 10/07/89; LA100789-0110]
• The state bird is the California gull, the state tree is the Colorado blue spruce and according to the map, ``Narm Bangerter'' is the state dinosaur.
  [Score: 355.99512; 07/17/88; AP880717-0030]
• I'm not wed to the necessity of a state bird (California valley quail) or a state reptile (California desert tortoise) or a state marine mammal (California gray whale), but live and let live.
  [Score: 335.1495; 91/12/15; SJMN91-06350120]
• In addition to the standard state flower (golden poppy) and bird (California valley quail), California has, among other official designations, a state insect (the dog-face butterfly), a state rock (serpentine) and two state dances (the West Coast Swing and the Square dance).
  [Score: 318.2823; 06/20/91; WSJ910620-0189]
• Quayle said that if elected, Dukakis would appoint judges like California's former Supreme Court chief justice Rose Bird, who was recalled by voters in part because of her opposition to the death penalty.
  [Score: 296.00494; 09/21/88; AP880921-0179]

Trec9 results: 3 1 0 1 0 28 (11.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Valley Quail A: valley quail

Question 255: Who thought of teaching people to tie their shoe laces?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• In Drummond's room, Rosenbaum found hundreds of pairs of used shoe laces, three old suits, eight pairs of shoes and 50 pairs of white socks.
  [Score: 356.0738; 03/11/89; AP890311-0084]
• He said that Sharp, Shoe Lace and Shoe Hut were all controlled by Mr Mahtani.
  [Score: 352.94714; 92/01/22; FT921-13324]
• The floating charge was created within two months before the onset of insolvency in the instant case where Sharp controlled Shoe Lace and so was a 'connected person' within the section.
  [Score: 350.82275; 92/04/22; FT922-12126]
• Also, Sharp controlled Shoe Lace and so was a connected person.
  [Score: 340.34528; 92/01/22; FT921-13324]
• If that was wrong and it was necessary to look at the reasons for the delay, it seemed that Sharp, through Mr Nolan, acquiesced in the delay of Shoe Lace, through Mr Nolan, in executing the debenture.
  [Score: 336.7771; 92/01/22; FT921-13324]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 2 31 (1.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Diamond Bar

Question 256: Who is buried in the great pyramid of Giza?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• Hawass said many people, especially in the United States, have ideas and theories about the Giza pyramids, particularly Cheops' Great Pyramid.
  [Score: 448.49414; 10/22/89; LA102289-0107]
• But they've failed to faze the oldest of the great monuments, the Giza pyramids or, so far, the newest, Gamal Abdul Nasser's Aswan High Dam, which began operating in 1971.
  [Score: 396.43237; 11/13/89; AP891113-0190]
• Many Egyptologists think the face belonged to Chephren, son of Cheops and builder of the second pyramid on Giza Plateau next to Cheops' Great Pyramid.
  [Score: 396.04333; 03/02/88; AP880302-0083]
• Many Egyptologists think the face is that of Chephren, son of Cheops and builder of the second pyramid on Giza Plateau next to Cheops' Great Pyramid.
  [Score: 396.04333; 03/02/88; AP880302-0182]
• Two tiny feet on a base are what remain of a small statue of King Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
  [Score: 376.90942; 07/09/90; AP900709-0029]

Trec9 results: 12 4 3 2 0 12 (47%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Cheops A: Chephren

Question 257: What do penguins eat?
Qtargets: I-EN-HUMAN-FOOD, I-EN-ANIMAL, I-EN-PLANT-FLORA

• Thriving phytoplankton are in turn eaten by microscopic animals and small creatures, such as the shrimp-like krill, which in turn are eaten by fish, crabs, penguins, seals and on up the steps of the food chain.
  [Score: 343.3213; 03/26/89; LA032689-0066]
• Some penguins now are apparently being eaten at sea by giant petrels, a long-winged bird.
  [Score: 299.93182; 03/23/89; AP890323-0192]
• As bacteria ate the dead plants, they would deplete the water of oxygen, possibly endangering fish and krill, which in turn are food for such creatures as whales and penguins.;
  [Score: 270.5333; 91/01/17; SJMN91-06017179]
• Plankton and the tiny shrimp-like creature called krill that feed on them are the primary food source for the whole web of life in the Antarctic, including fish, penguins and whales.
  [Score: 257.0914; 03/29/88; AP880329-0171]
• Lately, the glassed-in, 5,000-square-foot cold climate exhibit has begun to resemble a hospital infant ward, as park visitors strain to get a glimpse of the 14 fast-growing adelie penguins that are just beginning to venture outside their nests.
  [Score: 245.91438; 12/21/89; LA122189-0007]

Trec9 results: 1 3 3 2 1 23 (12.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Plankton A: krill

Question 258: Where do lobsters like to live?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• He said the lobsters on display at the zoo are Caribbean creatures and live in warmer waters than Maine lobsters.
  [Score: 289.30634; 02/01/89; AP890201-0041]
• The ads will mark a 30-day trial of what is billed as the first television sales and distribution network to guarantee home or office delivery of live Maine lobsters anywhere in the nation within 24 hours.
  [Score: 286.9621; 09/15/88; AP880915-0224]
• A live Maine lobster bought for a Valentine's Day dinner got a reprieve from a boiling pot when a wife told her husband she preferred the sea crustacean as a pet instead of as a main course.
  [Score: 282.5343; 02/22/89; AP890222-0174]
• One sells ostrich eggs while another tantalizes passers-by with live Maine lobster.
  [Score: 282.5343; 09/06/90; LA090690-0139]
• Perrydise Farms, 1920 S. El Camino Real, used to offer live Maine lobster every weekend to go with its assortment of vegetables and fruits.
  [Score: 282.5343; 09/06/90; LA090690-0139]

Trec9 results: 3 0 0 0 1 29 (9.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Maine A: off the San Diego coast A: from Newfoundland to the Carolinas

Question 259: What are birds descendents of?
Qtargets: S-NP

• All are descendants of the remnant population of 15 birds counted in 1941 at their summering grounds at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas -- a population that is now protected by U.S. and Canadian law.
  [Score: 172.09258; 09/17/90; LA091790-0062]
• La Canadans say the particular birds in their community are descendants of peacocks imported mainly to help rid a local ranch of rattlesnakes.
  [Score: 170.09125; 08/05/88; WSJ880805-0145]
• The Persian descendents are living in the urban areas of historically famous Samarkand and Bukhara, and the Turkish descendents are living in the surrounding areas.
  [Score: 159.71706; 04/22/94; FBIS4-6635]
• The fact is that encroachments on Village Grazing Reserves (VGR), Professional Grazing reserves (PGR), and forest and Khas lands are a generalised phenomenon with every section of the population encroaching upon them, though the perception about the nature of such encroachment, or about the identity of such encroachers, has always been selective, with "popular" opinion holding that it is only the descendents of erstwhile migrants from former East Bengal who are predominantly such encroachers.
  [Score: 158.32175; 02/02/94; FBIS3-21440]
• The Sorbs are descendents of the west Slavs who migrated from the Carpathian mountains in northern Romania and made their way northwards to the river Elbe.
  [Score: 158.00331; 94/04/05; FT942-17331]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: dinosaurs

Question 260: What does NAFTA stand for?
Qtargets: Q-ABBREVIATION-EXPANSION
Qargs: NAFTA

• Here, the acronyms NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association), GATT, and APEC (Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation) stand for his most impressive success.
  [Score: 986.7989; 01/21/94; FBIS3-58753]
• The half of major South Korean export companies fear they would suffer setbacks in exports to the United States due to the effectuation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
  [Score: 986.7989; 01/14/94; FBIS3-47628]
• Improved trade and Chile's intended support for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were the main topics at a meeting between Chilean President Eduardo Frei and U.S. President Bill Clinton in Washington today.
  [Score: 986.7989; 06/29/94; FBIS4-27015]
• The recent militant reaction of French farmers and the strong support given to their gesture by farmers of other European countries; the agitation of the working people of US against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); the effective protest registered by Canadian voters against the ruling party that became a signatory to the notorious NAFTA; the demonstration (on October 2) by 12 purely American organisations of environmentalists and humanitarians against the modus operandi of Cargill--all these indicate that the unholy alliance between the rulers and the big capitalists of US is operating not only against the third world countries, but also against other developed white countries, and even against the less privileged masses of US itself.
  [Score: 986.7989; 02/02/94; FBIS3-40638]
• Bearing in mind the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is appropriate to ask oneself: Hasn't the Mexican economic reconversion gone too far for such a rectification to be viable?
  [Score: 986.7989; 01/28/94; FBIS3-52056]

Trec9 results: 4 0 0 0 0 29 (12.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: North American Free Trade Association A: North American Free Trade Agreement

Question 261: What company sells the most greeting cards?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-COMPANY, = I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• In addition, Deluxe is still working to digest several acquisitions, the largest of which is Current, a mail-order seller of greeting cards.
  [Score: 337.69965; 07/13/88; WSJ880713-0016]
• Gibson Greetings Inc., one of the nation's largest greeting cards companies, said its chairman, Thomas J. Cooney, will retire on Feb. 28.
  [Score: 328.99084; 01/31/89; AP890131-0248]
• Copyright lawyers said the rash of ``look and feel'' lawsuits began in late 1986, after a federal judge in California ruled that a small software company, Unison World Inc., had infringed a competitor's copyright on a program for making customized greeting cards.
  [Score: 325.086; 05/25/89; AP890525-0235]
• American Greetings; and Gibson Greetings Corp., Cincinnati, together produce about 85% of the greeting cards sold in the U.S., Mr. Weiss said.
  [Score: 316.4632; 04/07/88; WSJ880407-0077]
• Emma Tennant cards, published by Frederica Freer Greeting Cards, are available at: The General Trading Company; Graham & Greene, 4 Elgin Crescent, London W11; The Royal Horticultural Society, Vincent Square, London SW1; The Chelsea Gardener, 125 Sydney Street, London SW3; Dartington Cider Press (Devon); The Village Bakery (Cumbria) and the National Trust.
  [Score: 315.87927; 94/03/26; FT941-1031]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Hallmark Cards A: Hallmark

Question 262: What is the name of the longest ruling dynasty of Japan?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-DYNASTY

• no answer
• The Qajars were the dynasty which ruled Iran from the 1790s and through the last century.
  [Score: 234.6552; 92/01/04; FT921-16281]
• For Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Rajiv Gandhi's former defense minister who now heads the increasingly popular National Front coalition of opposition parties, the race in Amethi is an allegory, a staged confrontation between the old-fashioned Gandhian morality of the Mahatma and the big-money, hi-tech power of India's long-ruling Nehru dynasty.
  [Score: 194.59789; 11/20/89; LA112089-0029]
• The princesses were the last two royal members of the Yi dynasty that ruled Korea for five centuries until 1910.
  [Score: 191.17867; 05/08/89; AP890508-0082]
• Yes, the corrupt government in the later years of the Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan following the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, and the Taiwanese people suffered enslavement for half a century.
  [Score: 188.81715; 06/18/94; FBIS4-26238]

Trec9 results: 1 1 1 0 0 30 (5.6%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Tokugawa

Question 263: When was Babe Ruth born?
Qtargets: C-DATE, C-TEMP-LOC-WITH-YEAR, C-DATE-RANGE, C-YEAR-RANGE, = C-TEMP-LOC (0.5)

• In 1895, baseball legend Babe Ruth was born in Baltimore.
  [Score: 543.9988; 01/30/89; AP890130-0189]
• Far from the bear-like buffoon William Bendix played in the sanitized 1948 film "The Babe Ruth Story," Lang's Ruth is a hot-tempered giant who could look the commissioner of baseball in the eye and call him a "white-haired old bastard," regardless of the fine and suspension that guaranteed.
  [Score: 391.42444; 91/10/06; SJMN91-06280188]
• In 1930, when Babe Ruth signed a stratospheric $80,000-a-year contract with the New York Yankees, scribes asked the slugger if he thought he should be paid more than President Herbert Hoover.
  [Score: 359.92078; 12/24/90; AP901224-0005]
• They're often as unlikely as Pepper Martin in 1931 or as predictable as Babe Ruth in 1927.
  [Score: 359.6011; 03/14/89; LA031489-0075]
• Even when the 50-year bell tolls on Babe Ruth in 1998, there are other legal ways to protect his name and likeness.
  [Score: 359.6011; 12/22/89; LA122289-0103]

Trec9 results: 10 4 2 0 0 17 (38.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: in 1895 A: 1895

Question 264: Who wrote the Farmer's Almanac?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• After watching his half-acre of grass wither and dry this spring, Witham Smith wrote a letter to the ``Old Farmer's Almanac.''
  [Score: 406.65137; 06/16/88; AP880616-0028]
• SELF-HELP / REFERENCETHE OLD FARMER'S 1989 ALMANAC by Robert B. Thomas (Old Farmer's Almanac: $2.95) Since 1792, this little book has presented an eclectic mix of planting tables, weather forecasts, recipes and astrological secrets.
  [Score: 373.00967; 10/15/89; LA101589-0014]
• The almanac was written by Thomas G. Aylesworth.
  [Score: 355.45206; 12/07/90; LA120790-0036]
• THE OLD FARMER'S 1991 Almanac by Robert B. Thomas, edited by Judson Hale ($2.50). New additions to the usual planting, recipes and folklore are features on tracking lost pets through the lost and found ads, predicting earthquakes and classic child-rearing advice.
  [Score: 355.30438; 10/21/90; LA102190-0065]
• In recent years, the market has been able to avert a historical pattern that Yale Hirsch, who publishes the annual Stock Trader's Almanac, calls ``the May-June disaster area.''
  [Score: 322.80658; 04/29/89; AP890429-0141]

Trec9 results: 2 0 1 2 3 25 (10.4%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Robert B. Thomas

Question 265: What's the farthest planet from the sun?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PLANET

• Among them are the clearest pictures yet of Pluto, the farthest planet from the sun in the solar system, and its moon Charon.
  [Score: 542.66016; 11/16/90; AP901116-0022]
• In Dante's medieval conception, hell was located at the Earth's core, and thus farthest from the sun, stars and planets by which human time is told.
  [Score: 341.03955; 01/07/90; LA010790-0015]
• Similar generators have been used on other deep space probes, including Voyager, which last year sent back photographs as it passed Neptune, at that point the planet farthest from the Earth.
  [Score: 331.66315; 02/08/90; AP900208-0028]
• The four largest moons bear the same relationship to their planet as planets in our solar system do to the sun _ the nearest being solid rock, like Mercury, and the farthest being a slush ball with a rock in the center, like gaseous Neptune.
  [Score: 311.20267; 10/05/89; AP891005-0217]
• Two previous "cold soak" attempts in July and August failed, but O'Neil said the December attempt would take place while Galileo was at its farthest point from the sun, before the 2.5-ton craft swings back toward the inner solar system and another loop around Earth late next year.
  [Score: 261.93237; 91/10/22; SJMN91-06296161]

Trec9 results: 15 0 1 0 1 16 (47.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Pluto A: Neptune

Question 266: Where was Pythagoras born?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• no answer
• "He was born in Lynn, Mass., in 1852. . . .
  [Score: 244.06554; 07/01/91; WSJ910701-0124]
• Ms. Bury, of Golden, Colo., says her methods are based on the theories of Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician.
  [Score: 224.87955; 01/30/92; WSJ920130-0011]
• Geometry is traditionally covered with only a passing reference to Euclid and Pythagoras; but Atlanta wants black mathematicians and their contributions not only to be mentioned, but to serve as a pivot for lessons.
  [Score: 219.77698; 07/01/91; WSJ910701-0124]
• An elegant reminder of Heliopolis' past, an obelisk, stands in New York's Central Park.
  [Score: 207.06146; 01/19/89; AP890119-0280]

Trec9 results: 0 1 0 0 0 32 (1.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Greek mathematician

Question 267: What is the name for clouds that produce rain?
Qtargets: S-NP, S-NOUN
Qargs: cloud, type

• Trotting is a form of driven horse racing, in which the pony pulls 9st 7lbs of driver in a two wheeled sulkie, it is popular with gamblers around the world: but it could not be better set than under the black belly of rain cloud, in rolling mid-Wales.
  [Score: 305.05444; 93/02/27; FT931-6685]
• Something we loved to see disappear in the '80s: the canopy of blue smoke that used to hang like a rain cloud over a ballroom while a party was in progress.
  [Score: 305.05444; 12/29/89; LA122989-0139]
• As the personal computer industry gathers in Las Vegas for its huge Comdex trade show starting Monday, companies of all stripes are anxiously scanning the heavens, wondering if the gathering clouds of recession will gently rain on the PC parade or unleash a devastating storm.
  [Score: 302.56033; 11/10/90; LA111090-0140]
• Low pressure well off the central California coast spread clouds and scattered showers across central California, but much of the rainfall was light.
  [Score: 295.74826; 02/25/89; AP890225-0123]
• Farmers began warily planting corn last week with one eye on the sky in hopes of finding dark clouds that will produce soaking rains for the state's rich but parched black earth.
  [Score: 294.40665; 04/23/89; LA042389-0109]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: rain clouds

Question 268: Who killed Caesar?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• This version of the plot to kill Julius Caesar is told through the eyes of Decimus Brutus, the protege whom Caesar most trusted and who became one of his assassins.
  [Score: 284.945; 93/05/15; FT932-8961]
• The rest of the top 10 were, in order, ``Julius Caesar,'' by Shakespeare, ``To Kill A Mockingbird,'' ``The Scarlet Letter,'' by Nathaniel Hawthorne, ``Of Mice and Men,'' by John Steinbeck, Shakespeare's ``Hamlet,'' ``The Great Gatsby,'' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and ``Lord of the Flies,'' by William Golding.
  [Score: 262.39893; 05/31/89; AP890531-0015]
• Having failed to prevent Cleopatra's henchwoman Ftatateeta from killing Pothinus, Caesar lets Rufius - the new governor of Egypt - murder her, before turning his back on the lot of them in a devastating display of political indifference.
  [Score: 248.8323; 92/02/06; FT921-10331]
• Caesar stays alive long enough to show he is worth killing, Cassius lurks hungrily throughout, and Casca (successfully cast as a woman) is blunt to a fault.
  [Score: 244.115; 94/01/24; FT941-13783]
• Thank you so much for your excellent piece on Caesar salad ("Hail Caesar" by Sam Gugino, Food section, Oct.2) -- by far the best I have seen, and there have been quite a few that have come my way.
  [Score: 231.56056; 91/10/30; SJMN91-06304110]

Trec9 results: 1 2 0 0 0 30 (6.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Decimus Brutus

Question 269: Who was Picasso?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Picasso

• The main point remains, however: Picasso is the ideal artist to exemplify the debate about the Modern movement because he showed with the pictures in his early Blue and Rose Periods that he was capable of creating hugely impressive and popular work in conventional styles, yet he chose to move into cubism and other unconventional styles.
  [Score: 1000.0; 94/02/16; FT941-9166]
• In both his excesses and his achievements -- above all, in the union of his excesses and achievements -- Pablo Picasso was the paradigmatic artist of our age, the Einstein of modern art.
  [Score: 800.0; 05/03/91; WSJ910503-0125]
• Picasso Artworks Stolen: The granddaughter of famed artist Pablo Picasso has been robbed of art works valued at $17 million in what French police call one of the biggest art thefts ever.
  [Score: 800.0; 11/07/89; LA110789-0019]
• ``It's in another stratosphere, but it's because there's a lot of cash around,'' Paloma Picasso, the artist's daughter who attended the auction, said when asked if she thought the bidding had gotten out of hand.
  [Score: 800.0; 05/09/89; AP890509-0216]
• A Japanese real estate tycoon paid $48.9 million today to set a world auction record for a painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.
  [Score: 800.0; 11/30/89; LA113089-0222]

Trec9 results: 19 4 1 1 1 7 (66%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Spanish-born artist A: pioneer in cubism

Question 270: Where is the Orinoco?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-STATE-DISTRICT, I-EN-PROPER-COUNTRY, I-EN-US-REGION&S-PROPER-NAME, = I-EN-PROPER-PLACE (0.5), I-EN-PLACE (0.33)

• Due to the freedom they have on the other side of the Orinoco [Colombia], Venezuelan authorities can do little about the presence of the drug traffickers on the Venezuelan side.
  [Score: 254.80736; 05/17/94; FBIS4-57716]
• Due to the freedom they have on the other side of the Orinoco [Colombia], Venezuelan authorities can do little about the presence of the drug traffickers in the Venezuelan side.
  [Score: 254.80736; 05/17/94; FBIS4-67271]
• Cruising up the Orinoco in Venezuela, but that's another story . . .
  [Score: 251.00557; 03/19/89; LA031989-0174]
• During a brief portage in Brazil between the Orinoco and an Amazon tributary, an army captain was so impressed by the voyage that he played them a tune on an instrument resembling a ukelele.
  [Score: 249.37117; 07/25/88; AP880725-0163]
• The Foreign Ministry won the Orinoco River for Venezuela in 1833 with 300,000 km east, or rather west of the Orinoco River with half of Guajira.
  [Score: 248.88828; 04/28/94; FBIS4-56375]

Trec9 results: 15 7 1 4 0 6 (60.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: in Brazil A: in Venezuela A: South America A: in Venezuela's Federal Amazonas Territory A: in Colombia A: in Eastern Venezuela

Question 271: How tall is the giraffe?
Qtargets: I-EN-DISTANCE-QUANTITY

• With Checkers and another mate, Freckles, who died in 1984, the 18-foot-tall giraffe sired 21 children, many of whom have populated zoos throughout the world.
  [Score: 349.3868; 08/15/89; LA081589-0085]
• The 16-foot-tall giraffe lost its head.
  [Score: 349.3868; 12/23/90; LA122390-0201]
• *Most expensive toys include a $6,000 toy Jaguar automobile for children and a 14-foot-tall stuffed giraffe, around $4,500.
  [Score: 347.33255; 08/01/90; LA080190-0054]
• Some of the more spectacular of the 60 floats included the tallest in parade history, a 75-foot flowered-covered giraffe by Carnation Co., and the Casablanca Fan Co. float featuring a ski run and breath-taking flips by members of the Stuntmen's Association.
  [Score: 285.14484; 01/02/89; AP890102-0120]
• The 1989 edition featured 275 horses, 20 marching bands and 60 floats _ including its tallest ever, a 70-foot creation depicting a roller-skating giraffe pulling a giant calliope.
  [Score: 282.8195; 01/02/89; AP890102-0061]

Trec9 results: 14 9 3 1 1 5 (60.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 16 to 18 feet A: 6 feet A: 18-foot-tall A: 17-foot A: 16-foot-tall

Question 272: Where are there aborigines?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• "There is no question that it's easier to raise money for the Royal Shakespeare Festival . . . than for the aborigines of Australia," she said.
  [Score: 262.00262; 07/12/90; LA071290-0188]
• About 300 aborigines marched through downtown Sydney on Saturday to protest the deaths of aborigines in custody.
  [Score: 251.1185; 10/01/88; AP881001-0066]
• Bruce Chatwin, in ``Songlines,'' seeks out the traditional ancestral paths of aborigines in the Australian Outback, and Mary Morris travels alone and offbeat in Mexico in ``Nothing to Declare'' (both Viking-Penguin).
  [Score: 248.70947; 03/20/89; AP890320-0264]
• ``The Dead Heart'' attacks exploitation of aborigines in Australia.
  [Score: 248.70947; 04/11/88; AP880411-0244]
• After all, many of their contemporaries see them as borderline fanatics, and even those who sympathize with them often equate them with the aborigines of Australia and Argentina, but the Hasidim are primarily scholars, who are steeped in idealistic dialectic from infancy.
  [Score: 248.70947; 02/14/94; FBIS3-42798]

Trec9 results: 9 10 0 1 3 10 (45%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: in Australia A: In Australia A: Australia A: New Zealand and Australia A: Australian Aborigines

Question 273: Who was the first U.S. president ever to resign?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• In 1832, John C. Calhoun became the first U.S. vice president to resign, stepping down over differences with President Andrew Jackson.
  [Score: 377.32175; 12/19/88; AP881219-0197]
• WHIPPLE, Charles Lewis, 77, who wrote the editorial that made the Boston Globe the first major U.S. paper to urge President Nixon to resign in 1973;
  [Score: 371.91644; 91/05/16; SJMN91-06137224]
• Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole today became the first member of President Bush's Cabinet to resign, leaving after two years to become head of the American Red Cross.
  [Score: 370.51004; 10/24/90; AP901024-0077]
• Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has rejected the new U.S. plan aimed at restoring him to power, insisting on the need for the military in power to resign as the first step of a peace plan in Haiti.
  [Score: 346.38367; 03/30/94; FBIS3-12121]
• Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who nearly a decade ago was forced by then-President Carter to resign as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for meeting with a PLO representative, applauded the decision, saying, ``People were not ready for this before now.''
  [Score: 343.17917; 12/15/88; AP881215-0043]

Trec9 results: 3 3 1 1 1 24 (16%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Nixon A: President Nixon

Question 274: Who invented the game Scrabble?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• Anyone knowing the answer off pat will probably be an addict of Scrabble (in which short words can be decisive in end-play) and so have cause to lament the death of the game's US inventor Alfred Butts.
  [Score: 347.5503; 93/04/08; FT932-15919]
• But beware: Forbes' Muse here isn't so much John le Carre as the game Scrabble.
  [Score: 342.71436; 01/20/90; LA012090-0039]
• The deal, expected to be announced today, would strengthen Hasbro's position in the toy business by adding to its product lines well-known Coleco items such as Cabbage Patch Kids and the board games Scrabble and Parcheesi.
  [Score: 317.52557; 05/24/89; LA052489-0108]
• Besides Cabbage Patch Kids, Coleco manufactures Alf dolls, Big Wheels plastic tricycles and board games, such as Scrabble.
  [Score: 312.0414; 07/12/88; AP880712-0258]
• Hasbro recently bought many of the products formerly manufactured by Coleco Industries Inc., including Cabbage Patch dolls, Scrabble and Parcheesi.
  [Score: 285.6181; 10/19/89; AP891019-0305]

Trec9 results: 9 2 0 1 1 20 (31.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Alfred Butts A: Alfred Butts, a New York architect

Question 275: About how many soldiers died in World War II?
Qtargets: I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Deaths of this sort happen in every war: in World War II roughly 5,800 U.S. soldiers died from friendly fire -- 814 in one miscalculated bombing run in France alone (no one was disciplined in that incident).
  [Score: 692.8618; 09/10/91; WSJ910910-0044]
• The Israeli doubts were evident Sunday at the dedication in Jerusalem of a memorial to 200,000 Soviet Jewish soldiers who died fighting Germany in World War II.
  [Score: 650.0137; 11/13/89; AP891113-0056]
• In a gesture of reconciliation more than four decades after the end of World War II, the Soviet Union has released the names of 1,500 German soldiers who died in its prisoner-of-war camps.
  [Score: 641.52844; 06/13/89; AP890613-0001]
• And in a gesture of reconciliation, the Soviet Union released the names of 1,500 German soldiers who died in its prisoner-of-war camps during World War II.
  [Score: 633.07654; 06/13/89; AP890613-0075]
• Historians now say that in World War II, 16 million soldiers were killed, including about half a million Americans.
  [Score: 630.21027; 91/01/31; SJMN91-06031228]

Trec9 results: 4 4 2 0 0 23 (20.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 16 million

Question 276: How much money does the Sultan of Brunei have?
Qtargets: I-EN-MONETARY-QUANTITY

• Fortune said the world's richest person is the Sultan of Brunei, at $25 billion.
  [Score: 426.7165; 07/09/90; AP900709-0225]
• But $10 million from the Sultan of Brunei mistakenly wound up in the wrong Swiss bank account.
  [Score: 421.29068; 02/14/89; LA021489-0090]
• Last year the Sultan of Brunei paid $757,000 a room for his name to appear on the deed to the Beverly Hills Hotel, affectionately dubbed the ``pink palace'' by the polo crowd, and real estate developer Donald Trump added New York's French Renaissance-style Plaza Hotel to his glitzy empire for an average $495,000 a room earlier this year.
  [Score: 421.29068; 09/30/88; AP880930-0244]
• Trump bought the Princess for $29 million from the Sultan of Brunei in 1987.
  [Score: 421.29068; 06/28/89; AP890628-0113]
• He is often listed as the second-richest man in the world, with $18 billion, after the Sultan of Brunei.
  [Score: 419.52905; 08/23/90; AP900823-0023]

Trec9 results: 2 3 2 6 0 20 (17.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: $ 24.64 billion A: $ 25 billion A: up to Dollars 30 billion A: Dollars 37bn A: $31 billion

Question 277: How large is Missouri's population?
Qtargets: Q-POPULATION, I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• In St. Louis, the state's most populous city with a metropolitan area population of more than 2 million, the president was to speak at an event for the Missouri GOP Victory '88 fund.
  [Score: 364.12918; 09/14/88; AP880914-0089]
• Missouri Telephone also serves cellular-telephone territories with a population of 320,000.
  [Score: 360.46063; 10/01/91; WSJ911001-0135]
• In St. Louis, the state's most populous city with a metropolitan area population of more than 2 million, the president will speak at the Omni Hotel St. Louis at an event for the Missouri GOP Victory '88 fund.
  [Score: 360.46063; 09/14/88; AP880914-0013]
• And making its debut this Saturday is Lotto America, a lottery linking Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oregon, Rhode Island, West Virginia and the District of Columbia -- which have a combined population of 16.5 million.
  [Score: 339.21692; 02/11/88; WSJ880211-0005]
• no answer

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 5.1m

Question 278: What was the death toll at the eruption of Mount Pinatubo?
Qtargets: I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Police have discovered the bodies of two men and a woman in three ash-covered villages, raising the death toll from the eruptions of Mount Pinatubo to 341, officials said today.;
  [Score: 739.96375; 91/07/08; SJMN91-06190141]
• The death toll from the eruptions of Mount Pinatubo, combined with a series of earthquakes and torrential rains, increased to more than 200, according to Philippine television.
  [Score: 659.8061; 91/06/18; SJMN91-06170249]
• 'ROLLY SORIA, 18, on the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.;
  [Score: 635.58875; 91/06/16; SJMN91-06168071]
• Last month's eruptions of Mount Pinatubo killed more than 300 people and forced the United States to abandon Clark Air Base, 10 miles east of the volcano.;
  [Score: 593.99194; 91/07/22; SJMN91-06204021]
• During the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, transports with rear-facing seats evacuated 7,000 Americans.;
  [Score: 555.7659; 91/08/04; SJMN91-06217105]

Trec9 results: 8 4 1 0 1 19 (31.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: more than 200 A: 169 people A: 227 A: 268 A: 338 A: 341

Question 279: Who was Lacan?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Lacan

• For the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the philosopher Jacques Derrida the reading of a text was a purely subjective, rhetorical act.
  [Score: 800.0; 92/01/18; FT921-13872]
• Some critics use the word as if it were synonymous with the old-fashioned 'formalist' (damaging in Stalinist times), something like '(too) consciously concerned with formal proportions and markers'; or again, to report telltale echoes of the infinitely self-aware, ironical litterateur Roland Barthes, or of the 'structuralist' psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's sweeping presumptions.
  [Score: 800.0; 92/12/24; FT924-482]
• He left Le Monde in characteristic circumstances, after his investigation into the share scandal associated with the Pechiney aluminium company, in which Lacan had implicated Patrice Pelat.
  [Score: 200.0; 94/05/21; FT942-8105]
• Lacan's writing also provided the theoretical basis for Kelly's most famous work, the 'Post Partum Document', presented at the ICA in 1976, and her lectures and writing since then have earned her an influential place in the academic feminist debate.
  [Score: 150.0; 93/05/08; FT932-10369]
• All this seems somewhat overdrawn but Lacan's world is unusually dramatic.
  [Score: 150.0; 94/05/21; FT942-8105]

Trec9 results: 7 1 1 1 2 21 (25.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: psychoanalyst A: structuralist psychoanalyst A: media and communications editor at Le Monde

Question 280: What's the tallest building in New York City?
Qtargets: S-NP, S-NOUN
Qargs: building

• The developers have not said how many stories they plan in the building, but it will be 265 meters tall _ or 869 feet, which would make it slightly less than three-quarters the height of the 102-story Empire State Building in New York City.
  [Score: 407.41895; 08/21/89; AP890821-0145]
• New York police said the Gorbachevs would visit the Observation Deck of the World Trade Center, the city's tallest building, on Wednesday and would drive past the Stock Exchange and through the Broadway area.
  [Score: 367.78027; 12/06/88; AP881206-0194]
• The World Trade Center, at 1,368 feet, is New York City's tallest building.
  [Score: 367.49072; 91/05/09; SJMN91-06130092]
• He's hinted that he may try to put up the world's tallest building, a tower of 125 stories or more, if plans for a similarly outsized building are thwarted in New York City.
  [Score: 367.2215; 04/13/90; AP900413-0117]
• Sears, Roebuck & Co. has hit a major snag in its negotiations to sell the Sears Tower in Chicago, the world's tallest building, to Olympia & York Developments Ltd.
  [Score: 362.20044; 09/13/89; WSJ890913-0003]

Trec9 results: 3 4 2 0 0 24 (17.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: World Trade Center

Question 281: When did Geraldine Ferraro run for vice president?
Qtargets: C-DATE, C-TEMP-LOC-WITH-YEAR, C-DATE-RANGE, C-YEAR-RANGE, = C-TEMP-LOC (0.5)

• When Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice president in 1984, the "women's vote" was billed as the sleeping giant that would awaken and save the Democratic Party.
  [Score: 540.45306; 04/12/90; LA041290-0028]
• Martin supported Bush in his 1980 presidential bid, helped him prepare for his 1984 vice presidential debate with Democrat Geraldine Ferraro and was a national co-chairwoman of his 1988 run for the White House.
  [Score: 480.7752; 12/17/90; AP901217-0099]
• Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, July 19, 1984, accepting the Democratic Party nomination for vice president.
  [Score: 466.1116; 12/07/89; AP891207-0193]
• Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, says Michael Dukakis, this year's likely Democratic presidential nominee, will probably choose a white male as a running mate.
  [Score: 446.78207; 06/22/88; AP880622-0067]
• The phrase ``deep doo-doo'' has been attributed to the vice president, and after his debate with Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 he said he had ``kicked ass.''
  [Score: 446.47253; 05/20/88; AP880520-0174]

Trec9 results: 25 2 0 1 1 4 (80.2%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 1984 A: in 1984

Question 282: What do ladybugs eat?
Qtargets: I-EN-HUMAN-FOOD, I-EN-ANIMAL, I-EN-PLANT-FLORA

• Bailey recommended turning ladybugs loose in the garden to eat the aphids that may appear.
  [Score: 333.41858; 10/20/90; LA102090-0118]
• According to Ron, the aphids produce a sweet, sticky goop that ants either eat or use for something or other, therefore the ants keep their "goo providers" from being eaten by the ladybugs.;
  [Score: 309.4616; 91/10/09; SJMN91-06283263]
• Rincon-Vitova Insectories Inc., Oak View, Calif., says its aphid-eating ladybugs and other insect stand-ins for chemicals are flying off the shelf.
  [Score: 305.38205; 04/03/90; WSJ900403-0038]
• Ladybugs -- the aphid-eating Hippodamia convergens -- do not reproduce well enough on a synthetic diet to make them economical to rear.
  [Score: 300.6953; 10/01/89; LA100189-0036]
• The beneficial insects, like the praying mantis, snail-eating ground beetle and ladybug larvae, can be imported into the garden, where they police the area for the leaf- and flower-munching pests.
  [Score: 295.22565; 06/09/90; LA060990-0142]

Trec9 results: 10 3 2 3 1 14 (39.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: aphids

Question 283: Where is Ayer's rock?
Qtargets: C-AT-LOCATION, I-EN-PROPER-PLACE, I-EN-PLACE (0.5)

• The couple claimed in August 1980 that their daughter Azaria was carried away by a dingo, an Australian wild dog, from the tent where they were camping in central Australia near Ayer's Rock.
  [Score: 330.92554; 11/02/90; AP901102-0173]
• In a memo to staffers, Jerry Siano, chairman of Ayer's U.S. operations, said Saturn officials told Ayer that Riney's size promised the "near total involvement of Hal Riney and key associates" with Saturn.
  [Score: 305.05896; 05/25/88; WSJ880525-0102]
• Jan Zwiren has resigned as chief executive officer of Ayer's Chicago office to join Omnicom's DDB Needham unit, adding to speculation that Ayer may sell its Chicago operation.
  [Score: 302.47342; 09/19/91; WSJ910919-0049]
• Her successor, Mr. Maher, will report to Dean Proctor, an executive vice president in Ayer's New York office.
  [Score: 297.41687; 09/19/91; WSJ910919-0049]
• That loss is expected to lead to the closing of Ayer's Dallas office.
  [Score: 297.41687; 06/25/91; WSJ910625-0059]

Trec9 results: 15 4 1 1 0 12 (53.3%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: central Australia A: Australia A: central Australian desert

Question 284: What is the life expectancy of an elephant?
Qtargets: I-EN-TEMPORAL-QUANTITY
Qargs: elephant

• The book listed the life expectancy of CF patients at three to five years.
  [Score: 240.01086; 11/20/90; LA112090-0153]
• The April 6 letter said that results of an investigation by the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) show "repeated disciplinary measures" on Feb. 17 and 18, 1988, to the 18-year-old female African elephant "did cause bruising and damage to the skin on the elephant's head and signs of behavioral stress."
  [Score: 221.91687; 04/11/89; LA041189-0041]
• When monsoons lash the countryside, a three-day elephant ride offers the only access.
  [Score: 220.50366; 03/14/88; AP880314-0247]
• Twinkles, a 15-year-old elephant, died while on loan to a traveling circus in North Carolina.
  [Score: 219.57901; 08/12/90; LA081290-0090]
• The German takes out a tape measure and calculates the animal's dimensions, the Brit gives a disquisition on the 300-year history of the elephant in the British Empire, and the Frenchman discusses the best way to cook the beast.
  [Score: 217.15695; 12/06/91; WSJ911206-0006]

Trec9 results: 4 0 0 1 0 28 (12.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 70 in captivity

Question 285: When was the first railroad from the east coast to the west coast completed?
Qtargets: C-DATE, C-TEMP-LOC-WITH-YEAR, C-DATE-RANGE, C-YEAR-RANGE, = C-TEMP-LOC (0.5)

• BEI Holdings Ltd. said it completed a top management restructuring following last year's acquisition of Golembe Associates Inc., and consolidated its East Coast and West Coast consulting operations.
  [Score: 311.51495; 04/11/90; WSJ900411-0087]
• The increase in the number of our nuclear-powered submarines equipped with ballistic missiles forces the United States to create and deploy in the 1980's new powerful over-the-horizon Pave Paws radars on the east and west coasts and also on its southern borders.
  [Score: 305.62378; 02/23/94; FBIS3-42477]
• McElroy had held curatorial posts in museums and public galleries on the East and West coasts since the mid-1970s.
  [Score: 291.4942; 06/05/90; AP900605-0096]
• Each was the product of a sweeping rationalisation of the fragmented east coast fishery in the early 1980s.
  [Score: 288.74203; 94/01/14; FT941-15460]
• The biggest, a 1,160-mile railroad from the capital of landlocked Zambia through Tanzania to the coast, cost the lives of 145 Chinese workers before it was completed in 1975.
  [Score: 288.49762; 07/25/89; AP890725-0093]

Trec9 results: 2 0 0 0 0 31 (6.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: in 1869 A: May 10 , 1869

Question 286: What is the nickname of Pennsylvania?
Qtargets: LEX&Keystone State, S-NP (0.5), S-NOUN (0.5)
Qargs: Pennsylvania

• Jackson raised money in Washington before returning late Sunday for a final push in the Keystone State.
  [Score: 750.0; 04/25/88; AP880425-0119]
• no answer
• But the one-time world-class sprinter who raced so fast at Arizona State that he earned the nickname Roadrunner, somehow ended up on the wrong side of the track.
  [Score: 161.08391; 04/16/89; LA041689-0184]
• Both the Rev. Neal Hail of Scottsbluff, who earned the nickname ``Near-Ton Neal,'' and the Rev. ``Bulbous'' Bill Bibb of Gering were confident their team would emerge victorious.
  [Score: 161.08391; 11/19/88; AP881119-0102]
• On the left is a building that dominates this area of the avenue, the Romanesque-style Old Post Office Building, whose soaring observation tower brought it the nickname "Old Tooth" and made it the tallest building in Washington.
  [Score: 161.08391; 01/20/89; LA012089-0115]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: the Keystone State

Question 287: Who is Desmond Tutu?
Qtargets: Q-WHY-FAMOUS-PERSON
Qargs: Desmond Tutu

• In the statement that was also sent to Israeli leaders, Van der Hoeven wrote: ``we specifically apologize for the remarks made by the visiting Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu...we bow our heads in shame.''
  [Score: 1000.0; 12/25/89; AP891225-0081]
• The son of Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Tuesday he engineered his own arrest at an airport to promote an advertising agency he heads.
  [Score: 1000.0; 01/03/89; AP890103-0166]
• WINDHOEK, South-West Africa (AP) _ In a stinging rebuke to President P.W. Botha, Archbishop Desmond Tutu today denied that he endorsed Marxism and said his fight against apartheid was deeply rooted in Christian tradition.
  [Score: 1000.0; 04/12/88; AP880412-0099]
• Anglican bishops, including an envoy sent by the Archbishop of Canterbury, today pledged support for Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his confrontation with the government.
  [Score: 1000.0; 03/22/88; AP880322-0108]
• Police arrested Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and hundreds of other activists nationwide Friday as clerics, students and workers staged protests in support of a growing anti-apartheid campaign.
  [Score: 1000.0; 09/01/89; AP890901-0136]

Trec9 results: 17 7 2 2 0 5 (65.7%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Black Anglican Archbishop A: the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize A: Anglican spiritual leader for all of southern Africa A: the anti-apartheid cleric A: South African leader A: the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town

Question 288: How fast can a Corvette go?
Qtargets: I-EN-SPEED-QUANTITY

• I mean, I'm thinking so hard I'm driving 30 m.p.h. in my Corvette, and you know, a Corvette don't run too good at 30 m.p.h."
  [Score: 239.91852; 07/09/89; LA070989-0177]
• The ZR-1 doesn't have the most horsepower of any assembly-line production Corvette _ a 1967 model with 435 horsepower did _ but it does have the highest top speed of any Corvette at about 180 mph.
  [Score: 236.9405; 08/10/89; AP890810-0225]
• A Huntington Beach man, who police said was driving his Chevrolet Corvette at 106 m.p.h., died Monday night when he lost control of the car and hit a power pole on Bolsa Chica Road, police said.
  [Score: 231.9687; 01/03/89; LA010389-0102]
• Paul Dean's recent article about the Corvette ZR-1 was of particular interest to me because of the "ZR-1's favorite party trick" of going from zero to 100 m.p.h. and back to a dead stop in 14 seconds.
  [Score: 231.72263; 06/11/89; LA061189-0037]
• Elementary school teacher Carol Benson, 45, was driving home for lunch on Cole Grade Road in Valley Center when Van Dusen, traveling about 90 m.p.h. in his Corvette, struck her car head-on.
  [Score: 230.10577; 04/25/90; LA042590-0030]

Trec9 results: 1 0 2 0 0 30 (5.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: about 180 mph A: can top 190 mph

Question 289: What are John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay known as?
Qtargets: S-NP

• It would have made quite a difference to American history if such limitations had ended after 12 years the careers of such illustrious legislators as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Sumner, James G. Blaine, Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert M. LaFollette, George W. Norris, Sam Rayburn, Robert P. Wagner, William E. Borah, Arthur Vandenberg, George Aiken, Robert A. Taft, Jacob Javits and so many others.
  [Score: 574.10236; 10/29/91; WSJ911029-0073]
• The eagle and shield were there during speeches on the old chamber's floor which served the Senate from 1810 to 1859, and can be seen in 19th century prints involving three famous senators of the era: Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.
  [Score: 567.06616; 04/06/89; AP890406-0128]
• America's best-known historic figures are here as well: Henry Clay (Ky.), Huey Long (La.), William Jennings Bryan (Neb.), Daniel Webster (N.H.), Robert E. Lee (Va.), Samuel Adams (Mass.), Roger Williams (R.I.), John C. Calhoun (S.C.), Sam Houston and Stephen Austin (Tex.), and Ethan Allen (Vt.).
  [Score: 529.9687; 06/10/90; LA061090-0213]
• The spa quickly attracted the notables of the times: Mrs. John Quincy Adams and her daughters, Aaron Burr, and statesmen Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster.
  [Score: 528.96924; 09/08/89; AP890908-0111]
• The names and faces of Webster's contemporaries, Sens. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and Henry Clay of Kentucky also were used to peddle cigars.
  [Score: 510.05743; 06/14/88; AP880614-0018]

Trec9 results: 4 3 0 4 2 20 (20.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: long-winded orators A: famous senators A: statesmen A: America's best-known historic figures A: illustrious legislators

Question 290: When was Hurricane Hugo?
Qtargets: C-DATE, C-TEMP-LOC-WITH-YEAR, C-DATE-RANGE, C-YEAR-RANGE, = C-TEMP-LOC (0.5)

• The court found Monday that Mondelice Croix, 61, shot the four pigs belonging to Annoncia Clock, a restaurateur, while this island was in the eye of Hurricane Hugo on Sept. 17.Answer extension: 1989
  [Score: 204.53929; 09/26/89; AP890926-0091]
• Of even greater significance were flood-loss payments following Hurricane Hugo, in 1989, of $364,240,415.
  [Score: 204.36804; 12/20/91; WSJ911220-0080]
• Gooda's syndicates were overwhelmed by losses from the Piper Alpha explosion in July 1988, Hurricane Hugo in September 1989 and the European storms of January 1990.
  [Score: 204.36804; 94/10/05; FT944-18166]
• As a result, a number of the largest US property-casualty insurers, who suffered multi-billion-dollar losses from Hurricane Andrew in August last year and Hurricane Hugo in 1989, said the Mississippi situation should cause them little problem.
  [Score: 202.12161; 93/07/13; FT933-14801]
• Claims of more than Dollars 13bn made Andrew one of the world's most expensive hurricanes, nearly three times as big as Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
  [Score: 202.10242; 92/12/31; FT924-83]

Trec9 results: 5 5 1 1 0 21 (24.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 1989 A: in 1989

Question 291: When did the Carolingian period begin?
Qtargets: C-DATE, C-TEMP-LOC-WITH-YEAR, C-DATE-RANGE, C-YEAR-RANGE, = C-TEMP-LOC (0.5)

• The Carolingian period refers to the reign of emperor Charlemagne and his successors in the 8th through early 10th centuries.
  [Score: 289.85068; 07/26/90; AP900726-0152]
• The Grossmunster also dates from the Carolingian period, and it was here that Huldrych Zwingli set off the Reformation in 1519.
  [Score: 278.31885; 93/12/02; FT934-4635]
• It represents "one of the masterpieces of Carolingian (8th- to late 9th-Century) book illumination," the foundation said.
  [Score: 245.91438; 05/01/90; LA050190-0162]
• In 1979, the collection began to expand with a gift from the estate of Judge Lucius Peyton Green.
  [Score: 226.52643; 07/01/90; LA070190-0236]
• The resurrection has just begun, but I am sure Mr Cogeval will ensure that it continues with both scholarship and excitement.
  [Score: 201.85829; 93/03/15; FT931-3596]

Trec9 results: 3 4 1 1 1 23 (17.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 8th-Century

Question 292: How big is Australia?
Qtargets: I-EN-AREA-QUANTITY

• Phillips Australian Oil Co., a unit of Phillips Petroleum Co., said the Australian Minister of Resources awarded it a 100% working interest in an exploration permit covering 700,000 acres offshore Australia.
  [Score: 201.12065; 04/10/91; WSJ910410-0055]
• Australia's 1.5 acres of prime land with a pond and many trees is in the posh Minato ward and, according to the spokesman, was recently sold to a consortium of four Japanese and two Australian firms.
  [Score: 200.90883; 04/28/88; AP880428-0237]
• ``Now that's what you call a country practice,'' said Brian Partridge, spokesman for the service, an organization that crisscrosses a landscape of about 2 million of Australia's nearly 3 million square miles.
  [Score: 199.50323; 08/22/88; AP880822-0210]
• Over one-seventh of Australia's 1m square miles has already been set aside, in one way or another, for the country's 265,000 aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people.
  [Score: 199.50323; 93/12/22; FT934-981]
• Flynn, or ``Flynn of the Inland'' as he was known, began his missionary work at a time when only two doctors served an area of some 186,000 square miles in drought-prone Western Australia state and 930,000 square miles in the Northern Territory, which is sub-tropical.
  [Score: 198.22986; 08/22/88; AP880822-0210]

Trec9 results: 0 2 0 0 0 31 (3%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 1m square miles

Question 293: Who found Hawaii?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME, I-EN-PROPER-ORGANIZATION (0.5)

• Now if we all do as Annetta suggests, it's a safe bet Willie would find his present stay in Hawaii a bit more relaxing,
  [Score: 294.09204; 11/21/90; AP901121-0071]
• Mr. Ordway finds an uncomfortable parallel between the Hawaii transaction volume and Chicago office real-estate before the 1929 Crash.
  [Score: 292.58005; 12/28/90; WSJ901228-0027]
• Some oil spill solutions are too secret even to discuss, as Mach found out when a group from Hawaii called offering a product but refused to say what was in it.
  [Score: 284.8927; 04/29/89; AP890429-0066]
• Nicholas Ordway of the University of Hawaii's Real Estate Research and Education Center, reviewing the 10,000% growth in the dollar volume of property transactions in the state since 1965, finds a direct link between boom periods and yen appreciation against the dollar.
  [Score: 283.36713; 12/28/90; WSJ901228-0027]
• In Hawaii, Sally went straight to Clarke's room in the middle of the night and crawled into his bed, where Julie found her after she decided to spend the night with Clarke.;
  [Score: 277.09515; 91/07/06; SJMN91-06188105]

Trec9 results: 0 1 0 1 1 30 (2.9%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: Polynesian settlers A: Captain Cook

Question 294: Who is the richest person in the world?
Qtargets: I-EN-PROPER-PERSON&S-PROPER-NAME

• As well as being the richest person in the world, Sir Hassanal lives with his relatives in the world's biggest palace _ a complex of buildings built with 38 types of marble on a 300-acre hill near the Brunei River.
  [Score: 324.28964; 07/07/89; AP890707-0180]
• Forbes' list of the world's richest people published in October listed Japan's Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, who made his money in land, railroads and resorts, as the world's richest individual worth about $15 billion.
  [Score: 324.1267; 02/04/90; AP900204-0027]
• The sultan of Brunei, reputedly the world's richest person, recently offered to buy it for a little more than $500 million.
  [Score: 319.3568; 08/16/88; WSJ880816-0016]
• Although tops in the U.S., Mr. Walton is the sixth-richest person in the world.
  [Score: 313.485; 10/11/88; WSJ881011-0106]
• The Iraqis arrived virtually unnoticed in an unmarked white airplane, while the Sultan of Brunei, the world's richest person, jetted in on his own jumbo.
  [Score: 310.53955; 92/09/02; FT923-5230]

Trec9 results: 10 3 3 1 0 16 (38.6%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: the Sultan of Brunei A: Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, the head of Japan's Seibu Railway A: Taikichiro Mori

Question 295: How many films did Ingmar Bergman make?
Qtargets: I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• Working with von Sydow, a veteran of 40 foreign films who played in some of Ingmar Bergman's best pictures, was one of the greatest experiences of his directing career, August said.
  [Score: 693.3931; 03/22/89; AP890322-0273]
• They have appeared on screen before, in some of the best of Bergman's 50 films.
  [Score: 566.52905; 09/22/89; AP890922-0241]
• Von Sydow is playing at the Royal Dramatic Theater, where he began his acting career 40 years ago and where he met Bergman, with whom he did 11 films.
  [Score: 543.1647; 04/08/88; AP880408-0208]
• (check) Film maker Ingmar Bergman is among the five 1991 recipients of the $100,000 Praemium Imperiale, an international prize awarded by the Japan Art Association for lifetime achievement in the arts.
  [Score: 539.0071; 91/06/12; SJMN91-06164019]
• Another UCLA Film and Television Archive presentation, "Marin Karmitz and MK2," continues Saturday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz Theater with two films that Karmitz produced and Claude Chabrol directed.
  [Score: 502.57245; 08/17/89; LA081789-0165]

Trec9 results: 4 0 1 2 1 25 (15.3%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: more than 50 A: 50

Question 296: What is the federal minimum wage?
Qtargets: I-EN-MONETARY-QUANTITY

• Minimum Wage: President Bush recently signed legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $4.25 an hour by 1991, but that move will not affect California, where the state-mandated minimum wage is already $4.25 per hour.
  [Score: 422.90173; 11/26/89; LA112689-0194]
• The current state minimum wage, $2.35 an hour, covers employers such as some small businesses not covered by the federal minimum wage of $3.35 an hour.
  [Score: 422.50513; 11/09/88; AP881109-0135]
• The modest raise would boost a weekly salary based on the federal minimum wage from $134 to $170.
  [Score: 417.66644; 09/07/89; LA090789-0023]
• The House Education and Labor Committee voted Thursday to raise the federal minimum wage to $5.05 an hour in several steps over the next four years.
  [Score: 416.0798; 03/11/88; AP880311-0183]
• Defying threats of a second presidential veto, the Democratic-controlled House Education and Labor Committee Tuesday agreed to raise the federal minimum wage to $4.25 an hour on Jan. 1, 1991.
  [Score: 416.0798; 09/20/89; LA092089-0032]

Trec9 results: 3 5 5 2 3 15 (25.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: from $3.35 an hour to $4.65 A: from Dollars 3.80 to Dollars 4.25 A: Dollars 4.25 an hour A: from Dollars 3.35 to Dollars 3.80 A: $ 3.35 A: from $3.35 an hour to $4.55

Question 297: What did brontosauruses eat?
Qtargets: I-EN-HUMAN-FOOD, I-EN-ANIMAL, I-EN-PLANT-FLORA

• After citing a several books using the term brontosaurus, he concluded that ``it's all right to use brontosaurus because most kids, including my sister, know that brontosaurus and apatosaurus are the same creature.''
  [Score: 247.05554; 10/10/89; AP891010-0118]
• The vegetation had armed itself to no avail with ridiculous prickles to ward off the teeth of the brontosauruses and other diplodocuses.
  [Score: 244.6565; 10/22/89; LA102289-0049]
• _Apatosaurus: Popularly known as the brontosaurus, one of the best-known dinosaurs.
  [Score: 242.77908; 04/02/90; AP900402-0207]
• Toys are as old as civilization -- older, if you can envision a brontosaurus pup playing with a stone as a kitten worries a ball of yarn.
  [Score: 241.11865; 12/23/90; LA122390-0068]
• Toys are as old as civilization; older if you can envision a brontosaurus pup playing with a round stone like a kitten with a ball of yarn.
  [Score: 241.11865; 12/10/90; AP901210-0205]

Trec9 results: 0 0 0 0 0 33 (0%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: vegetation A: pine needles

Question 298: What is California's state tree?
Qtargets: I-EN-TREE

• The state bird is the California gull, the state tree is the Colorado blue spruce and according to the map, ``Narm Bangerter'' is the state dinosaur.
  [Score: 347.35193; 07/17/88; AP880717-0030]
• 19) How tall is the tallest Joshua tree in California's Joshua Tree national park: 26ft?
  [Score: 287.25104; 93/07/03; FT933-16369]
• Firefighters laboring in 100-degree-plus heat today contained a desert wildfire near the grotesquely shaped trees of California's Joshua Tree Monument.
  [Score: 284.26306; 06/21/89; AP890621-0132]
• Timothy Quinn of Southern California's massive Metropolitan Water District reeled off these frightening facts and figures: 250,000 dead trees, 500,000 sick and dying trees, one-third of the turf dead, an estimated $36 million in 1990 construction losses and $12 million to $15 million in lost tourism.;
  [Score: 260.8514; 91/06/27; SJMN91-06179140]
• As happened generations ago in southern U.S. forests, the California timber industry is changing in part to accommodate smaller new-growth trees as old-growth trees have been cut.
  [Score: 259.78467; 03/12/90; LA031290-0067]

Trec9 results: 0 1 1 0 0 31 (2.5%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: the redwood

Question 299: How many types of lemurs are there?
Qtargets: I-EN-NUMERICAL-QUANTITY, I-ENUM-CARDINAL

• There are currently 30 types of woolly lemur on Madagascar.
  [Score: 660.8761; 07/30/89; LA073089-0110]
• There are 29 species of lemurs, primates whose name comes from the Latin word for ghosts because of their largely nocturnal habits.
  [Score: 273.20508; 01/08/89; LA010889-0078]
• "Since the arrival of man on the island (1,500 years ago), two species of tortoise, three of birds and 11 of lemurs have disappeared," the Durrells told the 1985 conference.
  [Score: 265.4322; 05/13/89; LA051389-0024]
• So, too, is their guardian, primatologist Patricia Wright, as she returns to her cabin with two mouse lemurs, captured in small metal boxes.
  [Score: 244.03983; 01/10/91; WSJ910110-0092]
• This is true of its 13 species of lemurs -- ranging from the teddy bear-faced indri, which begins and ends each day with a wail that sounds like someone learning to play the clarinet, to the tiny microcebus, a furry Kewpie doll with Bette Davis eyes.
  [Score: 242.53278; 01/10/91; WSJ910110-0092]

Trec9 results: 24 1 0 1 0 7 (75%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: 29 A: 43 varieties of lemurs A: 30 types

Question 300: What is leukemia?
Qtargets: Q-DEFINITION
Qargs: leukemia, disease

• Mrs. Klimova's leukemia, cancer of the white blood cells, was diagnosed earlier this month at Walter Reed U.S. Army Medical Center in Washington, where President Bush's physician arranged for her to be examined, said Miroslav Chrobok, embassy charge d'affaires.
  [Score: 1000.0; 07/28/90; AP900728-0025]
• Purring and appearing healthy, a cat could be suffering from a serious disease such as leukemia, a virus that attacks the immune system which is preventable by proper vaccinations," she says.
  [Score: 1000.0; 10/18/89; LA101889-0139]
• Spanish opera tenor Jose Carreras says his charity concert at the Vatican will be part of a continuing struggle against leukemia, the disease that struck him last year.
  [Score: 1000.0; 11/26/88; AP881126-0083]
• Researchers from the University of Chicago found an association between loss of the genes and development of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a blood cancer that is the most common form of childhood leukemia.
  [Score: 750.0; 01/15/90; LA011590-0100]
• The genetic probe detects a cancer-causing gene that has been activated to cause chronic myelogenous leukemia, a blood cancer that afflicts about 20,000 people and strikes 5,000 new patients each year.
  [Score: 750.0; 10/11/89; WSJ891011-0025]

Trec9 results: 8 2 4 1 0 18 (32.1%)
Reference answers (Miruna): A: blood cancer A: cancer of the blood-cell forming system A: a form of blood cancer A: a bone marrow cancer

Compiled by Ulf Hermjakob
Last updated: July 7, 2001