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Interaction is viewed within anthropological theory as an important causal mechanism for culture change. It has played an especially prominent role in western South American archaeology due to the dramatic environmental transitions that occur across the continental divide from Pacific coastal deserts to the Andean highlands and the vast expanse of the Amazon rainforest, thereby putting peoples into proximity to a variety of resources from different geographical zones. Indeed, the degree to which Amazonian and Andean populations engaged in interregional interaction prior to European contact has been a fundamental question within South American archaeology since its foundation. While these adjacent geographical zones have traditionally been characterized as separate archaeological culture areas, various types of indirect evidence from comparisons of art styles and iconography to historical linguistics and ethnohistoric accounts have indicated that goods, ideas, and people moved between the Andes and the Amazon as early as the initial peopling of the Americas to the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, impacting long-term cultural developments within each region. Unfortunately, archaeological inquiries into this subject were historically impeded by the logistical difficulties of working in tropical forest environments, preconceived notions concerning environmental barriers and limitations that would have minimized interregional movement, and the perishability and abstract nature of the types of evidence that would confer interaction between the Andes and the Amazon. Since the early 2000s, however, major advances have occurred in fields such as remote sensing, petrology, paleobotany, bioarchaeology and genetics, and linguistics. These advances, in combination with increased interest and investigation in the intermediate eastern Andean montane forest (or ceja de selva) and western Amazonian lowlands, have allowed scholars to better reconstruct the cultural histories of tropical forest societies as well as provide new avenues for identifying evidence of Amazonian-Andean interactions. The resulting evidence presents a complex pattern of interaction that varies considerably across time and space as it relates to the type of relationships that occurred and the materials and ideas that were exchanged, one that requires greater focus on the mechanisms behind these processes.

Postmedieval is a conventional term describing the period between the fall of the Christian Nubian kingdoms of Makuria and Alwa and the colonial Turco-Egyptian expansion toward Sudan. A void after the medieval kingdoms was filled by the Ottoman Empire north from the Third Cataract, and a newly established Funj Sultanate, which dominated the rest of the Sudanese Nile Valley. At the same time, Darfur was ruled by the Tunjur and from the 17th century the Keira state. The political transformation of the postmedieval period coincided with changes in the society. It encompassed the abandonment of Christianity and the spread of Islam instigated by Sufi holy men, whose activity left traces in the form of shrines—baniyas, and tombs—qibab, focal points of the local religious landscape. Despite political division, the society of the Middle and Upper Nile Valley was rather uniform. It was expressed by shared material culture, including pottery, basketry, and textiles, as well as a characteristic organization of egalitarian houses built around shared courtyards, known, for example, from Old Dongola and settlements in Ottoman Nubia. Alien components, added to the local landscape of Ottoman Sudan, were military forts, for instance, in Ibrim or Sai. The material culture of the postmedieval Sudan is characterized by home craft production. Nevertheless, the use of imported objects from the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and/or Asia attests a far-reaching trade. The territory of Darfur is much less recognized archaeologically. Nonetheless, data from surveys confirm that Dar Fur was a multiethnic sultanate with a large component of nomad or seminomad population, characterized by hilltop palaces of sultans and local chiefs. The Turco-Egyptian invasions put an end to the states of the postmedieval Sudan and eventually led to the transformation of the society by the colonial regimes.

African American music and literature have been consistently intertwined. This connection is true in narrative, which has its basis in the history and culture-keeping of orature, and in poetry, which transcends geography and culture in aligning with music. Among African Americans, the influence of Black music on literary art is longstanding, as is the use of music instrumentally and lyrically, especially blues, to convey all manner of life’s experiences. From the early liberation narratives of Frederick Douglass and the groundbreaking writing of W. E. B. Du Bois to the novels, poems, and plays of Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Fanonne Honorée Jeffers, Suzan-Lori Parks, William Henry Lewis, Jesmyn Ward, and Toni Morrison, among others, references to music, songs, and musicians, as well as replication of musical rhythms in writing, regularly occur in literature by African Americans. Stories also fill the sonic expressions of many African American musicians. Duke Ellington musically recreates scenes from Shakespear’s plays, and John Coltrane uses his saxophone as a speaking instrument to recite an eponymous poem from his album A Love Supreme. The cultural productions of African American writers and musicians are mutually significant intertexts that, with the African American cultural practice of riffs, repetition, and revision, have sustained these artists through time.

Chinese clefts mainly involve two patterns, the shi…de pattern and the bare shi pattern, and the shi…de pattern can be further categorized into the V–O–de pattern and the V–O–de pattern, which are distinguished according to the relative order of the object and de. Compared to clefts in other languages, Chinese clefts are particularly special in two aspects. First, in the surface order, the cleft focus stays together with the cleft presupposition between shi and de, instead of moving to a higher position as in languages like English. Second, Chinese shi…de clefts have a heavy preference for past-tense interpretations and the V–de–O pattern cannot host tense, aspect and modal elements in its presupposition. In the existing literature, some analyses take shi to be the central element of focus-marking, which partitions cleft sentences into the cleft focus and the cleft presupposition; while other analyses relate shi in clefts with shi in idenitificational/specificational sentences and pin down shi as a copula verb. For de, a group of studies treat it to be an optional element that serves a secondary function such as mood-marking or tense-marking; while other analyses, taking the shi…de pattern to be prototypical clefts that encode contrastiveness or exhaustivity, tend to assign de the function of focus partition and treat shi as a semantically vacuous copula verb. The TAM restriction is then explained by assigning de the syntactic position of a tense/aspect head or by ascribing such restrictions to PF-level linearization constraints and the implied default temporal interpretation of the cleft construction. Semantically, just like English it-clefts, the existence/absence of the exhaustive effect in Chinese clefts is a much-debated issue that has generated competing views. Some studies distinguish between emphatic and exhaustive meanings, and treat exhaustivity as the defining criterion for cleft sentences in Chinese, while others hold that Chinese clefts only encode contrastiveness and do not mark exhaustivity at the level of assertion.

Natech events are natural hazard–triggered technological accidents, which often cause hazardous material releases, fires, or explosions. In the past decades, the number of Natech events has trended upward. Many researchers emphasize that the observed trend could be attributed to climate change due to climate change’s influence on the growing frequency, duration, and severity of natural hazards. Apart from logical reasoning, however, there is limited direct evidence to support this surmise. To understand how climate change impacts Natech risk, this article specifically focuses on the history of scholarly understanding of climate change and Natech risks. It identifies gaps in current research and highlights the necessity for advanced risk management approaches. Finally, recommendations for future policy directions are provided, proposing adaptive strategies and active stakeholder engagement to mitigate the heightened Natech risks resulting from climate change.

Precipitation over Southeastern South America (SESA), the region located to the east of the Andes between 20°S and 40°S, shows large year-to-year variations, which are the result of the collective impact of several modes of variability and regional processes. Climate modes refer to recurrent spatial structures with defined seasonality and time scales and can have an atmospheric or oceanic origin, as well as may result from the interaction between these two media. The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a prime example as well as the main driver of rainfall variability over SESA through the establishment of atmospheric teleconnections that modify the regional circulation, and its impact depends on the season and the spatial structure and intensity of associated sea surface temperature anomalies. Moreover, other climate modes of variability such as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) or the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) can influence SESA rainfall and interact with ENSO constructively or destructively resulting in the observed interannual variability. El Niño induces maximum positive rainfall anomalies in spring through the establishment of stationary Rossby wave trains that propagate in an arch-like fashion from the Pacific toward South America. La Niña decreases SESA rainfall, and feedback between the tropically forced wave and the transient eddies is instrumental to generate the time mean response. ENSO interacts with the IOD and SAM during spring. For example, a combination of El Niño and a positive IOD induces stronger rainfall anomalies over SESA, while the presence of a positive SAM phase during La Niña strengthens the upper level and low-level circulation anomalies, intensifying the negative rainfall response. In high summer, the tropical–extratropical teleconnection from the Pacific weakens because the atmospheric basic state is not favorable to propagation, as the upper level jet shifts toward higher latitudes, and thus, the strength of ENSO becomes very important. In addition, other tropical oceans such as the Atlantic can modulate SESA rainfall. After the peak in early summer, ENSO tends to decay in fall, but the ENSO signal over SESA strengthens. At the same time, fall is the season when SAM has the strongest impact over SESA and is such that a negative phase induces positive rainfall anomalies due to higher frontogenetic activity and a northward shift of the cyclone track. Moreover, the occurrence of SAM in the absence of ENSO has a much stronger impact on rainfall over SESA than when SAM occurs under any ENSO phase, suggesting that rainfall predictability in this season is relatively small given that SAM has poor predictability on seasonal time scales. On longer time scales, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation can also modulate the ENSO impact. Climate change is altering the background conditions under which the modes of variability develop and the related atmospheric teleconnections are established, and therefore, it is likely that the influence of the different modes on SESA rainfall will change in the future, making seasonal climate prediction more challenging.

Despite the euphemisms of “forever families” and “child’s best interests,” adoption practices, policies, and ideologies contribute to illicit adoption practices, including child trafficking, the sale of children, first or birth mother trafficking, and abuse of process, that harm adopted individuals, birth or first families, and adoptive families.

Deaf theater in the United States arises out of the community of American Sign Language users. Deaf theater has existed as skits, pantomimes, and signed songs as long as deaf people have formed communities. The development of formal theater is tied to the establishment of schools for the deaf in the 19th century. The spread of deaf education led to the growth of communities centered on social interactions and entertainments in sign language, including theater. The founding of the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD) in 1967 was a pivotal moment in the United States. NTD exposed hearing audiences to stage sign language, the capabilities of deaf actors, and the artistic possibilities inherent in the merging of deaf and hearing theater. The success of NTD led to many other deaf theater companies being established throughout the United States, creating a “golden age of Deaf theater.” In addition, opportunities to work with hearing theater companies began to open up, sometimes for only one actor, but sometimes for multiple deaf artists. This type of theater has been termed integrated or mainstreamed theater. While deaf, integrated theater, and mainstreamed theater all incorporate deaf actors and sign language, they can be distinguished on the basis of cultural content and themes, ratios of deaf or hearing people involved, and accessibility for deaf audiences. All forms of deaf theater make artistic use of sign language. The unique linguistic, poetic, and musical elements of sign language create several challenges in producing deaf theater, such as translation approaches and choices, alignment of spoken English, sign language lines, and sometimes music; language access within the world of the play; and language access for audiences. William Shakespeare’s plays present unique challenges for translation due to their highly poetic language. Five recent productions in the United States illustrate the artistic and staging aspects of deaf and integrated theater: Grey House (2023), Richard III (2022), Private Jones (2024), ISM II (2023), and Trash (2023).

Drug overdoses have been increasing rapidly worldwide, particularly in the United States and Canada. Even when nonfatal, overdoses have a high potential for lasting health consequences. In the United States, the majority of drug overdose deaths are classified as unintentional/accidental. Drug overdoses can involve a variety of substances, ranging from prescription or over-the-counter medications to illicitly-manufactured drugs, and many overdoses involve multiple substances. In the United States, opioids, especially synthetic opioids such as illicitly-manufactured fentanyl, are most commonly involved in overdose deaths, followed by stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine. Drug overdoses disproportionately impact populations experiencing social and/or economic marginalization, and racial disparities in drug overdose are growing in the United States. Overall, drug overdose represents a topic of relevance for social workers engaged in research, policy, clinical, or community practice alike, across medical, behavioral health, legal, social service, educational, and child welfare systems.

The United States and its criminal-legal system have had a historically turbulent relationship with drugs and substance use. Public rhetoric, political ideology, and resulting policies, shaped by both rehabilitative and punitive ideals, have served as a foundation for the criminalization and mass incarceration of those who possess, distribute, and use illegal drugs—especially the targeting and blaming of communities of color. Early on, although drugs such as opium had versatile medical benefits, the use of heroin, crack/cocaine, and cannabis by people of color was quickly shaped into a discourse that amplified fear and racist stereotypes and catalyzed the War on Drugs. Throughout several presidential administrations, the criminalization of drug crimes disproportionately affected Black individuals, despite White citizens using them at similar or higher rates. “Tough on crime” policies, policing, and sentencing that resulted from this period culminated in the mass imprisonment of people of color. Trying to repair the harm caused by the War on Drugs and rhetoric from the media in 2024, there is a strong push for the decriminalization and legalization of several drugs across the United States. For cannabis in particular, efforts have been made to advocate for its legalization federally. In the criminal-legal system, many political leaders and legislators have actively attempted to advocate for and enforce policies that release individuals from prison who have been incarcerated for minor drug offenses or are affected by unjust sentencing practices. Combined with nationwide efforts to promote research on the use of drugs for medicinal purposes, as well as the problems of drug abuse and addiction, a more progressive and optimistic approach to drug use has begun and continues to grow across the United States. The social and political forces that have historically shaped attitudes toward drug use and punishment are crucial to understanding the direction of U.S. drug policies in the early 21st century and why the pendulum continues to swing.