This is the second in a series of progress reports on African archaeology in the United States. These reports are being produced at the request of the Archaeology Committee of the African Studies Association as a means of indicating the nature and extent of current North American participation in this aspect of African research.

William Y. Adams of the University of Kentucky is leading an archaeological expedition to excavate the medieval Nubian village site of Kulubnarti in the Republic of the Sudan. The object of the expedition is to try to discover evidence of Islamization in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries -- a historical problem which received almost no attention during the recent High Dam salvage campaign in Nubia. Work will be carried on from January to May 1969 under the direction of Dr. and Mrs. Adams with four student assistants and a labor force of 125. The expedition is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, under a grant from the National Science Foundation.

I would like, first of all, to express my profound sympathy to Mrs. Ida Brown and the children of my former mentor, Professor William O. Brown. Also to the Center and this our University for the loss of its founder Director of the African Studies Program and pioneer scholar in the field of African studies. I feel very honoured indeed that I have been invited to give this memorial lecture.

I first met Professor William Brown in September, 1951 when, as part of a tour of European centres of learning with programmes on Africa, he came to the Department of Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University. As the Professor and the lecturer in the Department were both away, it fell to me to show him round the Department and talk about our work; but, as I had only just been appointed to the Department, we spoke more about Africa than about the Department's programme.

This acquaintance was deepened into a lasting friendship when, in the Spring of 1953, I had the privilege of entertaining him as my house guest when he visited Sierra Leone. In the evenings we spent together in Freetown, I got to know Bill Brown; I got to know him as a man dedicated to and genuinely interested in the advancement of Africa. His was not merely an antiquarian interest; nor was he only interested in the kinship structures and anthropological tidbits of the African societies. He saw the Africans as personalities, as human beings, pursuing the same goal as others, and wanting for themselves the same rewards out of life. Those were the colonial days but, even in those days, Bill Brown was already deeply interested in the development of the African countries into viable nation states. It is not surprising, therefore, that this Center, under his leadership as its first Director, did not develop any narrow parochial interest, but studied Africa from a broader dimension, giving equal importance to historical, economic, political, as well as sociological factors in the development of Africa from traditionalism to modernity.

There are limited data on chiropractic care for older adults, specifically from medically underserved communities. This study describes the characteristics, clinical management, and patient-reported outcomes of older adults with spinal pain who present for chiropractic care at a publicly funded community health centre serving marginalized populations. This retrospective analysis utilized quality assurance data from chiropractic encounters at Mount Carmel Clinic between January 2011 and June 2020 of adults aged 45 and older. Descriptive statistics summarized the study population and their self-reported pain severity scores. Student’s t-tests and repeated-measures ANOVA explored relationships between pain outcomes, age, and clinical characteristics. The sample included 240 middle-aged (45–59 years) and older adults (≥60 years) who recorded baseline and discharge pain scores following chiropractic treatment. Over half of middle-aged participants self-identified as Indigenous or as people with disabilities. Statistically and clinically important improvements in pain were noted across spinal regions and extremities for both cohorts.

This paper investigates the nature of financial market fluctuations by empirically testing three competing models of instability. We contrast a linear state-space model and a nonlinear Markov-switching model – both rooted in heterogeneous behavioral heuristics and capable of generating endogenous dynamics – with a benchmark linear random walk model that assumes exogenous shocks. Using monthly S&P 500 data from 1990 to 2019, we find strong evidence supporting endogenous sources of instability. In particular, models incorporating behavioral nonlinearities significantly outperform both the linear behavioral model and the random walk in short-, medium-, and long-term forecasting. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for heterogeneous expectations and regime-switching behavior in explaining asset price dynamics.

Achieving Zero Hunger by 2030, a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, requires resilient food systems capable of securely feeding billions. This article introduces the Food Systems Resilience Score (FSRS), a novel framework that adapts a proven resilience measurement approach to the context of food systems. The FSRS builds on the success of the Community Flood Resilience Measurement Tool, which has been used in over 110 communities, by applying its five capitals (natural, human, social, financial, and manufactured) and four qualities (robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity) framework to food systems. We define food system resilience as the capacity to ensure adequate, appropriate, and accessible food supply to all, despite various disturbances and unforeseen disruptions. The FSRS measures resilience across multiple dimensions using carefully selected existing indicators, ensuring broad applicability and comparability. Our methodology includes rigorous technical validation to ensure reliability, including optimal coverage analysis, stability checks, and sensitivity testing. By providing standardized metrics and a comprehensive assessment of food system resilience, this framework not only advances research but also equips policymakers with valuable tools for effective interventions. The FSRS enables comparative analysis between countries and temporal tracking of resilience changes, facilitating targeted strategies to build and maintain resilient national food systems. This work contributes to the global effort toward long-term food security and sustainability.

The emergence of ChatGPT as a leading artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI has sparked substantial interest in the field of applied linguistics, due to its extraordinary capabilities in natural language processing. Research on its use in service of language learning and teaching is on the horizon and is anticipated to grow rapidly. In this review article, we purport to capture its nascency, drawing on a literature corpus of 71 papers of a variety of genres – empirical studies, reviews, position papers, and commentaries. Our narrative review takes stock of current research on ChatGPT’s application in foreign language learning and teaching, uncovers both conceptual and methodological gaps, and identifies directions for future research.

Canadian scholars involved in African research have recently formed the Committeé on African Studies in Canada (Le Comite des Etudes Africaines au Canada). The founding meeting was held on November 30 and December 1, 1962, at McGill University. The conference decided to create a permanent bilingual organization. Professor Ronald Cohen of the Sociology Department at McGill University and Professor Donald C. Savage of the Department of History at Loyola College in Montreal were chosen provisional officers of the Committee. It was agreed to meet in six months' time for the formal adoption of a constitution.

The Committee undertook three major tasks. The first was to provide a forum for the exchange of information among Canadian Africanists. The Executive is exploring the possibility of an annual meeting at which members of the Committee and others could contribute papers. It was also decided to distribute the report of the conference as widely as possible and then to publish an annual newsletter. The newsletter will list new appointments in the field of African studies, new courses, major additions to libraries plus any other information of relevance to African research in Canada. It was also agreed that one of the first tasks of the editor of the newsletter would be to publish a list of the holding of African periodicals in Canadian university libraries. All inquiries concerning the newsletter should be directed to Professor Donald Wiedner, Department of History, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. The newsletter will appear in both English and French.

Anthropologists in the United States came relatively late to a concern with Africa. It was through the study of American Indians that anthropology developed in this country. This orientation was specified long before the discipline was a recognized academic subject. Thomas Jefferson recommended the study of Indian customs and languages, and through this study a reconstruction of Indian history. Albert Gallatin in the 1830's began to give to this goal the vigor he also gave to public life. Many others, whose reputations are associated with other fields, were “intelligent dabblers” (e.g. Henry Thoreau; cf. Lawrence Willson, “Thoreau: Student of Anthropology,” American Anthropologist, LXI, no. 2 [April 1959]).

The European-derived populations of the United States and of South Africa have comparable situations in that each has in its own back yard, so to speak, a number of “laboratories” for the study of societies and cultures other than their own. Anthropology in each country has developed in relation to these opportunities and challenges, but in South Africa it came at a very much later period.

Americans were, in fact, among the catalysts of the development of anthropological thought in the nineteenth century, but they were scarcely cognizant of Africa. Insofar as African ethnography was developed in the nineteenth century, it was done by Europeans. The commercial, colonial, and missionary interest of European countries helped to direct the attention of anthropologists in those countries toward Africa, but also of course to Asia, Oceania, and elsewhere. In toto, Africa was less cultivated at that period than were other major areas.

If life ever existed on Mars, it may have developed survival strategies similar to those adopted by extremophiles living in terrestrial Martian analogs, such as the cryptoendolithic communities found in the rocky substrates of the McMurdo Dry Valleys or other ice-free areas of continental Antarctica. Nearly thirty years of research on these super-adapted organisms laid the foundation for the CRYPTOMARS project, which aims to disclose the genomic and phenotypic features allowing these microbial communities to withstand specific physico-chemical stresses that may be encountered on the Red Planet. This information will provide tools to outline, in terms of diversity and competences, a putative microbial community able to survive, adapt or even perpetuate under early or present Martian conditions. The project and the background information are here presented.

About 1960, the study of West African history took a new turn as historians became aware of the interest and value of Islamic sources for their work, particularly manuscript materials in Arabic. To be sure, the use of Arabic sources for the history of West Africa is nothing new: in 1841, W. Des-borough Cooley published his The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained; or, an Inquiry into the Early History and Geography of Central Africa. But Cooley's pioneering book was discounted by later British and American writers on Africa as the work of an eccentric. In the 1880's and 1890's, many of these writers were spellbound by their vision of what Christianity might do for the African, while others were preoccupied by what they deemed to be the morally indefensible activities of the Muslims as slave-raiders and traders in West and East Africa. As late as the 1930's, the well-known British anthropologist C. K. Meek indicted Islam in northern Nigeria when he wrote: “The institution of slavery is a pivotal feature of Islamic society, and we are justified with charging Muhammadanism with the devastation and desolation in which Northern Nigeria was found at the beginning of this century.” Other writers, like Sir A.C. Burns for Nigeria, and A. W. Cardinall and W. E. F. Ward for Ghana, dismissed the Islamic side of West African history in few words, or gave it no mention at all. There were other reasons for this lack of emphasis. In northern Nigeria, for example, many British officials were apprehensive of an outbreak of “Mahdism” among the Muslims; and very frequently, French officials looked on Islam as a rival political system, dangerous and potentially subversive.