Accounts known as popular microhistories tell sweeping, century‑spanning stories of ordinary objects like salt and bananas. ______ this approach with that of traditional microhistories, which undertake painstaking historical reconstructions of singular incidents, may seem unlikely, but both are guided by the idea that seemingly inconsequential subjects can reveal larger historical processes in surprising ways.

Although it would be overstating the case to characterize the effects of oil shocks—such as the 37% rise in oil prices between November 1947 and January 1948—as merely ______, Gbadebo Oladosu et al. have shown that the effects of oil shocks on gross domestic product (GDP) can be fairly modest. In the United States, for instance, recent oil shocks exerted only a slightly negative effect on GDP.

Artists affiliated with the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s were dancers (including Sally Gross) and creators from other fields (such as painter Alex Hay) interested in redefining the concept of dance. Rejecting formal techniques, the group ______ everyday movements: many pieces were built around ordinary actions, like walking.

Tulum, the famed Maya city located on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, was likely ______ of achievements attained in the lesser-known polities of the Mirador Basin. As Morales-Aguilar et al. have shown, developments at those earlier Mirador sites (e.g., the eight astronomically aligned complexes at El Mirador) were a historical precondition for the sophistication exhibited by the architects of later cities.

Although the cumulative weight of the goods in a cargo truck affects fuel efficiency, this effect—and the corresponding effect on the cost of a given trip to the trucking company—is relatively small. The large majority of a trip’s cost stems from the mere fact of the truck being on the road; accordingly, trucking firms are ______ to dispatch trucks that aren’t full.

Despite the marked divergence of such ballads as "The House Carpenter" from their antecedents in Britain, the balladry of the Appalachian South long figured as a proxy for the music naturalized there in the colonial era. More recent scholarship offers a ______, directly acknowledging Appalachian innovations to British ballads as well as the influence of spirituals sung in Black churches in the South.

The durability of commercial refrigeration units depends significantly on installers properly ______ refrigerant lines during setup. If non‑condensable gases, moisture, and microscopic debris aren’t purged from the lines, vital components can be damaged during use, leading to total system failure.

Support for the argument that a “consumer revolution,” in which possession of consumer goods among an increasingly wide range of socioeconomic groups surged despite only marginal wage growth, occurred in England between 1600 and 1750 has largely hinged on scholars’ analyses of probate inventories (detailed legal records of deceased persons’ possessions). Reexamining these data, Gregory Clark notes that while inventories from the period appear consistent with the consumer-revolution argument, the proportion of the population whose wills included such documentation decreased considerably between 1600 and 1750, with this documentation increasingly representing more affluent individuals. Clark’s findings thus directly raise the possibility that ______

Gustav Frank and Madleen Podewski have observed that although serialized publication and a commercial focus mark periodicals as quite distinct from other objects of literary analysis, the periodical is insufficiently theorized as a unique form, leaving scholars heavily reliant on methods of literary criticism developed for analyzing other types of texts, as well as methods arising from other fields entirely, such as visual studies. However, literary-critical methodologies in particular make assumptions about authorial control that to be tenable must be restricted to forms like novels, poems, and plays. Frank and Podewski thus caution that even as periodical studies has emerged as an independent discipline, it ______

The Bantu expansion refers to the gradual dispersal of Bantu-speaking peoples (which today include, among other groups, the Hlubi in South Africa and the Tutsi in Rwanda) and their languages from an ancestral homeland in West-Central Africa across much of sub-Saharan Africa over approximately 3,500 years, starting about 4,000–5,000 years ago (ya). Citing the discovery of grinding equipment dating as far back as 5,000 ya consistent with processing of plant foods, some researchers have asserted that the Bantu expansion can be explained by the farming/language dispersal hypothesis. This hypothesis proposes that the dispersal of many of the world’s large language families—for instance, Sino-Tibetan—was driven primarily by the adoption of agriculture.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
• Prehistoric rock art in the Kimberley region of Australia consists of several distinct styles across various time periods.
• Irregular Infill Animal Period (IIAP) rock art from 13,000 to 17,000 years ago consists of naturalistic animal figures showing detailed features and a variety of poses.
• Gwion rock art from 12,000 to 14,000 years ago features elaborately ornamented anthropomorphic figures.
• Wanjina rock art from up to 5,000 years ago features human ancestor figures along with animal motifs.
• A 2025 study of Kimberley rock art by Ana Paula Motta et al. identified 98 figures depicting outlines of animal forms with simple anatomical details and posed predominantly in profile.
• The study’s superimposition analysis showed that these Linear Naturalistic Figures (LNF) consistently appear on top of Gwion and underneath Wanjina figures.

Silica cements associated with casts of soft‑bodied marine organisms from the Ediacaran period (circa 538‑635 million years ago) are plausibly attributable to one of two phenomena: rapid postmortem preservation of the organisms via precipitation of cements from silica‑rich oceans or cement precipitation via high‑pressure reactions long after the organisms were preserved by some other means. Recognizing that such reactions generally result in cements with germanium/silicon (Ge/Si) ratios lower than those of silica grains recovered from the same portion of sandstone, Lidya Tarhan et al. investigated silica cements and grains associated with Ediacaran soft‑bodied casts at a site in South Australia.

P50—the pressure in the xylem (water‑conducting tissue) at which a plant loses 50% of its hydraulic conductivity due to embolisms (air bubbles in the water flow)—is a key index of xylem embolism resistance and, by extension, tolerance of water stress; lower P50 values indicate lower vulnerability to xylem embolisms. Studies have found that variation in this functional trait corresponds with the distribution of plant species along moisture and elevation gradients. A student hypothesizes that this pattern would persist in woody species in New Caledonia, which is home to moist tropical rainforests, dry forests, and a range of elevations. To test the hypothesis, the student analyzes P50 values as well as mean elevation and rainforest occupancy rates for New Caledonian woody species.

Some farms are expanding their mix of crop species in an effort to reduce nonagricultural biodiversity loss caused by increasing agricultural specialization, in which farmers focus on a limited range of crops or livestock species to improve yields and, thus, their revenues. To study the joint environmental and economic effects of diversification practices (which can encompass improved soil and water management as well as increased variety in crops and livestock), Laura Vang Rasmussen and team analyzed data from 2,655 farms in eleven countries. They found that using multiple diversification practices concurrently had greater potential for improving both nonagricultural biodiversity and yields than using a single strategy did. Their finding suggests that ______

Karl Popper’s argument that scientific hypotheses must be theoretically refutable, termed the criterion of falsifiability, rejects the confirmationist ______ verifiability as the essential criterion for scientific hypotheses. To Popper, a statement like “all ants live in colonies” is scientific not because it can be verified, or proved true, but because it can theoretically be proved false.

The legacy of the Spanish Empire, which once controlled portions of five continents, is evident in Spanish-speaking Panama, one of many places that reveal their imperial history in their language. Contrast Panama with the Netherlands, which ceased to be part of the empire in ______ the latter’s connection to the empire is so attenuated that Spanish is seldom spoken there today.

Traveling to India between 1935 and 1952, African American intellectuals Sue Bailey Thurman, Blanche Wright Nelson, and Sadie T.M. Alexander met with Mahatma Gandhi, an influential proponent of nonviolent resistance, and forged meaningful connections with local Indian women as part of an effort to promote women’s ______ but also around the world.

Over roughly 180 million years, the Indian, African, and Arabian tectonic plates separated from the supercontinent ______ drifted gradually northward, eventually passing the equator; and, in their convergence with Eurasia beginning roughly 50 million years ago, progressively closed the Tethys Sea—the vast ocean that had long divided the two landmasses.

Before the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, many US territories extended voting rights to women, in part to spur westward migration that would help these territories meet population thresholds for statehood. The Territory of Wyoming approved women’s suffrage in 1869 before attaining statehood in ______ while eastern states, lacking the same incentive, did not follow suit until after the turn of the century.

In Color Charts: A History (2024), anthropologist Anne Varichon uses vivid prose to describe various systems and tools that have been used over the past few centuries for categorizing colors. ______ Varichon’s book features many high-quality images of these color presentation tools—from fanlike arrangements of hued fabric swatches to clusters of dyed feathers.