Kinship and Class: A Study of the Weyerhaeuser Family

381 pagesThis study is an attempt to increase our understanding of the class structure and political economy of the United States, through a detailed examination of one extended family of great wealth. Focusing on a single case, the study analyzes the multigenerational and inter-institutional linkages of this kinship group. Through use of a genealogy, kinship ties are traced through five generations. The genealogy also provides a medium for identifying the family's links to corporations, foundations, political processes, and institutions of the upper class. By demonstrating how one wealthy family coordinates its activities for the purpose of maintaining its social and economic position in society, this study suggests that other upper class families may operate in a similar manner. The study will show how the family, through a variety of institutions, coordinates its activities. The Family Office, the annual Family Meeting, various foundations, and several holding companies are examined as mechanisms of internal cohesiveness and of external control over other institutions. The potential for external control and influence also extends itself to several large corporations, to trade associations, the candidate selection process, churches, and schools

Working in the Public Interest Law Conference

The two-day conference included a variety of panel discussions and roundtables on such topics as: civil liberties; race and the criminal justice system; decriminalizing mental illness; funding public defender systems; the media\u27s role in the law; immigration; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth in state sponsored institutions; environmental justice; and women\u27s reproductive rights

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead