We start this special issue with two perspectives. First, that the sociological study of crime and law often intersects with the study of inequality, power, the state, and life chances. Second, that the study of crime and law are deeply interconnected—institutionally, politically, and culturally. Legal institutions build on normative ideas, organizations, careers, and power to govern, to criminalize, and to punish (and, conversely, to ignore or absolve), and everyday understandings of crime are deeply tied to cultural understandings of legality, perceptions of justice and injustice, and hopes for everyday life. Law and crime are thus dynamically tied to social aspirations, fears, and divisions, and are political and social contests over what unites and what divides societies.

Using quantitative and qualitative data from a large national sample of lawyers, we examine self-reports of perceived discrimination in the legal workplace. Across three waves of surveys, we find that persons of color, white women, and LGBTQ attorneys are far more likely to perceive they have been a target of discrimination than white men. These differences hold in multivariate models that control for social background, status in the profession and the work organization, and characteristics of the work organization. Qualitative comments describing these experiences reveal that lawyers of different races, genders, and sexual orientations are exposed to distinctive types of bias, that supervisors and clients are the most frequent sources of discriminatory treatment, and the often-overt character of perceived discrimination. These self-reports suggest that bias in the legal workplace is widespread and rooted in the same hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual orientation that pervade society.

Whether monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins differ from each other in a variety of phenotypes is important for genetic twin modeling and for inferences made from twin studies in general. We analyzed whether there were differences in individual, maternal and paternal education between MZ and DZ twins in a large pooled dataset. Information was gathered on individual education for 218,362 adult twins from 27 twin cohorts (53% females; 39% MZ twins), and on maternal and paternal education for 147,315 and 143,056 twins respectively, from 28 twin cohorts (52% females; 38% MZ twins). Together, we had information on individual or parental education from 42 twin cohorts representing 19 countries. The original education classifications were transformed to education years and analyzed using linear regression models. Overall, MZ males had 0.26 (95% CI [0.21, 0.31]) years and MZ females 0.17 (95% CI [0.12, 0.21]) years longer education than DZ twins. The zygosity difference became smaller in more recent birth cohorts for both males and females. Parental education was somewhat longer for fathers of DZ twins in cohorts born in 1990–1999 (0.16 years, 95% CI [0.08, 0.25]) and 2000 or later (0.11 years, 95% CI [0.00, 0.22]), compared with fathers of MZ twins. The results show that the years of both individual and parental education are largely similar in MZ and DZ twins. We suggest that the socio-economic differences between MZ and DZ twins are so small that inferences based upon genetic modeling of twin data are not affected.

This paper aims to situate functional abstraction in light of systems thinking. While function does not extensively appear in systems thinking literature, the literature does identify function as part of systems thinking that enables us to recognize and connect that function has a role in building a systems thinking approach for students. A systems thinking approach is valuable for students since it helps them view a system holistically. In this research, we measure how well students are able to abstract function. We asked students to generate functions for two different products and examined how students taught functional modeling and function enumeration compare to students who are only taught function enumeration. The student responses were examined using a rubric that we developed and validated for assessing function. This rubric may be used to classify functions by correctness (correct, partially correct, and incorrect) and categories (high level, interface, low level, and ambiguous). On questions where students were not explicitly asked to write a high-level function or low-level function, and so on, students who were taught functional modeling were able to better demonstrate systems thinking in their responses (low-level and interface functions) than those students who were only taught function enumeration.

Eleven radiocarbon age determinations clearly show that a lens of Holocene fluvial organic debris on the Alaskan Arctic Coastal Plain contains mostly pre-Holocene organic material. Radio-carbon ages of identified plant macrofossils indicate the material was deposited about 9000 to 9500 yr B.P. Radiocarbon analyses of bulk samples from this deposit, however, range from 13,300 to 30,300 yr B.P. Most of the old organic matter seems to be in the smaller size fractions in the deposit, particularly in the fraction between 0.25 and 0.5 mm, but all size fractions are contaminated. Particular caution must be exercised in submitting bulk samples for radiocarbon dating from areas where conditions favor redeposition of isotopically “dead” carbon.

A 14-m-thick section of marine and nonmarine sediments of the Gubik Formation of northern Alaska, exposed in bluffs near Ocean Point on the Colville River, has been studied by means of pollen analysis. Pollen from the marine sediments, of probable late Pliocene age, records a boreal forest of spruce and birch with minor amounts of alder in the adjacent terrestrial vegetation. Pine and perhaps true fir were probably at or near their northern limit here, but hemlocks and hardwoods were absent. The suggested environment for the Arctic Slope during the time represented by the marine sediments is similar to that of present-day Anchorage. Pollen floras from the overlying fluvial strata, of early or middle Pleistocene age, record predominantly herbaceous taxa indicating tundra conditions probably more severe than those of the present day. These deposits were most likely contemporaneous with glacial conditions in the Brooks Range to the south. Pollen of woody taxa (spruce, alder, birch, heaths) is rare through most of the section, although birch and alder percentages similar to those found in modern river sediments indicate an interstadial or interglacial warming in midsection. Inland climates during glacial episodes may have been similar to those of the present Arctic coast.