University Of Chicago

Alfred Dennis Sieminski, 78, a decorated veteran who won election to Congress while he was fighting in the Korean War, died Thursday. Mr. Sieminski, a Jersey City, N.J., Democrat, served in the House from 1951 to 1959. He earned a degree in political science in 1934 from Princeton University, where he was a member of a crew team that raced in the Henley Regatta in England. He also studied at Hamburg University in Germany, the University of Warsaw and Harvard Law School. Mr. Sieminski enlisted in the Army as a private in 1941.

CHICAGO - Chicago, once the Second City, fell to third when Los Angeles surpassed it in population, and even third place is more than it usually achieves in the National Football League standings. But on Sept. 29, on ABC's Monday Night Football, the city will unveil to the nation a title-winner of sorts: the most expensive publicly funded stadium in the NFL. Locals don't have to be told that the renovation of Soldier Field does not appeal to every eye. Rather than tear down the World War I memorial, the Chicago Park District and the Bears agreed to preserve the exterior and replace the interior.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, known for its "genius" grants, has named as its president Jonathan Fanton, the president of the New School in New York.Fanton, who will succeed Adele Smith Simmons in September, will earn about $400,000 a year.The foundation, based in Chicago, is one of the 10 largest in the United States, with assets of about $4 billion and annual spending of about $150 million."Being president really fits with the things I've done all my life," Fanton said in a telephone interview last week from Chicago, xTC referring to his work in human rights, community development, education and the arts.

CHICAGO -- Scientists are running out of things they think truly separate humans from other animals. For a long time the reigning difference was thought to be tool-making, but then they discovered that chimpanzees and gorillas use tools. One of the last bastions of human uniqueness, they surely thought, is language. Although animals can communicate, it was thought to be in only a fixed way - using sequences of sounds with specific meanings that never vary. Humans supposedly were different because they can follow rules of grammar.

Alberto Calderon, 77, considered one of the century's most influential mathematicians, died Thursday in Chicago after a short illness. Professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Chicago, he was best known for his contributions to mathematical analysis, the large branch of mathematics that includes calculus, infinite series and the analysis of functions.Alberto Bovone, 75, an ailing Italian prelate who became a cardinal two months ago, died Friday. His death in a Rome hospital reduced to 118 the number of cardinals under age 80 who are eligible to vote for the next pope.

LAST YEAR on cable television, I saw a sex and hypocrisy double-header: "Peyton Place" followed by "Return to Peyton Place."The first movie begins with shots of the village churches, which do a brisk business on Sunday morning.Then it shows what the sanctimonious churchgoers do the rest of the week -- the drunken lout who rapes his stepdaughter; the unwed mother who invents a dead husband to legitimize her child; the self-deluding mother whose refusal to acknowledge incest in her family leads first to murder, then to suicide.

Happiness is so important to Americans that the right to pursue it is guaranteed in our Declaration of Independence.So what is this happiness thing, anyway?"

Washington -- AS PRESIDENT Clinton struggles to moderate his views on affirmative action, he is less than contrite about his federal court appointments."

Raising troubling questions about health care for blacks, researchers report today that blacks are significantly more likely to suffer and die from sudden heart failure than whites, and that whites with heart disease are far more likely to undergo surgery to correct it than blacks.The findings, published in separate articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, highlight striking racial differences that, in the case of the second study, cannot be attributed to socioeconomic factors, such as the ability to pay.One explanation, experts say, is that prejudice influences physicians' judgment, preventing white doctors from recommending certain procedures to black patients, or patients from accepting them.

Just from looking at a man's face, women can sense how much he likes children, gauge his testosterone level and decide whether he would be more suitable as a one-night stand or as a husband, new research suggests. Scientists in Chicago and California photographed men's faces and asked women to rate them on whether they seemed to like children, on their masculinity, on their physical attractiveness and on whether they seemed kind. Then the women rated them on their potential as long- and short-term lovers.