University Of Chicago

CHICAGO -- A fearsome predator of the ancient seas had the most powerful jaws of any fish that ever lived, according to a new study that makes even the biggest great white shark seem like a slack-jawed weakling. The new report by scientists at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago offers a window into the bizarre aquatic world of 400 million years ago, when the conquest of land by animals had barely begun and the first jawed creatures were carving out their evolutionary niches.

Being shy and reluctant to take chances may keep you from meeting new people or changing careers, but could it also give you cancer? That seemingly farfetched link is one focus of a University of Chicago research group that is trying to understand how temperament affects a wide range of health yardsticks. Some experts refer to the discipline by the unwieldy name of psychoneuroimmunology. The group's most recent results, published last month in the journal Hormones and Behavior, suggest the relationship between shyness and cancer is real, though the study could not draw firm conclusions about why that is. In this case, the medical payoff may have to await details that no one has nailed down.

CHICAGO -- Ridvan Tatargil's factory makes pillows, comforters and duvets destined for the homes of customers willing to pay more for bed furnishings than some might pay for a car. But Tatargil, who grew from a one-person shop with 300 employees on Chicago's West Side, says he faces a growing concern: knockoffs. Many U.S. businesses are seeing their products, including golf clubs, backpacks and sunglasses, duplicated cheaply in foreign factories and sold here at a fraction of the price of the real thing.

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.

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.

CHICAGO -- What is in a word? For Israelis and Palestinians, words are much more than their dictionary definition, two professors say. Words stir feelings, rouse nations to greatness, label enemies as evil. Language can lead to war or promote peace. In the Middle East, words can magnify misunderstanding, keeping peace just out of reach. To combat the problem, Ilai Alon and Assad Busool - one Israeli, one Palestinian, both professors of Islamic studies in Chicago - are creating a dictionary of terms they hope will shed light on how each side defines issues and events that have shaped a decades-long conflict.

Before the ink dries on your college diploma, your alma mater begins to ask for a donation. Paying off student loans? Grappling with credit card debt? Don't have a job? It doesn't matter. Alumni giving accounted for 27.5 percent of the $24.4 billion raised at colleges and universities in 2004, according to the Council for Aid to Education, with foundations and non-alumni donors making up most of the rest. And though the dollar amount of alumni giving represents a 2 percent increase from the previous year, the number of those donating has been on the decline since 2001.

On November 4, 2005, ELAINE K. BERNSTEIN (nee Katz), 84; cherished wife of the late Nathan; beloved mother of Becca and Carol Bernstein (Martin Eckstein); loving grandmother of Nathan and Lillian Eckstein; dear sister of Gerald (Joan) Katz; fond aunt of James Katz and Robin Kamphaus. Donations appreciated to the University of Chicago, Elaine K. Bernstein Memorial Fund for Women in Science, 5801 S. Ellis, Chicago, IL 60637, or Goucher College. News obituary in Chicago Tribune, November 6, 2005, at chicagotribune.

Robert Montgomery Scott, 76, the stylish scion of two prominent families who was once dubbed "The Quintessential Philadelphian," died of liver failure Thursday in Bryn Mawr, Pa. His mother, socialite Hope Montgomery Scott, was the model for Katharine Hepburn's character in the 1940 film The Philadelphia Story. His father, investment banker Edgar Scott, was an heir to the Pennsylvania Railroad fortune. He worked as a law partner in the city and as a diplomatic aide in Britain, but is perhaps best known for running the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1982 to 1996, during which time the museum's endowment grew from less than $20 million to $100 million, and its annual attendance grew from 400,000 to 950,000.

John Ludwig Sarkissian, a retired St. John's College tutor and well-known raconteur, died of heart failure Monday at his Annapolis apartment. He was 82. Mr. Sarkissian was born and raised in Chicago, the son of parents who fled Turkey during the Armenian persecution. In 1942 he left the University of Chicago, where he was studying biology, to enlist in the Army. Mr. Sarkissian served in Italy as a military administrator and was later shipped to the Pacific Theater, where he was a code breaker stationed in New Guinea.