NEWS FROM CHICAGO

* MUSICOLOGIST WINS MELLON AWARD
Chicago professor Philip Gossett, an expert on Italian opera, has received a $1.5 million Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award. The third Chicago professor in four years to win a Mellon, Gossett will use the three-year research grant to continue his 20-year project of creating critical editions of works by Rossini and Verdi:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/041217.gossett.shtml

* HONORING THE DREAM: MLK CELEBRATION
Kweisi Mfume, former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, headlined the University's 2005 commemoration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a weeklong program of lectures, films, readings, exhibitions, and performances:
http://mlk.uchicago.edu

RESEARCH AT CHICAGO

* IN THE FAST LANE: HUMAN BRAIN EVOLUTION
Chicago researchers, led by geneticist Bruce Lahn, have found that genes regulating brain development and function evolved much more rapidly in humans than in nonhuman primates and other mammals because of natural-selection processes unique to the human lineage. The research was reported in the December 29 Cell:
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/050106/lahn.shtml

* ROCKS AS OLD AS LIFE ITSELF?
Experiments by geophysical scientist Nicolas Dauphas have clarified the sedimentary origin of the world's oldest rocks, reinforcing the possibility that the rocks--found in southwest Greenland--contain the earliest evidence for life on Earth, some 3.85 billion years ago:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/041216.dauphas.shtml

TODAY @ UChiBLOGo

* SOMETHING TO CROW ABOUT
The Magazine's Web log celebrates the Year of the Rooster with the Chinese Undergraduate Students Association:
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/uchiblogo/

FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

* SAVE THE DATE FOR ALUMNI WEEKEND, JUNE 2-5
June's Alumni Weekend is the biggest Alumni Association event of the year, and all alumni and their families are invited back to campus for faculty lectures and classes, tours, exhibits, picnics, parties, and concerts. Most offerings are free and many are planned for the whole family. Saturday's Alumni Convocation speaker will be political journalist David Broder, AB'47, AM'51, America's most widely read columnist.

Online registration begins in March. In the meantime, for a schedule of events and special reunions, discounts on travel and lodging, and to see who else is coming, visit
http://alumnireunion.uchicago.edu

* FOLK FESTIVAL IS 45 AND STILL STRUMMIN' ALONG
The 45th annual U of C Folk Festival takes place Friday through Sunday, February 4-6, in Mandel Hall. Bluegrass, creole, Celtic, old-time fiddle, gospel are all on tap. For the full schedule of musical offerings go to:
http://folklore-society.cs.uchicago.edu/html/movabletype/folklore

* FACULTY LECTURER IN YOUR TOWN
Chicago professors take to the road to lecture in 21 cities this winter and spring. Here's the February-March line-up: February 10 in Chicago, anthropologist Paul Friedrich on "Walden's Thoreau: Poetic Sage and Activist"; February 27 in Tampa Bay, economist Don Coursey on "Economic Value, the Value of Economists, and the Meaning of Life," and in Phoenix, economist Allen Sanderson on "If You Build It, They May Come...But You'll Be Sorry: The Economics of Sports Stadiums"; March 6 in San Diego, mathematician Robert Fefferman on "Infinity and Beyond"; March 8 on Chicago's North Shore, mythologist Wendy Doniger on "The Man Who Wouldn't Sleep with His Wife Until She Had Borne Him a Son"; March 10 in San Francisco and March 12 in Palo Alto, political economist Charles Lipson on "The Future of the U.S. in the Middle East": March 15 in downtown Chicago, historian Neil Harris on "Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury"; March 16 in Greenwich, CT, astrophysicist Rocky Kolb on "The Quantum and the Cosmos," and in Philadelphia, religious historian Martin Marty on "When Faiths Collide"; March 19 in Milwaukee, humanities professor Herman Sinaiko on "Plato's Parable of the Cave: Poetry, Philosophy, and Politics"; and March 22 in downtown Chicago, physics Nobel laureate James Cronin on "Enrico Fermi Remembered."
http://www.alumni.uchicago.edu/regional.html

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