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Welcome to the December issue of UCHICAGO.EDU, a monthly e-bulletin bringing you online news about the University of Chicago and its larger community of alumni and friends.

The December/05 University of Chicago Magazine is in the mail--and it's also online at: http://magazine.uchicago.edu.

Here's a sampling from the December issue:

* Static Adjustment
Robert Thompson, AB’81, television and pop-culture expert, tunes out critics’ raised-eyebrow reactions to his field.
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0512/features/thompson.shtml

* Last Rights
As a human-rights issue, treatment of the mentally disabled gets routinely ignored around the globe. Eric Rosenthal, AB’85, works to make governments address the problem:
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0512/features/last.shtml

* Shticking to Their Puns
For nearly 60 years Chicago professors have gathered their wits and witticisms to debate The Big Question: which is better—the latke or the hamantash?
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0512/features/puns.shtml

News from Chicago

* Maroon Invasion
Four U of C students are off to Great Britain next fall. For the fourth time in a decade multiple Chicagoans have won Rhodes scholarships: fourth-years Nicholas Juravich and Maria Cecire and Samsher Gill, AB'05. Fourth-year Stephen Brusatte received a British Marshall Scholarship:
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/051201/scholars.shtml

* Transplanted Transplant Team
This fall one of the nation's top lung-transplant teams will move to the U of C Hospitals. The team, from Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, IL, performs about 35 transplants a year. Joining the University's nationally recognized teams in heart, liver, kidney, pancreas, multi-organ and islet-cell transplantation, the new team will begin performing transplants as early as February 2006:
http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2005/20051115-lung.html

* Hospitals Plan Room to Grow
The University of Chicago Hospitals has begun conceptual design for a new hospital pavilion devoted to complex specialty care, with a focus on cancer and advanced surgical programs. To open as early as 2011, the new facility would increase the Hospitals' current space by more than one-third:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/05/051206.hospital.shtml

Research at Chicago

* All the Lonely People, Where Do They All Come From?
Heredity helps determine why some adults are persistently lonely, Chicago psychologists have shown. Working with colleagues in the Netherlands, the scholars found about 50 percent of identical twins and 25 percent of fraternal twins shared similar characteristics of loneliness. A risk factor for heart disease, loneliness is also connected to self-esteem, mood, anxiety, anger, and sociability:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/05/051115.loneliness.shtml

* Throw Down Your Marbles
University of Chicago physicists have created a novel state of matter using nothing more than a container of loosely packed sand and a falling marble. The impacting marble produces a jet of sand grains that briefly behaves like a special type of dense fluid--a phenomenon reported in the December issue of Nature Physics:
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/05/051205.newfluid.shtml

Today @ UChiBLOGo

* Songs in the Key of Advent
The Magazine's Web log attends a seasonal concert at Rockefeller Chapel:
http://uchiblogo.uchicago.edu

From the University of Chicago Alumni Association

*Political Scientist James Q. Wilson to Receive 2006 University Alumni Medal
James Q. Wilson, PhD'59, has been chosen to receive the University Alumni Medal during Alumni Convocation in Rockefeller Chapel on Saturday, June 3, 2006. Wilson, a 2003 winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, has had a distinguished career as a political scientist, criminologist, policy analyst, government advisor, and public intellectual. He will present the 2006 Alumni Convocation address. The event is free and open to the public.
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/051201/alumnimedal.shtml

* Great River Cruise; New Date
Our alumni voyage on the M.S. River Navigator will cruise the Rhine and Moselle rivers with visits to Cologne, Cochem, Bernkastel-Kues, Trier, Rudesheim, Mainz, Baden-Baden, Strasbourg, Breisach Am Rhein, and Basel. Dates for the cruise (which originally began in May) have been changed to June 9-24:
http://www.alumni.uchicago.edu/study-trips.html

*Send a U of C E-Card for the Holidays
A new selection of winter campus scenes is ready for you to use in greeting old friends. First find your friends via the online alumni directory at
https://alumniservices.uchicago.edu/directory_login.asp

then send them an e-card (and a gentle reminder of Alumni Weekend, June 1-4) at
http://greetings.uchicago.edu/reunion/index.phtml

Before You Ring in the New Year...

* Don't Let 2005 Pass By without Making a Gift to the Annual Fund
Annual gifts from alumni and friends provide the University with vital resources for undergraduate financial aid, graduate scholarships and fellowships, faculty support, research opportunities, and student programs. Every gift makes a difference. Please make a gift today by clicking here:
https://alumniservices.uchicago.edu/giving

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