Newsletter

of the ASIAN CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATION.

Volume II No 3 October 1992 >>>> PDF of the original

President's Message

Dear Colleague,

This is the third Newsletter of AsCA for the 1990-1993 term. I hope all of you doing well in your University, Institution, or elsewhere.

Thanks to the AsCA International Program Committee in this issue. I can show you the Programs and Timetable of the Inaugural Conference of the Asian Crystallo-graphic Association Singapore, November 13-16, 1992 (AsCA'92).

I am happy to announce to all of you that Professor A.Authier, the President of the International Union of Crystallography, kindly accepted our invitation to attend the AsCA'92 and to participate in the Opening Ceremony.

I am looking forward to having a great pleasure to meeting you in Singapore. With best wishes and warmest friendship,

Nobutami KASAI

NEWS from Taiwan

Japan-ROC joint seminar

The 1992 annual crystallographic meeting will be held in Academia Sinica on November 9-10. This will also be the joint seminar between Japan and ROC following the one held in Tokyo two years ago. The topics will be in all the related area in crystallography. We expect to have a total of 70 participants. Anybody who is interested in attending the meeting is welcome. The deadlinefor the submission of the abstract is September 30. The format is the same as that of AsCA'92. The abstract should send to Dr. K. H. Lit, Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Nan-Kang, Taipei,Taiwan. We plan to publish a proceeding afterwards.

New Personnel and facilities

Two crystallographers are moving back from the United States: Dr.Michael Chi-ang is taking a position in the chemistry department of National Sun Yat-Shin University this fall. Dr. Huana Yuan has joined the macromolecular crystallographic group of Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica. There are a few new installations of single crystal diffractometer among the local universities: three CAD4's, two Siemens and two Rigaku diffractometers. In addition, there are Huber 6-circle fe 8-circle diffractometers setting up in SRRC. Two imagining plate systems are in order. Numerous powder diffractometers are also installed in the recent years.

SRRC—Synchrotron Radiation Research Center

The 1.3 GeV dedicated synchrotron source is expected to be completed at the beginning of next year(1993). The booster part is commissioning now. The storage ring will be commissioning in a year time. There will be three beamlines with experimental stations available by the time of commissioning. All three are out of bending magnet with the wavelength scanning range from 10-2000 A, the accessible experiments include gas-phase spectroscopy, pho-toabsorption, photoemission spectroscopy, microscopy etc. The SRRC will eventually provide 18 photon beam extraction ports out of bending magnet. In addition, there are four straight sections for insertion devices. The first one will be a 1.8T, 25 poles wiggler,aiming at energy range up to lOKeV. The wiggler beam line is,at present, in the conceptual design stage and is expected to be completed and in operation in 1995. And only then we will have hard X-ray for crystallographic studies. The director of SRRC is Professor Edward Yen;

and the deputy director is Professor Y.C. Liu. The user's division is headed by Professor Shih-Lin Chang. Whoever is interested in the experimental facilities should contact Professor S.L.Chang.

NEWS from Korea

The 1991 Fall Meeting of the Korean Crystallographic Association was held at Seoul City University, October 5. There were about 70 participants. At the General Assembly during the meeting, Ung-Up Ji was elected to the president and Ro-Hak Park, Hoon-Sup Kim, Soo-Jin Jung, and Young-Ja Park to vice-presidents to serve the Society for the next two years. And an amendment for the Constitution was passed to change the Society name to the Korean Society of Crystallography and Crystal Growth.

Se Won Suh Secretary General

NEWS from Australia

Society of crystallographers in Australia council elections and business meeting

Members are advised that a SCA Business Meeting will be held during the AsCA'92 Conference in Singapore. This Meeting will be held in Room C of the poster area at 18:00 on Monday 16th November 1992 preceding the Farewell Banquet at 19:30. The annual meeting of the Crystallographic Society of Japan will be held at AsCA'92 at the same time.

This Meeting brings with it the end of the current terms of election of Professor Allan White (President), Professor John White (Past President), Dr Geoff Williams (Secretary), Dr Colin Kennard (Treasurer) and Dr Maureen Mackay (Council). To fill the vacancies thus created the Nominations Committee, in accordance with Article IV and Rules III and IV of the SCA Constitution, has nominated Dr lan Grey (CSIRO) for Vice President, Dr Max Taylor (Flinders Univ.) for Secretary, Dr Graham Smith (QUT) for Treasurer, and Dr Mark Spack-man (Univ. of New England) for Council.

As no further nominations were received, the new composition of Council and Standing Committees for the term beginning November 1992 is:

President: D.C. Creagh (University College, ACT)

Vice President:I.E. Grey (CSIRO, Port Melbourne)

Secretary: M.R. Taylor (Flinders Univ.)

Treasurer: G. Smith (QUT)

Council:

C.J. Howard (ANSTO, NSW) W.T. Robinson (Univ. of Canterbury, NZ) M.A. Spackman

(Univ. of New England) ANCCr representative: J.W. White (Research School Chem., ANU) (ex officio) Past President: A.H. White (University of WA)

Nominations Standing Committee: M. Sterns (ANU, Canberra) B.M.K. Gatehouse (Monash University, Vie.) S.W. Wilkins (CSIRO Materials, Vie.)

Photon Factory Management

The installation of the Australian beam-line at the Photon Factory in Tsukuba is approximately on schedule, A number of research groups have started to make use of other facilities at the Photon Factory. Funds are available to support travel by Australian investigators for this purpose. The current memberships of the various committees involved in managing our activities at the Photon Factory are as follows:

Photon Factory Management Committee: Dr David Cook, Chairman (ANSTO) Ms Pauline Barratt (DITAC) Dr Peter Colman (CSIRO) Associate Professor Dudley Creagh (University College, UNSW) Professor Hans Freeman (AAS) Professor Graham Rigby (ARC) Professor John White (ANU)

Technical Committee: (responsible for getting the Australian beam-line running) Associate Professor Dudley Creagh, Chairman Dr Richard Garrett, Secretary (Project Scientist) Dr John Boldeman (ANSTO) Professor John White Dr Stephen Wilkins (CSIRO)

Program Committee: (responsible for assessing proposals to use the Australian beam-line and applications for funds to support travel to Photon Factory)

Professor John White, Chairman Dr Peter Colman Associate Professor Dudley Creagh Professor Hans Freeman

Summary of Profile of Australian Crystallography, November 1991

Of 100 responses received by 31 December 1991, seven were from SCA members overseas (incl. New Zealand). The following summary is of the remaining 93 responses from crystallographers currently practising in Australia.

Institutions:

University 62

CSIRO 17

Industry 4

Other Tertiary 2

Government 7

Other 1

Age:

21-30 21

31-40 20

41-50 26

51-60 18

61-65 6

66- 2

Position:

Honours student 3

Postgraduate student 14

Postdoctoral 6

Tenured professional 53

Contract professional 10

Free-lance 5

Salaried professional 2

Techniques /Instrumentation:

Sealed-tube X-ray generator Rotating-anode generator Synchrotron X-ray source Neutron source (HIFAR) Neutron source (0/S) Powder diffractometer/camera Single-xl diffractometer/camera Low-angle diffraction Small-angle scattering X-ray absorption spectroscopy Electron diffraction

Professional Bodies:

IUCR Commissions 8

Committees 14

Advisory bodies 4

NEWS from India

1. The 23rd National Seminar on crystallography was held between 23rd March to 25th March 1992 at the picturesque pink city of Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan state, India. The seminar was hosted by the Regional Engineering college, Jaipur and was attended by over 250 delegates. Jaipur is one of the important centers for precious and semi-precious stones. A special session on characterization and improvement of gemstones was addressed by both scientists and industry-persons. It was evident from the interesting discussions that there is a large interest in gemstones in the country. The seminar also brought to the fore the varied research activities in crystallography in India. Papers were presented on protein and virus crystallography carried out in the country along with papers on organic, inorganic structures, organo-metallics, compound of medicinal importance, drug-protein interaction, computer programs, database usage and theoretical crystallography. Special sessions were also devoted to material science research and crystal growth and characterization.

2. 24th National Seminar on Crystallography will be held in Department of Physics, University of Jammu, Jammu 180 001 (con- tact person, Prof. P.N.Kotru) between 20-22 October 1992. There will be a microsym-posium on the crystallography of superconducting materials at this meeting. Jammu is in north India about 500 km north of Delhi.

AsCA'92 Program Chairman's Report

It is too early to forecast an accurate total number of abstracts submitted, but the number received so far is already higher than the expected total. Some distinct trends are emerging. The boundaries between contributions on inorganic structures, mineral structures and materials science are increasingly fuzzy, and the combined total for these three areas is high. The structural chemistry of coordination complexes remains popular. An increasing proportion of the effort in this field is directed to polymeric structures.

Submissions on organic/biological structures are strongly represented, with the research effort shifting inexorably towards large structures, and to crystallographic modeling of biological reactions. There is lively interest in the sub-fields of maximum entropy methods and the measurement of electron distributions. Electron diffraction and powder diffraction continue to flourish, and an increasing proportion of the x-ray studies are based on synchrotron radiation. Innovators are well represented by papers that, being distinctly different, are not readily classified.

The bulk of the contributions are from Japan, India, China and Australia as expected, but some authors are from as far away as England and South America. The general picture is that the health of Asian crystallography in growing with the rapid economic development in the Asian region. The popularity of the meeting has surprised the organizers. While it is probable that all who wish to attend can be accommodated it is not possible to guarantee absolutely that this will be so. It will be advisable to register early for AsCA'92.

Ted Maslen

Ninth Edition of the World Directory of Crystallographers

The International Union of Crystallography has decided to install a database of crystallographers. This will allow to find specialists in a given field or the full address of a person. The paper edition of the world directory will be a by-product of this database. The interrogation will be made by e-mail messages or, later, by telnet sessions and security tools will be installed to avoid non-authorized uses of the database. To make this database usable it has been necessary to establish a list of keywords which will be published in the September issue of Acta Crystallographica A. It contains more than 1500 entries.

The schedule is approximately the following:

- November 1992: distribution of the instructions to the national co-editors with all explanations to be given to the scientists.

- First demonstration of the database: Bei-jing congress.

We expect to organize an open meeting on this database and the exchange of information by electronic means.

- Installation of the database at Chester (UK): end 1993

- Paper edition of the World Directory: beginning 1994 if all sub-editors have sent back their data!

The intention of the Union is to promote all electronic means for exchange between scientists and this is the beginning of this policy.

I would like to mention that, following this policy, I will establish a exchange list for the persons interested in the field "High Precision Diffraction and Topography". Everybody interested is welcomed and should send an e-mail message to me:

epelboin@lmcp.jussieu.fr For more information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Professor Y. Epelboin General Editor 9th World Directory of Crystallography LMCP, Universite P.M. Curie, Case 115, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France

AsCA Council Meeting

During the AsCA'92, the AsCA Council will hold its third meeting at 7:00 pm(19:00) on Saturday, November 14, 1992 in the "Room C" at the "Regional Language Centre (RELC)", the same building of the AsCA'92.

Agenda

1. Minutes of the Second Council Meeting, Bordeaux, France, 21 July 1990

2. Report of the Executives AsCA'92

Organizing Committee Program Committee Singapore Committee Budget

3. Financial Report

4. Sixteenth Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography Beijing 1993

5. Other Businesses

AsCA’92 Program

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 14

Session 14A SYNCHROTRON RADIATION

Session 14B CARBON AND ORGANIC STRUCTURES & ORGANOMETALLIC STRUCTURES
Session 14Y POWDER DIFFRACTION
Session 14C MAXIMUM ENTROPY METHODS
Session 14Z INTERFACES, FILMS AND SURFACES
Section 14P MACROMOLECULAR STRUCTURES I
Section 14Q MACROMOLECULAR STRUCTURES II
Section 14R INTERACTIONS IN BIOLOGICAL STRUCTURES
Section 14S ELECTRON SCATTERING, AND MICROSCOPE IMAGING OF STRUCTURE
Section 14T MINERALS, INORGANICS fe ALLOYS I
Section 14U MINERALS, INORGANICS & ALLOYS II
Section 14V PHASE TRANSITIONS and SOLID STATE REACTIONS
Section 14W CRYSTAL GROWTH AND PREPARATION

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 15

Session 15A ELECTRON SCATTERING, AND MICROSCOPE IMAGING OF STRUCTURE
Session 15B BIOLOGICAL STRUCTURES
Session 15Y THEORY

Session 15C MINERALS, INORGANICS fe ALLOY STRUCTURES

Session 15Z CRYSTAL GROWTH AND PREPARATION

Section 15P SYNCHROTRON RADIATION

Section 15Q DIFFRACTOMETRY and DATA ANALYSIS

Section 15R TECHNIQUES OTHER THAN DIFFRACTION

Section 15S NEUTRON DIFFRACTION

Section 1ST CARBON AND ORGANIC STRUCTURES I

Section 15U ORGANOMETALLIC STRUCTURES I

Section 15V ELECTRON DISTRIBUTIONS

MONDAY NOVEMBER 16

Session 16A NEUTRON DIFFRACTION

Session 16X SOLID STATE REACTIONS and PHASE TRANSITIONS

Session 16B INTERACTIONS IN BIOLOGICAL STRUCTURES

Section 16Y EXTINCTION and ELECTRON DISTRIBUTIONS

Section 16Y DIFFRACTOMETRY AND DIFFRACTION PHYSICS

Section 16Z CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Section 16P INTERFACES, FILMS & SURFACES I

Section 16Q INTERFACES, FILMS & SURFACES II

Section 16R ORGANIC STRUCTURES II

Section 16S ORGANOMETALLIC STRUCTURES II

Section 16T ENZYME STRUCTURES

Section 16U SMALL BIOLOGICAL MOLECULES AND FRAGMENTS

Section 16V PHASE TRANSITIONS and SOLID STATE REACTIONS