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Minutes of the AsCA Council Meeting

Adelaide, Australia, December 2012

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19 delegates from 8 countries, a number of invited guests and interested meeting participants attended the meeting. ASCa President S. W. Suh opened the meeting and introduced the guests.

[AsCA officers] 1st row: Pinak Chakrabarti (AsCA Vice President), Se Won Suh (AsCA President), Alice Vrielink (AsCA Secretary/Treasurer). 2nd row: Hwo-Shuenn Sheu, Takashi Kamiyama, Jennifer Martin, Altaf Hussain, Duong Ngoc Huyen, Samat Talipove, Ian Williams. 3rd row: Atsuhi Nakagawa (Japan), Jagadese Vital (Singapore).

IUCr President G. R. Desiraju presented an overview of the current activities of the IUCr. He commented on the growth of the community within AsCA and the high quality of talks and, particularly, the larger number of students in attendance. He described the International Year of Crystallography (IYCr) 2014 as an opportunity to highlight our science throughout Asia, including at the high-school level. UNESCO is willing to support a traveling exhibition of crystallographic equipment that will go to smaller Asian countries (Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Bangladesh) to educate and inspire young people. Desiraju suggested that the larger countries (Australia, China and India) could play an important role in promoting crystallography in the region. He urged them to send their manuscripts to IUCr Journals and to help in gathering funds or in-kind contributions to support IYCr2014. He has asked that all National committees formulate plans for IYCr and communicate their plans to the IUCr. The IUCr encourages activities such as the publication of textbooks about crystallography in various languages to teach our science to the next generation of crystallographers. The IUCr has appointed a project manager to promote IYCr activities. All communications about regional activities should be sent to the project manager.

S. Talipov (Uzbekistan) gave a presentation detailing crystallography activities in his country.

IUCr Newsletter editor, W. L. Duax, urged attendees to send articles describing crystallographic activities and achievements in AsCA countries and especially plans for IYCr activities to him for publication in the Newsletter of IUCr. The Newsletter is sent electronically to all crystallographers in the IUCr database. Printed copies are also sent to libraries. If individuals would like to have copies sent to their local library they should send the name and address of the library to Duax. If you would like to have hard copies to distribute at meetings that you host or attend, notify the Newsletter office. Duax has asked everyone to identify a crystal that made a significant difference to the world (or just to them) and to write a paragraph explaining their choice. If published the author will receive two glasses with the structure of their 'Most Important Crystal' etched on the surface.

Samar Hasnain, the newly appointed Editor in Chief of the IUCr journals, spoke about his vision for the IUCr Journals. His presentation is entitled 'Responding to a new era of crystallographic-based science and changes in its global distribution'.

His aims for the future development of the IUCr journals are:

  • To make IUCr journals the natural home for many of the high-quality scientific publications that are currently published elsewhere;
  • To encourage chemists, biologists, physicists, material scientists, mineralogists, computational scientists and archaeologists to report the best of their crystallographic results in the IUCr journals;
  • Publishing original research articles review articles (topical, trends, opinions, etc) in all areas of the IUCr commissions; and
  • A new Management Board for the IUCr Journals held its first meeting in October. Membership to the Board consists of the Editor in Chief of the IUCr Journals, the Executive Managing Editor, IUCr President, IUCr General Secretary and Treasurer and a Main Editor of each IUCr journal.

Meeting report: Ray Withers reported that AsCA2012/Crystal28 was running smoothly with three concurrent sessions, over 425 attendees and the prospect of a modest sum balance. R. Withers also reported on the Bragg Symposium. The expectation is that there will be ∼350 delegates including school children. The city of Adelaide would unveil a bust of Lawrence Bragg on Friday, December 7th.

17 July 2013