2004 annual meeting

Osaka, Japan, November, 2004

The Annual Meeting and General Assembly of the Crystallographic Society of Japan was held at Osaka U., Osaka, Japan, November 16-17, 2004.

The meeting featured 3 special symposia, 74 oral and 174 poster presentations covering all aspects of crystallography, and an industrial exhibition. 547 crystallographers attended the meeting, which was the largest number of attendees to date.
The three symposia were on “Crystallography of Photo-Induced Phenomena”, “Global environmental problems and Crystallography” and “Forefront of membrane proteins and biological supramolecular complexes studies”.
The lectures “Recent Advances in Photo-Induced Phenomena and Their Time-Resolved Structure Analyses” (H. Uekusa, Tokyo Inst. of Tech), “Single Crystal Structure Analyses of Photo Induced Excited States and Reaction Intermediates using the Low-Temperature Vacuum X-ray Camera on SPring-8 BL02B1” (K. Toriumi, U. of Hyogo), “Photo-induced structural transition probed by steady-state and time-resolved X-ray diffraction” (S. Adachi, KEK-PF), “Photoexcited Structure on Charge Density Level using Powder Diffraction” (K. Kato, JASRI/SPring-8) were included in the first symposium.
“Atmospheric Oxygen Evolution Revealed by Crystallography - Reconstruction of Paleoweathering” (T. Murakami, U. of Tokyo), “Crystallography in Environmental Earth Sciences; atmosphere, water, soils, and bacteria” (K. Tazaki, Kanazawa U.), “Regulation mechanism of the crystal orientation in calcium carbonate as biominerals” (T. Kogure, U. of Tokyo), “Surface Environment of the Earth and EM- Mineralogy/Crystallography of nano- to micro-meter scale Fe-minerals” (J. Akai, Niigata U.) were included in the second symposium.

And “The new stage of structure-functional research of membrane - a protein complex - cytochrome c oxidase” (H. Aoyama, RIKEN), “Crystal structure of the complex between Vitamin B12 receptor and Colicin E3” (G. Kurisu, U. of Tokyo), “Crystallization and structural-functional analysis of a bacterial multi-drug efflux transporter” (S. Murakami, Osaka U.), and “Crystal structure and function of the MexAB-OprM antibiotic efflux pump subunits of Pseudomonas aeruginosa” (T. Nakae, Tokai U.) were included in the third one. The Nishikawa memorial lecture titled “Development and structure analysis of phase-change optical disk materials” was presented by N. Yamada (Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.).

At the Awards Ceremony, the Young Crystallographer Awards went to K. Kusaka (JAERI) and T. Chatake, (Chiba Inst. of Science). At the general meeting, J. Harada (Prof. Emer. Nagoya U.), F. Marumo (Prof. Emer. Tokyo Inst. Tech.) and Y. Sasada (Prof. Emer. Tokyo Inst. Tech.) became Honorary Members of our society.

The local Chair was Y. Kai (Osaka U.) and the Program Chair was A. Nakagawa (Osaka U.). Details of the meeting program can be viewed at wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/crsj/index-e.html.

Kenji Tsuda