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Something for everyone in Acta C

Issues of Acta C have a broad spectrum of structures for all tastes and disciplines; inorganic to organic structures, X-rays and neutrons diffraction studies at low-temperature and high from powders and crystals, some with disorder but most without. The large December 1998 issue of Section C contained the following interesting examples.

The characterization of a mixed valence (MnIII, MnIV) manganese complex [(bpy)2Mn(u-O)2Mn(bpy)2] (ClO4)3.CbH5NO2. 0.5H2O] by Wilson et al. (pp. 1797-9), using crystallographic and IR spectroscopy methods, shows quite different and unusual manganese environments. Rabinovich et al. (pp. 1740-2) show that in the hydrated uranium (IV) bromide structure [UBr(H2O)8]Br3.H2O, the uranium atom is coordinated in a novel tricapped trigonal prismatic arrangement.

Among the many organic studies, commercial paracetamol is shown by Clegg et al. (pp. 1881-2) to yield on crystallization diparacetomol as an oxidatively coupled dimer. Bromine aficionados will enjoy a very interesting and detailed study of a hydrogen-bonded anhydrous theobromine structure reported by Ford, Ebisuzaki and Boyle (pp. 1980-3). The definitive power of our "non-sporting method" is demonstrated yet again in the elucidation of the structure of epiclusianone (Santos et al., pp. 1990-2). A brave effort by Bemm and Oestmark (pp. 1997-9) defines precisely the nature of the explosive 1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethylene and assists in explaining its properties. The rationalization of the blue luminescence of tetracyano-p-xylene is given by Arena et al. (pp 2003-5) in terms of its crystal stacking interaction.

Sydney R Hall
Crystallography Centre
U. of Western Australia