The IUCr Newsletter goes from strength to strength

The initial launch of the new online IUCr Newsletter three months ago attracted a good deal of interest and we have been working hard to build upon this success. In this second issue you will note that we have a large number of articles of varied content. Topics covered include reports on meetings, developments in Africa, crystal growth competitions and other outreach activities. In addition, we have included a few articles of, I hope, general interest to crystallographers and others wanting to find out more about our subject. In particular, to get you thinking we have an unusual study of the symmetry of prime numbers as observed in terms of diffraction theory. My attention was drawn to this by a note on Twitter! I have also added an article myself on certain aspects of quartz crystals that you may not know, and we have in addition a fascinating idea related to early hominids and their observation of crystals, and how this might have influenced the development of early human intelligence. They seem to have been crystallographers at heart. Are we all here because of crystals?

As you will see, this issue includes some animations, something that could not be done before with the printed copy of the Newsletter. This I think adds more interest and makes our content eye-catching and at the same time informative. As I mentioned in the last Newsletter, I would like to have more submissions to include such dynamic content, i.e. films, animations, etc. I also would encourage our advertisers to make good use of this possibility.

I would welcome receiving your own articles of interest for future issues, and so at the bottom of each page you will find some buttons, one of which will enable you to send in your own contributions to the next Newsletter (March 2019). You can also submit material directly to any of our Regional Editors or directly to me at Newsletter.Editor@iucr.org. Such material should be submitted before 15 February 2019 to be considered for inclusion in the next issue.

I am also keen to increase our mailing list (around 12,500 at present) to include other scientists and even members of the public who wish to be kept informed about crystallography and the work of the International Union. You can help in this by drawing attention to our Newsletter to others. To this end we have included a button to enable new readers to sign up for future issues. Note that it is planned that from 2019 onwards we shall have four issues per year.

I hope you enjoy this latest issue of the online IUCr Newsletter. Do feel free to contact me at any time. I am happy to receive any comments, complaints (I hope not too many!) and suggestions for improvement or additions.