Editorial

This issue contains a wealth of information concerning the XVIII Congress of the International Union of Crystallography, which will be held in Glasgow, Scotland Aug. 4-13, 1999. The scientific and social programs and satellite meetings are outlined on pages 6 and 7. The program committee has designed a rich program covering the latest advances in crystal growth, data collection, instrumentation and methods of determination, refinement and computational and graphic analysis. The full range of applications will be covered, from surfaces, textures and organic and inorganic materials to supramolecular structure and macromolecular interactions. An overview of the daily program including keynote lectures and speakers and microsymposia topics appears on pages 8 and 9. The abstract deadline is Feb. 1, 1999. The call for abstracts will be distributed with the next issue of the IUCr Newsletter. Due to the delay in delivery of the newsletter in some countries and the possibility that the next issue may reach some readers very near to or after the abstract deadline I urge you to check the Glasgow website at http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/iucr99 regularly. The full call for papers will appear on that website weeks before a hard copy is available for distribution.

If you appreciate receiving the IUCr Newsletter, please express your appreciation to our advertisers and the Executive Committee of the IUCr whose financial support make it possible. If there are vendors of scientific instruments, supplies and books that you use regularly, who are not among our advertisers, please let us know their names and addresses. If you find your area of crystallographic interest is under-represented in the newsletter please send us a brief article about a meeting or symposium on that topic for inclusion in a future issue. If news of crystallographic activities in your country rarely appear in the newsletter, please prepare a report so that this oversight can be rectified.

The opinions expressed by Alex Wlodawer in his open letter to the commission on biological molecules in the IUCr Newsletter (Vol. 6, #1, p.6) appeared to be widely held. In July 1998 both Science and Nature announced a policy change with respect to publication of X-ray crystal structure determination. "In order to promote the dissemination of information derived from high-resolution structures (determined by x-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, or other methods) of biological macromolecules, Science will require unrestricted release of the coordinate sets on or before the date of publication for all new manuscripts received on or after Oct. 1, 1998."

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