Follow-up from Madrid Meeting

[Brian McMahon]

Original text by Sine in black; amendments by Marv in blue; amendments by Elena in green; amendments by Mitchell in orange.

EC - IYCr working group
Action Steps:
All aspects/aims of the IYCr should be presented at a preliminary website to be launched asap:
[JMG] I have looked at the local efforts for the IY in Chemistry and the general thrust of their efforts is very similar to what is outlined below. I note, however, that they are having little traction with the general public that is likely to be of lasting impact. In that regard, I believe as stated often by Sine, that crystallography is in a special place in science as it transcends so many formal disciplines. We should therefore keep in mind that it is as important to raise our profile with other scientists as well as the public (& politicians).
Suggested content:
· Aims of the year;
· Logo, and availability of logo; Do we need to do anything to copyright the logo?
· Forthcoming meetings - German Cryst. Meeting 2012, Adelaide 2012, EC’s; Add dates
· IYCr working group members and their contact details;
· Template for organization of educational material / Questionnaire;
· Deadline for the application for seed money from the IUCr; I suggest we create an application form or at least cover sheet with guidelines that that can be submitted online or a pdf file that can be completed and returned. The cover sheet would have a name and contact information, organization or group making request, short abstract of idea, budget request, and breakdown of needs and other sources to support project. [JMG] I think we should make the application process quite prescriptive – i.e. a form with specific questions and character limits on the length of responses.
· Information on the UN process… - We need to share with the national committees exactly what they can do to help and when it is needed in this effort. [JMG] This will clearly become urgent once the timing is known. Jenny Martin had already started the process via UNESCO in Australia but we are ready to move with the General Assembly once we have th details.


Promote education in crystallography and its links to other sciences,

Organization of educational material
· Step 1: organization of educational material: Elena and Katherine K prepare a template that can be used to describe the different types of educational material available, e.g. type of material (book, movie, experiments, exhibits etc), language; level (school children, general public, high school, etc); copyrights? The template should be available at the website and possibly accompanied by a text on the website. It should be sent to commissions, national committees and crystallographers in the WDC(?) Deadline ???? where to send the materials? Chester, Elena, Katherine ? Any recommendations?

Katherine has made a draft of the template, and I have made a draft of the Questionnaire and the text. I shall now look at the Template, if I have comments. I also wait for comments on the text and questionnaire.
· Work with museums on possible exhibits / Art and cultural heritage for exhibit ideas - should we send messages to the selected museums? [JMG] This is a very good idea.
· Step 2: Elena and Katherine organize the material, e.g. how many crystal growth competitions are there? Are we going to try to identify one month or one week for special focus and encourage many of the crystal growth competitions to be done during that time? Yes, we can think of this, but, giving a very good visibility, this could also be difficult to some places to be firmly bound to a selected date. Maybe, we should give people more flexibility. A permanent world-wide activity, with events marked on the web everyday, may be not worse. [JMG] The existing competition in Australia is run by the Chemists. I shall get in touch with them. I think increased flexibility will make the process much easier to coordinate.
· Step 3: After organization it is made available on the website in 2013.
Available textbooks in crystallography
One should involve the OUP book series in this work, e.g. ask them to compile a list of available textbooks in different languages, and liaise to create an online text book for high school teachers and good high school students (ACA may help), MH, MG; CLC should help to identify good persons for the translation of the book. How long would a textbook for high school teachers be? Would we want it to be entirely web based? How many languages would we be aiming for to have it translated into? I think it should have relatively concise chapters, easy to follow, but the number of these chapters is less critical. I do not think there is an already available text-book of the type we need. I am not sure that a single person could prepare such a text-book. I would rather expect that such a text-book should be prepared specially addressing three-four authors, who could make parts on different topics. I have some ideas on the contents and on the potential authors. I think it is realistic to have it entirely web-based. The main languages should be: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and other languages (Polish, Italian, Portuguese, etc.) are possible and welcome, if there are volunteers to translate. IUCr has already such an experience with E. Wood's "Crystals". [JMG] I support the idea of a web-based volume. This makes it easy to update.

Link to other sciences
Contact other scientific unions to investigate the possibility to address this point! AIP, IUPAC, ACS, there must be organizations of high school science teachers out there. I will see what exists in the USA. Other ideas???? I shall contact Russian Ministry of Education and Science, asking to provide a contact with schools and colleges. [JMG] In Australia, like many other jurisdictions, we have a Society for Crystallography that is entirely independent and a National Committee for Crystallography operated under the auspices of the Academy of Science. It is probably easier to coordinate activities via the National Academy.

Publicity / News Coverage

Increase the public awareness of crystallography and the way it underpins most technological and medical developments in modern society
Contact to commissions
· Commissions should be contacted as a follow up of the discussions in Madrid.
· Inform them of their contact person on the EC IYCr working group.
· Remind them to prepare a general public statement for their website,
· Work on a list of planned activities directed towards the general public (deadline??? - January 16th if applying for funding, no deadline, if using their own means),
· Remind them of 16 January deadline to apply for funding for activities in IYCr that fulfill this goal
SL will draft the letter during September and send it to the working group for comments.

IYCr working group contact persons (please check that this is in accordance with your notes!):
· M. Guss: SAS; Computing; Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography [JMG] I believe that the assignments for me are correct. There is an international meeting on Small Angle Scattering (supported by the Commission) to be held in Sydney in November 2012 one week before the AsCA/Bragg meeting in Adelaide.
· M. Hackert: Biological macromolecules; Nomenclature; Inorganic and mineral structures
· C. LeComte: Charge, spin and momentum; Neutron; Aperiodic; magnetic structures; electron crystallography
· E. Boldyreva: Teaching; High pressure; Crystal growth; Structural chemistry, Powder diffraction - yes, I agree, I would appreciate the list of all new commissions members with e-mails. I asked Mike, but he does not answer, probably is out of his e-mails now.
· S. Larsen: Synchrotron radiation, XAFS; Art and cultural heritage

Contact to national committees
A letter should be sent to the regional associates containing more or less the same information as the letter sent to the commissions from the IYCr working group with information on the contact persons. The IYCr working group should contact the countries that are members of IUCr.
I have preliminary informed the Russian National Committee, and they expect further information to come. [JMG] I am the liaison with AsCA.

Involve the numerous large-scale facilities worldwide in the celebrations of the IYCr
SL is already in contact with the ESRF on the celebrations of the IYCr, which at least should be a special session at the Users meeting. In September she will meet with Director from BESSY and will contact other hard X-ray synchrotrons & neutron facilities to which she has good personal contacts: DESY (PETRA III, FLASH); SOLEIL; DIAMOND; ALBA; PSI; Elettra; ILL; X-FEL; ESS; MAX IV Laboratory; NSLS II; LCLS; ALS; APS; SPring 8; Photon Factory.
I suppose that Mitchell will look after the Australian synchrotron and ANSTO. [JMG] That will be fine. I shall contact them once we have the distribution details. Both organizations are already committed supporters of the Bragg/AsCA meeting. Note that the relevant division of ANSTO is named the Bragg Institute.

Does any of the working group members have contacts China, Taiwan?
Maybe we can act through Commissions members from these countries? [JMG] I can take care of both of these if you wish.

Intensify the programme “Crystallography in Africa” and create similar programmes in other parts of the world lacking adequate education in crystallography
· Claude looks after the African scene with Dave Billing , it is important to have a budget by mid January !
· There are some initiatives in South America organized by the young crystallographer from Uruguay - Lerpoldo Suescun(?) Marv should follow up on this!
· Asia/Oceania: Mitchell knows the area well and should initiate some activities. [JMG] I don’t have personal activities in the area but can operate through AsCA and I have colleagues with strong ties in Indonesia and Singapore.
We have started working on a programme of advanced training in NEW fields and methods in Russia, with a possible cooperation with FSU countries

[Brian McMahon]

You might like to know that there is now a placeholder website on the IUCr server: http://www.iycr2013.org

Our thanks are due to Bernhard Rupp, who secured this domain name (as well as iycr.org) for our use.

[sinelarsen]

Dear Brian

Have you been in touch with Bernard Rupp to investigate what he wants to leave the www.IYCr.org address to IUCr?

Sine