Crystallography matters ... more!

Since 1948 a group of distinguished scientists from all over the world and from a wide range of fields gathered at the International Symposium on the Reactivity of Solids to discuss recent results and future experimental developments in the fields of the reactivity of solids. A characteristic feature of this symposium is that it is not a function of a particular society but is arranged by a local organizing committee, with input from many past attendees, and lives on the enthusiasm and on the scientific curiosity of a world-wide community. The flavor is distinctly international and decidedly interdisciplinary.
A special focus will be devoted to reactivity of materials for energy and environment.

Chronology

Many initiatives have been and are being organized to involve schoolchildren at Mudaliarpet, Pondicherry (India) into crystallography on the occasion of IYCr2014.

1. At first, the students were given a brief introduction on various crystals, which made them think about how crystals are formed.

2. Following this, a team of students were selected for a project on Crystal Growth - investigating the size, shape and number of crystals formed, taking various substances such as table salt, sugar, epsom salt, borax, potassium nitrate and alum. 

3. A Radio Talk was given by the teacher and the students on the "International Year of Crystallography".

4. A lecture was given on the topic to the school students, following which a demonstration -cum- exhibition, along with a poster presentation by the teacher is to be arranged for view for the public around the school locale. 

5. A next attempt to telecast the above in the television is made.

6. Students of our school are participating in the IYCr2014 Crystal Growing Competition. 

One hundred years ago, a series of brilliant experiments and ingenious ideas paved the way to the opportunity of visualizing three-dimensional molecular architectures from the analysis of the crystalline state. The era of modern crystallography was begun. Nowadays, crystallography is a mature discipline and it allows a deep understanding of atoms and molecules in solids. Biologists, chemists and physicists regularly employ crystallographic tools to visualize the structure of proteins, to develop novel materials and drugs and to figure out how several properties of the matter we observe in our everyday life ultimately depend on how atoms and molecules recognize and organize themselves at the nanoscale.

El Museo de Historia Natural "Dr. Carlos A. Torres de la Llosa" de Montevideo, Uruguay ha realizado una exhibición especial de Cristales y Estructuras Cristalinas aprovechando su colección de minerales para celebrar el Año Internacional de la Cristalografía 2014. En la exposición se agregan a los minerales algunas figuras con las estructuras atómicas correspondientes.

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The Natural History Museum "Dr. Carlos A. Torres de la Llosa" of Montevideo, Uruguay has created a special exhibit of Crystals and Crystal structures using its own minerals collection to celebrate the International Year of Crystallography 2014. The exposition contains some figures with the atomic structures of the selected minerals.

The exhibition and lectures "World of Crystals" (original title Svět krystalů) aim at showing the amazing shapes of the crystals from the whole world and from the Železné hory (Iron Mountains) National Geopark in particular.

The exhibition will be inaugurated on 6 May at 6.30 pm in the exhibition hall of the Vodní zdroje Chrudim s r.o.

Opening times: Monday to Friday, 8.00 to 4.00 pm.

Download the poster of the exhibition

The exhibition “In the unusual world of crystals” shows the beauty of crystals, the history of their investigations and their various applications. 

The exhibition was organized to celebrate the International Year of Crystallography IYCr2014 and the 650th Jubilee of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. 

Sites of Exhibition:

• Faculty of Chemistry JU,  14 May -14 June 2014
• Jagiellonian University Professors Garden, Krakow, 14-18 May 2014
• Main Jagiellonian Library , Krakow, 18 June – 18 July 2014
• Institute of Low Temperature and Structure Research PAS, Wroclaw, 26-28 June 2014

and is scheduled to be displayed in many other places (Krakow, Wroclaw, Czestochowa, Poznan, Opole, Warsaw) in the second half of 2014.

A photo gallery is available at http://www2.chemia.uj.edu.pl/krysztaly_wystawa/?page_id=77

More about the exhibition (in Polish): http://www2.chemia.uj.edu.pl/krysztaly_wystawa/

The workshop will focus on the latest advances of the crystallographic methods for solving structures by both powder (Module 1) and single crystal (Module 2) diffraction data.

In particular, it will be devoted to the use of the latest versions of EXPO and SIR, two packages widely used by the international scientific community. The workshop will include theoretical and practical sessions. Participants will have the opportunity to personally use EXPO and/or SIR under the supervision of the authors.

EXPO is able to solve crystal structures by powder diffraction data using reciprocal as well as direct space methods. It is able to carry out the full pathway of the solution process, from indexing to Rietveld refinement. With respect to the previous version, it has been enriched with new powerful computing tools: e.g. the covariance principle based completion method (COVMAP) for structure model optimization; the RAndom Model based Method (RAMM) and the Hybrid Big Bang-Big Crunch approach for structure solution in reciprocal and direct space, respectively. The graphical interface has been improved making the program very user friendly.

SIR can solve ab initio crystal structures of small- and medium-size molecules, as well as protein structures, using X-ray or electron single crystal diffraction data. Several new abilities have been implemented: e.g. a new phasing method (VLD), simulated annealing techniques to exploit prior knowledge of the molecular geometry, molecular replacement methods for solving proteins, including a pipeline useful to automatically refine and complete the structure. The graphical interface has been further improved and allows the straightforward use of the program even in difficult cases.

The exhibition will be inaugurated on Wednesday, 21 May at 6 pm at the regional library of Lower Austria in St. Poelten.

Click on the image to download the invitation to the exhibition.

Following the great success obtained in Reggio Emilia, the exhibition “L’ENIGMA ESCHER- PARADOSSI GRAFICI TRA ARTE E GEOMETRIA”, a major retrospective exhibition of the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher, will be on display at "Il Filatoio di Caraglio" (Cuneo, Italy) from 29 March to 29 June 2014.

The exhibition presents the work of the Dutch graphic artist from his debut on the scene to his latest years, bringing together 130 works, including lithographs, etchings and drawings, on loan from museums, libraries and national institutes – among which the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Rome and the Fondazione Wolfsoniana of Genoa – as well as from some important, private collections.

A special section is dedicated to tilings, with a panel illustrating the 17 crystallographic planar groups and some original examples of Escher's plane-filling drawings.

The exhibition is included in the events for IYCr2014 celebrations in Italy. 

Read the press release on the Reggio Emilia exhibition mentioning the connection with IYCr2014 (in Italian)

Venue: Planetario de Pamplona

21 May, 7.30 pm: Los Minerales en La Tierra. Esther Lasheras, Universidad de Navarra

28 May, 7.30 pm: Photo 5: la imagen de ADN más famosa de la historia. Javier Novo, Universidad de Navarra

4 June, 7.30 pm: Las caras del cristal. Una aproximación multidisciplinar a la historia de la cristalografía. César Tomé, Universidad del País Vasco

18 June, 7.30 pm: Kriptonita, estalagmitas y otros cristales peculiars. Jose Ramón Isasi Allica, Universidad de Navarra

25 June, 7.30 pm: Neutrones en la vida cotidiana. Javier Campo, CSIC Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón

The exhibition will open on May 9th with a speech by Sven Lidin, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Lund University and Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

The exhibition "Living with crystal" (original title in Slovenian: Živeti s kristali), organized on the occasion of the International Year of Crystallography, will be open from 13 February 2014 to 11 January 2015 at the Slovenian Museum of Natural History, Ljubljana. 

On display: Photographs of minerals, Crystal drawings, Mineral and crystal collections, Jewellery, Fluorescent minerals, Interactive presentation of minerals and rocks on Biedermeier tables, Interactive play "Umek the Mineralogist", Microscopic world of crystals.

Authors: Miha Jeršek, Mirjan Žorž, Breda Činč Juhant, Katarina Fuchs

Con motivo de este año tan especial, se ha organizado la exposición titulada "Los minerales: Año Internacional de la Cristalografía".

La exposición trata de ofrecer un recorrido por las características principales de los minerales, los cristales inorgánicos naturales. Estas características van desde cuales son las posibles formas de la celda unidad (sistemas cristalinos) hasta las principales propiedades físicas que presentan como consecuencia de su composición y su estructura, y que, con frecuencia, nos permiten identificarlos.

Every year, the third week of May, Uruguay celebrates the Science and Technology week. In 2014 the week will be motivated by the International Year of Crystallography 2014 and will have the motto "it all depends on the crystal you look through".

Researchers and graduate students will be offering talks focusing on the impact of Crystallography in our lives. The opening ceremony of the week will include a Dissemination Lecture on Crystallography. Lectures, about 1h long, will be offered to Primary and Secondary schools (both public and private), Teaching institutions in general and Social institutions from all the country. An estimate of 50 lectures on different aspects of crystallography will be given from May 19 to June 30 where the activities of the Sci & Tech week officially end.

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Cada año, durante la tercera semana de mayo, Uruguay celebra la Semana de la Ciencia y la Tecnología. Este año las actividades están motivadas por el Año Internacional de la Cristalografía 2014 y tendrá como llamador la frase "todo depende del cristal con que se mire".

Tanto investigadores como estudiantes de postgrado darán charlas enfocándose en el impacto de la Cristalografía en nuestras vidas. El evento de apertura de la semana estará basado en una charla de divugación de Cristalografía y las charlas, de 1 hora aproximada de duración serán ofrecidas a Escuelas Primarias y Secundarias (públicas y privadas), instituciones de enseñanza en general e instituciones sociales de todo el país. Se estima que unas 50 charlas serán dictadas sobre distintos aspectos de la cristalografía desde el 19 de mayo al 30 de junio cuando concluyen oficialmente las actividades de la Semana de la Ciencia y la Tecnología.

This MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) explains the basic building blocks of crystals, their symmetrical structure and introduces free software for crystal structure exploring. To be enrolled to this online course, visit the web site and click on the green button "Enrol with email".

The course is organized in chapters, every week a new chapter will be launched starting on April 18th.

Frank Hoffmann and his team from the University of Hamburg invite you to be part of the crystal admiring community.

As part of the lecture series to celebrate the International Year of Crystallography at FCT-NOVA, on June 11, Dr Giuseppina Padeletti (Institute of Nanostructured Materials of CNR, Italy) will give a talk entitled "Significant findings on the Italian lustred majolica at Renaissance".

Here's a summary of her lecture: The characterization and the study of lustre-decorated majolicas is of great interest for archaeologists, but also offers possibilities for producing pottery with outstanding decoration today, following ancient examples, since nowadays Italian artisans are interested in the reproduction of the ancient recipes and procedures. The results of several studies carried out on ancient lustre layers using numerous different analytical techniques such as XRD, SEM–EDX, TEM–EDX–SAED, ETAAS, ICP–OES, UV–vis reflectance spectroscopy and SAXS will be presented. Lustre films were shown to be formed by copper and silver clusters of nanometric dimension. The color and the properties of the lustre films depend on the elemental composition of the impasto applied to the ceramic surface as well as on other factors like the metallic nanocluster dimension, the firing conditions, the underlying glaze composition and the procedure. Furthermore, by means of XRD was possible to discover markers, useful in the attribution of works of art to different civilizations.

Read the short biographies of all speakers of the FCT-NOVA lecture series at http://xtal.dq.fct.unl.pt/iycr2014/Speakers.html