January 2008 Newsletter.

Chair's Message

The latter half of 2007 was a productive one for the IG Committee: we held two very-well attended meetings, and have been busy planning our programs for the Spring Meeting in April AND two meetings on minerals in May. November 2007 saw back-to-back meetings of the Pharmaceutical Special Interest Group and the Autumn Industrial Group; we were fortunate not only to have the use AstraZeneca's conference facilities, but also to receive financial sponsorship from them.

In April we will have several sessions at the Spring Meeting, then meetings on minerals in May, and finally we hope to have a joint Autumn meeting with the Young Crystallographers. Details of all these meetings are on the website. Some of these events still have spaces free for speakers, and I hope some of you will consider contributing talks.

I would like to invite your input into the planning of future meetings: suggestions on topics, speakers, meeting format and venue would all be welcome. I'd also like to point out that you don't need to be on the Committee to get involved with organising……… any volunteers?

Finally, I'd just like to thank Roy Copley, who is standing down from the IG Committee at the end of his term of office, in April. Roy has been a major contributor to the success of the IG meetings, and represented us on the program committee of the Spring Meeting, with great effect.

Happy New Year to you all.

Anne Kavanagh - IG Chair.

Editorial

Welcome to this edition of the BCA Industrial Group's Newsletter. It contains details of the Industrial Group's XRD sessions at this years BCA Spring Meeting which will be held at the University of York. You will also find reports for the Pharmaceutical Special Interest Group Meeting and the Industrial Group Autumn Meeting which were both held at AstraZeneca, Macclesfield in November. I would like to remind you that unedited versions of all the reports covered in this Newsletter can be found on the group's web site.

The IG Committee have been discussing the Group's constitution. Rather than making changes for changes sake the focus has been to improve the constitution so that it more closely reflects what actually happens in the running of the Group. The proposed changes are shown on page 10 and will be voted on at the Group AGM which will be held during the BCA Spring Meeting (see below for details)

Newsletter and Web Site Content

We continually try to improve the content of both the Newsletter and web pages and would like to ask you to submit articles etc. Do you use web sites for your day to day work in XRD and XRF? If yes, then which sites do you visit, let us know and send us a paragraph about what you use the site for and why you like it.

That's it for now. Enjoy your Newsletter.

Mark Farnworth - Pilkington Group Limited, Editor

Proposed Changes to BCA IG Constitution

These changes will be proposed at the AGM on 9th April 2008 at the York Spring Meeting.

Additions are underlined; deletions are struck through; comments are in italics.

10 OFFICERS. The Officers of the Group shall be a Chairman, a Vice-Chairman, and an Honorary Secretary (who shall also act as Honorary Treasurer) and an Honorary Assistant Secretary/Treasurer. Only members of the Group shall be eligible to be officers of the Group.

When changes to the Group Officers occur, problems and delays are experienced in issuing cheques, this is especially the case if two officers retire at the same AGM. The problem is exacerbated by the increased security measures now involved in changing bank signatories. The Honorary Secretary/Treasurer has the highest workload of all the Group Officers. The committee propose a new office of Honorary Assistant Secretary/Treasurer to overcome both these problems. It will increase to FOUR the number of cheque signatories (any two from four) and relieve some of the Honorary Secretary/Treasurer's workload. The committee will oversee the division of duties between the Honorary Secretary/Treasurer and Honorary Assistant Secretary/Treasurer to best suit the needs of the Group and the individuals. The new assistant position is seen as a training role for future office as Honorary Secretary/Treasurer.

12 PERIOD OF OFFICE FOR OFFICERS AND COMMITTEE. Each Officer and Ordinary Member of the Committee shall retire after a maximum of three years service. No officer or Ordinary Member of the Committee shall be eligible for re-election to the same office until one year has elapsed since his or her retirement. In this section a year's service is deemed to be the period between successive AGM's.

There is a need to make clear that the period of office of committee members is not governed by calendar years, but the period between successive AGM's. The proposed change gives clarification of this issue.

13 CO-OPTION TO THE COMMITTEE. The Committee shall have power to co-opt to fill casual vacancies in compliance with Rule 11. In addition it may co-opt such other members not exceeding two three in number as may be required from time to time, without the restrictions contained in Rules 11 and 12.

Experience has shown that only permitting two coopted members can lead to inadequate flexibility, so it is proposed to increase to three the number permitted.

16 DELEGATION.
(a) The Committee may delegate any of their powers or functions to a subcommittee consisting of two or more Committee members, one as chair, and a small number of nominated experts. The terms of reference of any such delegated subcommittee must be recorded in the minutes.
(b) No expenditure may be incurred on behalf of the Industrial Group except in accordance with a budget previously agreed by the Committee.
(c) The Committee may revoke or alter a delegation.
(d) All acts and proceedings of any subcommittees must be reported to the Committee.

It has become clear with the experience gained in bringing XRF into the Group that some of the work of the Industrial Group Committee is best handled by smaller sub-committees. A new addition to the constitution on delegation sets forth what we have found to work well for XRF and opens up the possibility of the delegation of other tasks in the future. Rules 16-20 would become 17 - 21.