Besides the dramatic world situation, this April NewsLetter is issued just between the start of Spring and the Easter weekend.

You may receive this on April 1st, but be assured that there is no ‘April Fool’ or ‘Poisson d’avril’ joke in the newsletter or is there?

It should be an optimistic period of life. Life wake up after a rather cold winter. Back up to life for trees, flowers, wildlife, ... 2003 is the year of the Chemistry in Germany, and we suggested 2003 as the year of EChemTest ! Hopefully, the task force we could setup, will allow us to consider this year as the official "launch" year for the European Chemistry Test.

There are several important pieces of information this month related to different area of interest of ECTN and the ECTN Association, as well as two activity reports.

ECTN Association and ECTN Project

by Anthony Smith

ECTN Association

The ECTN Association Administrative Council held a meeting on February 8th 2003 at CPE Lyon, France. The Administrative Council discussed the future of the EChemTest and the Association’s role in this activity. It was agreed to work together with QuestionMark to develop the EChemTest and to move towards certification. This is mentioned in the EChemTest section of this newsletter and will be discussed further at the plenary meeting in April.

The ECTN Association will apply to be an associate member of SEFI (www.sefi.be).

Please note that the ECTN Association general Assembly will be held during the Prague plenary meeting. Would all Association members please try to attend this meeting. If no representative of your institution can attend, please think about asking another member to be a proxy for you. It is important that as many members as possible are present or represented by proxy at the meeting. A form for this has been sent to all Association members. An agenda will be circulated to members in the near future.

A publicity and information leaflet for the Association is being prepared.

ECTN Project

Firstly, as stated elsewhere in this newsletter, if you have not yet registered for the Prague plenary meeting, it may not be too late, although we cannot guarantee to meet your accommodation requirements. Please register immediately, and in any case before April 5th. The meeting promises to be of great interest and importance. This is the third year of a three-year project and we must produce final reports for the majority of our working groups. The plenary meeting is your chance to participate in discussions concerning the activities and preliminary reports of each working group, and to provide input for future ECTN activities.

Please note that Ettore Deodato, the person responsible for Thematic Network projects at the European Commission will make a presentation at the ECTN Plenary Meeting in Prague giving the Commission’s views on TN projects. Other invited plenary speakers will be Jean-Claude Falmagne (University of California at Irvine) on Knowledge-Space theory and its application to teaching and assessment, Roland Nyns (QuestionMark, to be confirmed), J. Berninger (CambridgeSoft) on Electronic Labjournals - a new type of productivity tool for laboratory research, and G. Desmarquets (ACD/Labs) on Teaching chemistry: from didactic tools for naming Phys Chem properties and spectroscopy to mobile chemistry (Chemistry in your Palm or your Pocket).

At the Management Committee meeting held in Lyon on 8th February 2003, it was agreed that some ECTN funds would be used to update and improve the ECTN web site. A Powerpoint presentation of the ECTN would be made available on the web site so that any partner can make use of this for presenting the ECTN. The ECTN logo will also be available as a good vector graphics image.

The ECTN is participating in two Leonardo da Vinci projects. One is the FACE project, coordinated by Europa Fachhochschule Fresenius, Idstein, DE. One of the aims of this project is to produce a database of chemistry programmes that include an industrial placement. It was agreed that Ray Wallace, Nottingham Trent University, UK would be the ECTN representative for this project. Further details of the project can be found on the project web site at www.face.net.tc , and a form for submitting details of chemistry programmes for the data base can be found here (Explanation .doc 28Kb ; .pdf 29Kb // Project Data Report .doc 52Kb ; .pdf 20Kb).
ALL MEMBERS OF ECTN ARE ENCOURAGED TO SEND INFORMATION TO BUILD UP THIS DATABASE.

The second Leonardo da Vinci project is CHLASTS, coordinated by the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, PL. This is a project about safety in the chemistry laboratory. It was agreed that Donny Blue, Strathclyde University, UK would be the ECTN representative for this project.

Please contact Tony Smith (smith@cpe.fr) if you would like any further information about these projects.

The full application for a new ECTN project ECTN3: The New Generation of Chemists has been submitted. 23 pre-proposals from 52 applications had been invited to submit a full proposal. It is expected that about 11 projects will be funded. The result should be known in July.

The next meeting of the ECTN Management Committee will be held on 20th September 2003, in Vienna, AT.

EChemTest

by Pascal Mimero

The ECTN Association invited Roland Nyns (QuestionMark Belgium), our software provider, to the February meeting in Lyon. He presented the new features of the last release 3.3 of QuestionMark Perception, the Internet oriented survey and testing platform and its future development, to the Administrative Council members and the EChemTest group leaders. We already collaborate in the past with the old version QuestionMark Author for Windows, and we agreed during the Administrative Council session to strengthen the partnership with QuestionMark. A first action, still under progress, was launched to check the possible integration of a Chemical Formula Editor within the Perception question-type editor. This feature, allows candidates to be evaluated, for example, on the understanding of IUPAC nomenclature rules understanding by drawing the correct structure, or drawing the product of a chemical reaction instead of clicking on suggested molecules.

A global survey by the EChemTest group leaders showed the status of the work. All together the certification database, will present a full set of more of 3000 selected and approved questions in English, covering General Chemistry 1 & 2, Analytical Chemistry 3, Organic Chemistry 3 and Physical Chemistry 3. All these databases are now available in the Internet/Perception format, a final double-checking and polishing is under progress. The Inorganic Chemistry 3 already starts its integration into Perception.

In addition to the English version, the Physical Chemistry 3 database will be available in Italian and the Organic Chemistry 3 database in German.
Our Multimedia support team and all the IT experts are involved and working hard to make this database technically available in a close future.

Thanks to all of them.

Group Leaders / IT Experts

Analytical Chemistry 3 Miltiades Karayannis - mkaragia@cc.uoi.gr (Ioannina, GR) / Constantinou Efstathiou - cefstath@chem.uoa.gr (Athens, GR)

General Chemistry 1 & 2 Kristiina Wähälä - kristiina.wahala@helsinki.fi (Helsinki, FI) / Jorma Koskimies - jorma.koskimies@helsinki.fi (Helsinki, FI)

Inorganic Chemistry 3 David Cardin - d.j.cardin@reading.ac.uk (Reading, UK)

Organic Chemistry 3 Tapio Hase - tapio.hase@helsinki.fi (Helsinki, FI) / Janna Velder - janna.velder@uni-koeln.de (Cologne, DE)

Physical Chemistry 3 Rodriguez Renuncio - renuncio@quim.ucm.es (Madrid, ES) / Valentina Piermarini - tina@impact.dyn.unipg.it (Perugia, IT)

Multimedia Support Johannes Krebs - jfroehli@pop.tuwien.ac.at (Vienna, AT) / Heinz Krebs - heinz@chemit.at (Vienna, AT)

Conferences Announcement

Second European School on Computational Chemistry, Reaction and Molecular Dynamics

Andrei Tchougreeff, Kharpov Institute, Moscow - Russia (received February 5, 2003)

From: Andrei L. Tchougreeff <wpcc@qcc.ru>
Subject: European Comp Chem List information

Dear Dr. MIMERO
Dear collegues,
Prof. M. Gonzalez of Barcelona asked me to circulate the following through the EuroCCL
===========================================
SECOND EUROPEAN SCHOOL ON COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY, REACTION AND MOLECULAR DYNAMICS
23-28 June 2003, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Barcelona, Spain
Read the on-line annoucement <here> (.html format)

Gordon Research Conference on "Visualization in Science and Education"

Tony Rest, Soton University - UK (received February 12, 2003)

For the forthcoming event : Gordon Research Conference on "Visualization in Science and Education", see http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ecchemed/grc/

Check the program, the organisational details and the Aims and Objectives (The purpose of the Gordon Conference ...) at : http://www.grc.org/programs/2003/visualiz.htm

10th Blue Danube Symposium on Heterocylic Chemistry

Johannes Froehlich, TU Wien, AT (received March 3, 2003)

Our colleague and friend, Johannes Froehlich, is a member of the organizing committee of the 10th BDSHC which will be held from September 3-6, 2003, at the Vienna University of Technology.

Please find more details and information about the background of the BDSHC in the attached PDF (32 Kb) and on the dedicated website at www.bdshc.org - find details about congress venue, registration fee, deadlines, scientific program, submission of papers, congress calendar, site maps, sponsors, and socials programa, ...
"... We did our best to draw up an excellent scientific program. So it is a pleasure to announce that following distinguished scientists, among them two lady professors, have accepted to deliver Blue Danube Plenary Lectures:

Mercedes Alvarez (Barcelona, Spain)

Thorsten Bach (Munich, Germany)

Martine Bonin (Paris, France)

Steve Hanessian (Montreal, Canada)

Ray C. F. Jones (Loughborough, England)

Barry M. Trost (Stanford, USA)

On the occasion of the 10th Blue Danube Symposium on Heterocyclic Chemistry an additional "Blue Danube Jubilee Plenary Lecture" has been included into the scientific program, which will be delivered by the Chemistry Nobel Prize Laureate 2001, Barry K. Sharpless.
Some general remarks for those who plan to attend the symposium:
*) Registration is entirely accomplished via web (e-registration).
*) Submission of abstracts for short presentations and posters is done via upload of documents (e-submission).
*) Abstracts of accepted papers will be presented on the web site.
*) Full manuscripts of selected contributions out of all presented papers will be published in a special issue"Highlights in Heterocyclic Chemistry" of Chemical Monthly . Papers can be submitted until October 6, 2003.
*) Companies interested in technical, book and software exhibitions at the conference site are kindly asked torequest information by e-mail to peter.stanetty@tuwien.ac.at .
..."

News flash

ECTN Association and ECTN Project

EChemTest

Working Group Reports

Remediation Report

Tuning in Chemistry ...

ECTN Dissemination

Eurobachelor at the Finnish Chemical Society

Conferences Announcement

Second European School on Computational Chemistry, Reaction and Molecular Dynamics

Gordon Research Conference on "Visualization in Science and Education"

10th Blue Danube Symposium on Heterocylic Chemistry

In brief ...

Study in Sweden

What's coming next ?