Glossary of Three Letter Acronyms seen in 'Crystallography News'

• ACA American Crystallographic Association
• AEA Atomic Energy Authority
• AERE Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell (now AEA)
• AGM Annual General Meeting
• APS American Physical Society
• BCA British Crystallographic Association, in other contexts may be the British Cement Association
• BSG Biological Structues Group of the BCA
• CCD Charge Coupled Detector
• CCDC Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre
• CCG Chemical Crystallography Group of the BCA
• CCLRC Council of the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils
• CD Compact Disc? as in CD-ROM
• CIF Crystallographic Information File
• CLRC Central Laboratory of the Research Councils
• CP/MAS Cross Polarization Magic Angle Spinning
• CRG Collaborative Research Group, something funded by EPSRC
• CSD Cambridge Structural Database marketed by CCDC
• CUP Cambridge University Press
• DESY Deutsches Elektron SYnchrotron, Hamburg, Germany
• DL Daresbury laboratory
• DOS disk operating system, that on which 'Windows' sits on a PC
• DSC Differential Scanning Calorimetry
• DTA
• EBS Electron Back Scattered Diffraction
• ECA European Crystallographic Association
• ECC English China Clays
• ED electron diffraction
• EMBL European Molecular Biology Laboratory, main site in Heidelberg, outstation at DESY
• EPSRC Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
• EDX, EDXA electron-dispersive X-ray Analysis
• ESF European Science Foundation
• EXAFS Extended X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure
• FRS Fellow of the Royal Society
• FT Fourier Transform
• FWHM Full width at Half Maximum
• GMR Giant magnetic resonance may also be referred to as
  CMR Colossal magnetic resonance
• HEFCE Higher Education Funding Council for England
• HMX (1,3,5, 7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetra-aza-cyclo-octane)
• HRPD High Resolution Powder Diffractometer, an ISIS instrument
• HSE UK Health and Safety Executive
• HTK
• HTML Hyper Text Markup Language (the format used on the WWW)
• ICDD International Centre for Diffraction Data
• ICI Imperial Chemical Industries
• IG Industrial Group of the BCA
• ILL Institut Laue Langevin, Grenoble
• INEL a company that makes X-ray detectors and XRD instruments
• IR infra red
• IOP Institute of Physics
• ISBN International standard book number
• ISO International Standards organisation
• ISP Internet Service Provider
• IUCr International Union of crystallography
• IUPAC International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
• JAC Journal of Applied Crystallography
• JREI Joint Research Equipment Initiative
• JSR Journal of Synchrotron Radiation
• KBE Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire
• LAD Liquids and Amorphous Diffractometer at ISIS
• MAD Multiple Amorphous Displacement
• MCD magnetic circular dichroism
• MRC medical research council
• MRD (part of tradename in IG section Philips Xpert MRD
• MTDSC Modulated Temperature Differential Scanning Calorimetry
• NCUACS National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Science
• NDB Nucleic Acid Database (Rutgers)
• NHM The Natural History Museum, London
• NIST United States National Institute for standards
• NMR Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
• NSF National Science Foundation of the United States
• ODF Orientation Distribution Function
• OUP Oxford University Press
• PC personal computer, usually running the Microsoft Windows System
• PCG Physical Crystallography Group of the BCA
• PDB Protein Data Bank - see also RCSB
• PDF either Powder Diffraction File (ICDD)
  or Page Description Format (Adobe)
• PR Public Relations
• PSD Position Sensetive Detector
• RAL Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
• R&D Research and Development
• RCSB Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics - a US organisation which now maintains the PDB
• RDX (1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triaza-cyclohexane)
• RI Royal Instituion (of London)
• RISC reduced instruction set
• RSC Royal Society of Chemistry
• SAXS Small Angle X-ray scattering
• SECC Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow
• SEM scanning electron microscope
• SERC Science and Engineering Research Council (now epsrc)
• SRC Science research Council, former name of SERC
• STM scanning tunneling microscope
• SUC Scientific Unions Committee of The Royal Society
• TATP (tri-acetone-tri-peroxide)
• TDS thermal diffuse scattering ? not sure about this one
• TEM transmission electron microscope
• TGA An uncompressed graphics image format. Copes with many bytes per pixel, and multiple colour planes well.
• URL universal resource locator (the adress of a file on the WWW)
• UV ultra violet
• WAXS Wide Angle X-ray scattering
• WWW world wide web
• XAFS X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure
• XANES X-Ray Absorption Near Edge Structure
• XD computer software for charge density studies
• XRD X-ray diffraction (Note the spelling X-ray not xray or x-ray)
• XRF X-ray fluorescence
• XRPD X-ray powder diffraction

Click here to return to BCA homepage