Our cover designer, Betsy True, has just given us the happy news that she has won a 1997 Citation of Excellence Award in the Magazine Covers division of the Madison Advertising Federation's annual contest. Betsy works with us each month to take a basic cover idea and turn it into a powerful and engaging graphic for the cover. Working with Betsy always gives us pleasant surprises. To be eligible for this year's Addys Award, an entry needed to have been published in 1996. Betsy chose the January 1997 cover about the chemistry of sunscreens because she felt it best illustrated a variety of techniques used in cover design (and met the publishing deadline). Both the award-winning cover and her award citation are shown at the right. Betsy works in the Department of Medical Illustration in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Medical School, on the other side of campus if you are actually going there but just a few mouse clicks away if you are picking up files electronically.

What's Online?

If you have not visited our World Wide Web site, be sure to do so soon. Revamping and enlarging it has been a major Winter project, a project that took more than normal working hours to complete. As this is being written, the site is up to dateÑincluding the April issue of the print Journal, which appeared on March 19. The site now has its first video, a demonstration of the Seebeck effect (a still is shown below). In the video you can see an electric motor that is powered by a thermoelectric module. When the thermoelectric device is subjected to a temperature gradient (one side is exposed to air, the other side to an ice bath), current is supplied to the motor and it spins a blade.

Reversing the direction of the temperature gradient (by flipping the module over) reverses the polarity of the voltage produced, turning the motor in the opposite direction. This video is just the first of many that will be on the site, located at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/. The demo of the Seebeck effect is at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/1996/Oct/art940.html.

JCE Collections

It is flattering to know that many of you keep your issues of the Journal-sometimes for as long as 50 years! Some people have told us fondly about their collection, one passed on to them many years ago by a colleague who was retiring.

People who have such a collection of Journals sometimes need to know its value for tax purposes. If you contact us, we have information that can help you with this. Sometimes a person with a large collection wants to find someone interested in acquiring it; sometimes people want to know how to acquire a whole collection or just a few missing issues. If you fit any of these categories, let us know. We can try to match those who have issues with those who need them. We can't make promises except that we will try to help you.

New Publications/Software List Ready

Another big winter project has been the production of our JCE Publications/Software booklet. This replaces our previous publication ("Available Issues") of only JCE Software offerings. The new 52-page catalog includes the print Journal as well as all our software, CD-ROMs, videodiscs, videotapes, books, offprints, handbooks, etc. Copies have just come off the pressin time to be at the NSTA Meeting and the ACS Spring Meeting in San Francisco. If you would like a copy and didn't get one at either meeting, let us know and we will send you one.

Subscriptions Made Easy

You may recall that we announced a new subscription agent a few months ago, and you may have recently received your subscription renewal notice, which probably looked a bit different from previous ones. PIC, the organization that handles Journal subscriptions as well as orders for books and reprints, has come up to speed very quickly and their customer service reps have learned to handle most of the wide variety of questions that subscribers pose. To make communication easier, they have added email access (jchemed@aol.com) in addition to postal, toll-free telephone, and fax. Our masthead carries all of this information every month, should you need to find it. In addition, there is a subscription form on JCE Online, http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Subscribe.html.