Several years ago ISAC initiated the action to help our collegues from underprivileged countries. Among many activities, the most valuable was a contribution provided by Wiley-Liss, who offered up 100 complimentary subscriptions of CYTOMETRY to the researchers which could not afford it and had no chance to have CYTOMETRY in their libraries. Our collegues, predominantly from Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and the countries which obtained freedom after fall of the former Soviet Union, were the main beneficiaries. We all are very thankful to Wiley-Liss, and to Susan King in particular, for this geneorous support. Another activity worth of mentioning was a participation of ISAC members (Jim Watson, Gunter Vallet, Paul Robinson, Maria Pallavicini, Carl and Sigi Stewart, Jola Kunicka and the author of this note) in a workshop organized by Jurek Kawiak in Warsaw, just after our Congress in Rimini. There were over 100 attendees from several countries on this workshop. This was followed by a workshop in Cracow. Throughout recent years Paul Robinson was in particular very active, maintaining interaction with many collegues from these countries and helping them in a variety of tasks. Another person who is active in organizing the help is Gunter Vallet. Paul Robinson and I will be teaching in the next workshops, in Warsaw and then in Cracow (June 7-12). Since the organizers cannot cover the travel expenses, we travel on our own, trying to combine the trip with other Meetings (Iberian Cytometry). By the way, I apeal to potential speakers who can afford to come to Warsaw and want to teach at the workshop to contact Jurek Kawiak (his address is in ISAC Directory). I have just received a sad latter from Rotislav Stoika, Professor at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Division of Regulatory Cell Systems, AV Palladin Institute of Biochemistry, Drahomanov Street 14/16, 290005 Lviv, Ukraine , e-mail: "stoika@biochem.lviv.ua"). He asks for help in receiving any journals in field of cell and molecular biology, cytometry etc. They have no funds whatsoever for the subscriptions. I contacted Wiley-Liss (via Jean Parker, who always was so helpful in this endeaver) asking for complientary subscription of CYTOMETRY. But I also appeal to everyone on the Purdue Cytometry Board to help them. Just this morning when talking by phone with Paul Robinson, he came with a great idea, namely to open a web page which will specifically address this issue. The colegues from underprivileged who need a help could specify it on this page. We believe that commercial Companies will be helpful: the supporting Companies will be acknowledged on this page. Details will given by Paul. I appeal for new ideas regarding as how we could be helpful for our less lucky collegues. Living long time in communist Poland I know the first-hand how difficult it is not being able to do research because of limitations such as lack of the essential journals, reagents, etc. We can discuss this issue further on this board. Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz
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