PACIFIC POLYMER FEDERATION NEWSLETTER No. 11 December, 2001 Editor: Miriam F. Beristain

Takeshi Ogawa (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (Mexico), President Supawan Tantayanon (Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, Thailand) Vice President, Guillermina Burillo (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico) Secretary/ Treasurer

Members of the Council:

Ezio Rizzardo (Australia), Wayne D. Cook (Australia), Francoise Winnik (Canada), Franco Rabagliati (Chile), Fosong Wang (China), Louis M.L. Leung (Hong Kong), M. Sugandi-Ratulangi (Indonesia), Kazuyuki Horie (Japan), Tisato Kajiyama (Japan), Sung Chul Kim (Korea), Chee-Cheong Ho (Malaysia), Ramiro Guerrero (Mexico), David Officer (New Zealand), Hardy Chan (Singapore), Yu-Der Lee (Taiwan), James E. McGrath (USA), William H. Daly (USA), Tim Lodge (USA), Dang Van Luyen (Vietnam)

President's Message: Takeshi Ogawa

It is a great pleasure to welcome all the participants to the PPC-7 at Oaxaca, Mexico. For the first time, the Pacific Polymer Conference is being celebrated in Latin America, which has a very different culture from North America and Asia. We have chosen Oaxaca as the conference site because the organizers can provide the participants with a taste of its unique mixture of pre-Columbian civilization, Spanish colonial culture and typical provincial Mexican life. We chose a country style hotel as the venue for a change as all the last Pacific Polymer Conferences have been held in huge modern skyscraper hotels.

The polymer community in Mexico has been slowly but steadily developing over the last decades, and is presenting 1I 5 papers from every institution in Mexico. This figure is below the numbers presented by host countries at the last Pacific Polymer Conferences held in countries with huge numbers of polymer scientists, such as Japan, USA, Korea and China, however, we believe that we have done our best to organize this important polymer congress.

The atrocity of September 11 has significantly changed the situation of this event. Cancellations have been received due to the fear of possible terrorism and anthrax, with people hesitating to go to Mexico through the USA even if their journey involves only a stay of a few hours at a US airport for a connection. Very unfortunately, many participants have had to give up their participation due to the recently imposed visa restrictions, and we feel very sorry for them. Fortunately, we have nearly about 400 papers being presented and these cancellations have not damaged the conference significantly.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Society of Polymer Science, Japan, the American Chemical Society, the Korean Polymer Society, the Chinese Polymer Society, for their efforts in trying to send us many participants, and for recommending invited speakers from their societies. We are very grateful also to those invited speakers who accepted our invitation without any financial assistance. Without them it would not be possible to achieve the high academic standard of this Pacific Polymer Conference.

I should mention also our sincere gratitude to the Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. (UNAM) for the sole economic assistance to this event, and the Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares of UNAM for providing us with the human resources necessary for the preparation of this event.

The organizers are very grateful to all the participants attending this meeting in spite of the turmoil since September 11. We want you to enjoy the meeting and your stay in Oaxaca.

Finally, my wish is that the relationships between the polymer societies of Latin America and the rest of the Pacific Basin societies become strengthened in future.

Sincerely yours,

Takeshi Ogawa, President. of PPF.

Cancellations

The organizers of the previous Pacific Polymer Conferences probably did not have so many problems caused by cancellations at a time so close to the meeting as in this PPC-7. The majority of cancellations were received after the technical program had been composed and after the Abstract Book had been edited and sent to the printer. The organizers had to change the program each time new cancellations arrived, and notices of cancellations continued until several days before the conference was going to begin. Therefore, the Abstract Book became complete unusual with so many cancellations stamps.

The participants from the countries, whose citizens are required to have Mexican visa, had a terrible time, and many of them had to cancel their participation, due to visa problems. Usually, the Mexican government issues visitors a visa on the basis of a letter of acceptance of a paper or a letter of invitation from the organizer. Since the atrocity of September I 1, this simple system has been changed. Under the new system, the organizers have to submit visa petitions for the participants from certain countries here in Mexico through the Instituto Nacional de Inmigracion, who examine them and then advise the corresponding Mexican Embassy to authorize visa emission. You can imagine how long this process takes. Then if the participants do not have a US visa, they cannot come to Mexico through US airport. The only flight, which does not stop over at a US airport, is the direct flight

JAL 012 from Narita (Japan) to Mexico City, which stops over at Vancouver for refueling, with the passengers having to remain in the transit area of the airport. Now, the Canadian authorities have decided to impose a Canadian Transit visa for citizens of some countries. They were told that it would take 2 weeks to obtain the transit visa.

Number of Participants: 386, (324)

Cancellations Included cancellations of foreign nationals with problem of visa to Mexico. Participation that depended on visas to Mexico and USA, and Canadian Transit visa.

360 papers were scheduled on November 20, 2001.

Many participants from South Asia and China did not know about this change, nor did we the organizers, and when they started their visa applications it was already too late. The organizers of PPF-7 tried their best to help them so that they could visit Mexico. We received cancellations with sad letters from some of them who had given up due to this difficulty in obtaining the visa. At the time of writing this, various participants are still anxiously awaiting their visas. We sincerely hope that they will obtain their visas in time, but if not, we express our thanks for their intention of participation, and hope they can visit our beautiful country in the near future.

The numbers of the cancellations after September 11 were over 60. The majority of them were received by the organizers during October and November. The principal reason given for the cancellations was the fear of terrorism in the USA, They were probably afraid of Bin Laden crashing Mexicana airplane on the Monte Alban ruins in Oaxaca. It is interesting to note the differences in the cancellations among the different nations.

Future Meetings in the Pacific Region

1 American Chemical Society. Orlando, Florida, USA. April 7 - 11. 2002.

2. IUPAC World Polymer Congress 2002. 39th International Symposium on Macromolecules, July 7-12,2002 Beijing, China.

3. American Chemical Society, Boston, MA. USA August 18-22. 2002

4. XXX Congreso Latiniamericano de Quimica.

Sociedad Quimica de Mexico, September 22-26, 2002. Cancun, QR, Mexico.

5. 2nd Korea-Mexico Bilateral Polymer Forum.

UNAM, Mexico City, November 16-20, 2002.

Sociedad Polimerica de Mexico.

6. Simposio Latinoamericano de Polimeros. (SLAP 2002) Noviembre 10-15, 2002, Acapulco, Mexico. Sociedad Polimerica de Mexico.

7. IUPAC Polymer Conference on the Mission and Challenges of Polymer Science and Technology. (IUPAC-PC2002) December 2-5, 2002. The Society of Polymer Science, Japan.

Sociedad Polimerica de Mexico. Mexican Polymer Society.

Established in 1985, President (2000 - 2001) Guillermina Burillo,

Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.