Dear Colleagues,
it is a particular pleasure to be able to offer you this issue 
of Acta Chimica Slovenica. Having been entrusted the role of the
guest editor, and having coordinated the conference, based on
which a good part of papers in this issue have been submitted, 
we feel privileged and grateful to all who contributed their work.
The selection and reviewing process was no easy task, and much 
of the burden was carried on the shoulders of reviewers. We thank
all who helped.
In the profusion of meetings, conferences and symposia, 
the 12th International Symposium on Separation Sciences in Lipica,
Slovenia, September 27–29, 2006, was an undisputed success. 
The response from participants from predominantly – although not
exclusively – Central Europe was extraordinary. Of the 192 
registered participants, 59 came from Slovenia, 21 from Austria,
further 21 from Czech Republic, 16 from Poland and the rest from
all over the globe – from Argentina to Ireland. This was a pleasant
surprise and demonstrates a real need for such meetings.
By all means, separation techniques are a mature line of analytical
research and its steady progress is secured due to the demands 
of numerous industrial, research, environmental and clinical 
analytical laboratories. Separation techniques encompass not only
chromatographic and other migration-based analytical techniques,
but also sample preparation based on separation. We are pleased 
to present a review of this field in the issue.
The advances of separation techniques are based on constant 
development of both stationary phases and instrumentation. 
As evident from another paper, advanced knowledge is needed to
understand the retention mechanisms, based on which optimisation
of the separation can be attempted. Which ultimately leads to better
quality work: more efficient separations, 'greener' analysis, lower
detection limits and lower costs. This is undoubtedly an area where
more work is needed.
The daunting numbers of analytical data generated nowadays often
need to be complemented by chemometric methods, either in the
preparation of experiments or in data evaluation – both steps are
well demonstrated in several papers. The educational aspects are 
also covered in one of the contributions. Although rarely featured in
Guest editor
Matija Strlič
Symposium chairperson
Lucija Zupančič-Kralj
Editorial
ActaChimicaSlovenica
this journal, we feel that the promotion of good teaching practices
through such papers is vital for a better recognition and 
advancement of any scientific field. 
Apart from 19 papers based on Symposium presentations, further
15 'regular' papers are included, which makes it one of the most
comprehensive issues of this journal.
Matija Strli~, 
Guest editor
Lucija Zupan~i~-Kralj,
Symposium chairperson