Last revised: January 1, 2008

A cookie is an electronically transmitted file that holds small pieces of information.  The cookie collects certain information about your use of our Web site and sends it back to our Web server.  Cookies do not, standing alone, identify you as an individual; they merely recognize your browser.  No cookie on our Web site collects personal information.

There are two types of cookies: persistent and session-based.  Persistent cookies remain on your computer after you've closed your browser or turned off your computer.  Session cookies disappear from your computer when you close your browser, turn off your computer or exit from the portion of the web site that caused the cookie to be set. For example, we may use session cookies on the online seminar registration and online publication order forms.

When you visit the general portion of our Web site (that is, the portion other than our extranets), our Web server sends a persistent cookie to your computer.  We use this cookie to help us understand better how visitors use our Web site so that we can improve it.  For example, the cookies allow us to collect information about how many people are visiting our Web site, what pages they are visiting and how they navigate the site.  They allow us to recognize different browsers when visitors return to our site.  This helps us to track trends over time.

When you visit the home page of the general portion of our Web site, you also have the opportunity to choose to display the site without Flash navigation or Flash graphics throughout the duration of your visit.  If you click on the "non-Flash site" link in the lower left-hand corner of the home page, a session cookie will be set to implement your choice.  Without this session cookie, you would see the Flash-version of the Web site as soon as you left the home page, even if you had selected the non-Flash version.

You can choose to not receive a cookie by changing the settings on your browser to enable it to refuse cookies or to prompt you before you accept a cookie.  You can also delete cookies from your computer.  Refusing to accept our persistent cookie or deleting it will have no adverse effect on your experience of our Web site.  However, refusing to accept cookies or deleting the session cookie will prevent you from viewing the non-Flash version.

Our Web site does not currently use "Graphics Interchange Format" files (GIFs), web beacons or other Web tools that operate in a manner similar to cookies, although we may do so in the future.  We do not allow third party cookies to be placed on our Web site.  For more information about cookies including how to set your internet browser to reject cookies please go to www.allaboutcookies.org.