Search results

Chemical Abstracts Service has recently introduced a new data base, CA SEARCH, which is supposed to replace CA CONDENSATES and CASIA, and which is, in effect, a combination of the two. Two major U.S. search services, Lockheed Retrieval Service (LRS) and System Development Corporation (SDC), offer access to CA SEARCH. Bibliographic Retrieval Service (BRS) will also soon load CA SEARCH, but is presently offering CA CONDENSATES.

The year 1977 was the first in the tenth collective period (1977‐1981) for Chemical Abstracts. Thus during that year the important and very voluminous Tenth Collective Index began to appear on library shelves, but as this review is being written in 1978 there are still volumes of the formula and chemical substance indexes that have to be added. Librarians will have recently received two Index Guides: one as part of the Ninth Collective Index, and the other as the first Index Guide for the tenth collective period ‐ to be supplemented annually, and finally superseded by the Index Guide which appears as part of the Tenth Collective Index.

The chemistry librarian has been better served by professional literature than any other subject specialist in the library, except perhaps the medical librarian. A new series of papers on chemical substance searching in Online Review continues this tradition. If the first installment of this series is an indication of what is to come, chemistry librarians and online searchers can look forward to a lot of valuable (and readable) literature on this most important topic. The useful column by Buntrock has, I am sure, already made valuable contributions to more efficient and effective online searching in chemistry.

Principles of online bibliographic information retrieval, and some practical work with major search systems, was offered as a component of a course dealing with information resources for university students in science and engineering at the University of California. As part of this program each student performed a search on a topic of his own choice and presented an oral report to the class on that search. Student reactions and attitudes are discussed, and some of the problems which emerged are described. The relevance to student needs of the online component of the course is also presented.

Social capital is a complex and multidimensional construct, which has been used widely in the social sciences, and which focuses attention on non‐monetary resources and relationships. The aim of this analysis study was to test the feasibility of deriving social capital variables from an epidemiological dataset, to explore associations between social capital and psychosis and to investigate the utility of the concept for understanding and treating mental illness. We set out to derive social capital variables from an existing epidemiological study, and tested their associations with first episode psychosis. Associations were found between psychosis and one form of social capital, active engagement in social activities. We conclude that social capital is a promising construct that can be utilised in analysing social dimensions of mental illness. Secondary analysis is possible, but longitudinal surveys with comprehensive measures of social capital and mental health are needed.

The science of chemistry is almost unique among the sciences in being blessed with a single, thoroughly comprehensive key to the literature. That key, of course, is Chemical Abstracts. Hence, when there is a change in Chemical Abstracts format or indexing policy, or when Chemical Abstracts Service introduces a new product, science librarians who serve any part of the chemical community are professionally affected by these changes. This was evident when, in 1972, at the beginning of the ninth collective period for Chemical Abstracts, a number of new features were introduced. Perhaps the most obvious was the break‐up of the subject index into two parts — the general subject index and the chemical substance index. The over‐hauling of Chemical Abstracts nomenclature (particularly for organic compounds) at that same time was a more subtle, but probably also a more disorienting break with the past. The nomenclature changes were needed, however, and have been discussed and defended in an article by Donaldson and others.

A common charge against qualitative researchers in general and interactionist researchers in particular is that they produce descriptive, a-theoretical accounts of group life. We consider the problem of “analytic interruptus” in contemporary symbolic interactionism – that is, a failure to move beyond analyses of individual cases – and offer a potential to a solution via the pursuit of a generic social process (GSP) research agenda. A GSP approach involves developing, assessing, and revising concepts from the close scrutiny of empirical instances across diverse contexts. By considering criticisms of GSPs from feminist and postmodernist scholars, a more informed, qualified, and better-situated approach to the framework becomes possible. We argue that GSPs remain a quintessential analytical tool to explore subcultural realities and build formal theories of the social world.

Six sigma is a systematic data driven approach to reduce the defect and improve the quality in any type of business. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from the application of six sigma in a food service “small to medium sized enterprise” (SME) in a lean environment to reduce the waste in this field.

A simplified version of six sigma is adopted through the application of appropriate statistical tools in order to focus on customer's requirements to identify the defect, the cause of the defect and improve the delivery process by implementing the optimum solution.

The result suggests that modification in layout utilization reduced the number of causes of defect by 40 percent resulting in jumping from 1.44 sigma level to 2.09 Sigma level which is substantial improvement in SME.

Simplicity of six sigma is important to enabling any SME to identify the problem and minimize its cause through a systematic approach.

Integrating of supply chain objectives with any quality initiatives such as lean and six sigma has a substantial effect on achieving to the targets.

This paper represents a potential area in which six sigma methodology along side the lean management can promote supply chain management objectives for a food distribution SME.

This survey covers 1977–78 and presents a brief overview of some of the publications that have had, and will continue to have, impact on biology. Excluded are: 1) applied areas such as agriculture, medicine, and veterinary medicine; and 2) botany. The botanical reference literature has been voluminous as usual during this period and deserves an individual review which will appear in a later issue of RSR.

This column has always intended to provide in‐depth, comparative reviews of abstracting services, indexes, serial bibliographies, yearbooks, directories, almanacs and other serial tools which would normally be housed in reference departments. For the purposes of this column, reference serials are materials which must meet two rather flexible requirements: they must be useful as reference sources and they must be issued as serials or be titles which are superseded periodically by new editions.