Number Of Inquiries Research Articles

Online, CD‐ROM and Web: is it the same difference?

Some obstacles to the use of electronic information are discussed. The major differences between information from online, CD‐ROM and Web sources are outlined. Data from rhus Public Library's business information services (1992–96) are analyzed with special reference to information media. A decrease in the number of enquiries after 1994 is explained by (1) the growing number of online database end‐users, (2) the increasing supply of business information on CD‐ROMs, and (3) the spreading of the Internet. Recent information from the DGXIII Report about the markets for electronic information services are included. What is needed in general among future users of electronic information is a more professional attitude and new skills. A concept of “Web Information Literacy” is defined and two implications are discussed: (1) knowledge about the Internet and its resources, and (2)innovativeness as a major component in Internet user skills.

Mental Health Inquiries: Implications for Probation Practice

The number of inquiries into mental health tragedies is increasing rapidly. Within these inquiry reports there are important findings, together with recommendations for improving practice in the delivery of services to mentally disordered offenders in the community. However, the reports are published in an ad hoc and piecemeal way with the consequence that they are often difficult to obtain. Margaret Reith, Social Work Manager with South Wales Forensic Psychiatric Service at the Caswell Clinic, Bridgend, provides an overview of recent reports with greatest relevance for probation practice and training.

A learning process of the matching identification problem

Recently, Mehrez and Steinberg (1995) described and studied the matching identification problem (MIP). The MIP is a form of knowledge acquisition problem from the field of artificial intelligence. For instance, an expert system infers knowledge from a set of examples. But how do you most quickly acquire the examples that knowledge is inferred from? The MIP is a special case of this problem. Although an optimal algorithm was not found by Mehrez and Steinberg, they described two general types of heuristics. We describe in this paper an optimal algorithm for the case of K=2, and an improved heuristic for general K, which identifies a chosen subset with 6% fewer inquiries on average when N=15, K=3. The heuristic improves relative to the Type I heuristic as N increases, K held constant. The improved heuristic is concerned with the symbols yet unclassified as being in the chosen subset or not in the chosen subset. By inquiring subsets with all unclassified symbols, we most quickly "span" the set of unclassified numbers. Closed form equations are developed for the expected number of inquiries required and the variance of the number of inquiries required for the optimal algorithm. Computational studies are provided for Mehrez and Steinberg's Type I heuristics, the K=2 optimal algorithm, and the spanning heuristic.

自殺に用いられる薬毒物と出版物による影響に関する研究

The Japan Poison Information Center (JPIC) received 205, 199 inquiries from citizens and medical personnel for 5 years from April, 1989 to March, 1995. And, the number of inquiries concerning with suicide in those was 5, 778. In July 1993, the book named the Suicidal Manual were published in Japan and since then, the inquiries concerning with suicide attempts have increased. So, I analyzed these data about implicated products and contrasted the data received before the publication of the manual to the data received after that on purpose to make clear the affection of the Suicidal Manual. In regard to the substance that was selected in suicide attempts cases, teen-ager and the twenties tend to use medicines, especially over-the-counter drugs and older people tend to use agricultural chemicals. After the book was published, the number of inquiries about some over-the-counter drugs that were shown as appropriate way for easy and painless death in the book had increased. So, it is very important to give the young people the information of drug toxicity and appropriate management of drugs to decrease the influence of the book.

Poisons centre will monitor cases

EDITOR,--Jean-Paul Yih's concern about the identification and management of injuries to the eye caused by O-chlorobenzylidine malononitrile (CS) gas1 is reflected by the number of inquiries about such injuries received by the National Poisons Information Service (London). In 1994, 354 emergency inquiries about CS gas were received from health care professionals throughout Britain. In some circumstances differential diagnosis of the chemical is easy, but a recent inquiry to the service concerned an incident in …

The Science Reading Rooms of the British Library: The User Community and Patterns of Use

When the British Library in London moves into its new building at St Pancras the reference collections for science, business and patents in the Science Reference and Information Service (SRIS), at present housed in three locations, will be united in a single reading room complex. Much information of value for planning future services and arrangement of stock has been obtained over the years by surveys of users and usage, most recently at the end of 1993. A variety of survey methods was employed. The largest category of users consists of students, whose proportion rose from 28% in 1983 to 40% in 1993, while the patent community fell proportionately from 23% to 13% over the same period. Nearly all users were based in the UK, 92% of them in London and the South-East; but 22% were carrying out work for clients, 38% of whom were based in London, 26% in the rest of the UK and 36% abroad. Patent searchers spent nearly twice as much time in the reading rooms as other readers. English language periodicals received most use (used by 44% of users), but monographs (34%) and foreign language periodicals (7%) also received substantial use. The average user consulted 24 items per visit, and the average number of enquiries per day was 561. These and other findings are being used in planning aspects such as reader admissions procedures, arrangement of open access stock and staffing rotas, to ensure that the SRIS reading rooms in the new building will fulfil the needs of users.

An eye to the future: iconography in post-apartheid South Africa

The South African Library is the oldest such institution in South Africa, having been founded in Cape Town in 1818, but its Iconographic Section was not officially established until 1986. Demand for research and copying services has increased steadily since 1990, and we are now receiving a gratifying number of enquiries from overseas picture researchers and specialists.I have been Iconographic Librarian for about four years, which is not nearly long enough for me to pose as an expert, but in our country there are so few specialists in picture research that those of us who work with pictures soon achieve specialist status, whether warranted or not.Our collection consists of some 100,000 images, mainly photographs, limited to Southern Africa and covering subjects of socio-cultural interest. It is a reference and research collection intended primarily to provide visual information, and it therefore includes copies of material held by other institutions.

Scottish office white paper: ‘Scotland's children - proposals for Child Care Policy and Law’: A critical analysis

Abstract This article summarizes the Scottish Office White Paper, Scotland's Children - Proposals for Child Care Policy and Law, and analyses the proposals in the context of a number of inquiries and reports which preceded the White Paper. The main legal changes involve protection of children and more stringent provisions before there can be emergency intervention to remove children from their homes. In addition there are provisions for the exclusion of abusers from the home, provisions for children to be assessed without their being removed from the home and measures to improve the techniques used by those interviewing children. The proposed measures try to comply with the obligations created under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. There are also a number of provisions on the Children's Hearing system in Scotland, including strengthening the role of the safeguarder to protect the interests of the child, as well as provisions aimed at truants, at young offenders (especially persist...

Discontinuation of Manufacture of Isocarboxazid-Reply

In Reply. —Roche has received a number of inquiries about isocarboxazid, an antidepressant that was discontinued in December 1993. Prior to that, for more than 30 years, isocarboxazid had been prescribed for certain types of depression. At the time it was discontinued, isocarboxazid was not being used extensively. Moreover, Roche believed that new depression therapies, which had been introduced to the marketplace, were capable of treating the types of depression formerly treated by isocarboxazid. With these considerations in mind, Roche management made a decision to discontinue production of isocarboxazid. A decision was also made to make a small supply of isocarboxazid available to those patients, who, during a transition period to a new medication, might need to be eased off isocarboxazid and onto another antidepressant. Since then, we have received a number of inquiries from physicians and patients about the continued availability of the product, and as a result, we

MS InterView: An elemental mass spectrometry spectral interference data base for Microsoft Windows

Summary In a recent publication [1] we described a computer program called “MS InterView”. This program is a graphically-oriented data base intended to provide ICP and glow discharge mass spectroscopists with the ability to display, access, and manage elemental mass spectrometry spectral interference data. The program was written for the Apple Macintosh. We have had a number of inquiries as to whether DOS or Windows compatible versions of the program could be made available. To this end, we have written a Microsoft Windows version of the program. For a discussion of the capabilites of the program, we refer the reader to the original article [1] and the accompanying documents in electronic form. The purpose of this short note is simply to make this new version of the program available to the readers of SAE. This article is an electronic publication in Spectrochimica Acta B (SAB). The hardcopy text is accompanied by a disk containing the program MS InterView for Windows, a Windows version of the manual, a reference list, and a bar graph format mass spectral library of the elements.

Registering the history of nursing.

As a school of nursing librarian, I received increasing numbers of inquiries about historical records from researchers in this country and abroad. Nursing schools and leaders were being honored with exhibits and films, biographies of American nurses appeared in the literature in greater numbers, and occasions, such as National Nurses’Day, were observed with historical displays. This lively interest in the history of nursing stimulated my curiosity about our own past and about the many apparently unrecorded documents and memorabilia that I kept finding in my attempts to answer some of these questions.

A multi-level incentive model for service organizations

Incentive programmes for production employees have been used for many years. However, more recently, there has been an increasing desire to use incentive programmes in service applications, particularly with the advent of electronic performance monitoring. This paper summarizes the methodology for developing a model that incorporates the parameters of quality (customer and supervisor evaluations), quantity of production, sales and individual goals. The model was used to compute incentive bonus payments for customer service employees who performed above standard. Employees were motivated by the incentive bonus, and thus productivity was increased. The model could be applied to any service organization. The model was developed to assist a customer service department where performance standards, quality measures or customer feedback were not firmly established. It measured objectively employee performance and rewarded the employee with individually calculated incentive bonuses through an electronically monitored system. The internal working of the model is a combination of the above parameters. Customized software was used to collect and tabulate customer feedback regarding a recent inquiry to the customer service department. This made up the first part of the quality measure for the department. The second part of the quality parameter was a regular evaluation by the supervisor. The quantity of production was measured by the number of inquiries handled per unit time. Sales were also calculated on a per-unit-time basis. The individual goals were the result of regular employee-supervisor meetings where past and future employee performance was discussed and mutually agreed upon. The five model parameters of quality (customer and supervisor), quantity, sales and individual goals are combined through the use of a linear equation. It was found that this form of employee evaluation worked very well in an electronic monitoring environment and was accepted by the participating work group. Overall, monthly productivity gains exceeded 15%.

Instability and chaos in acoustically driven flows

A number of inquiries into the mechanisms responsible for the instabilities observed in time‐periodic fluid motion have been made. However, only recently has it been theoretically shown that a fluid, driven by a time‐periodic acoustic wave, can bifurcate from stability at a fixed acoustic particle velocity amplitude. This departure from stability is the result of the action of the gradient of the Reynolds stress. Hence, the parametric interaction of acoustically driven vorticity with external disturbances is important. This basic result will serve as the foundation material. Sensitivity of the acoustic instability mechanism to temporal and spatial modulations generated by harmonics resulting from shock formation will be examined. A theoretical model will be presented to describe the nonlinear evolution of unstable disturbances, such as burst‐associated, Reynolds stress pulses near a rigid boundary wall. The relationship between unstable vortical disturbances and self‐modulation to experimentally observed ...

Childhood poisoning in Wales: experience of the Welsh National Poisons Unit (1984).

In 1984, 60% of all the enquiries made to the Welsh National Poisons Unit in Cardiff concerned children under 15, and 86% of the latter concerned children under 5. Nearly 60% of requests for information in childhood poisoning were about non-medicinal products and this contrasts with hospital admissions which are more often associated with medicinal products in this age group. Seasonal variability was noted for non-medicinal products such as pesticides and plant poisoning enquiries, whereas medicinal product enquiries remained constant over the year. The pesticides enquiries were greatest in Spring while those concerning plants were significantly greater in Summer. The latter was due to increased reports of ingestion of garden plants since the number of enquiries concerning house plants remained constant. Thus availability appears to be a major determinant of the risk of poisoning with any particular product in childhood.

Chemically Induced Birth Defects

More pregnant women are becoming concerned about the adverse effects that might result from exposure to chemicals in the environment. This has resulted in an ever-increasing number of inquiries to physicians about the possible teratogenicity of chemicals and drugs. Unfortunately, few references and few human data are available for use in responding to such inquiries. This book is an excellent and welcome summary of the literature on studies in humans and animals of exposures to drugs and chemicals. The text is organized by categories of drugs and chemicals; an index includes generic names and some of the most commonly used trade names. Each chapter has a detailed summary of the data available from human experience and animal studies. One of the book's most important features is the review of adverse reproductive outcomes related to chemical exposure. An introductory chapter on chemical exposures during pregnancy gives a historical perspective on the

International organizations documentation: Serving research needs of the legal community

This paper discusses the huge international organizations collections of the Library of Congress and stresses that many international documents, as opposed to international publications, are not sent to libraries. To confirm an impression about an increase in the number of inquiries from the legal community, the author surveyed and classified requests received over an 18-month period. Almost 20% of the inquiries related to legal matters, and the most frequent questions concerned the law of the sea, human rights matters, the International Court of Justice, outer space, transnational corporations, and environmental matters. Detailed examples of how some of these legal inquiries have been handled are provided. Because international publications only, rather than documents, are distributed to libraries by a number of the organizations, stress is placed on the importance of contacts with information personnel in the agencies as well as with government officials who work with the international organizations.

Developing a potato irrigation scheduling program—the Maine situation

The future of irrigation in Maine appears to be still in question. Maine farmers will probably continue to face extended periods of dry conditions yearly. One such period has already been experienced in Maine during the 1983 growing season, as only 0.88 of an inch of rainfall was received in June. During such extended dry periods, the number of inquiries concerning irrigation increases. Once adequate rainfall is received, however, such inquiries stop. Yet each year, it is learned that an additional irrigation system or two is installed in Aroostook County.

An investigation of pre-admission referral activity to three residential units with a related commentary on the pattern and range of services for problem drinkers.

Information on all referral enquiries made to three short‐term residential units for problem drinkers in the Midlands over a 2 year period is presented. Of the 904 first time enquiries, 30 per cent reached the point of being admitted for assessment. The majority of enquiries withdrew over the early period of selection, the largest number dropping out between acceptance of an interview and actual attendance. The main referral source was the Probation Service accounting for 30 per cent of the total number of enquiries. Referral interest from other hostels, Alcoholism Treatment Units and Psychiatric hospitals were more likely to generate positive applications than enquiries from non‐specialist sources. On the basis of these findings and discussions with referral agencies it is suggested that the changes recommended by the DHSS in the Pattern and Range of Services for Problem Drinkers will do little to induce new types of problem drinker outside the client groups of primary agencies to seek help. Specialist services themselves might take on this responsibility.

Imports and the British Car Market

Introduction From the mid to late Seventies imports virtually doubled their share of the British car market. The reasons for this have been subject to a number of enquiries (e.g.) and this article, therefore, restricts itself to an analysis of marketing strategy and, in particular, to the importance of the marketing mix in the UK.

Obstetric drug information service

An obstetric drug information service in a 435-bed general hospital in Australia is described. The specialized service was established within a general drug information center after receiving a large percentage of calls on the use of drugs during pregnancy and lactation. The service decided to specialize in information on: (1) drugs excreted in breast milk, (2) drug effects on the fetus, (3) drug effects on the pregnant mother, and (4) drugs affecting sperm. An obstetrician is associated with the service to provide clinical judgments, assessments, and his expertise in the field. Monographs were prepared on 97 commonly prescribed drugs. The service provides oral replies and written replies that are checked by the director and deputy director of pharmaceutical services for their accuracy. Of the 1445 inquiries received during an 18-month period, 60% (863) were related to the use of drugs during pregnancy and lactation. The most frequent users of the service were physicians. Specific topics of the calls included inquiries on antibiotics (154 calls), psychotropic drugs (108), and analgesic and cold preparations (58). The center provided written replies for 51% of the calls. The specialized drug information center has received an increasing number of inquiries and positive feedback from its users.