LITERATURE
Cyanamid's Organic Code Uses Subdecks Machine time is 20 minutes maximum. Patent Office man proposes new generic system; COMAC Mark III designed 139TH
ACS
NATIONAL
MEETING
Chemical Literature
Rapid growth of the number of organic compounds in the files of American Cyan amid and the prospect of contin ued rapid increases in the files led to a new code system, says Dr. Lee N. Starker of the company's Lederle Laboratories division. This code uses 68 columns of an IBM card, leaving 12
columns for expansion. It is practi cally a direct punch code. At present, Cyanamid has a file of 60,000 cards containing molecular formula data on compounds synthe sized or purchased by its various re search laboratories. This number is up from 20,000 compounds about 10 years ago and will reach 100,000 in five years, Dr. Starker and co-worker Jose A. Cordero said at the Symposium on New Machine Methods in Chemi cal Documentation. To minimize time on the sorting ma-
chine, Cyanamid uses a system of subdecks for the cards. Normally the number of cards in a subdeck ranges from 10,000 to 15,000. The subdecks are based on either functional groups or card columns. With an information chemist who selects the proper subdeck based on the information request and programs the search, machine time is a maximum of 20 minutes per search. Various short cuts can be made with some requests, depending on their nature. The Cyanamid code breaks down this way: • Identification numbers, assigned serially to all compounds. • Molecular formulas covering C, N, S, Ο, Ρ, Β, and the halogens; presence of other elements is recorded but not counted. • Functional groups, which now take 131 group codes. • Monocyclics covering size, degree of saturation, and number, types, and orientation of hetero atoms. • Substituents for monocyclics. • Alkyl and alkylene groups, with out distinguishing branched from straight chains, but including unsaturation. • Fused rings covering many varia tions such as un saturation or nitrogen or other heterocyclic atoms in the ring. • Miscellaneous properties.
GENERIC. Cyanamid's Dr. Lee Starker uses Minnesota Mining's Filmac-100 ReaderPrinter to reproduce structures of compounds obtained in a generic search of the type that can be used with the company's new coding system 90
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So far the coding system has worked out well for expected types of searches, says Dr. Starker. It has also given better entry into company biological reports. When questions are phrased in terms of chemical structure, a generic search gives all members of a group of similar compounds. These are then checked against biological in dexes when this type of data is re quired. Fit Users' Needs. More than 20,000 mechanized literature searches done in the U.S. Patent Office have led to one major conclusion: The infor mation needs of scientists vary widely,
says the Patent Office's Julius Frome. Some users, for example, may not need as great a depth of indexing as others. Mr. Frome proposes a new generic system which is segmented to allow a user to decide which portion meets his needs. The system encodes in ma chine language so that basic informa tion can be used with various ma chines. Thus, users can select a ma chine depending on its availability and cost. Besides these considerations, Mr. Frome says, to be valuable to an infor mation scientist a system should: • Not be limited to one particular chemical field. • Store and retrieve compounds, processes, compositions, and biological data. • Have an unlimited dictionary. • Provide information useful in sys tems organized for both random access and serial searching. Within practical limits, a system that does many of these things has been developed at the Patent Office. Some of its special features include placing of codes in groups by signals, modulants to determine the meaning of codes which follow them, and in termediate cards. Placing of codes by signals will per mit all the codes pertaining to a com pound to be correlated, says Mr. Frome. All the compounds in a docu ment or in a given mixture within a document can be indicated by signals. Then, since there is no limit to the number of codes in a signal, there will be no limit to the amount of data re corded for a document. More than 1000 modulants may be used in the system, but so far only about 40 are used, Mr. Frome says. These modulants indicate generic terms with specifics given by the codes. Intermediate cards are the keys to making the system usable or compat ible with several machines. Informa tion to make up an intermediate card may be put into a machine such as a RAMAC 305 which will punch the card automatically by a suitable pro gram. Or intermediate cards may be prepared by the ordinary key punch machine. Toward Efficiency. Drawbacks in present information storage and re trieval systems are leading to a new approach—logical comparison. Two of these drawbacks, bad dynamics of
start-stop movements of tape methods and the large storage needed for the cards, may be overcome with "Peek-aboo" systems, according to Dr. Morti mer Taube of Documentation, Inc. However, such systems do have a difficulty: the cost of providing, on each record, space for the totality of items in the collection. Such space allotment, or dedication, on the indi vidual cards affects special files of limited vocabulary and high density posting very little. For general infor mation retrieval problems, only about V/c of the coding area will be used and the rest is excess dedicated space, says Dr. Taube. An improved version of a Continu ous Multiple Access Comparator (COMAC Mark III), designed by Dr. Taube and associates, may overcome the problems of earlier machines. In the COMAC Mark III, the basic store of information will be in the form of an inverted file with item numbers under terms, says Dr. Taube. He compares the procedure with addresses on a disk memory in a RAMAC-type device. Using such a disk memory, the items on any segment of a tape under any term can be distributed to addresses corresponding to the item numbers on the disk. In effect, such a distribution converts the basic dense store to a matrix-type store, according to Dr. Taube. The matrixes are not regular and permanent parts of the store, but are set up as required in the searching process. Thus, a dense store of nondedicated systems is potentially avail able and processing of the various matrix systems can be rapid, simple, and logical when used to answer a question. Intermittent stop-start (as needed when comparing tapes) is eliminated, since the total class of in formation is written into the compar ing medium before it is compared with any other class, says Dr. Taube. Space saving is another advantage, Dr. Taube points out. There is no limit in principle to the amount of in formation that can be stored at each dedicated address. Dedicated space in the COMAC Mark III system is used only for the logical operations and not for permanent storage. There fore, any type of information now handled by collating and interfiling systems using the arithmetical opera tions of high, low, and equals can be handled in this system using dedicated environmental comparison, and logical, rather than arithmetical, instruction.
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Timely Ceramics Book
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Barnebey Cheney 92
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The field of ceramics is still in transi tion from an art to a science, and for this reason, among others, a book pro viding a comprehensive and systematic treatment of any segment of the field is timely and welcome. Such a book is particularly welcome when it comes from the hands of so experienced a ceramist as Eugene Ryshke witch, whose earlier work, "Oxidkeramik der Einstoff-Systeme," published in 1948, is the progenitor of the present volume. Ryshkewitch's new "Oxide Ceram ics: Physical Chemistry and Tech nology," provides a wealth of informa tion on general subjects of ceramic technology, such as plastic workability of slips and bodies, firing and sintering of ceramics, and specifics of the chem istry, physics, and ceramic handling of metal oxides, double oxides, and com binations of oxides with η on oxides. Silicon dioxide as such is regarded by the author as comprising a whole field in itself, and is not covered in the present work. Among the excellent features of this book are its fine peda gogic quality, the clear treatment of such topics as properties of particles, behavior of plastic masses from which ceramic products are derived, the technology of flames, furnaces, and firing, the vapor and decomposition pressures of oxides under various ther mal conditions, the pertinent electri cal, mechanical, and chemical charac teristics of the materials which consti tute the substance of ceramics. The 177 figures in the book include useful selections of phase diagrams of oxide systems, photomicrographs of sections of oxide sinters, photographs of ce ramic products, and sketches of equip ment used in ceramic technology. In addition to his phenomenological treatment of scientific fact, technologi cal experience, and pertinent concepts and theories, Ryshkewitch focuses at tention on the need to develop defini tion in the ceramic field. The old defi nition of ceramics as "an art and sci ence related to the silicate industries" that has been adopted by the Ameri can Ceramic Society "is obsolete. . . . Classic ceramics should be defined as silicate ceramics, as distinguished from oxide ceramics." The author gives a list of common and characteristic fea tures of ceramic products, as he under stands them, and defines oxide ceram ics as "ceramic products [and their processing] composed of [mostly
single] oxides" (page 9 ) . He calls at tention to a need for a concept of "ceramography" related to ceramics as "metallography" is to metals. Ryshkewitch gives extensive treat ment to substantially all pertinent as pects of alumina, ceria, magnesia, thoria, and zirconia, and the double oxides, zircon and spinel. He is par ticularly knowledgeable in the tech nology of alumina, and devotes 147 pages to the discussion of this oxide, as against 42 pages for magnesia and 46 for zirconia. He properly retains the ceramists' viewpoint throughout, and is willing to treat chemistry rather loosely, so long as it serves to indicate simply and in effect correctly the phenomena under discussion. Thus, he will show aluminum oxide reacting with hydrogen chloride in the presence of water to form anhydrous aluminum chloride (pages 37 and 6 1 ) , without intending to convey just that. How ever, contrary to Ryshkewitch's state ments, hydrofluoric acid does not attack zircon violently (page 399). (It attacks finely divided zircon slug gishly and large grains or sintered zir con almost imperceptibly. ) Only very critical reading of the book brings into focus occasional Ger man usages in Ryshkewitch's English. Also occasional unconventional Eng lish expressions and spellings, such as sodium-meta-zirconate (page 356) are found. But the book is clearly and interestingly written, and its contents are in general well expressed. Students, laboratory workers, and directors of ceramic investigations and preparations will all find Ryshke witch's book highly informative and a handy source of useful data. Oxide Ceramics: and
Physical Chemistry
Technology.
EUGENE
RYSH
KEWITCH. viii + 472 pages. Aca demic Press, Inc., I l l Fifth Ave., New York 3, N.Y. 1960. $16. Re viewed by Warren B. Blumenthal and William J. Baldwin, Titanium Alloy Manufacturing Division, Na tional Lead Co.
Chemical Producers Directory A Directory of Chemical Producers is being issued by Stanford Research In stitute, Menlo Park, Calif. The serv ice will comprise several loose-leaf volumes so that new pages can be issued monthly listing new products and plants as they appear. The first pages will be mailed to subscribers
soon and additional product and com pany pages will be issued as rapidly as they are completed. The main part of the directory will be divided into three sections. The product section will list each chemical alphabetically and identify the com pany and location of producing plants. The company section will summarize plants and products for each producer. In the regional section, each state will be listed separately. Within each state, listing will be alphabetical by product and then by company in each product classification. In addition to the three sections of the directory, a comprehensive sum mary of new plants and expansions will be issued monthly. The subscription fee will cover one full year of the service from March 1, 1961, to Feb. 28, 1962. The fee is $60 for those who subscribe during the first year. After that, term renewals are expected to remain at $60 with new subscriptions priced at about $100 per year.
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Applied Thermodynamics. BRANSOM.
STANLEY H.
vii + 230 pages.
D. Van
Nostrand Co., Inc., 120 Alexander St., Princeton, N.J. 1961. $6.00. Fundamentals of physical chemistry and heating-engineering thermodynamics com bined in practical applications to modern chemical technology. The Chemistry of the Terpenes. A. R. PINDER. vii -f- 223 pages. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 440 Park Ave. South, New York 16, N.Y. $8.25. Book is said to act as a bridge between the general textbooks of organic chemistry and the comprehensive works of terpenes. Great American Scientists. Fortune Magazine Editors, xii + 144 pages. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1961. $3.50. Introduces American scientists and their achievements which have put the United States in the leading position in science since 1920. Textbook of Chemistry. 8th ed. STELLA GOOSTRAY, J. RAE SCHWENCK.
xiii +
502 pages. Macmillan Co., 60 Fifth Ave., New York 11, N.Y. 1961. $6.95. Designed especially for the student of Paperbound Biochemical Aspects of Microbial Patho genicity. Vol. 88, article 5. 395 pages. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2 East 63rd St., New York 21, N.Y. 1960. $5.00. Experiments for Instrumental Methods. CHARLES
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SAWYER, Χ -f- 412 pages. McGrawHill Book Co., Inc., 330 West 42nd St., New York 36, N.Y. 1961. $5.95.
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