Search concepts

Up to now, the management of warranty has received very little attention, at least as far as consumer products are concerned (D. N. P. Murthy et al. 2002). Nevertheless, searching concepts as warranty cost and warranty management model , it is possible to find many related studies treated from different points of view. Some of these studies are regarding the following issues (listed chronologically) ... 

The pre-processing concepts have been a more recent development of substructure searching systems. These approaches have become popular since the mid-1980s, when the cost of the storage devices (hard disks and CD-ROMs) decreased. 

Similarity searching is the database implementation of the similarity concept. Some of the steps involved in similarity searching are overviewed next, in the context of chemoinformatics. 

It is also possible to extend this concept to cover the presence of more than one distinct segm pair in a pair of sequences (for example, if there are three MSPs present with scores of 40, and 50 then one can calculate the probabOity of finding three pairs with at least a score of by chance). The ability of BLAST to provide a quantitative significance of any match fou is a particularly useful feature of the program, which, with its continuing development a availability, has made it the most widely used method for sequence database searching. 

A major trend in organic synthesis, however, is the move towards complex systems. It may happen that one needs to combine a steroid and a sugar molecule, a porphyrin and a carotenoid, a penicillin and a peptide. Also the specialists in a field have developed reactions and concepts that may, with or without modifications, be applied in other fields. If one needs to protect an amino group in a steroid, it is advisable not only to search the steroid literature but also to look into publications on peptide synthesis. In the synthesis of corrin chromophores with chiral centres, special knowledge of steroid, porphyrin, and alkaloid chemistry has been very helpful (R.B. Woodward, 1967 A. Eschenmoser, 1970). 

Basically, Newtonian mechanics worked well for problems involving terrestrial and even celestial bodies, providing rational and quantifiable relationships between mass, velocity, acceleration, and force. However, in the realm of optics and electricity, numerous observations seemed to defy Newtonian laws. Phenomena such as diffraction and interference could only be explained if light had both particle and wave properties. Indeed, particles such as electrons and x-rays appeared to have both discrete energy states and momentum, properties similar to those of light. None of the classical, or Newtonian, laws could account for such behavior, and such inadequacies led scientists to search for new concepts in the consideration of the nature of reahty. 

The depressed prices of most metals in world markets in the 1980s and early 1990s have slowed the development of new metal extraction processes, although the search for improved extractants continues. There is a growing interest in the use of extraction for recovery of metals from effluent streams, for example the wastes from pickling plants and electroplating (qv) plants (276). Recovery of metals from Hquid effluent has been reviewed (277), and an AM-MAR concept for metal waste recovery has recentiy been reported (278). Possible appHcations exist in this area for Hquid membrane extraction (88) as weU as conventional extraction. Other schemes proposed for effluent treatment are a wetted fiber extraction process (279) and the use of two-phase aqueous extraction (280). 

A PC-based H-nmr database, which includes fiiU spectmm search capabiHty, is being constmcted by the Toyohashi University of Technology (67). Speclnfo, owned by Chemical Concepts, offers a 150,000 spectra Hbrary and database system for mainframe computers, which includes H, F, "O,... 

CA Search Data-Star, DIALOG, ORBIT, Questel, etc Chemical Abstracts Service international, chemistry limited bibhographic data deep indexing of chemical concepts compound registry searchable by stmcture on Questel and by name and molecular features on other systems... 

In the earliest days of on-line databases, all three indexing types coUapsed into the third. Using older manual tools, it was difficult to coordinate more than two or three concepts, but the computer made that easier. Each concept in a search can be represented by a string of synonyms or alternatives, and searching can be done for two such parameters or more. Thus, Boolean logic expressions can easily be constmcted as follows ... 

A number of methods have been developed to introduce context to on-line databases, enabling searches to be refined to minimized false retrieval. One of the earliest techniques is proximity searching, in which two words are required to be adjacent, or within a limited distance from each other in text. The assignment of roles to chemical substances is a method of precoordinating concepts. A substance can be identified as a reactant, as a product, and in some systems in a number of additional roles. For example, by searching for documents in which formaldehyde is a product, documents in which it is a reactant, or in which it undergoes no reaction, are thus eliminated. 

Extension of the appHcations of polymethine dyes has required special spectral and other characteristics. As a rule, the search for and synthesis of promising new compounds having desired properties imply the preliminary estimation of their most important parameters on the basis of elaborated theoretical conceptions. Thus, an effective way of governing electron properties consists of the variation of molecular topology of polymethines. 

Chemically related database searches can be used to estabhsh concepts and patentable ideas. For instance, searches have identified researchers using particular monomers in a potentially patentable latex formulation found precedents for a polymeric emulsifier summarized pubHcations of people being considered as consultants, expert witnesses, employees or speakers to an industrial group and provided market description information for a new pigment manufacturing firm to identify target markets. 

There are two basic types of unconstrained optimization algorithms (I) those reqmring function derivatives and (2) those that do not. The nonderivative methods are of interest in optimization applications because these methods can be readily adapted to the case in which experiments are carried out directly on the process. In such cases, an ac tual process measurement (such as yield) can be the objec tive function, and no mathematical model for the process is required. Methods that do not reqmre derivatives are called direc t methods and include sequential simplex (Nelder-Meade) and Powell s method. The sequential simplex method is quite satisfac tory for optimization with two or three independent variables, is simple to understand, and is fairly easy to execute. Powell s method is more efficient than the simplex method and is based on the concept of conjugate search directions. 

The steepest descent method is quite old and utilizes the intuitive concept of moving in the direction where the objective function changes the most. However, it is clearly not as efficient as the other three. Conjugate gradient utilizes only first-derivative information, as does steepest descent, but generates improved search directions. Newton s method requires second derivative information but is veiy efficient, while quasi-Newton retains most of the benefits of Newton s method but utilizes only first derivative information. All of these techniques are also used with constrained optimization. 

The need for an overall and combined chemical structure and data search system became clear to us some time ago, and resulted in the decision to build CHIRBASE, a molecular-oriented factual database. The concept utilized in this database approach is related to the importance of molecular interactions in chiral recognition mechanisms. Solely a chemical information system permits the recognition of the molecular key fingerprints given by the new compound among thousands of fingerprints of known compounds available in a database. 

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