Chemical Information System (The CIS)

THE CIS NEWS	November 2003

This issue of The CIS News is coming to you from the CIS E-mail address -- cissupport@nisc.com. Comments, questions, concerns, etc., should be directed to that address.

UPDATES

Several existing CIS databases were updated early in November.

CERCLIS (Superfund Sites):

The number of sites/records in the database increased from 44,760 to 45,092. The number of records with lists of PRPs attached (Potentially Responsible Parties) increased from 2,688 to 2,711.

RTECSŽ:

An update to RTECS increased the number of records in the database from 156,484 to 157,086. In addition, some full-text TSCATS documents have been linked to RTECS records for the first time. There are only a handful of these at present -- some 190 TSCATS documents out of some 2,700 documents cited in the database as a whole -- but there will be more to come in the not-too- distant future. Search for CAS RN 2493-02-9 in the RTECS database if you want to see an example of how this works. Furthermore, a new Summary field has been added to RTECS. This appears toward the bottoms of records, and it includes lines of text that summarize the data appearing in the record. For example, if a record contains acute toxicity data relating to a man, then there will be two lines of text in the Summary field -- one saying "Acute Toxicity Data Man" and the other saying "Acute Toxicity Data Human." There are similar lines for Reproductive Data, Mutation Data, Tumorigenic Data, and Multiple Dose Toxicity Data. Each of these terms is followed by the relevant species entry -- as in "Tumorigenic Data Dog." This will enable users to search through the Keyword field for only those RTECS records containing particular types of data. For example, entering REPRODUCTIVE DATA in the Keyword field, and RTECS in the Database field, will retrieve only those RTECS records containing Reproductive Data. If you make the Keyword search entry REPRODUCTIVE DATA HUMAN, then you'll retrieve only those records containing reproductive data relating to humans. (This capability was inserted in response to a user who wanted to be able to do this. We're always glad to hear from users who would like to find out if some special search capability can't be added to our databases.)

TSCATS:

This database indexing unpublished health and safety studies submitted to EPA did not increase in record count, but the same 190 full-text images that were added to RTECS were also added to TSCATS -- that is, you can reach the full- text images by hitting the pertinent records in either database.

FINDS:

The FINDS database of sites and facilities regulated under a wide variety of EPA programs increased in size from 1,115,512 to 1,116,699 records. A number of state programs are also indexed in the database.

TSCAINV:

The TSCA Inventory database underwent its twice-a-year update. It now makes reference to the second issuance of the public inventory for 2003.

HSDB, IRIS MALLIN, RISKLINE:

A small number of new or revised records were added to each of these databases.

NETSCAPE AND POPUPS

The latest release of Netscape's Internet browser -- 7.1 and later -- includes a mechanism to suppress popup windows. Unfortunately, CIS occasionally uses popups to deliver operational messages to users -- the boxes that suggest alternate search strategies when your search hasn't worked. If you're using the latest Netscape browser, and you hit one of these popups, everything stops: It just looks as though you'd lost your connection to CIS. The problem is easily fixed, however. In the Netscape browser, click on EDIT, then PREFERENCES, then PRIVACY & SECURITY, then POPUP WINDOWS. This leads to a mechanism by which you can add to the list of allowed sources of popup windows. In that area, type in biblioline.nisc.com This is the domain from which CIS operates, and adding that domain to the list of allowable sources will eliminate the problems caused by Netscape's new arrangement. If you've noticed other database services acting oddly when using Netscape in recent weeks, you might try checking this setting for those database services as well. When we began telling users who called us about this difficulty, several realized that they had already encountered the same problem elsewhere without being able to figure out what was going on.

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