LRL—L INFORMATION INTEGRATION PROJECT
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fallout. Among the specific questions he must then ask the literature
are:
1. Is there a group of papers that reports '!I concentration in
milk in various areas and another group that reports '84] in fallout in
the same areas?
2. Are there papers that report the effective half-life of fallout
1311 on forage?
3. To go with question 2, are there papers that report the biologi-
cal availability of fallout 13/1?
4. Are there papers that report the fraction of ingested ‘I excreted in cow milk?
Depending upon the availability of information on the preceding
questions, each question could be permuted into several specific ques-
tions for additional collateral information. For example, the data for
question 1 could be inconsistent unless the fraction of '*/I that is re-
tained by plants is similar for dry fallout and fallout brought down by
rain. This would be another specific questionfor the literature. Lacking
specific information on ‘!I with respect to this question, the scientist
may ask for data concerning another soluble nuclide, e.g., "Cs. Ob-
viously,
any of these lines of questioning which proves unsuccessful
will point out crucial gaps that need to be filled by experimentalefforts.
In searching the literature for these specific kinds of information,
the scientist must use various bibliographies and abstracting journals.
By the very nature of these literature aids, he must read numerous
articles to obtain the few that are pertinent to his specific question.
Furthermore, in asking a series of questions such as the preceding
ones, he may request the same (and at times useless) reference several times.
On the other hand, with a problem as broad as this overall mission
problem, practically any specific kind of information in a piece of
literature may eventually apply to some segmentof the problem. This
is particularly true when one considers that many of the problems will
have to be solved in an analytical manner with the use of collateral
data. To proceed as expeditiously as possible with our mission problems in the areas concerned with nuclear explosives, we developed an
information-retrieval system as part of the Information Integration
Project. The first time a member of the group readsa piece of literature, he codes into the system the specific kind(s) of information contained in the document. As a result the various pieces of literature
will be recalled in the future (by the original reader or any other individual) only when a need arises for these specific kinds of information.
Consequently the
three major functions:
Information
Integration Project will service