Congressional Research Service
A Selection of Recently Updated Web Accessible CRS Reports
Time for another short list of recently updated reports from CRS. These reports are available (full-text) on the web. Access to these and other reports are available from either the web site of Rep. Chris Shays OR Rep. Mark Green. Once on either of these pages, click and scroll to the appropriate report. All reports are pdf’s. Most of these reports will not be found using a general purpose search engine and cannot be linked to directly.
—Listed in the Issue Briefs section:
IB10072 Endangered Species: Difficult Choices (Updated 12/6)
IB10012 Intelligence Issues for Congress (Updated 12/7)
—Listed in the Short Reports section
RS20727 Energy Independence: Would It Free the United States From Oil Price Shocks? (Updated 11/17/01)
RS21075 Terrorism Insurance in the Post September 11 Marketplace (Updated 12/7/01)
—Listed in the Long Reports section
98-45 Commemorative Observances: A Chronological List (Updated 11/8/01, Contains 2002 Info)
RL30516 Mergers and Consolidation Between Banking and Financial Services Firms: Trends and Prospects (Updated 11/17/01)

Web Search–Inktomi
Inktomi Adds New Search Capabilities, Coming Soon: Hotbot Europe
Inktomi, the search services company that supplies search “power” to many engines (MSN Search, Hotbot and portions of AOL Search) has added new technology to assist in identifying certain types of content. From the announcement, “Inktomi has incorporated new regional identification and blending technologies as well as enhanced language analysis into its Web search platform, providing geographic context to international search results.”
Web Search enhancements include:
Regional Identification: By examining the link structure of the Web, Inktomi has gathered contextual clues that identify content of interest to users in a particular region, enabling portals to provide a more relevant search experience by allowing the distinction between content from countries that share a language but do not share cultural commonalities.
Regional Blending: With regional blending, portals can now weight content of regional user interest more highly in the relevance calculation to provide more accurate results and a differentiated Web experience to users.
Enhanced Language Analysis: Inktomi’s Web search platform utilizes a native Unicode base to serve all languages, including Japanese and Chinese, out of a single database for enhanced relevance. Additionally, the search engine is now aware of the differences between the text in various languages for improved word breaking of queries.
Of course, only time will tell if this new functionality in the Inktomi algorithm will prove beneficial to searchers. Remember, each engine uses Inktomi in a different manner. This means that each Inktomi search partner not only has its own “chunk” or “flavor” of the entire Inktomi database but the ranking/relevancy algorithms are also different for each search partner. Greg Notess’s Inktomi choices are Hotbot and MSN Search.
MORE News: Coming VERY Soon, The Debut of Hotbot Europe! Stay Tuned!

Natural Language Searching–iPhrase
Learn More About iPhrase and Natural Language Searching
On Monday we mentioned a new natural language search feature using Yahoo Finance. The nlp technology is from iPhrase. Yesterday, iPhrase CEO Noam Ben-Ozer appeared on CNNfn. You can watch the interview online using Real Player or Windows Media Player.

Information Quality
Source: News.Com
First Time, Health Web Sites Awarded Accreditation
From the article, “Millions of Americans going to the Internet for health information got a little more guidance with the independent certification on Wednesday of 13 health-related Web sites. The American Accreditation HealthCare Commission, which certifies managed care organizations and other health care companies, said it was reviewing dozens of other sites as well. “The newly accredited sites are some of the nation’s largest and busiest health sites, including WebMD, WellMed, InteliHealth, the Health Insurance Association of America, Healthwise and Healthyroads,” said the commission, an independent and nonprofit group. You can find the complete list of accredited sites and 15 others that are “in-process” via the AAHC site.
See Also: The Virtual Chase Section on Evaluating Web Info Quality

Online Industry–LexisNexis
LN Does Deal With Knight Ridder
Bottom line: More content for LN. From the annoucement, “Through the relationship, Knight Ridder Digital is syndicating its content available to LexisNexis users; and LexisNexis is powering access to on-point information to 17 Knight Ridder newspapers in 28 markets.Twenty-eight full-text daily Knight Ridder publications from top media markets throughout the country now will be available to LexisNexis customers, many same-day or and within a day of publication, powered by Knight Ridder Digital. The offering includes major metropolitan papers such as The Miami Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, the Detroit Free Press, The Charlotte Observer, the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, MN., and The San Jose Mercury News.” Thanks to GT for the news tip.

New, Updated, & Newly Discovered Resources (5 Items)
–
Public Utilities–Electric–United States
Source: EIA
Financial Statistics of Major U.S. Publicly Owned Electric Utilities
541 pages .pdf, includes several lists and rankings
–
Health–United States–2002 Events
Source: NHIC
2002 National Health Observances
Also available in .pdf
Also searchable by date via HealthFinder.Gov
–
Womens Health–United States–2002 Events
Source: NWHIC
Calendar of Women’s Health Events
–
Federal Holidays–United States–2002 Events
Source: Office of Personnel Management
Federal Holidays
Dates available through 2006
–
Scholarly Publishing
Updated: Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
Version 40 of Charles Bailey’s bib contains over 1500 entries.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2001 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.