Notre Dame Radiation Chemistry
Data Center.
Keith P. Madden
Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory
Mission of the RCDC:
The Radiation Chemistry Data Center (RCDC) is a service of the Notre
Dame Radiation Laboratory to the chemistry, biochemistry, medical, and
engineering communities. The mission of the data center is to:
• collect numerical property data from radiation chemical and
photochemical research literature,
• compile, critically evaluate, and assemble this unstructured data into a
coherent body of knowledge and,
• disseminate it in a useful form for those working with the chemistry
of transient intermediates.
Audience of the Data Center.
– Our target audience of chemists, biologists, material scientists, physicians,
and chemical engineers is diverse, representing numerous organizations:
• Government
– Environmental remediation at weapon sites, nuclear waste
processing, reactor engineering within USDOE
– Basic research: radiation chemistry, photochemistry, free radical
chemistry
• Universities ( radiation biochemistry, oxidative stress)
• Industrial laboratories (radiation processing, polymer production)
– We provide accurate data for experiment and process design in fields as
diverse as power generation, polymer processing, food preservation,
pharmaceutical stabilization, radiation therapy, and cloud / aerosol
chemistry.
Audience of the Data Center.
com
13%
• Users of the data
center, according to
domain referenced
during web access.
other
39%
edu
18%
gov
3%
for-com
1%
for-edu
26%
Activities of the RCDC.
The activities of the RCDC consist of two major components:
First, to collect and perform a continuous, comprehensive review of primary
sources in the radiation chemical, photochemical, and free radical
literature.
• Publication of “Recent Papers in Radiation Chemistry and
Photochemistry”
Second, to produce and publish critical compilations of chemical property
data in the aforementioned areas from the information obtained via the
literature review.
Dissemination of the information thus compiled is via the RCDC website
(http://www.rcdc.nd.edu) and through publication of data compilations in
journals.
Literature review at the RCDC
~ 5000 Papers and monographs per
week are produced in chemistry,
physics, and closely related fields.
Bibliographic citation and abstracts
from these papers and monographs
are obtained in electronic form.
This information is compared to our
indexing thesaurus and database of
active researchers yielding a set of
candidate publications for inclusion
in our database.
Typically, there are 700 - 900
candidate publications per week.
These are examined for relevance.
Papers containing chemical
property data are indexed for our
bibliographic database, and a copy
is obtained for compilation
construction (~200 per week).
The list of relevant recent papers is
published on our web site as our
current awareness service.
Compilation Preparation and Publication.
The current priority: updating “Critical Review of Rate Constants for
Reactions of Hydrated Electrons, Hydrogen Atoms, and Hydroxyl Radicals in
Aqueous Solution.”
Research papers are collected as part of the literature review.
Detailed keywording of research papers, data extraction to XML
metadata form, initial data evaluation, preliminary web page
preparation and database entry occur in-house at RCDC.
External data reviewers check accuracy of web pages and
database entries, and evaluate the quality of the numerical data
extracted from the paper.
Final web pages and database entries are made. Recommended
values for the numerical data are made if warranted.
Information access via the RCDC web site
Although the RCDC website is accessible without charge, detailed records are
kept of visits to the site to enable RCDC personnel to determine appropriate
design improvements and the chemical topics of interest to our user base.
Visits to the RCDC website generally fall into four categories:
•
•
•
•
kinetics searching (~ 300 searches per week)
bibliographic searching (~100 searches per week)
kinetics browsing (~2800 pages viewed per week)
current awareness browsing ( ~2400 pages viewed per week --may be
prompted by email notification of 350 users on our mailing list)
Current Data Projects.
Both data projects and infrastructure development are planned:
– To initiate and complete an update to the "Critical Review of Rate
Constants for Reactions of Hydroxyl Radicals" to include the period 19962004.
– To complete and publish “Critical Review of Rate Constants for Reactions
of Hydrogen Atoms in Aqueous Solution;” in the open literature.
– To continue the biweekly publication of our web-based current awareness
service, “Recent Papers in Photochemistry and Radiation Chemistry.”
Current Infrastrucure Projects.
Infrastructure development projects proposed:
– Define and implement XML (extended markup language) data encoding
for chemical property data in addition to rate constants, such as reduction
potentials, free radical structural information, and transient spectra.
– Develop collaborative on line tools for the input and evaluation of
chemical property data during the compilation process.
– Develop and implement data interchange standards and software to enable
us to interoperate efficiently with our collaborators at NIST.