CONTENTS

• Q: I'm only interested in cardiovascular drugs. How can I get directly to that information?
• A: The information in Daily Essentials has been classified in different fields. In order to access directly the data on a broad therapeutic category of compounds, select the category by using the browse index for the Section field in the Daily Essentials search form. You can also access the information on a specific section by selecting the appropiate header from the Today's News Weekly Report Options.

• Q: How is Daily Essentials different from other alerting services?
• A: The Prous Science Daily Essentials is the first service of its kind accessible through the Internet. Launched as the Prous Science Weekly Essentials in March 1996, the service has evolved to a more frequent updating interval, with a unique and user-friendly search interface. Information from 11 patent offices, more than 300 congresses yearly, and more than 1,500 pharmaceutical companies and research organizations worldwide makes the coverage of the Prous Science Daily Essentials much more extensive than that of other services. Another important difference arises from the possibility of viewing the chemical structure for every compound specifically described. And what's more, the quality of the information provided makes the Prous Science Daily Essentials the most valuable service available at present.

• Q: How many news items are included each day in Daily Essentials?
• A: Each business day more than 25 news items are incorporated in the Prous Science Daily Essentials database. This represents more than 6,500 news items yearly (20,000 news items are available from the last three years), giving a complete panorama of worldwide pharmaceutical activities.

LICENSING ISSUES

• Q: If I subscribe under the pay-per-view option, how will I know when my deposit has run out?
• A: When your deposit reaches 10% of its initial value, the system will notify you and inquire if you are interested in renewing your license. Once the deposit reaches its limit, you will be notified again. The system will then be unreachable after one week if a decision regarding license renewal has not been made.

• Q: I now have a single-user license. If my company wanted to add more users would that be possible?
• A: You can make the Prous Science Daily Essentials available to other people in your company by taking advantage of the multiple-user agreement license. Should you decide to increase the number of users in your company, additional user passwords will be sent and the license fee updated.

• Q: Do we need to start our license to Daily Essentials on the first day of the month?
• A: No, you can start your license whenever you need it.

DISPLAYING AND PRINTING RESULTS

• Q: What are the options in terms of grouping the search results?
• A: The Prous Science Daily Essentials is extremely flexible. You can group your search results in any of the following categories: Section (default option), Therapeutic Group, Company, Type of Compound, Source of Information, or Date. Within each category, news items are classified chronologically.

• Q: Can I print search results and/or news items? What about downloading them?
• A: All the information retrieved from the Prous Science Daily Essentials can be printed or exported to a word processing program, provided usage of this information is restricted to personal use as stated in the Prous Science Daily Essentials Copyright Form.

SEARCHING

• Q: Will I be able to search back through past months?
• A: The Prous Science Daily Essentials has been designed taking into account the information needs of different types of users. The search form can be set to search over any time period. You can retrieve not only the information that has ppeared in the last 24 hours, but also that generated during the last week, quarter or year; or even information generated while you were on holiday!

• Q: How long does it take to query the system?
• A: As one of the major drawbacks of the Internet is sometimes its slowness, the Prous Science Daily Essentials has been optimized to deliver information as quickly as possible. For example, a search on a particular field for information entered during the last month can take from 3 to 5 seconds to be delivered to the end user.

ACCESS

• Q: Our colleagues in another department want to consult the information in Daily Essentials, but they do not have Internet access. Are there other ways to access the information?
• A: Due to the usefulness of the information provided in the Prous Science Daily Essentials, other formats have been made available including e-mail, fax and Intranet downloading of the information. Contact Prous Science for details.

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