Expert Systems and Analytical Chemistry:  Recent Progress in the ACexpert Project

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the application of expert system technology in the analytical chemistry domain and summarizes the progress made in the implementation of the ACexpert project. We start with a brief description of the software tools that are commonly used in construction of expert system applications as well as the inference mechanisms employed to search the knowledge base. A brief review of the achievements made world wide during the past five years in the development of expert systems for use in the chemistry domain follows. This paper particularly addresses the difficulties found in the knowledge acquisition process. An effective knowledge encoding scheme, named the knowledge domain matrix process (KDM), that has been developed in our laboratory as an knowledge encoding alternative, is described. In the final section, we describe the development of several stand-alone expert system modules based on implementation of the KDM scheme within the framework of the ACexpert project. The importance of the user interface in an expert system program is also emphasized, and graphical user interfaces featuring icons, pull-down menus, and graphical descriptions have been developed for the different modules in the ACexpert project to ensure a user-friendly and self-explanatory environment.

Structure property studies revealed a new indoylfuranone based bifunctional chemosensor for Cu2+ and Al3+

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