Search Rules

This search defaults to the largest number of hits based on your keyword(s). To refine your search, choose an Index from those listed. To search Abstracts exclusively, you must choose "Abstracts" from the Index list. This search engine will respond to keywords, phrases, or questions typed into the search box. The engine returns a list of all the Web pages in the Index you have chosen. The most relevant content will appear at the top of your results.

How To Use:

1. Select an Index.
2. Type your keyword(s) in the search box.
3. Press the Search button.

More Basics - An Overview

Here's a quick overview of the rest of our Basic Help. Just click on the links to jump to these sections.

What is an 'Index'?
What is a word?
What is a phrase?
Simple Tips for More Exact Searches
Fancy Features for Typical Searches

What is an Index?

This search engine is designed to find pages on The Whitaker Foundation web site. It will also isolate pages from Academic Programs or Investigator Abstracts. Choose the Index of interest from the pull-down menu. The default is ALL indexes, which searches the entire site.

What is a word?

When searching, think of a word as a combination of letters and numbers. The search service needs to know how to separate words and numbers to find exactly what you want. You can separate words using white space and tabs.

What is a phrase?

You can link words and numbers together into phrases if you want specific words or numbers to appear together in your result pages. If you want to find an exact phrase, use "double quotation marks" around the phrase when you enter words in the search box.

Example: To find which U.S. universities talk about tissue engineering in their academic program summaries, type in (including the quotation marks) "tissue engineering". Be sure to select Academic Programs as the Index. You can also create phrases using punctuation or special characters such as dashes, underscore lines, commas, slashes, or dots.

Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

All searches are case insensitive and accent insensitive. Searching for "Fur" will match the lowercase "fur", uppercase "FUR", and German "für".

Including or excluding words:

To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Example: To find pages that talk about curriculum but not those that refer to curriculum vitae, try curriculum -vitae.

Expand your search using wildcards (*):

By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings.

Example: Try wish*, to find wish, wishes, wishful, wishbone, and wishy-washy.

Fancy Features for Typical Searches

You can search more than just text. Here are all of the other ways you can search on the net: