Students tired of using search engines that produce ambiguous results can look forward to using a new search mechanism soon. NewsInEssence, a research experiment combining artificial intelligence and computer technology, is now offering a web-based service that allows students to custom-tailor their Internet searches to yield the most favorable results.

Engineering Prof. Dragomir Radev, the project's head, said in a written statement that the website is unique because users can call up several different news stories about one given topic in seconds.

"NewsInEssence is personalized and interactive," he said. "It allows users to specify a 'seed story' or topic, to specify which sources they prefer and how long the search should take, to say how long the summary should be, and to decide how often updates should be sent to them."

School of Information student Jay Jackson said the ability to set search parameters is one of the website's best features.

"If you use Google to find something, you'd get 25,000 responses, but with NewsInEssence you can pull up news stories based on your own preferences," he said.

LSA sophomore Liana Reading said she likes the idea behind the website but finds the Internet site difficult to navigate.

"It's cool that you can type in one topic and get so many news articles at once, but it took me a while to figure out how to use the site," she said.

Jackson said the website was put together by a team of University students and is operating under funding from the National Science Foundation.

"This is not a commercial project. Things may seem kind of complicated right now, but they are a lot less complicated than they were last week. We expect the interface to get better every day," he said.

The website will soon include additional features that allow users to receive summary updates directly to their e-mail accounts as well as a natural language search query that will allow users to ask questions like, "when was the president of France inaugurated?" and get a precise answer.

The website for the search engine is www.newsinessence.com.