Major-religious festivals hosted in the city of Kerbala, Iraq, annually generate large quantities of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) which negatively impacts the environment and human health when poorly managed. The hospitality sector, specifically hotels, is one of the major sources of MSW generated during these festivals. Because it is essential to establish a proper waste management system for such festivals, accurate information regarding MSW generation is required. This study therefore investigated the rate of production of MSW from hotels in Kerbala during major festivals. A field questionnaire survey was conducted with 150 hotels during the Arba'een festival, one of the largest festivals in the world, attended by about 18 million participants, to identify how much MSW is produced and what features of hotels impact on this. Hotel managers responded to questions regarding features of the hotel such as size (Hs), expenditure (Hex), area (Ha) and number of staff (Hst). An on-site audit was also carried out with all participating hotels to estimate the mass of MSW generated from these hotels. The results indicate that MSW produced by hotels varies widely. In general, it was found that each hotel guest produces an estimated 0.89 kg of MSW per day. However, this figure varies according to the hotels' rating. Average rates of MSW production from one and four star hotels were 0.83 and 1.22 kg per guest per day, respectively. Statistically, it was found that the relationship between MSW production and hotel features can be modelled with an R of 0.799, where the influence of hotel feature on MSW production followed the order Hs > Hex > Hst.

In some longitudinal drug studies, regulatory agencies suggest baseline observation carry forward (BOCF) as a method of handling patient dropout, despite the existence of many criticisms to BOCF. The reason for using BOCF is not clear to many users who either treat BOCF as an imputation method or consider BOCF to be "conservative" in the sense that it allows treatment effect to be evaluated with a severe penalty for dropouts. In this article we address the following questions and issues: What is the reason for using BOCF? Is BOCF a conservative approach to assessing drug efficacy? Is BOCF reasonable? If not, what are the alternatives? Our discussions are based on both theoretical and practical viewpoints.

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Geophysicsis such an acceptedpart of British archaeology that itseffectiveness seemsobvious.Yet if there is no reason to doubt the benefits of geophysics why do some experienced archaeologists use it so rarely and why is it little used in some countries which, in other ways, have highly developed professional archaeology services? There are, often cheaper, alternatives for archaeological survey. Yet since the performance of different survey methods has rarely been studied systematically there is no objective basis on which to test which choices best meet archaeologists' needs. Moreover the geophysicists' understandable desire to present successful rather than unsuccessful surveys, and to discuss resultsin geophysicalrather than archaeologicalterms, makes such assessment more difficult. Thus although geophysical surveyors have strong grounds to claim that their work benefits archaeology, those who pay for survey can reasonably ask that these benefits be clarified, quantified where possible, and compared with alternatives, such as aerial photography or surface artefact survey, so that they can make the best choices about its use. This paper summarizes a study of all the geophysical surveys carried out in the northwest of England before 2006. The study assessed the performance of geophysical surveys in archaeological terms and was centred on a detailed analysis of 35 sites for which there is good comparative excavation data or whichhave particularlyillustrative casehistories.The study concludesthat, despite the doubts in this area, geophysics serves archaeologists well and provides greater certainty in both identifying where sites exist and where they do not exist than has been generallyassumed.It therefore deserves more extensive and more rational use.Geophysics is, however, being underused because, although abundant, surveys are formulaic and commercial surveyors are rarely able to fit methodologies to sites by a programme of reflective project development.Thus, although currently effective, geophysics might be even more so if surveyors had the time and resources to do this and to answer more complexand specific questions.The paperconsidershow these findingsrelate to the use ofgeophysical survey in other countries.