Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to provide library professionals with insights into students' fake news judgment and the importance of teaching media and information literacy, not as an option but as a core educational requirement. Design/methodology/approach-Qualtrics was used to collect the study data. Students completed a set of tasks designed in the form of a survey that entailed verifying whether news, stories, images and news sources were real, fake, dubious or trustworthy. Statistical tests were used to asses whether their responses depended on criteria, such as faculty and gender. Findings-No significant relationship exists between the students' responses and variables, such as gender, student category, fact-checking and source of information. The findings reveal that students' ability to identify the authoritativeness of information is dependent on the faculty in which they are enrolled. Originality/value-This paper reports the first known attempt in Lebanon to measure students' ability in distinguishing fake from real news. The results of this paper can be used by library professionals, particularly in Lebanon, to convey the importance of teaching and embedding media and information literacy into their curriculum.

In the past decade, data science became trendy and in-demand due to the necessity to capture, process, maintain, analyze and communicate data. Multiple regressions and artificial neural networks are both used for the analysis and handling of data. This work explores the use of meta-heuristic optimization to find optimal regression kernel for data fitting. It is shown that optimizing the regression kernel improve both the fitting and predictive ability of the regression. For instance, Tabu-search optimization is used to find the best least-squares regression kernel for different applications of buckling of straight columns and artificially generated data. Four independent parameters were used as input and a large pool of monomial search domain is initially considered. Different input parameters are also tested and the benefits of using of independent input parameters is shown.

A cross-sectional study on a pool of undergraduate smokers and nonsmokers (n = 200) was randomly selected from Notre Dame University, Lebanon. The study design is based on a questionnaire about the students' smoking record exposure, cotinine saliva levels, and ventilatory lung function parameters. Despite the nonsmoking policies that have been recently established by universities, diffused smoking stations in proximity to classes and offices still exist, at least in the MENA region. Such an environment still imposes a remarkable effect on certain lung health parameters of nonsmokers exhibiting similar exhaled air per second (FEV1) to smokers with a P value = 0.558 and normal flow of air (TV) with a P value = 0.153. However, the maximum amount of air held in the lungs remained different with respect to sex and smoking status. These results imply a poor performance of nonsmokers mimicking partially the lung health parameters of smokers. It remains a pressing issue to increase awareness concerning the debilitating effects of secondhand smoking.

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