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Describes the use of the decomposition method for solving the differential system governing the interaction between two species, based on the Lotka‐Volterra model. The Alienor method is applied for identifying the parameters of the model, which are the intrinsic rates of natural increase of the different species and their interaction coefficients.

Using the ALIENOR transformation avoids the problem of determining the first and second derivatives of the objective functional f when using the multidimensional bissection method. Knowledge of the Lipschitzian constant C is generally sufficient for using this method, and therefore for determining the global maximum of f defined on a compact set.

Suggests a unidimensional model for determining the analytical solution of the diffusion of antibodies in tumours. By using the Alienor technique, identifies the parameters characterizing this diffusion and calculates the interval between steps.

This study aims to evaluate the quality of an on-campus medical facility at a leading university.

Published literature was consulted to review knowledge areas on the usability and quality performance requirements of healthcare facilities. Quality indicators were, thus, developed from the extant literature and verified by a walkthrough of a case study medical facility. Then, a quality assessment survey was developed and administered to obtain feedback from users of the medical facility. Additionally, a focus group meeting was conducted to obtain more qualitative feedback on the issues identified through the questionnaire survey.

The results show that users were generally satisfied with the identified evaluation categories, indicating moderate quality. Potential quality issues related to the exterior and interior finishes, furniture and the indoor air were noted through focus group meetings. The study proposed a number of recommendations to enhance the design quality of the medical center.

The importance of this study is evident in the fact that the quality of healthcare facilities has a direct link to the performance and overall well-being of its intended users, as well as the overall success of its host organization. The study demonstrates the value of users' feedback on the quality of a built facility. It re-emphasizes the point that buildings can only be judged to be of high quality if the users' are highly satisfied.

Shows how a hi‐dimensional optimisation problem with linear inequalities constraints is converted into a global optimisation problem of one bounded variable function f*. Then, we reduce the feasible region f* before seeking its global optimum.

Purpose – Islam's environmental ethic has been largely ignored by Western activists. This chapter attempts to fill this void by providing an overview of Islam's environmental values and by exploring how this is related to behavior.

Design/methodology/approach – The study reports on data collected from a national survey of American Muslim women.

Findings – Results show that Muslim women living in the United States participate in a wide variety of outdoor recreation activities. They also engage in pro-environmental behaviors with frequencies similar to those of the general population. Yet as a group, Muslims are not taking action on environmental issues. This shows an untapped potential for mosques to build upon Islam's existing environmental ethic and develop an environmental agenda that incorporates the unique strengths of this American multi-ethnic, multiracial community.

Originality/value – This is one of the few studies to study Muslim environmentalism. It is also unique for its focus on Muslim women.

This study aims to identify the effect of selected agro-industrial factors associated with the olive oil phenolic composition, total phenolic content (TPC), antioxidant capacity and oxidative stability index (OSI). The study also aims to assess the relationship between the quality indices and each of the individual phenol, TPC, antioxidant capacity and OSI.

Olive oil samples (n=108) were collected from Lebanese northern (Akkar and Zgharta-Koura) and southern (Hasbaya and Jezzine) regions, at three harvesting times (early, intermediate, late) and using different types of mills (traditional, sinolea, two- and three-phase decanters). The samples were analyzed using official standard methods.

The highest TPC, antioxidant capacity and OSI were obtained in early harvested olive oil, using two-phase decanters for TPC and three-phase decanters for antioxidant capacity and OSI. A prediction model, including the free acidity, K232, TPC, C18:2, C18:0, tyrosol and apigenin, was obtained; it allowed to predict very highly significantly the OSI (p < 0.001). Apigenin, tyrosol and C18:2 recorded the highest standardized coefficients (ß^+= 0.35) and thus had the highest influence on OSI. As per antioxidant capacity of olive oil, another very highly statistically significant prediction model was constructed (p < 0.001). It included only two predictors, oleacein and TPC, with the latter having the most influence (ß^+= 0.37).

The overall results highlighted the detrimental effects of agro-industrial factors on olive oil chemical composition, and this contributes significantly to improve olive oil’s quality and characteristics, which are important for the product economical and nutritional values.

The reducing transformation and global optimization technique called Alienor has been developed in the 1980s by Cherruault and Guillez. These methods are based on the approximating properties of α ‐dense curves. The aim of this work is to give a very large class of functions generating α ‐dense curves in a hyper‐rectangle of Rⁿ.

Introduces new reducing transformation which allows expression of n variables in function of a single one. This allows densification of the space Rⁿ and the quality of the densification can be estimated. Applications to global optimization problems lead to the optimization of one variable function and the time of calculation for obtaining a global optimum can be estimated.

Most of the known optimization methods for a given continuous function f defined on a compact set H = Π_i=1,..,n[a_i,b_i] require strong conditions on f. In the early 1980s, Cherruault proposed a method, called ALIENOR which was able to reduce the multidimensional optimization problem to another one‐dimensional optimization: the optimization of the restriction f_h^* of f to some adequate α‐dense curve h into the domain H. The characterization, the generation of such curves as well as the theoretic calculation times associated with them, have been studied previously by the authors. Their consequences and the general problem concerning the error in the approximation to global minimum of f and the minimization of the error itself, that such reduction produces, will be the subject of this paper.