MOTIVATION: Immunoglobulin heavy chain (IGH) genes in mature B lymphocytes are the result of recombination of IGHV, IGHD and IGHJ germline genes, followed by somatic mutation. The correct identification of the germline genes that make up a variable VH domain is essential to our understanding of the process of antibody diversity generation as well as to clinical investigations of some leukaemias and lymphomas. RESULTS: We have developed iHMMune-align, an alignment program that uses a hidden Markov model (HMM) to model the processes involved in human IGH gene rearrangement and maturation. The performance of iHMMune-align was compared to that of other immunoglobulin gene alignment utilities using both clonally related and randomly selected IGH sequences. This evaluation suggests that iHMMune-align provides a more accurate identification of component germline genes than other currently available IGH gene characterization programs. AVAILABILITY: iHMMune-align cross-platform Java executable and web interface are freely available to academic users and can be accessed at http://www.emi.unsw.edu.au/~ihmmune/.

Relevant information known to be available may go unused in research and development because of information overload or because its use is excluded by deliberate policy. Exclusion by policy shows that R&D is not, and does not aim at always being, efficient in the sense of fully reflecting all available relevant information. It may still be efficient relative to chosen strategies of information use and non-use. Overload may be a sign of strategic error, or may be accepted as routine and normal. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

If communication in research and development is efficient, then the current cognitive situation in any specialty should fully reflect all available relevant information. Available evidence suggests that communication in R & D is not in that sense efficient, and a priori arguments seem to show that it could not be. But we try to show that the evidence and arguments are inconclusive, and that the question of efficiency is an open one. It is also one which information science has an interest in pursuing. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Abstract Utility‐theoretic indexing as presented by Cooper requires prediction of the consequences of each indexing decision. Cooper appears to think that this is the most rational way of indexing and can be known a priori to be preferable to alternatives. But its practical success is not guaranteed in advance; its claim to superior rationality rests only on its appeal to the consequences of decisions. One may rationally choose either individual actions or rules and policies for action: the requirements of rationality do not exclude action according to nonpredictive rules. Areas of choice are known in which predictive rules are inferior to nonpredictive rules. If Cooper's rule is practically superior to others, this cannot be known without appeal to experience.