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The purpose of this study is to evaluate a hybrid system as a decision support model to assist with the auditor's going-concern assessment. The going-concern assessment is often an unstructured decision that involves the use of both qualitative and quantitative information. An expert system that predicts the going-concern decision has been developed in consultation with partners at three of the Big Five accounting firms. This system is combined with a statistical model that predicts bankruptcy, as a component of the auditor's decision, to form a hybrid system. The hybrid system, because it combines the use of quantitative and qualitative information, has the potential for better prediction accuracy than either the expert system or statistical model predicting separately. In addition, testing of the system provides some insight into the characteristics of firms that experience problems, but do not necessarily receive a goingconcern modification. Further investigation into those firms that have problems could reveal factors that may be incorporated into decision support systems for auditors, in order to improve accuracy and reliability of these decision tools.

Successive nuclear material balances form a time series of often autocorrelated observations. Significiant deviations from the underlying in-control process model or time series pattern, i.e., outliers, indicate an adverse process change or out-of-control situation relative to the model. This paper uses these ideas to demonstrate a method for detecting nuclear material losses earlier than currently used models and thus helps to alleviate a problem which is growing to world crisis proportions. The process control capabilities of these methods were successfully tested on two autocorrelated data sets of nuclear material balances with known removals. These algorithms should be of assistance to the nuclear engineer involved in process control. A. INTRODUCTIONIn Nuclear Materials Accounting the goal is to accurately discover material losses (e.g., leakage or theft) as early as possible to minimize the threat to life and property. Despite some progress, control against leakage, theft, or loss of radioactive material has continued to be a problem. International terrorist activity and the desire of renegade nations to become nuclear powers make the threat of theft very real. Only recently it was discovered that controls for weapon grade nuclear materials are grossly deficient in the former Soviet Union as evidenced by several instances of stolen plutonium and uranium being found in Germany.1 Possible scenarios regarding the theft of weapons grade material are frightening.