MOST NOTEWORTHY: Orbitz Worldwide (OWW), Agilent (A), National Instruments (NATI) and Ametek (AME) were today's noteworthy initiations:

• Orbitz Worldwide (NYSE: OWW) was initiated by a host of firms today:
  
• Thomas Weisel and Morgan Stanley started Orbitz with an Overweight rating.
  
• Pacific Crest and Piper Jaffray started shares with Overweight ratings, and $18 and $16 targets, respectively.
  
• Stifel initiated Orbitz with a Buy rating and $16 target, while JP Morgan started shares with a Neutral rating.

• Citigroup finds the valuation of Agilent (NYSE: A) attractive at current levels and started shares with a Buy rating, They expect a recovery in the company's Electronic Measurement business to drive shares to $43.

• Citigroup initiated National Instruments (NASDAQ: NATI) with a Hold rating and $40 target, saying that shares could suffer if PMI decelerates in 3Q07 or negatively inflects in 1Q08.

• Ametek (NYSE: AME) is is CIBC's top pick in the mid-cap Industrial Diversified area, due to the company's attractive asset portfolio and growth opportunities. CIBC initiated Ametek with a Sector Outperformer rating and $45 target...

OTHER INITIATIONS:

• Jefferies initiated WNS Holdings (NYSE: WNS) with a Hold rating.

• Cuisine Solutions (AMEX: FZN) was initiated with a Buy rating at BB&T.

• Gabelli initiated Interpublic Group (AMEX: IPG) with a Buy rating and $19 target.

• Ferris Baker Watts initiated DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) with a Buy rating and $29.50 target.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

Imagine my satisfaction when reading the recent issue of Motion Systems Design and find yet another industrial reference to the LEGO Group, Billund, Denmark. Being that my first real engineering projects were built using LEGOS as a boy, it is very pleasing to me that it's kept pace with the baby boomer generation and has followed us to work.

Mindstorms NXT by the LEGO Group provides a toolkit interface for LabView users, allowing them to use drag and drop graphical programing by National Instruments Corp (NASDAQ:NATI) out of Austin, Texas, to create virtual instrumentation for utilization in operating and controlling the Mindstorms NXT robotics platform. While the toolkit is intended to facilitate advanced user's interaction with NXT robotics, the maker states that its design may be successfully utilized by children as young as ten years old.

National Instruments states in a press release issued in December: "Once users download a LabVIEW program to the NXT, they can use the toolkit to interact with the NXT robot while a program is running." The toolkit is designed and intended for use with LabVIEW versions 7.1, 8.0 and 8.20.

National Instruments is a designer and manufacturer of hardware and programming environments for utilization in the testing, observation and control of a wide variety of physical attributes such as pressure, heat and electrical current flow. Additionally, N.I. provides test management software applications for use in industrial systems analysis. National Instruments may be considered for the custom design of testing regimens to best capture and exploit any manner of in house, statistical process control (SPC) testing and functionality programs.

National Instruments stock closed at $26.67 on 02-16-07 at about double its average volume. NATI's 52-week high of $34.14 was set on 04-21-06, and its 52-week low of $24.41 was set on 07-18-06. National Instruments recorded EPS of $1.06 for fiscal 2006 and pays a quarterly dividend of 7 cents.