Does Maya 7 ultimate have LOD/parametric modeling capabilities installed?

I have two questions:

My glow effects (called within the blinn shader node) flicker over time in my animation. I've read somewhere that it's due to autoexposure being on. So, how do I turn it off?...

I'm having some problems with transparency/raytracing/backface culling.

First, if I have a paint effect, let's say, on a NURBS surface,
it won't render behind a transparent blinn mat'l unless...