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THE several hundred members who heard the thought‐provoking addresses delivered at the Harrogate conference of the British Institute of Management recently must have returned stimulated by much that was said. At the outset the American Ambassador reminded them that the big business tended to suffer from a certain complacency because it thought that operating efficiency could allow it to ignore the whips and spurs of competition, although he did not advocate cutting up the leviathans to nourish a lot of little fish for the sake of seeing them fight. Indeed, he thought the growth of mass markets meant that the creation of business organisations commensurate with catering for them was inevitable.

Mobile devices are generally designed for use in low‐bandwidth environments and therefore have limited ability to handle e‐mail attachments. As such, these devices often have to be complemented by using a type of electronic agents, known as attachment handling agents (AHAs), which convert the contents of the attachments to a bandwidth‐conserving text‐form that is then sent to the mobile device for viewing. The purpose of this study is to assess whether AHA usage would improve an individual employee’s perceived work‐performance, measured by a multidimensional set of factors. The participants in the survey are employees at an F1000 Canadian company, all of whom have adopted a mobile communication device. Results indicate that AHA usage has a positive impact on productivity and customer satisfaction.

Delay and power dissipation are the two major design constraints in very large scale integration (VLSI) circuits. These arise due to millions of active devices and interconnections connecting this gigantic number of devices on the chip. Important technique of repeater insertion in long interconnections to reduce delay in VLSI circuits has been reported during the last two decades. This paper deals with delay, power dissipation and the role of voltage‐scaling in repeaters loaded long interconnects in VLSI circuits for low power environment.

Trade off between delay and power dissipation in repeaters inserted long interconnects has been reviewed here with a bibliographic survey. SPICE simulations have been used to validate the findings.

Optimum number of uniform sized CMOS repeaters inserted in long interconnects, lead to delay minimization. Voltage‐scaling is highly effective in reduction of power dissipation in repeaters loaded long interconnects. The new finding given here is that optimum number of repeaters required for delay minimization decreases with voltage‐scaling. This leads to area and further power saving.

The bibliographic survey needs to be revised in future, taking the various other aspects of VLSI interconnects viz. noise, cross talk extra into account.

The paper is of high significance in VLSI design and low‐power high‐speed applications. It is also valuable for new researchers in this emerging field.

To study the breakdown (MI) mechanism in the sub‐micron MOSFET device.

Second‐order Poisson's differential equation is solved for suitable boundary condition to find the electric field expression for the sub‐micron devices. With the help of the electric field expression the exact relation for multiplication factor is derived, and then the equation for breakdown voltage has been generated.

This research paper provides the following findings: by controlling oxide thickness, junction depth and drain voltage, the breakdown can be easily controlled in the sub‐micron device; multiplication factor is not only affected by maximum field but also due to critical field; for very low gate voltage, the offset voltage mainly governs the breakdown; the breakdown voltage increases continuously as the channel length increases. It means, for larger channel length the breakdown will occur at high drain voltage.

This paper is based on the assumption that the electric field along the channel is independent of the junction depth (although not correct) and varying linearly from zero to E_sat.

The paper derived the exact expression of the multiplication factor. Also discusses that for MI mode of breakdown, the breakdown voltage increases slowly with the gate voltage and approximated by drain saturation voltage plus offset voltage.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the safety performance measurement of belt conveyor systems.

A structural methodology of graph theory and matrix approach is used for developing a framework for safety performance measurement of belt conveyor systems.

The development of a framework for safety performance measurement of belt conveyor systems is essential for ensuring plant safety. For this, safety performance factors, including design and operating contextual factors of belt conveyor systems, are identified. The factors along with their interrelations are modeled using digraph. An equivalent matrix of the digraph provided safety performance function (SPF) of belt conveyor systems, leading to the development of a safety performance index (SPI).

The developed framework will enable the designers for evaluating and comparing alternative designs of conveyor systems from the safety viewpoint. The plant operators can make inferences from the SPI to identify the weak contextual factors in the plant and develop action plans for its mitigation.

The paper is novel and employs graph theory and matrix approach for safety performance measurement. The methodology helps in the quantitative evaluation of the safety performance of belt conveyor systems.

The lack of conceptual approaches for organizing and expressing capabilities, usage and impact of intelligent machines (IMs) in work settings is an obstacle to moving beyond isolated case examples, domain-specific studies, 2 × 2 frameworks and expert opinion in discussions of IMs and work. This paper's purpose is to illuminate many issues that often are not addressed directly in research, practice or punditry related to IMs. It pursues that purpose by presenting an integrated approach for identifying and organizing important aspects of analysis and evaluation related to IMs in work settings. 

This paper integrates previously published ideas related to work systems (WSs), smart devices and systems, facets of work, roles and responsibilities of information systems, interactions between people and machines and a range of criteria for evaluating system performance.

Eight principles outline a straightforward and flexible approach for analyzing and evaluating IMs and the WSs that use them. Those principles are based on the above ideas.

This paper provides a novel approach for identifying design choices for situated use of IMs. The breadth, depth and integration of this approach address a gap in existing literature, which rarely aspires to this paper’s thoroughness in combining ideas that support the description, analysis, design and evaluation of situated uses of IMs.

Aggressive environments that enhance indoor corrosion in industrial plants decrease the yielding of electronic equipment, causing electrical failures. The purpose of the present paper is to evaluate corrosion rates in metals used in electronic devices as a function of temperature, humidity and the concentrations of some air pollutants in order to predict the optimal conditions preventing or minimizing corrosion.

Atmospheric pollutants mainly sulphur oxides, penetrating through small crevices and holes into electronic plants in combination with climatic factors such as humidity and heat, promote corrosion. The corrosion rate of the five most used metals in the electronics industry: carbon steel, copper, nickel, silver, and tin, were studied gravimetrically as a function of variations in humidity, temperature and air pollutant concentrations from 2003 to 2005. The samples were exposed in an instrumented boot to indoor conditions and gravimetric measurements were performed together with measurements of the above‐mentioned parameters. Mathematical simulation applying Math Lab software was carried out as well. The ternary diagrams for pollutants, temperature and relative humidity were applied as a useful tool to correlate these parameters in indoor conditions with the corrosion rate of metals applied in the electronics industry.

The obtained results have shown that the presence of even small concentrations of air pollutants promoted corrosion processes when time of wetness conditions were reached.

The study was carried out in order to minimize the corrosion losses of the electronic plants situated especially in Mexicali City located on a semi‐desert zone in the Northwest of Mexico.

This paper establishes the relationship of variations of pollutants concentration, temperature and the relative humidity with the corrosion rate of metals in indoor conditions in the electronics industry located in the semi‐arid zone of Mexicali. Design was characterized and simulated using the MathLab software.

This paper sets out to encompass a comparative analysis of news reports and official police records of TASER deployments from 2002 to 2005.

The methodology involves a content analysis of all LexisNexis and New York Times articles involving police use of the TASER during the study period (n = 353). Regional (New York Times) and national (LexisNexis) news reports describing police use of the TASER are compared with police reports of all TASER deployments by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) during the same timeframe (n = 375).

Descriptive statistics and logistic regression are used to compare the data sources with respect to: the circumstances in which the weapon is deployed; the characteristics of the suspects involved in the TASER incidents; and the significant predictors of continued suspect resistance and repeated use of the TASER by an officer.

The paper examines official police records on TASER deployments from one police agency. This limits the ability to generalize the research findings to other police agencies that have adopted different practices and policies regulating the deployment of CEDs. Additionally, the content analysis includes only articles in the mainstream print media.

The paper concludes with a discussion about some myths associated with news reports on police use of the TASER, and their potential impact on both public perception and police practices.

To date, research has not systematically compared media representations of the TASER with official reports on police deployments of the weapon. That is the focus of this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to present the use of a free code computational tool, Patent2net, in the search of patents for the implementation of distance learning aimed at Continuing Medical Education.

This technical report is based on the extraction, organization and availability, in the format of graphs and dynamic tables, and also based on information in other patents on the subject, made available in the Espacenet database.

As a result, it was possible to identify a Chinese patent, free for reproduction in Brazil, which describes an e-learning system that simulates 3D scenarios for training nursing teams.

The paper has used one unique patent database, but containing more than 100m documents.

The selected patent can contribute to the improvement of care and behavioral techniques of the health professionals.

The training of health professionals can improve the public and supplementary health systems.

This is the first paper in that de technometric analisys of patents was used to solve a problem regarding the training of health professionals.