IBM (Portugal)

This study is the first known large-scale research specifically examining the 60-hour workweek hypothesis, which proposes that the ideal for intact households with children is for both parents to participate in paid employment but with the combinedwork hours of the mother and the father not to exceed 60 hours per week. Three groups of married couples with children are compared: full-time/full-time; at least one partner part-time (60-hour); and full-time/not employed. The relationship between these arrangements and eightwork and family outcomes—job satisfaction, job flexibility, job performance, organizational commitment, work-family fit, work-to-family conflict, family-to-work conflict, and family satisfaction—is examined. The sample is from International Business Machines Corporation ( N= 3,097) and consists mostly of employees in professional positions. Sixty-hour couples report significantly greater job flexibility, improved workfamily fit, enhanced family satisfaction, and lesswork-to-family conflict. Results are discussed as they relate to the recent trend for professional mothers to leave theworkplace.

Paste backfill technology has become increasingly relevant to the mining industry, providing not only a safe way for the underground disposal of tailings but also essential advantages for ground stabilization and optimized ore recovery. Yield stress is among the most important rheological properties of paste backfill, which determines its transportability during long distances. Measurement of yield stress is a challenging and complex task, given the high number of variable factors. So far, no standard procedures and methods have been established for measuring the rheological properties of paste backfill, in particular yield stress. This experimental work consists of the development of an accurate laboratory testing programme that will allow for the evaluation, measurement and understanding of rheological yield stress of paste fill. For this study, tailings from Zinkgruvan (Sweden) and Neves-Corvo (Portugal) mines were analysed. A series of laboratorial tests were conducted including the following test procedures: slump, flow table spread, fall cone and the vane technique (applied using a viscometer and a rheometer). The correlations between the yield stress, measured by vane technique and other test methods, were obtained from the test results. Additionally, preliminary conclusions were drawn regarding the influence of physical properties of tailings (particle size distribution, dry content, uniformity coefficient and coefficient of gradation) on yield stress by a statistical study using multiple linear regression models. The fall cone test has resulted in the best correlation measurement of dry content and of yield stress measurements using the viscometer and rheometer. Being a simple, inexpensive, and expedited method for paste yield stress measurements, it is considered effective for quality control and/or rapid on-site measurements of paste fill.

With the challenges of VLSI forever pressing the designer to increase productivity while remaining at a constant resource level, the market place has been inundated with an onslaught of front-end design tools to ease the designer's current burdens. The pervasiveness of these new design tools in the engineer's environment has, in actuality, fallen far shy of expectations. This paper will attempt to analyze the reasons why the ideals of a complete turnkey system, as presented at conferences, and the reality of the current systems, as actually seen by the designer, are still divergent.