WLAN Security Processor

A novel wireless local area network (WLAN) security processor is described in this paper. It is designed to offload security encapsulation processing from the host microprocessor in an IEEE 802.11i compliant medium access control layer to a programmable hardware accelerator. The unique design, which comprises dedicated cryptographic instructions and hardware coprocessors, is capable of performing wired equivalent privacy, temporal key integrity protocol, counter mode with cipher block chaining message authentication code protocol, and wireless robust authentication protocol. Existing solutions to wireless security have been implemented on hardware devices and target specific WLAN protocols whereas the programmable security processor proposed in this paper provides support for all WLAN protocols and thus, can offer backwards compatibility as well as future upgrade ability as standards evolve. It provides this additional functionality while still achieving equivalent throughput rates to existing architectures. © 2006 IEEE.

Transmit and receive filter design for OFDM based WLAN systems

We analyze the effect of different pulse shaping filters on the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless local area network (LAN) systems in this paper. In particular, the performances of the square root raised cosine (RRC) pulses with different rolloff factors are evaluated and compared. This work provides some guidances on how to choose RRC pulses in practical WLAN systems, e.g., the selection of rolloff factor, truncation length, oversampling rate, quantization levels, etc.

Tri-Band HIS Backed Spiral Antenna for Wireless LAN Applications

This study reports the performance of an Archimedean spiral antenna, which exhibits unidirectional circularly polarized radiation patterns with a peak gain >8 dBic in the lower (2.4–2.485 GHz) and upper (5.15–5.35 and 5.725–5.875 GHz) Wireless local area network frequency bands. The required backlobe suppression and impedance match are obtained by placing a multiresonant high impedance surface (HIS) in close proximity to the radiating aperture. Simulated and measured radiation patterns are shown at the center frequency of all three channels and a comparison of the key performance metrics is made with free space and metal backed antenna arrangements to demonstrate the enhancements which are attributed to the HIS reflector.

Boys' underachievement, educational aspirations and constructions of locality

Over recent years the moral panic that has surrounded 'boys' underachievement' has tended to encourage crude and essentialist comparisons between all boys and all girls and to eclipse the continuing and more profound effects on educational achievement exerted by social class and 'race'/ethnicity. While there are differences in educational achievement between working class boys and girls, these differences are relatively minor when comparing the overall achievement levels of working class children with those from higher, professional social class backgrounds. This paper argues that a need exists therefore for researchers to fully contextualise the gender differences that exist in educational achievement within the over-riding contexts provided by social class and 'race'/ethnicity. The paper provides an example of how this can be done through a case study of 11-year-old children from a Catholic, working class area in Belfast. The paper shows how the children's general educational aspirations are significantly mediated by their experiences of the local area in which they live. However, the way in which the children come to experience and construct a sense of locality differs between the boys and girls and this, it is argued, helps to explain the more positive educational aspirations held by some of the girls compared to the boys. The paper concludes by considering the relevance of locality for understanding its effects on educational aspirations among other working class and/or minority ethnic communities.

Individual factors and perceived community characteristics in relation to mental health and mental well-being

Background
It has been argued that though correlated with mental health, mental well-being is a distinct entity. Despite the wealth of literature on mental health, less is known about mental well-being. Mental health is something experienced by individuals, whereas mental well-being can be assessed at the population level. Accordingly it is important to differentiate the individual and population level factors (environmental and social) that could be associated with mental health and well-being, and as people living in deprived areas have a higher prevalence of poor mental health, these relationships should be compared across different levels of neighbourhood deprivation.

Methods
A cross-sectional representative random sample of 1,209 adults from 62 Super Output Areas (SOAs) in Belfast, Northern Ireland (Feb 2010 – Jan 2011) were recruited in the PARC Study. Interview-administered questionnaires recorded data on socio-demographic characteristics, health-related behaviours, individual social capital, self-rated health, mental health (SF-8) and mental well-being (WEMWBS). Multi-variable linear regression analyses, with inclusion of clustering by SOAs, were used to explore the associations between individual and perceived community characteristics and mental health and mental well-being, and to investigate how these associations differed by the level of neighbourhood deprivation.

Results
Thirty-eight and 30 % of variability in the measures of mental well-being and mental health, respectively, could be explained by individual factors and the perceived community characteristics. In the total sample and stratified by neighbourhood deprivation, age, marital status and self-rated health were associated with both mental health and well-being, with the ‘social connections’ and local area satisfaction elements of social capital also emerging as explanatory variables. An increase of +1 in EQ-5D-3 L was associated with +1SD of the population mean in both mental health and well-being. Similarly, a change from ‘very dissatisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’ for local area satisfaction would result in +8.75 for mental well-being, but only in the more affluent of areas.

Conclusions
Self-rated health was associated with both mental health and mental well-being. Of the individual social capital explanatory variables, ‘social connections’ was more important for mental well-being. Although similarities in the explanatory variables of mental health and mental well-being exist, socio-ecological interventions designed to improve them may not have equivalent impacts in rich and poor neighbourhoods.

Largest Matching Areas for Illumination and Occlusion Robust Face Recognition

In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to face recognition which simultaneously tackles three combined challenges: 1) uneven illumination; 2) partial occlusion; and 3) limited training data. The new approach performs lighting normalization, occlusion de-emphasis and finally face recognition, based on finding the largest matching area (LMA) at each point on the face, as opposed to traditional fixed-size local area-based approaches. Robustness is achieved with novel approaches for feature extraction, LMA-based face image comparison and unseen data modeling. On the extended YaleB and AR face databases for face identification, our method using only a single training image per person, outperforms other methods using a single training image, and matches or exceeds methods which require multiple training images. On the labeled faces in the wild face verification database, our method outperforms comparable unsupervised methods. We also show that the new method performs competitively even when the training images are corrupted.

Acoustic oceanographic buoy telemetry system: an ‘advanced’ sonobuoy that meets acoustic rapid environmental assessment requirements

The Acoustic Oceanographic Buoy (AOB) Telemetry System has been designed to meet acoustic rapid environmental assessment requirements. It uses a standard institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) to integrate the air radio network (RaN) and a hydrophone array and acoustic source to integrate the underwater acoustic network (AcN). It offers advantages including local data storage, dedicated signal processing, and global positioning system (GPS) timing and localization. The AOB can also be integrated with other similar systems, due to its WLAN transceivers, to form a flexible network and perform on-line high speed data transmissions. The AOB is a reusable system that requires less maintenance and can also work as a salt-water plug-and-play system at sea as it is designed to operate in free drifting mode. The AOB is also suitable for performing distributed digital signal processing tasks due to its digital signal processor facility.

South Carolina’s employment situation-January 2014

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.

South Carolina’s employment situation-February 2014

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.

South Carolina’s employment situation-March 2014

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.

South Carolina’s employment situation-April 2014

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.

South Carolina's employment situation-December 2014

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.

South Carolina's employment situation-January 2015

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.

South Carolina's employment situation-May 2015

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.

South Carolina's employment situation-June 2015

The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce publishes news releases with monthly statistics about the employment situation of the state, including unemployment rate, employment by industry, and local area unemployment by county and MSA.