Fall 2007, Mendez ‘96 leads international baseball in a new direction with Dominican Republic Sports and Education Academy

Harold Mendez earned his B.S. in Kinesiology and International Affairs at UNH in 1996. Three years later he graduated with a Doctorate/J.D. from the Temple University School of Law. Mendez lives in New York City

Strategies for resolving security and interference issues in 802.11 wireless computer networking : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Engineering in Computer Systems Engineering at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis presents the outcomes of the research and development of strategies to improve 802.11 wireless networking security, reduce interference, and investigation into the trends of home users in the city limits of Palmerston North, New Zealand. The main contributions of the research are several types of improvement strategies that reduce interference, add additional layers of security to 802.11, and reports on wireless trends. The thesis begins with an overview of the current 802.11 security protocols and related issues. The current state of the 802.11 security is presented along with an assessment of efficacy of 802.11. Lastly, the motivations for improving security and reducing interference are explained. The main improvement presented within the thesis is that of client filtering. The operation of filtering is explained. Using methods from other filtering protocols its shown that how an additional layer of security can be added to 802.11. Following this, more improvements are shown that can be used with or without client filtering. The use of smart aerials, wizards and frequency selective materials is discussed and the advantages and disadvantages of each are highlighted, as well as the aspects and issues of implementing the strategies on a home personal computer based platform are presented. This is followed by a description of the experiments conducted into attenuation and direction sensing. The results of the experiments are presented along with the discussion. Finally, conclusions about the improvements are detailed and the results shown, in addition to research conducted on the trends of 802.11 users to further highlight the need for this research

Faint blue objects on the Hubble Deep Field North & South as possible nearby old halo white dwarfs

Using data derived from the deepest and finest angular resolution images of the universe yet acquired by astronomers at optical wavelengths using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in two postage-stamp sections of the sky (Williams et al. 1996a,b), plus simple geometrical and scaling arguments, we demonstrate that the faint blue population of point-source objects detected on those two fields (M\'endez et al. 1996) could actually be ancient halo white dwarfs at distances closer than about 2 kpc from the Sun. This finding has profound implications, as the mass density of the detected objects would account for about half of the missing dark matter in the Milky-Way (Bahcall and Soneira 1980), thus solving one of the most controversial issues of modern astrophysics (Trimble 1987, Ashman 1992). The existence of these faint blue objects points to a very large mass locked into ancient halo white dwarfs. Our estimate indicates that they could account for as much as half of the dark matter in our Galaxy, confirming the suggestions of the MACHO microlensing experiment (Alcock et al. 1997). Because of the importance of this discovery, deep follow-up observations with HST within the next two years would be needed to determine more accurately the kinematics (tangential motions) for these faint blue old white dwarfs.Comment: Accepted for publication on The Astrophysical Journal, Part 1. 8 pages (AAS Latex macros V4.0), 1 B&W postscript figure, 2 color postscript figure

Does Imprisonment Have an Effect on Crime Rates?

Since the 1790s, prisons in the United States were built with the means of reducing crime rates through the usage of incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. However, while it may seem intuitive to assume that higher incarceration rates yield lower crime rates, it is not regularly the case. Using the 2016 States dataset, I examine the effects of incarceration rates and its influence on crime rates in the United States; I suggest that states with higher incarceration rates will have higher crime rates than states with lower incarceration rates. Therefore, the evidence concludes states with high incarceration rates generate higher rates of violent, murder, property, and burglary crime rates than states with lower incarceration rates. However, the impact is relatively low. Conclusively, while there is a positive relationship between incarceration rates and crimes rates, the correlation is not strong nor consistent enough to make a solid argument; rather, the data suggest other factors, such as the education, per capita income and unemployment rate, are contributors to the rise of crime, thus, further research needs to be taken into consideration because incarceration rates cannot be the sole explanation as to why there is an increase of crime rates throughout the United States