This thesis deals with illegal distribution of programs. It describes methods of licencing programs and ways their restrictions. It focuses on description basic tools and techniques used to program cracking. Farther this work describes structure of executables files on MS Windows. The work is completed with malware analysis for clarification techniques masking of code. This work is complemented by a demonstration application for program code masking.

Athletes in sports such as the gymnastics who perform the still rings cross position are disadvantaged due to a lack of objective and convenient measurement methods. The gymnastics "cross" is a held isometric strength position considered fundamental to all still rings athletes. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if two small force platforms (FPs) placed on supports to simulate a cross position could demonstrate the fidelity necessary to differentiate between athletes who could perform a cross from those who could not. Ten gymnasts (5 USA Gymnastics, Senior National Team, and 5 Age Group Level Gymnasts) agreed to participate. The five Senior National Team athletes were grouped as cross Performers; the Age Group Gymnasts could not successfully perform the cross position and were grouped as cross Non-Performers. The two small FPs were first tested for reliability and validity and were then used to obtain a force-time record of a simulated cross position. The simulated cross test consisted of standing between two small force platforms placed on top of large solid gymnastics spotting blocks. The gymnasts attempted to perform a cross position by placing their hands at the center of the FPs and pressing downward with sufficient force that they could remove the support of their feet from the floor. Force-time curves (100 Hz) were obtained and analyzed for the sum of peak and mean arm ground reaction forces. The summed arm forces, mean and peak, were compared to body weight to determine how close the gymnasts came to achieving forces equal to body weight and thus the ability to perform the cross. The mean and peak summed arm forces were able to statistically differentiate between athletes who could perform the cross from those who could not (p < 0.05). The force-time curves and small FPs showed sufficient fidelity to differentiate between Performer and Non-Performer groups. This experiment showed that small and inexpensive force platforms may serve as useful adjuncts to athlete performance measurement such as the gymnastics still rings cross.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Fall in recent years have become a potential threat to elder generation. It occurs because of side effects of medication, lack of physical activities, limited vision, and poor mobility. Looking at the problems faced by people and cost of treatment after falling, it is of high importance to develop a system that will help in detecting the fall before it occurs. Over the year's, this has influenced researchers to pursue the development to automatic fall detection system. However, much of existing work achieved a hardware system to detect pre and post fall patterns, the existing systems deficient in achieving low power consumption, user-friendly hardware implementation and high precision. Growth in medical devices can be seen in recent years. Today's medical devices aim to increase the life expectancy and comfort of human being. The systems are designed to be made reliable by improving the performance, optimizing the size and minimizing the energy consumption. For wearable technologies, power consumption is an important factor to be considered during system design. High power consumption decreases the battery life, which leads to poor comfortability. The purpose of this research is to develop a system with low power consumption to detect human falls before they happen. This research points towards the development of dependable and low power embedded system device with easy to wear capabilities and optimal sensor structure. In this work, we have developed a device using motion sensor to sense the subjects linear and angular velocity, communication sensor to send the fall related information to caretaker, and signal sensors to communicate and update user about device information. The designed system is triggered on interrupts from motion sensor. As soon as the system is triggered by an interrupt signal, users balanced and unbalanced states gets monitored. Once the unbalanced state is designated, the system signifies it as fall by setting a fall flag. The fall decision parameters; pitch, roll, complementary pitch, complementary roll, Signal Vector Magnitude (SVM), and Signal Magnitude Area (SMA) are layered to classify subject's different body posture. This helps the system to differentiate between activity of daily living (ADL) and fall. When the fall flag is set, the device sends important information like GPS location and fall type to caretaker. Early fall detection gives milliseconds of time to initiates the preventive measures. The system was designed, developed, and constructed. Near 100% sensitivity, 96% accuracy, and 95% specificity for fall detection were measured. The system can detect Front, Back, Side and Stair fall with consumption of 100_A (650_A with BLE consumption) in deep sleep mode, 6.5mA in active mode with no fall, and 14.5mA, of which 8.5 mA is consumed via the BLE when fall is declared in active mode. The power consumption was reduced because the integrated wireless communication devices consumed power only when the fall is triggered, giving the device a potential to communicate wirelessly.

Respiratory diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), are pathological conditions affecting the airways of the respiratory system. Currently more than 90 million people are suffering from respiratory diseases, and COPD is predicted to become the third leading cause of death in the world by 2030. Inhalation devices are commonly used in the treatment of respiratory diseases, where an aerosolised medication is delivered to the lungs of the patient via inhalation. The inspiratory flow rate is one of the main factors affecting the drug deposition in the lung, but is currently not controlled in most inhalation systems. The purpose of this master thesis is to design, manufacture and characterize a passive flow regulator device for portable inhalation systems. The designed prototype utilises the principle of a Venturi nozzle and membrane deflection to create a variable flow constriction, which acts as a negative feedback loop for the flow rate regulation. The flow regulator is based on a previously working device used for controlling exhalation flow rate in the range of 3 L/min. Experimental results are evaluated and compared to an analytical solution of the classical Venturi design. Additionally, membrane deflection is measured to analyse the physical behaviour of the membrane within the device. The flow regulating device is scaled up for inhalation flow rate ranges (&gt;30 L/min) and a flow rate sensor is constructed for the measurements. The passive control of flow rates using a deflecting membrane is deemed promising. However, further improvements of the scaled up model used for inhalation are necessary.

In today’s increasingly fast-moving, complex, and competitive world, the need for flexibility and creativity in teaching and learning is crucial. For that reason, innovative educational methods should be introduced. In education, web-based learning and portable devices are emerging as teaching and learning aids which can be efficient and effective tools. Learning use and identification of ornamental plants are the main objectives of the plant materials courses offered by Department of Plant and Soils Sciences at Mississippi State University (MSU). The professors, teaching assistants (TA), and students use the MSU gardens to study and identify ornamental plant species. This can be time consuming for both instructors and students. This research developed an automated web-based database system to deliver information on the ornamental plants in the MSU gardens. Apache, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop software were used to develop this application in the Windows environment and information about each plant was entered into the database. Plant locations were given by longitude and latitude coordinates and linked to Google maps. Quick Response codes(QR code) were created to directly access ornamental plant information at the field. This database may function as a virtual TA for the plant materials courses and as an information source for the public. Users can search the ornamental plant information and determine the location of plants using a computer or mobile device. Plant information can be retrieved from the field by a smart phone with a QR code reader. To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of developed automated system, an experimental study and questionnaire survey were designed.

With the increased requirements for personal portable power systems to be more capable and better matched to the load and the mission, manufacturers have become interested in improved methods for predicting the performance of these systems. Personal portable power systems must meet challenging energy and portability requirements that require better predictive knowledge of these systems in integrated systems with realistic mission scenarios. This thesis presents the development of a modeling and simulation environment to further expand and predict the needs and requirements of personal portable power systems. The proposed personal portable power system is a diverse system consisting of energy and power sources, controllers, a DC-DC converter, batteries, and loads. An outcome of this initial simulation environment development is a tool that can be used in future work to plan scenarios and tasks.

No description available.

While many people use USB flash drives, most do not protect their stored documents. Solutions for protecting flash drives exist but inherently limit functionality found in unprotected drives such as portability, usability, and the ability to share documents between multiple people. In addition, other drawbacks are introduced such as the possibility of losing access to protected documents if a password is lost. Assuming protecting portable documents is important, in order for people to be willing to protect their documents they should be required to make as few sacrifices in functionality as possible. We introduce KiwiVault, a USB flash drive encryption solution that retains more of the functionality found in unprotected storage devices than preceding solutions. In addition, this thesis reviews encryption solutions appropriate for portable data storage, reviews security components used by KiwiVault, discusses the design and implementation of KiwiVault, discusses a user study and threat analysis conducted to validate KiwiVault as a solution, and proposes future work.

Portable electric spas are typically the largest electrical load in homes that have one. In recent years, the California Energy Commission’s California code of regulations, Title 20 has been revised to regulate the maximum allowable standby power for a portable electric spa based on the spa volume. The goal of this regulation is to require improvements to the lowest performing models, for which simple and cost effective improvements are readily available, without eliminating average or better performing products. In this research, the standby power of twenty seven portable electric spas was measured and compared to the Title 20 requirement. These tests resulted in nine of the twenty seven spas not meeting the allowable standby power. Analysis demonstrates that simple and inexpensive improvements to these nine spas would likely cause the spas to pass the Title 20 requirement. Additionally, temperature normalization developed in this research have been adopted by the California Energy Commission and included in revisions to Title 20.

Arsenic contamination of the environment is a worldwide health hazard. This research project focused on four areas: development and testing of low cost, field portable devices capable of measuring levels of arsenic at 10 μg L-1 or less; specific chemical techniques for such testing; creation of educational tools and techniques to allow operators who lack advanced chemistry training to perform accurate testing; and the determination and use of a biomarker in DNA as a cancer predictor in individuals exposed to environmental arsenic. The analytical techniques explored include: (1) the Gutzeit method of arsenic determination though arsine gas production, which was investigated in three experiments: measuring arsenic levels in soil samples, using Gutzeit-based kits using silver nitrate as a reactant for arsine gas, and sensitivity comparison of three commercial test kits over varying time periods up to twenty-four hours. (2) The molybdenum blue method, technologically quantified through three different experiments: digital photographic analysis, spectroscopic analysis, and flow injection. (3) Filtration of arsenic contaminated water with wood-ash, sand, ferric oxide, and commercially available steel wool; and the construction of a filtering device constructed of recyclable discarded soda bottles. Further, single nucleotide polymorphisms in the DNA of arsenic exposed individuals were studied to determine what immune response genes might be implicated in arsenic susceptibility. The major conclusions of this research were: digital image analysis used with the Gutzeit method improves precision and accuracy; silver nitrate proved to be a better measurement tool at low concentrations of arsenic than mercuric bromide; and the Gutzeit method can be applied to soils in the Hach kit.