A History Of The Improvement Of Internet Protocols Over Satellites Using ACTS

This paper outlines the main results of a number of ACTS experiments on the efficacy of using standard Internet protocols over long-delay satellite channels. These experiments have been jointly conducted by NASA’s Glenn Research Center and Ohio University over the last six years. The focus of our investigations has been the impact of long-delay networks with non-zero bit-error rates on the performance of the suite of Internet protocols. In particular, we have focused on the most widely used transport protocol, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), as well as several application layer protocols. This paper presents our main results, as well as references to more verbose discussions of our experiments.

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e. a controlling message) compared to no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly-internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared to the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly-internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing: Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Reliable message transport for network communication

Computer communication software presents the abstraction of a single, global communication system, known as an internetwork, over which any connected computer can send information to any other connected computer. The information transfer service provided by an internetwork, however, is not guaranteed to be reliable; information can be lost, delayed, duplicated, or corrupted. A piece of communication software known as a transport protocol is responsible for providing a layer of reliability above the internetwork layer. A transport protocol provides the abstraction of a reliable mechanism for the exchange of information between applications. An exchange of information between applications, or conversation, consists of units of data called messages. For applications that rely on relatively short-lived conversations, existing widely-used transport protocols impose a high efficiency penalty because of the amount of time required by the transport protocol to establish, manage, and terminate short-lived conversations. This dissertation defines a conceptual model of a transport protocol and the underlying internetwork, and characterizes the various aspects of protocol reliability as being Arrival, Order, Uniqueness, Integrity, Replay, and Performance. Using these models of the transport protocol, the internetwork, and the various aspects of reliability, this dissertation describes the Simple Reliable Message Protocol, SRMP, a new message transport protocol. SRMP uses novel reliability mechanisms that allow it to efficiently manage short-lived conversations. SRMP\u27s performance is compared to the performance of existing transport protocols in the areas of short-lived conversation efficiency, the amount of protocol acknowledgement information required, and performance in the presence of congestion. Experiments comparing SRMP to existing transport protocols show that SRMP manages short-lived conversations more efficiently than existing, widely-used transport protocols. Additional experiments indicate that decreasing the amount of acknowledgement information returned by SRMP, by extending the acknowledgement interval, can further improve the protocol\u27s performance in certain cases. Further experimental data shows that SRMP\u27s congestion control mechanisms are equivalent to the mechanisms used by the commonly used transport protocol TCP, whose congestion control mechanisms have been widely studied

Statistical Analysis of Malformed Packets and Their Origins in the Modern Internet

In this work, we collect and analyze all of the IP and TCP headers of packets seen on a network that either violate existing standards or should not appear in modern internets. Our goal is to determine the reason that these packets appear on the network and evaluate what proportion of such packets could cause actual damage. Thus, we examine and divide the unusual packets obtained during our experiments into several categories based on their type and possible cause and show the results