Columbia University WiMAX Campus Deployment and Installation

This report describes WiMAX campus deployment and installation at Columbia University

Connecting the Physical World with Arduino in SECE

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables the physical world to be connected and controlled over the Internet. This paper presents a smart gateway platform that connects everyday objects such as lights, thermometers, and TVs over the Internet. The proposed hardware architecture is implemented on an Arduino platform with a variety of off the shelf home automation technologies such as Zigbee and X10. Using the microcontroller-based platform, the SECE (Sense Everything, Control Everything) system allows users to create various IoT services such as monitoring sensors, controlling actuators, triggering action events, and periodic sensor reporting. We give an overview of the Arduino-based smart gateway architecture and its integration into SECE

WiMAX in the Classroom: Designing a Cellular Networking Hands-on Lab

Wireless networking has recently gained tremendous attention in research and education. Since the concepts taught in wireless courses are difficult to acquire only through lectures, hands-on lab experience is indispensable. While Wi-Fi based networking labs have been introduced before, to the best of our knowledge, labs that use a cellular technology have not been designed yet. Therefore, we present a WiMAX hands-on lab designed for a graduate course in wireless and mobile networking. The lab is based on the mobile WiMAX hardware and software developed and deployed within the GENI WiMAX project. We provide a brief overview of the course and of the main concepts taught in the WiMAX lecture. Then, we describe in detail our WiMAX network and the structure of the lab experiment. The effectiveness in achieving the learning objectives is evaluated via the lab reports submitted by the students. Finally, we review some of the lessons we learned during design and implementation of this lab. These can provide important insights to designers of similar labs

GRAND: Git Revisions As Named Data

GRAND is an experimental extension of Git, a distributed revision control system, which enables the synchronization of Git repositories over Content-Centric Networks (CCN). GRAND brings some of the benefits of CCN to Git, such as transparent caching, load balancing, and the ability to fetch objects by name rather than location. Our implementation is based on CCNx, a reference implementation of content router. The current prototype consists of two components: git-daemon-ccnx allows a node to publish its local Git repositories to CCNx Content Store; git-remote-ccnx implements CCNx transport on the client side. This adds CCN to the set of transport protocols supported by Git, alongside HTTP and SSH

Soft Elastomers for Fused Deposition Modeling

This paper describes an ongoing effort towards extending the capabilities of the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process to soft thermoplastic elastomers (STPEs). Two thermoplastic elastomers with hardness of 72 and 78 Shore A, respectively, have been processed into 0.070" (1.78 mm) filament stock for use in the FDM 1600 rapid prototyping system. The FDM 1600 liquifier subsystem has been modified to accommodate the reduced column strength ofthe STPE filament stock. Sample STPE parts have been fabricated with ABS material support structures.Mechanical Engineerin

NetServ: Reviving Active Networks

In 1996, Tennenhouse and Wetherall proposed active networks, where users can inject code modules into network nodes. The proposal sparked intense debate and follow-on research, but ultimately failed to win over the networking community. Fifteen years later, the problems that motivated the active networks proposal persist. We call for a revival of active networks. We present NetServ, a fully integrated active network system that provides all the necessary functionality to be deployable, addressing the core problems that prevented the practical success of earlier approaches. We make the following contributions. We present a hybrid approach to active networking, which combines the best qualities from the two extreme approaches — integrated and discrete. We built a working system that strikes the right balance between security and performance by leveraging current technologies. We suggest an economic model based on NetServ between content providers and ISPs. We built four applications to illustrate the model

NetServ Framework Design and Implementation 1.0

Eyeball ISPs today are under-utilizing an important asset: edge routers. We present NetServ, a programmable node architecture aimed at turning edge routers into distributed service hosting platforms. This allows ISPs to allocate router resources to content publishers and application service pro\-vi\-ders motivated to deploy content and services at the network edge. This model provides important benefits over currently available solutions like CDN. Content and services can be brought closer to end users by dynamically installing and removing custom modules as needed throughout the network. Unlike previous programmable router proposals which focused on customizing features of a router, NetServ focuses on deploying content and services. All our design decisions reflect this change in focus. We set three main design goals: a wide-area deployment, a multi-user execution environment, and a clear economic benefit. We built a prototype using Linux, NSIS signaling, and the Java OSGi framework. We also implemented four prototype applications: ActiveCDN provides publisher-specific content distribution and processing; KeepAlive Responder and Media Relay reduce the infrastructure needs of telephony providers; and Overload Control makes it possible to deploy more flexible algorithms to handle excessive traffic

The psychological science accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data

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