The selection of comparators for randomized controlled trials of health-related behavioral interventions: recommendations of an NIH expert panel

Objectives: To provide recommendations for the selection of comparators for randomized controlled trials of health-related behavioral interventions. Study Design and Setting: The National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research convened an expert panel to critically review the literature on control or comparison groups for behavioral trials and to develop strategies for improving comparator choices and for resolving controversies and disagreements about comparators. Results: The panel developed a Pragmatic Model for Comparator Selection in Health-Related Behavioral Trials. The model indicates that the optimal comparator is the one that best serves the primary purpose of the trial but that the optimal comparator's limitations and barriers to its use must also be taken into account. Conclusion: We developed best practice recommendations for the selection of comparators for health-related behavioral trials. Use of the Pragmatic Model for Comparator Selection in Health-Related Behavioral Trials can improve the comparator selection process and help resolve disagreements about comparator choices

Premenopausal and Postmenopausal Women Differ in their Cardiovascular and Neuroendocrine Responses to Behavioral Stressors

ABSTRACT Middle‐aged (45–51 years) women performed four tasks while their heart rate, blood pressure, and plasma catecholamines were measured. The tasks were serial subtraction, mirror image tracing, speech, and postural tilt. The speech task was considered to be particularly relevant to women because of its emphasis on social skills. Fifteen premenopausal women reported menstruating regularly and were tested in the early follicular phase. Sixteen postmenopausal women reported not menstruating for at least 12 months and their hormonal status was verified by serum levels of follicle‐stimulating hormone. Results showed that postmenopausal women exhibited greater increases from baseline in heart rate during all tasks, relative to premenopausal women, with a particularly pronounced increase during the speech task. Postmenopausal women exhibited greater increases from baseline in systolic blood pressure and epinephrine, relative to premenopausal women, during the speech task only. Explanations for the stressor‐specific effect of menopausal status were discussed. The results suggest that reproductive hormones may interact with stressor characteristics to determine middle‐aged women's physiological responses to stress

Eventpad: Rapid malware analysis and reverse engineering using visual analytics

Forensic analysis of malware activity in network environments is a necessary yet very costly and time consuming part of incident response. Vast amounts of data need to be screened, in a very labor-intensive process, looking for signs indicating how the malware at hand behaves inside e.g., a corporate network. We believe that data reduction and visualization techniques can assist security analysts in studying behavioral patterns in network traffic samples (e.g., PCAP). We argue that the discovery of patterns in this traffic can help us to quickly understand how intrusive behavior such as malware activity unfolds and distinguishes itself from the rest of the traffic.In this paper we present a case study of the visual analytics tool EventPad and illustrate how it is used to gain quick insights in the analysis of PCAP traffic using rules, aggregations, and selections. We show the effectiveness of the tool on real-world data sets involving office traffic and ransomware activity