It Takes a Village: A Case for Including Extended Family Members in the Joint Oversight of Family-based Privacy and Security for Mobile Smartphones

We conducted a user study with 19 parent-teen dyads to understand the perceived benefits and drawbacks of using a mobile app that allows them to co-manage mobile privacy, safety, and security within their families. While the primary goal of the study was to understand the use case as it pertained to parents and teens, an emerging finding from our study was that participants found value in extending app use to other family members (siblings, cousins, and grandparents). Participants felt that it would help bring the necessary expertise into their immediate family network and help protect the older adults and children of the family from privacy and security risks. However, participants expressed that co-monitoring by extended family members might cause tensions in their families, creating interpersonal conflicts. To alleviate these concerns, participants suggested more control over the privacy features to facilitate sharing their installed apps with only trusted family members

Nova proteins direct synaptic integration of somatostatin interneurons through activity-dependent alternative splicing

Somatostatin interneurons are the earliest born population of cortical inhibitory cells. They are crucial to support normal brain development and function; however, the mechanisms underlying their integration into nascent cortical circuitry are not well understood. In this study, we begin by demonstrating that the maturation of somatostatin interneurons in mouse somatosensory cortex is activity dependent. We then investigated the relationship between activity, alternative splicing, and synapse formation within this population. Specifically, we discovered that the Nova family of RNA-binding proteins are activity-dependent and are essential for the maturation of somatostatin interneurons, as well as their afferent and efferent connectivity. Within this population, Nova2 preferentially mediates the alternative splicing of genes required for axonal formation and synaptic function independently from its effect on gene expression. Hence, our work demonstrates that the Nova family of proteins through alternative splicing are centrally involved in coupling developmental neuronal activity to cortical circuit formation