"Am I Private and If So, how Many?" -- Using Risk Communication Formats for Making Differential Privacy Understandable

Mobility data is essential for cities and communities to identify areas for necessary improvement. Data collected by mobility providers already contains all the information necessary, but privacy of the individuals needs to be preserved. Differential privacy (DP) defines a mathematical property which guarantees that certain limits of privacy are preserved while sharing such data, but its functionality and privacy protection are difficult to explain to laypeople. In this paper, we adapt risk communication formats in conjunction with a model for the privacy risks of DP. The result are privacy notifications which explain the risk to an individual's privacy when using DP, rather than DP's functionality. We evaluate these novel privacy communication formats in a crowdsourced study. We find that they perform similarly to the best performing DP communications used currently in terms of objective understanding, but did not make our participants as confident in their understanding. We also discovered an influence, similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect, of the statistical numeracy on the effectiveness of some of our privacy communication formats and the DP communication format used currently. These results generate hypotheses in multiple directions, for example, toward the use of risk visualization to improve the understandability of our formats or toward adaptive user interfaces which tailor the risk communication to the characteristics of the reader

"Am I Private and If So, how Many?" - Communicating Privacy Guarantees of Differential Privacy with Risk Communication Formats

Decisions about sharing personal information are not trivial, since there are many legitimate and important purposes for such data collection, but often the collected data can reveal sensitive information about individuals. Privacy-preserving technologies, such as differential privacy (DP), can be employed to protect the privacy of individuals and, furthermore, provide mathematically sound guarantees on the maximum privacy risk. However, they can only support informed privacy decisions, if individuals understand the provided privacy guarantees. This article proposes a novel approach for communicating privacy guarantees to support individuals in their privacy decisions when sharing data. For this, we adopt risk communication formats from the medical domain in conjunction with a model for privacy guarantees of DP to create quantitative privacy risk notifications. We conducted a crowd-sourced study with 343 participants to evaluate how well our notifications conveyed the privacy risk information and how confident participants were about their own understanding of the privacy risk. Our findings suggest that these new notifications can communicate the objective information similarly well to currently used qualitative notifications, but left individuals less confident in their understanding. We also discovered that several of our notifications and the currently used qualitative notification disadvantage individuals with low numeracy: these individuals appear overconfident compared to their actual understanding of the associated privacy risks and are, therefore, less likely to seek the needed additional information before an informed decision. The promising results allow for multiple directions in future research, for example, adding visual aids or tailoring privacy risk communication to characteristics of the individuals.Comment: Accepted to ACM CCS 2022. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2204.0406

Impact of Bayesian penalized likelihood reconstruction on quantitative and qualitative aspects for pulmonary nodule detection in digital 2-[18F]FDG-PET/CT

To evaluate the impact of block sequential regularized expectation maximization (BSREM) reconstruction on quantitative and qualitative aspects of 2-[18F]FDG-avid pulmonary nodules compared to conventional ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) reconstruction method. Ninety-one patients with 144 2-[18F]FDG-avid pulmonary nodules (all ≤ 20 mm) undergoing PET/CT for oncological (re-)staging were retrospectively included. Quantitative parameters in BSREM and OSEM (including point spread function modelling) were measured, including maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax). Nodule conspicuity in BSREM and OSEM images was evaluated by two readers. Wilcoxon matched pairs signed-rank test was used to compare quantitative and qualitative parameters in BSREM and OSEM. Pulmonary nodule SUVmax was significantly higher in BSREM images compared to OSEM images [BSREM 5.4 (1.2–20.7), OSEM 3.6 (0.7–17.4); p = 0.0001]. In a size-based analysis, the relative increase in SUVmax was more pronounced in smaller nodules (≤ 7 mm) as compared to larger nodules (8–10 mm, or > 10 mm). Lesion conspicuity was higher in BSREM than in OSEM (p < 0.0001). BSREM reconstruction results in a significant increase in SUVmax and a significantly improved conspicuity of small 2-[18F]FDG-avid pulmonary nodules compared to OSEM reconstruction. Digital 2-[18F]FDG-PET/CT reading may be enhanced with BSREM as small lesion conspicuity is improved

Traffic Sign Recognition with Neural Networks in the Frequency Domain

In this paper we describe traffic sign recognition with neural networks in the frequency domain. Traffic signs exist in all countries to regulate the traffic of vehicles and pedestrians. Each country has its own set of traffic signs that are more or less similar. They consist of a set of abstract forms, symbols, numbers and letters, which are combined into different signs. Automatic traffic sign recognition is important for driver assistance systems and for autonomous driving. Traffic sign recognition is a subtype of image recognition. The traffic signs are usually recorded by a camera and must be recognized in real time, i.e. assigned to a class. We use neural networks for traffic sign recognition. The special feature of our method is that the traffic sign recognition does not take place in the spatial domain but in the frequency domain. This has advantages because it is possible to significantly reduce the number of neurons and thus the computing effort of the neural network compared to a conventional neural network

Being right vs. getting it right: orientation to being recorded in psychotherapeutic interaction as disaffiliative vs. affiliative practice

IntroductionThe study focuses on the orientation to being recorded in therapy sessions, emphasizing that these practices adapt to specific circumstances and influence subsequent actions. The study suggests a way to deal with the insolubility of the “observer paradox”: to accept that observation has an impact on the observed, but that the recorder is not necessarily a negative determinant. Furthermore, the study builds on the idea that participants' orientations to the recorder can be seen as actions.MethodsThe data included in this study were collected from four psychodynamic therapies. A total of 472 sessions were searched for orientation to be recorded. Twenty-three passages were found and transcribed according to GAT2. Of the 23 transcripts, six excerpts have been analyzed as part of this article. The analysis of this study was done through Conversation Analysis.ResultsThe study explores how participants use the orientation to be recorded to initiate or alter actions within conversations, which can help achieve therapeutic goals, but can also hinder the emergence of a shared attentional space as the potential to disrupt the therapist-patient relationship. The study identifies both affiliative and disaffiliative practices, noting that managing orientation to be recorded in a retrospective design consistently leads to disruptive effects. Moreover, it highlights the difference between seeking epistemic authority (“being right”) and managing recording situations (“getting it right”) in therapeutic interactions as a means of initiating patients' self-exploration.DiscussionThe integration of recordings into therapeutic studies faces challenges, but it's important to acknowledge positive and negative effects. Participants' awareness of recording technologies prompts the need for a theory of observation in therapeutic interactions that allows therapists to visualize intuitive practices, incorporate active contributions, counteract interpretive filtering effects, facilitate expert exchange, ensure quality assurance, and enhance the comprehensibility of therapeutic processes. These aspects outline significant variables that provide a starting point for therapists using recordings in therapeutic interactions

AGAMOUS mediates timing of guard cell formation during gynoecium development

In Arabidopsis thaliana, stomata are composed of two guard cells that control the aperture of a central pore to facilitate gas exchange between the plant and its environment, which is particularly important during photosynthesis. Although leaves are the primary photosynthetic organs of flowering plants, floral organs are also photosynthetically active. In the Brassicaceae, evidence suggests that silique photosynthesis is important for optimal seed oil content. A group of transcription factors containing MADS DNA binding domains is necessary and sufficient to confer floral organ identity. Elegant models, such as the ABCE model of flower development and the floral quartet model, have been instrumental in describing the molecular mechanisms by which these floral organ identity proteins govern flower development. However, we lack a complete understanding of how the floral organ identity genes interact with the underlying leaf development program. Here, we show that the MADS domain transcription factor AGAMOUS (AG) represses stomatal development on the gynoecial valves, so that maturation of stomatal complexes coincides with fertilization. We present evidence that this regulation by AG is mediated by direct transcriptional repression of a master regulator of the stomatal lineage, MUTE, and show data that suggests this interaction is conserved among several members of the Brassicaceae. This work extends our understanding of the mechanisms underlying floral organ formation and provides a framework to decipher the mechanisms that control floral organ photosynthesis

Image_1_Being right vs. getting it right: orientation to being recorded in psychotherapeutic interaction as disaffiliative vs. affiliative practice.JPEG

IntroductionThe study focuses on the orientation to being recorded in therapy sessions, emphasizing that these practices adapt to specific circumstances and influence subsequent actions. The study suggests a way to deal with the insolubility of the “observer paradox”: to accept that observation has an impact on the observed, but that the recorder is not necessarily a negative determinant. Furthermore, the study builds on the idea that participants' orientations to the recorder can be seen as actions.MethodsThe data included in this study were collected from four psychodynamic therapies. A total of 472 sessions were searched for orientation to be recorded. Twenty-three passages were found and transcribed according to GAT2. Of the 23 transcripts, six excerpts have been analyzed as part of this article. The analysis of this study was done through Conversation Analysis.ResultsThe study explores how participants use the orientation to be recorded to initiate or alter actions within conversations, which can help achieve therapeutic goals, but can also hinder the emergence of a shared attentional space as the potential to disrupt the therapist-patient relationship. The study identifies both affiliative and disaffiliative practices, noting that managing orientation to be recorded in a retrospective design consistently leads to disruptive effects. Moreover, it highlights the difference between seeking epistemic authority (“being right”) and managing recording situations (“getting it right”) in therapeutic interactions as a means of initiating patients' self-exploration.DiscussionThe integration of recordings into therapeutic studies faces challenges, but it's important to acknowledge positive and negative effects. Participants' awareness of recording technologies prompts the need for a theory of observation in therapeutic interactions that allows therapists to visualize intuitive practices, incorporate active contributions, counteract interpretive filtering effects, facilitate expert exchange, ensure quality assurance, and enhance the comprehensibility of therapeutic processes. These aspects outline significant variables that provide a starting point for therapists using recordings in therapeutic interactions.</p

Image_2_Being right vs. getting it right: orientation to being recorded in psychotherapeutic interaction as disaffiliative vs. affiliative practice.JPEG

IntroductionThe study focuses on the orientation to being recorded in therapy sessions, emphasizing that these practices adapt to specific circumstances and influence subsequent actions. The study suggests a way to deal with the insolubility of the “observer paradox”: to accept that observation has an impact on the observed, but that the recorder is not necessarily a negative determinant. Furthermore, the study builds on the idea that participants' orientations to the recorder can be seen as actions.MethodsThe data included in this study were collected from four psychodynamic therapies. A total of 472 sessions were searched for orientation to be recorded. Twenty-three passages were found and transcribed according to GAT2. Of the 23 transcripts, six excerpts have been analyzed as part of this article. The analysis of this study was done through Conversation Analysis.ResultsThe study explores how participants use the orientation to be recorded to initiate or alter actions within conversations, which can help achieve therapeutic goals, but can also hinder the emergence of a shared attentional space as the potential to disrupt the therapist-patient relationship. The study identifies both affiliative and disaffiliative practices, noting that managing orientation to be recorded in a retrospective design consistently leads to disruptive effects. Moreover, it highlights the difference between seeking epistemic authority (“being right”) and managing recording situations (“getting it right”) in therapeutic interactions as a means of initiating patients' self-exploration.DiscussionThe integration of recordings into therapeutic studies faces challenges, but it's important to acknowledge positive and negative effects. Participants' awareness of recording technologies prompts the need for a theory of observation in therapeutic interactions that allows therapists to visualize intuitive practices, incorporate active contributions, counteract interpretive filtering effects, facilitate expert exchange, ensure quality assurance, and enhance the comprehensibility of therapeutic processes. These aspects outline significant variables that provide a starting point for therapists using recordings in therapeutic interactions.</p

Sequences bound in <i>MUTE</i> first intron by AG-SEP3 from seq-DAP-seq.

Sequences mapping to the MUTE first intron identified as bound by SEP3 (SEP3_rep1-4), an AG-SEP3 complex (SEP3AG_rep1-3), or an AG-SEP3Δtet complex (SEP3del_AG_rep1-2). CArG_1 and CArG_2 are highlighted in purple boxes. (TIF)</p