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The U.S. Census Bureau's use of differential privacy (DP) fundamentally changed how academic DP researchers perform outreach with official statistics stakeholders. In this perspectives piece, I propose ways for us in this community to improve those processes by being more receptive to the practical concerns raised by building DP systems. First, I discuss how academic DP work fundamentally differs from the policy decisions needed to implement DP systems and why this distinction has political consequences. Through examples and discussions from workshops, I show how the DP community largely asked applied stakeholders to communicate on DP's theoretical terms, when such an ask foreclosed important considerations relevant for the Census Bureau's policy problems. Second, I discuss how existing polarization between theoretical and empirical privacy researchers unintentionally seeped into the ways we communicated about DP, pointing to why both perspectives are necessary in different ways for policy conversations. Finally, I conclude by discussing how these issues are not unique to data privacy work, but instead reflect structural problems in translating theoretical science into practice. These ideas are presented in service of a single goal: to ensure DP theory supports substantive, privacy-aware data processing and dissemination in practice for essential data curators.

The vitamin D receptor as well as its ligand have been localized to various immune tissues and cells. These observations have led researchers to hypothesize a role for vitamin D in the immune system. However, a specific role for vitamin D in immunity has yet to be clearly delineated. The work in this report was undertaken to determine if mounting an antibody response is altered in the face of vitamin D-deficiency or when the signaling pathway is eliminated by removal of the nuclear receptor. This investigation provides direct evidence vitamin D is not necessary for producing antibodies, a process paramount for optimal attack against many foreign organisms. The idea that vitamin D plays a significant role in immunity has been proposed repeatedly for many years. To address this important idea we have carried out studies in mice to determine if vitamin D plays a significant role in antibody production. Two animal models were utilized: mice depleted of vitamin D and mice devoid of the vitamin D receptor. Further, a possible role of hypocalcemia resulting from vitamin D deficiency in antibody production was determined. Neither the absence of vitamin D or the vitamin D receptor nor hypocalcemia affected the ability of mice to mount an antibody response to an antigen challenge. Thus, we found no evidence that vitamin D or normal serum calcium is required for this major form of immunity.