The Role of Information and Communication Technology in the Acculturation of Vietnamese Refugees

One of the most significant refugee populations in the United States is the Vietnamese. This group initially fled their native country to escape political oppression at the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975 and continued to flee in a series of separate waves that continued for more than three decades. As a relatively new immigrant group in the U.S., the Vietnamese still face a variety of challenges as they try to reestablish their lives and adapt in a new cultural environment. Acculturation is a complex process that is influenced by a number of factors. Throughout history, U.S. immigration policy has significantly affected the admission and adaptation of refugees. As shifts in the ideological frameworks, economic demands, and attitudes towards the rest of the world occurred in the twentieth century, which eventually brought the liberalization of immigration policy, this influence slowly decreased. This allowed for factors in the domestic political, economic, and social environments to become more powerful in affecting how refugees adapt in the U.S. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become integral aspects in both assisting and complicating the acculturation process for refugees. These technologies are helping Vietnamese refugees culturally adjust in American communities as well as maintain ties with their native culture; thus, illustrating the multifaceted nature of acculturation. However, the impact of ICTs is not uniform across all of the different waves of refugees who fled from Vietnam. This study demonstrates that interaction and communication are key aspects in cross-cultural adaptation and the importance of media in contemporary everyday life

Impact of a multidimensional infection control approach on catheter-associated urinary tract infection rates in adult intensive care units in 10 cities of Turkey: International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium findings (INICC).

We evaluate the effectiveness of a multidimensional infection control approach for the reduction of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) in 13 intensive care units (ICUs) in 10 hospital members of the International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) from 10 cities of Turkey.METHODS:A before-after prospective active surveillance study was used to determine rates of CAUTI. The study was divided into baseline (phase 1) and intervention (phase 2). In phase 1, surveillance was performed applying the definitions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Healthcare Safety Network. In phase 2, we implemented a multidimensional approach that included bundle of infection control interventions, education, surveillance and feedback on CAUTI rates, process surveillance, and performance feedback. We used random effects Poisson regression to account for clustering of CAUTI rates across time periods.RESULTS:The study included 4,231 patients, hospitalized in 13 ICUs, in 10 hospitals, in 10 cities, during 49,644 patient-days. We recorded a total of 41,871 urinary catheter (UC)-days: 5,080 in phase 1 and 36,791 in phase 2. During phase 1, the rate of CAUTI was 10.63 per 1,000 UC-days and was significantly decreased by 47% in phase 2 to 5.65 per 1,000 UC-days (relative risk, 0.53; 95% confidence interval: 0.4-0.7; P value&nbsp;= .0001).CONCLUSION:Our multidimensional approach was associated with a significant reduction in the rates of CAUTI in Turkey.</p

New Worlds Discovered Towards the End of Antibiotic Era: Resistome and Mobilome

Antibiotics, which have increased human life expectancy and quality since their discovery in the mid 20th century, and the antibiotic era associated with them have come to an end with increased prevelance of multiple drug resistance in pathogens. Antimicrobial resistance genes, which can be found naturally across biosphere, can acquire a dynamic structure and deplace pathogen strains. This system, which is defi ned as resistome (the total resistance genes content) - mobilome (the total mobile genetic elements content) cycle, is proposed as a hypothesis explaining the fl ux of antibiotic resistance from environment to the clinic. Accordingly, the main reason behind the emergence of strains in the last century, which are multiple drug resistant with increased antibiotic suppression, extended drug resistant, and resistant to all antibiotics, is the resistome-mobilome cycle between soil microorganisms community (soil microbiata), each of which are a resistant gene pool, food microbiata, aquatic microbiata, waste water, human microbiata and the clinic. Since current conventional microbiological methods cannot sample a majority of microorganisms and cannot cover the entire resistance gene reservoirs, metagenomic approaches have emerged. Metagenomic approaches, which are able to analyze the entire genetical material within environmental samples without the requirement of culturing, is the basis for recent resistome-mobilome studies. A better understanding of resistome-mobilome structures in the nature will lead to careful industrial and clinical use of antibiotics, development of effective biosafety approaches for the control of pathogen and resistance gene spread, as well as the design of new generation antibiotics or alternative and complementary therapies such as bacteriophage therapy or probiotic therapies. In this review, the relation of antibiotic resistance with the microbial ecosystem is summarized based on recent findings, and also the role of metagenomics, as the new paradigm of molecular microbiology, in the analysis of the corresponding relation is demostrated