False memory and age : a review on false memory susceptibility in children and the elderly

People of any age are susceptible to false memories. In the legal scene, false memories have led to many eyewitness misidentifications and wrongful convictions. In order to minimize the risks of false memories, it is important to understand who is more susceptible and why that is so. We hypothesized that children and the elderly are most susceptible to false memories due to compromised cognitive functioning in these two populations. We reviewed existing literature in false memory research, focusing specifically on children (aged 3-17) and the elderly (aged 60 and above). Age differences in false memory susceptibility were examined across a wide variety of measures and were explained by three prominent theories: schema theory, source-monitoring framework and fuzzy-trace theory. We found that children’s susceptibility to false memories was dependent on the type of task. On tasks that involved leading questions, implausible events and reality-monitoring, younger children were most susceptible to false memories, followed by older children and adolescents. However, they were less susceptible to false memories on tasks that required them to form meaning-associations. On the other hand, we found that the elderly were more susceptible to false memories as compared to adults. Their vulnerability was observed on tasks that required them to form meaning-associations and monitor source memories. Finally, possible methods to reduce false memories for both children and the elderly were suggested.Bachelor of Art

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN