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Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted in Toronto, Canada, this study examines how the young adult children of Korean immigrants, also known as 1.5-generation immigrants, explore multicultural senses of belonging and identity through digital media practices. This study reveals that although young immigrants’ capabilities to choose from different forms of cultural content may be enhanced by digital media, they may be subject to structural forces, such as offline ethnic segregation. That is, young immigrants may enjoy digital media as a multicultural facilitator in one sense but question its contribution to multicultural senses of identity in another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative interviews with South Korean migrants in Canada, this study examines how full-time working migrants appropriate the Internet to maintain sociocultural connections with their homeland, their diasporic community, and the host society. The present study raises the question of how the rapid diffusion of the Internet may redefine the meanings of the Korean diaspora, and it explores how migrants engage in, or negotiate, the digital mediascape of the host society. While Korean migrants in the present study encountered no difficulty with accessing and using the Internet, it was largely appropriated in Korean language and in relation to Korean community rather than serving as a platform through which they could actively engage in the host society's mediascape. Thus, it is questionable how the ethnic use of the Internet may contribute to the co-construction between migrant and host media users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how young people in transnational contexts use communication applications (apps) through mobile platforms built into the smartphone. Drawing on qualitative interviews with young adults from transnational South Korean families in Canada, the study examines how young people use, and create meanings with, different apps in transnational contexts. In the study, the participants frequently used the Korean-based mobile platform of Kakao, as well as the globally popular Facebook, to mediate different human networks and emotions. By appropriating different mobile platforms, they sought to widen their peer networks in Canada and to maintain diasporic ties with their country of origin and/or ethnic communities in the host society. The young Koreans’ negotiation of the different app platforms illustrates a unique process of global–local and cultural–technological articulations in the appropriation of technology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores diasporic Asian young people's engagement with the recent wave of Korean pop culture, also known as the Korean Wave, in Canada. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted in Toronto and Vancouver, the study examines how transnational cultural flow is articulated with social media and ethnic sociality. In the study, while the transnational flow of Korean media content was largely reliant on social media, it was renegotiated by the users’ subject positions as ethnic minorities and by their ethnic networks in the Canadian cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of young people are making long-stay travels while postponing their transition to adulthood and seeking ‘global experience’. Among various forms of long-stay travel, the working holiday has been popular among young people looking for opportunities to work during travel. In order to empirically explore how global experience is negotiated by young travellers, this study analyses the narratives of 30 South Korean working holidaymakers in Toronto, Canada. The in-depth interviews reveal that the working holiday in Canada is considered by its participants to be a process of seeking the ‘true self’ and a way of enhancing social mobility, both of which lead to a sense of self-development. Drawing upon the empirical findings, the article suggests that the discourse of self-development naturalises a particular mode of neoliberal subjectivity and thus standardises the practice of global experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the extent and frequency of a knockdown-type resistance allele (kdr type) in North American populations of human head lice. Lice were collected from 32 locations in Canada and the United States. DNA was extracted from individual lice and used to determine their zygosity using the serial invasive signal amplification technique to detect the kdr-type T917I (TI) mutation, which is most responsible for nerve insensitivity that results in the kdr phenotype and permethrin resistance. Previously sampled sites were resampled to determine if the frequency of the TI mutation was changing. The TI frequency was also reevaluated using a quantitative sequencing method on pooled DNA samples from selected sites to validate this population genotyping method. Genotyping substantiated that TI occurs at high levels in North American lice (88.4%). Overall, the TI frequency in U.S. lice was 84.4% from 1999 to 2009, increased to 99.6% from 2007 to 2009, and was 97.1% in Canadian lice in 2008. Genotyping results using the serial invasive signal amplification reaction (99.54%) and quantitative sequencing (99.45%) techniques were highly correlated. Thus, the frequencies of TI in North American head louse populations were found to be uniformly high, which may be due to the high selection pressure from the intensive and widespread use of the pyrethrins- or pyrethroid-based pediculicides over many years, and is likely a main cause of increased pediculosis and failure of pyrethrins- or permethrin-based products in Canada and the United States. Alternative approaches to treatment of head lice infestations are critically needed.

Background: Most people in the United States and Canada with pediculosis will be treated with neurotoxic pediculicides containing pyrethrins or pyrethroids. Their widespread use led to significant resistance reported from various countries. Although treatment failures are frequently observed in Canada, the resistance frequency to pyrethroid pediculicide of human head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) has not been determined., Objective: To determine the knockdown resistance (kdr) allele frequency in human head louse populations in Canada., Methods: Patients infested with Pediculus humanus capitis, aged 4 to 65 years, residents of Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, were participants. Head lice were collected by combing and picking the enrolled subjects' hair. Lice were analyzed by serial invasive signal amplification reaction (SISAR) for genotyping the T917I mutation of lice indicating permethrin resistance. The permethrin-resistant kdr allele (R allele) frequency could then be evaluated in the head lice collected in Canada., Results: Of the head louse populations analyzed, 133 of 137 (97.1%) had a resistant (R) allele frequency, whereas only 4 of 137 (2.9%) had a susceptible (S) allele frequency., Conclusions: The 97.1% resistant (R) allele frequency in head lice from Canada could explain the treatment failures encountered with pyrethrin and pyrethroid pediculicide treatments in Canadian populations infested with Pediculus humanus capitis as the latter will not be eliminated by those pediculicides.