Follow My Eyes: The Gaze of Politicians Reflexively Captures the Gaze of Ingroup Voters

Studies in human and non-human primates indicate that basic socio-cognitive operations are inherently linked to the power of gaze in capturing reflexively the attention of an observer. Although monkey studies indicate that the automatic tendency to follow the gaze of a conspecific is modulated by the leader-follower social status, evidence for such effects in humans is meager. Here, we used a gaze following paradigm where the directional gaze of right- or left-wing Italian political characters could influence the oculomotor behavior of ingroup or outgroup voters. We show that the gaze of Berlusconi, the right-wing leader currently dominating the Italian political landscape, potentiates and inhibits gaze following behavior in ingroup and outgroup voters, respectively. Importantly, the higher the perceived similarity in personality traits between voters and Berlusconi, the stronger the gaze interference effect. Thus, higher-order social variables such as political leadership and affiliation prepotently affect reflexive shifts of attention

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

The fall of political leaders reflected in gaze-following behavior of their voters

Gaze-following is a pivotal social behavior that albeit automatic, is permeable to high-order variables like political affiliation. In a previous study we showed that gaze-following is stronger when right-wing participants faced their in-group political leader (vs. the out-group's), namely Silvio Berlusconi (SB), who, dominated the Italian political landscape and had a massive popularity at the time of data collection. This effect paralleled the perceived-similarity between the voters’ and SB’s personality. Since the popularity of the former Prime Minister dramatically dropped down from the year in which we collected those data to the period in which he had to resign, we explored if changes of popularity were reflected in changes of perceived-similarity and gaze-following behavior. We recruited a representative subsample of the original group (N= 15, mean age= 26.73), and split it, on the basis of self-reported ideology and recent voting behavior in two groups (liberals and conservatives). We found that the political fall of SB was mirrored in a significant decrease of the attracting power of his gaze on the voters' gaze. Importantly, our data suggest that the perceived-similarity mediates this relationship. We tested the same hypothesis on a representative group of electors of the former governor of 'Regione Lazio' who also had to resign. A preliminary analysis on perceived-similarity speaks in favor of its prominent role in mediating the attracting power of a political leader. Thus, voters’ proneness to political leaders’ gaze is modulated by real societal changes

Directions in cardiovascular medical: the renin system in the diagnosis of hypertension

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Site effects of the 2002 Molise earthquake, Italy: analysis of strong motion, ambient noise, and synthetic data from 2D modelling in San Giuliano di Puglia

On October 31st and November 1st 2002 the Basso Molise area (Southern Italy) was stuck by two moderate magnitude earthquakes (Mw = 5.7 and 5.5). The epicentral area showed a high level of damage, attributable both to the high vulnerability of existing buildings and to the site effects caused geological and geomorphological setting. The town of San Giuliano di Puglia show a very peculiar departure from the local intensity pattern: it reached an intensity two degrees higher than neighbouring towns and also within the same S. Giuliano town the damage varied notably. The site response was initially evaluated by H/V ratios performed on microtremors, while a limited number of strong motion recordings from the most severe aftershocks was also available. Both data sets indicate the simultaneous presence of two amplification effects: one around 6 Hz (that previous studied attributed to the strong, shallow impedance contrast among landfill/clay and calcarenites), and another at 2 Hz related to the first S-wave arrivals and predominant on only one receiver component. A further study performed on weak-motion recordings showed also strong vertical amplification, thus indicating underestimation by HVSR technique. This set of phenomena has been investigated with a 2-D model, whose principal novelty is the geometry of the simulated geological structure consisting of a positive flower structure generated during the late orogenic transpressive regime. The numerical model allows to reproduce the location of occurrence, the amplitude and (partly) the frequency of the observed amplifications