Gambling Disorders Among Young Women Regular Gamblers: The Unique and Common Contribution of Executive Thinking Style and Mindfulness

The aim of this study is to investigate the role played by mindfulness in the relationship between cognitive styles and gambling disorders in a sample of female young adults. Participants in this study (125 women; Mage = 18.64 years; SD = 1.7) were recruited in betting or bingo halls. They completed the South Oaks Gambling Screen, the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure, and Sternberg's questionnaire on thinking styles. The results from the mediation analyses revealed that the executive thinking style increases gambling and that the deficit in mindfulness ability mediates this relationship. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed

Sexual Fantasies and Stereotypical Gender Roles: The Influence of Sexual Orientation, Gender and Social Pressure in a Sample of Italian Young-Adults

Differences in gender and sexual orientation are suggested to be linked to differences in the way individuals think and behave. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the effect of gender and sexual orientation on sexual fantasies and gender roles in heterosexual and gay and lesbian people. The sample was composed of 547 participants, 246 men (Mage = 28.85; SD = 9,27) and 301 women (Mage = 25,97; SD = 7,141). Within this sample, 61.8% of men and 79.4% of women were heterosexual, whereas 38.2% of men and 20.6% of women were gay and lesbian. Participants completed an online battery of questionnaires to assess their sexual orientation, sexual fantasies, and gender roles on three different dimensions. It was hypothesized that the heterosexual group would report more normative sexual fantasies (H1) and that women in general would report androgynous characteristics, which would be linked to a low degree of reported feminine ideal roles and high social pressure to conform to feminine social expectations (H2). The results showed that lesbian women scored slightly higher than heterosexual women on transgressive sexual fantasies and lower on emotional-romantic ones. Moreover, heterosexual women, but not lesbian women, showed a pattern of high social pressure to conform to feminine expectations together with lower scores in the IRQ. We found the same results on gay men but not for heterosexual men. The overall results suggest that sexual fantasies and gender roles are relatively independent concepts and are influenced by different mechanisms

The feasibility and applications of non-invasive cardiac monitoring in obese patients undergoing day-case surgery: Results of a prospective observational study

Aims: This prospective observational study evaluates the utility of non-invasive cardiac monitoring in obese patients in the day-surgery case, considering factors, such as Body Mass Index (BMI) and anaesthesia technique. Background: Obese patients are more likely to be admitted to hospital or to get hospitalized because they are more prone to concomitant diseases and obesity itself is not a contraindication to day surgery. Obese patients are a high-risk patient population that may particularly benefit from monitoring perioperative haemodynamic variations. Methods: In this observational study, we compared haemodynamic variations between overweight or obese and normal weight patients undergoing day-case surgery. We adopted NICOM® as a non-invasive cardiac output monitoring. Objective: The aim of the current study was to investigate the haemodynamic impact of BMI and anaesthesia technique during day-case surgery procedures. The other goal was to evaluate the feasibility and applications of non-invasive cardiac output monitoring among the obese population in day-surgery. Results: 74 patients were included in the study. 34 were overweight or obese (weight 84 ± 10 kg, height 160 ± 10 cm, BMI ≈ 30 kg/m2), 40 were normal weight (weight 63 ± 15 kg, height 160 ± 10 cm, BMI ≈ 22 kg/m2). Compared to normal-weight patients, obese patients show an increase in blood pressure with a return to baseline values at the end of surgery (p < 0.05). The Cardiac Output (CO) shows a similar trend, whereas the heart rate is normal. A decrease in the Cardiac Index (CI) during the operation was noticed in both groups, the one in obese patients (p = 0.24) being greater. In the same way, the Stroke Volume Index (SVI) was lower in obese patients during surgery (p < 0.05). In spinal anaesthesia, the Total Peripheral Resistance Index (TPRI) was not statistically different between the groups of study. As for the TPRI in obese patients, we reported values similar to the ones in non-obese patients in spinal anaesthesia. In local anesthesia, TPRI was higher in obese patients than in non-obese. Conclusion: Cardiovascular alterations in relation to obesity include an increase in blood pressure, CO and SV. An inadequate monitoring of haemodynamic parameters is a risk factor for perioperative complications. NICOM® provides a continuous, non-invasive haemodynamic measurement

Ducks Lay Eggs and Lions Have Manes: The Acceptability of Gender-Specific Minority Generic Sentences

Minority characteristic generic statements such as ducks lay eggs are judged to be generally true of the class, despite being true of a minority of cases, such as healthy female ducks of egg-laying age. Five studies explored the factors responsible for the acceptance of minority generic statements about biological kinds. Studies 1 and 2 found that minority generic statements about animals that are true of just 1 sex were no more likely to be accepted as true of the class than were statements true of just 1 of 2 subtypes, not differentiated by sex. Further studies showed that gender-specific properties are more often accepted when related to reproduction (ducks lay eggs) than to appearance (deer have antlers). It is proposed that reproductive properties are more easily interpreted as referring to the kinds themselves, on account of their role in naïve biological theories of the kinds. The result supports the view that minority generics are accepted to the degree that they are embedded in naïve theories of a biological kind

Surgical ‘damage control’ treatment of a large retroperitoneal liposarcoma encasing a horseshoe kidney

Damage control is a surgical strategy for severely compromised trauma patients based on speed control of life-threatening injuries that aims to rapidly resuscitate patients in an intensive care unit (ICU). We report on the use of such therapeutic strategy in a patient affected by a retroperitoneal sarcoma concomitant to a horseshoe kidney, a relatively rare anatomical malformation

Light-front Ward-Takahashi Identity for Two-Fermion Systems

We propose a three-dimensional electromagnetic current operator within light-front dynamics that satisfies a light-front Ward-Takahashi identity for two-fermion systems. The light-front current operator is obtained by a quasi-potential reduction of the four-dimensional current operator and acts on the light-front valence component of bound or scattering states. A relation between the light-front valence wave function and the four-dimensional Bethe-Salpeter amplitude both for bound or scattering states is also derived, such that the matrix elements of the four-dimensional current operator can be fully recovered from the corresponding light-front ones. The light-front current operator can be perturbatively calculated through a quasi-potential expansion, and the divergence of the proposed current satisfies a Ward-Takahashi identity at any given order of the expansion. In the quasi-potential expansion the instantaneous terms of the fermion propagator are accounted for by the effective interaction and two-body currents. We exemplify our theoretical construction in the Yukawa model in the ladder approximation, investigating in detail the current operator at the lowest nontrivial order of the quasi-potential expansion of the Bethe-Salpeter equation. The explicit realization of the light-front form of the Ward-Takahashi identity is verified. We also show the relevance of instantaneous terms and of the pair contribution to the two-body current and the Ward-Takahashi identity.Comment: 48 pages, 3 figure

Vulnerability to shocks in the global seafood trade network

Trade can allow countries to overcome local or regional losses (shocks) to their food supply, but reliance on international food trade also exposes countries to risks from external perturbations. Countries that are nutritionally or economically dependent on international trade of a commodity may be adversely affected by such shocks. While exposure to shocks has been studied in financial markets, communication networks, and some infrastructure systems, it has received less attention in food-trade networks. Here, we develop a forward shock-propagation model to quantify how trade flows are redistributed under a range of shock scenarios and assess the food-security outcomes by comparing changes in national fish supplies to indices of each country’s nutritional fish dependency. Shock propagation and distribution among regions are modeled on a network of historical bilateral seafood trade data from UN Comtrade using 205 reporting territories grouped into 18 regions. In our model exposure to shocks increases with total imports and the number of import partners. We find that Central and West Africa are the most vulnerable to shocks, with their vulnerability increasing when a willingness-to-pay proxy is included. These findings suggest that countries can reduce their overall vulnerability to shocks by reducing reliance on imports and diversifying food sources. As international seafood trade grows, identifying these types of potential risks and vulnerabilities is important to build a more resilient food system