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Happy Sunday. Welcome to the best of The Conversation.
When the nurse at my doctor’s office reads out the numbers after taking my blood pressure, I generally remark “I have no idea what that means.”
It turns out I’m a pretty average American – at least in this regard. According to a recent survey, only 39% of American understand blood pressure readings.
The survey was conducted by Wändi Bruine de Bruin, a health communications expert at the USC Dornsife, and Mark Huffman, a cardiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
In addition to sharing their survey results, they offer 10 tips for fighting this silent killer, including this no-nonsense recommendation: “If you smoke, vape or both: Quit now.”
Later this week, we’ll bring you stories about regulating artificial intelligence, meeting the mental health needs of earthquake survivors and how the discovery of a new exoplanet represents a shift in exoplanet science.
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High blood pressure has no symptoms, so you could have it and not be aware.
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Wändi Bruine de Bruin, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; Mark Huffman, Washington University in St Louis
Nearly half of all Americans ages 20 and up have high blood pressure. Yet research shows that most people in the US don’t know the cutoff numbers for healthy blood pressure.
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Ronald Suny, University of Michigan
A year into the war in Ukraine, a historian reflects on how it has affected the geopolitical environment.
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Leland Glenna, Penn State
Corporations restrict what farmers can do with their own seeds, as well as their farm equipment when it breaks down.
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Tracy Roof, University of Richmond
More than 41 million people rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to buy their groceries. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the program ramped up.
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Juliane I. Beier, University of Pittsburgh
Vinyl chloride dilutes fairly quickly in outside air and water. One concern for lingering exposure from the derailment involves private wells.
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Social media can sometimes damage the self-esteem of teen girls.
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Elizabeth Englander, Bridgewater State University; Meghan K. McCoy, Bridgewater State University
The mental health of teenagers has grown far worse over the last decade. But a new report shows that, compared with boys, teen girls are disproportionately experiencing sadness and hopelessness.
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Andrew Blum, University of San Diego
Questions about whether warring parties agree about how the war will end and the costs of war or peace are all key factors to help assess when a conflict might end.
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Andrey Vyshedskiy, Boston University
By learning what parts of the brain are crucial for imagination to work, neuroscientists can look back over hundreds of millions of years of evolution to figure out when it first emerged.
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Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino
Americans are not the first to fret over the potential harm that parties can inflict. But parties can also promote the common interest.
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Molly Jackson, The Conversation
A roundup of The Conversation’s articles about this holy Christian season and its history.
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News Quiz 🧠
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Fritz Holznagel, The Conversation
Test your reading with a weekly quiz drawn from some of our favorite stories. Questions this week on Jimmy Carter, tattoos, literary revisions and stargazing.
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