The Conversation

Arrested development: Can we improve cardiac arrest survival in hospitals?

Written by Brahmajee Nallamothu, Professor of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, University of Michigan

How teams respond to cardiac arrests in hospitals can make all the difference, a new study suggests. antoniodiaz/Shutterstock.com

Each July brings residents – recent graduates from medical schools – to the inpatient wards of major teaching hospitals across the United States. Among the many new responsibilities these young doctors will...

What are madrasa schools and what skills do they impart?

Written by Myriam Renaud, Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Thought and Ethics, University of Chicago

Students at a madrasa in the Assaba region of southern Mauritania in May 2014.Michal Huniewicz, CC BY

Turkey’s recently reelected president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made expansion of Muslim schools a top priority. Erdogan’s government is reported to have approved a religious education budget of US$1.5 billion this year, an increase of...

Congress could declaw restrictions on politicking from the pulpit — over the objections of many churches

Written by Samuel Brunson, Professor of Law, Loyola University Chicago

President Trump signed an executive order related to the Johnson Amendment in 2017.AP Photo/Evan Vucci

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump promised his Evangelical supporters that he would eliminate the Johnson Amendment, a law that has barred tax-exempt charities from weighing in on political candidates since the 1950s.

Trump reiterated his...

Weaponized information seeks a new target in cyberspace: Users' minds

Written by Richard Forno, Senior Lecturer, Cybersecurity & Internet Researcher, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Cyberattacks target Americans' thinking.Fancy Tapis/Shutterstock.com

The Russian attacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the country’s continuing election-related hacking have happened across all three dimensions of cyberspace – physical, informational and cognitive. The first two are well-known: For years, hackers have...

After summit Russians like Trump more, Americans less

Written by Erik C. Nisbet, Associate Professor of Communication, Political Science, and Environmental Policy and Faculty Associate with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University

President Donald Trump has garnered a great deal of criticism in the United States for his performance at the summit with Russian Vladimir Putin. But how was Trump’s performance viewed by the Russian public?

Our analysis of Russian polling data collected before and after the summit suggests one outcome of this meeting was a significant rise...

How the Russian government used disinformation and cyber warfare in 2016 election – an ethical hacker explains

Written by Timothy Summers, Director of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Engagement, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland

Outside forces pushed the American people farther apart.Delpixel/Shutterstock.com

The Soviet Union and now Russia under Vladimir Putin have waged a political power struggle against the West for nearly a century. Spreading false and distorted information – called “dezinformatsiya” after the Russian word for...

The thrill of curing hepatitis C and the pain of watching the disease surge with opioid abuse

Written by Anna Suk-Fong Lok, Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan

Hepatitis C rates have risen in the U.S. as drug use and opioid abuse have risen. By Zephyr_p/shutterstock.com

When I began my medical career in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, I chose to focus on hepatitis B, in part because it was very common and because the hepatitis C virus had not yet been discovered. I witnessed the devastation that this virus...

A cooler ocean predator than sharks? Consider the mantis shrimps

Written by Thomas Cronin, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

When you think about fearsome predators in the ocean, the first thing that pops into your mind is probably a shark. Sure, sharks are OK, with their sleek, menacing shape and their gaping jaws with rows of jagged teeth. But if you were a fish living on a coral reef or cruising along the shore over the sands of a tropical island, you would fear a...

5 reasons why Venezuela's nightmare could get worse

Written by Andrea Oelsner, Associate professor, Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina)

“It’s time for a coup in Venezuela.”

That statement appeared in Foreign Policy magazine on June 5, two weeks after Nicolás Maduro was re-elected as Venezuela’s president on May 20 in an election widely considered to be rigged.

José R. Cárdenas, the former Bush administration official who wrote it, argued...

Race of mass shooters influences how the media cover their crimes, new study shows

Written by Laura Frizzell, PhD Student in Sociology, The Ohio State University

If a news report mentions a shooter's tough childhood, chances are he's white.ASAG Studio

On Jan. 24, 2014, police found Josh Boren, a 34-year-old man and former police officer, dead in his home next to the bodies of his wife and their three children. The shots were fired execution-style on Boren’s kneeling victims, before he turned the gun...