Research & Expertise news at HSE University

During the first half of the twentieth century—a period marred by wars, revolutions, and social upheaval—Europe almost destroyed itself twice. Despite the apparent closeness of the events of this period and the copious studies that they have inspired, many questions still remain unanswered, and the causes and interrelationships between the events remain unclear. Laura Pettinaroli, a researcher at the Catholic University of Paris, has been conducting research in the archives of the Vatican, Italy, France, Belgium and Russia for more than ten years in order to shed more light on the relationship between the Vatican and Russia during this period.

Reproductive behavior is modernizing at different rates in post-Soviet countries. Things are changing faster in Russia, Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine, where, over the last fifteen years, the average maternity age has increased and the contribution of women in their thirties to their countries’ birthrates has grown. Meanwhile, old reproductive patterns persist in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where firstborns are usually born to parents under 30, demographers Vladimir Kozlov and Konstantin Kazenin note in a paper delivered at HSE’s XX April International Academic Conference.

A new supercomputer, which has been recently set up at MIEM, will allow the university to carry out high quality research in deep learning and mathematical modeling. The computer was ranked sixth in the April Top-50 ranking of supercomputers in Russia.

Researchers from HSE University and York University have become the first to analyse the results of 82 functional neuroimaging studies on working memory mechanisms in different adult age groups. The meta-analyses showed that across studies the agreement of various areas of the prefrontal cortex decreases with ageing, suggesting reorganization of brain function during healthy aging. The results have been published in the paper ‘Meta-analyses of the n-back working memory task: fMRI evidence of age-related changes in prefrontal cortex involvement across the adult lifespan’.

More than half of school graduates in medium-sized Russian cities will change their place of residence either forever or at least for a long time. According a report on internal migration presented by HSE demographers at the XX April International Academic Conference, these people are lost to their cities.

At the general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), held on April 23, research by Alexander Kostinskiy, Vladimir Rakov and Mikhail Andreev conducted in collaboration with their colleagues from academic institutes on the modeling and development of lightning was acknowledged as one of the most significant Russian scientific achievement in 2018.

Researchers from HSE University and London Business School have carried out research into the dynamics of the prices for Russian companies’ stocks and depositary receipts. The research indicates that, thanks to their price differences, there are opportunities for profitable trading with zero or, at least, minimum risk.

Part of the Centre of Deep Learning and Bayesian Methods and another partner project between Sberbank and HSE University’s Faculty of Computer Science, the laboratory will focus on applying machine learning methods to financial services.