News

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown have made life difficult for credit institutions and their clients. Citizens’ incomes have decreased, which can lead to an increase in bad debts, and a decrease in the key rate to support the economy makes deposits less and less attractive and deprives banks of an important resource. Banks are compelled to search for new ways to earn money, which carries additional risks, says HSE Banking Institute Director Vasily Solodkov.

The Poletaev Readings, dedicated to the memory of Andrey Poletaev, one of the founders of the Poletaev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (Russian acronym — IGITI), is a major annual event of the Institute. The event was set to mark its 10^th anniversary in 2020, but due to the pandemic, the anniversary forum has been postponed to 2021. In its place, the organizers have arranged the Poletaev Readings 9¾, which were held online. HSE News Service spoke with the event organizer and some of the participants.

The Second International Conference ‘East and West in the New Transformation Phase: Asia Encountering the Challenges Of Deglobalization’ will be held from December 16-17, 2020. According to Vera Vishnyakova, Head of theFaculty of World Economy and International Affairs School of International Regional Studies, it will be the first event to discuss the most pressing questions in contemporary international regional studies.

Although Russia has traditionally been a patriarchal society, misandry—the sharp criticism of men, or ‘reverse sexism’—is on the rise. Women accuse men of every possible sin, from acting aggressively to being too passive at work and home, and from narcissism to general indifference. In a pilot study, HSE University researchers studied misandry in the women of two different generations.

Known for its particularly tactile culture, the Eastern Roman Empire maintained rather complex customs when it came to kissing—on the lips, the shoulders, the chest, and the feet. Emperors and nobles, military leaders, and even monks engaged in the practice unsparingly. Based on the research of Sergey Ivanov, professor of history and philology at the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies of HSE University, IQ has prepared a short guide to Byzantine kisses.

On September 23– 25, Yandex held the Yandex Scale 2020 conference on new digital products and services. The conference included practical sessions on machine learning, data processing, analysis and other topics, as well as cases of the company’s customers and partners. One such case, concerning the evolution of a digital university, was presented by Alexey Chukarin, HSE University’s Senior Director for Digital Transformation.

On September 21, the VIII International Conference on Applied Research in Economics (iCare) was held online, bringing together more than 100 researchers from 19 countries. Organizers, speakers, teachers, and students shared their impressions of the event and talked about the opportunities that the conference opens up for them.

Researchers from HSE University compared the effect of two meditation practices – loving-kindness meditation (LKM) and compassion meditation (CM). Loving-kindness meditation turned out to be more effective when it comes to increasing happiness, but, in contrast with previous studies, compassion meditation also did not result in a growth of negative emotions. The paper was published in Mindfulness journal.

The Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Sociology recently published a collective monograph on socio-technical barriers to the production, distribution and consumption of digital technologies entitled Adventures in Technology: Barriers to Digitalization in Russia. A number of chapters were written by HSE University researchers Konstantin Glazkov, Olga Logunova and Alisa Maximova. 

The HSE International Laboratory of Statistical and Computational Genomics has launched an online school for applied population genetics and analysis. The school does not require special knowledge in biology and is aimed at students, graduate students, and postdocs in mathematics, physics, and computer programming.