Research & Expertise

The Russian Science Foundation announced the results of its 2019 competitions for support from the Presidential Research Project Programme. One competition was for grants in support of research initiatives by early career researchers, and another was in support of research conducted by research groups headed by early career scholars.

The cold war not only influenced the ideology and military sector of the Soviet Union, but served as an engine that jumpstarted its consumer economy — in particular, the food industry. In an article published in the journal Russian History, HSE historian Elena Kochetkova traces the development of the Soviet dairy industry and the production of dairy packaging in the post-war period. Her article recounts how milk became a staple of state propaganda and how Tetra Pak packaging came to be used in the USSR.

Researchers have used machine learning to discover that the two most widespread DNA structures — stem-loops and quadruplexes — cause genome mutations that lead to cancer. The results of the study were published in BMC Cancer.

The way one thinks, feels and acts in certain circumstances can determine career opportunities in terms of employment and pay. For the first time in Russia, Ksenia Rozhkova has examined the effect of personality characteristics on employment.

A mother’s intense involvement in her children’s lives is perceived as a social norm by many. However, intensive mothering is not always a voluntary choice. School and broader society often pressurise women into making this decision. Whether or not this parental practice always benefits children remains a question. The following is a brief account of related issues based on a new paper by Olga Isupova and other research into this field.

In a competition for science bloggers held at HSE University, Vladimir Mikheev and Vikotria Zemlyak were among the top performers. The students of the English-taught Master’s programme ‘Cognitive Sciences and Technologies: From Neuron to Cognition’ produce ‘Neirochai’ (‘NeuroTea’), a science podcast. The duo spoke with the HSE News Service about their guests, their listeners and their future plans.

For a long time, it was mainly art and theatre critics who wrote for a wide audience about dance from a spectator’s perspective. Later, philosophers and ethnographers began to study dance from different angles. But only when people with first-hand experience, i.e. dancers, joined in, did dance and movement studies get off to a real start. Irina Sirotkina explains how dance studies evolved in the 20th century.

The International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences at HSE University held a Graduate Student Seminar in Soviet History together with Sciences Po (France) on June 17 – 18, 2019. HSE News Service spoke with participants and instructors of the seminar, which examinedthe impact of WWII on the Soviet Union and surrounding regions, as well as aspects of the Soviet system from Stalin up to the 1980s.

The HSE University competition committee has announced the winners of an international competition for new physics laboratory proposals. Two proposed projects were selected: the Laboratory of van der Waals Heterostructures, headed by Davit Ghazaryan, and the Laboratory of Nanophotonics and Functional Materials, headed by Andrey Krasavin.

The subject of bilingualism, with its attendant pros and cons, has been surrounded by myths. This Card File is based on a series of lectures by Irina Dubinina, Associate Professor at Brandeis University, discussing the phenomenon of bilingualism, its impact on the human brain, and whether it is possible to raise a bilingual child in the Russian context.