Research & Expertise news at HSE University

Although a growing number of Russians now exercise regularly, the overall figure remains low — only one-fourth of working women and less than one-third of working men are physically active. Are Russians just lazy or are gym memberships too expensive for them? What can stimulate people to adopt a more active lifestyle, and is Russia up to international standards in this regard? Find the answers in a newly released study from HSE University. IQ.HSE selected 10 of the most interesting facts from that research.

Ekaterina Melianova and Artyom Volgin, second-year students of the Master’s programme ‘Applied Statistics with Network Analysis’, took second place in an international data analysis competition. Using a Kaggle survey of 19,717 respondents from 171 countries, they analyzed the community of PhD degree holders in Data Science.

HSE University hosted a Russian-Chinese meeting on ‘Social policy as a tool for combating poverty and developing human capital’. Representatives of the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs, the World Bank, the Russian Pension Fund, the government of Tatarstan, and HSE University researchers evaluated the social policies of both countries, shared effective measures for combating and eliminating poverty.

Professor Heinrich Haerke, a renowned archaeology expert, has been cooperating with HSE University researchers for a long time. This year he has joined HSE as a Professor at the recently formed Centre for Classical and Oriental Archaeology. He has talked to HSE News Service about his research interests, field projects, and teaching archaeology.

Russia has just had a great contraceptive revolution, and it is not over: unwanted pregnancies are more often prevented than terminated. Russians now engage in family planning with more confidence: the number of births is almost equal to the number of pregnancies. On the basis of studies completed by HSE demographers, IQ.HSE examines the Soviet and Russian culture of birth control.

The turnstiles and entrance gates used in municipal transport not only ensure that passengers pay, but also structure their behavior according to age, body size, ability and speed. Many people must maneuver themselves to pass easily through the rotating arms or swinging gates of an Automated Passage Control System (APCS): passengers cannot be too large or too small and must not walk too quickly or too slowly. Sociologists studied how turnstiles impose uniformity on passengers’ physicality and behaviour.

The parties agreed to cooperate on issues related to the improvement of legislation and law enforcement practices in an area that is the subject of research activity at HSE University.

Big Book, one of Russia’s most prestigious literary prizes, has been awarded in Moscow, and the biographical book Venedikt Yerofeev: a Stranger has taken the first prize. The book was co-authored by Oleg Lekmanov* (Professor in the HSE Faculty of Humanities), Mikhail Sverdlov (Associate Professor in the HSE School of Literary History and Theory) and Ilya Simanovsky.