Research & Expertise news at HSE University

A team of Russian researchers affiliated with the HSE University, RANEPA, and NES found professional athletes to perform better against their former clubs. At least in some circumstances, emotions seem to have a greater effect on their performance than knowledge of the opponent's tactics. The study's findings are published in the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics and may be useful for coaches, sports managers, and bookmakers.

Two of the winners, Konstantin Sorokin, doctoral student and visiting lecturer of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science and research assistant at the HSE International Laboratory of Algebraic Topology and its Applications, and Daria Kleeva, doctoral student of the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences and research assistant at the HSE Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience Centre for Bioelectric Interfaces, spoke to the HSE News Service about why attending the School matters so much for them.

The Mirror Labs research project competition is aimed at HSE University departments that are planning to conduct joint studies with other Russian universities and research centres. The competition is now in its third year. A total of 19 academic organisations from 14 regions of Russia submitted applications as partners of HSE University, including 9 organisations participating for the first time.

On July 7–10, Gorky Park hosted Russian Creative Week, a major event in the sector of economics linked to intellectual activity. Participants and guests of the event discussed the main tasks and issues in developing a strategy for a national creative product, and experts from HSE University presented effective models for work and life in the new economic reality.

An international team of researchers led by scientists from the HSE University have examined the interplay of languages in the brains of bilinguals. Using EEG data of Russian-English bilinguals, the authors were the first to demonstrate nearly instant and automatic detection of semantic similarity between words belonging to their two languages, suggesting the existence of an integrated bilingual lexicon in which words are activated in parallel in both languages. The study findings are published in Cortex.

An international collaboration of scientists, including researchers from the International Laboratory of Bioinformatics of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, have discovered a promising new approach to killing hard-to-treat melanoma. The team has found that an alternative form of the DNA molecule can induce an immune response in tumours—similar to the body's response to a virus— that causes the death of cells that support tumour growth. As a result, the patient becomes more responsive to cancer therapy. The results of the study have been published in Nature.

Russian researchers have studied the correlation between personality authenticity (the ability to be oneself) and the ability to forgive under different levels of stress. They found that people experiencing chronic stress are more inclined to forgive, while people affected by everyday stress are less inclined to do so. The ability to forgive promotes authenticity. The results of the study, which have been published in the journal Clinical Psychology and Special Education, can be used in life coaching programmes.

In the run-up to Youth Day, IQ.HSE studied the results of an all-Russian survey by the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector. Sociologists studied the role of young people in charity and volunteering. What do they sacrifice for the sake of their neighbours — and are they prepared to do it in general? For those who think that young people have their heads in the clouds, the answers will be unexpected.