Champagne and Unsanitary Conditions: Trade in Siberia 150 Years Ago
The increasing application of law in various spheres of life in the Russian empire promoted trade regulation and influenced everyday trade practices—even in remote regions. Tradespeople, in turn, tried to limit the application of new regulations while using laws to serve their own interests. HSE University has hosted a seminar on trade in Siberia in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Scholars Gain New Data on Heavy Exotic Hadrons
As part of the Belle experiment, researchers were able to measure the energy dependence of e+e- -> B-anti-B, B-anti-B* and B*-anti-B* reactions in the 10.63 GeV to 11.02 GeV energy range for the first time. The new data will help clarify the nature of the group of exotic Upsilon mesons that have mass in this range. The results of the study were published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
‘Our Task Is to Do Things Better, or Do the Things That the Region Lacks’
HSE University's English-language newsletter, HSE LooK, has talked to Anna Blyakhman, Director of the HSE Nizhny Novgorod campus, about the history of the campus, its most noteworthy achievements, and future plans.
Surviving on Zoom: How Teachers Have Adapted to Online Education
Teaching is a stressful job, and with schools and universities operating remotely over the last eighteen months, teachers’ worries have increased dramatically. In the latest in a series of articles on distance learning, IQ.HSE reports on research conducted by the HSE University Institute of Education on how teachers have been coping with stress.
Scholars Look at Publication Activity in Post-Soviet Countries
75% of papers published in post-Soviet countries are by Russian researchers. In total, about 3% of all papers published globally are from post-Soviet countries. The role of universities has grown over the last 30 years, with over half of all recent academic papers being made with the participation of university researchers. These are the conclusions made in a study of publication activity by scholars in post-Soviet countries.
Meditation Has Greater Benefits for Intrinsically Motivated People with High Self-Control
HSE University researchers Evgeny Osin and Irina Turilina conducted an intervention study looking into the effectiveness of a short-term online mindfulness meditation course. They discovered that even after a three-week course of daily 10 to 15-minute meditation sessions, novice participants benefitted from improved emotional wellbeing, concentration, motivation and self-reflection. The practitioners were also less likely to fixate on negative thoughts. However, these effects only applied to people who already had sufficiently high levels of self-control and motivation to meditate and were thus less likely to give up on the practice. The research is presented in an article published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being
‘I Studied as an International Student at ICEF, but Never Felt Like One’
Tonka Lange graduated from the HSE International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF) in 2008 and then entered the LSE Master’s programme. After five years of working at Goldman Sachs, she got her MBA at INSEAD and in 2021, started working as Senior Treasury Analyst at Amazon (Singapore). In this interview, Tonka talks about how a finance graduate can survive a crisis, what to do to get the most out of the LSE master’s programme, and the main advantages of an MBA degree.
HSE University Enters Top 125 of THE World University Rankings in Psychology
HSE University has once again improved its position in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings by subject in Psychology, entering the 101–125 cohort of the world’s best universities in the field.
Researchers Explain Potential Cause of Earth’s Green Airglow
A team of Russian researchers from HSE University, the Russian Space Research Institute, and the Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism (Russian Academy of Sciences) has described the development of modulational instability of electromagnetic waves in dusty ionospheric plasma, which is caused by a high intensity of electromagnetic emissions. The researchers considered inelastic collisions of ionospheric plasma particles and formulated new tasks and applications to be addressed at a later stage. The results are published in the Physics of Plasmas journal.
Education and Employment in ‘Hard’ Science Provide no Salary Advantages Compared to ‘Soft’ Science at Any Career Stage
HSE University economists question whether Russian STEM specialists are better paid than non-STEM specialists. They compare wages of professionals with STEM and no STEM majors, and those working in STEM and no STEM jobs and explore how the gap evolves over the life cycle. They find that there is no advantage of STEM major and STEM job over their no STEM alternative. They present their findings in a paper published in the Voprosy Ekonomiki journal.