News

In early December, the finals of the Yandex Cup international programming competition took place in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). The prize, which totalled a record 16 million roubles, was shared among the winners from Russia, Belarus, Japan, the USA, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Dmitry Rempel, student of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science, won in the Backend track.

Polina Makarova initially planned to pursue a career in programming but soon shifted her focus to theoretical linguistics. In this interview with the HSE Young Scientists project, she discusses her research on grammatical agreement in the names of professions, the importance of emotional intelligence, and the benefits of keeping an eublepharid, or leopard gecko, as a pet.

Men are three times more likely than women to commit traffic violations while driving and to be involved in accidents. Moreover, they are more likely to create situations on the road that are highly dangerous to others. Men are also twice as likely to drive under the influence and nearly one-third more likely to receive a prison sentence for reckless driving. Perhaps it comes down to cultural norms and the different attitudes men and women have toward driving. These are the conclusions reached by Anton Kazun, Assistant Professor at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, and Research Assistant Mikhail Belov.

Hannah Kanu, from Freetown in Sierra Leone, is a second-year student of the Master’s in Law of International Trade and Dispute Resolution at the HSE University Faculty of Law. With 2024 coming to an end, the HSE News Service has asked students to reflect on the year gone by and their time at the university in general. In this instalment, Hannah talks about discovering Russia and the rewards and challenges of studying in Moscow—including the Russian word she finds the most difficult.

Preparations are underway at HSE University for Parallel Computational Technologies (PCT) 2025, an IT conference covering all aspects of the use of cloud, supercomputer, and neural network technologies in science and engineering. Applications to present at the conference (including those from early-career scientists) are open until January 1, 2025.

Researchers at the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience have investigated how the emotional impact of advertising affects the amount people willing to donate to support animal welfare. To accomplish this, the researchers measured physiological responses such as heart rate, electrodermal activity, and facial expressions in individuals viewing various photos of dogs. The findings indicate that willingness to donate is most accurately predicted by heart rate and facial muscle activation. The study has been published in Social Psychology. 

Scientists at Privolzhsky Research Medical University (PRMU) and the Centre for Language and Brain Studies at the HSE Campus in Nizhny Novgorod have developed methods to diagnose autoaggressive and heteroaggressive tendencies in adolescents using eye-tracking technology. This will allow psychiatrists and psychologists to address this condition in young people before they may harm themselves or others. Anna Khomenko, Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Language and Brain Studies at the HSE Campus in Nizhny Novgorod, presented the results of the project at the NeuroThursday seminar.

On December 13–15, 2024, the final round of theNorthern Eurasia Contests (the semi-final of theInternational Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC)) took place. Six teams from the HSEFaculty of Computer Science (FCS) participated, and each of them won an award. The overall winner was the FCS team Surstrumien Bobra.