Social networks have been found to influence academic performance: students tend to perform better with high-performers among their friends, as some people are capable of inspiring others to try harder, according to Maria Yudkevich, Sofia Dokuka and Dilara Valeyeva of the HSE Centre for Institutional Studies.
From October 5 to 11, the Summer School of the International Laboratory of Decision Choice and Analysis was held at the Higher School of Economics, where Professor Allan Drazen (Department of Economics, University of Maryland, USA) served as the speaker. In a recent interview, he spoke not only about the importance of legislative politics in modern democracies but also about why he was struck by HSE students, why gut instincts are so important, and why theory is more important than practice.
Honorary Professor at the University of Chicago and Sydney University, historian Sheila Fitzpatrick gave a lecture on Stalin and Post-War Anti-Semitism in the USSR at the HSE’s International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences on Thursday 22nd October. In her talk, Professor Fitzpatrick looks at anti-semitism as a bone of contention between Stalin and his closest colleagues in the years when challenging the leader could have life-threatening consequence. As she explained in an interview with the HSE English News website, Sheila Fitzpatrick’s interest in the ‘Jewish question’ came out of her latest book.
The HSE Centre for Cognition and Decision Making together with a group of other Russian research centres is about to begin work on creating a mathematical model of the human brain. With its help scientists will be able to study the processes which take place in the brain and brain disease. It could be used for medical purposes in the future.
Almost half of all Israeli exports are produced by hi-tech companies. They make up more than 11% of GDP which is the highest (on a par with the USA) among leading industrial countries. Michael Zinigrad, Rector of Ariel University, will give a public lecture at HSE on the 29th October about how Israel has produced stunning results in commercialising academic research.
On October 22, the HSE Public Policy Department and the Course on Comparative Migration Policy will hold a panel discussion on the European refugee crisis. Dr. Mahama Tawat, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and a specialist in comparative migration policy, will serve as one of the panel members. Dr. Tawat recently spoke with the HSE news service about his research interests, what attracted him to HSE and his views on tolerance and diversity.
of Russians are not currently willing to pay additionally for goods that are produced in line with ethical principles (e.g., respect for the environment, respect for workers' rights, refusal to test cosmetics on animals, etc.).
HSE St Petersburg initiated and organised an international conference on Minorities and Conflicts: Asian and African States in the Modern World. Academics from Russia, South Korea, South Africa, Turkey and Armenia gathered for the event on 9th and 10th October.
The article ‘Tensorizing Neural Networks’, prepared by the Bayesian Methods Research Group under the supervision of Associate Professor of HSE’s Computer Science Faculty Dmitry Vetrov, has been accepted by the NIPS conference – the largest global forum on cognitive research, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, rated A* by the international CORE ranking. This year it is being held December 7-12 in Montreal. Here Dmitry Vetrov talks about the research he presented and about why delivering reports at conferences is better than getting published in the academic press.
