Tag "research projects"

Rogue waves, or killer waves, are abnormally high and deadly waves that can emerge unpredictably in open seas and along shorelines. They pose an imminent deadly threat to everyone from colossal liners and pleasure yachts to seafarers and vacationers. Scientists from the HSE campus in Nizhny Novgorod Efim Pelinovsky and Ekaterina Didenkulova have assembled a catalogue of such phenomena that occurred in the World Ocean from 2011 to 2018, identifying the areas where they are frequently documented and inflict the most substantial damage.

Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl believed that the quest for meaning constitutes a fundamental and intrinsic motivation for all human beings. Some other authors suggest that the need for meaning or purpose only emerges at higher levels of personality development. According to a team of psychologists from HSE and the University of Paris Nanterre, individuals who have achieved higher levels of ego development are inclined to relinquish hedonistic motives in favour of cultivating mindfulness and embarking on a quest for meaning. These findings have been published in Frontiers in Psychology.

On June 8th, 2023, students from different faculties of HSE University who had participated in the project ‘Cross-cultural dialogue between the Arab Maghreb and France through the example of song and music traditions’ presented the results of their work. Irina Bilyk, head of the project, and Arina Tulebaeva, a second-year student of the Asian and African Studies programme at HSE University in Moscow, who was instrumental in organising it, spoke to us about the project.

People who are fluent in two or more languages are less susceptible to age-related mental disorders. They more quickly process information and make decisions, have better memories, and can even better identify emotions. Scientists from various countries discussed the influence of a second language on the processes of cognitive aging at the international symposium ‘Bilingualism: Proper Learning, Effective Communication, and Pleasant Old Age’ hosted by HSE University.

Researchers from the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences will study social processes in African countries, the issues and features of the continent’s demographic development, and problems related to the causes of separatism and decentralisation in particular African states during a multi-day scientific expedition that will be launched in June 2023.

Physicists from the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of RAS, HSE University, and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technologies have developed the first open-source GPU-based code for the simulation of microparticles motion in a plasma flow.  OpenDust is optimised for graphics accelerators, that allows it to calculate the forces acting on microparticles significantly faster than existing alternatives. A paper with the findings has been published in Computer Physics Communications.

A team of researchers from HSE University, the Russian Academy of Sciences Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry, and Molecular Technologies, LLC have jointly proposed a new treatment for osteoarthritis. This is currently the first disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug to act simultaneously on bone and cartilage tissue metabolism and on inflammation. The study findings are published in Scientific Reports.

Greater marital satisfaction lowers the risk of professional burnout, with this correlation being more pronounced among men than women. This is a conclusion made by HSE psychologists after conducting a study on the effect of social interactions on workplace burnout on a sample of 203 employees from several Russian companies. According to the researchers, gaining a better understanding of the specific aspects of burnout experienced by individuals makes it possible to address this syndrome more effectively. The paper has been published in Organizational Psychology.

A supercapacitor is a device capable of rapidly storing and releasing a significant amount of energy within a matter of seconds. It consists of metal electrodes immersed in an electrolyte solution. In their model, MIEM HSE scientists substituted the conventional low-molecular-weight electrolyte with a polyelectrolyte, resulting in an unexpected and adverse physical phenomenon: supercapacitors experience a reduction in capacitance when the pore size of the electrode is below 1 nm. By carefully selecting optimal conditions for polyelectrolytes, it becomes possible to develop supercapacitors that are not only more robust but also more efficient in their performance. The study has been published in Physical Review E.

Economists and sociologists who study alcohol consumption patterns often link them to people's living conditions and human capital such as education, work experience, and knowledge. Researchers of the HSE Laboratory for Labour Market Studies and the HSE Laboratory for Studies in Economic Sociology have found that non-cognitive skills developed in childhood and adolescence can have a major effect on the likelihood of alcohol abuse later in life and can diminish the role of education in this respect. The paper has been published in the Journal of Comparative Economics.