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The 8^th Russian Comics Conference ‘The World of Comics’, organised by the HSE Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, took place online in March 2023. Over the two days of the conference, 44 comics researchers from Russia, France, China, and Malaysia presented their papers on comics history, narratives, visuals, and animation.

In honour of HSE University’s 30^th anniversary in November 2022, the RT television channel made a documentary film called 2052: See the Future. The film is dedicated to the university’s research achievements and how they will change the world in the decades to come. The film was released this year in English and Arabic. The first festival screening of 2052: See the Future took place as part of the 7^th Gagarin.doc International Festival of Cinema, Science and Contemporary Art.

HSE researchers, in collaboration with their colleagues from Skoltech and the Central Research Institute for Epidemiology, have uncovered the mechanisms behind the emergence of new and dangerous coronavirus variants, such as Alpha, Delta, Omicron, and others. They have discovered that the likelihood of a substitution occurring at a specific site of the SARS-CoV-2 genome is dependent on concordant substitutions occurring at other sites. This explains why new and more contagious variants of the virus can emerge unexpectedly and differ significantly from those that were previously circulating. The study’s findings have been published in eLife.

Researchers at the HSE Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience have discovered that analysing the electrical activity in the brains of a small group of people and studying their visual attention makes it possible to predict the impact of an online advertising campaign on a much larger group of 300,000 consumers. The paper has been published in Brain Sciences.

Researchers from Russia and the U.S. have found language impairment in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to be associated with a lower volume of grey matter and greater gyrification in the temporal and frontal lobes of the cerebral cortex. These regions play a critical role in language functioning. Understanding the structural characteristics that underlie behavioural deficits can aid in designing special education programmes for children with autism. A paper with the study’s findings has been published in Scientific Reports.

To devote one’s time to scientific research does not at all mean to engage in abstract academic reflection. Vasily Minkov, who graduated first from the HSE’s Faculty of Social Sciences and then from its Faculty of Computer Science, conducts research as a bioinformatician at the BostonGene medical company. He even managed to give his musical project a cultural and anthropological focus. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr. Minkov explained how the brain is studied in HSE laboratories, what bioinformatics is and why working in the industry is useful for a scientist.

In late April, the official opening ceremony of Russia’s first intensive student workshop ‘Chinese Perspective’, organised jointly by the HSE University Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs (WEIA), the Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, and the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICCA RAS), took place. The intensive course will allow students to explore Chinese business culture and acquire the skills to work and do business in China.

The partners have agreed to develop education in the field of fintech. The corresponding bilateral agreement was signed by HSE University Rector Nikita Anisimov and Alfa-Bank CEO Vladimir Verkhoshinskiy.