People Over 65 are Less Prone to Apathy and Depression
The degree of depression and apathy is higher between the ages of 50 and 65 than after 65. What’s more, apathy among those of pre-retirement age depends on subjective vitality — the sense of being full of life and energy.
Deadly Habits: Why Women Live Longer Than Men
In developing countries, the gap in life expectancies between men and women has been shrinking for a long time—but it has not disappeared completely. In many cases, gender-related differences in mortality in the 45–69 age group account for almost half of this gap. However, in Eastern Europe, early mortality in men aged 50 and under accounts for over a third of it. Demographer Marina Vergeles examined the situation in more than 40 countries and shared her conclusions with IQ.HSE.
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Shattering the Family’s ‘Glass Ceiling’: Why Young People Go to University
Attitudes towards education are often inherited, with parents explaining to their children what university education can give them. They offer very pragmatic arguments—that higher education ensures a more successful career, interesting work and a good income. But there are also other arguments that should not be underestimated. At this time when many universities are holding open house, IQ.HSE draws on a study by HSE scholars Tatiana Chirkina and Amina Guseynova to explain the attitudes towards education that parents give their children and which considerations they might have overlooked.
Tunnelling Contact Helps to Study Electron Structure of Carbon Nanotubes
Russian physicists have demonstrated how tunnelling contacts can be used for single-particle states spectroscopy in carbon nanotubes. The proposed technology of tunnelling contact fabrication and the spectroscopic method will help measure the exact nanotube bandgap value, which is the key characteristic required for design of any nanotubes-based electronic devices. Applied Physics Letters publishes the result of the study.
Mine or Ours: The Brain’s Choice
Researchers from HSE University have shown how the brain works differently depending on whether a subject is dealing with common (shared) or private natural resources. The ventral striatum—the so-called pleasure centre—plays a significant role in this process. The study has been published by Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
About Half of Russian Employees Consider Themselves Overqualified
About half of all Russian employees consider themselves overqualified for their current job. This perception affects their level of job satisfaction and leads them on a search for more suitable employment.
HSE University Assesses the Impact of Global Trends on Russian Education
Russian respondents positively assessed trends of co-authorship between students and teachers in the learning and teaching process, the need to ensure equal access to education for all categories of the population, and the trend towards ‘humanising’ education.
Chemists Suggest Using Polymeric Ionic Liquids in Supercapacitors
A team of researchers from HSE MIEM joined colleagues from the Institute of Non-Classical Chemistry in Leipzig to develop a theoretical model of a polymeric ionic liquid on a charged conductive electrode. They used approaches from polymer physics and theoretical electrochemistry to demonstrate the difference in the behaviour of electrical differential capacitance of polymeric and ordinary ionic liquids for the first time. The results of the study were published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.
A Paucity of Publishing: Why University Professors Find It Difficult to Do Very Much Research
There are usually three main parts to working at a university: teaching, research, and administrative tasks. However, professors at Russian universities are still mostly occupied with the demands of a very heavy teaching load. As HSE International Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms Senior Researcher Ilya Prakhov discovered, even at leading universities with a focus on science, professors spend 2.5 times more time on classroom work than on research. Given this situation, is it possible to advance research at universities?
Researchers Teach Algorithm to Predict Success in Effortful Tasks
Researchers from HSE University and Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology have developed machine learning models that can predict success in visual tasks of mental attention using reaction time and eye movement. The paper ‘A machine learning investigation of factors that contribute to predicting cognitive performance: Difficulty level, reaction time and eye-movements’ was published in Decision Support Systems.