HSE Economists Use Search Queries to Forecast Birth Rates
Researchers from the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences have shown that the accuracy of birth rate forecasts for Russia can be improved by almost 50% by incorporating the dynamics of online search queries related to pregnancy and childbirth into forecasting models. In the best-performing models, the forecasting error fell from 4.6% to 3.2%. The findings have been published in Populations and Economics.
HSE University and RREDA Join Forces to Support 2026 Renewable Energy of the Planet Competition
HSE University and the Russia Renewable Energy Development Association (RREDA) have signed a partnership and information cooperation agreement to support Renewable Energy of the Planet—2026, a national competition with international participation for students and early-career researchers. Applications are open on the competition's website until September 20, 2026.
HSE Researchers Discover Who Eats Out in Russia—And Why
Around one-third of Russians (31.3%) rarely eat out or buy ready-made meals. The core group of active consumers—those who eat out or purchase prepared food almost every day or several times a week—accounts for only about 9% of the population. These are the findings of a study conducted by the HSE Institute for Social Policy. According to the researchers eating out is no longer a marker of high social status in Russia.
HSE’s Development Projects Named Among the World’s Top 15 Urban Development Practices
A development project for Novy Urengoy, prepared by the Vysokovsky Graduate School of Urbanism at the HSE Faculty of Urban and Regional Development (FURD), has beenshortlisted for the Guangzhou Award for Urban Innovation, one of the world’s leading international competitions in urban planning.
Scientists Model How Interactions Between Societies Can Trigger Chaotic Behaviour
Scientists at HSE MIEM have proposed a mathematical model explaining how interactions between societies can influence their stability. Based on the classical theory of evolutionary games, the study reveals an unexpected effect: even a weak informational influence of one society on another can cause one society to remain stable while the other exhibits chaotic behaviour among its individual members. The study has been published in the International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos.
Ancient Craniiform Brachiopod: A Newly Discovered Species with a Unique Shell Shape and Lifestyle
Scientists from HSE University, MSU, and Tallinn University of Technology have studied a fossil species of ancient brachiopods that lived in a warm sea in what is now northern Estonia more than 445 million years ago. These ancient brachiopods developed a cup-shaped shell with a protective 'cap' that shielded them from overgrowth by other marine organisms. The study has been published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
Scientists Develop Bacterium-Sized Microlaser
An international team of researchers, including scientists from HSE University–St Petersburg, has developed microlasers that emit deep-ultraviolet light at a wavelength of 255 nanometres. The devices operate at room temperature, and the smallest of them measures just two micrometres in diameter—roughly the size of a bacterium. These microlasers could be used in sensors, spectroscopic systems, photonic chips, and communication devices. The paper has been published in Optics & Laser Technology.
HSE Develops App for Assessing Phonological Processing in Children
Researchers at the HSE Centre for Language and Brain have developed a new digital tool for assessing children's phonological processing skills—the ZARYA (Sound Analysis of the Russian Language) test battery. It is the first standardised application in Russia designed to provide a fast and reliable assessment of children's ability to distinguish speech sounds, retain them in working memory, and perform phonemic analysis. The app runs on Android tablets and smartphones and is available for download from RuStore. Details of the test validation have been published in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
Researchers Discover How Spelling Errors Slow Down Reading in Russian
Psycholinguists from the Centre for Language and Brain at HSE University–St Petersburg have shown that words that are frequently misspelled are processed more slowly by readers, even when presented with the correct spelling. The researchers confirmed this effect for the first time using Russian-language materials and found that response speed is most strongly linked to how confidently individuals can distinguish the correct spelling of a word from an incorrect one. The study has been published in The Mental Lexicon.
Scientists Discover Why Europium 'Misbehaves'
Europium is a rare-earth metal responsible for the pure red glow in displays and other luminescent materials. For a long time, however, it refused to emit light when surrounded by certain organic molecules known as acylpyrazolone ligands. Chemists have now uncovered the reason: in europium complexes with these ligands, a 'black window' appears—a charge-transfer state in which the energy absorbed by the ligand is dissipated as heat rather than emitted as light. Understanding this mechanism opens the way to designing more efficient red-emitting materials for displays, fluorescent thermometers, and chemical sensors. The results have been published in Dalton Transactions.