Research & Expertise news at HSE University

The history of the invention of telephony reads like a captivating detective novel, but even more intriguing are the events that contributed to the worldwide adoption of this technology. In this series of columns on IQ.HSE, Anton Basov, HSE Faculty of Computer Science editor, discusses how telephones have become an integral part of our everyday life. The fourth episode of the series recounts the story of the fledgling start-up's confrontation with hordes of patent trolls and its subsequent victory in a full-blown corporate war against the largest telecommunications company of the late 19th century.

Researchers from HSE, MIPT, and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Solid State Physics, jointly with colleagues from the UK, Switzerland, and China, have conducted a study on the characteristics of thin films composed of platinum and niobium. Both the experiments and the theoretical calculations have confirmed that when in contact with a superconductor, platinum exhibits a spin, creating a potential for its effective use for data transmission. Platinum atoms have no magnetic moment, paving the way for the development of even smaller chips utilising this novel structure compared to conventional spintronics. The paper has been published in Nature Communications.

Researchers from HSE University and the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (AIRI) have successfully lowered the latency between a change in brain activity and the presentation of the corresponding neurofeedback signal by a factor of 50. The results were obtained by employing a neural network trained in low-latency filtering of brain activity signals from diverse individuals. This approach opens up new prospects for the treatment of attention deficit disorder and epilepsy. A paper with the study findings has been published in Journal of Neural Engineering.

Students from HSE University in Nizhny Novgorod and Privolzhsky Research Medical University have received one million roubles in financial support for the development and testing of StressTouch, an innovative mobile application. The grant was allocated by the Innovation Promotion Foundation (Bortnik Foundation).

In September, HSE University’s Voronovo Study Centre hosted ‘Scientarium: Young Researcher School’, a retreat for undergraduate and graduate students engaged in scientific activities. The Scientarium project started in 2021 in an online format, and was later held in the format of an educational retreat for the first time in autumn 2023. This year, the Young Researcher School brought together students from different universities across Russia.

HSE AI Research Centre works on achieving applied results, striving not only to develop innovative algorithms and models, but also to put them into practice to solve real-world problems and tasks. Alexey Masyutin, Head of the AI Research Centre, spoke about some of the the specifics of applying AI technologies in various fields.

Cooperation with Chinese partners in all spheres of the economy is reaching a new qualitative level. At the same time, Russian entrepreneurs often lack knowledge about the specifics of doing business with China. Ways to solve this problem and strengthen the bilateral partnership were discussed at the ‘Russia—China: Business in a Multipolar World’ forum held at HSE University.

According to HSE and MGIMO economists, increased financial sector risks in developed countries may be associated with a higher carbon footprint in banks' loan portfolios. This is likely due to the fact that in response to an unstable economic situation, banks tend to issue more loans to companies that have a detrimental impact on the environment. Although this might yield short-term profits for the banks, such trends hinder humanity's progress towards achieving a green economy. The paper has been published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research.