State Secrets Research Articles

Harnessing AlphaFold to reveal hERG channel conformational state secrets.

To design safe, selective, and effective new therapies, there must be a deep understanding of the structure and function of the drug target. One of the most difficult problems to solve has been resolution of discrete conformational states of transmembrane ion channel proteins. An example is K v 11.1 (hERG), comprising the primary cardiac repolarizing current, I kr . hERG is a notorious drug anti-target against which all promising drugs are screened to determine potential for arrhythmia. Drug interactions with the hERG inactivated state are linked to elevated arrhythmia risk, and drugs may become trapped during channel closure. However, the structural details of multiple conformational states have remained elusive. Here, we guided AlphaFold2 to predict plausible hERG inactivated and closed conformations, obtaining results consistent with multiple available experimental data. Drug docking simulations demonstrated hERG state-specific drug interactions in good agreement with experimental results, revealing that most drugs bind more effectively in the inactivated state and are trapped in the closed state. Molecular dynamics simulations demonstrated ion conduction for an open but not AlphaFold2 predicted inactivated state that aligned with earlier studies. Finally, we identified key molecular determinants of state transitions by analyzing interaction networks across closed, open, and inactivated states in agreement with earlier mutagenesis studies. Here, we demonstrate a readily generalizable application of AlphaFold2 as an effective and robust method to predict discrete protein conformations, reconcile seemingly disparate data and identify novel linkages from structure to function.

Methodological approach to quantitative assessment of the security of open operating systems AS of the Internal Affairs Bodies

Objective. The article considers the provisions of the fuzzy logic approach in relation to the method of quantifying the security of open operating systems (OS) of automated systems of the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation (AS of the Russian Federation), taking into account possible security threats and the requirements of the standard GOST R ISO/IEC 15408 for leveling possible consequences. Information Message № 240/24/4893 dated October 18, 2016 «On Approval of Information Security Requirements for Operating Systems» of the FSTEC of Russia defines 6 OS security classes. Operating systems corresponding to protection classes 1, 2 and 3 are used in information (automated) systems in which information containing information constituting a state secret is processed, operating systems corresponding to protection classes 4, 5 and 6 are not intended for processing such information. In the presented study, the open operating systems of the AS of the Russian Federation are understood as OS AS, in which information containing information constituting a state secret is not processed. Method. The study was conducted based on the method of analyzing possible security threats to open operating systems, as well as the requirements of GOST R ISO/IEC 15408 standard, using the provisions of fuzzy logic. Result. The result of the automated system for calculating the security index of the analyzed open OS is one of the specified criteria for the degree of security of the OS, based on the provisions of fuzzy logic. Conclusion. The authors propose a method for assessing the security of open OS of the AS of the Russian Federation, based on the provisions of fuzzy logic.

Кримінальна відповідальність за злочини проти основ yаціональної безпеки: вітчизняний та зарубіжний досвід

The article deals with the issue of criminal liability for crimes against the foundations of national security on the example of domestic and foreign experience of certain countries. The author specifically analyzes the legislative regulation of criminal liability for crimes against national security in the Republic of Lithuania, the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of Estonia, Georgia, the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Poland, Switzerland, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the French Republic. The author suggests that there is a need for more in-depth research and improvement of the legal regulations regarding criminal liability for crimes against the foundations of national security in Ukraine. The article proposes resolving any inconsistencies between the title of Section I of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which is “Crimes against the Fundamentals of National Security of Ukraine”, and the content of the relevant articles included in it. This section should address criminal liability for all activities that threaten Ukraine’s national security. Therefore, the author recommends to include provisions for criminal liability related to the protection of state secrets, safeguarding critical infrastructure, expanding the scope of information security, imposing penalties for actions that aim to harm the state by an authorized person representing Ukraine in dealings with the leadership of a foreign state or organization, and establishing criminal liability for individuals who publicly insult the Ukrainian people or Ukraine.

Right to information: legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine

The article reveals the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine regarding everyone’s right to information. Attention is focused on information that is collected by state authorities, local self-government bodies, institutions and organizations, and which is not a state or other secret protected by the Law of Ukraine «On Information» and which every person has the right to familiarize himself with. Separate attention is focused on confidential information (information with limited access). One of the types of confidential information is medical information, which, on the one hand, in special cases provided for by the Fundamentals of the Health Care Legislation of Ukraine, can be disclosed to family members or a legal representative of the patient, and on the other hand, in accordance with the decision of the European Court of Human Rights person in the case of «M.K. against Ukraine» confirmation by a doctor of a patient’s illness to a member of his family, even if he learned about it from the patient himself, is an interference by the state in a person’s right to private life, and in the case of infectious diseases, it is qualified as not carried out «in accordance with the law». Attention is focused on the fact that such situations arise more and more when military personnel undergo medical examinations and that there are prohibitive norms of a special law that forbid the disclosure of medical information regarding a certain list of diseases of a military personnel to his employer (military unit), commander, family members of the military personnel. Regarding the confidentiality of information and about a person who holds a position related to the performance of the functions of the state, local self-government bodies, and about members of his family, the legal positions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine are established: absolutely in each specific case it is determined whether information about a person belongs to confidential; there are guarantees of protection of the rights of the above-mentioned persons, and additional legal burdens, and therefore the state is called upon to ensure a balance of public and private interest. The article also draws attention to the fact that even under martial law conditions, control (direct; indirect) by institutions of public power is prohibited both in terms of content and dissemination of information, even if the state pursues such a goal as protecting the information space from what is considered harmful by the state information that is not necessary for society. The practice of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on this issue is established. Attention is focused on the fact that censorship cannot be used in Ukraine to protect the information field of the state even in war conditions - it is prohibited in part 3 of Art. 15 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

State secret as an institution of legal support for national sovereignty and security of the Russian Federation

State secret as an institution of legal support for national sovereignty and security of the Russian Federation

Режим секретности: понятие и признаки

The work is devoted to the issues of legal regulation of the secrecy regime, its structure and content. The features of establishing a secrecy regime and its signs are indicated. It is shown that the structure of the regime includes such elements as classification of information, protection of state secrets and declassification. As a result of the conducted research, the authors conclude that the secrecy regime can be considered a kind of legal regime.

Male Body Odor Affects Emotional State, LH, and Cortisol Secretion in Women of Different Age Groups.

Hormone changes across women's menstrual cycles may lead to changes in their perceptions of chemical signals and their hormonal responses to these cues. The aim of the present study was to determine the role of menstrual cycle phase in the response to extracts of male axillary secretions (EMAS) in women. We tested healthy reproductive age and premenopausal women (n = 29). An EMAS/control solution was applied once every two hours during either the follicular or luteal phase, at which point saliva samples for luteinizing hormone (LH) and cortisol monitoring were collected. LH and cortisol concentrations were analyzed using the enzyme immunoassay (EIA) technique. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) scores were used to assess the participants' moods. For the first time, we showed that EMAS may produce opposite effects on LH secretion depending on the menstrual cycle phase of the recipient. We observed a significant increase in the number of LH peaks (p = 0.0447) and their amplitudes (p = 0.0469) when EMAS was applied during the follicular phase, while the same application in the luteal phase lowered the amplitudes of LH peaks (p = 0.0382). For the first time, we showed that EMAS application increased salivary cortisol levels in reproductive age women relative to premenopausal women (p = 0.0032). PANAS scores revealed changes in positive and negative affect after EMAS application. Our data indicate the significance of the menstrual cycle phase for EMAS' effects on LH secretion and mood, but not on cortisol secretion in women.

Power Trading and Access Control Scheme Based on IPFS and Blockchain

In recent years, a large number of renewable energy power plants have been built all over the country, which has led to a sharp increase in the pressure on the current centralized electricity trading platform. There are data storage bottlenecks and data privacy problems in the current blockchain-based power transaction and access control system. In this paper, the interstellar file system is proposed to store the data of the new distributed power trading platform in a distributed way, so as to improve the storage capacity of the physical nodes; An improved ciphertext strategy attribute encryption scheme, which is lightweight, traceable and supports outsourced decryption combined with state secret algorithm, is adopted to integrate the user’s unique identity into the user’s private key and part of the expensive decryption calculation is outsourced to the cloud server to realize fine-grained data access control in the electricity market. The experimental results show that compared to the basic CP-ABE scheme, when the encryption attribute is 100, the decryption time of the proposed scheme is reduced from 556[Formula: see text]ms to 1.1[Formula: see text]ms; Compared to blockchain-based solutions alone, when storing data of 15[Formula: see text]MB, GAS consumption decreases from 2968738133 to 89360. The scheme can greatly improve the storage capacity of the system, improve the operational efficiency and meet the actual performance requirements.

‘Resisting’ while Collaboratively Informing in Communist Czechoslovakia

Abstract Informers in the service of state secret police collaborate with authorities and thus contribute to the power of repressive regimes. Through a case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945–1989)—and drawing from secret police archives– this article presents selected stories of informers who in one way or another also ‘resisted’ collaboration with the Czechoslovak State Security (StB). By doing so, we try to further complexify the notions of ’everyday resistance’, on the one hand, and ‘collaboration’ on the other. We demonstrate that resistant acts, similar to collaborative acts, can be apolitically devoid of ideology, highly idiosyncratic, and motivated by private drivers. Informing can be a tool of social navigation—namely, making the most out of one’s circumstances—in repressive times. Hence, resisting while informing also can be approached as a method for an individual to maximize opportunities within the overlapping incentives—both public and private, personal and professional—that contour decision-making and social action in repressive regimes.

Augmented-reality-based multi-person exercise has more beneficial effects on mood state and oxytocin secretion than standard solitary exercise

BackgroundExercise has positive effects on psychological well-being, with team sports often associated with superior mental health compared to individual sports. Augmented reality (AR) technology has the potential to convert solitary exercise into multi-person exercise. Given the role of oxytocin in mediating the psychological benefits of exercise and sports, this study aimed to investigate the impact of AR-based multi-person exercise on mood and salivary oxytocin levels. MethodsFourteen participants underwent three distinct regimens: non-exercise (Rest), standard solitary cycling exercise (Ex), and AR-based multi-person cycling exercise (Ex+AR). In both Ex and Ex+AR conditions, participants engaged in cycling at a self-regulated pace to maintain a Rating of Perceived Exertion of 10. In the Ex+AR condition, participants' avatars were projected onto a tablet screen, allowing them to cycle alongside ten other virtual avatars in an AR environment. Mood states and saliva samples were collected before and immediately after each 10-minute regimen. Subsequently, salivary oxytocin levels were measured. ResultsNotably, only the Ex+AR condition significantly improved mood states associated with depression-dejection and exhibited a non-significant trend toward suppressing anger-hostility in participants. Moreover, the Ex+AR condition led to a significant elevation in salivary oxytocin levels, while the Ex condition showed a non-significant trend toward an increase. However, changes in salivary oxytocin did not show a significant correlation with changes in mood states. ConclusionsThese findings suggest that Ex+AR enhances mood states and promotes oxytocin release. AR-based multi-person exercise may offer greater psychological benefits compared to standard solitary exercise, although the relationship between oxytocin and mood changes remains inconclusive.

Information War - International Security Dilemma in the Modern World

In the modern world, in the field of international security, one of the important challenges is the information war. On the other hand, information is a universal and cheap weapon with a limitless scope and high efficiency. Therefore, it can be more dangerous than any conventional means of warfare. During its implementation, the attacking side achieves the desired outcome through the psychological manipulation of common beliefs. During the last ten years, the rate of disinformation has increased sharply. Also, propaganda, espionage, uncontrolled dissemination of state secrets and personal information, massive cyber-attacks and so on. Both states and terrorist organizations use such mechanisms. Today, the most functional means of information in this field are used by terrorist organizations, which often use social media to recruit so-called “Islamic Fighters” and lay out fundamentalism. Cooperation at the international and regional levels is important in fighting cybercrime and protecting critical information infrastructure. For this purpose, within the framework of the Council of Europe, the European Union, the United Nations, NATO, and other international organizations, it carries out active activities on cyber security topics. In addition, protecting against cyber intrusion, even on a small scale, is in the country’s national security interests, and it is crucial to involve each state in the proceeding discussion about information warfare.

The Text beyond Itself: Romani Social Construction in Romanian Secret Police Files

Romanian State Secret Police (Securitate) files produced before 1989 can be accessed today through a lengthy process that requires official research authorization through a government office, the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității - CNSAS). The CNSAS General Document Fund includes large issue-related files under the umbrella of “The Gypsy Problem,” with thousands of pages of both national and county-level reports and recommendations. This paper teases out the granular documentary clues (spie, as Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg describes them) in some of the Securitate files to explore the way in which a pattern of documentary communication is built to frame Romani identity as idiosyncratically marginal, oriental, and parasitic. A particularly interesting aspect of the knowledge production imposed through these files is reflected by anecdotes that purportedly illustrate the character of the Roma. This study analyzes the relations of power built through hermeneutic devices and language choices which build “truth formulae” (Weir) that reify a particular view of Romani ethnicity, class, and gender. This archival (de)construction has implications for a long view of policy, political memory, and exclusionary societal attitudes today and in the future.

The Legal Limits of Jurnalisme

The freedom of expression and information is guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and also by many other international conventions and national constitutions. This freedom is not without limits and the limits are imposed where it affects the the rights of other subjects and state secrets. This paper aims to treat the legal limitations of the jurnalisme. It aims to give an answer to these questions; Does the right of information has limits? How this right is limited? Which is the report between public information and the state secrets? Which is the report between information and the protection of the secret during a criminal investigation? Which is the report between information and private life? For giving an answer to those questions, we will look mostly the international law, using the analytic and synthetic methods. Received: 25 December 2023 / Accepted: 25 February 2024 / Published: 23 April 2024

Public authority and the will of the people: to the 100th anniversary of the birth of E. I. Kozlova

The article deals with the main issues of power and the will of the people, associated with the activities of public authorities. Consideration of these issues is based on the works of Professor E. I. Kozlova. It is noted that the content of a democratic state should be based on the values of the society of a particular state, without establishing the primacy of a single standard of a liberal state. Building a democratic state may be associated with the solution of the following tasks: achieving a balance of interests of the whole society and the minority; creating conditions for a broad discussion of issues of state and public importance; providing access to information about the activities of public authorities; historical succession of state building. It is noted that these tasks are solved in law through the introduction of public discussion of bills; fixing traditional values in constitutional law and sectoral legislation and ensuring their protection (protection of the feelings of believers, a ban on the rehabilitation of Nazism, a ban on same-sex marriages). At the same time, it is proposed: to introduce criteria and grounds for mandatory public discussions for public authorities; legislative consolidation of the publication of transcripts of meetings of public authorities that do not contain state secrets. In the development of the theory of democracy E. I. Kozlova, the author notes that the list of forms of realization of national sovereignty cannot be closed, it is constantly updated and developed by the peoples themselves, in accordance with their will.

Distributed identity management mechanism based on improved block-chain certificateless encryption algorithm

For solving the problem of the lack of full control over the identity data of network users, we propose an identity management method based on the certificateless encryption algorithm of block chain. We also propose a certificateless encryption algorithm combined with state secret algorithm SM2 to reduce the computational cost of the algorithm by using the decentralized advantages of block chain and the characteristics of data tamper-proof. The distributed user identity management mechanism is designed. The algorithm models of user identity registration, identity certificate issuance and identity authentication are optimized to improve the security of identity data management. The model is tested and verified. The results show that the model has fast information response ability, and the average delay is about 0. 4 s. Compared with other algorithms, the scheme in this paper has the highest computational efficiency. Under the same conditions, the computational time is about 6.9% of Su et al. (2020), 63.4% of Xu et al. (2021), 7.0% of Zhang et al. (2023) , and 76.9% of Cheng (2021). The computational performance is greatly improved.

The Useful Cinema of State Secrecy. On Some Socialist Romanian Spy Films

A decree passed by the socialist Romanian state at the beginning of the 1970s stipulated the need to defend state secrets as a condition for the country’s economic and social progress in the context of its growing participation in world commerce. While the law operated with a wide notion of state secrecy, referring to any piece of information which, if disclosed, could jeopardize the Romanian state’s interests, it included harsh regulations with regard to personal contacts with foreign citizens and served primarily for establishing a heightened operative control over the local economic life. Following the Romanian State Security Council’s encouragement of campaigns for popular education, which should help prevent any trespassing of this decree, the early 1970s saw the commissioning of several instruction films made by the newly founded Film Service of the Ministry of the Interior as a form of ‘counterintelligence training of the working class’. The present paper contextualizes and closely analyzes some of these films staging fictional cases of industrial espionage and their subsequent investigation by State Security as a form of useful cinema, arguing that, aside from their main educational mission of raising awareness about the legal responsibilities ensuing from the decrees concerning state secrecy, these films also acted as an instrument of national, geopolitical and institutional self-representation.

Реализация социально-правовой функции адвокатом по назначению в уголовных и гражданских делах, в которых содержится государственная тайна

The article delves into the realization of the social and legal function of the appointed advocate in criminal and civil proceedings in cases involving state secrets, as well as problematic issues and liability that may occur in case of its divulgence. The relevance of the research topic is that in Russia there is an increase in the number of convictions under Article 283 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – disclosure of state secrets. In addition, the article discusses theoretical issues, the relationship between attorney-client privilege and state secrets, and provides examples from judicial practice. From a certain angle, the author is convinced that it is necessary to investigate the issue of the advocate’s activity on appointment in criminal and civil cases, in which there is a state secret, in order to further develop recommendations for advocates. The formal legal method, the method of comparative analysis, synthesis, the inductive method, generalization and systematization of scientific sources on the research problem, comparative and predictive methods were used.

Citizens’ Liability for Remedying Individual-Scale State Wrongdoing, Actions Ultra Vires, and Deep State Secrets

Citizens’ Liability for Remedying Individual-Scale State Wrongdoing, Actions Ultra Vires, and Deep State Secrets

Vladimir Ivanovič Lamanskij in Venice (1868-1869)

The aim of the article is to update the scientific heritage of the well-known Slavist and prominent representative of late Slavophilism Vladimir Ivanovič Lamanskij (1833-1914). Lamanskij’s biography is insufficiently studied in modern research literature. On the basis of archival documents, the article reconstructs Lamanskij’s work in the archives of Venice in 1868 and 1869, which resulted in the publication of an extensive collection of documents and studies on the Venetian Republic’s relations with the Greeks and Slavs during its heyday (16th-early 18th century), called State Secrets of Venice (1884). Lamanskij himself considered State Secrets of Venice his primary academic contribution, and the preface is one of Lamanskij’s main ideological texts. It reflects the Panslavist ideas that were supported in the Russian academic environment in the last third of the 19th century. Archival materials allow us to trace the genesis of Lamanskij’s historiosophic views to better understand how his concept of civilisation, in which the ideas of Slavophiles were developed, was formed. One of the key concept of Lamanskij’s work is the idea of confrontation between the Greco-Slavic and Romano-Germanic cultures in Europe. As a consequence, the study provides a better understanding of the ideology of late Slavophilism in the form of a theory which, in Lamanskij’s works, claims the status of a scientific programme in the humanities and social sciences.

Procedural Cost-Shifting Under the State Secrets Privilege: A Comparative Statutory Approach

Procedural Cost-Shifting Under the State Secrets Privilege: A Comparative Statutory Approach