World Security Research Articles

Metaverse mingle: Discovering dating intentions in metaverse

The present work represents a mixed-method investigation to redefine Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) using some innovative variables to investigate dating-partner behaviour in the metaverse. In addition, it seeks proof that realistic threat and perceived trust have a moderating role in this proposed model. The research is split into two parts: in the first stage, dating app users' responses have been collected from online reviews posted on social media sites. Python have been used to find out the constructs from the content analysis. Then using the constructs second phase have been started where the model has been validated by confirmatory analysis. Perceived trust moderates the association between perceived attitude and dating intention in Metaverse whereas realistic threat don't have. Our research showed that apart from perceived accuracy of information all the other factors are having significant association towards perceived attitude. Our findings highlight the importance of both channels in persuading consumers to try out metaverse dating. In order to earn the users' trust, they must resolve their concerns over privacy and security in the online world. To achieve this, strict user verification and security procedures should be implemented.

Research on the Prediction of the Number of Nuclear Weapons in the World in the Future Based on NAR Neural Network Model

The issues connected with nuclear weapons are closely related to the survival of mankind. Nuclear weapons pose a great threat to world security, human health, the Earth's environment, and other aspects. This paper conducted an investigation and mathematical analysis on the research and development of nuclear weapons in each country, its stockpiles, the number of nuclear tests and the attitude of each country towards nuclear weapons research and development. In order to predict the number of nuclear-weapon countries in the next 100 years, this study can use the number of nuclear-weapon countries in 1938 to 2022 and the number of nuclear weapons in each country in the inventory table to establish a simple sequence prediction neural network, and use the prediction method of NAR neural network model to finally get the change trend of the number of nuclear-weapon countries and the number of nuclear weapons.Finally, it was concluded that the countries with nuclear weapons in 100 years would still be the nine countries with nuclear weapons today, and the total number of nuclear weapons dropped to 8,787. China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States respectively have 312, 271, 135, 74, 16, 151, 3,745, 161, and 3,922 nuclear weapons in 2123.

Agro-morphological and nutritional assessment of chenopod and quinoa germplasm-Highly adaptable potential crops.

Quinoa belongs to the family Chenopodiaceae, a pseudo-grain having high nutritional value and is considered an underexploited vegetable crop with the potential to improve the nutritional security of millions. Therefore, assessing genetic diversity in Chenopodium germplasm to untap nutritional and site-specific adaptation potential would be of prime importance for breeders/researchers. The present study used 10 accessions of two Chenopodium species, that is, C. quinoa and C. album. Quantitative and qualitative phenotypic traits, proximate composition, minerals, and amino acids profiles were studied to compare the differences in nutritional value and extent of genetic diversity between these two species. Our results showed significant variation existed in yield attributing agro-morphological traits. All the traits were considered for hierarchical clustering and principal components analysis. Large genetic variability was observed in traits of Chenopodium accessions. The protein, dietary fiber, oil, and sugar content ranged from 16.6% to 19.7%, 16.8% to 26%, 3.54% to 8.46%, and 3.74% to 5.64%, respectively. The results showed that C. album and C. quinoa seeds had good nutritional value and health-promoting benefits. The C. quinoa was slightly ahead of than C. album in terms of nutritional value, but C. album accession IC415477 was at par for higher test weight, seed yield (117.02 g/plant), and other nutritional parameters with C. quinoa accessions. IC415477 and other potential accessions observed in this study may be taken up by breeders/researchers in the near future to dissect nutritional value of Chenopodium and related species for dietary diversity, which is imperative for the nutritional security of the ever-growing world's population.

Evidence of fruit syndromes in the recently diverged wild tomato clade opens new possibilities for the study of fleshy fruit evolution

Societal Impact StatementFleshy fruits provide humans with many flavorful and nutritious crops. Understanding the diversity of these plants is fundamental to managing agriculture and food security in a changing world. This study surveyed fruit trait variation across species of tomato wild relatives and explored associations among color, size, shape, sugars, and acids. These wild tomato species native to South America can be interbred with the economically important cultivated tomato. Beyond its application to tomatoes, deepening our knowledge of how fruit traits evolve together is valuable to crop improvement efforts aimed at breeding more nutritious and appealing varieties of fruits.Summary Fleshy fruits display a striking diversity of traits, many of which are important for agriculture. The evolutionary drivers of this variation are not well understood, and most studies have relied on variation found in the wild. Few studies have explored this question on a fine‐grained scale with a group of recently diverged species while controlling for environmental effects. We developed the tomato clade as a novel system for fruit trait evolution research by presenting the first common garden‐based systematic survey of variation and phylogenetic signal in color, nutrition, and morphology traits across all 13 species of tomato wild relatives (Solanum sect. Lycopersicon). We laid the groundwork for further testing of potential evolutionary drivers by assessing patterns of clustering and correlation among disperser‐relevant fruit traits as well as historical climate variables. We found evidence of two distinct clusters of associated fruit traits defined by color, sugar type, and malic acid concentration. We also observed correlations between a fruit's external appearance and internal nutrient content that could function as honest signals to dispersers. Analyses of historical climate and soil variables revealed an association between red/orange/yellow fruits and high annual average temperature. Our results establish the tomato clade as a promising system for testing hypotheses on the drivers of divergence behind early‐stage fleshy fruit evolution, particularly selective pressure from frugivores.

Women's Role Repositioning in Security Sector

Background: The world of intelligence and security is still seen as the realm of men, due to the strong patriarchal culture and existing stigma, the world of intelligence and security is seen as a world that requires physical abilities, mental resilience, aggressiveness, which are considered to be more owned by men. Aim: This research is intended to describe the role of women in the intelligence and security sector, the obstacles and constraints for female officers to be more involved in intelligence and national security activities, and the importance of repositioning the role of women in fields that are still often seen as a male world. Method: This study used a qualitative research method by conducting literature studies, observing in the field, and collecting data related to this research. Findings: Awareness about the role of women in the security sector such as intelligence, law enforcement, military, needs to be continuously disseminated to all parties, not only to policy makers, organizational leaders, men, or the community, but also to women themselves so that they are not skeptical of their ability to assume a more strategic role in the sector.

European Union military operations and global security: ambitions and reality

In the last twenty years, the European Union (EU) has made notable efforts in improving its military capabilities to react to crises. The Union launched crisis management missions and operations, aiming to play a relevant role in the field of international security. Thirteen military operations and missions were established amongst its overseas action to date. Notwithstanding, the results are questionable, i.e. the positive relationship between what the EU says, and its concrete action in practice. The paper aims to present what is the real role of EU military operations by arguing that although high ambitions the Union’s military interventions are still limited. It is demonstrated by using a model with proxies from inputs to impacts through which I analyse perceptions and intentions and how they have been translated into effective implementation. I used quantitative data combined with certain qualitative remarks collected from primary and secondary sources. It concludes that the EU military operations remain more as ambitions than to project its best features in favour of a better world security environment

The Relevance of Human Security Approach in Assessing The Causes and Solutions to Food Insecurity in South Sudan (Case Study: South Sudan 2017 Famine)

The Relevance of Human Security Approach in Assessing The Causes and Solutions to Food Insecurity in South Sudan (Case Study: South Sudan 2017 Famine)

TSC-VEE: A TrustZone-Based Smart Contract Virtual Execution Environment

TrustZone as a trusted execution environment (TEE) has been proven to preserve the confidentiality of blockchain transactions supported by smart contracts. Despite some academic effort, TrustZone can only support limited languages for now. The lack of the corresponding execution environment for smart contracts seriously hinders blockchain applications from directly running on TrustZone. In this paper, we design the first virtual execution environment named TSC-VEE for performing Solidity smart contracts on TrustZone, to the best of our knowledge. TSC-VEE can be decomposed into fourfold: (1) an instruction set adapted to the isolation and world switching mechanism of TrustZone. (2) a runtime memory management mechanism that provides a pair of instructions with the corresponding processing mechanism to allocate and release the work memory. (3) a hybrid granularity resource analysis algorithm which computes and records the value of maximum stack height and static gas cost through bytecode pre-execution, avoiding runtime overflow and invalid computations. (4) a cross-isolation-environment prefetching approach that supports loading and storing the storage data from the normal world into the secure world on TrustZone before execution, thus avoiding switching the world state frequently at runtime. Extensive experimental results show that TSC-VEE can perform smart contracts correctly and efficiently on TrustZone. Compared with the most commonly used Ethereum client— <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Geth</i> , TSC-VEE achieves execution performance improvements by <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$9.29\times$</tex-math></inline-formula> . We also implement the Ethereum virtual machine— <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">evmone</i> on TrustZone. TSC-VEE can reduce the latency by 12.63% with our optimization techniques, and decrease the work memory footprint by 22.95% on average when executing various scale contracts.

The Potential of the Organization of Turkic States in Ensuring the Security of the Turkic World

В глобализирующемся мире каждая страна сталкивается с угрозами национальной безопасности, такими как терроризм, экстремизм, сепаратизм и тд. В этом контексте, в то время как многие страны собираются под эгидой международных организаций, некоторые из них боряться за устранение выше упомянутых угроз в рамках многостороннего сотрудничества. Естественно, свою долю в этой ситуации получают и тюркские государства. Исходя из этого, целью данной статьи является исследование потенциала Организации тюркских государств в обеспечении безопасности тюркского мира. Для достижения цели статьи обсуждаются вопросы, угрожающие безопасности тюркского мира, и значение Организации тюркских государств с точки зрения обеспечения этой безопасности. В этом контексте, во-первых, пытались определить место тюркского мира в международной системе и влияющие на него факторы. Источником статьи являются ранее опубликованные статьи и работы отечественных и зарубежных исследователей по данной теме, данные официальных организаций, тексты официальных договоров и соглашений. Статья написана методом качественного исследования с использованием всех собранных данных и источников. В результате исследования, было установлено, что в целях обеспечения безопасности тюркского мира, были некоторые важные документы, в том числе документ «Концепция тюркского мира до 2040 года», были проведены ряд исследований, мероприятий такими организациями как TÜRKPA, TÜRKSOY и Тюркской академией в рамках Организации, для укрепления сознания «мы», которое составляет краеугольные камни безопасности.

The attack of the Russian Federation on Ukraine – Approach regarding the land logistics support of military actions

The current conflict on Romania’s border is a genuine threat to national and European security, but above all to world security, given that one of the two belligerents possesses nuclear weapons and has always taken a hostile stance towards democratic circles. The Russian Federation’s unprovoked and totally unjustified invasion of Ukraine will radically change the entire geopolitical and security environment both nationally and on NATO’s eastern flank. Although the conflict is still ongoing, Russian logistical support to the war in Ukraine requires further approaches and is a critical area of research for several reasons. First, a thorough understanding of Russian logistical support can help develop effective strategies to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine. Second, an understanding of Russian logistical support can help policymakers assess the effectiveness of economic sanctions and other measures aimed at reducing Russian involvement in the conflict. Third, understanding Russian logistical support can provide insights into Russia’s broader geopolitical strategy in the region, which could help to resolve the conflict diplomatically and promote stability in the region

Xi's Global Campaign for Chinese Security

Xi's Global Campaign for Chinese Security Carla P. Freeman (bio) Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, China's leader Xi Jinping has frequently invoked the Chinese idiom that in crisis, there is opportunity (CGTN 2020). In 2022, even as China continued its COVID state of emergency, Xi Jinping doubled down on promoting China as a source of answers to the world's security challenges. Making a case that the US-led international order lacks the capacity to address current international threats and is also a source of instability, Xi began a global campaign to assert that China had an alternative and better vision for managing global security. Beijing has yet to provide many details about what it has in mind for a new global security order. What can be inferred is that China perceives the current fraught international environment as a chance to win support for security norms that align more closely with its national capabilities and preferences. Beijing's principal vehicle in this undertaking is a "Global Security Initiative" (GSI), introduced by Xi at the Boao Forum in April 2022 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2022). The initiative is purposively bold: as then Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi elaborated soon after Xi's roll out of the concept, it promises nothing less than "a new approach to eliminating the root causes of international conflicts" (Wang 2022). A GSI concept paper published by China's Foreign Ministry in February 2023 repeats this phrase, adding that "China stands ready to work with all countries and peoples…to create a better future for mankind …" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2023). It remains to be seen if the GSI concept will itself win China significant international followership as it takes form. Chinese media reports that 80 countries have already endorsed it (Global Times Editors 2023). Public commentary in non-aligned countries suggests, however, that there are concerns the GSI could be a new bloc in the making (Giri 2022). What is clear is that Chinese arguments that something needs to [End Page 313] be done to improve global security resonate with large swathes of the global public (Yiu 2022). Beijing has almost certainly launched the GSI with multiple policy outcomes in mind. At minimum, the GSI provides a framework for China to amplify its preferred narrative that the US-led international environment is deteriorating and strengthens perceptions that China is a willing provider of global security (Sun 2022). At the time it was launched, Beijing may have seen the GSI as an opportunity to buffer China from criticism on a number of fronts. First, that its own zero COVID policies had contributed to the global economic slowdown; at minimum, it has used narratives critical of Western handling of not just international security but also the pandemic to win support for the GSI in the developing world. Second, the GSI may also have been timed to counter rhetoric that Beijing sought to maximize its opportunities in the Ukraine crisis by maintaining an ambiguous position on Russia's invasion. In early 2023, Beijing associated the GSI with a number of high profile diplomatic initiatives, including a position paper enumerating principles for a political settlement of the Ukraine war and a key role in brokering a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Recent developments also offer evidence that the GSI could be operationalized as a channel for the export of Chinese technologies and techniques China uses to implement its domestic security goals (Freeman and Stephenson 2022b). As this suggests, the development of a new international security architecture with Chinese characteristics is about much more than just buttressing Chinese hard power or diplomatic influence: it is about enhancing a comprehensive vision of Chinese security that encompasses the entire state, domestic society, and, to an increasing degree, the international community as well. 2012–2021 Comprehensive National Security with Xi Jinping Characteristics Securing China has been a dominant theme of Xi Jinping's leadership since he succeeded Hu Jintao a decade ago. A number of institutional changes and new policies that followed the 18th Party Congress and the 2018 Two Sessions made clear that, under Xi's leadership, China would pursue a security strategy that...

Weaponising ChatGPT

Depending on who you ask, ChatGPT is either a great boon to humanity or an existential menace. In the cyber security world, however, it has been characterised as mostly a threat – one that will enable unskilled actors to become potent hackers. What truth is there in the hype? And could ChatGPT and other large language models actually be a force for good?

Clustering the Impacts of The Russia-Ukraine War on Personnel and Equipment

In post-pandemic recovery efforts, uncertainty arose due to the unresolved conflict between the Russia-Ukraine war. This conflict impacts world security stability and affects the economic, energy, and food sectors. This conflict also impacts humanity by causing death to civilians and military personnel, including children in Ukraine. The clustering analysis results of the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war show losses and losses in personnel and war equipment, with three cluster optimization methods used through k-means. Of the two methods that can be recommended, namely elbow and Silhouette, both produce K=3. The profiling results show that losses or losses in Ukrainian personnel and war equipment are categorized into three clusters, with cluster one being the lowest category, cluster two being the very high category, and cluster three being the moderate category. This research is helpful for state agencies, international organizations (NGOs), and other stakeholders.

The Food Security Dynamic in MENA Countries: How Should Policies be Distinctive?

Key Outcomes: - Food security in the Arab world is a seasonal event that triggers debate and discourse during transitory shocks caused by external factors (e.g., war in Ukraine), and causes disruption in the price and food supply chain. - The nature of the shift and diversity in consumption patterns in the Arab world is caused either by a change in the lifestyle due to the change in living standards, or by the significant food assistance over decades, in which traditional approaches to the food security do not seem to be working and require a shift towards a more dynamic and mixed approach. - Innovative solutions and revisiting the entirety of the food security approach require a mixed approach to food security to make the most out of commodity markets to support and smooth consumption and avoid transitory food deficits for countries during price hikes and to stabilize the prices accompanied with building grain storage strategy as part of the precautionary strategies for unusual times.

Clustering the Impacts of The Russia-Ukraine War on Personnel and Equipment

In post-pandemic recovery efforts, uncertainty arose due to the unresolved conflict between the Russia-Ukraine war. This conflict impacts world security stability and affects the economic, energy, and food sectors. This conflict also impacts humanity by causing death to civilians and military personnel, including children in Ukraine. The clustering analysis results of the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war show losses and losses in personnel and war equipment, with three cluster optimization methods used through k-means. Of the two methods that can be recommended, namely elbow and Silhouette, both produce K=3. The profiling results show that losses or losses in Ukrainian personnel and war equipment are categorized into three clusters, with cluster one being the lowest category, cluster two being the very high category, and cluster three being the moderate category. This research is helpful for state agencies, international organizations (NGOs), and other stakeholders.

Crop wild relatives in Lebanon: mapping the distribution of Poaceae and Fabaceae priority taxa for conservation planning

Lebanon is a part of the Fertile Crescent recognized for its agrobiodiversity wealth in terms of both cultivated plants and crop wild relatives (CWR) diversity. Within the context of climate change and its adverse effect on agrobiodiversity, conservation of CWRs in Lebanon is essential to prevent the loss of potentially useful genetic diversity and to facilitate their use in crop breeding. To establish a comprehensive conservation plan for Lebanese CWR belonging to Poaceae and Fabaceae, in this study we prioritized 16 taxa based on their value for world security and local economy, gene pool (primary and secondary) and genome type (A, B and D for Triticum genera). Georeferenced occurrence data of populations belonging to the prioritized taxa list were retrieved from different sources and imported into QGIS to visualize by mapping their distribution in-situ and ex-situ on the Lebanese territory, highlighting sites with highest density per genus and sites characterised by the highest taxa richness. The analysis allowed to identify Lebanese areas that still need further surveying actions (mainly the south-west parts of the country) and showed that priority taxa had different distribution pattern independently from genus. Bekaa and Baalbak governorates were evaluated to include sites represented with highest taxa richness, which makes them preliminary contenders to be included within in-situ conservation actions. This study provided a foundation for further research into the conservation planning of crop wild relatives belonging to Poaceae and Fabaceae in Lebanon by identifying areas with highest taxa richness.

ShieLD: Shielding Cross-Zone Communication Within Limited-Resourced IoT Devices Running Vulnerable Software Stack

Securing IoT devices is gaining attention as the security risks associated with these devices increase rapidly. TrustZone-M, a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) for Cortex-M processors, ensures stronger security within an IoT device by allowing isolated execution of security-critical operations, without trusting the entire software stack. However, TrustZone-M does not guarantee secure cross-world communication between applications in the Normal and Secure worlds. The cryptographic protection of the communication channel is an obvious solution; however, within a low-power IoT device, it incurs high overhead if applied to each cross-world message exchange. We present ShieLD, a framework that enables a secure communication channel between the two TrustZone-M worlds by leveraging the Memory Protection Unit (MPU). ShieLD guarantees confidentiality, integrity and authentication services without requiring any cryptographic operations. We implement and evaluate ShieLD using a Musca-A test chip board with Cortex-M33 that supports TrustZone-M. Our empirical evaluation shows, among other gains, the cross-zone communication protected with ShieLD is <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">5 times</i> faster than the conventional crypto-based communication.

НОРМАТИВНО-ПРАВОВАЯ ОСНОВА ОБЕСПЕЧЕНИЯ МЕНТАЛЬНОЙ БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ

Mental threats to individual and group identity lead to a large-scale crisis and jeopardize the future of Russia and the Russian world as a civilizational (not ethnic) project. Globalization processes and their specific side effects pose a significant danger to the mentality. The most serious destructive effect on the mentality is exerted by external manipulation practices, in particular, by the instruments of “soft power”. The problem of external influence is becoming one of the most important problems of ensuring national security in the modern world. An orientation is being formed not only on passive protection, but also on preventive actions in this area. The legal and regulatory framework for the mental security of the Russian Federation is fully consistent with the emerging threats and the necessary efforts to counter them. At the same time, there are opportunities for its improvement in the direction of the final separation of mental security into an independent integral segment of national security, which will make it possible to more effectively solve the problems and tasks that arise in this area.

Stock price valuation analysis of the digital technology industry based on the HP-ARIMA method - with 18 listed companies of different volume sizes in its 3 segments as an example

The world securities market has formed a more complete system since its origin in the 17th century, with a considerable number of small and medium-sized investors and institutional investors, and proposing innovative new methods for securities valuation models can assist investors in making more accurate investment decisions. This paper proposes for the first time to use an interdisciplinary analysis method, ARIMA + HP filter analysis, to analyze the valuation of the securities market, by taking the opening prices of individual stocks in digital technology industry segments: blockchain, artificial intelligence, and Beidou navigation as examples for valuation analysis, firstly, the initial data of the opening prices of individual stocks from 2019-2021 are analyzed by HP filter analysis, and secondly, the data are analyzed while doing Tobit model test. By analyzing the long-term trend of the digital technology industry after noise reduction, its corresponding valuation forecast and value judgment results show that the head effect of the digital technology industry is more significant, and the opening price volatility shows a U-shaped relationship with company size and profitability, and the opening price volatility of individual stocks is less, while the shorter the company's establishment time, the greater the stock price volatility. While the past literature focused on the traditional valuation of financial conditions and historical data analysis of a single variable, this paper analyzes the data of individual stocks in the digital technology industry through an interdisciplinary analysis method, which allows for a more comprehensive use of historical data and prediction of possible stochastic fluctuations, providing a more reliable valuation method for securities investors and opening up new ideas for research related to the field of valuation analysis.

Current state of the world securities market

. The scientific article discusses the world securities market and its current state. Thedevelopment of the modern world securities market, in addition to general economic trendsaffecting the stock market, is also characterized by specific trends. The market capitalization ofthe global securities market is calculated by region from the total volume of exchange operations.Based on the data contained in the final report of the world Federation of exchanges for 2019,the countries of the world are classified according to the concentration of stock markets. Thelist is headed by the United States, Japan, great Britain, China, France, Germany and Canada,Switzerland and Australia, and other countries. The article analyzes market capitalizations andsales transactions of the New York, Tokyo, and London stock exchanges. The current index valuesof these three exchanges are determined