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Translation. Region: Russian Federation –

Source: Novosibirsk State University –

An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.

Master's student Faculty of Information Technology Stepan Gudkov (NSU Faculty of Information Technologies) has developed software that automates the recognition of handwritten historical documents, specifically the decision books of volost courts that existed in Russia in the early 20th century. The project aims to introduce these court decisions, which reflect many aspects of the lives of Siberian peasants, into scientific circulation. The development is part of Stepan Gudkov's master's thesis, which he is preparing under the supervision of Vladimir Borisovich Barakhnin, Doctor of Engineering Sciences and Professor in the Department of General Informatics at NSU Faculty of Information Technologies.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the peasant class in Russia had so-called volost courts, which dealt with civil matters. Their decisions were recorded in thick journals, bound with cord and sealed with a seal. They represent a treasure trove of information—a description of the lives and daily routines of Russian and Siberian peasants in the pre-revolutionary era.

"Although these are court documents, they're not really about the court; they're about life in its various manifestations. Reading these decisions, we get a picture of the different peasant occupations, learning about their daily lives, their daily concerns, their personalities, and their habits. We see all this diversity in the decisions of the volost court. They give us a glimpse of peasant Russia, which later disappeared during the 20th century, when the country became completely different. It's a photographic portrait of peasant Russia," said Alexey Kirillov, senior researcher at the Institute of History, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences.

Thus arose the idea of making this knowledge accessible to a wide range of historians and interested individuals, not just selecting 100 solutions, but digitizing and recognizing a large number of documents, presenting them in a form understandable to the modern reader, so that all this would be easy and accessible.

"By my estimates, at the beginning of the 20th century, volost courts across Russia issued approximately 1 million decisions annually. Of these, only a tiny fraction have survived. Archives in Siberia currently contain several tens of thousands of decisions, and across the country, I believe, we can count on hundreds of thousands. To introduce them into scholarly circulation and begin studying them, they first need to be recognized and translated into modern text. We are currently manually transcribing them, which is a very labor-intensive process. I can give you an example: we will soon publish two books presenting several hundred volost court decisions. This work took us three years. If we set the goal of recognizing the texts of all decisions, then, if done manually, it would take several decades. The use of information technology, however, allows us to automate and significantly speed up this work," added Alexey Kirillov.

Historians approached the NSU Faculty of Information Technology with this task. To introduce a handwritten historical document into scientific circulation, it's not enough to simply digitize it as an image; it must be recognizable in text form.

"The text must, at a minimum, be indexed, with all words extracted. Then the text must be processed, extracting the most important general terms describing the subject matter of a given decision; the document must be cataloged. Then it will be possible to assemble a comprehensive information system that will allow specialists and the general public to access decisions of the district courts. Where should we begin here? Of course, with the translation of the handwritten text, its recognition, and its conversion into a machine-readable format," explained Vladimir Barakhnin.

Existing text recognition systems are not applicable to such documents due to various characteristics, so it was necessary to develop an algorithm suitable for working with handwritten documents.

When recognizing handwritten texts, specialists face a number of challenges that must be addressed. First, the volost court decision log is composed of ruled pages, including vertical ones. However, in reality, writing wasn't always done strictly in columns; often, the text ran continuously across the page, making it difficult to understand. Second, there are different handwriting styles. Although the volost register was typically written by a single scribe and a certain number of documents were written in the same handwriting, handwriting varies from book to book. Third, pre-revolutionary orthography differs from modern orthography. Finally, the scribes' limited literacy and the use of various abbreviations and proper names all complicate text recognition and processing.

To solve the problem of recognizing such texts, NSU developers applied machine vision algorithms that allow them to recognize lines, individual symbols, and letters.

"The system takes as input an image of a page from a book of decisions of rural district courts. It is broken into several small fragments, each of which is divided into individual lines of text, which can be done using neural networks like YOLO. After this, the image of the line must be converted into text. There are several approaches: running a dynamically sized window over the line, cropping the letter images and feeding them to the recognition model (an ensemble of convolutional neural networks can be used); solving the problem of transforming a sequence (handwritten text) into a sequence (printed text) using convolutional recurrent neural networks or transformer-based networks, which requires a large number of manually transcribed lines to train the model; or using a training method with a small number of training samples, which we have not yet tested and has an undeniable advantage since it requires very little data to train the model. The recognized text will, of course, contain errors, so post-processing is required: at least checking it against dictionaries. The result should be a text file containing the recognized text," Stepan Gudkov explained.

A machine vision algorithm has now been developed that helps train a neural network to recognize words as a set of symbols, without any processing or correction. Further refinement of the algorithm is intended to enable the system to suggest possible spellings and corrections based on meaning and context, allowing a human to decide which version is correct.

"Further text processing requires some thought; reading word-by-word doesn't produce a perfect result; errors and recognition difficulties are possible. Solving this problem with IT alone will be difficult; we need to develop an application that, when it encounters unfamiliar words, underlines them, marks them for correction, and suggests the most likely variants. Therefore, it's essential to involve specialists with a humanities background," Vladimir Barakhnin added.

The future plan is to create a full-fledged information system with search interfaces. In such a system, each document is provided with all metadata, all words are extracted, and it is machine-readable. The system allows for contextual searching and selection by various criteria—by village, person, case category, etc.

In the future, this development can be applied to the analysis of any handwritten documents from archives—letters, diaries, etc., created in the pre-revolutionary period—from the mid-19th century, when the modern Russian language emerged, until 1917.

Photo: Photos used from https://volsud.sibistorik.ru/

Please note: This information is raw content obtained directly from the source. It represents an accurate account of the source's assertions and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

Translation. Region: Russian Federation –

Source: Novosibirsk State University –

An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.

On December 5, Novosibirsk State University hosted its first international roundtable discussion, "Law, Bioneuroconstitutionalism, and Human Rights in the Age of Genetic Information and Bioneurotechnology." The event was timed to coincide with Lawyer's Day and the 1993 Constitution Day of the Russian Federation. Leading experts in bioethics, biolaw, and neuroscience from universities and research centers in Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Tyumen, Kazakhstan, and China spoke at the roundtable.

The round table was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 25-18-00338 “Anthropological bioconstitutionalism and the achievement of bioethical well-being in the system of ensuring humanitarian biosecurity: human dignity and new human rights in legal ontology and biosocial reproduction.”The grant is for three years and, in addition to the roundtable, includes interdisciplinary research into anthropological bioconstitutionalism and human biorights, as well as the publication of Russia's first scientific research encyclopedic dictionary, collective monographs, and proposals for amendments to current Russian legislation.

The round table was initiated by scientists Institute of Philosophy and Law (IPL) of NSU.

"Different sciences come to the forefront at different times. The 21st century is the century of life sciences, including, of course, biomedicine and neuroscience. Law is also a life science, no less important than medicine, because jurisprudence teaches us how to live in society, how to live while observing the laws. In my opinion, the main characteristic of the modern world is uncertainty; nothing is constant except change. In this environment of uncertainty and volatility, guidelines are essential, and in this sense, our constitution plays a crucial role, setting guidelines by which the ship called Russia can navigate. Therefore, the topic of the roundtable is particularly relevant. I am very pleased that the event generated great interest among our graduate students—we have about 60 of them, some attending in person, some online," noted Vladimir Diev, Doctor of Philosophy and Director of the NSU Institute of Physical Problems, at the opening of the event.

The project's director is Igor Kravets, Doctor of Law, Professor, Head of the Department of Constitutional and Municipal Law, and Chief Research Fellow at the Institute of Physical Problems at NSU. Speaking about the genesis of the roundtable discussion, he emphasized its interdisciplinary nature and the existence of research centers that address this issue, noting the importance of biocentrism in law, medicine, and healthcare.

"This is an interdisciplinary topic based on the development of human biorights, bioethics, and biomedicine in the context of achieving bioethical well-being. When we initiated this roundtable, we assumed that bioethics centers already exist at universities where biolaw is being developed and human rights in biomedicine are studied. Therefore, we invited colleagues from Moscow State Law University, the Center for Bioethics and Human Rights at the Ural State Law University, and the Higher School of Economics, as well as other leading specialists from Russian academic schools working on these issues," explained Igor Kravets.

The roundtable discussion included four scientific panels: Bioneuroconstitutionalism, human rights, and new technologies; Reproductive technologies, biomedicine, and human rights; Biomedical law and the status of individuals and citizens in light of new technologies (domestic and international experience); Bioethics and neurophilosophy facing the challenges of new technologies; and a youth panel.

"The topic of bioethics, the focus of this roundtable, is extremely important because significant changes in scientific knowledge are currently underway, and this is reflected in a new interdisciplinary synthesis—firstly, the sciences related to biology are merging; secondly, new technologies are emerging, primarily artificial intelligence and neural networks; and thirdly, legal science must respond to these changes. Therefore, it is crucial to approach the topic of bioethics from the perspectives of philosophy, biology, and law," commented Andrey Medushevsky, Doctor of Philosophy and Professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

Elena Titova, Doctor of Law and Professor at the Law Institute of South Ural State University (Chelyabinsk), spoke at the roundtable. She discussed the relationship between the category of bioconstitutionalism and biosafety rights, as well as scientific approaches to developing this doctrine. Titova specializes in litigation involving individuals and medical organizations when rights are restricted or when it is necessary to ensure the protection of rights in the field of biomedicine.

Mikhail Kotlovsky, MD, PhD, Chief Researcher at the N.A. Semashko National Research Institute of Public Health (Moscow), focused his presentation on the ethical challenges facing professionals implementing new technologies in healthcare. The focus was on the extent to which ethical standards and ethics apply to artificial intelligence when it is used in medicine. This applies to medical research and healthcare institutions, as much data is currently generated and systematized using artificial intelligence—so-called biodata. The expert provided a comprehensive assessment of the potential of using artificial intelligence to process biodata.

Igor Kravets discussed in more detail the issue of bioethical dignity from the perspective of international and national biomedical law.

"UNESCO's international instruments provide for a law enforcement and enforcement mechanism that considers human rights in the field of biomedicine in the context of their relationship with human dignity. For example, human dignity and genetics, human dignity and biorights, human dignity and biosafety. I see this as a new paradigm. That is, bioethical dignity is not only the dignity of a person participating in medical research or exercising reproductive rights; it is the dignity of various living beings that exist on our planet and that may have various forms of vulnerability. For example, if we consider humans, these include people with disabilities, children, and pregnant women. Bioethical dignity demonstrates the degree of their autonomy and vulnerability, which should be reflected in the structure of state guarantees. Bioethics also considers the rights of animals and the ability of humans to participate in their care within the context of the dignity of living beings," explained Igor Kravets.

Continuing this theme, Irina Krylatova, PhD in Law and Director of the Center for Bioethics and Law at the V.F. Yakovlev Ural State Law University, presented her research findings. She discussed the role of bioethical principles in conceptualizing the bioethical dignity of the individual.

Vladislava Boyarinova, PhD in Law, Institute of Philosophy and Law, Novosibirsk State University, shared her thoughts on the current challenges of informed consent when collecting neurophysiological data for analysis using artificial intelligence technologies, as part of a study supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation.

Particular attention was paid to the application of bioethical principles in family relationships. Daria Sennikova, PhD in Law and Associate Professor at the Law Institute of the National Research Tomsk State University, presented a paper on the right to protection from violence, raising the question: how to help without harming?

Experts from other countries participated in the roundtable. Zhang Yueping, Doctor of Law, Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Russian Language at Heilongjiang University, was a year-long intern at the Institute of Legal Philosophy at NSU. Her presentation focused on the specific understanding of biolaw in China and the status of citizens of the People's Republic of China from this perspective. Anton Didikin, Doctor of Philosophy and Candidate of Law at the Maqsut Narikbayev University Graduate School of Law (Kazakhstan), a graduate of NSU, has a long history of studying neurophilosophy and neurolaw. He presented a paper entitled "Transformation of Legal Responsibility in the Age of Neuroscience," which examined how the concept of legal capacity is changing under the influence of technological advances. This primarily concerns criminal liability, as advances in neuroscience call into question free will and the awareness of one's actions.

The field of neurophilosophy in Russia is currently most developed at one university—the Higher School of Economics. And HSE Professor Andrey Medushevsky's presentation was devoted specifically to neuroscience and its relationship with law.

"The essence of neuroscience is that it unites various fields of knowledge related to the study of the brain. And currently, some researchers are declaring a true revolution in brain research. This is linked, firstly, to the emergence of cognitive sciences and psychology. Secondly, it's biology, bioethics, and artificial intelligence. This revolution in brain research lies in the emergence, for the first time, of technologies that allow us to track the processes of cognition, meaning formation, and thought. And the most important of these technologies is, without a doubt, cerebral cortex scanning. Humanity is gaining a unique opportunity to empirically study subjective states," commented Andrey Medushevsky.

Lawyers face new challenges: firstly, a whole new field of legal research related to neurolaw is emerging; secondly, the question arises of how to approach these technological advances from a legal perspective, in particular the legality of using neuroevidence in court.

The presentations by experts in the field of reproductive technologies from the perspective of both biolaw and public health generated great interest.

Valentina Komarova, Doctor of Law and Professor at the Kutafin Moscow State Law University, addressed the highly specific issue of the relationship and safeguarding of private and public interests in the use of reproductive technologies.

Andrey Kondrashev, Doctor of Law and Professor at the Law Institute of the Siberian Federal University (Krasnoyarsk), spoke online about the problems of regulating the post-mortem use of reproductive technologies in Russia (with comparative aspects).

Ekaterina Abrosimova, PhD in Law and Associate Professor at MGIMO University (Acting Head of the Department of Innovative Jurisprudence and Information Law), spoke online about the issue of the private legal status/regime of cryopreserved embryos.

Evgeniya Mossberg, a junior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Law at Novosibirsk State University, shared the results of her research (both under a grant from the Russian Science Foundation and for her dissertation) on the topic "Cryopreservation of human germ cells and embryos as a way to ensure human reproductive rights in the post-COVID period: the experience of BRICS countries."

Also of interest was the youth panel, which featured presentations by graduate students from the NSU Institute of Philosophy and Law. Maria Solodkina (Igoshkina), who has been working on information technology in constitutional law for over a year, presented a paper on the impact of information and digital technologies on the legal regulation of bioinformatics and biodata security. This is one of the issues related to the digitalization of healthcare.

Vitaly Kamorny, a civil law specialist by training, is interested in the issues of liability for harm caused by artificial intelligence in the fields of biolaw and biotechnology. It's possible that his research will expand to include exploring how artificial intelligence influences the development of biolaw.

Ivan Kuzmenkin is writing a dissertation on genetic constitution, which is related to international biolaw and the development of rights in Russia regarding genetic information. Genetic constitution, broadly defined, is a set of rights to the preservation and use of genetic information. The topic of his presentation at the roundtable was "Implementation of the Constitutional Principle of Human Dignity in Human Cloning," and human cloning is precisely part of the realization of rights to bioengineering and genetic constitution.

Roundtable participants expressed a commitment to scientific communication on complex issues of biolaw, biomedicine, neuroscience, and healthcare, and demonstrated the importance and potential of an interdisciplinary approach.

Please note: This information is raw content obtained directly from the source. It represents an accurate account of the source's assertions and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.