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1. The biochemistry of lanthanide acquisition, trafficking, and utilization

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamcr.2020.118864  

   Featherston, Emily R.; Cotruvo, Joseph A. (January 2021, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Molecular Cell Research)

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2. Extracting and Visualizing Wildlife Trafficking Events from Wildlife Trafficking Reports

   Coughlin, D. (January 2022, ACM/IEEE Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining)

   Abstract—Experts combating wildlife trafficking manually sift through articles about seizures and arrests, which is time consuming and make identifying trends difficult. We apply natural language processing techniques to automatically extract data from reports published by the Eco Activists for Governance and Law Enforcement (EAGLE). We expanded Python spaCy’s pre-trained pipeline and added a custom named entity ruler, which identified 15 fully correct and 36 partially correct events in 15 reports against an existing baseline, which did not identify any fully correct events. The extracted wildlife trafficking events were inserted to a database. Then, we created visualizations to display trends over time and across regions to support domain experts. These are accessible on our website, Wildlife Trafficking in Africa. 

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3. The fight against sex trafficking

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jrssig/qmad095  

   Bott, Gregory J; Freeman, Nickolas K; Cochran, James J; Keskin, Burcu B (December 2023, Significance)

   Abstract Monitoring online ads, social media and other internet activities can help identify and rescue victims of this murky, complex crime. Nickolas K. Freeman, Gregory J. Bott, Burcu B. Keskin and James J. Cochran describe how their advanced analytical techniques are helping police 

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4. Women and urban wildmeat trafficking in the Republic of Congo

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110587  

   Green, Aalayna R.; Plowman, Christian; Mwinyihali, Robert; Wieland, Michelle; Gore, Meredith L. (April 2024, Biological Conservation)

   As a result of declining biodiversity and increasing rates of urbanization, the illegal urban wildmeat trade is projected to become an integral sector of the wildlife crime industry. Adequate assessment of urban wildmeat trafficking requires investigation into the roles and behaviors of individuals who engage in wildlife crimes. However, akin to much of wildlife crime literature, women's engagement within the urban wildmeat trade have received little investigation. The objectives of our investigation were to (1) explore relationships between women and wildlife products across the supply chain, and (2) determine whether a significant relationship exists between women and specific wildlife products. Through systematic social observations, we evaluate the gendered dimensions of urban wildmeat trafficking in the Republic of Congo between the urban centers of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire. We place particular emphasis on species of conservation concern, namely great apes, African pangolins, and dwarf crocodiles. Results indicate that there are gendered variations at the species and the geographic level, indicating that women are sourcing and sending their products to different locations than men, and that women are specializing in trade of different species. We attest that urban wildmeat trafficking prevention strategies implement a gender-aware approach due to the unique ways that individuals engage with the industry and how that engagement is gendered. 

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5. Combating Sex Trafficking: The Role of the Hotel—Moral and Ethical Questions

   https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13020138  

   Jeng, Chu-Chuan; Huang, Edward; Meo, Sarah; Shelley, Louise (February 2022, Religions)

   Legitimate companies are key facilitators of human trafficking. These corporate facilitators include not only websites providing advertisements for commercial sex services but also hotels and motels. Analysis of all active federal criminal sex trafficking cases in 2018 and 2019 reveals that in approximately 80% of these cases, victims were exploited at either hotels or motels. This paper studies the prevalence of the hospitality industry in the crime of sex trafficking and the failure of this industry to address this problem until recent civil suits were filed by victims against individual hotels and chains. Drawing on the civil cases filed in federal courts by victims of human trafficking between 2015 and 2021 along the East Coast of the United States, this paper assesses the characteristics of these hotels and the conditions in the hotels that facilitated sex trafficking. The paper then explores the moral and ethical problems posed by the facilitating role of hotel owners/operators in sex trafficking either through collusion or failure to act on and/or report evidence of individual abuse. Suggestions on how to address the problem are provided. 

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