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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: Examining the Spatial Distribution of Hotels in Urban Areas that Facilitate Sex Trafficking in the US

   Shelley, Louise; Jeng, Chu-Chuan; Huang Edward (May 2022, Urban crime an international journal)

   This study examines the characteristics of hotels that have become critical locales for exploiting sex trafficking victims in all regions of the United States. In recent years, almost all the hotels named in the numerous civil suits filed by victims of human trafficking in US federal courts were in urban areas. The article focuses on the attributes of the hotels where the exploitation has been documented. The hotels are analyzed in terms of their price level and rating, their spatial distribution within cities, and the neighbourhood’s economic attributes. The analysis concludes that the hotels/motels are located close to major highways and airports, are primarily economy hotels, and three-quarters of named hotels are in poorer urban neighbourhoods. Yet one quarter are higher-end hotels reflecting the affluence of the customers. Strategies to address the problem are provided. 

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