BALTIMORE, MD, May 24, 2025 – Most anti-human trafficking efforts focus on breaking up sex sales; however, new research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management is turning its attention to where trafficking truly begins – recruitment. Using machine learning to analyze millions of online ads, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have uncovered patterns that link deceptive job offers to sex trafficking networks. By mapping the connections between recruitment and sales locations, the study reveals a hidden supply chain – one that can now be exposed and interrupted earlier in the trafficking process.
Drugs being explicitly developed to treat rare diseases are getting more expensive.
Old technology is behind the recent ongoing delays and cancellations at Newark Liberty International Airport, but newer technology will be an important part of the solution.
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INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals, has awarded the U.S. Air Force Academy its 2017 UPS George D. Smith Prize for its operations research (O.R.) program, which prepares its graduates to become frontline O.R. practitioners as analysts in the Air Force.
INFORMS Fellow William Cook, of the University of Waterloo, calculated the best route for visiting 50,000 sites across America from the National Register of Historic Places. Traveling by foot via the shortest route, which stretches 100 times the length of the Appalachian Trail, it would take 50 years to visit each site.
With the number of natural disasters doubling globally since the 1980s, a team lead by INFORMS Fellow Anna Nagurney are researching a novel new way to improve disaster response efforts: game theory.
New research by INFORMS member Burak Kazaz, of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, shows a wine distributor can significantly improve its profits by investing in wine futures, in addition to bottled wine. The study's numerical analysis demonstrates an approximate 21 percent profit improvement, a benefit that increases as the wine distributor's degree of risk aversion increases. This study will be published in the INFORMS journal of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.
Aviation security expert and INFORMS Fellow Sheldon Jacobson provided insight on vulnerabilities at airport checkpoints, like the kind that resulted in 11 passengers passing through an unsupervised checkpoint at JFK airport in February, all of whom reached their flights without further screening.
“The most vulnerable time for any kind of check point is in a transition period,” said Jacobson, who continued that airport security is weakest early in the morning and during shift changes.
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