Doctor of Philosophy

• Their appeal is immediately understandable – many people would be upset by seeing photos of a loved one everywhere after such a traumatic event.
• There has been valuable commentary about the issues surrounding the common journalistic practice of mining social media after a “newsworthy” death.
• My PhD research offers further insight into a perspective that is rarely shared: the view of families bereaved through homicide.

Private photos in the public domain

• When these photos enter the public domain following homicide, they become photos of a victim.
• In this new domain, private photos serve altogether different purposes.
• My research indicates this is an issue that persists long into the aftermath of homicide, well after media and public interest has dissipated.

Judging victims

• My research uncovers how details in a photo can be highlighted and twisted at the expense of others.
• One mother recalled how her son would do a silly pose and ruin their family photos.
• Instead, the mother read comments made by the public underneath the article that said her son deserved to be murdered.

The right to control

• The bereaved deserve to be in control of that decision.
• Allowing them to make that choice themselves gives the bereaved agency at a time when they feel most powerless.

Laura Wajnryb McDonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Distressing photos and headlines dominate front pages, and politicians stoke negative narratives about migration.
• Also popular is the “cash for migration control” approach, turning countries on the edges of Europe into, effectively, “border guards”.
• One example is the EU’s recent deal with Tunisia, promising €150 million (£128 million) to boost Tunisia’s migration control efforts.
• But there is not much consensus on what the root causes of migration actually are, and little evidence to show that addressing them actually reduces migration.

Tackling the root causes

• But which ones are the most important drivers for people to take the enormous step of leaving home for somewhere new?
• The problem in migration policymaking – which often relies on intuition and guesswork, rather than evidence – is a scatter-gun approach which lists a whole range of issues as root causes.
• Corruption in hospitals, schools and police forces can be signs of low pay, inadequate management and a lack of accountability.
• Tackling corruption, therefore, can improve lives and strengthen people’s confidence to build their futures locally, rather than seeking opportunities elsewhere.

Aid and migration control

• Tackling the root causes of migration is not an easy, short-term fix to prevent migration.
• Governments allocating aid must separate this from the issue of migration, so that this money can be channelled into what it’s actually meant for: addressing economic, humanitarian, political and security issues.

Jessica Hagen-Zanker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• In an article published today in Nature, my colleagues and I show that illicit, often out-of-control road building is imperilling forests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
• Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive.
• Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples.
• All nations have some unmapped or unofficial roads, but the situation is especially bad in biodiversity-rich developing nations, where roads are proliferating at the fastest pace in human history.

Mapping ghost roads

• This workforce then spent some 7,000 hours hand-mapping roads, using fine-scale satellite images from Google Earth.
• For starters, unmapped ghost roads seemed to be nearly everywhere.
• In fact, when comparing our findings to two leading road databases, OpenStreetMap and the Global Roads Inventory Project, we found ghost roads in these regions to be 3 to 6.6 times longer than all mapped roads put together.

• When ghost roads appear, local deforestation soars – usually immediately after the roads are built.
• We found the density of roads was by far the most important predictor of forest loss, outstripping 38 other variables.

Roads and protected areas

• In protected areas, we found only one-third as many roads compared with nearby unprotected lands.
• The bad news is that when people do build roads inside protected areas, it leads to about the same level of forest destruction compared to roads outside them.
• Keeping existing protected areas intact is especially urgent, given more than 3,000 protected areas have already been downsized or degraded globally for new roads, mines and local land-use pressures.

Hidden roads and the human footprint

• To gauge how much impact we’re having, researchers use the human footprint index, which brings together data on human activities such as roads and other infrastructure, land-uses, illumination at night from electrified settlements and so on.
• When ghost roads are included in mapping the human impact on eastern Borneo, areas with “very high” human disturbance double in size, while the areas of “low” disturbance are halved.

Artificial intelligence

• Worse, these roads can be actively encouraged by aggressive infrastructure-expansion schemes — most notably China’s Belt and Road Initiative, now active in more than 150 nations.
• You might think AI could do this better, but that’s not yet true – human eyes can still outperform image-recognition AI software for mapping roads.
• Once we have this information, we can make it public that so authorities, NGOs and researchers involved in forest protection can see what’s happening.

Distinguished Professor Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic bodies. He is a former Australian Laureate and director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University.

• Tubulis is developing a pipeline of uniquely matched antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) with an indication-tailored targeting molecule and payload combination to develop novel ADCs with superior properties.
• The proceeds of the Series B2 will primarily support progress in Tubulis’ pipeline of next-generation ADCs toward clinical evaluation and help achieve clinical proof-of-concept for lead candidates, TUB-040 and TUB-030.
• The company expects to start its first Phase 1/2a clinical trial, including dose escalation and dose optimization cohorts in 2024.
• “This substantial financing from a syndicate of global specialist biotech investors recognizes Tubulis’ unique position in the ADC space.