Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor MOVIES

UC Davis uses machine learning analysis of handgun transactions to predict firearm suicide risk

First-of-its-kind study shows algorithm can forecast the likelihood of firearm suicide using handgun purchasing data

A new study from the Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP) at UC Davis suggests machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, may help identify handgun purchasers who are at high risk of suicide. It also identified individual and community characteristics that are predictive of firearm suicide. The study was published in JAMA Network Open.

Previous research has shown the risk of suicide is particularly high immediately after purchase, suggesting that acquisition itself is an indicator of elevated suicide risk.

Risk factors identified by the algorithm to be predictive of firearm suicide included:

  • older age
  • first-time firearm purchaser
  • white race
  • living near the gun dealer
  • purchasing a revolver

“While limiting access to firearms among individuals at increased risk for suicide presents a critical opportunity to save lives, accurately identifying those at risk remains a key challenge. Our results suggest the potential utility of handgun records in identifying high-risk individuals to aid suicide prevention,” said Hannah S. Laqueur, an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and lead author of the study.

In 2020, almost 48,000 Americans died by suicide, of which more than 24,000 were firearm suicides. Firearms are by far the most lethal method of suicide. Access to firearms has been identified as a major risk factor for suicide and is a potential focus for suicide prevention.

Methodology

To see if an algorithm could identify gun purchasers at risk of firearm suicide, the researchers looked at data from almost five million firearm transactions from the California Dealer Record of Sale database (DROS). The records, which spanned from 1996 to 2015, represented almost two million individuals. They also looked at firearm suicide data from California death records between 1996 and 2016.

The team generated 41 predictor variables from the transaction data. Among other data points, the researchers looked at handgun categories (such as a revolver or semiautomatic pistol), caliber size, price, where the gun was purchased, the buyer’s previous gun purchases, gun purchases, gender, race and ethnicity, and age.

The researchers ran a random forest classification algorithm — which can generate predictions on a wide range of data. They used the transaction-level data to predict firearm suicide within one year of purchase.

Among the top 5% of transactions identified as the riskiest, close to 40%, or 379 of 983, were associated with a purchaser who died by firearm suicide within one year.

Among the very small number of transactions with a random forest score or predicted probability of 0.95 and above, 69%, or 24 of 35, were affiliated with a purchaser who died by firearm suicide within one year.

“Research has established a clear and strong association between firearm acquisition and ownership and firearm suicide risk, but this study contributes to the growing evidence that computational methods can aid in the identification of high-risk groups and the development of targeted interventions,” Laqueur said.

The researchers caution that the first-of-its-kind study was large “proof of concept.” Still, the results suggest the potential of utilizing handgun records in identifying high-risk individuals to aid suicide prevention. They also noted that many firearm suicides occurred among individuals classified as “low-risk,” so other forms of intervention would be necessary to prevent firearm suicide in this group.

Additional authors of the study include Colette Smirniotis, Christopher McCort, and Garen J. Wintemute from the VPRO and the California Firearm Violence Research Center.

Video simulation of binary star

Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor MOVIES
Video simulation of binary star.The binary star system, NGC 1333-IRAS2A, is surrounded by a disc consisting of gas and dust.Notably, the movement of gas and dust does not follow a continuous pattern.For relatively short periods of ten to one hundred years every thousand years the movement becomes very strong.The binary star becomes ten to one hundred times brighter until it returns to its regu...
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Each rack holds 52 Angstrom Microsystem-brand “blades,” with a memory footprint of 12 or 24 gigabytes each. (Photos by Olivia Bartlett Drake)
Each rack holds 52 Angstrom Microsystem-brand “blades,” with a memory footprint of 12 or 24 gigabytes each. (Photos by Olivia Bartlett Drake)

Blue Sky Studios Donates Animation SuperComputer to Wesleyan

Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor MOVIES

Next fall, Wesleyan students and faculty will perform research activities on the same state-of-the-art animation computers that produced Ice Age the Meltdown, a $652 million worldwide box office hit.

The computer hardware was donated July 2 by Greenwich, Conn.-based Blue Sky Studios, the creator of a number of award-winning digital animation features, including the Ice Age series and Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, which took in nearly $300 million worldwide.

In 2008, Blue Sky Studios refreshed their technology for their latest movie, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and bought racks of new computers.

“The old computer racks still had a lot of life left in them, so we went looking for large colleges and universities in Connecticut that might be able to make use of this kind of computing infrastructure, and to which we might donate these computers,” explains Andrew Siegel, head of systems at Blue Sky Studios. “Wesleyan seemed like a good candidate.”

Blue Sky arranged for the racks to be delivered to the Exley Science Center loading dock. They are now housed on the fifth floor of Information Technology Services.

“We requested two, but they graciously gave us four,” Ganesan “Ravi” Ravishanker, associate vice president for Information Technology Services.

Each rack holds 52 Angstrom Microsystem-brand “blades,” with a memory footprint of 12 or 24 gigabytes each. Combined, Blue Sky donated about 3.7 terabytes of total memory.

“This is just phenomenal,” says Henk Meij, senior consultant and manager of Unix Systems Group. “Once it’s in full operation, it’s going to be much appreciated by the researchers. They’re definitely going to notice a difference in how fast research can be done.” 

One rack will be devoted to supporting high performance computing at Wesleyan. The current system allows up to 300 “jobs” to run at once. An additional 100 jobs will be able to run with the new rack, and at higher processing speeds.

“If a graduate student in astronomy wants to calculate planet rotations in a section of the galaxy, he or she will be able to do this much faster,” Meij says.

Another rack will be used primarily by ITS in a pilot project of building a virtualized data center using an entire rack. Services such as blogs, wikis, web servers and similar applications could be hosted in such an environment. When a hardware failure occurs, or one server experiences heavy loads, the virtualization layer would migrate the services to healthy servers automatically in the virtualized environment.

The additional two racks will be used to replace any hardware that fails in production system. Wesleyan would need additional cooling systems to run all four racks at once.

The high-speed animation computers feature 104 Centralized Processing Units (CPU) per rack. Each rack has a current market value of approximately $35,000. The University of Connecticut’s drama and computer science engineering departments also are each receiving two racks.

Blue Sky, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fox Filmed Entertainment, relocated to Connecticut from New York in January, bringing with it more than 300 jobs. The company, which continues to expand, said it was attracted to Connecticut because of the state’s efforts to promote the film industry.

“This is a tremendous gift for our students and for our state,” Governor Jodi Rell said in a statement. “The film industry has clearly found a home in Connecticut and we are grateful for Blue Sky’s commitment to Connecticut and partnership in helping us develop the next generation of skilled, educated industry professionals. This generous donation comes at a time when resources for so many worthwhile programs are stretched thin.”