High on Life? Medical Marijuana Laws and Suicide

Using state-level data for the period 1990 through 2007, we estimate the effect of legalizing medical marijuana on suicide rates. Our results suggest that the passage of a medical marijuana law is associated with an almost 5 percent reduction in the total suicide rate, an 11 percent reduction in the suicide rate of 20- through 29-year-old males, and a 9 percent reduction in the suicide rate of 30- through 39-year-old males. Estimates of the relationship between legalization and female suicides are less precise and are sensitive to functional form.medical marijuana laws, marijuana, alcohol, suicide

Experimental test on an RC beam equipped with embedded barometric pressure sensors for strains measurement

The current trend in structural health monitoring (SHM) is to install increasingly large numbers of distributed, heterogeneous types of sensors, for a timely and exhaustive detection of any possible damage scenario evolving in the system. These sensors should be low-cost, easy to install, robust and durable. Among others, strain remains one of the most straightforward measurands for monitoring the state of a structural element and for assessing its health condition. However, for application to reinforced concrete structures, currently available strain sensing devices, such as electric strain gauges or fibre optic sensors, do not fully satisfy the aforementioned requirements, generally proving difficult to install, fragile and expensive. In this paper, an innovative monitoring technology, called Smart Steel System (S3), is proposed that measures strains in reinforced concrete members, by incorporating commercial barometric pressure MEMS sensors in appropriate sealed cavities embedded in the reinforcing steel bars. The results of an experimental campaign are reported, in which a reinforced concrete beam, instrumented with both S3 devices and conventional electrical strain gauges, is subjected to increasing loading and unloading cycles until collapse. The tests show the superior robustness of the S3 system during construction and loading as well as its good sensing accuracy, demonstrating its potential for a massive use in SHM applications

Have U.S. Gun Buyback Programs Misfired?

There are 1.2 guns for every person in the United States, and the total number of firearms in circulation is estimated to be over 393 million. Gun violence is the leading cause of death among young men aged 15–19, and firearms are involved in 51 percent of completed suicides and 73 percent of all homicides. The link between the supply of firearms and gun violence has been the subject of intense debate among policymakers and academics studying the economics of crime. To limit the supply of firearms in circulation, a number of U.S. cities have implemented gun buyback programs (GBPs). GBPs use public funds to purchase civilians' privately owned firearms. We examined the effect of GBPs and found no evidence that they reduce gun crime

Effects of 2012 Earthquake on the behavior of Ghirlandina tower in Modena

Collapse events, that occurred in the past (such as the Venice Bell Tower in 1902 and the Civic Tower in Pavia in 1989) claimed for the need to assess the long-term behavior of such monuments. A significant effort has been therefore devoted to clarify the reasons for these collapses after many centuries from the construction date. In addition, recent earthquakes in Italy have once again put into evidence the seismic vulnerability of the cultural heritage. To assess this aspect, in many cases the soil-structure interaction cannot be neglected. In this context, a simple but consistent framework for soil-structure interaction analysis is here presented with reference to a case history. It is discussed how the difference in the fundamental frequency observed during seismic events can be associated to non-linearity in soil response, leading to a rotational stiffness of the soil-foundation system consistent with the shear strain level derived from the seismic ground response analysis. Thereafter, the validated soil-structure interaction model has been used to define an equivalent SDOF model of the structure that explains the differential settlements suffered by the Ghirlandina tower in Modena during the 2012 seismic events as well as its behavior since those events