Epidemic: Responding to America's Prescription Drug Abuse Crisis, 2011

Prescription drug abuse is the Nation’s fastest-growing drug problem. While there has been a marked decrease in the use of some illegal drugs like cocaine, data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show that nearly one-third of people aged 12 and over who used drugs for the first time in 2009 began by using a prescription drug non-medically.1 The same survey found that over 70 percent of people who abused prescription pain relievers got them from friends or relatives, while approximately 5 percent got them from a drug dealer or from the Internet.2 Additionally, the latest Monitoring the Future study—the Nation’s largest survey of drug use among young people—showed that prescription drugs are the second most-abused category of drugs after marijuana.3 In our military, illicit drug use increased from 5 percent to 12 percent among active duty service members over a three-year period from 2005 to 2008, primarily attributed to prescription drug abuse.

Micro-Computer Based Linear Scheduling Application for Highway Construction Project Control, HR-339A, 1995

This report describes a new approach to the problem of scheduling highway construction type projects. The technique can accurately model linear activities and identify the controlling activity path on a linear schedule. Current scheduling practices are unable to accomplish these two tasks with any accuracy for linear activities, leaving planners and manager suspicious of the information they provide. Basic linear scheduling is not a new technique, and many attempts have been made to apply it to various types of work in the past. However, the technique has never been widely used because of the lack of an analytical approach to activity relationships and development of an analytical approach to determining controlling activities. The Linear Scheduling Model (LSM) developed in this report, completes the linear scheduling technique by adding to linear scheduling all of the analytical capabilities, including computer applications, present in CPM scheduling today. The LSM has tremendous potential, and will likely have a significant impact on the way linear construction is scheduled in the future.

A Feasibility Study on Embedded Micro-Electromechanical Sensors and Systems (MEMS) for Monitoring Highway Structures, TR-575, 2011

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) provide vast improvements over existing sensing methods in the context of structural health monitoring (SHM) of highway infrastructure systems, including improved system reliability, improved longevity and enhanced system performance, improved safety against natural hazards and vibrations, and a reduction in life cycle cost in both operating and maintaining the infrastructure. Advancements in MEMS technology and wireless sensor networks provide opportunities for long-term continuous, real-time structural health monitoring of pavements and bridges at low cost within the context of sustainable infrastructure systems. The primary objective of this research was to investigate the use of MEMS in highway structures for health monitoring purposes. This study focused on investigating the use of MEMS and their potential applications in concrete through a comprehensive literature review, a vendor survey, and a laboratory study, as well as a small-scale field study. Based on the comprehensive literature review and vendor survey, the latest information available on off-the-shelf MEMS devices, as well as research prototypes, for bridge, pavement, and traffic applications were synthesized. A commercially-available wireless concrete monitoring system based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and off-the-shelf temperature and humidity sensors were tested under controlled laboratory and field conditions. The test results validated the ability of the RFID wireless concrete monitoring system in accurately measuring the temperature both inside the laboratory and in the field under severe weather conditions. In consultation with the project technical advisory committee (TAC), the most relevant MEMS-based transportation infrastructure research applications to explore in the future were also highlighted and summarized.