Projects
RTI International's research has spanned areas like cancer, pollution, drug abuse and education.
Two RTI scientists, Monroe Wall and Mansukh Wani, synthesized an anti-cancer treatment, camptothecin, from a Chinese tree in 1966, and Taxol, from a Pacific yew tree in 1971. $3 billion in the two drugs invented by RTI scientists are sold each year by pharmaceutical companies. In 1986, RTI was awarded a $4 million contract with the National Cancer Institute to conduct an eight-year clinical trial on the effects of a tobacco intervention drug. Two years later, RTI began a $4.4 million AIDS treatment program for the National Institutes of Health, which grew to $26 million by 1988.
RTI scientists helped identify toxic chemicals in the Love Canal in the 1970s. In 1978, RTI researched the possibility of improving solar cells for the US Department of Energy and coal gasification for the Environmental Protection Agency the following year. The Institute helped China implement emission controls before the 2007 Olympics in Beijing by training air modelers and providing computer models.
An RTI survey in 1973, commissioned by the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, confirmed prior research that found no connection between drug use and violent crime, despite a long-held belief that heroin users were more prone to violence. In 1975, a study RTI conducted for the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism found that 28 percent of the 13,000 teenagers polled were "problem drinkers," though they were under-aged. A 1996 study done by RTI and funded by the Pentagon found that drug abuse in the military had been reduced by 90 percent since 1980.
In 1975, RTI provided recommendations to the Bureau of the Mint to halt production of expensive pennies and replace half-dollars with a new dollar coin. In 2001, RTI scientists created a new thinfilm superlattice material that uses the thermoelectric effect to cool microprocessors. In 2009 RTI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in Health Affairs estimating the cost of obesity in the US to be $147 billion annually due to the increased costs of medical care. RTI also developed a reading skill measurement program called the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) for the USAID and the World Bank. EGRA has been used in 70 languages and 50 countries.
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Famous quotes containing the word projects:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)