GE announced its 2014 results this morning, capping a year in which the company launched the biggest acquisition bid in its history for Alstom, took public its consumer lending business, Synchrony, and announced the sale of its Appliances business to Electrolux.
The big portfolio moves will help GE generate 75 percent of earnings from its core industrial businesses and 25 percent from its financial arm, GE Capital, by 2016. Just four years ago, about half of GE’s earnings came from GE Capital. Today, that figure stands at about 30 percent.
The company has been also building up its services business and expanding its software offerings for the Industrial Internet. Today, its software solutions can monitor everything from blowout prevents for subsea oil wells to the electrical grid and medical records.
In 2014, GE also opened up its Predix software platform. for the Industrial Internet. In December, Japan’s Softbank Telecom became the first licensee. There is a $12 billion data analytics market in Japan alone that can benefit from Predix apps.
Top image: A view of Stargate, the nickname for Clemson University’s massive grid simulator. The facility holds the world’s most advanced rig for trying and validating wind turbine drivetrains, the machinery that connects the spinning main shaft and gearbox to the electricity generator. GE has used it to test its latest wind turbine technology.
Like many inventors, Thomas Edison started out as a teenage tinkerer with empty pockets. But his work on improving the telegraph led him to a better stock market ticker and a valuable patent, which he sold for $10,000 to Western Union. He used the money to build a lab in Menlo Park, N.J., and amp up his work with electricity, which attracted venture investments from J.P. Morgan and William Henry Vanderbilt and, eventually, led to GE.
Today, it is GE who is doing the investing. Two years ago the company rolled up its venture capital, new business, and licensing teams and launched GE Ventures. One goal of the business unit includes investing in new companies with ideas that carry a big payoff potential for both their and GE’s customers. Currently GE Ventures has 61 startups in its portfolio covering software, energy, healthcare and advanced manufacturing. Besides, money, they get also access to GE’s expertise, global scale and network of customer and partners to bring ideas to market faster.
Here’s a short list of companies that received investment from GE Ventures:
Top image: A GIF animation of Thomas Edison working in his lab. Image credit: Kevin Weir, flux machine. Above: A super-revolution microscopic image of a dividing cell. This image was used for cancer research.
RainDance Technologies is developing new “liquid biopsy” systems using tiny droplets separated by oil to analyze DNA. The new tools could allow doctors to test tumors and cancer cells with a simple needle prick. Alex de Winter, who invests in clinical diagnostics startups at GE Ventures, says that each droplet becomes a miniature bioreactor that can amplify target DNA inside a RainDance analyzer. De Winter says that instead of sequencing the whole genome, the droplets allow researchers to focus only on the relevant pre-identified genes, or as little as 1 percent of the sample. “You don’t waste time and you don’t waste sequencing power,” de Winter says.
Airware is developing a suite of hardware, software and cloud services foe drones called the Aerial Information Platform. Drones equipped with the technology have already took part in an anti-poaching exercise in a northern white rhino wildlife preserve in Kenya. “We want to make it easy for customers to build drones for any commercial application and operate them in a safe and reliable manner,” says Airware founder and CEO Jonathan Downey says. “This is something the industry as well as regulators have been asking for.”
Stem is using batteries, data analytics and machine learning to . make the power grid more intelligent. The company wants to reduce electricity costs by up to 20 percent without changing the way we get power.
Ayasdi is using “deep analytics” to help customers automatically discover hidden meanings in their data. The company says that its goal is to make analyzing complex data “as simple as online shopping or searching the web.”
You can read about companies that partnered with GE Ventures here.
Digital technology is changing medicine, but many pathologists still use old-fashioned microscopes to ply their trade. They load them with tissue samples, analyze them through the eyepiece and dictate findings to a voice recognition system or an administrative assistant.
It can be a pain. “Every time I reach for a new slide, I have to take my eyes off the lens and check the forms for that case,” says Ian Cree, professor of pathology at Warwick Medical School in Coventry, UK. “You can get a sore neck from hours at the microscope.”
Those hours are getting longer. As cancer rates rise, pathologists play a critical part inside cancer care teams, and their assessment often becomes the foundation of an oncologist’s recommended treatment plan. Yet the College of American Pathologists expects their number decline by a fifth over the next 15 years.
But engineers are working on digital systems connected to the Industrial Internet that can make the pain go away. Three years ago, Cree and his team started testing a machine that allows them to digitally scan images of tissue slides and patient histories, attach matching barcodes and upload everything to a database. Cree can study tissue samples on a computer monitor and control their flow with a mouse.
A pathologist can control the flow of tissue samples with a mouse. Image credit: GE Healthcare
The system is efficient in many other ways. The slides, which hold prepared biopsied tissues about 5 microns thick – a tenth of a human hair – no longer travel to Cree’s desk as they once did, but go straight back to storage after scanning. This makes it easier to preserve them and keep track of them, while pathologists analyze their images and search for diagnoses.
The technology allows one pathologist to study around 150 slides a day, increasing the lab’s efficiency by about 13 percent. “Digital pathology puts everything directly on the screen in front of you, including the paperwork,” Cree says. “Everything is linked and I can even collaborate with my colleagues without stepping out into the corridor. It’s much quicker and better for everyone, including the patient.”
Above: Omnyx’s Image Analysis Application can help with measurements for Dako HercepTest, a test commonly used by pathologists to assess treatment options for breast cancer patients. Top image: Skin melanoma sample showing digital measurements of Breslow’s depth, describing the depth of the cancer’s spread, and the distance to the tumor’s margins.
The system in Cree’s office is called Omnyx Integrated Digital Pathology. It was developed by Omnyx LLC, a joint venture between GE Healthcare and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Omnyx takes advantage of the power of the Industrial Internet, connectivity and data analysis. In the future, it could allow doctors to reach beyond hospital walls and create global “pathology networks.”
Doctors can access patient images and files from their desktop monitors. Image credit: GE Healthcare
“Pathology is a crucial diagnostic skill that can be contemporized with digital technologies,” says Omnyx CEO Mamar Gelaye. “We can connect doctors in rural and underfunded hospitals with pathology experts. The technology helps eliminate access as a variable in quality of care.”
Similar Big Data systems are already helping doctors in Sweden to analyze X-rays images of rural patients and improving diagnostics in Washington State.
Omnyx first scans samples with a high-resolution camera and stores the images in a digital archive. Pathologists can access the archive in real time and pull up desired samples.
The system can be easily scaled up from just one lab to a hospital or even an entire healthcare network. Doctors can use it to collaborate and share slides with peers and specialists, make measurements that are more consistent, improve the accuracy and speed of diagnosis, and quickly obtain second opinions. “The human eye is extremely good at looking for patterns on a slide,” Cree says. “But we are very bad at determining how much of something is on it. That’s where digital pathology adds value for the patient.”
The system could analyze samples stored in the database and look for hidden correlations. Doctors can also use it to share information about new discoveries in molecular and genomic testing. “With these new tools, pathology can rise to deliver an elevated level of patient-centered care,” Gelaye says. “We know pathology will evolve, and our solution is committed to stand ready for that transformation.”
Boston and other parts of the Northeast took it on the chin from Winter Storm Juno on Tuesday. The blizzard was expected to dump up to two feet of snow along the Atlantic coast, stranding people, toppling trees and knocking out power for thousands of residents, including the entire island of Nantucket.
But ever since Hurricane Sandy ravaged the area two years ago, engineers and local power authorities have been looking for tools to soften the weather’s blows.
Last December, for example, National Grid, Clarkson University, GE Energy Consulting, and Nova Energy Specialists started working on a functional design of a resilient electrical micro-grid for the Village of Potsdam located in New York State, near the Canadian border. If built – the funding right now only covers the feasibility study - it would supply key local business and emergency facilities with power during extreme weather, geomagnetic storms and crippling events similar to the 2003 northeast blackout. “This could be a blueprint for other towns and cities in New York and the U.S.,” says Beth LaRose, general manager of GE’s Energy Consulting business.
Potsdam, N.Y., endures ice and heavy snowfall every winter. Image credit: Mwanner
The project is funded by a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and National Grid and managed by Tom Ortmeyer from Clarkson University. It will rely on an underground power distribution network sheltered from the elements.
On most days, the microgrid could stay connected to the primary local power grid to help enhance the reliability of the system. It would kick in when bad weather strikes and allow Potsdam to disconnect from the grid during emergency, if necessary.
On its own, the microgrid would operate as an independent electrical island distributing power generated by a number of diverse potential sources, which could range from natural gas to fuel oil or hydroelectric power and solar energy. “This combination of power source diversity and secure distribution is the key,” LaRose says. “This is an important component of what a modern grid could look like.”
Top image illustration: Snowplow working on the Saltfjell in Norway. Image credit: Kabelleger/David Gubler
Last fall, the Wall Street Journal reported that a small Wisconsin private equity company turned a $91 million investment into a $1.4 billion fortune when it invested in a mine producing fine silica sand suitable for use in hydraulic fracturing. Energy companies mix the sand with water and additives, pump it down wells, and use the grains to prop open cracks in underground shale rock formations and allow oiland gas locked inside to escape.
It can take up to 275 truckloads of sand to stimulate a single well, but the rising demand for the material isn’t the only challenge for the booming energy sector. All those truck trips and diesel emissions can be vexing for local communities. “These are often small country roads and all that traffic creates a lot of disturbance, not to mention it being a significant business cost,” says BruceTocher, research and development manager for shale oil and gas at Statoil, theNorwegian energy company. “We’d like to find a new way to open up the rock. Weneed a new alternative.”
Top and above: A Statoil drilling pad and a truck in Williston, N.D. Image credit: Ole Jørgen Bratland, Statoil
Statoilis leaving little to chance. This week, the company launched a collaboration withGE to speed up the development and application of more sustainable and economic solutions for
the production of oil and gas. The two companies also launched an open innovation
challenge looking for innovative ways
to replace or reduce the amount of sand and water used in hydraulic fracturing operations.
“The
challenge of achieving more efficient and sustainable energy production is too
large for one entity to address alone,” said Eldar Sætre, president and chief
executive officer of Statoil.
Sand used by Statoil for hydraulic fracturing. Image credit: Tom Paine AP/Statoil
The online open innovation platform NineSigma is
hosting the challenge and anyone can pitch ideas. The challenge will start by
focusing on the use of sand, followed by a stage seeking to reduce the need for
water in hydraulic fracturing. “We want to reduce the need for trucking and thereby
lessen its local impact,” Tocher says. “The alternative to sand could be a new
type of lighter, more permeable material that allows oil and gas to flow freely
out of the rock.”
A Statoil drilling pad in the EagleFord shale formation Runge, Texas. Image credit: Mieko Mahi, AP/Statoil
Statoil and GE are already capturing and compressing natural gas produced from oil wells, which would
otherwise be flared due to a lack of local infrastructure or market (see below). This
project alone could reduce the equivalent of 120,000 to 200,000 tons per
year of CO2 emissions in North Dakota’s Williston Basin alone, the sponsors estimate.
An LNG truck at a Statoil well in the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota. Image credit: Jay Pickthorn/AP/Statoil
They are also exploring the use of liquid CO2 as a partial replacement for water in fracturing shale, reducing the need for water. CO2 could also create more complex fractures, boosting well productivity. “The collaboration we are announcing today with Statoil brings together two leading technology players, and allows us to leverage our global network of engineers and technologists to make a profound impact on the development of energy solutions that reduce environmental impacts,” said Jeff Immelt GE chairman and chief executive.
The first challenge opened on Jan. 28 and will close
on April 28, 2015. Up to five winners will be awarded an initial cash prize of
$25,000 each, with an additional $375,000 available as a discretionary prize
pool of development funds. The winners will be announced in June 2015.
For full challenge terms and conditions, please go here.
Last fall, the British Royal Navy commissioned a powerful new high-tech frigate so silent that it would be able to sneak up on submarines undetected. The ship, called the Type 26 frigate, has been designated to become “the workhorse” of the British fleet. BAE Systems is building the vessel, but a team of noise and vibration experts from GE used special 3-D software to model the ship’s acoustic dynamics and design the whisper-quiet electric motors.
The ship’s motors are one example of the advanced naval engineering taking place across GE. The company said today that it would combine the expertise of several GE businesses focused on ships and the sea in a new unit called GE Marine. “We already power, propel and position everything from the most advanced frigates to the largest luxury cruise-liners and the hardest-working vessels for the oil and gas industry,” says Joe Mastrangelo, chief executive of GE’s Power Conversion business. “GE Marine will help our customer benefit from highly integrated technologically rich solutions for a wide range of marine applications.”
Top image: The cruise ship Queen Mary 2 on the River Elbe near Glückstadt, Germany. The vessel is powered by two aeroderivative turbines developed by GE Aviation. Image credit: Torsten Bolten Above: The Royal Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is wired with GE electrical technology. Image credit: The Royal Navy
GE has a long naval history. Its turbo-electric systems powered the collier USS Jupiter, the U.S. Navy’s first electric ship, which launched in 1913. But its maritime businesses boomed with the recent acquisition of Converteam, the century-old French power conversion company that specializes in building heavy-duty systems that transform mechanical motion into electricity. Today, their systems power more than 70 electric cruise ships and dozens of merchant, military and offshore vessels. The flotilla includes the Queen Mary 2 luxury liner, the next-generation stealth destroyer USS Zumwalt, some of the world’s largest LNG tankers, and the Francisco, the world’s fastest ship.
The wake behind the Francisco, the world’s fastest ship. The 325-foot ferry is powered by two GE turbines and can go as fast as 58 knots, or 67 mph. Image credit: Incat
The new Marine business combines the company’s naval prowess with jet engine design, locomotive engines, and oil and gas expertise. “We need smarter, greener marine solutions,” said Tim Schweikert, the head of the new GE Marine business, in an opinion piece published by IdeasLab. “It’s not enough to boast the fastest engine or the biggest hull on the seas — it’s about being able to do more with less energy and a smaller environmental impact.”
For example, the business is building powerful propulsion systems that demand less fuel and produce fewer emissions. The U.S. Navy’s first hybrid ship, the 800-foot long USS Makin Island, which can carry almost 100 helicopters and 3,000 sailors and marines, is using an electrical and gas propulsion system designed by GE. It saved the Navy more than 4 million gallons of fuel, worth $15 million, during its first seven-month deployment.
GE Marine will also design dynamic positioning (DP) systems that allow captains to steer a near perfect course on roiling seas, or to stay put exactly in one place. (This comes in handy on a ship drilling a well or supplying an oil platform.)
The DP technology includes a combination of high-tech navigation systems such as GPS, ultrasonic beacons and lasers that feed data to a powerful computer for processing. An array of thrusters and propellers listen to its commands, compensate for ocean current, waves and wind, and keep the ship in the right place. The system will serve on supply vessels that are being built by Brazil’s Starnav Serviços Marítimos Ltda.
GE is also helping the marine industry explore the digital world and connect ships to the Industrial Internet. For example, sensors throughout the ship’s engine and propulsion system not only work to ensure everything is working properly, but can help with predictive maintenance.
For a sector responsible for transporting 90 percent of the world’s goods, the possibilities of realizing just 1 percent reduction in unplanned downtime is wind in its sails.
Future U.S. presidents will get a big new plane with the big new job. The U.S. Air Force has announced that Boeing’s next-generation 747-8 passenger jet, powered by GE engines, will replace the existing version of presidential plane popularly known as Air Force One.
“The presidential aircraft is one of the most visible symbols of the United States of America and the office of the president of the United States,” said Deborah James, secretary of the Air Force. James said that the 747-8 plane, which entered service in 2011, was the only aircraft manufactured in the U.S. that met “the necessary capabilities established to execute the presidential support mission.”
Above: A Boeing 747-8 during take-off. Image credit: Dave Subelack Top: A GEnx-1B engine at the Dubai Airshow. The GEnx is the fastest selling engine in GE history. Image credit: Adam Senatori
Bloomberg reported that the Air Force was seeking to acquire three 747-8 jets to replace the existing trio of 747-200B aircraft, whose 30-year service life will expire in 2017.
The new planes will be modified and outfitted with special avionics, navigation and communications technology. Boeing says that the current Air Force One can refuel in the air, and holds a 4,000-square-foot “flying Oval Office” and two galleys that can provide 100 meals at one sitting.
Air Force One at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. Image credit: Alex Lloyd, USAF
Each of the 747-8 planes will use four GEnx-2B engines. The engines share architecture with the GE90, the most powerful jet engine ever built, but they are lighter and more efficient. Together with its sibling GEnx-1B engine powering the Dreamliner, the three engines are the only commercial jet engines with light-weight carbon-fiber composite fan blades.
As as result this and other innovations, the new engines burn up to 15 percent less fuel and cut CO2 emissions by the same amount, compared to the CF6 engines powering the current Air Force One fleet. They are also more quiet.
In 2011, a GEnx-1B-powered Dreamliner flew halfway around the world on a tank of gas, and finished the job on the next tank. The journey set a weight-class distance record for the first leg stretching 10,337 nautical miles.
A GEnx-1B engine suspended from a Dreamliner jet. The engine has the best fuel burn in its class. Image credit: Adam Senatori
GE continues to evolve its engines. A future model of the GE90, called GE9X, will include 3-D printed components and parts from light, strong and heat-resistant materials called ceramic matrix composites, which promise to improve the gains further.
The GE90-115B is the most powerful jet engine ever built. It generated 127,900 pounds of thrust. That’s more than the combined total horsepower of the Titanic (46,000 pounds) and the Redstone rocket (76,000 pounds) that took the first American to space. Image credit: GE Aviation
GE, the NFL, the sports performance brand Under Armour, and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have launched a new open innovation challenge seeking to protect athletes, soldiers and workers in dangerous jobs from traumatic brain injuries. The challenge will focus on developing advanced materials that can absorb or diffuse impact energy.
The challenge, which is open to anyone, will award up to $2 million to the most successful participants. Their materials will be independently tested by NIST, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
NIST will set up a battery of tests and testing protocols for the challenge, says Laurie Locascio, director of the institute’s Material Measurement Laboratory. Locascio is a bioengineer and her lab employs more than 1,000 material scientists, chemists, physicists and other researchers in Gaithersburg, Md., and Boulder, Colo. “We will determine the minimum set of tests required to identify the highest quality materials,” she says.
A simple example of making a material fail “better”: By fine-tuning the thickness of the connecting spokes in a sheet of acrylic, scientists can change how it transmits force when fractured. With thick spokes (left), fractures propagate in a straight line and concentrate the impact. Thin spokes (right) divert the fracture across the sheet, diffusing the impact. Image credit: Center for Hierarchical Materials Design
Locascio says her multidisciplinary team will draw upon extensive experience in materials characterization as well as forensic testing. “We’ve tested protective gear, Kevlar vests and body armor for police officers, for example, to see how they respond to new types of bullets,” she says.
But impact testing is just one tool in NIST’s arsenal. “We also use various imaging and analytical techniques to see what’s happening” inside the material, Locascio says.
Participants can start submitting their ideas now. The challenge will stay open until March 13, 2015.
Top image: A NIST research chemist uses an immersive 3D environment to analyze the structure of a smart gel material. Above: A NIST engineering technician examines a bullet-resistant vest being tested to ensure it meets minimum performance requirements. Image credit: NIST
The new challenge is part of the GE andNFL Head Health Initiative, which plans to invest $40 million in a research and development program focused on new brain imaging technologies to improve brain trauma diagnosis. The initiative also set aside further $20 million for several innovation challenges.
The winners of the first challenge, which looked at improving the diagnosis and prognosis of traumatic brain injuries, were
announced in January 2014. The winners of the second challenge proposed
exploring innovative ways for identifying and preventing brain injury,
including virtual reality goggles, software and accelometers placed behind
athletes’ ears.
University of New Hampshire researcher Erik Swartz is placing pill-sized accelerometers, gyroscopes and other head sensors behind players’ ears to measure the effectiveness of Helmetless Tackling Training (HUTT), a training technique he developed to teach players to “keep their heads out of the game.” Image credit: University of New Hampshire
Deep under the North Sea, an orchestra of transformers, choke manifolds, pumps and valves whirs an improvised subsea symphony. The audience is a 500-pound electronic ear whose design is a trade secret.
The ear pipes the sounds through a cable to a floating control room packed with computer servers and engineers analyzing every hiss. Like the most discerning music critics, they are listening for odd harmonies, vibrations, cracks and other signs of trouble. “An acoustic signature from a piece of equipment is like a fingerprint from a human,” says Fabian Dawson, sales manager from GE Measurement and Control. “We can filter out the background noise, like marine life, and listen only to the things that we want to. No two leaks or pumps are going to sound the same.”
Call it Shazam, the popular app that can identify songs playing around you, for the deep sea.
The team is using data from existing subsea installations to build a huge data library of sounds. The more sounds, the better the predictive capabilities of the system. Like other Industrial Internet technologies, it could help customers detect problems before they get out of hand and pare down unplanned downtime. GE estimates that a 1 percent productivity increase in the oil and gas industry from the application of Industrial Internet yields approximately $90 billion in savings.
The team is particularly keen on catching “rogue sounds,” Dawson says. “You are looking at the correlations between the pieces of the equipment emitting both the electrical and acoustic signals and sometimes there is a signature there you can’t trace,” he says. GE data scientists and engineers are working on algorithms that can pin them down and add them to the library.
Dawson says that the system can be up to 10,000 times more accurate than traditional “mass balance” type of leak detection technology. These systems measure differences in the amount of oil and gas flowing through pipes to detect leaks.
The deep water ear, officially called Subsea Condition Monitoring System, is known as the cage because it looks like a large birdcage (see above). The design uses special crystals that respond to sound wave vibrations and convert them into electricity. (Engineers call this effect “piezoelectricity.”) One ear can listen to sounds within a 1,600 foot radius.
But the system can do more than that. An array of carbon rods attached to the device can detect changes in the electromagnetic field generated by electrical cables, pumps, motors and other electrical equipment.GE data scientists and engineers are working on algorithms that can pin them down and add them to the library. It can also spot ground faults and defective isolation. “You can determine the rpm of a compressor from the acoustic signal, and then you can determine how hard it is working from the electrical signal,” Dawson says. “Taken together, they will tell you what the efficiency is.”
Workers deploy the cage by lowering it down the side of a ship from a crane. They use ROVs to secure it to a piece of subsea equipment or to the sea floor. “It’s a simple, X-marks-the-spot procedure,” Dawson says.
The system is already working at some 130 sites in the North Sea operated by Statoil, ENI, and Shell, and off the coast of Africa. GE introduced it to American customers in 2013.
It’s the afternoon rush hour just outside central London and the traffic is nose to tail. Drivers here have come to expect the sight of taillights as far as they can see. One section of road, a stretch of the A3 close to Heathrow Airport, has been named Britain’s most congested road and has holdups totaling 91 hours during the afternoon rush each year.
The British capital isn’t an isolated case. Drivers across Europe’s 10 most jammed up cities spent 63 hours on average stuck in traffic last year, and cars in New York, Los Angeles and other big American cities didn’t fare much better. Annual congestion costs are expected to double to $231 billion in the U.K., U.S., France and Germany by 2030, according to data gathered by INRIX.
Sure, Google Maps helps, but the solution to the problem could come from an unexpected source – the streetlight. Lighting and software engineers are working on a breed of new LED lights containing sensors that gather traffic data. They could help drivers avoid busy roads and intersections, and ease congestion.
Top image: The cover of the booklet Architecture of the Night, printed by GE in 1930, when illuminated buildings were still a novelty. Above: The 700-foot Trylon and the Perisphere from the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Visitors were still getting used to electricity and the fair introduced them to various novel lighting technologies, including fluorescent lights. Image credit: GE Lighting
App developers could use data from the sensors to build new online services and make cities more efficient. They could improve public transportation by sending more buses to areas congested with pedestrians, or make parking more efficient by sharing real-time location of nearby empty spaces.
San Diego, for example, is working with a GE team on designing and installing a network of charging outlets that could boost the use of EVs. In Bristol, U.K., the City Council has already opened up traffic management, land use and other data sets to the public.
“We have computational power that is unprecedented,” says Agostino Renna, president and CEO of GE Lighting for Europe, Middle East and Africa. “By virtue of software and analytics, you’re able to take reams and reams of data, extract from that data insight and transform that data into action – whether that’s automated action or action driven by people that in turn drives productivity.”
LED street lights in Oakland, Calif. Illuminated Minds has more information about smart cities. Image credit: GE Lighting
The LEDs are building on technologies already helping cities reduce their electricity bill by dimming outdoor lights when there is nobody around. San Diego in California, Phoenix in Arizona, and Budapest, Hungary, for example, are using smart LED street lights that automatically adjust their brightness. In Europe, Balatonfured, one of the most popular vacation destinations in Hungary, replaced its traditional streetlights with smart LEDs and cut its energy costs by more than a half.
But that’s just the beginning. Cities can also use lampposts to increase broadband coverage in remote areas, and link up with a networked ecosystem of solar panels, batteries, weather sensors and smart meters to build a truly “bright” lighting system.
GE recently organized a roundtable discussion where speakers shared case studies from Copenhagen, Bristol, Glasgow and elsewhere about their smart lighting applications.
Smart LEDs could make living and driving in cities less stressful. They could also make cities greener.
The parasites that cause malaria, from the plasmodium genus, can lay low in their victims’ blood and organs and hide from common malaria tests. Up to three months can pass before cramps, chills, fever and other symptoms appear, but they can be easily confused for other maladies. During this period, the parasite can break out and infect mosquitoes, which spread it around and cause infection in others.
The disease kills 500,000 people annually and some 200 million get infected every year. Most of them are children under the age of five living in sub-Saharan Africa. Patients suffering from malaria symptoms strain healthcare in places with few spare resources. “Today, when you show up at a clinic, current technology will know you have it only when you’re already pretty far down the malaria road,” says Brian McIlroy, a director at GE Ventures, GE’s venture capital arm. “Asymptomatic cases get sent home and the disease can propagate through the community.”
One solution is a testing kit that can unmask the culprit early on, when it is hidden from conventional tests, and stop its spread. That’s why GE Ventures and GE Global Research partnered with Global Good. Together they want to develop an affordable testing platform that could be deployed anywhere and detect hidden cases of malaria. It would allow health teams to identify people who need treatment early, stop the disease, and eventually wipe out malaria entirely.
“With this technology, we’d like to arm health workers to simply and accurately detect malaria in more remote locations with easy-to-use yet advanced technology,” says Deborah Zajac, director of business development at GE Ventures. “The idea is to give people an accurate diagnosis and therapeutics on the spot, wherever they are.”
Much of what the partners need to build for an early diagnosis platform already exists. GE will contribute an advanced, paper-based diagnostic test called a lateral flow immunoassay (LFA), a simple device that can spot proteins produced by the malaria parasites. The LFA test will build on work GE completed for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Global Good is providing a state-of-the-art reader that will detect nanoparticles tagged to key bio-markers for the detection of malaria.
“The existing tests are not specific or sensitive enough,” says David Moore, a lab manager at GE Global Research, who will be leading the technology development. “Potentially, we can improve sensitivity by greater than 20 times to get to an improved point-of-care diagnostic test.”
Scanning electron micrograph of Plasmodium gallinaceum (purple) invading mosquito midgut. Image credit: National Institutes of Health
The program will run for two years, with the first field trials set to begin this summer. Scientists will start with the existing LFA technologies to find areas where they could be optimized to dramatically enhance the platform’s detection capabilities. If all goes well, a commercial model could go to market in three or four years.
Provided the malaria infection test project is successful, the partners’ plan to expand the platform’s capabilities is to detect tuberculosis. The team will then start looking at potential uses for the system in the developed world.
"What GE and Global Good hope to accomplish in the field of disease diagnosis is also representative of a broader goal," said Maurizio Vecchione, who leads Global Good. "As partners, we want to use invention to catalyze a market that has been neglected for the world’spoorest."
Leonardo da Vinci always seemed to be hungry for new ideas, but sometimes he may have been just hungry. Some 500 years ago, he designed a roasting jack that powered an automatic rotisserie. It used hot air rising from a fireplace to spin a horizontal vane placed in the chimney above it. The vane was attached to a vertical rod that turned the spit, and, presumably, his dinner.
The jack was one of the world’s first turbines and engineers have been using the same principle inside jet engines and power plants ever since. Since high heat can make turbines more efficient, the hot sections of modern turbines operate at temperatures above 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, much higher than Leonardo’s design and near the melting point of steel.
For that reason, their blades, which are shaped like aircraft wings and machined to extreme accuracy, require very sophisticated ways of cooling. Engineers riddle the blades with a maze tiny channels and holes that bleed in enough cooling air to protect them. But making the holes in the right places without weakening the blades, which spin thousand of times per minute and must handle titanic pressures, is akin to magic.
A 19th century design of a smoke jack. Image credit: Gregory Olinthus
Traditionally, companies have used lasers to make the tiny holes, heating the surface with the beam until the steel vaporizes. But that’s a delicate business. The metal can sputter and form molten microscopic gobbets that can spread through the air and stick to the finely machines metal surface.
Charlie Hu, an industrial manufacturing engineer at GE Power & Water, is exploring a different way. He is drilling cooling holes with a technology called Laser MicroJet developed by the Swiss company Synova.
Above: Cooling holes in high-pressure turbine blades for the CF-6 jet engine. These engines power many Boeing 747 passenger jets. Image credit: GE Aviation Top: Machining holes in a blade with a laser beam inside a water jet. Image credit GE Power & Water
The Laser MicroJet fires a laser beam inside a hair-thin jet of water, which acts like an optical fiber and guides the laser to the blade surface. The jet also helps cool down the surrounding material and flushes out machining debris. The technology could allow engineers to make more durable parts faster and design turbines that perform better.
Starting in 2011, it took Dr. Hu three years to adapt the method to turbines and take it out of the lab at GE Power & Water in Greenville, S.C. “We had to redesign the laser jet to the geometries we required,” says James Cuny, engineering executive at GE Power & Water. “Before this, the machine used for other applications was like a big barrel with a laser coming out of it. It was not very conducive to what we required.”
Today, manufacturers use lasers to make cooling holes in turbine blades. Image credit: GE Aviation
GE has already used the technology to make gas turbine blades. The company is now looking at applying it to other related businesses, such as aviation. “There is a lot of great development so far on this,” Cuny says.“Our engineers are excited about pushing the limits of the technology and bringing it to the market in the very near future.”
Dr. Hu’s mind is already on the next idea. Since the water jet can be also used to slice materials, GE and Synova are investing in a new technology that combines the advantages of both water and laser cutting in a single operation.
Leonardo invented his turbine while thinking about grilling. Hu’s ideas give GE a new cutting edge.
Engineers at GE Global Research are developing an ultra-efficient water-jet cutter that can blast through slabs of metal with ease. Here, the water jet is being tested to cut wind turbine parts from a solid aluminum ingot. It fires an abrasive mixture of garnet dust and plain water at a pressure of 60,000 pounds per square inch. The water-jet cutter could dramatically reduce manufacturing time at GE plants. Image credit: GE Global Research
Engineers in GE labs have built a penny-sized sensor that can detect the faintest traces of explosives and needs no power to operate. The device uses a special film a tenth the thickness of a human hair to detect chemicals. The team was inspired by their research of the unique iridescence of Morpho butterflies caused by the jagged, forest-like scales found on their wings. (They applied data analytics developed for their bio-inspired Morpho light and temperature sensors to the new radiofrequency (RF) bomb sensors.)
“Our sensor could be placedas a sticker inside of a cargo container on a ship or on packaging for shippedgoods,” says Radislav Potyrailo, a chemical sensing principal scientist who is
leading development of the detector at GE Global Research. “It’s a
stick-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. This advance brings us closer to a future
of ubiquitous testing of chemical explosives.”
The tiny device might be a game changer in detecting hazardous materials like chemical oxidizers and explosives, a process that today requires large and expensive equipment like spectrometers and chromatographs. Instead, the new sensor, which should cost a few cents to produce, is 300 times smaller and consumes 100 times less power than desktop detectors found at airports and other inspection areas.
Top image: An example of a wireless,
battery-free RFID sensor tag for detection of chemicals such as explosives and
oxidizers at very low concentrations. These sensors could provide advanced chemical and explosive
detection at shipping ports. Above: Heat and chemicals can alter how the jagged structures on Morpho wings reflect light and change butterfly’s color. Image credit: GE Global Research
The device uses a radio
frequency identification (RFID) tag coated with an advanced chemical detection
film. The scientists designed the film by pooling their knowledge of materials
science, nanotechnology, chemistry and data analytics.
Potyrailo, for example,
has been studying
the scales on the wings of Morpho
butterflies for several years. These
complex structures absorb and bend light and give the butterflies their
trademark shimmering coats. He found that when chemical molecules lodge
themselves in the scales on the wings, the structures cause iridescence change.
“We analyze
optical spectra from out bio-inspired Morpho
sensors and spectra coming from the RF sensors using the same methods,”
Potyrailo says. “Light and radio waves are very similar, after all. They are
just different portions of the electromagnetic radiation.”
Morpho butterfly wings change their natural color (A) after exposure to ethanol (top B) and toluene (bottom B). Image credit: GE Global Research
The detector is made of two
parts: the RFID sensor tag and a battery-powered, cellphone-size handheld tag
reader. Commuters will be familiar with the RFID tag component. It’s similar to
the technology they stick on their windshield for automatic highway toll
collection but without a battery.
The tag is composed of a
flat, coiled antenna attached to a microchip in the center. The antenna
harvests power from the reader when it is nearby to operate. Layered on top of
the antenna and chip is the special film. This film and sensor combination is
designed to respond only to molecules or particles of explosives or oxidizers
that are used to make improvised bombs.
The portable reader is hitting
the tag with radio frequencies, just like light hitting the butterfly’s
wing. When workers hold it up to the sensor
tag, the radio frequency spectrum is predictably altered by the presence of
hazardous materials trapped in the film. This radio spectrum response is picked
up by the antenna and then transmitted back to the reader, which processes the data
to let authorities know whether a dangerous substance is present and how much of it is around.
The GE Global Research team
behind the RFID sensor. Potyrailo is second from the left. Image credit: GE Global Research
Potyrailo says the
technology’s sensing range will expand into an assortment of applications in
the future, including passive gas leaks, electrical insulation degradation and
bacterial contamination detection.
Potyrailo’s group has been
working on the detector for several years. They have partnered with a number of
GE labs as well as the Technical Support Working Group (TSWG), a U.S.
interagency program for research and development into counterterrorism
measures, and other companies to pull in expertise from a range of fields.
Their device is designed to meet tough requirements for field deployment on
ships and in punishing environments.
“It’s a very attractive
device - reliable, robust, cost-effective, low power and high performance,” Potyrailo says. “Chemical threats can be detected and quantified at very low levels with
a single sensor, even improvised explosive devices—crazy devices made out of common
grocery or pharmacy stuff —we can detect them.”
Thomas Edison lost much of his hearing when he was still a child. “I have not heard a bird sing since I was 12 years old,” he once remarked. But that did not stop him from inventing the phonograph, a device that for the first time recorded sounds and played them back, in 1877, when he was 29 years old.
Edison had, in many ways, invented a whole new way of experiencing the world through sound. It seemed appropriate, then, that in 1958 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences was thinking about naming their music industry awards the the Eddie to honor Edison’s contribution, before deciding on Grammy, after the gramophone.
Above: A sketch of Edison speaking into a tinfoil phonograph. Top image: Edison listening to his was cylinder phonograph in 1888. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady.
Edison’s invention engraved sound vibrations captured by a diaphragm on a rotating tinfoil cylinder. The rotation movement created a single long groove and allowed Edison to replay the sound by retracing it with a playback needle. (The gramophone, which gave the Grammys its name, is essentially the same thing but with the grooves laid out as a spiral on a disc. That innovation belongs to the German-American inventor Emile Berliner.)
Edison’s first phonograph from 1877. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady.
According to documents from the Museum of Innovation andScience in Schenectady, “thephonograph was the result of a process of pure reasoning” and Edison’s deepknowledge of the telegraph and the telephone.
“I wasexperimenting on an automatic method of recording telegraph messages on a disk
of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the disk talking
machine of today,” Edison told a biographer. “From my experiments on the
telephone I knew the power of a diaphragm to take up sound
vibrations. Instead of using a disk, I designed a little machine using
a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was
placed tin foil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the
diaphragm.”
Edison put a
price on the machine - $18, the equivalent of $390 today – and asked a worker
named John Kruesi to make it from a sketch (see below). “I did not have much faith that it
would work, expecting I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope
for the future of the idea,” Edison told a biographer. “Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked
what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking and then
have the machine talk back. He thought it was
absurd. After it was finished the foil was put on. I then
shouted ‘Mary had a little lamb, etc.’ I adjusted the reproducer and the machine
reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken back in my life. ”
A signed copy of the original sketch that Edison made for Kruesi. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady.
The device made
Edison immediately famous. (He didn’t invent his commercial-grade light bulb
until two years later.) On April 18, 1878, he traveled to the White House at the
request of President Rutherford B. Hayes, who wanted to see the machine.
Edison later switched to wax cylinders. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady.
According to the
Thomas Edison Papers, the phonograph “made
Edison’s reputation as the ‘Inventor of the Age’ and led to his most famous
nickname ‘The Wizard of Menlo Park.’ Newspaper reporters flocked to the Menlo
Park Laboratory to see the new invention and to interview Edison.”
Fans of
his phonograph left behind many tinfoil recordings. The Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and the Library of Congress are using some of the latest,
non-invasive scientific techniques including 3D imaging and optical scanning to
digitize them and preserve them forever. Edison would surely find the interests
as well as the technology intriguing.
An Edison recording. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady.
An Edison recording. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady.
A wax recording cylinder. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady.
In the century following the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903, planes have gone through three materials revolutions: wood and fabric fuselages gave way to aluminum and, eventually, to light and strong carbon composites used to make the bodies of the latest planes like Boeing’s Dreamliner and the Airbus A350. But a new and unusual material is now changing the industry again: ceramics.
These ceramics are not your typical cup of tea. If you want to fly non-stop from New York to Sydney, jet engines with parts made from so-called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) could be your ticket not too far in the future. The light, tough and heat resistant material will allow engineers to build lighter and more efficient engines that can take planes farther and burn less fuel.
Top and above: GE’s ADVENT adaptive jet engine for sixth-generation fighter jets could soon start using turbine blades made from CMCs. You can read more about the research here. Image credit: GE Aviation
Static components made from CMCs are already serving in the newest and most advanced civilian and military engines like the LEAP engine made by CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aviation and France’s Snecma (Safran).
GE Engineers just scored an important breakthrough when they for the first time successfully tested rotating parts made from CMCs inside a jet engine turbine (see below). “Going from nickel alloys to rotating ceramics inside the engine is the really big jump,” says Jonathan Blank, who leads CMC and advanced polymer matrix composite research at GE Aviation. “CMCs allow for a revolutionary change in jet engine design.”
A turbine rotor with blades made from CMCs after a test. The yellow blades are covered with an environmental barrier for experimental purposes. Since blades made from CMCs are so light, they allow engineers to reduce the size and weight of the metal disk to which they are attached (the shiny steel part in the center), and design lighter and more efficient jet engines. Image credit: GE Aviation.
The material has two hugely winning attributes for aviation: it’s one-third the weight of metal, and it’s also heat-resistant and doesn’t need to be air-cooled.
The turbines of most modern jet engines work with surface high temperatures, which can make even advanced alloys grow soft. Engineers use lasers to drill tiny holes in the metal alloy turbine blades to bleed in cooling air and protect their surface from the heat. But the cooling air also reduces engine performance. “More heat means more cooling air, which lowers overall efficiency,” Blank says. “When you drop the need for cooling components, your engine will become aerodynamically more efficient and also more fuel efficient.”
GE spent two decades developing CMCs. Scientists at GE Global Research tried to shoot a steel ball flying at 150 mph through a sample, but failed. Image credit: GE Global Research
Since the rotating turbine blades made from CMCs are so light, they also allow engineers to reduce the size of the metal disks to which they are attached. “This is pure mechanics,” Blank says. “The lighter blades generate smaller centrifugal force, which means that you can also slim down the disk, bearings and other parts.”
When they tried the same with a non-CMC plate, they easily succeeded. Image credit: GE Global Research
GE just recently finished the world’s first successful test of rotating CMC blades inside an F414 military jet engine, which normally powers F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet jets. They were able to run the engine for 500 cycles. (One cycle takes the engine to takeoff thrust and back.) The blades powered through punishing dynamic forces and high temperatures inside the engine’s low-pressure turbine, giving engineer another proof that the heat-resistant technology that can withstand unprecedented conditions. Blank says that thanks to CMCs, GE’s ADVENT adaptive cycle engine had already set the world record for the highest combined compressor and turbine temperatures. It was validated by the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL).
The first application of the blades could be inside new jet engines for “sixth-generation” fighter jets (see below), like the ADVENT. “But we already envision future commercial applications,” Blank says.
A rendering of GE’s ADVENT engine. Image credit: GE Aviation
GE made the CMC blades for the test at its materials research facility in Newark, Del., but the company has already built a new plant in Asheville, N.C. for high rate production of components made from CMCs.
GE has spent $1 billion over the last two decades to develop the material. Says materials scientist Krishan Luthra who was involved in the project: “I thought it would be the Holy Grail if we could make it work.”
When Edith Clarke was born, the odds that she would one day join a group of celebrated inventors including Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, the Wright Brothers and Alexander Graham Bell seemed microscopic.
She lived in a pre-computer era when the few women with science education worked mostly as “human computers,” helping their male colleagues solve labor-intensive equations. But Clarke, who was the first woman to receive a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), rebelled against that reality. “I had always wanted to be an engineer, but felt that women were not supposed to be doing things like studying engineering,” she later told The Dallas Morning News.
Last month, Clarke got the last of her many satisfactions. She was elected into the National Inventors Hall of Fame [NIHF], a rarefied group of some 500 engineers and scientists whose technological achievements have changed the U.S. and beyond. “In effect, she wrote what now would be called software for machines that set the stage for electronic digital computers,” says James E. Brittain in an early profile of Clarke, who alternated between roles at GE and in academia throughout her career.
Clarke, who was born in 1883, grew up on a farm near Ellicott City, outside Baltimore, Md. There were eight other kids in the busy household. As a small girl, Edith “suffered from what probably now would be diagnosed as a ‘learning disability’ in reading and spelling,” Brittain writes, “but she exhibited a good aptitude for mathematics and card games, especially duplicate whist.”
Hers was a tragic childhood. Edith’s father died when she was 7 and her mother when she turned 12. Edith’s uncle, who served as her legal guardian, sent her to a boarding school in Maryland. But when she turned 18, she received little money from her parent’s estate and used it to pay for tuition at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
At Vassar, she studied math and astronomy, and after graduation joined AT&T as a “computer.” She became part of the company’s effort to build the first transcontinental telephone line from New York to California, but was still drawn to engineering. In 1918, she enrolled as a graduate student in electrical engineering at MIT.
After graduation in 1919, she found a job at GE in Schenectady. America was rapidly electrifying and Clarke filed her first patent for a “graphical calculator” to improve methods for solving complicated power transmission problems over distances as long as 250 miles. “She was the one of the engineers who really understood and expanded Charles Steinmetz’s equations of alternating current theory,” says Chris Hunter, a GE historian and curator at the Schenectady Museum of Science.
But even a graduate degree from MIT wasn’t enough to free her from the ranks of women computers “calculating mechanical stresses in high-speed turbine rotors,” Brittain writes.
She left her job in 1921 and traveled to Egypt and Istanbul, where she became professor of physics at the Istanbul Women’s College.
Edith Clarke’s graphical calculator for solving power transmission problems. Image credit: NIHF
Clarke rejoined GE in 1922, this time as full engineer. The job made her the first woman professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the U.S., according her biography published by NIHF.
She also joined the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, where she became the first woman to present a paper and, later, the first woman with full voting rights. The paper, called “Steady-state stability in transmission systems-calculation by means of equivalent circuits or circle diagrams” apparently held her audience rapt.
Clarke spent the next 25 years at GE, writing papers dealing with power transmission, a crucial topic as electricity became the lifeblood of the industrial world. She was the first person to publish a mathematical examination of power lines longer than 300 miles. She also figured out to use an analyzer to obtain data about power networks, arguably the first step leading to the smart grid.
“She translated what many engineers found to be esoteric mathematical methods into graphs or simpler forms during a time when power systems were becoming more complex and when the initial efforts were being made to develop electromechanical aids [like computers] to problem solving,” Brittain writes.
Clarke retired from GE in 1945 and spent the last decade of her life teaching electrical engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. She died in November 1959, in Baltimore.
On Wednesday, the U.S. celebrates National Inventors Day, which falls on Thomas Edison’s birthday. Clarke is one of 22 engineers and scientists inducted in NIHF who were employed by GE during their career. They are all men, except physicist Katherine Blodgett. The list includes Edison, Tesla, Nobel Prize winners Irving Langmuir, Charles Brush, who built the first wind turbine, William Coolidge, who revolutionized the X-ray machine, and Robert Hall and Nick Holonyak, who pioneered LED technology.
Katherine Blodgett was the first woman to receive a PhD in physics from Cambridge University. At GE, she worked on molecular coatings and created “invisible glass” that was almost entirely transparent to light. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady
Nikola Tesla is best known as Edison’s rival, but it was Edison who hired him and brought him from Europe to America. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady
Electrical engineer Charles Steinmetz found a way to distribute alternating electrical current over long distances and helped electrify the country. A barn behind his house served as GE’s first research center, before if burned down a year later. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady
Thomas Edison and Charles F. Brush (above) were born just two years and 70 miles apart in small Ohio towns strung along the Lake Erie shore. They both started out as backyard inventors, and launched successful electricity companies that later formed the foundation of GE. Brush built the first wind turbine for power generation. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady
William D. Coolidge, a longtime director of the GE Research Laboratory in Schenectady, NY, invented the X-ray tube in 1913. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady
Nick Holonyak invented the red-light LED. Image credit: GE Lighting
Britain’s coast is way more than cold beaches and crisp-stealing seagulls. It also boasts some of the highest tidal ranges in the world, measuring between 23 to 40 feet. Twice a day, like clockwork, the moon’s gravity makes the seas ebb and flow. All that moving water is also a huge reservoir of reliable, renewable, and carbon-free electricity.
That’s why the country plans to build the world’s first power generating tidal lagoon in Swansea Bay, off the coast of South Wales. The lagoon will cover over 4.2 square miles (11 square kilometers) – an area three times the size of New York’s Central Park.
A jetty will surround the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon. Image credit: Tidal Lagoon Power
As the tide flows into and out of the lagoon, it will power giant underwater turbines generating enough power for a whole city - over 155,000 homes. That’s equivalent to 90 percent of the area’s annual domestic electricity use. And that’s just one power station.
Technology, some of it developed by GE, is playing a key role in making the project happen. People have been using hydropower to generate electricity for a long time, but Swansea Bay is different. The lagoon will be able to produce 320MW of electricity only by 16 high-tech turbines.
A more traditional array would require hundreds of stream turbines to obtain the same result. With fewer turbines needed, the facility will be much cheaper to build and to run. The technology is also designed to last, with the plant having an operational life expectancy of 120 years.
Top and above. A cross-section of an underwater tidal turbine planned for the Swansea Lagoon. Image credit: Andritz Hydro
GE’s Power Conversion unit worked both on the power generation technology and also power transmission the shore. The company’s large induction generators and variable speed drives will work in tandem with hydro turbines supplied by Andritz Hydro. The GE technology is already powering other renewable energy applications such as onshore and offshore wind farms, mining, oil and gas installations, and ships. The Royal Navy has also used similar technology inside a number of vessels over the past 10 years.
The project could save over 236,000 tons of C02 each year, and turn tidal energy into a source of low-cost electricity. And that’s just the beginning. The team behind Swansea says that future tidal lagoon projects could reach up to 3GW of installed capacity.
The Baltimore fashion designer Jill Andrews has spent her career making bespoke wedding dresses, bodices and skirts for hundreds of happy clients. This Friday, she will make her debut at New York’s Fashion Week. Not with a fancy gown, but with an ingenious suit designed to fight Ebola.
Andrews was part of a team based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore that developed a drastically redesigned and simplified prototype of the Ebola protective suit. The single-piece, fully integrated suit cuts the removal process by three quarters to just 5 minutes. It takes the wearer just eight steps to shed it. Current models require 20 movements and an assistant. “It’s all engineering,” Andrews says. “If you can build a bra, you can build a bridge.”
Andrews learned about the project from her friend who works at Hopkins. “My studio is just a couple of blocks from the campus and I wanted to help,” she says.
Richard Lamporte, vice president for development at Jhpiego [Jah-Pie-Go], the Johns Hopkins non-profit involved in the effort, said the “reduction in the number of steps and their complexity was a key criteria for the suit.”
Just before Halloween, she met the team, which included students, engineers, medical and public health specialists, and even an architect. They watched presentations about proper donning and doffing of protective suits for healthworkers, learned about design requirements, identified potential contamination points, and tried to engineer around them. “I love parameters,” Andrews says. “Wedding gowns include a lot of problem solving. My Jewish Orthodox clients, for example, like to dance, but their dress must remain modest. You have to combine all of these.”
Jill Andrews at her Baltimore studio. Besides crafting the Ebola suit, she recently launched a new collection. Image credit: Jill Andrews
The team broke up to different groups and started generating ideas, selecting and combining existing concepts, and rapidly prototyping elements of the suit to make sure they were going to work. “In order to get something quickly into the field, we wanted to use parts that are already in production,” Andrews says.
She started sewing segments of the suit at her studio from Tychem, a proven heavy-duty industrial fabric made by DuPont. Of course, there were changes. They included moving the zipper to the back, like a wet suit, and attaching tabs to zippers to allow healthcare professionals an easier way out. “We wanted them to emerge as if from a cocoon,” Andrews says.
By Thanksgiving, the team had a working prototype. The suit has already won a spot among five finalists of the “Grand Challenge” competition to fight Ebola, which was organized by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The team will use USAID funding to move the prototype closer to mass production.
Jhpiego, the GE Foundation, which is backing Ebola programs in the U.S. and in Africa and provided funding for the non-profit, and the International Rescue Committee will present the suit at New York Fashion Week this Friday, February 13. The pop-up event will take place from 5 to 7pm at The Empire Hotel located at 44 W 63rd Street in Manhattan.
GIFs created from Youtube video courtesy of Johns Hopkins University. Graphic courtesy of JHU.
A series of epic winter storms buried the New Brunswick town of Salisbury under 40 inches of snow in January, including the railroad. But all that snow wasn’t enough to stop a Canadian National Railway freight train pulled by a GE diesel-electric Evolution Series ES44DC locomotive, which sliced straight through it in a spectacular manner.
How deep is your love? Stanford neuroscientist Melina Uncapher has a system in her lab that can supply the answer.
In 2013, Dr. Uncapher and her friend, the filmmaker Brent Hoff, invited seven men and women ranging in ages from 10 to 75 to engage in a “love competition” that measured the strength of their brain signals associated with love. “We chose them for their diversity, because we wanted to highlight the different experiences of love,” Dr. Uncapher says. “There may be familial love that a boy can feel for his cousin, romantic love among young lovers, and bonding love between a couple that has been beautifully married for 50 years.” Hoff made a short film about the project.
A love competitor during an fMRI scan. Image credit: Brent Hoff
The love contest was the brainchild of Hoff, who previously organized and filmed a crying competition. “He wanted to see if people could make themselves cry on cue, and then wanted to something similar for love, but using technology that allows us to peek inside their brain while thinking about love,” Dr. Uncapher says. “Everything we experience, whether it’s love, lust or sadness, originates in the brain and—if the technology is sophisticated enough—we can begin to study it.”
Dr. Uncapher says that the love competition was “really a public outreach project. People are fascinated by the brain, but intimidated by neuroscience. It’s part of my personal mission to show that science can be art and beautiful,” she says.
Dr. Uncapher, whose specialty is the cognitive neuroscience of memory and attention, focused on a pea-size area of the brain called nucleus accumbens, located deep in the center of the brain. “It’s the place where the pathways of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin – the neurotrasmitters and hormones thought to be involved in love – converge. It seemed to be the lowest hanging fruit in terms of detecting a signal indicative of whether we are experiencing love.”
A screenshot from the test. Image credit: Brent Hoff
Each love contestant climbed into a magnetic resonance imaging machine, the GE-built Discovery MR750, for about fifteen minutes. After a few quick calibration scans, Dr. Uncapher asked them to think about someone or something they love. “When you are using your muscles, they get pumped full of oxygenated blood,” she says. “The brain works in a similar way. By visualizing possible changes in the bloodflow to various parts of the brain, we can start making educated guesses as to which parts may be responding to the experience.”
The competitors thought about their family, romantic partners, spouses and former lovers. Who won? The answer is in Hoff’s film.
Dr. Uncapher focused on a pea-size area of the brain called nucleus accumbens. Image credit: Brent Hoff
