It takes more than an hour to drive from downtown Dubai to Al Maktoum International Airport, the site of the city’s biannual air show. The runways are still surrounded by red desert sand. But like anything in this booming business capital of the United Arab Emirates, there are already plans to transform the airport into a major transportation hub surrounded by gleaming homes, canals, broad roads and cavernous warehouses.

Ambition, like heat and humidity, fills the air in Dubai, where nothing seems too big or too bold. That’s doubly true for aviation, a key link that tethers Dubai and nearby Abu Dhabi to the rest of the world. Two of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, Emirates and Etihad Airways, are based in the UAE, and Qatar Airways, based in Doha, is just a short flight away. They have grown into dominant global players in just a few decades.

The Al Maktoum airport is surrounded by a vast desert. Not for long. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Looking at the expansion through the lens of GE Aviation, another huge industry player, no other place in the world today has a higher concentration of GE jet engines. Their number will keep climbing. GE Aviation and its joint-venture partners hauled more than $17 billion in new business from the Dubai Airshow, which ended last week. That number includes a $16 billion contract with Emirates to maintain, repair and overhaul next-generation jet engines GE is building for Boeing’s 777X aircraft. Emirates has ordered 150 of the twin-engine, wide-body planes, and GE will be the exclusive engine supplier.

The first 777X will enter service at the end of the decade, but the tarmac at Al Maktoum this year had plenty of planes powered by GE tech. Once again, GE invited pilot and aviation photographer Adam Senatori to document the air show. His images were just featured in Wired, which did a special piece on him.

Qatar Airways is one of the region’s fastest growing airlines. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Senatori has been shooting air shows around the world for several years. He says that this year, Dubai organizers “curated a tight portfolio of aircraft and displayed them in a coherent manner.”

“The layout felt spacious,” he says. “I think that’s one of the most defining characteristics of the Dubai show versus Paris and Farnborough. The flight line is roomy compared to the tight confines of the other shows.” Here are some of the best shots from Senatori’s most recent visit.

The heat during the airshow was relentless, but aircraft parked on the tarmac provided ample shelter. Image credit: Adam Senatori

This giant Airbus A380 belongs to Qatar Airways. It’s powered by four GP7200 jet engines with GE technology inside. Image credit: Adam Senatori

GE’s CF34 engine on a Russian jet. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Visitors inspect giant landing gear of a Qatar Airways Airbus A380. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Few other airshow allow visitors to walk right up to the planes. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Qatar Airways brought to Dubai its 25th Boeing 787 Dreamliner. They are all powered by GE’s GEnx engines. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Airshows are not just about business. They are also about flyovers. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Every day, the UAE Air Force’s aerobatic team opened and closed the afternoon flying program. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Etihad Airways brought to Dubai its flagship Airbus A380. Image credit: Adam Senatori

The Etihad plane and its crew wore matching colors. Image credit: Adam Senatori

GE Aviation makes more than just jet engines. The wing trailing edge of this Airbus A350 XWB is made from GE carbon fiber composites. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Sunset through a GEnx engine. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Senatori at work. Image credit: GE Reports

“I get to travel the world shooting amazing machines and make aerial images from helicopters and aircrafts, yet still fly on my own and be home with my family more,” Senatori told Wired. “I may go back someday and continue my career as an airline pilot, right now I’m pretty content as a photographer.”

The marginalization of anti-aging research is our most shameful humanitarian failure.

Aging is a hot topic among the chattering classes these days. What with biotech companies like Calico and Human Longevity Inc. being founded with the mission to defeat aging, and venerable institutions such as Prudential proclaiming the imminence of superlongevity on billboards, there’s no denying that this is a time of great interest in our oldest and deepest-held dream — to escape from the tyranny of inexorable and ultimately fatal physiological decline.

But hang on — is the buzz around aging really reflective of what’s being done to realize this goal? The briefest dispassionate analysis reveals a different story altogether. The proportion of government spending allocated in the industrialized world to diseases and disabilities of old age is appropriately high, but it is overwhelmingly dedicated to the transparently quixotic approach of attacking those ailments directly — as if they were infections — rather than attacking their lifelong accumulating causes.

The latter approach is the focus of biomedical gerontology. Researchers in this field recognize that any direct attack on late-life disease is doomed to become progressively less effective as the causes of those diseases continue to accumulate, so they focus instead on those causes — the “damage” that the body inflicts on itself throughout life in the course of its everyday operation. But they comprise a tiny coterie of scientists — far too few, and with access to far too little funding, to allow progress to occur at anywhere near the maximum rate that the simple technical difficulty of the problem would allow.

I believe that the main reason for this tragic myopia is a phobia about aging that is so ancient and deep-seated that it overpowers the rationality of nearly all of us, even the most intelligent and educated. Aging holds us in a psychological stranglehold, preventing us from even contemplating the idea of its medical conquest. We have been brought up to make our peace with our inevitable decline following middle age. And the last thing that people who have made their peace with a tragic future want to do is reopen the old battle scars.

Thus it is that grown adults find it possible to argue that we should forever continue to let everyone endure the number one cause of human suffering, because the alternative would be — wait for it — that we might need to have fewer babies than we would ideally like, or that dictators might live forever (what proportion of dictators die of aging?), or that life might become boring, or a litany of similarly bewildering inanities. And unfortunately for us — by which I mean, for the whole of humanity — those adults include the overwhelming majority of the people who control enough money (whether their own, their company’s or the taxpayer’s) to make a difference.

When confronted with the moral repugnance of this attitude, some of those who hold it fall back on the case against the mutability of aging. Since the defeat of aging is as impossible as the creation of perpetual motion, they say, it doesn’t matter whether it would be good or bad. The problem is that those same people all too often simultaneously adopt the converse position — that since defeating aging would be a bad idea, it doesn’t matter whether it’s possible. Thereby, they ever so neatly deflect each of the two questions by deciding on the answer to the other. And they do it with a straight face.

So what do experts actually say about the feasibility of bringing aging under medical control? I have for some time been at the optimistic edge of expert opinion on this matter, on the basis of a proposed approach to the problem that most of my colleagues initially found incongruous and are only in recent years coming to appreciate. But even without getting into the debate about what approaches to this challenge are the most promising, one can no longer escape the fact that most biomedical gerontologists now agree that we are approaching a time of sharply accelerated progress in extending healthy lifespan.

Except, of course, by letting that expert opinion go in one ear and out the other. And that, I’m afraid to say, is what most decision-makers are still doing. But those few visionaries who see beyond this — who get the message that a transformation greater than the Industrial Revolution is coming soon — will benefit astronomically when it indeed comes, even when it becomes widely anticipated. Now is the time for companies with that kind of vision to act on it.

The opportunities and challenges presented by innovations in studies of the aging process are featured in the fourth episode of the Breakthrough documentary series, “The Age of Aging,” directed by Ron Howard. The six-part series, developed by GE and the National Geographic Channel, airs Sundays at 9pm ET on the NatGeo Channel.

(Top image: Courtesy of Bob Hall)

Aubrey de Grey is Chief Science Officer and Co-Founder of the SENS Research Foundation.

All views expressed are those of the author.

Some 1.3 billion people don’t have access to reliable electricity today. The International Energy Agency’s 2014 World Energy Outlook estimates the world needs to add some 7,200 gigawatts (GW) of power generating capacity by 2040 to meet new demand and replace old plants. Two thirds of that growth will be in non-OECD countries, including places like China.

If you’re looking for a solution, GE is a good place to shop. That’s a point that Steve Bolze, chief executive of GE Power, made to investors last Friday during a presentation at the UBS Industrials and Transportation Conference. 

Top image: GE started testing the first 9HA turbine (pictured above) last year. The 500,000 horsepower machine can generate 600 megawatts when combined with a steam generator, enough to power the equivalent of 600,000 U.S. homes. Image credit: GE Power & Water

GE’s recent acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business boosted its global installed power generation base to some 1,800 gigawatts (GW). Sure, the world’s largest installed power base is good to have, but Bolze also stressed to investors the importance of the GE Store, the idea that different GE businesses can share the same knowledge and research to quickly build innovative products.

The GE Store makes the whole of GE more competitive than its parts, Bolze said. Take a look at a handful of examples of how the GE Store works.

Taking from the store:

Additive manufacturing:

GE Aviation was the first business to experiment with 3D printing and successfully produced the first commercially viable 3D-printed GE part (see above): a component for the fuel nozzle of the LEAP jet engine. (Aviation engineers even printed parts for an entire model jet engine and then turned it on.)

Now other GE businesses such as GE Healthcare, GE Oil & Gas and GE Power are all experimenting with the technology and looking for ways to incorporate GE Aviation’s insights in its designs.

Aeroderivatives:

There are some 2,100 aeroderivative gas turbines generating electricity around the world. Despite being firmly planted to the ground, these machines have “aero” in their name in recognition of their roots in GE Aviation. They use the compressor, combustor and turbine from the CF6 jet engine to generate power.

Maintenance inspection & intervals:

GE’s Jenbacher engines can consume a wide variety of fuels. Image credit: GE Reports

GE Oil & Gas has a lot of experience running engines that use a variety of different fuels. The engineers and scientists from Bolze’s business have leveraged their knowledge to extend the maintenance intervals for their turbines, allowing them to operate longer between repairs.

Giving to the store:

CMCs:

A model of jet engine blade made from CMCs. Image credit: GE Aviation

GE Power and GE Global Research have been experimenting with a GE-developed super material called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs). After a successful run inside a 2-megawatt gas turbine, GE Aviation decided to test parts made from CMCs inside jet engines. Today, CMCs are one of the key technologies inside the LEAP next-generation jet engine developed by CFM International, a joint company between GE and France’s Safran (Snecma). Even though the engine won’t enter service until next year, it’s already the best selling jet engine in GE’s history. CFM has have received more that 7,000 orders and commitments for the LEAP valued at more than $125 billion.

Powering Egypt:

Last December, GE Power reached an $800 million deal with Egypt to provide the country with 46 gas turbines that can generate 2.6 GW. But with the hot summer around the corner, Egypt needed more than just the equipment. They needed someone to bring it online as soon as possible. GE Energy Management, which focuses on power transmission and distribution, helped install 34 turbines in a record 6 months—more than 50 percent faster than what it typically takes.

Talent Transfer:

Scientists at GE Global Research, GE Aviation and GE Power & Water are looking for efficient ways to design cooling holes in turbine blades. Image credit: GE Aviation

The former chief executive of GE’s power generation business, Vic Abate, recently became the head of  GE Global Research (GRC). He’ll draw on his 25 years of experience from GE Power to lead nine global research facilities and team of 50,000 engineers and scientists. The GRC works on the most cutting-edge innovations and technologies within the company, focusing on GE’s long-run needs.

Laser MicroJet Technology:

GE Power uses Laser MicroJet technology to improve the cooling capabilities of their gas turbine parts. The technology shoots a laser beam inside of a hair-thin jet of water, which acts like an optical fiber and guides the laser. GE Aviation has been working to get cost out of their CMC parts, and it just so happens this laser is very good at cutting CMCs. So GE Power lent their laser to Aviation for experimenting.  The results were very positive, and Aviation has placed orders for their own machine. It will make parts for the LEAP jet engine.

When Fiona Ginty was an 11-year-old schoolgirl entering Salerno Secondary School in Salthill, Galway, Ireland, she had to make a tough choice. Many other girls in her class were studying things like cooking and budgeting in home economics. But Ginty’s father encouraged her to take a different road. “My father said, ‘You are doing science!’” Ginty recalls. She happily took his advice.

More than three decades later, the world is poised to reap the benefits of Ginty’s choice. As a principal scientist at GE Global Research, Ginty has been working to advance our understanding of everything from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.

Ginty’s work will be featured in Sunday’s episode of the six-part documentary series “Breakthrough.” GE and National Geographic Channel jointly developed the series, which highlights scientific discovery and looks at innovations on the verge of breaking out. The series was produced by Hollywood duo Brian Grazer and Ron Howard.

The episode, called The Age of Aging, was directed by Howard and looks at scientific advances that could help people live longer, healthier lives. It will air on National Geographic Channel at 9pm ET.

With the number of Americans over 65 set to double between now and 2050 (and the number worldwide set to almost triple), health in old age is a pressing topic Ginty deals with every day. “We are working to gain new insights into cell function and behavior in cancer and other diseases, which will hopefully lead to therapies in the long run,” Ginty says.

Ginty and her team GE Global Research in Niskayuna, N.Y., are using the latest disease mapping tools that allow them to get a more complete picture of cancer by visualizing culpable proteins in their cells. They’ve already processed thousands of tumor samples to better understand their behavior. The work could give pharmaceutical companies and biomedical researchers a better understanding of tumors so they can develop new drugs and therapies.

“I liken the process to Google Maps,” Ginty says. “At the 30,000-foot view, you can tell there is a town. But as you zoom in, you can start to see streets, rivers, stores and other finer details. Our technology gives similar information about tumors, such as how the tumor is organized, where the blood supply is and what the pockets of cells are doing.”

Previously, scientists were able to visualize either only a few proteins at a time in a tissue slice or a chaotic jumble of thousands of them. In both instances the process was slow and cumbersome. But the technology in Ginty’s lab allows her to stain, image, wash and re-stain the same tissue sample. As a result, she can get a look at more than 60 proteins undisturbed on a single slice of tissue, and gather tremendous detail on how diseased cells communicate and grow.

Researchers stained this colon cancer tissue sample to highlight a biomarker linked to poor patient outcome. Image credit: GE Global Research

She says that the process that involved thousands of proteins, for example, was like making a complex smoothie in a blender then trying to identify the fruit that went inside. The new methods “allows us to look closely at the contents of the fruit bowl of fruit before it goes into the mixer and see whether there is any spoiled fruit and where,” she says. “With our approach, you can see which types of immune cells are located around the tumor. That’s important information as researchers try to understand how the immune system responds to cancer and develop new immunotherapies.”

Scientists are using the technology to study a variety of cancers including colon, prostate, lung, breast, brain and gastric cancer. They can also use it to investigate Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injury.

Says Ginty: “When I was a young child, I wanted to be an inventor, but thought that everything had already been invented. As an adult scientist, I came to see how much work there is left to do.”

Last month, the National Geographic Channel launched a new television series called “Breakthrough,” focusing on scientific discovery. Each of the six episodes follows scientists seeking to solve daunting challenges, from global pandemics to figuring out how the brain works. The series was developed by the channel and GE, and produced by Oscar winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Howard even directed an episode focused on aging, which airs this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.

GE may be better known for jet engines, power plants and software, but “Breakthrough” is not the company’s first brush with Hollywood. In 1954, it hired actor and future President Ronald Reagan to host a national TV show called “General Electric Theater.”

Over eight seasons, Reagan and Herbert crisscrossed the country to visit more than 130 GE labs and factories. Image credit: Museum on Innovation and Science Schenectady

Like “Breakthrough,” the show aired every Sunday at 9 p.m., on CBS television and radio. Don Herbert, the creator and host of the iconic educational series “Mr. Wizard,” was Reagan’s “progress reporter,” gathering news on GE’s “contributions to progress through research, engineering and manufacturing skill,” according a story published in The Monogram, a GE magazine. The topics tackled by the new series prove that GE’s quest to solve looming global problems hasn’t changed.

Reagan and future First Lady Nancy Reagan opened their “all-electric” house in Pacific Palisades, Calif., to TV cameras while it was still under construction. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Over eight seasons, Reagan and Herbert crisscrossed the country to visit more than 130 GE labs and factories, reporting on everything from jet engine development — the technology was barely a decade old back then — to the future of electricity. Several broadcasts in 1956 even took place inside Reagan’s brand-new “all-electric” hilltop home in Pacific Palisades, California, as part of GE’s “Live Better — Electrically” marketing campaign. The Reagan residence served as the model home “pointing the way to the electrical future.”

“It wouldn’t be same house without the lighting, which is so unique and beautiful … the real thrill comes with sundown when the lights come on,” future First Lady Nancy Reagan told The Monogram.

Critics liked the show, too. The Boston Herald opined that “apparently the people at GE assume that we are not idiots and are interested in some intelligent facts about their company and its work. It won’t start a trend but we thank them anyway.”

Besides Howard and Grazer, “Breakthrough” includes a number of other Hollywood luminaries. Paul Giamatti, Angela Bassett, Peter Berg, Brett Ratner, Akiva Goldsman and Howard each directed an episode. Adrien Brody and Jason Bateman helped with narration.

Reagan inside a GE factory in 1956. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Similarly, Reagan brought a number of stars onto “General Electric Theater,” including Fred Astaire, Lou Costello, James Dean, Joan Fontaine, Ernie Kovacs and others. By 1956 it was the third-most-popular show on American television, reaching over 25 million viewers every week.

“General Electric Theater” and Reagan signed off for the last time in 1962. “We have tried consistently to put on the very best stories available using the best actors and actresses, directors and producers we could find,” Reagan wrote in The Monogram. “We on the ‘Theater’ believe that year in and year out, we have had the highest-quality half hour on television.”

Reagan was a hit on TV and off. Here he’s featured in a hallway at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, N.Y. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Although painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell wasn’t a founding father, there are few things more American than his art. From 1916 until 1963, he re-created scenes from everyday life on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, back then the most widely circulated magazine in the U.S. Throughout his career, Rockwell painted American presidents, and his work now decorates hallways inside the White House. His “Freedom From Want” canvas may be the best-known visual ode to the Thanksgiving holiday that millions of Americans will celebrate tomorrow.

It’s a testament to the refined artistic tastes of GE’s marketing department that it hired Rockwell in the 1920s to make a series of paintings and drawings for an ad campaign promoting the company’s Mazda electric lamps. (Rockwell is far from the only famous artist GE’s worked with over the decades. Others include Kurt Vonnegut, Ronald Reagan and, most recently, Ron Howard, Paul Giamatti, Angela Bassett and others.)

Top image: All Right with the Light (1921) Above: Old Man Playing Solitaire (1921) All images courtesy of GE Lighting Institute

The Norman Rockwell Museum believes the painter created “at least 20 advertising illustrations” for GE. Seven on them — all large oil paintings that range in style from Dutch masters to impressionism — are still on display at GE Lighting’s Nela Park historical campus in East Cleveland, Ohio. (The company gave some of the rest away decades ago as retirement gifts to executives.)

What Difference a Light Makes (1925)

Like many other Rockwell paintings, the work he did for GE captured ordinary Americans discovering the electric light and putting it in their homes. Michael J.P. Collins, former president of the Rockwell Society of America, wrote that the light campaign “marked a major turning point in [Rockwell’s] career. It required something more of him than mere talent: to capture the profound change which the new electric light brought to American life, he had to explore its impact on a whole range of traditional family activities.”

Good Housekeeping (1925)

GE published the works in the Post and other magazines, including Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal, and also as calendar art. “In the 1920s and 1930s, most of the lightbulb dealers were electrical shops that specialized in all kinds of appliances and lighting fixtures,” said Mary Beth Gotti, who manages GE’s Lighting Institute in Ohio. “GE provided them with merchandising materials including signs, display stands, posters, blotters — and calendars. These calendars featured the works of many noted artists, including Rockwell and also Maxfield Parrish.”

Almost a century later, GE lights, a number of them energy-efficient LEDs, will illuminate many Thanksgiving dinners. In cities like San Diego and Jacksonville, “intelligent” GE LED streetlights will light the way home for locals and, soon enough, help them avoid traffic and find a parking spot. So thanks for the lights!

Grandpa’s Treasure Chest (1920)

What a Protection Electric Light Is (1925)

And the Symbol of Welcome is Light (1920)

Renewables are key to a sustainable global power supply. Private-sector ingenuity and collaboration can help accelerate the transition toward a low-carbon energy future.

The pace of growth of renewable energy technologies — hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal, biopower, and emerging renewables — has accelerated in the last decade. Since 2005, 870 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity have been added to the global electric power system. In 2014 alone, 37 GW of hydropower, 51 GW of wind power and 40 GW of solar power were installed, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Today, when a new power plant is built somewhere in the world, it is just as likely to be renewable as it is fossil fuel or nuclear. We believe this trend will continue and that more than 50 percent of new global electricity capacity additions will come from renewable energy through the end of the decade.

Data from global electricity markets highlight the magnitude of renewable energy’s presence on the global power scene. In 2014, generation from renewable energy sources added up to nearly 5,500 terawatt hours (TWh). Renewables have now edged out natural gas as the second-largest source of electricity generation — second only to coal — and with the current boom, renewable energy will continue to be a leading fuel in the future. Renewables are an important addition to the diverse international electricity generation portfolio.

New investments in renewable power are outpacing investment in additional fossil fuel capacity as well. Global new investment in renewable energy, excluding large hydro, was $270 billion in 2014. That represents a 17 percent increase from 2013. Investment in renewables was evenly split between developed and developing countries. Total investment in fossil fuel generation capacity was $289 billion. However, many of these investments were made to replace existing power plants that were being retired. Investments for net fossil fuel capacity additions were $132 billion.. Furthermore, for the first time, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has more investments in renewable energy than in thermal power.

A confluence of factors is driving this transition. First, growth in global electricity demand has fueled the rise of all power generation technologies. GE estimates that global electricity generation rose from 16,800 to 21,900 TWh between 2005 and 2014, with nearly 2,000 GW of new sources of electricity installed to meet this growing demand. Second, the rising threat of climate change, the desire for increased domestic energy security and enhanced economic development have prompted policymakers to implement an increasing number of renewable power support policies across the globe. These policies have been successful in encouraging the adoption of renewable power over the last decade.

Third, and most importantly, as a result of technology innovation, renewable power technologies have become increasingly cost competitive over time and more “grid-friendly” — or compatible with the electric power system. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for onshore wind power has declined by 15 percent since 2009, which has enabled wind power to be the least-cost source of electricity generation in many jurisdictions around the world. The largest cost reductions have come from solar photovoltaic (PV) technology, which has experienced a 53 percent decline in costs since 2009. New technologies that incorporate energy storage to reduce the impact of variability from wind and solar PV technologies, as well as the addition of digital technologies that ensure the renewable power system are fully optimized, will continue to push down the cost of renewable energy and facilitate their integration to the grid

Looking ahead, the combination of business innovation and smart renewable energy policies will continue to drive large amounts of renewable energy investment, capacity and generation. GE estimates that another 730 GW of renewable energy capacity will be added between 2015 and 2020. Renewable energy capacity additions will account for over 50 percent of total global electric power capacity additions through the end of the decade. As in the last decade, hydropower, wind and solar PV are expected to account for the bulk of these additions. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation will be up to 13 percent lower in 2020 than they would have otherwise been without non-hydro renewable power technologies in the global electricity portfolio.

However, there are both challenges and opportunities in the path ahead. First, stakeholders must work together to coordinate electricity planning. Second they must develop rules to ensure system flexibility, expansion of electricity access and to improve systems operations according to market evolution expectations. In order to accommodate the increasing levels of variable renewable energy, both demand- and supply-side technologies within the electric system must become increasingly flexible. Greater levels of deployment and utilization of the existing grid-friendly capabilities of renewables will be required. Technology innovations like more sophisticated methods of forecasting the wind and sun, and cost-competitive energy storage solutions will be needed to allow renewables to become more predictable and to better manage variability. And finally, the Industrial Internet must be fully leveraged to enable greater control and coordination across the grid.

Through technology and business model innovation, GE believes that these challenges can be transformed into opportunities. At GE, innovation is driven across the organization and accelerated by GE’s commitment to Ecomagination. Innovations like GE’s Digital Wind Farm and new Industrial Internet successfully blend the physical and digital in ways that help maximize resource productivity across the global energy system. Over 100 years ago, GE imagined a world where humankind was able to successfully harness the sun, wind, and sea. Thanks to continuous technology innovation, this is the world that we live in today. Let’s seize this opportunity and work collaboratively to further accelerate renewable energy innovation, build new solutions and create a sustainable electric power system for the planet, its people and the world economy.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Brandon Owens is the Strategy and Analytics Director at GE Ecomagination.

Thibault Desclee is Global Strategic Marketing Leader at GE Renewable Energy.

All views expressed are those of the authors.

In 1980, the world collectively shed not a single tear upon hearing that the scourge of smallpox would likely never take another life. A gargantuan global effort had eradicated the disease in the open (though the virus still survives in government labs). Now it looks as if humanity will be able to close the book on polio, another terrible infectious disease that has wreaked havoc throughout history.

One among the many maladies that remain and take a huge yearly human toll is malaria, a preventable and curable disease that nonetheless remains entrenched in 97 countries, where transmission is often rampant. It’s caused by a handful of species of protozoa in the genus Plasmodium, whose complex life cycle makes them hard to control. That cycle involves infecting mosquitos that then bite humans and slip it into their bloodstream. These humans become reservoirs of the parasite, and pass the infection back to uninfected mosquitos that bite the carrier.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 3.3 billion people are at risk of contracting malaria — just under half of the world’s population. In 2013, there were nearly 200 million cases of the disease globally, and it caused around 584,000 deaths. Ninety percent of cases occurred in Africa, where the disease is endemic in large areas.

This blood film for malaria parasite shows healthy and infected blood cells (with dark spots). Image credit: Getty Images

But things are looking up in the fight. The WHO reported that the rate of new cases has fallen by 37 percent and death rates have decreased by 60 percent since 2000, thanks to improvements in prevention, diagnosis, treatment and surveillance. “Based on the progress I’m seeing in the lab and on the ground, I believe we’re now in a position to eradicate malaria — that is, wipe it out completely in every country — within a generation,” Bill Gates wrote late last year. His organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is working toward that goal by boosting its malaria program budget by 30 percent. “This is one of the greatest opportunities the global health world has ever had,” Gates wrote.

But a major hurdle to eliminating the disease resides in one of the peculiarities of malaria infection. Since the single vaccine available confers only partial protection in small children, a person not consistently taking anti-malarial medication must be diagnosed with the disease before being treated. A number of studies have shown that many people who live where malaria is present — up to 60 percent of some sample populations — actually carry the parasite without showing symptoms. These so-called asymptomatic carriers act as disease reservoirs, allowing malaria to circulate.

Fumigation is a basic way to fight the disease. Image credit: Shutterstock

The trouble is that finding the disease in asymptomatic patients requires serious scientific firepower. To get anywhere near finding most hidden cases, trained scientists and technicians need expensive and complicated tools called thermal cyclers, which help them recognize whether Plasmodium’s genetic material is present in a person’s bloodstream.

But that type of talent and hardware isn’t necessarily available close to patients in malaria-endemic regions of Africa, South Asia and Central and South America. As a result, the process often takes days.

But that’s about to change. GE has partnered up with Global Good, itself a collaboration between the Gates Foundation and Intellectual Ventures. The two organizations are developing a new paper-based test called a lateral flow assay (LFA), which uses a patient’s blood sample to detect malaria in asymptomatic carriers. When it’s released, the test will be more powerful than existing LFAs, and similarly affordable and user-friendly. “We’re operating under the idea that if you can find those asymptomatic malaria carriers and treat them, then you could eliminate the disease from a region,” says David Moore, the laboratory manager of membrane and separation technologies at GE’s Global Research Center.

In addition to the still-under-development paper-based test, the partners are also collaborating on an electronic test reader that will be backpack-portable and battery-operated.

Like a pregnancy test from a pharmacy, the malaria LFA is designed to identify proteins made by the parasite that are present in the blood, and provides results within minutes. A positive result is indicated by a color change on the bioactive paper. The clinician or technician performing the test will then further analyze the result by the electronic reader to obtain even more sensitive and accurate results. “Today, existing solutions tackle diagnosis in symptomatic patients, albeit sometimes inadequately, but miss infection in asymptomatic patients, resulting in the cycle of infection continuing,” wrote Matt Misner, a materials scientist and project leader working in Moore’s lab. “We expect that the combination of these technologies will stack up to provide the performance necessary to make a real impact on the way malaria is treated. Additionally, when successful, we plan to adapt this diagnostics platform to target other infectious diseases that persist around the world.”

Says GE’s Moore: “Overall, we’re very pleased with the way things are progressing. So far, the results are promising and we’re encouraged by the data we’re getting back.”

We must consider the key moral and policy questions around artificial intelligence and cyborg technologies to ensure our innovations don’t destroy us.

How much do we really know about the impact of scientific breakthroughs — on technology or on society? Not enough, says Marcelo Gleiser, the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College.

As someone who explores the intersection between science and philosophy, Gleiser argues that morality needs to play a stronger role in innovations such as artificial intelligence and cyborg technologies due to the risk they could pose to humanity. He has described an artificial intelligence more creative and powerful than humans as the greatest threat to our species.

While noting that scientific breakthroughs have the potential to bring great harm or great good, Gleiser calls himself an optimist. But says in this interview that “the creation of a transhuman being is clearly ripe for a careful moral analysis.”

When it comes to understanding how to enhance humans through artificial intelligence or embedded technologies, what do you view as the greatest unknowns we have yet to consider?

At the most basic level, if we do indeed enhance our abilities through a combination of artificial intelligence and embedded technologies, we must consider how these changes to the very way we function will affect our psychology. Will a super-strong, super-smart post-human creature have the same morals that we do? Will an enhancement of intelligence change our value system?

At a social level, we must wonder who will have access to these technologies. Most probably, they will initially be costly and accessible to a minority. (Not to mention military forces.) The greatest unknown is how this now divided society will function. Will the different humans cooperate or battle for dominance?

As a philosopher, physicist and astronomer, do you believe morality should play a greater role in scientific discovery?

Yes, especially in topics where the results of research can affect us as individuals and society. The creation of a transhuman being is clearly ripe for a careful moral analysis. Who should be in charge of such research? What moral principles should guide it? Are there changes in our essential humanity that violate universal moral values?

For example, should parents be able to select specific genetic traits for their children? If a chip could be implanted in someone’s brain to enhance its creative output, who should be the recipient? Should such developments be part of military research (which seems unavoidable at present)?

You’ve cited warnings by Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk in suggesting that we need to find ways to ensure that AI doesn’t end up destroying us. What would you would as a good starting point?

The greatest fear behind AI is loss of control — the machine that we want as an ally becomes a competitor. Given its presumably superior intellectual powers, if such a battle would ensue, we would lose.

We must make sure this situation never occurs. There are technological safeguards that could be implemented to avoid this sort of escalation. An AI is still a computer code that humans have written, so in principle, it is possible to input certain moral values that would ensure that an AI would not rebel against its creator.

Could the AI supersede the code? Possibly, which is why some people are very worried. There could be a shutdown device unknown to the AI that could be activated in case of an emergency. This would need to be outside the networking reach of the AI.

Are there policies that can be put in place that could better ensure that scientific breakthroughs are used appropriately?

From a policy perspective, granting agencies should monitor the goals of the funding to make sure the intentions are constructive and that safeguards are implemented from the start. Governments should work in partnership with scientists and philosophers to maintain transparency and to implement humane operating procedures.

Progress in the control of new technological output should come not just at the national, but at the international level. Global treaties should ensure that cutting-edge research involving AI and transhuman technologies are implemented according to basic moral rules to protect the social order.

There is urgency in developing these rules of conduct. Let us not repeat the errors from climate change regulation — we must act before it’s too late.

Are you generally an optimist or pessimist about how humanity uses science?

I’m optimistic. The human drive to kill existed before science was here. It’s not a scientific problem — it’s a moral problem embedded in a species that evolved within a hostile environment and that is still unable to look beyond its origins. Humans will continue to use science to kill and to heal.

But I detect the emergence of a new mindset, one that seeks a higher moral ground. This mindset is a byproduct of a new global consciousness, a consequence of increasing knowledge of our cosmic position as molecular machines living in a rare planet that are capable of self-awareness. Science not only creates new machines and technologies, but also new worldviews. It’s time we moved one from our ancient tribal divides.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

Marcelo Gleiser is the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College. His latest book is “The Island of Knowledge.”

All views expressed are those of the author.

Last month, the National Geographic Channel launched a new television series called “Breakthrough,” focusing on scientific discovery. Each of the six episodes follows scientists seeking to solve daunting challenges, from global pandemics to figuring out how the brain works. The series was developed by the channel and GE, and produced by Oscar winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Howard even directed an episode focused on aging, which airs this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.

GE may be better known for jet engines, power plants and software, but “Breakthrough” is not the company’s first brush with Hollywood. In 1954, it hired actor and future President Ronald Reagan to host a national TV show called “General Electric Theater.”

Over eight seasons, Reagan and Herbert crisscrossed the country to visit more than 130 GE labs and factories. Image credit: Museum on Innovation and Science Schenectady

Like “Breakthrough,” the show aired every Sunday at 9 p.m., on CBS television and radio. Don Herbert, the creator and host of the iconic educational series “Mr. Wizard,” was Reagan’s “progress reporter,” gathering news on GE’s “contributions to progress through research, engineering and manufacturing skill,” according a story published in The Monogram, a GE magazine. The topics tackled by the new series prove that GE’s quest to solve looming global problems hasn’t changed.

Reagan and future First Lady Nancy Reagan opened their “all-electric” house in Pacific Palisades, Calif., to TV cameras while it was still under construction. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Over eight seasons, Reagan and Herbert crisscrossed the country to visit more than 130 GE labs and factories, reporting on everything from jet engine development — the technology was barely a decade old back then — to the future of electricity. Several broadcasts in 1956 even took place inside Reagan’s brand-new “all-electric” hilltop home in Pacific Palisades, California, as part of GE’s “Live Better — Electrically” marketing campaign. The Reagan residence served as the model home “pointing the way to the electrical future.”

“It wouldn’t be same house without the lighting, which is so unique and beautiful … the real thrill comes with sundown when the lights come on,” future First Lady Nancy Reagan told The Monogram.

Critics liked the show, too. The Boston Herald opined that “apparently the people at GE assume that we are not idiots and are interested in some intelligent facts about their company and its work. It won’t start a trend but we thank them anyway.”

Besides Howard and Grazer, “Breakthrough” includes a number of other Hollywood luminaries. Paul Giamatti, Angela Bassett, Peter Berg, Brett Ratner, Akiva Goldsman and Howard each directed an episode. Adrien Brody and Jason Bateman helped with narration.

Reagan inside a GE factory in 1956. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Similarly, Reagan brought a number of stars onto “General Electric Theater,” including Fred Astaire, Lou Costello, James Dean, Joan Fontaine, Ernie Kovacs and others. By 1956 it was the third-most-popular show on American television, reaching over 25 million viewers every week.

“General Electric Theater” and Reagan signed off for the last time in 1962. “We have tried consistently to put on the very best stories available using the best actors and actresses, directors and producers we could find,” Reagan wrote in The Monogram. “We on the ‘Theater’ believe that year in and year out, we have had the highest-quality half hour on television.”

Reagan was a hit on TV and off. Here he’s featured in a hallway at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, N.Y. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

In the 1960s, French radiologist Charles Gros working at University of Strasbourg, asked the imaging machine maker Compagnie Générale de Radiologie (CGR) to find a way to build a dedicated device for X-ray breast imaging that would provide better images than conventional equipment and was also more comfortable for women.

The task fell to CGR engineers Jean Bens and Emile Gabbay. They came up with a special X-ray tube that emitted low-energy radiation that produced uniform images and contrast that allowed doctors to see breast tissue in greater detail. They called their machine Senographe and brought it to market in 1966.

Whereas a 2D image of a square might look flat, a 3D image reveals that the square is actually a box. GIF credit: GE Healthcare video

GE acquired the Paris-based CGR in 1987, and mammography machines that followed the Senographe remain the standard of care for breast cancer screening. But they aren’t perfect. Sometimes they yield false positives and lead to unnecessary stress. In other instances, it may be difficult for physicians to see through what they call “dense breast tissue,” which can mask tumors. Some 40 percent of women in the U.S. have dense breasts, so this is no small issue.

But recently, another Parisian, GE nuclear physicist Francesca Braga, has helped commercialize an add-on to the GE mammography gantry called SenoClaire that allows doctors to image the breast in a greater detail and could improve the odds of finding cancer and getting the results right the first time around.

Braga in her lab. Her grandmother is a breast cancer survivor. “You can immediately relate your work to what it means for women and for breast cancer,” she says. “The passion starts there.” Image credit: GE Healthcare

DBT delivers 3D images of the breast by taking nine low-dose mammograms from different angles and using powerful algorithms to arrive at the result. Whereas a 2D image of a square might look flat, a 3D image reveals that the square is actually a box. Braga, who is Italian, works at GE Healthcare’s facility just outside Paris. Last year, she and her team of 120 engineers brought DBT to market. “As program manager, I always saw my role as a ‘chef d’orchestre,’” Braga says. “I simply led this project with a lot of tenacity and passion, and put all of myself into inspiring and motivating the team even in difficult times. A lot of my motivation came simply from being a woman that will go through breast cancer screenings in her life, if nothing more.”

Unlike traditional mammographs, SenoClaire images the breast in 3D in 0.5 mm spaced-planes or slices, and allows radiologists to “cut” through the breast so that each plane is virtually free of overlapping tissue in front and behind. They can then reconstruct the entire breast by combining the set of virtual cuts. Inspect each “slice” is similar to leafing through pages of a book.

“Traditional mammography uses 2D imaging — you compress the breast and take a picture,” Braga says. “But when you compress the breast, you create puddles of tissue that can hide lesions that are cancer. The image can also show what looks like a lesion but which in reality is not. You may have to call the patient back for another mammogram for nothing.”

SenoClaire uses the same amount of radiation as a traditional 2D mammogram, and a much lower dose than an average CT scan. The machine acquires images in approximately 10-second intervals, using a “step and shoot” approach that helps eliminate the blurring that occurs with traditional continuous-sweep X-rays.¹

Braga, who has double degrees from universities in Milan and Paris, had originally intended to work in nuclear physics. “But I could not find a real motivation, because I couldn’t see the immediate impact,” she says.

Instead, she joined GE in 1999, straight from university. She quickly joined the company’s mammography engineering team and found a way to combine her engineering expertise with an issue she felt personally connected to. “It was perfect,” she says. “My grandmother had been a survivor of breast cancer and my mother’s best friend died of breast cancer when I was a student. You can immediately relate your work to what it means for women and for breast cancer. The passion starts there.”

It took Braga and her team six years to turn Dr. Kopans’ invention into a viable machine and attain FDA approval, which they received last year.

The results are encouraging. Braga said that while the machine could not remove the discomfort of the experience, her team worked to make it as comfortable as they could — an important aspect of convincing women to come in for screenings. “SenoClaire gives the radiologist clarity around the information in the images he is looking at,” Braga says. “So he has a better sense of what he is seeing and could make a more confident decision.”

¹Typical acquisition time is <10 sec (average breast of 4.5cm)

It takes a typical computer 6 hours to process information from a CT scanner to see exactly what’s going on inside the head of a patient who’s just arrived at a hospital with certain stroke symptoms. But the typical window for treatment is limited to four hours – and likely moving to just three hours based on recent clinical studies. “Speed is one of the most important elements of treating stroke,” says Jan De Witte, president and CEO of GE Healthcare IT. “If doctors can intervene quickly, they can often help patients escape serious damage to the brain.”

De Witte’s team is now writing software that could help doctors move faster. The cloud-based app they are developing will be able to sort terabytes of raw data from a CT scanner – the primary tool for probing the brain of suspected stroke victims – into a full picture of the brain in around 5 minutes, processing of thousands of images in a single data set.

But it gets better. Since the data sits in the cloud, it will be accessible to experienced clinicians in certified stroke centers. They will be able to read patient scans from remote hospitals, discuss treatment online, and make recommendations to their colleagues in the field.

“Using the massive computing power of the cloud, we’re able to assemble complex images in 3D, manipulate them and generate little movies that show the blood flow through the brain and show doctors where the blockage is sitting.”

GE is already connecting jet engines, wind turbines and all manner of industrial equipment to the cloud. Medical machines will be no different. The shift to data gathering, software and analytics, and the powerful insights they provide are at the core of GE’s transformation to the world’s largest digital industrial company. On Monday, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt will be speaking at the annual meeting of Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago – the medical imaging industry’s largest trade show – about the “GE Health Cloud”.

The GE Health Cloud will quickly process terabytes of raw data from CT scanners and other machines. Image credit: GE Reports

The health cloud is designed to be an ecosystem connecting software, hardware and medical devices. It will host data and also help doctors and clinicians collaborate and compare notes and insights as easily as using a social network.

John Flannery, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, says the amount of data from healthcare devices will grow 50 times by the end of the decade. The new cloud, which will meet security and privacy standard prescribed by the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other software development standards, will start by connecting more than 500,000 GE imaging machines.

The health cloud is built on the same Predix software platform that GE developed for the Industrial Internet. “We are fundamentally transforming life both for the radiologist and for the chief information officer,” says Justin Steinman, chief marketing officer for GE Healthcare IT. “Since it’s built on a single platform, the cloud will enable CIOs of healthcare systems to quickly scale up or scale down their IT systems and roll out the latest tools. It will also make it easier for radiologists to collaborate with their peers within their hospital and with outside experts.”

The cloud will initially receive data from  500,000 GE imaging machines.

Predix is essentially an industrial-grade version of the types of platforms that power smartphones. It allows developers to quickly write apps as soon they see a new opportunity on the market.

At RSNA, GE Healthcare has announced its first cloud-based apps, focused on advanced imaging and clinical collaboration. By opening its cloud for third party app development, GE intends to attract independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop their apps in the new cloud ecosystem. “We’re looking for innovation anywhere,” De Witte says. “For example, academic medical centers have great developers who can write algorithms looking at specific diseases and then let them loose on the data that’s inside the healthcare cloud. The insights could be groundbreaking.”

Another application for the cloud could be wellness management, helping doctors and patients collaborate to proactively monitor their wellbeing. The customers could be healthcare systems as well as insurers. “We call this digital therapeutics,” De Witte says. “The cost of keeping somebody healthy is way lower than the cost of treating something that has gone wrong. At the end of the day, the payer has the biggest financial incentive to keep people healthy.”

De Witte says GE will move all of its medical software into the cloud by the end of the decade. “The industry is moving from healthcare that’s driven by volume to a system built on value,” he says. “The health cloud will help us get there.”

By the time you’re done reading this story, heart disease will have killed nearly 40 people in Europe. The picture elsewhere isn’t much different. The World Health Organization reported earlier this year that more people die from cardiovascular disease than from any other cause.

The grim statistics is what keep scientists like Anja Brau motivated. “Cardiovascular disease isn’t just a European issue, it’s a human issue,” says Brau, director of global cardiac magnetic resonance at GE Healthcare. Brau and her team of cardiac specialists, physicists, engineers and software developers at GE Global Research in Munich are writing algorithms and building other digital tools that take MRI imaging data generated during heart scans and quickly reconstruct it so that doctors can see what’s going on.

Their technology, ViosWorks* can do the job in 10 to 15 minutes, rather than the more typical 45 minutes to an hour. It displays the results in 7 dimensions – 3 in space, 1 in time, and 3 in velocity direction – showing the actual blood flow in the heart as a moving image. This is critical during heart attacks, which deprive the heart of blood and oxygen.

GE Healthcare brought the technology to this year’s meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), which is taking place this week in Chicago. RSNA is the world’s largest gathering of radiologists, drawing an expected 60,000 visitors.

Top GIFs: ViosWorks* combines 3D cardiac anatomy, function, and flow in 1 free-breathing, approximate 8 minute scan. It enables visualization of the whole chest and beating heart from any vantage point – any structure, in any plane – simultaneously seeing ventricles contracting and accurately quantifying blood flow. Above: Vector image demonstrates the directional flow of blood in the heart and vessels. Color depicts velocity of blood flow. For example, red may indicate accelerated flow in areas of valvular abnormalities *7 dimensional viewing capabilities of the heart; 3 in space, 1 in time, 3 in velocity direction. Image and GIF credits: GE Healthcare

ViosWorks* can help physicians distinguish scarred or damaged tissue from healthy heart muscle and tell them whether blood is flowing through the heart the way it should be.

Every second counts. Doctors need to assess damage as quickly as possible to administer the right treatment, prevent death, speed recovery and reduce healthcare costs. The CDC Foundation estimates that by 2030, annual direct medical costs associated with cardiovascular diseases will rise to more than $818 billion, while lost productivity costs could exceed $275 billion. For comparison, the U.S., which has the world’s largest defense budget, spends on the military about $600 billion annually.

ViosWorks* demonstrates extraordinary resolution, previously unattainable with conventional imaging and post processing technology. Now with Arterys software, large image datasets of the whole chest can be post processed and evaluated in real-time via cloud technology. Image credit GE Healthcare

But it’s not no easy. MRI works by “acquiring” the image of the organ one thin slice of tissue after another – kind of like rebuilding a salami stick from individual slices. However, the procedure can take up to an hour and patients have to remain still. This is doubly difficult when imaging body parts like the heart, which keeps moving.

ViosWorks* delivers a three-dimensional spatial and velocity-encoded dataset at every time point during the cardiac cycle, yielding high resolution, time-resolved images of the beating heart and a measure of the speed and direction of blood flow at each location. Image credit: GE Healthcare

The software doesn’t need a specialized machine and works with existing MRIs. ViosWorks* also has a major knock-on effect on the rest of the cardiac healthcare system, because MRI scanning acts as an important gatekeeper for determining what treatment cardiac patients go on to receive next.

Says Brau: “As exciting and encouraging as these breakthroughs are, they are also just the beginning of what we can achieve.”

*Not yet commercially available

In the 1980s, when AIDS started ravaging communities around the world, many people reacted to the disease with panic. With no cure and little information about the illness, there was a climate of fear similar to last year’s outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. “There [were] a lot of people who felt they did not know about the epidemic and they were afraid,” James Bunn, one of the co-founders of World AIDS Day, told National Public Radio. “And they were right to be afraid because of the things that they were hearing.” Bunn said sick people “were being ostracized by their families. They were being evicted from their homes because they were sick and dying.”

Bunn, who worked back then as a public information officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva, teamed up with his colleague Thomas Netter and came up with the idea to celebrate the first World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, 1988.

Top image: A 3D rendering of an HIV virus attacking a T-cell. Image credit Shutterstock Above: An HIV-infected T-cell. Image credit: NIAID

Bunn told NPR that when they started, they focused on the story of a girl with AIDS who could go to school only if she was inside a glass enclosure. Today, governments and nonprofits spend billions on treatment, prevention and education, and people view AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) more like a chronic ailment than the lurking monster it once seemed.

One direct result of the push to demystify AIDS was the development of antiretroviral drugs. They keep the HIV virus that causes AIDS under control in the body and allow patients to live longer and more productive lives. The obvious next step is finding a cure.

Some 34 million people around the world live with HIV and AIDS, including 3.2 million children. HIV attacks immune cells called T-cells, replicating itself and infecting other cells. As AIDS develops, it leaves the body susceptible to infections and diseases it would otherwise easily fight off.

“We’re really starting to identify which cells get infected first, and where they are located,” says Northwestern’s Tom Hope.

Thomas Hope, professor of cell and molecular biology at the Hope HIV Laboratory at Northwestern University, is taking a closer look — literally.

Dr. Hope is using a high-definition microscope developed by GE Healthcare Life Sciences to study how HIV particles infect a cell and then spread to other cells. His goal is to prevent the initial infection. This microscope — GE Healthcare Deltavision OMX™ — is so powerful that scientists call it the OMG microscope. The device uses advanced algorithms and high-definition cameras that allow researchers to observe living organisms and viruses in 3D even beyond Ernst Abbe’s diffraction barrier, once the final frontier for microscopic resolution. (The barrier prevented researchers from seeing two objects closer to each other than half the wavelength of light they used to image the sample.) As a result, scientists can use it to study objects as small as 120 nanometers, about 1,000th the width of a piece of human hair.

HIV Virus – 3d rendered illustration. Image credit: Shutterstock

Unlike a typical microscope, the machine does not have an ocular lens or a traditional stand. Instead, scientists place samples on a platform inside the machine and photograph them using high-definition cameras. Rather than shining light at the sample, they attach colored fluorescent molecules, called probes, to parts of viruses and cells. The light emitted by the probes then illuminates things that were previously obscured.

The technology allows Dr. Hope and his team to highlight different segments of the HIV virus and the cells it tries to infect. “We’re really starting to identify which cells get infected first, and where they are located,” Dr. Hope says. “That sets the stage for us to really begin to pick that apart. The Deltavision became … the instrument of choice for a whole lot of HIV work.”

“We have nice evidence of disrupting envelope trafficking and stopping the spread of the virus,” says Emory’s Paul Spearman.

At Emory University, Paul Spearman is using the GE Healthcare Deltavision Core and the OMX microscopes, along with GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ AKTA™ Protein Purification Systems, to study how HIV assembles, replicates and gets released from infected cells.

One of the pathways his team has been dissecting is that which places the HIV envelope protein (Env) onto developing particles. By manipulating cellular recycling pathways, Spearman and his team have been able to arrest Env trafficking in a discrete compartment called the endosomal recycling compartment. By trapping Env in this compartment, the viruses that assemble are rendered noninfectious. “We have nice evidence of disrupting envelope trafficking and stopping the spread of the virus,” Spearman says. “We have been using Deltavision for about seven years, and now we are learning new details of the assembly pathway using the OMX.”

He says once the Env trafficking pathway is fully understood, he can work on developing an inhibitor.

“We take blood cells from HIV-infected people, particularly those who are able to control their infections,” says Vanderbilt’s James Crowe . “There may be clues in their immune response as to how to resist HIV. We’re studying antibodies made by these individuals.”

The Deltavision system isn’t the only GE technology researchers are using to find a cure for HIV. Dr. James Crowe, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, uses GE Healthcare Life Sciences technology to isolate, purify and characterize batches of individual monoclonal antibodies in order to study people who are unusually resistant to HIV. He believes these patients — called “controllers” or “nonprogressors” — could hold the key to developing a vaccine.

Controllers live as long as 20 years before HIV becomes AIDS — twice as long as most patients. “We take blood cells from HIV-infected people, particularly those who are able to control their infections,” Crowe says. “There may be clues in their immune response as to how to resist HIV. We’re studying antibodies made by these individuals.”

He is getting closer to finding out what makes them special, and how to leverage their unique immune response to reach the holy grail of HIV research: a vaccine.

Working in a high-safety laboratory, he mixes the purified monoclonal antibodies with live HIV cells and incubates them. “Then we see if the virus can still replicate in cells, and if the antibodies inhibit the replication of the virus … a process called neutralization,” he says. “That’s the function we’re looking for. That’s the moment of truth: when we know if these antibodies are really potentially useful.”

Cindy Collins, general manager of in vitro diagnostics, research and applied markets at GE Healthcare Life Sciences, says, “A decade ago, it seemed unimaginable that we might one day see a cure for HIV. While much work remains to be done, the groundbreaking work of these researchers gives us hope that this may not be such a far-off reality. Our focus is to continue to develop the technology that will enable and advance their research.”

The GE Healthcare Deltavision OMX™ and AKTA™ Protein Purification Systems are for research use only. They are not for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.

Paris could prove the turning point in the global effort to combat climate change, but culture will be as important as policy going forward.

Earlier this week delegates from 196 countries arrived in Paris to attend the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP21 is neither the first nor will it be the last COP. Yet many see it as the most important negotiation round since the 2009 one in Copenhagen. To shed some light on the strategic issues underlying COP21, Look ahead interviewed Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate change program at the World Resource Institute. Morgan, who also serves on the German Council for Sustainable Development and who is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has followed the negotiations since the early days of the Kyoto Protocol. Here, she tells Look ahead what leaders should expect from COP21, how technology can help achieve some of the goals the conference will set and why climate change is just as much about cultural change as it is about policy reform.

From a strategic point of view, what distinguishes COP21 from the previous COPs?

I think it’s understood that COP21 is a moment in a longer negotiation process. Yet it is also happening at a very critical time. The prices of renewable energy have dropped dramatically over the last few years. Over 160 countries have also put forward climate action plans. Last, but not least, countries now understand that taking climate action actually has multiple benefits, while in the past they might have seen it as an environment-versus-the-economy issue. Altogether, this is creating a perfect-storm moment that is facilitating a different kind of conversation than has been the case in the past.

Another differentiator is the cooperation between the United States and China. If you look at their relationship in general, you can see there aren’t that many issues that the two countries are actually in deep collaboration about, which makes climate, really, a very unique and special issue. It also means no country can hide behind anybody anymore.

We have now reached a stage where it’s about how we’re going to do this, not whether we’re going to do this. I think that’s quite important.

In view of the above, how should one measure success at COP21?

As far as benchmarks go, I think Paris needs to be the turning point after which it is clear that emissions are going to continue to go down. It’s an acceleration mechanism in a way.

For this to work, the international agreement should be binding with a strong enough level of precision as to send a signal to the business and investor communities and help shift investments. Such a signal includes a long‑term goal that countries are committed to decarbonising the global economy over the course of the century.

We can talk about it in different ways, but it needs to be supported by goals out to 2050 or 2060 — combined with a decision to come back every five years to the table to strengthen commitments in view of progress (both political and technological). Last, but not least, we need a cooperation package to support developing countries in this transformation and in dealing with the impacts of climate change. This is vital, notably for Africa and the island nations.

The intended nationally determined contributions (INDCS) submitted so far go beyond existing policies. Despite that, we are still 12-14 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year short of a 2C pathway. What can be done to increase ambition? Can this be achieved at the COP21 or is it something that one should think about in a separate dynamic?

I think staying below two degrees is a long‑term effort. In that regard, what happens the day after the COP is going to be as important as what happens in the COP. I also think that there are additional things that can happen on this question in Paris and which can provide more confidence that we still have a fighting chance to stay below two degrees.

One relates to these signals I was talking about. Scientific research by a consortium of institutes and think tanks, for instance, shows not only that a further 5GtCO2e per year could be saved thanks to frequent “pledge and review” mechanisms, but that the transition below 2C is also much more orderly (and thus less costly, too).

The other lever of action in Paris, which is much harder to quantify, is the part of the Paris agenda where companies, cities, banks and other key actors of civil society commit to do more. There, I think one needs to pay attention to the divestment commitments and longer‑term ones related to infrastructure or things that probably countries did not take into account in their INDCs because it’s very hard to pick that apart. Another forum to keep an eye on will be the World Economic Forum next January and how it will respond to the COP’s outcomes.

Let’s move to climate finance — another important part of the climate deal. According to the OECD, we are about halfway to the $100 billion climate finance goal. How do we bridge the remaining gap?

I think finance is one of the key foundations of the whole thing. The fact that the prices of clean energy technologies have dropped so quickly, for instance, is a fundamental change/shift in the fight against climate change. With India placed so that it can achieve its solar mission, in particular, it will be fundamental to staying below two degrees. At the same time, I think that there is a lot more that can be done to catalyse private investment by bringing together the multilateral national development banks.

I’m not a finance expert, but another thing that has captured my attention is the whole question of financial regulation, the UNEP work on that topic and the fact that China is hosting the G20 next year and is putting finance and “green finance” on the agenda there.

I was on a panel yesterday with Christian Thimann from AXA, which recently divested EUR500m out of coal. He was saying that along with financial risk, we’ll increasingly have to take into account climate risk, too. I see this as a massive field of progress moving forward. Before Copenhagen, very few people were not talking about shifting the trillions agenda or the financial regulatory structures at all. Not anymore.

The need for a clear, long-term and ambitious carbon-pricing-driving investment is well understood. What role, if any, can or should we expect COP21 to play in this regard?

What you’re already seeing is that a number of countries have carbon-pricing or carbon-emissions trading systems in their national implementation schemes. I think that’s important and I think COP21 has helped to catalyse that. Part of the agreement hopefully will have global accounting rules, which is really a precondition if you want to have any kind of emissions-trading scheme moving forward — even if it’s the linking of national systems to avoid double counting. But setting a global carbon price has never been part of the delegation’s mandate. It’s never been on the agenda per se.

Success in Paris will hinge on a solid reporting and verification framework. As recent events in the US and China suggest, however, there are challenges with emissions reporting. Do you expect issues related to the recent US/China revelations to complicate the talks’ dynamics?

Incredibly important topic. I think these scandals put a greater emphasis on getting more clarity in the Paris agreement on MRV [Monitoring, Reporting, Verification] issues. The interesting thing about the China case is that China was actually the one that brought forward the fact that these numbers were off. To me, that’s actually a positive sign. They didn’t try to hide it. It does, however, show the massive complexity and challenges of “getting the numbers right.” That’s for sure.

What Paris should try to do is to create a culture and a binding commitment of countries to report and be verified every two years, to have a level of detail that’s there that allows for catching these types of errors that come through and also a culture that allows the Chinas to come forward and say, “You know what? These numbers were wrong.”

What role do you see for technology in helping the monitoring and verification of climate pledges?

It’s huge. WRI’s Global Forest Watch is an example of what technology could bring to the table. Using satellite data, rapid-SMS and cloud-computing algorithms, for instance, we can now track illegal deforestation in near-real time where it’s happening, identify who owns the land and send automatic alerts to law enforcers. It’s tremendous. Similar work is happening through NASA and other projects. If I look into the future, there’s a huge role both for innovation and technology here to help countries hold levels of extreme transparency. Unfortunately, it’s not always discussed in these negotiations, because it’s a bit overwhelming for some of the delegates.

China’s 13th Five-Year Plan will be finalized in March 2016. How do you expect current discussions around it to influence the negotiation process at COP21 (and vice versa)?

On that one, what we’ve seen is the relationship between the Five‑Year Plan and the INDC. My expectation is that the Five‑Year Plan will be able to go into more detail and include things that they, China — this is the case for many countries — is not comfortable putting in an international agreement.

Take the coal-cap debate, for example. This is a huge debate in China of trying to cap coal. I think that is a very active and important discussion that COP could, in some ways, complement and — if successful — help bring a greater confidence to the supporters of coal cap domestically.

You’ve been tracking the climate negotiations for more than 20 years. What advice would you have to a youth leader interested in bringing change to this field?

My advice would be to be really active: both against and for things. I personally think we need more youth, more activism in capitals that are standing up for, I don’t know how else to put it, but truth and power in all of this. We need more climate campaigners to bring the issue home in a way that policy people can’t.

In addition to science and economics, this will require them to develop important communication skills. It will also require courage. The other side has done a good job of silencing people and it takes courage to actually stand up and say these things. Theatre is a great training in that regard. It’s a great way to become a powerful public speaker who can speak with the facts.

As for where to act, culture will be as important as policy moving forward. We really need to get into the mainstream culture. We’ve done some of that on climate, but if I look at the gay rights movement in the United States, there’s a lot to learn from them.

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

This piece first appeared in GE Look ahead.

Jennifer Morgan is Global Director of the Climate Change Program at the World Resource Institute.

All views expressed are those of the authors.

In the 1960s, French radiologist Charles Gros working at University of Strasbourg, asked the imaging machine maker Compagnie Générale de Radiologie (CGR) to find a way to build a dedicated device for X-ray breast imaging that would provide better images than conventional equipment and was also more comfortable for women.

The task fell to CGR engineers Jean Bens and Emile Gabbay. They came up with a special X-ray tube that emitted low-energy radiation that produced uniform images and contrast that allowed doctors to see breast tissue in greater detail. They called their machine Senographe and brought it to market in 1966.

GE acquired the Paris-based CGR in 1987, and mammography machines that followed the Senographe remain the standard of care for breast cancer screening. But they aren’t perfect. Sometimes they yield false positives and lead to unnecessary stress. In other instances, it may be difficult for physicians to see through what they call “dense breast tissue,” which can mask tumors. Some 40 percent of women in the U.S. have dense breasts, so this is no small issue.

But recently, another Parisian, GE nuclear physicist Francesca Braga, has helped commercialize an add-on to the GE mammography gantry called SenoClaire that allows doctors to image the breast in a greater detail and could improve the odds of finding cancer and getting the results right the first time around.

Top Image: “My grandmother had been a survivor of breast cancer and my mother’s best friend died of breast cancer when I was a student,” says GE’s Francesca Braga. “You can immediately relate your work to what it means for women and for breast cancer. The passion starts there.” Braga visited RSNA this week. Above: Whereas a 2D image of a square might look flat, a 3D image reveals that the square is actually a box. GIF credit: GE Healthcare video

The original idea behind SenoClaire came from Daniel B. Kopans, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who invented a technique called digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) in the early 2000s, and built a prototype with scientists at GE Global Research Center. DBT delivers 3D images of the breast by taking nine low-dose mammograms from different angles and using powerful algorithms to arrive at the result. Whereas a 2D image of a square might look flat, a 3D image reveals that the square is actually a box.

Braga, who is Italian, works at GE Healthcare’s facility just outside Paris. Last year, she and her team of 120 engineers brought DBT to market. “As program manager, I always saw my role as a ‘chef d’orchestre,’” Braga says. “I simply led this project with a lot of tenacity and passion, and put all of myself into inspiring and motivating the team even in difficult times. A lot of my motivation came simply from being a woman that will go through breast cancer screenings in her life, if nothing more.”

Unlike traditional mammographs, SenoClaire images the breast in 3D in 0.5 mm spaced-planes or slices, and allows radiologists to “cut” through the breast so that each plane is virtually free of overlapping tissue in front and behind. They can then reconstruct the entire breast by combining the set of virtual cuts. Inspect each “slice” is similar to leafing through pages of a book (see GIF above).

“Traditional mammography uses 2D imaging — you compress the breast and take a picture,” Braga says. “But when you compress the breast, you create puddles of tissue that can hide lesions that are cancer. The image can also show what looks like a lesion but which in reality is not. You may have to call the patient back for another mammogram for nothing.”

SenoClaire uses the same amount of radiation as a traditional 2D mammogram, and a much lower dose than an average CT scan. The machine acquires images in approximately 10-second intervals, using a “step and shoot” approach that helps eliminate the blurring that occurs with traditional continuous-sweep X-rays.¹

Braga, who has double degrees from universities in Milan and Paris, had originally intended to work in nuclear physics. “But I could not find a real motivation, because I couldn’t see the immediate impact,” she says.

Instead, she went to work for GE in 1999, straight from university. She quickly joined the company’s mammography engineering team and found a way to combine her expertise with an issue she felt personally connected to. “It was perfect,” she says. “My grandmother had been a survivor of breast cancer and my mother’s best friend died of breast cancer when I was a student. You can immediately relate your work to what it means for women and for breast cancer. The passion starts there.”

It took Braga and her team six years to turn Dr. Kopans’ invention into a viable machine and attain FDA approval, which they received last year.

The results are encouraging. Braga said that while the machine could not remove the discomfort of the experience, her team worked to make it as comfortable as they could — an important aspect of convincing women to come in for screenings. “SenoClaire gives radiologists clarity around the information in the images he is looking at,” Braga says. “So they have a better sense of what they are seeing and could make a more confident decision.”

¹Typical acquisition time is <10 sec (average breast of 4.5cm)