When Ernest O. Lawrence invented the cyclotron in 1932, the American physicist used his innovative particle accelerator to probe the structure of the atom. The cyclotron earned Lawrence the Nobel Prize and scientists today still use its offspring to get to the bottom of matter and even the universe itself. But the machines are also helping doctors crack the riddles of cancer and diagnose disease. “They help radiologists see the metabolic processes inside cells,” says Erik Stromqvist, general manager for cyclotrons at GE Healthcare’s plant in Uppsala, Sweden, one of the world’s largest makers of cyclotrons for the medical industry.  “This is extremely important because you can tell whether the cancer is alive and whether it’s responding to treatment.”

The machines, which are as large as two telephone booths and weigh as much as 20 tons, work the same way as Lawrence’s machine. They use giant electromagnets made from tightly wound copper coils and lots of power – some 65 kilowatts – to heat up hydrogen to 5,000 degrees Celsius – almost as hot as the surface of the sun. The machines need this energy to convert the hydrogen into negatively charged hydrogen ions and accelerate them towards the speed of light.

Top image: A scaled-down version of a GE cyclotron. The copper electromagnets in the center accelerate hydrogen to 20 percent of the speed of light. Above: This GE cyclotron uses cooper coils to heat up hydrogen atoms to 5,000 degrees Celsius, almost as hot as the surface of the Sun. Image credit GE Healthcare.

The ions are extracted in the center of the machine and the magnet sends them flying along a spiral trajectory. Along the way, they keep accelerating until they reach nearly 20 percent of the speed of light at the outer perimeter of the coil. There, generally speaking, they slam into oxygen atoms, knock out some of their neutrons and turn them into a radioactive isotope called fluorine-18.

Technicians then use another special GE device called FASTlab to bound the isotope, which has a half-life of less than two hours, to carrier molecules such as glucose to form fluorine-18 labelled glucose. Doctors then inject this tracer into patients and observe where it travels and whether there’s cancer inside the body.

GE’s FASTlab system binds the fluorine-18 isotope, which has a half-life of less than two hours, to carrier molecules such as glucose to form fluorine-18 labelled glucose. Image credit: GE Healthcare

They can do this because active cancer needs a lot of energy to grow and consume the glucose, which is a form of sugar. “The isotope is like the world’s smallest cellphone,” Stromqvist says. “The glucose carries it to energy-hungry regions like tumors and the isotopes light them up like radio beacons.”

This type of imaging is called positron emission tomography, or PET, because the fluorine-18 isotope produces tiny particles called positrons as it decays. The positron “cell phones” generate their signal because of another bit of space science called electron-positron annihilation. The positron is the electron’s antiparticle and when it collides with an electron in the body, the pair annihilates and creates a pair of photons. Doctors use PET scanners to track these photons and see where the glucose or other carrier molecule traveled in the body.

After the procedure, all of the isotope will quickly decay and will be no longer present in the body because of its short half-life.

Unlike “anatomic imaging” using X-rays, for example, that displays the actual organs, PET helps doctors visualize what’s happening inside cells, guiding them when they are diagnosing cancer, neurological disease and other serious ailments, and even to determine whether a treatment is working. This is important for the advance of precision, or personalized medicine. “PET can help us figure out whether a cancer is treatable and whether it’s replicating,” Stromqvist says. “A tumor that’s not growing will not light up because it’s not eating as much glucose anymore.”

Why aren’t PET scanners everywhere? There are still many challenges that Stromqvist’s business is working to overcome. Since the isotopes are mildly radioactive, cyclotrons must be housed in special structures and behind 2-meter-thick walls. “Combine this with the fact that the isotope tracer has a half life of less than two hours and you have a fairly limited [geographical] area that you can serve,” Stromqvist says.

However, GE recently released a new cyclotron model the size of a large washing machine called GENtrace. This compact cyclotron – it weighs “just” 6 tons – has all the shielding built inside and allows hospitals and healthcare systems to install them pretty much anywhere. “This self-shielding cyclotron is the future of PET scanning,” Stromqvist says. “You don’t need to build a bunker around it anymore. It will simplify things.”

The GE plant in Uppsala ships between 20 and 30 cyclotrons per year. With the new machine ready, workers there are about to get busy.

Not everything Thomas Edison touched became raging success. His “monster doll” turned out to be an outright dud.

In 1877, Edison made the first recording device that could play back sound, and from there it was just a short leap of imagination to the “talking doll.” The doll, which held inside its tin body a miniature phonograph, gave owners the option to listen to popular nursery rhymes. Unfortunately, the recordings also produced copious amounts of spooky crackling and hissing sounds. Even Edison called the dolls “little monsters.”

Until recently, curious historians couldn’t listen to the recordings because they feared the toys would break if they attempted to play the wax cylinders inside. But in 2014, scientists have made them speak again.

“To operate the doll you had to turn the crank by hand, turning at the perfect pace to keep the right count,” said Robin Rolfs, a collector of Edison dolls and co-author of “Phonograph Dolls & Toys.” Credit: Courtesy of Robin and Joan Rolfs

In 2014, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, recovered a 123-year-old recording of an unidentified woman reciting “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”. It languished on a foil cylinder tucked inside a doll, and has not been heard since Edison’s lifetime.

Edison’s doll factory. Credit: Courtesy of Robin and Joan Rolfs

The “talking dolls” were reportedly a “dismal failure” when they were released, but the setback did not stop Edison from pursuing other spooky ideas. In 1920 he announced that he had been working on the “spirit phone.” In theory, the machine would allow callers to speak with dead people. The news generated a lot of media attention, but he spirit phone never materialized. (The project may have been Edison’s prank on credulous reporters.)

Edison died a few years later, but his playful spirit took permanent residence inside GE labs. During World War II, GE scientist James Wright and his team were working on a new kind of silicon rubber for the military when someone accidentally mislabeled a chemical bottle in their lab. The mistake resulted in a chemical reaction that led to a gooey compound that became known as Silly Putty, one of the most popular toys in history. Unlike the monster doll, Silly Putty was a keeper. In 2001 it entered the National Toy Hall of Fame.

James Wright and his team at GE were working on a new kind of silicon rubber for the military when someone accidentally mislabeled a chemical bottle in their lab. The mistake resulted in a chemical reaction that led to a gooey compound that became known as Silly Putty.

The head of the National Science Foundation discusses the promises and challenges of science and tech research, including the need to scale up the U.S. innovation ecosystem and make it more evenly distributed geographically.

French-born astrophysicist Dr. France Córdova has long shattered glass and cultural ceilings. She and her 11 siblings grew up with little exposure to the sciences. But just after earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford, Dr. Córdova saw a U.S. public television special on neutron stars. Compelled to learn more, she made her way to the office of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher featured on the programme … and left with a job.

Since then, Dr. Córdova has become a rocket scientist, a wife and mother, the youngest and first woman to become chief scientist at NASA, the first female president of Purdue University and, since 2014, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The $7 billion agency funds scientific research across the United States. In this Future scope, Dr. Córdova shares her insights into what’s on the horizon in science and tech research. Some of the answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

What do you see as the most pressing innovation challenges for 2016?

There are many pressing innovation challenges, but if I were to pick one, I would say the need to scale up the U.S. innovation ecosystem and make it more evenly distributed geographically. Innovation shouldn’t just be centred in certain areas of the country. It should be everywhere, so that everyone has a chance to participate in the innovation economy and reap its benefits.

Big Data and analysis-based modelling are becoming more and more critical to basic research. Could you tell us a bit more about how this has affected your work?

Big Data is, indeed, becoming important in fundamental research. The possibilities of scientific study are now expanding and researchers are gaining access to vast new data sets and analysis tools. Due to that shifting landscape, NSF does more than just support projects that integrate Big Data into existing fields — we fund research that looks at Big Data’s potential and ways to avoid misusing it.

For example, we fund a number of high‑performance computers, such as a new one called Wrangler. (It’s in Texas, of course.)

Wrangler is designed for data‑intensive science. It assists researchers with problems ranging from market analysis of stock options to combating human trafficking to astronomy surveys.

Then there’s Arizona State University’s NSF-funded Decision Center for a Desert City, which has a huge bank of 360-degree roundup computers. It reminds me of mission control. Big Data analysis combined with behavioral analytics helps researchers analyze climatic uncertainties, urban-system dynamics and adaptation decisions.

For instance, they can bring up different areas of the state and view where the water is coming from. How is it changing this year from 10 years ago? What are their energy needs? What kind of crops are they growing? Where are those going? Are they feeding locally or are they feeding outside the state? They can also identify which crops are producing the highest yield for biofuels. Can we restore marginal or polluted lands for growing plants for biofuels? How can we harness the power of enzymes to break down stalks and other inedible materials for biofuels? What are the best new methods for refining biofuels?

This kind of basic, bottom-of-the-food-chain, fundamental research, which is the kind we fund, is essential to eventually creating products.

Some 50 billion things are expected to be connected by 2020. How do we ensure that the resulting massive increases in data are not misinterpreted or misused, especially when it comes to individuals’ information like health or consumption patterns?

This is a very important topic and universities are especially forward-thinking here. They want their students to understand that there is an ethics component to the technologies.

Responsibility in science has always been a part of having a humanistic view of what you’re doing. Synthetic biology, for example, opens up such questions.

I’m an astrophysicist by training. That field has been using Big Data since the first research satellite was launched. There’s always the concern that data be properly interpreted.

I used to worry about my graduate students in that regard. They’d put something in one end of a computer program and out would pop a result. I’d say, “Well, let’s just do a back‑of‑the‑envelope calculation and see if it makes sense.” An area of research is developing to ensure that Big Data doesn’t create fake discoveries.

We’re also looking at ways to keep Big Data secure. Some of the scientists we fund are developing data analytics, management methods and technologies that are meant to anonymize data when it involves personal information, keep it tracked and protected. It offers such a world of opportunities, but we know we have to be careful. It’s a scary world, and it’s not just about people looking at our data and worrying about how to protect it. To that end, we’re also funding research that focuses on how hackers and cyber criminals communicate. The idea is that if we understand their social systems, we can better predict likely targets.

Let’s explore energy a bit. What do you see as important developments on that front in 2016 and which ones are you focusing on?

At the University of Texas at Austin, a research team led by the inventor of the lithium-ion battery, Professor John Goodenough, is developing a safe, sustainable cathode material for low-cost sodium-ion batteries. Sodium, in contrast to lithium, is abundant and inexpensive and could one day be used for wind and solar energy storage. The team’s new cathode material is made of the nontoxic and inexpensive mineral eldfellite, a promising development towards creating a commercially viable sodium-ion battery.

We’re also funding research into studying the vulnerability of smart grids. Local variabilities like your Internet-connected television set or refrigerator can open the door to hacking. Again, the research is interdisciplinary. Aside from computer scientists, we have social scientists looking at the behavioral side of the smart grid and the changing relationship between the power grid and customers.

Let’s turn to advanced manufacturing. What’s new on the horizon?

We’re investing in research that aims to create cyber‑enabled adaptive manufacturing systems. Machine learning — machines learning as they go — can improve processes. And we’re using a lot of nano‑scale manufacturing research.

For example, a project we’re funding at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign involves transfer printing, a type of nanomanufacturing. Nanocircuits are “printed” like tiny stamps. Think of the material used to make the circuit as the ink, which might be silicon or another semiconductor. The stamp transforms the ink into a nanostructure; together, a group of those transferred to a surface with other electrical properties then creates a circuit.

But when something’s that tiny, it’s hard to get the ink to come off the stamp. The researchers use lasers to break the adhesive forces, which could lead to faster printing of these tiny circuits. Those circuits could be used, for example, in a wearable so that an asthmatic person could monitor surrounding air quality.

We’re investing in other areas with real potential, from 3D printing to smarter manufacturing systems that use machine learning to adapt and conserve resources. We’re also pushing the frontiers of new materials. For example: The world of high-powered electronics requires components made with very high thermal conductivity. Our supported researchers are learning how to layer materials like graphene to make them suitable for those applications.

Here again, we see challenges; some nanomaterials and some 3D-printed materials can be toxic. We’ve funded research that tests for those kinds of dangers.

Nano also holds promise for personalized medicine, both in the diagnostics and in the treatment of diseases such as cancer. What kinds of advancements do you think we could see in the next few years?

I have in front of me a little peptide array — in plexiglass, so I can’t use it — developed at ASU’s Biodesign Institute. You put different blood drops in and they can read immunosignatures to tell if you have one of five different types of cancer.

I asked the lead investigator, “Did you apply to NIH for funding?” They said it was too high‑risk. Instead, we funded it. A lot of what we fund is considered “high‑risk, high-reward”: People don’t know what the outcome will be or where the research will go. But fundamental science enables the kinds breakthroughs that drive the economy. We’ve had 217 supported researchers go on to win Nobel prizes — including two of this year’s laureates in chemistry and economics — and some of the discoveries we’ve funded have generated billions of dollars in economic impacts.

Personalized medicine is a hot topic. Here, again, we see Big Data and machine learning. We fund a project at John Hopkins University using both to treat complex, chronic autoimmune diseases. The system learns patterns that can indicate whether certain treatments improve or worsen symptoms, thus helping doctors design individualized treatment plans.

Then there’s nano: Vanderbilt University just announced that a NSF‑supported engineering team has developed hardware and software designs for medical-capsule robots. They made it open source, allowing researchers around the globe to create customized ones.

The idea is that within years they’ll be pill‑sized. You ingest them, and they can perform tasks like screenings, diagnosis and event treatments while they’re inside of you.

What would be your recommendation to young minds interested in science today? And why should they push through barriers and pursue it?

There’s no such thing as a career, or a calling, without obstacles. Some challenges can be invigorating — embrace those. Once you take a challenge apart, overcoming it a piece at a time, you see that there’s no goal you can’t achieve. Be persistent. Build a life shaped by you and no one else.

Of course, there are some challenges that can be more vexing than just those associated with doing the best you possibly can in your field. There are societal pressures and the prejudices of people and institutions. You have to surmount those, like any other obstacle.

We know these barriers exist and are studying why they persist and how we can bring them down. We’re also working to ensure that all students receive adequate scientific education, even if they’re not planning on careers in the sciences. In an increasingly technology-driven workforce, this kind of knowledge is more important than ever.

NSF is committed to the idea that everyone has a fair chance to pursue scientific learning. So, as you move forward, know that you’re not alone.

(Top image: NSF Director France A. Córdova listens as a representative from Colorado State University explains a “Listening to Magnetism” device at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Courtesy of Steve McNally, NSF)

This piece first appeared in GE Look ahead.

France Córdova is Director of the National Science Foundation.

All views expressed are those of the author.

The brand publishing mavens at Contently included GE Reports on their list of the best branded content in 2015. “If Red Bull is the popular skater-jock at your high school, GE is the hot valedictorian science nerd who everyone should be trying to marry,” wrote Joe Lazauskas, editor-in-chief of Contently’s Strategist magazine that just published the annual list. “The brand puts out tons of fantastic podcasts, TV shows, and web series, but my personal favorite is its online magazine, GE Reports, which tells the story of the crazy research going on inside the company.”

GE Reports writes about that and much more. It’s a news hub where thousands of readers come every day for news and opinions about the latest technological breakthroughs and developments, including the future of medicine, power generation and aviation. It’s also a place where investors learn how GE makes money.

A “turbulence sphere” at GE Aviation’s jet engine test facility in Peebles, Ohio. GE engineers use it to control the flow of air inside a jet engine during testing. Image credit: Chris New Top Image by Adam Senatori

Over the last year, GE Reports published insights from engineers and thinkers like NASA’s “space cowboy” Adam Steltzner, who helped land the Curiosity rover on the moon, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden and Aubrey de Grey, who studies aging. Pictures from leading photographers like Vincent Laforet, who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, Adam Senatori and Chris New also appeared in the magazine. GE Reports has also drawn on support from partners like Group SJR, which redesigned the site this fall.

Lazauskas said that 2015 was a breakout year for branded content and that “interest in content marketing is spiking more right now than ever before.” GE Reports is a case in point. Its stories and videos have attracted more than 3.5 million views in 2015, a record.

The GE-produced podcast, The Message, was also one of the 10 examples on the Contently list.

Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter and Periscope, and stay close in 2016.

GE has been around for more than a century, but few years in its history have been as important for the future of the company as the one that’s just ending. GE started transforming itself into the world’s largest digital industrial company by selling GE Capital assets valued at more than $100 billion.

It also acquired Alstom’s power and grid business, the largest acquisition in GE’s history, launched GE Digital and opened its cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet, Predix, to the outside world. “We’re the only company that will have the machines, analytics and operating systems,” GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said in December. “That’s how we’ll play the Industrial Internet.” Immelt said GE’s biggest task in 2016 will be to “keep executing on the digital industrial strategy.” Here are the most important milestones and deals from 2015.

In April, GE Capital said it would sell assets valued at $200 billion by the end of 2017. As of December, the company has closed deals valued at more than $100 billion and signed transactions valued at $154 billion. In 2014, GE Capital successfully completed a public offering of Synchrony Financial shares. GE said a share exchange program following the IPO would contribute to the company’s effort to return more than $90 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. GE Capital will keep providing jet engine and infrastructure financing for airlines, utilities and other industrial customers.

In March, GE signed an agreement with the Egyptian government to supply the country with turbines and other technology capable of generating 2.6 gigawatts of power, enough to supply 2.5 million Egyptian homes. The power is much needed. Egypt’s economy is growing at 4 percent and its population is quickly expanding, too.

Much of Egypt’s new power generating capacity was in place before the summer heat set in. GE could move fast because of the GE Store, a concept that allows it to share and quickly transfer knowledge and technology across its businesses. The store holds everything from know-how to materials and next-generation components like silicon carbide semiconductor chips.

Last summer, GE launched GE Digital. The new unit will work closely with all GE businesses and help them and their customers take advantage of the Industrial Internet. One new solution is the “digital twin,” a virtual version of a wind turbine, a jet engine and even the human body based on real-world data. Digital Twins will help customers predict and respond to problems before they get out of hand.

In September, GE launched Predix, a cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet and opened it to outside developers. Predix is similar to iOS or Android, but built for machines. The platform allows developers to write apps for everything from CT and MRI scanners  to turbines and jet engines, gather insights and make them the machines more efficient.

In October, the company announced Current – a startup that combines energy hardware with digital intelligence. Current’s intelligent LED street lamps can already see and hear things and measure air quality.

In October, GE Transportation signed a $2.6 billion deal to supply 1,000 trains to India. In 2015, GE unveiled the Evolution Series Tier 4 locomotive , the first freight train engine that meets the U.S. government’s strict Tier 4 emission standards.

In November, GE acquired the energy and grid business of Alstom, including Alstom’s huge Haliade offshore wind turbines shown above. Their combined power generation assets can now produce 30 percent of the world’s energy demand.

In 2015, GE Aviation won $35 billion in orders and commitments at airshows in Paris and Dubai.

Textron Aviation, the world’s largest maker of business propeller planes like Beechcraft Bonanza, Baron and King Air, said in November it would use a brand new advanced turboprop engine developed by GE to power its latest single-engine turboprop plane. The engine burns 20 percent less fuel and produces 10 percent more power, compared to engines in its class. The agreement represented a major coup for GE Aviation. A mainstay in the commercial and military jet engine space, the company entered the turboprop space for business aviation only seven years ago, when Pratt & Whitney Canada dominated the market.

In December, GE Healthcare launched the Predix-powered Health Cloud. The cloud and apps will help doctors diagnose and treat everything from stroke to diabetes and transform healthcare.

Subscribe to GE’s investor newsletter for more GE financial news.

Every year, GE sends photographers, filmmakers and other visual artists around the world to document its technology in action. 2015 was no different. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet traveled to the high plains of Colorado to document how GE was testing its most advanced locomotive, pilot and photographer Adam Senatori visited three airshows on as many continents to get close to the latest planes powered by GE jet engines, and Chris New climbed to the top of an experimental wind turbine in the Mojave desert. Take a look at what they brought back and other great images from the past year.

A LEAP jet engine in a testing cell at GE Aviation’s test facility in Peebles, Ohio. Image credit: Chris New

GE Aviation’s flying test best with a new Passport engine on wing is cruising over Sierra Nevada. Image credit: Wolf Air Vectorvision/GE Aviation

One of the strangest structures at the Peebles test site is a  honeycombed orb spanning 32 feet in diameter. Up close, the mysterious sphere appears like a translucent alien beehive attached to the front of a jet engine. Holes in its surface control the flow of air during testing. Image credit: Chris New

The sphere is made from an array of 300 flat aluminum honeycombs and perforated stainless steel plate panels of varying sizes, and weighs 30,000 pounds. Image credit: Chris New

The Experimental Aircraft Association’s air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is know for its nighttime aerobatics display (Also top image). Image credit: Adam Senatori

Mornings at the Dubai air show are all about business. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Afternoons in Dubai belong to flyovers. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Visitors in had their hands full in Dubai. Image credit: Adam Senatori

GE’s latest wind turbine prototype rises 450 feet from base to blade tips in the Mojave desert. Image credit: Chris New

The turbine has a large spinning silver aluminum dome bolted to its rotor that can make it more efficient. Image credit: Chris New

GE’s Evolution Series Tier 4 locomotive during a test run in Pueblo, Colorado. Image credit: Vincent Laforet

Laforet was taking his photographs from a helicopter. He got so close that its rotor blew tumbleweeds in front of the locomotive. Image credit: Vincent Laforet

Inside GE’s new gas turbine test facility in Greenville, South Carolina. The air coming out of the turbines could fill the Goodyear blimp in 10 seconds. Image credit: Chris New

The compressor of a gas turbine in Greenville. Image credit: Chris New

This fall in Paris, Louis Vuitton’s creative director, the French designer Nicolas Ghesquière, used fabrics bearing images of jet engines made by GE and its joint-venture partners for his women’s ready-to-wear collection titled “Strange Days.” Image courtesy of Louis Vuitton

GE Healthcare’s Revolution CT scanner can take incredible images of the body. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Information and communication technology has an important role to play in helping countries meet their climate goals — both from a mitigation and adaptation standpoint as well as in the efforts to reduce e-waste.

Earlier this month in Paris, 195 nations reached an ambitious agreement to combat climate change. While the deal does not explicitly mention information and communication technology (ICT), it is becoming increasingly clear that ICTs will have an important role to play in helping countries meet their climate goals. At the same time, however, ICTs face important sustainability challenges, including e-waste, which last year reached 42 million tons at the global level.

To explore this evolving relationship between ICT and sustainability, Look Ahead sat down with Malcolm Johnson, deputy secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) — the United Nations’ specialized agency for ICT. From 2007 to 2014, Mr Johnson served as director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, where he spearheaded activities in cybersecurity, climate change and accessibility. In this Future scope, he shares with Look Ahead his views on how ICT can help combat climate change, how to address the e-waste challenge and what role technology and innovation can play in connecting the billions of people still lacking access to the Internet.

You’ve attended multiple climate change negotiations. How have negotiators’ views evolved when it comes to the role of ICT in combating climate change?

We first started promoting ICTs at COP15 in Copenhagen. The UNFCCC gave us this fantastic space right on the crossroads between the negotiation rooms. We ran an event every day with industry members, getting high-level speakers to present on how ICTs can help with mitigation and adaptation. We also held bilateral meetings with member states to try to get this message across as well.

It was a struggle because many didn’t even know what ICT was — most negotiators then were from environment ministries. It was a challenge, but we persevered in subsequent COPs.

Six years later, it’s incredible to see how things have changed. People now take it for granted that we can’t do anything without ICTs. Some still come with questions, of course, but the conversation has moved from “What is ICT?” to “How can it help?”

Where will ICT help most in the fight against climate change?

ICT has a big role to play in both mitigation and adaptation. For mitigation, we have a fairly well‑recognized study produced by GeSI known as the SMARTer2030 Report, which estimates that by 2030 you can reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent through the use of ICTs, particularly in carbon-intensive sectors such as transportation, energy, waste or building construction.

On the adaptation side, a lot of climate monitoring happens through ICT, in particular satellite monitoring of the climate to get better predictions of likely natural disasters, as well as remote monitoring to help with rapid response.

A good example of where ICT can help is water management. It’s estimated that smart water management systems could help save up to 70 percent of water used for irrigation. Egypt, for instance, uses ICT technology to save on the water used for irrigation. But other countries in the Nile basin don’t have the same technology. They may have some that is similar, but it doesn’t interoperate.

This is why we need to have international standards. Not just for those countries but for countries across the world suffering from lack of water. This, in turn, would provide a bigger market for the equipment, which brings down the cost of technology thanks to economies of scale.

ICT at scale can also mean e-waste, however. How do we decouple one from the other?

It’s a major concern, notably for developing countries. There are some terrible pictures of children digging away amongst piles of e‑waste, which is very often toxic. And when it gets burned, there’s terrible pollution from it as well.

We’ve been working on how to identify what metals are in ICT products, and how to go about recycling them. We have developed several standards that are available on the ITU website.

But there’s also a business case, here. 42m tons of e‑waste were dumped last year. If you look at all the precious metals in that waste, such as copper, gold, iron, aluminium, silver and palladium, its estimated worth is €48m. For one ton of gold ore, you get 5 milligrams of gold. For one ton of mobile phones, by contrast, you get 400 milligrams of gold.

How do we go about connecting those still lacking access to ICT and the Internet?

The current statistics are that there are 3.2 billion people online. Two billion of those are in developing countries, and the majority of people now go online through their mobiles. Mobile penetration in developing countries is very, very high. Almost everybody has a mobile. What we’re concentrating on is using this mobile penetration to get people online and benefit from all the services and applications that come with it.

Another interesting area is connectivity through satellite. A few months back, I was taken to a primary school in a village outside of Nairobi, Kenya. The school had access to the Internet via satellite, classrooms had large LCD displays instead of the traditional chalkboard and teachers used online teaching aids for the children.

The satellite company provides all this for free because the school acts as a downlink for the satellite signal. The school then emits WiMAX, which it uses in the classrooms. But because WiMAX has a larger reach than WiFi, people in the village can also make use of the connection—these customers have to pay for the service. In that way the company is getting some return on the investment and the school is benefiting. It’s a very interesting example.

How should we deal with the volume of data traffic that will come with connecting the rest of the world to the Internet?

It’s a challenge, but if you look at the way technology has been responding to this increasing demand, there are reasons to be optimistic. Take video, for instance, which is expected to account for about 75 percent of the traffic on networks by 2020. Most of that video is using an ITU standard called H.264. Last year, ITU adopted an updated standard (H.265). It only uses 50 percent of the bandwidth that H.264 did. So, you’re immediately doubling the capacity. Things have moved quickly over the past years. Even if it’s difficult now to envision how on earth are we going to handle all this data in the future, I’m sure technology will find a way.

Start-ups are a crucial element of the ICT ecosystem. How does ITU engage or plan to engage with them?

This is a good question. Most of the innovation now is coming from start-ups. It used to be academia, but now it’s more start-ups. We were very keen to get academia as part of ITU membership and to some extent we have succeeded, with over 100 universities now ITU academia members. Now we’re very keen to get start-ups and SMEs, too.

Hopefully, we’ll soon be creating a new category of membership for start-ups. Clearly, the membership fee for start-ups will have to be low—much lower than we currently have.

This would enable ITU to bring together start-ups, academia, well-established tech companies and governments. You would then have a great platform where bright start-up companies can come to with their fresh ideas and get the Googles, the Microsofts and the governments of the world to engage and commercialize their ideas. ITU could then provide an international platform for SMEs and innovators coming from emerging economies to develop the standard, help support scale up and connect to new markets.

(Top image: Courtesy of Sean Gallup, Getty Images News)

This piece first appeared in GE Look ahead.

Malcolm Johnson is Deputy Secretary General of International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

All views expressed are those of the author.

There were many tech stories that caught our eye in 2015. Here are 19 examples that either touch on GE technology and research or received funding from the company. They stretch from the depths of the human genome to edge of the solar system. Take a look:

Scientists around the world have been experimenting with a powerful new tool called the CRISPR-Cas9 system, which has begun to open up the possibility of rewriting faulty or unwanted human, animal and plant DNA.

Europe is using so much solar energy that a partial eclipse that swept over much of the continent in March tested its power distribution system.

Neuroscientists are making important advances with brain implants. They allowed a paralyzed woman to control a robotic arm with her thoughts. Image credit: Brown University

GE scientists shrunk and 3D printed and steam turbine originally designed to generate electricity. The smaller version can efficiently remove salt from seawater. The system could one day reduce the cost of desalination by as much as 20 percent and bring desalination technology to places that cannot afford it today.

Philippine farmers in Bacolor, Pampanga, just north of the capital Manila, have plenty of grassy land to grow cattle, but the town’s meat factory needs electricity to process the beef and send it to market. It turns out that a clever solution that feeds biogas made from the grass to an omnivorous Jenbacher engine can keep the lights and machines on. Engines like the Jenbacher, which can burn biogas from many different sources of fuel, could be a key to bringing electricity to parts of the world that still remain mostly dark after sunset.

A company called Neuronetics is using a non-invasive technology called “transcranial magnetic stimulation,” or TMS, to help patients battle depression. TMS uses a small but powerful magnet to deliver electromagnetic energy to the brain tissue through the skull. “What if you could stimulate the brain from the outside, without drugs, and make it heal?” says Dr. Mark Demitrack, chief medical officer of Neuronetics. Image illustration: GE Global Research

Intelligent LED street lights developed by Current, a GE startup, are using sensors to monitor everything from traffic to air quality, parking and even street crime, and transmit the data to the cloud for analysis. The information could be one day available to app developers. San Diego and Jacksonville have already started testing the system.

Winning a Formula 1 race is no longer just about building the fastest car and the best driver. Today, teams beam data from hundreds of sensors wired in their cars to distant computer centers for analysis and insights, and then relay optimal race strategies back to the driver. This is also the idea behind the “digital twin” – cloud-based simulations of physical assets – which will soon encompass and start optimizing everything from wind turbines, power plants, jet engines and even the human body.

The World Health Organization reported earlier this year that more people die from cardiovascular disease than from any other cause. A new MRI imaging system can see the heart 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. It 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. The system is not yet commercially available.

The FAA cleared the first 3D-printed part to fly inside a GE jet engine. GE engineers also 3D-printed all of the components for a miniature jet engine, assembled it and then took the engine for a spin. Advanced manufacturing techniques like 3D printing will be going mainstream in 2016.

The tides are a prefect and perfectly predictable source of renewable energy. But until now, the technology to tap their power has been too expensive. That’s changing, however. France and the U.K.  have both started building new tidal power plants. The tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. After tapping electricity from the sun and the wind, moon power is finally within reach.

When the New Horizons spacecraft finally buzzed Pluto at roughly 30,000 mph last summer, it sent back snaps of untamed plains and jagged ice mountains. The pictures of the dwarf planet at the edge of the solar system traveled the expanse of space thanks to a 125-pound power plant that doesn’t know the meaning of quit. It was originally designed by GE’s space division.

A company in Rhode Island started building America’s first offshore wind farm. It will include some of the world’s largest offshore wind turbines. When completed in late 2016, the farm will generate a combined 30 megawatts of electricity — enough to supply 17,000 homes.

The Stockholm-based biomaterials company Spiber Technologies is using genetically engineered bacteria and GE protein purification technology to produce large quantities of spidroin proteins found in spider dragline silk. It then customizes them for a variety of applications. “Man-made spider silk can be adjusted to contain specific parts that bind to cells and promote wound healing, thereby enabling use within fields of tissue engineering, diagnostics and cell culture,” says Kristina Martinell, Spiber’s production director. “In short, it’s a tailor-made biomaterial.” Image credit: Spiber Technologies

Japan is famous for innovation. But, like many countries in the Pacific, it must also cope with earthquakes and other fierce forces of nature. Now one local company has merged insights from both and built what could be one of the  world’s first “disaster-proof” factories.

GE’s latest wind turbine prototype rises 450 feet from base to blade tips – almost half the height the Eiffel Tower – and has a large spinning silver aluminum dome bolted to its rotor. “It almost looks as if an UFO got stuck on the face,” says Mike Bowman, the leader of sustainable energy projects at GE Global Research. “But the dome could be the future of wind.” If experiments confirm wind tunnel data, the 20,000-pound dome, called ecoROTR, could lead to larger and more efficient turbines. “As far as I know, there’s nothing like this in the world,” Bowman says. “This could be a game changer.”

More than a decade after the last flight of the supersonic Concorde, NASA has invested  $2.3 million into eight projects seeking to overcome barriers to commercial supersonic flight. The goal of the new work is to make supersonic flight greener by reducing high-altitude emissions and to cut down on the noise from sonic booms, the extremely loud report from a shockwave created by an aircraft flying faster than the speed of sound.

Over a decade ago, the Human Genome Project gave us the first blueprint of our genetic code, opening the door to a future where medical interventions could be personalized for each patient’s genetic composition. Today, programs like the Human Protein Atlas are zooming in even deeper, mapping out not just the DNA that defines our bodies, but also the building blocks – specifically, the proteins – that make us tick (or sick). A team of scientists led by Mathias Uhlén of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, published the first comprehensive open-source map of 17,000 human proteins, showing where they are, and how they function in the human body.

Scientists at the GE Global Research found a futuristic way to fix things: blowing metal powder at four times the speed of sound onto parts in need of service. “The tiny bits of material fly so fast they essentially fuse together when they hit the target,” says Gregorio Dimagli, materials scientist from Avio Aero, a division of GE Aviation. “Unlike welding, you don’t need to apply heat to make them stick. The bond happens on the atomic level. That’s why we are so excited.”

GE train engineers built a software-guided high-tech air blower that directs high-pressure air moving at supersonic speeds in front of the lead axle of a locomotive, blasting away snow, rain, sand and other debris. The system has increased the tonnage hauled by a locomotive by the equivalent weight of pulling four extra jumbo jets. This could help railroads run longer trains and move more goods more efficiently.

GE has been around for more than a century, but few years in its history have been as important for the future of the company as the one that’s just ending. GE started transforming itself into the world’s largest digital industrial company by selling GE Capital assets valued at more than $100 billion.

It also acquired Alstom’s power and grid business, the largest acquisition in GE’s history, launched GE Digital and opened its cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet, Predix, to the outside world. “We’re the only company that will have the machines, analytics and operating systems,” GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said in December. “That’s how we’ll play the Industrial Internet.” Immelt said GE’s biggest task in 2016 would be to “keep executing on the digital industrial strategy.” Here are the most important milestones and deals from 2015.

In April, GE Capital said it would sell assets valued at $200 billion by the end of 2017. As of December, the company has closed deals valued at more than $100 billion and signed transactions valued at $154 billion. In 2014, GE Capital successfully completed a public offering of Synchrony Financial shares. GE said a share exchange program following the IPO would contribute to the company’s effort to return more than $90 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. GE Capital will keep providing jet engine and infrastructure financing for airlines, utilities and other industrial customers.

In March, GE signed an agreement with the Egyptian government to supply the country with turbines and other technology capable of generating 2.6 gigawatts of power, enough to supply 2.5 million Egyptian homes. Some of the turbines were based on technology originally developed for jet engines like the CF6 engine above – the same kind that power many Boeing 747 jumbo jets. The electricity is much needed. Egypt’s economy is growing at 4 percent and its population is quickly expanding, too.

Much of Egypt’s new power generating capacity was in place before the summer heat set in. GE could move fast because of the GE Store, a concept that allows it to share and quickly transfer knowledge and technology across its businesses. The store holds everything from jet engine know-how to advanced materials and next-generation components like silicon carbide semiconductor chips (pictured above).

Last summer, GE launched GE Digital. The new unit will work closely with all GE businesses and help them and their customers take advantage of the Industrial Internet. One new solution is the “digital twin,” a virtual double of wind turbines, jet engines and even the human body animated with real-world data. Digital Twins will help customers predict and respond to problems before they get out of hand.

In September, GE launched Predix, a cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet, and opened it to outside developers. Predix is similar to iOS or Android, but built for machines. The platform allows developers to mine industrial data and write apps for everything from CT and MRI scanners  to turbines and jet engines, gather insights and make the machines more efficient.

In October, GE launched Current – a startup that combines energy hardware with digital intelligence. Current’s intelligent LED street lamps can already see and hear things and measure air quality.

In October, GE Transportation signed a $2.6 billion deal to supply 1,000 locomotives to India. In 2015, GE unveiled the Evolution Series Tier 4 locomotive (above), the first freight train engine that meets the U.S. government’s strict Tier 4 emission standards.

In November, GE acquired the energy and grid business of Alstom, including Alstom’s huge Haliade offshore wind turbines shown above. (They will power America’s first offshore wind farm.) The companies’ combined power generation assets can now meet 30 percent of the world’s energy demand.

In 2015, GE Aviation won $35 billion in orders and commitments at airshows in Paris and Dubai.

Textron Aviation, the world’s largest maker of business propeller planes like Beechcraft Bonanza, Baron and King Air, said in November it would use a brand new advanced turboprop engine developed by GE to power its latest single-engine turboprop plane. The engine burns 20 percent less fuel and produces 10 percent more power, compared to engines in its class. The agreement represented a major coup for GE Aviation. A mainstay in the commercial and military jet engine space, the company entered the turboprop space for business aviation only seven years ago, when Pratt & Whitney Canada dominated the market.

In December, GE Healthcare launched the Predix-powered Health Cloud. The cloud and apps will help doctors diagnose and treat everything from stroke to diabetes, and potentially transform healthcare.

Subscribe to GE Reports and GE’s investor newsletter for more GE financial news.

GE finished a historic year of massive deals with one more win before the ball dropped in New York’s Times Square. On the last day of the year, the company announced a landmark power contract with the Saudi Electric Company valued at nearly $1 billion.

GE will supply gas, steam, and solar power generation technology to the Waad Al Shamal combined cycle power plant. The deal follows a series of milestone announcements for GE this year, including its largest-ever deal in India for 1,000 locomotives, a megadeal for more than 2.6 gigawatts (GW) of power in Egypt and more than $35 billion in wins at the Paris and Dubai Air Show. (You can see more 2015 highlights here.)

Top: A gas turbine on the half shelf inside GE Power’s plant in Greenville, South Carolina: Above and below: The turbine channels air with variable stator vanes (the moving parts below). The vanes were originally developed for supersonic jet engines. GE calls this concept of sharing ideas between its businesses the GE store. Images credit: GE Power

GE tech has been working in Saudi Arabia for more than 80 years. The company supplied the country with equipment for its first oil refinery. There are already some 550 GE turbines operating in the Kingdom, generating more than half of the its electricity. GE technology is also helping the desert country produce 180 million liters of clean water through desalination and treatment. That’s equivalent to a tenth of the Kingdom’s daily oil production.

When completed, the new project will generate 1,390 GW, enough to supply 500,000 Saudi homes. Like in Egypt, GE was able to move quickly because of the GE Store, a global exchange of knowledge and technology between its businesses and research centers. The turbines that are part of the deal contain technology like variable stator vanes, that was originally developed by GE Aviation for supersonic jet engines.

With momentum building on the trade front despite ongoing concerns about globalization, here’s how leaders can earn an A in trade.

The trade horizon unexpectedly brightened last year, including in the United States, where some key successes pushed the trade agenda forward despite ongoing concerns about globalization and its effects. Congress delivered the votes President Obama needed to complete negotiations on an ambitious trade pact spanning the Pacific Rim and to reopen the embattled Export-Import Bank, while the U.S. also helped lead an international deal to significantly expand trade in information technology goods.

The gains were enough to earn a B+ for global trade policy leaders, according to trade experts Gary Hufbauer and Tyler Moran of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. If the U.S. and other countries can continue to build on the momentum, they face the prospect of acing the trade agenda and providing a much-needed spark to global growth.

“Leaders earned their B+,” says Hufbauer, the Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute. “The question for 2016 is whether leaders can up their game to an A by persuading legislators to ratify the pacts.”

Hufbauer and Moran, a research analyst at the think tank, share their take on past accomplishments as well as what unfinished business still needs to be taken care of:

Completing the 2015 Playbook

Trans-Pacific Partnership — The TPP remains the largest “loose end” in the trade box from 2015, and the most promising free trade agreement on the horizon. The 12 participants finalized the text of the pact in November 2015, but the deal must still be ratified by legislatures along the Pacific Rim. The deal faces stout resistance in the U.S. Congress, with some Democrats hoping to scuttle the TPP entirely and some Republicans hoping that a new GOP administration can strike a better bargain at the negotiating table. Critics are right when they claim that the 5,000-word package is not perfect, but no trade deal has ever met the imaginary “gold standard” held up as a template for the TPP. If the global economy is going to benefit from the progress made in 2015, the TPP should be ratified by the end of 2016 and enter into force by June 2017. When TPP is fully implemented in about 10 years, according to Peterson Institute calculations, member country exports will increase by about $440 billion (in 2007 dollars) and their collective GDP will rise by about $285 billion.

World Trade Organization. The November 2015 Nairobi Ministerial meeting of WTO members did not accomplish great things, but it did accomplish some things. Foremost, more members need to ratify the Trade Facilitation Agreement, which was signed in 2014, for the TFA to take effect as a binding WTO pact. Some 63 countries have already ratified the TFA; that figure needs to reach 109 countries, two-thirds of the total WTO membership. At Nairobi, many countries pledged to ratify the TFA in 2016, probably enough to get the agreement past the goalpost. Once implemented, the TFA will curb corruption and antiquated practices that hinder the movement of goods around the globe. Port and airport delays, corruption and duplicative inspections now constitute a bigger barrier to global commerce than tariffs. Faithful implementation of the TFA will eventually raise world exports by several hundred billion dollars and boost GDP to nearly the same extent.

The second important “deliverable” from the Nairobi Ministerial was the expanded Information Technology Agreement, dubbed ITA-2, signed by 53 countries that account for nearly 90 percent of exports and imports of information technology goods. The ITA expansion deal will cut tariffs on hundreds of products in the electronics and telecommunications sector. The ITA’s commitments will enter into force in July 2016, and tariffs on almost 90 percent of the covered goods will expire within three years. The expansion will be a major improvement over the original ITA and will liberalize about $1.3 trillion in trade.

New Initiatives in 2016

While legislators and customs officials are busy locking in the agreements inherited from 2015, trade negotiators will have new important contributions to make in 2016. Foremost is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), which advanced much less quickly than TPP in 2015. While tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic are already quite low, the deal offers a major opportunity to harmonize regulatory standards, liberalize government procurement and make progress on rules surrounding privacy and digital trade. Tough negotiating issues are plentiful, but a strong commitment from U.S. and EU leaders could put T-TIP on a path towards completion in 2017.

As the U.S. and EU negotiators continue to work out T-TIP, they also supply the driving force in the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) negotiations with several other countries. In total, the negotiations involve 50 countries, which account for 75 percent of the global trade in services. TiSA is an attempt to put solid liberalization on the framework established in the General Agreement on Trade in Services back in 1995 and may attempt to “export” portions of TPP’s services chapter to a broader set of parties. A comprehensive TiSA would enable services around the globe greater opportunities to participate in foreign markets.

In short, 2016 has the potential to build on the momentum generated last year. If global legislatures sign off on the agreements struck by their negotiators, and if the negotiators continue to do good work, policy leaders will earn a solid A and the world trading system will continue its recovery.

(Top image: Courtesy of tetedelart1855)

Gary Hufbauer is the Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Tyler Moran is a Research Analyst at the Peterson Institute.

All views expressed are those of the authors.

When Joe Salvo bought his house in Schenectady, New York, in 1986, he purchased a piece of history. GE built it in 1905, not long after Thomas Edison opened the company’s research labs in the city and moved manufacturing plants here. The house was intended to be the model electric home of the future. It came fully wired, with light bulbs in every room, an electric sewing machine, a toaster, an electric stove and even an electric water heater. It was the 1905 version of the self-driving car.

But Salvo doesn’t spend much time there. As GE’s director of the Industrial Internet Consortium (ICC) – a not-for-profit group seeking to bridge the physical and digital industrial worlds – he’s too busy building the “new” future and telling the world about it. “I actually come from the future,” he jokes over the phone from Shanghai, where he was speaking last fall. “I’m paid by GE to work in the future and create the things that are going to be transformational.”

He’s only half kidding. In his office at GE Global Research in the Schenectady suburb of Niskayuna, Salvo has a 2015 take on Teddy Roosevelt’s electric toaster: a dedicated 100-gigabits-per-second line. Compared to regular broadband speeds of 25 megabits per second, he could download an HD movie in just seconds. He can expand that line to a bandwidth of many terabits per second in preparation of the data flood that will soon arrive.

Above: Thousands of sensors placed on this 9HA GE gas turbine produce nearly 5 terabytes of data, about half the content of the print collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Image credit: GE Power & Water

For all of its blessings, the plain vanilla Internet — the one that allows you to shop and watch Game of Thrones online — still has problems, foremost among them, security. The Industrial Internet, a secure network that connects machines, sends their data to the cloud for analysis and then dispatches relevant results to human operators, is a different beast. “This is the network where we are going to put the machines that our lives depend on,” Salvo says.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to make smarter decisions. But that’s getting harder without data. The Industrial Internet will carry all manner of performance data about heat, noise, and vibrations from sensors attached to all kinds of machines including jet engines, locomotives and oil rigs. It can also connect help optimize factories, power plants, hospitals and even patient outcomes.

“We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” says GE’s Joe Salvo. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

Salvo says that thanks to Moore’s law, which states that computing power will double every two years, and Metcalfe’s law, declaring that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users, we now have both the computing power and memory that is required to make really intelligent machines and link them together. “We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” Salvo says. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

This is vintage Salvo. He helped establish the IIC in 2014. Along with GE, Salvo signed up four other companies as co-founders – Intel, Cisco, AT&T and IBM – and convinced each company to pay an annual fee of $250,000 to kick-start the funding the group needed. The IIC now includes more than 215 members from 24 countries. They include universities and research institutions as well as telecoms and industrial businesses.

In 1905, GE built in Schenectady the electric house of the future. Joe Salvo, who bought the house in 1986, is now building GE’s new digital industrial future. Image credits: Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady

Salvo says the IIC’s job is to make sure the Industrial Internet will be built on an open architecture where everything is interoperable. There will be as many as 50 billion connected devices by 2020.

One such piece of architecture is GE’s cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet called Predix. GE has been using the platform internally and in September opened it to outside developers.

Salvo says Thomas Edison would have understood this vision. “Edison based our company on the concept that you build a network and you add all kinds of interesting devices to it that will change the way we live — things like voice recordings, movies, washing machines, stoves and electric motors,” Salvo says. “GE has taken advantage of that network thinking for over 100 years, and the Industrial Internet is the logical extension of that.”

Every year, GE sends photographers, filmmakers and other visual artists around the world to document its technology in action. 2015 was no different. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet traveled to the high plains of Colorado to document how GE was testing its most advanced locomotive, pilot and photographer Adam Senatori visited three airshows on as many continents to get close to the latest planes powered by GE jet engines, and Chris New climbed to the top of an experimental wind turbine in the Mojave desert. Take a look at what they brought back and other great images from the past year.

A LEAP jet engine in a testing cell at GE Aviation’s test facility in Peebles, Ohio. Image credit: Chris New

GE Aviation’s flying test best with a new Passport engine on wing is cruising over Sierra Nevada. Image credit: Wolf Air Vectorvision/GE Aviation

One of the strangest structures at the Peebles test site is a  honeycombed orb spanning 32 feet in diameter. Up close, the mysterious sphere appears like a translucent alien beehive. Holes in its surface control the flow of air inside a jet engine during testing. Image credit: Chris New

The sphere is made from an array of 300 flat aluminum honeycombs and perforated stainless steel plate panels of varying sizes. It weighs 30,000 pounds. Image credit: Chris New

The Experimental Aircraft Association’s air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is know for its nighttime aerobatics display (Also top image). Image credit: Adam Senatori

Mornings at the Dubai air show are all about business. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Afternoons in Dubai belong to flyovers. Image credit: Adam Senatori

Visitors in had their hands full. Image credit: Adam Senatori

GE’s latest wind turbine prototype rises 450 feet from base to blade tips in the Mojave desert. Image credit: Chris New

The turbine has a large spinning silver aluminum dome bolted to its rotor that can make it more efficient. Image credit: Chris New

GE’s Evolution Series Tier 4 locomotive during a test run in Pueblo, Colorado. Image credit: Vincent Laforet

Laforet was taking his photographs from a helicopter. He got so close that its rotor blew tumbleweeds in front of the locomotive. Image credit: Vincent Laforet

Inside GE’s new gas turbine test facility in Greenville, South Carolina. The hot air blowing out of GE latest 9HA and 7HA turbines could fill the Goodyear blimp in 10 seconds. Image credit: Chris New

The compressor of a gas turbine in Greenville. Image credit: Chris New

This fall in Paris, Louis Vuitton’s creative director, the French designer Nicolas Ghesquière, used fabrics printed with images of jet engines made by GE and its joint-venture partners for his women’s ready-to-wear collection titled “Strange Days.” Image courtesy of Louis Vuitton

GE Healthcare’s Revolution CT scanner can take incredibly detailed images of insides of the body. Image credit: GE Healthcare

From robotics and artificial intelligence to virtual reality, digital innovation is poised to accelerate this year.

Change has always been a constant, but it is now happening faster than ever before. The exponential pace of technological innovation is leading to a world of templosion, in which very large things happen in increasingly compressed amounts of time. The impacts of this acceleration — and digital transformation — will be felt everywhere.

Below are four areas where this era of templosion will play out this year:

1. Workreation: The Emergence of a New Creative Class

Robots are increasingly being trained to match human dexterity and speed. However, this new wave of evolutionary technology can automate not just manual, but cognitive tasks. Up to 44 percent of jobs may be automated within the next decade. What may be looming is an era of technological unemployment, in which computer scientists and software engineers essentially invent us out of work, and the total number of jobs declines steadily and permanently.

But as smart machines relieve us of tedious tasks, they may allow us to spend more time being creative. Traditional paths to economic viability are vanishing. We are hardly needed for — or benefiting from — any of it anymore. Instead, we may see the mind redeployed in much more highly engaging ways.

A broader question that emerges is: Are we heading towards a workreation future — where jobs consist of more creative endeavors? A future where creation itself — rather than material compensation — is what compels us to work. Skills like relationship-building, collaboration, empathy and cultural sensitivity will become top currency in the future.

2. The Neural Net: The Next Frontier for Artificial Intelligence?

One of the biggest philosophical debates centers around whether artificial intelligence (AI) will ever be able to fully replicate human intelligence. If we are indeed moving towards a workreation future, can true AI express creativity, empathy, emotion? There is a fundamental difference between “smart” and “intelligent.” While we’ve long been able to develop “smart” systems — abie to absorb and integrate inputs that have in some way been taught — the challenge has been how to develop “intelligent” systems — able to devise a solution to a problem never before encountered.

Now we’re beginning to conquer that hurdle through the development of artificial neural networks— inspired by the way neurons operate in the brain. These networks are used to approximate functions that can depend on a large number of inputs and are generally unknown. A key component of this is deep learning, which teaches computers how to solve perceptual problems including image recognition, speech recognition and bioinformatics. Artificial neural networks represent an exponential leap forward in AI that could change everything from search to mobile, the Internet of Things, infrastructure (built & digital), drones, robotics, space exploration and beyond.

3. Awhereness: The Future of Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) is still considered niche, but we may be nearing a significant inflection point,. We may be increasingly moving towards is a time of awhereness: being aware, but not sure where —in reality or in a virtual environment, or a combination of both.

The biggest hindrance for consumers may be the comfort associated with being removed from the real world. We have defined VR as tricking the brain into believing it is somewhere else — doing something else — in real time. That’s what presence is, the sense that you are actually where VR wants you to believe you are.

Until developers fully unlock and exploit this incredibly powerful secret sauce, VR will remain a nice-to-have versus a need-to-have technology. In the not-so-distant future, computers may fluently interact directly with the human brain, eventually supporting computer-brain communication in VR. Learning a skill, an organization’s history or even an entire marketing strategy will straddle the worlds of real and virtual seamlessly.

4. Everyone Is a Technology & IP Company:

In a world of templosion, many long-established corporations are facing a marketplace mandate to audit and overhaul much of what they do — and how they do it — to remain sustainable and competitive in a vastly different operating environment. Even the most traditional manufacturing firms will have to identify as technology- and intellectual property (IP)-based companies. Artificial intelligence, the Industrial Internet, 3D (and eventually 4D) printing, Big Data, new communications and energy technologies, state-of-the-art robotics, the neural net…these things are not coming, they’re already here. Every entity will have to protect the IP that not only goes into all of that technology, but that is the output (in the form of proprietary data) of these new platforms.

In the end, the amount of innovation and transformation taking place is staggering. The considerable impacts of this acceleration will be felt across all industries and disciplines. Those who are able to constantly refresh their thinking and remain relevant in a time of rapid change, will emerge on top.

(Top GIF: Courtesy of GE)

Erica Orange is Executive Vice President & COO of The Future Hunters, a boutique futurist consultancy that looks at long-term global trends.

Jared Weiner is Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer of The Future Hunters.

All views expressed are those of the authors.

South America’s vast Pampas stretch over three countries and cover an area larger than France. Farmers in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil have long discovered the appeal of the flat and fertile lowlands. Wind farm operators, especially in Brazil, the continent’s largest economy, are now taking a second look.

Although the first wind farm opened in Brazil in 1992, wind has failed to reach its full potential and supplies less than 5 percent of the country’s electricity. That’s because the windswept plains often stretch far away from urban centers and lack the wires and infrastructure to bring the electricity they generate to customers.

Top and Above: This Brazilian wind farm built by Casa dos Ventos is using GE wind turbines. A local artist designed a graphic for the tower of the 1,000th GE wind turbine installed in the country. Image credit: GE Renewables

The Brazilian government, which is seeking to diversify the country’s power base, has set a goal for wind to reach nearly 12 percent of national generation capacity by 2023. The country is trying to meet this goal by demanding that new projects build their own transmission lines.

It’s a tall order, but the challenge got easier last fall when GE acquired Alstom’s grid and energy business. Both companies already rank among the world’s largest makers of wind turbines. With Alstom under one roof, now GE also has the technology that can get them quickly connected to the grid.

The timing could hardly be better. Brazil makes more than two-thirds of its energy from large-scale hydro projects like the massive Itaipu Dam on the Paraná River (it holds a world record in hydropower generation). But the world’s fifth most populous country is going through its worst drought in four decades, which is making electricity more expensive and driving up the frequency of blackouts. It also has to get ready for the 2016 Olympics, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro this summer.

A Francis water turbine designed by Alstom. Image credit: GE Power

Virna Araripe is an executive at Casa dos Ventos, which owns Brazil’s largest portfolio of wind projects. In the past, her company has bought a variety of GE turbines as well as Alstom turbines, substations and power lines. She said the new GE wind turbine and grid technology mix made “a compelling package.”

Wind also happens to be complementary to hydro, Araripe says. That’s because in Brazil, wind power is typically fully dispatched to the grid, allowing hydro plants to hold water at dams to save for later in the year. Another hydro application, called pumped-storage hydro, uses electric pumps to move water into holding dams for storage when power is plentiful — say, at night. The dam releases it to generate power when it’s needed during peak hours or when wind and solar are not available. In both senses, wind and hydro can be thought of as literally and figuratively “balancing” each other.

Wind projects are relatively speedy, too, compared to other means of generating power. A new Brazilian wind farm can typically start supplying renewable power within two years.

GE and Alstom have been doing business in Brazil for decades. There were 1,000 GE wind turbines installed in Brazil as of September 2015. Alstom’s high-voltage equipment works on the world’s largest transmission line, known as the Linhão do Madeira. The line runs for 2,580 kilometers (1,420 miles) from the Amazonian state of Rondônia to the state of São Paulo in the Southeast. With Alstom’s grid technology handling the wind power transmission requirement for new farms, their footprint could grow quickly.

Araripe believes wind energy can eventually contribute up to 20 percent of Brazil’s power needs. Her company is ramping up at a rapid pace, planning to have 1,140 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity online by the end of 2017. In five years, it plans to have installed power of 3,000 MW. Araripe says more wind power could bring down electricity costs for producers, who can “pass on some of those savings to the customer.”

That’s a windfall that can fill everyone’s sails.

One easy way to see Africa’s power problem is by looking at a picture of the Earth from space at night. While other inhabited regions of the world glow and sparkle like jewels in a black velvet display case, Africa remains largely dark. That’s because the continent’s 1.1 billion inhabitants have at their disposal just 185 gigawatts (GW) of installed power-generation capacity. The United States, by comparison, can draw on 1,000 GW for 300 million people. “That statistic alone tells you there is a huge gap,” says Stephane Charrieau, GE Hydro’s sales leader for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The stark contrast is only the beginning the story. Africa is also the fastest-growing continent, with a population expected to hit 1.8 billion by 2050. The new generations will need a reliable supply of electricity to power factories, expand the economy and create jobs. “We’ll have a huge issue if we simply do nothing,” Charrieau says.

Alstom’s massive Francis water turbines help generate electricity all over the world. Image credit: GE Power

The good news is that the continent is rich in energy resources. Nigeria, Algeria and Egypt straddle some of the world’s largest natural gas reservoirs. Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa have huge endowments of coal. Morocco, Senegal and parts of East Africa are good candidates for wind power, and huge swaths of Southern and West Africa are ripe for hydroelectric projects. “There are even excellent geothermal-power prospects in the East African Rift Valley, which runs from Ethiopia to Mozambique,” says Charrieau, referring to the process of generating electricity by harnessing the Earth’s internal heat.

Alstom’s Arabelle steam turbines use stream from nuclear reactors to generate electricity. They can deliver anywhere between 700 to 1,900MW. Image credit: GE Power

There are a number of companies that can assist local governments with tapping these resources. But one of them, GE, can help them harness several at once. “We’ll have all kinds of technology — gas, steam, coal, wind, hydro and nuclear power — in all kinds of sizes,” Charrieau says.

Mobile power plants, distributed power systems and even wind farms with GE technology are already generating electricity on the continent. Last fall, GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business expanded its portfolios of gas turbines and steam turbines needed for coal-fired plants, and even turned the company into a hydropower player. It also allowed GE to start building the distribution lines that take electricity from power plants to where it’s needed.

GE started connecting machines, including entire power plants,  to the Industrial Internet to analyze their operations and make them more efficient. Its cloud-based software platform Predix can optimize hardware made by GE, Alstom and other manufacturers. Image credit: GE Power

Today, large GE gas turbines are the perfect fit for North African countries with relatively mature gas industries such as Egypt. States like Ghana and Cameroon, which have struggled to achieve large-scale production from their gas fields or have not been able to transport the fuel to power demand centers, can take advantage of smaller turbines and engines used for local power generation. They produce between 5 and 50 megawatts (MW).

Many GE turbines include efficient designs originally developed for GE aviation. A Nigerian milling company is using a sturdy engine with components from a GE locomotive. They illustrate the power of the GE Store— the ability of the company to move knowledge around and quickly respond to local demands.

A re-engineered diesel engine from GE’s PowerHaul locomotive will generate electricity for two Nigerian flour mills. Image credit: GE Power

GE’s mobile power plants, which are generating electricity in Algeria. Egypt and elsewhere in Africa, are built around technology developed for jet engines like this CF6. Similarly to the Power Haul example above, the technology is part of the GE Store that allows GE to share know-how across industries and quickly develop new products customers need. Image credit GE Aviation

Charrieau says GE will have “unparalleled reach in Africa” with Alstom. In North Africa, Alstom’s turbines and alternators produce around half of Morocco’s electricity. Its technology has expanded GE’s existing footprint in Algeria and Egypt. GE has traditionally been strong in West Africa, supplying some 2.5 GW of Nigeria’s power-generating capacity. In renewables, Alstom has provided equipment for Bujagali’s 250 MW hydropower plant in Uganda and Grand Renaissance’s 3 GW project in Ethiopia. The company also has a big wind presence in Morocco and hydroelectric plants in operation or under construction in Uganda and Zambia.

Alstom’s Haliade offshore wind turbine. Image credit: GE Power

There are more opportunities. South Africa, the only African country with a commercial nuclear power plant, could soon sign off on as many as eight reactors, generating 9.6 GW. The cost of the project, which Pretoria wants to complete by 2029, could be as much as $100 billion.

Taken together, GE now has the power to brighten up the face of Africa, both from space and on the ground.

Deadly conflicts, horrific terrorist attacks and a worsening global humanitarian crisis have dominated 2015. Yet this year also saw a number of major international breakthroughs, most recently with the Climate Agreement in Paris. But for these agreements to bring us closer to a more peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world, 2016 must be all about action and implementation.

Ask anyone for their abiding memory of 2015, and they will most likely recall a negative one.

Some will recall the horrifying stories of death and destruction caused by conflicts around the world, most notably in Syria where over 250,000 people have lost their lives and almost 11 million people have been displaced. Others will recall a sense of grief, fear and anger after violent extremists attacked, tortured, kidnapped and executed innocent civilians around the world. Others still might recall a simple but disturbing fact they heard in passing — that 2015 was the hottest year on record or that over 15,000 children continue to die annually, mostly from preventable diseases.

Yet, despite all of this, 2015 was also a year of progress and breakthroughs.

2015 was the year, for instance, when health workers and public officials supported by the international community brought an end to the Ebola Epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. It was the year when the UN Millennium Development Goals expired, having helped to reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty globally by over 50 percent. And it was the year when talks — not tanks — led to improvements in Cuba/US relations, an Iranian nuclear deal, a breakthrough in peace-talks in Colombia, transition in the Central African Republic. And most recently, a roadmap on resolving the Syria conflict was agreed on in the Security Council; the hope is that finally we can begin to contain this horrible humanitarian disaster.

Each of these is a great achievement in its own right. But it was the adoption, by more than 193 members of the United Nations, of three major international agreements that gives me greatest hope for the future.

In September, world leaders descended on New York to embrace a new compact for people and planet anchored in 17 Sustainable Development Goals known as the SDGs. In Addis Ababa, just two months earlier, those same leaders committed to a new global framework on finance, capacity building, technology, trade, debt and other issues to support the realization of these goals. And in Paris earlier this month, after years of disappointment, they overcame divisions and agreed on how to avert catastrophic climate change while advancing human progress.

Through these agreements, governments everywhere have committed to advance three critical transformations in our world. First, they committed to address the root causes of poverty and hunger and to advance human development and gender equality everywhere. Second, they agreed to promote shared prosperity while transitioning to a low-carbon climate-resilient economy and protecting our natural environment. And, third, they agreed to improve governance at all levels so as to bring about more peaceful, just and inclusive societies.

2016 – From Commitments to Action

Skeptics will of course question both the ability and commitment of governments to translate these agreements into real change. But not only do I believe that we can succeed, I truly believe that we will succeed.

Let me explain why.

After 50 years in politics, I have never seen negotiations that were more deliberative or more inclusive than those that gave rise to these agreements. The result is that these agreements have real political buy-in at the highest possible level. They have also helped create a global movement for positive change, involving civil society, young people, private companies and more, that will be with us every step of the way over the next 15 years. And from the Millennium Development Goals to reduction in the price of renewables, many governments and many companies are demonstrating that the change we need is not only possible but already happening.

In 2016, however, we must build on this momentum and secure early implementation. To do so, we need action from all actors. As President of the United Nations General Assembly, this is my top priority.

Governments, for example, must identify and plan for the changes they need to undertake to reach these new Goals. They must invest in essential services so that all people can fulfill their potential. They must create an enabling legal and policy framework that encourages more responsible consumption and increased investment in sustainable infrastructure. And they must advance more transparent and inclusive governance so that everyone pays their fair share, people live in freedom and security; and societies become more cohesive and more equal.

At the international level, we need a United Nations system that is ready to give countries the support they need. We also need to ensure that exclusive economic decision-making forums, such as the World Bank and IMF, the G20 etc, become more aligned with this new Agenda.

In the area of peace and security, we need changes at the UN so that we can become better at preventing conflicts and protecting human rights, before it is too late.

The Sustainable Development Goals also demand action from the private sector. They must align their corporate activities with the essence of the new Goals. They can turn their innovation towards finding SDG solutions and partner with governments and other key actors to support and finance implementation. This includes the global finance industry, which must now embrace the shift. Governments must ensure a framework of regulation and taxation for the private sector that makes it obvious that green investment is not just the best for the environment and the future of mankind, but the best for business too.

Finally, change will not happen without action and pressure from civil society and ordinary people everywhere. Non-governmental organizations need to hold governments to account for the commitments they have made in 2015. Philanthropic foundations need to support causes that are aligned with the SDGs and work more effectively with governments and other actors. And ordinary citizens, young people and others can use the incredible explosion in information technology in recent years to become key drivers of implementation.

If 2015 was a year of incredible breakthroughs, then 2016 must mark the moment when all of us begin to deliver, when we begin to make the transformation needed to a more sustainable and just world.

(Top image: A cluster of Ebola viruses. Courtesy of Shutterstock)

This piece first appeared in the World Economic Forum blog.

Mogens Lykketoft is the President of the UN General Assembly. He has served as Speaker of the Parliament of Denmark, as well as Foreign and Finance Minister of Denmark. 

All views expressed are those of the author.

There’s hardly a more storied sea power than the British Royal Navy. Its fleet destroyed the Spanish Armada, beat Napoleon at Trafalgar and sunk the Bismarck and the Tirpitz, Germany’s greatest World War II battleships.

Now British sailors are looking toward the future. The Royal Navy is working on a new high-tech Global Combat Ship designed to become the “workhorse of the fleet” and focus on a variety of maritime missions ranging from complex combat operations to counterpiracy and disaster relief. The Navy says the vessels, called Type 26 Global Combat Ships, will be able to operate independently “for significant periods,” or as a part of a group.

BAE Systems, the prime contractor for the Type 26 program, has recently announced that the first three ships will use advanced electric propulsion motors and drive systems developed by GE Marine. This tech is nothing that Lord Nelson would recognize. GE has deployed a team of noise and vibration specialists using special 3D modeling software to map the acoustic dynamics of the ship’s electric motors. They designed an electric propulsion system that is quiet but also powerful. It will give the ship the key advantage of being able to hunt submarines more effectively without being detected.

GE used a special 3D acoustic modeling software to design a quiet electric propulsion system that will allow Type 26 frigates to hunt submarines more effectively without being detected. Images credit: BAE Systems Plc

The shock-and-vibration-proof motors are also quite small and can fit in a tight space. “On military ships, volume within a ship is at an absolute premium,” says Ben Salter, technical solutions director for Naval Systems at GE. “If all the platforms do is to carry engines and propulsion motors around, they may be fast, but they won’t be able to fight. The Royal Navy therefore values power density, which is having enough power but in a tight space.”

Each of the 150-meter-long destroyers will be able to reach top speed of more than 26 knots and operate within a 7,000-nautical-mile range. Image credit: BAE Systems Plc

The ships will use the electric motors for patrolling and cruising at lower speeds – something that military vessels tend to do a lot. They will draw electricity from diesel generators, but the new ships will also have a gas turbine for sprinting at high speeds.

Hybrid propulsion – i.e. the combination of power generators and gas turbines – is now preferred by many navies because of its easy operation and reduced fuel and maintenance costs.

The future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) sailed for the first time in December, conducting at-sea tests and trials in the Atlantic Ocean. The NAVY says the “multi-mission ship will provide independent forward presence and deterrence, support special operations forces, and operate as an integral part of joint and combined expeditionary forces.” U.S. Navy photo courtesy of General Dynamics Bath Iron Works

Of course, the ships will have more than just motors. They will come equipped with sophisticated missiles, radar and weaponry including a helicopter and be capable of hosting a variety of unmanned aerial, surface and underwater vehicles. But each ship will also stand out because of the technology it carries in the engine room. The vessel is the latest in a line of next-generation naval ships powered by GE.

The company developed electrical systems for Britain’s Type 45 destroyer, the new Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carriers and also America’s fearsome stealth destroyer Zumwalt.

Lord Nelson’s HMS Victory in Portsmouth, England. Some 6,000 trees, mostly oak, were used in her construction in 1759. Image credit: Getty Images

From advances in renewables to data-driven efficiencies and empowered consumers, 2016 offers the opportunity to shape the future of energy.

In my view, 2016 will prove to be a watershed year when it comes to sustainable energy. Years from now, we’ll look back and realize that a variety of technological, design and demographic trends drove the power sector forward, accelerated by one key event — the Paris climate accord.

The accord will prove to be a huge motivating factor for both individuals, as well as the industrial and utility sector, to start to think bigger in terms of what can be done with smart energy systems and non-carbon technology.

For the first time, we have a global consciousness that the time is right to try to accomplish something unique — to apply our technological, design, architecture and analytical capabilities to come up with solutions that will help to drive down our reliance on a carbon economy.

It’s happening at two levels. Individuals and small energy cooperatives are leading the charge through small crowdfunded initiatives, or through what has come to be known as the “maker” economy.

In addition, Paris will encourage large utilities to move faster with alternative energy opportunities. They’ll take a closer look at what they can do to help to achieve the bold goals of a cleaner energy future. They’ll be less willing to take criticism over those who might browbeat them over economic models that might sometimes be marginal. But going forward, it won’t just be the financial return on investment that matters — but the social return as well.

Here are a few predictions for the energy sector in 2016 and beyond:

The most promising breakthrough in renewable power will likely be a massive amount of innovation throughout every aspect of the sector. This is coming about because of our ability to apply more connectivity and computer intelligence to every single aspect of renewables — whether it’s generation, transmission, or deep analytics into the efficiency of operations.

Essentially, what I think is happening is that the rule of Moore’s Law is rapidly coming to renewables. This “law” — predicting that the processing power of a computer chip doubles ever year while the cost is halved — is coming to the manufacturing process of renewable technology, to the infrastructure built into renewables, and to the systems that drive renewable use.

It’s almost as if it’s 1981, when arrival of the personal computer caught the imagination of thousands of hackers and developers — and the rest is history. I think we are at the same tipping point with renewables, particularly small-scale energy generation.

Some of the most fascinating innovations are occurring in the global “maker” and crowdfunding initiatives. People interested in solar development are building small communities in which shared insight is accelerating the pace of pure science. This globally connected mind is turning itself toward solving some unique challenges in the world of energy and renewables.

Big Data will enable the power sector to add far more intelligence to the grid, and to have far better insight into operational conditions. Most of the grid today is pretty dumb — it’s built for one-way transmission, from big energy production facilities out to homes and industries. But there is a tremendous amount of investment in creating a two-way, intelligent and interactive grid. This changes everything, allowing us to more easily accommodate and utilize the energy production occurring in a more distributed world.

In homes across the world, the Internet of Things will enable energy consumers to build their own micro-climate monitoring systems, and better manage their personal energy infrastructure usage. 

Consider this: it’s entirely feasible today for someone with just a little bit of technical knowledge to build their own local micro-climate weather monitoring system. Now imagine that you can link it to your intelligent home energy thermostat, one of the fastest-growing home-based IoT categories. Go a step further — add some solar, wind or biomass energy-generation capability — and link your own personal Big Data to that technology, in order to come up with the most optimal time to generate your own power.

Expand that to what’s possible in the industrial sector. Global companies with large-scale facilities now have the ability to monitor and manage all their energy infrastructure worldwide from one central data viewpoint. They can see what it necessary to reduce usage, avoid cost and be more intelligent about how energy is deployed.

I’m a big believer that we are on the edge of “real magic” when it comes to the future of energy and utilities. It’s not just the trends above; it’s the fact that we have new solutions that didn’t exist before — such as intelligent lighting technology that is so advanced that it is hard to put the efficiency it provides into perspective.

From my view, the future of energy is all about opportunity.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

Jim Carroll is a futurist, trends and innovation expert, with clients that include NASA, the PGA of America, PG&E, the Swiss Innovation Forum and many others. He speaks worldwide on the trends that will impact industry, and the innovation opportunities that result from embracing the fast pace trends of the future.

All views expressed are those of the author.

In a laboratory in Chicago, a doctor called Hope is hunting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS with a microscope so powerful that scientists call it the OMG microscope.

Thomas Hope is a professor of cell and molecular biology at the Hope HIV Laboratory at Northwestern University. He’s is among a group of researchers using advanced tools developed by GE Healthcare Life Sciences to study the disease, control the virus that causes it and push for the obvious next step – a cure.

Top image: “We’re really starting to identify which cells get infected first, and where they are located,” says Northwestern’s Tom Hope. Above: An HIV-infected T-cell. Image credit: NIAID

Dr. Hope is using a high-definition microscope from GE to learn how HIV infects a cell and then spreads to other cells. His goal is to prevent the initial infection. This microscope — GE Healthcare Deltavision OMX — 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.)

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.

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 — Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — 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.