Large passenger jets are pretty much all alike, but each private jet is different in its own way. “We now make it a bit easier for customers to stand out,” says Vic Bonneau, president of GE Aviation’s Electrical Power Business.

Bonneau and his team have decided to rewire the private jet and developed a modular “brain” spread out across the aircraft. It includes a data concentration network linking multiple aircraft systems with special software that “intelligently” monitors power distribution through the plane, and also the jet’s health.

“The system runs pretty much everything, from engines, fuel pumps and avionics to the entertainment systems,” Bonneau says. “It also saves space. Now you can put in almost any cabin design you desire.”

Bonneau says that a new power system, for example, can eliminate as much as 3 miles of cabling and over 400 mechanical circuit breakers. It could strip more than 200 pounds in redundant copper and fiberoptic wires from planes.

The first beneficiary of the technology will be Gulfstream’s brand new G500 and G600 business jets, which the plane builder announced this week. (The G500 will be reportedly available for $43.5 million, while the G600 will cost $54.5 million.)

The Gulfstream G500 and G600 planes will be able to reach destinations 5,000 and 6,200 nautical miles away, and fly at a maximum speed of 0.9 Mach. Photo credit: Gulfstream

Here’s how the system works: the data concentration network collects performance information from sensors distributed throughout the plane. Using an aircraft network GE originally built for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the data travels to the Gulfstreams’ aviation health management unit. The unit can detect, predict and isolate potential issues with aircraft systems, engines and other equipment sometimes weeks in advance, before they can cause trouble.

The unit relays the information over satellite and GSM to the ground. There, a companion system can compare it with information from other planes, look for anomalies, and start troubleshooting and deliver replacement parts before the jet lands.

A similar system already is working on Gulfstream’s flagship G650 jets. Aviation Week wrote that “in one case, a G650 reported a problem six hours before reaching its destination airport – when it arrived, a technician and replacement parts were on site to fix the problem.”

“Once the system knows what a good jet looks like, it can predict problems before they cause delays,” says Mike Madden, a sales leader at GE Aviation. “The plane is most valuable when it’s in the air. We want to keep it there.”

The space exploration company Astrobotic wants to be your robot’s cheap ticket to the moon. The aerospace innovator is planning to start flying missions there in summer 2016. Its lander-in-development, called Griffin, will have enough room on board to take four robotic rovers and scientific instruments to the lunar surface. On the way, it could also drop off a satellite in the moon’s orbit.

“The typical quote from NASA for the cost of a mission like we’re doing is $1 billion,” says Kevin Peterson, the chief technology officer of Astrobotic. “We believe we can do it for a tenth of that, about $100 million.”

Astrobotic is competing with 17 other teams to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE. To winner of the $30 million grand prize must land a rover on the moon; drive it for 500 meters (1,640 feet) along, above or below the lunar surface; and send back a high-definition TV signal for the world to see.

Astrobotic brought its Griffin lander prototype to a Pittsburgh slag heap for publicity photos simulating the lunar environment. Top GIF: Astrobotic sent a prototype of its autonomous lunar rover on an obstacle avoidance test drive in April 2014. The rover’s brain uses electronics from GE that process and compress data from lasers and cameras. Photo and GIF credit: Astrobotic.

The biggest budget item for getting stuff to the moon is the launch vehicle that boosts the cargo out of Earth’s atmosphere. Peterson plans to strap their rover-ferrying lander onto the relatively inexpensive SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. But Astrobotic is driving costs down in other ways—by equipping moon robots with cheaper and more powerful electronic brains .

The company has teamed with GE’s Intelligent Platforms unit, which makes ruggedized electronics for fighter jets, tanks and the oil and gas industry. GE workers harden off-the-shelf, energy efficient chips to survive severe vibrations, shock, dust and the vacuum of space.

Astrobotic tested its autolanding system aboard a rocket-powered technology demonstration vehicle supplied by Masten. Here the vehicle touches down after flying a distance from its launch site. GIF credit: Astrobotic.

“We needed to enable high-performance computing while using as little energy as possible,” said GE’s Rubin Dhillon. His colleague, applications engineer Dustin Franklin, said the technology for Astrobotic was “an order of magnitude” cheaper and provided greater processing capability than systems designed specifically for space exploration. “The craft couldn’t land without it,” Franklin says. “It tells the lander: ‘Hey, you’re a little off here. You need to correct.’”

The Griffin lander is 5.2 feet high and 14.8 feet wide. It can carry more than half a ton of cargo to lunar orbit and almost 600 pounds to the moon’s surface. Astrobotic expects it to touch down on the moon within 330 feet of a predetermined landing spot.

The Astrobotic Autolanding System uses lasers and cameras that feed real-time data into GE’s MAGIC1 processor. The computer matches the information to a map database and provides guidance and navigation. Photo credit: Astrobotic

This level of accuracy is considerably better than previous lunar landings. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin parked the Apollo 11 lander some three miles from where it was supposed to be.

Naturally, the Griffin won’t be able to rely on GPS. Its guidance and navigation system uses cameras, lasers and inertial sensors to adjust its descent and avoid obstacles. It will compare real-time imaging and range-finding to highly accurate moon maps stored in the memory on the GE MAGIC1.

A closeup of the GE MAGIC1 computer. Photo credit: Astrobotic

The computer will crunch the sensor data and to tell the lander where it is. Sounds complicated, but it relies on similar graphics chips to those found in state-of-the-art video game consoles.

Once the Griffin safely arrives, it will release Astrobotic’s Polaris rover. To drive the distance it needs for the XPRIZE or other missions without getting stuck or falling in a crater, the rover is equipped with a GE electronics package featuring NVIDIA’s next-generation Tegra K1 processor. This is the same chip being used to power the Tesla electric car’s center display and in high-end Android and Apple tablets.

The Polaris will use the processor for navigation with the unit’s cameras and lasers. The electronics package will also massively compress a live TV feed so it can be sent to the lander, which will then relay it to Earth.

“This GE equipment is much more powerful than what NASA would fly,” Peterson says. “These computers are the brains of our lander and rover. They are really game changers.”

The Astrobotic Autolanding System uses downward-facing laser imaging, detection and ranging to map the surface below for location-finding and obstacle avoidance. GIF credit: Astrobotic

Peterson estimates the cost of landing Griffin on the moon will exceed the $30 million purse being offered to the XPRIZE winner. That’s why in June Astrobotic, which was spun off from Carnegie Mellon University to compete for the prize, announced that it was inviting competitors to hitch a ride on its lander and engage in a NASCAR-like race over the final 500 meters to crown a winner. “Not only does the shared launch create a more exciting race for the Prize, it would be the first international competition beyond Earth orbit,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said on the company’s blog.

Peterson said that Astrobotic has already signed agreements to carry four payloads on the Griffin and was in talks with others. The price of the mission - $500,000 per pound of cargo to the moon– makes his offer appear attractive.

But Peterson said that price could drop by an order of magnitude in the future if SpaceX can cut launch costs and expand the volume of cargo. (The rocket company is already pursuing both goals.) “If we can get the cost down to $50,000 a pound to carry cargo to the moon, then the mission for our customers would cost $10 million,” he says. “Then you suddenly have a large pool of people, organizations and countries on Earth that could do science and other pursuits on the moon. This is paradigm shifting.”

The deadline for the XPRIZE moon landing - Dec. 31, 2015 - is tight, and Astrobotic doesn’t expect to launch its lander until 2016. “The prize isn’t enough to fly our payload alone,” says Peterson. “We’re negotiating with a number of countries to carry their payloads up with ours, so we might have to skip the competition if they don’t move their deadline.”

The British Royal Navy may be the world’s most storied sea power. Its fleet has included famous ships like the Mary Rose and the Victory, and it has notched triumphs such as the destruction of the Spanish Armada, Lord Nelson’s victory over Napoleon at Trafalgar and the sinking of the Bismarck, the greatest German battleship.

But Britain’s sailors are also looking towards the future. The Royal Navy has recently commissioned a new high-tech frigate designed to become the “workhorse of the fleet” and focus on a variety of maritime missions ranging from complex combat operations to counter piracy and disaster relief. The Royal Navy says that the ship will be able to operate independently “for significant periods,” or as a part of a group.

Top image and above: The Type 26 frigate will carry 185 personnel aboard at maximum speed of 28 knots. Its range will be 7,800 nautical miles. Photo credit: BAE Systems

The vessel, called a Type 26 Global Combat Ship, will come with sophisticated missiles, radar and weaponry including a helicopter and an arsenal of unmanned aerial, surface and underwater vehicles. But it will also stand out because of the technology it carries in the engine room.

The new ships will have hybrid propulsion using gas turbines for sprinting at high speeds and diesel generators powering a pair of powerful electric motors for patrolling and cruising at lower speeds – something that military vessels tend to do a lot.

BAE Systems, which is developing the ships, has been working with a number of partners to come with the advanced technology. GE, for example, will provide the electric propulsion system. The company has deployed a team of noise and vibration specialists using special 3-D software to model the acoustic dynamics of the ship’s electric motors. The goal is to build an electric propulsion system that is whisper quiet but also  powerful. It will give the ship the key advantage of being able to hunt submarines more effectively without being detected.

A lot has changed in the Royal Navy since the days of Nelson’s HMS Victory. Image credit: J.M.W. Turner’s painting of the Battle of Trafalgar. National Maritime Museum

Electric propulsion in combination with gas turbines is now preferred by many navies because of its easy operation and reduced fuel and maintenance costs. The motors that GE is developing won’t be just shock and vibration proof, but also highly compact so they can fit within a relatively small 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 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.”

The first Type 26 frigates are supposed to enter service after 2020 and sail the seas for the next three decades.

The vessel is the latest in a line of next-generation Navy ships powered by GE. The company developed electrical systems for Britain’s Type 45 destroyer, the new Queen Elizabeth II-class of aircraft carriers, and also America’s fearsome stealth destroyer Zumwalt.

The USS Zumwalt, is the U.S. Navy’s largest stealth destroyer and its first modern all-electric warship. Photo credit: General Dynamics

Mid-morning on October 13, 2011, Hollye Jacobs was getting dressed after her breast exam in Santa Barbara, Calif., when the radiologist sent a word that he wanted to see her. “When I walked into his office, I saw images of my breasts on four large computer monitors,” says Jacobs, who works as pediatric and adult palliative care nurse. “I saw what looked like a lot of snowballs.”

The snowballs were hiding tumors.

Hollye Jacobs’ is a cancer survivor. She knew she needed an ultrasound after her mammography screening. Image credit: Hollye Jacobs Top image: An illustration photo of GE’s ABUS ultrasound machine. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Jacobs has dense breasts and her breast tissue appears white on a mammogram, the same color as cancer.

Dense breast tissue is a common physical attribute, like freckled skin or curly hair. About four in every 10 women have it. (The percentage is even higher in Asian women.) There is no way to tell whether a woman has dense breasts without a mammogram, and density can be a factor regardless of age or breast size.

Although women with dense breasts may have a four to six times higher risk of breast cancer, the real danger is the dense tissue’s ability to obscure cancers on a mammogram. “It’s literally like looking for a snowball in snowstorm,” says Dr. Jessie Jacob, chief medical officer for breast health at GE Healthcare.

Jacob says that mammography, which uses a low-dose of X-rays to image breasts, is still the gold standard in breast cancer screening. But for women with dense breast tissue, a clinician may not see everything with a mammogram alone. That’s because dense breasts contain more “glandular elements” than fatty tissue. “The fatty tissue lets you see through, but the glandular elements can obscure masses,” Dr. Jacob says.

Compounding the issue is the fact that many women don’t even know that they have dense breasts. A new study carried out by the Working Mother Research Institute and sponsored by GE Healthcare found that while 80 percent of the surveyed women have had a mammogram, only 43 percent knew that dense tissue makes the results harder to read.

The lack of awareness about dense breast tissue is a serious matter. There are currently 19 states that have laws that require women be told if they have dense breasts and in some cases if they should potentially consider a follow up like alternate testing. More state bills are pending.

The automated breast ultrasound exam (ABUS), which was developed by GE Healthcare, takes about 15 minutes and remains the only technology for screening women with dense breasts approved by the FDA.

A comparison of a mammography image (right) and ABUS images (top and bottom on the left). Photo credit: GE Healthcare

Ultrasound, which uses sound waves to create images of the body, is valuable since it renders cancer black and eliminates the snowball effect. (Women with suspected cancer lesions may also undergo an MRI and biopsy.)

Jacobs, the Santa Barbara nurse, knew she had dense breasts and her physician scheduled an ultrasound exam right after her mammogram. “The technician was chatty, chatty, chatty. She was so nice,” Jacobs wrote in her blog The Silver Pen. (She has published a book, The Silver Lining, about her bout with cancer.) “Then, she stopped talking. Silence. This, I knew, was not a good sign.”

Jacobs is now a breast cancer survivor and an advocate for educating women about the disease. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” she says. “I was a marathoner with no risk factors and no family history, and my diagnosis came as a shock. You have to listen to your intuition, and if you feel that something isn’t right, then it’s not right. Pursue all avenues to get you questions answered.”

Business news networks and other financial media stay largely focused on covering companies whose shares are owned by the public. But away from the TVs and newspapers, there is another powerful engine pumping life into the economy: the middle market

This unsung sector is mostly made up of private businesses that together generate one third of U.S. private sector GDP. “Both in revenue growth and in jobs growth, these companies in the middle are leading the U.S. economy,” says Thomas A. Stewart, executive director of the National Center for the Middle Market (NCMM).

Stewart describes the U.S. middle market as a group of some 200,000 businesses with annual revenues ranging from $10 million to $1 billion. It includes well-known companies like Airstream, Edible Arrangements and King’s Hawaiian, and employs nearly a third of American workers. Lumped together, they would form the fifth largest economy with $4.3 trillion in GDP, behind Japan and ahead of Germany.

Top image: Airstream has been making trailers and RVs since the 1930s. Photo credit: Airstream

The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and GE Capital founded the NCMM four years ago to serve as an expert on the segment. “It’s a giant group of companies, but they are largely overlooked,” says Susan Bishop, spokeswoman for GE Capital. “No one really talks about them.” 

The center just released its quarterly Middle Market Indicator (MMI) tracking the sector’s health. The indicator is a blend of business performance updates and an economic outlook survey the center conducts among 1,000 middle market executives. The third quarter results detected a lot of energy in the sector’s engine room. Middle market revenues have grown for four quarters in a row, from a 5 percent increase in the fourth quarter of 2013, to a 7.5 percent increase in the third quarter of 2014. By comparison, S&P 500 companies grew 5.5 percent in the last quarter.

Click here to download.

The middle market is also busy adding jobs, topping the 3 percent employment growth mark for each of the three quarters so far this year. The NCMM projects that at the current rate, the middle market will create 60 percent of all new jobs over the next year.

The segment also remains confident in the economy on the national level and somewhat confident on the local level. But its view of the global economy has grown more tepid.

The NCMM released the full results of the survey at the Middle Market Summit, which is taking place at Ohio State’s campus on Wednesday. This year’s lineup of guests includes former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, AOL founder Steve Case, and GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. Past speakers included investor Warren Buffet, and President George W. Bush.

GE Capital is also sponsoring a special edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, which will broadcast from the event between 6 to 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Morning Joe will also live stream this year’s Summit from 8:30 a.m. to noon ET at www.msnbc.com/morningjoe.

Click here to download.

One of the many characters in Melville’s Moby Dick is Bulkington, an intrepid sailor for whom “land seemed scorching to his feet” and who on a “shivering winter’s night” thrust the mighty ship Pequod’s “vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves,” as it set out on its fatal whale hunting expedition.

Bulkington would be right at home on modern drill ships. The oil industry uses these vessels to drill deep subsea wells as far as 100 miles from shore. They spend months on the open ocean, weathering gales while trying to stay pinned to one spot on heaving seas.

“When you are drilling, you need to stay where you are,” says Paul English, a marine leader at GE’s Power Conversion business. “Coming off the wellhead because you’ve lost position could be very expensive and also very risky.”

Above and below: Drill ships are using multiple thrusters to stay in one place. The thrusters rotate around both horizontal and vertical axes. Photo credit: EEP S.A. Top image: A drill ship at anchor in Walvis Bay, Namibia. Photo credit: CellsDeDells

English’s business is developing sophisticated navigation and electrical systems that allow energy companies to keep their drill ships within a 15-foot radius, even on stormy seas. But matching the best electrical and wiring design with the right thrusters and propellers has been a laborious process lasting on average 16 hours, spread over several months. 

Not anymore. Over the last two years, engineers at the GE unit developed a new software system that can do the same job in just one hour and fits on a laptop. It can even predicts operational costs.

The software is one outcome of simplification, a company-wide culture shift taking hold at GE. Simplification, says GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, is about delivering results to customers faster, at a lower cost and making them more competitive. Immelt says that simplification is also helping GE reduce the time it takes to introduce a new product by a third and cut the deal cycle in half. 

The technology that tells vessels where they are and helps them stay put is called dynamic positioning (DP). It includes a combination of high-tech navigation systems such as GPS, ultrasonic beacons and lasers.

The systems  feed the navigation data to the DP’s big computer brain for processing. An array of thrusters and propellers listen to the brain’s commands, compensate for ocean current, waves and wind, and keep the ship in the right place.

GE makes the DP technology. It also helps customers with the design of the ship’s electrical systems and the distribution of the thrusters and propellers along the ship’s hull (see the two pictures above).

For decades, developing these designs has been a prized skill. A small group of specialized engineers sitting in an industrial office in Rugby, England, would use a dedicated computer and software to help customers pick the right thrusters for various sea conditions and calculate how much power they’ll need.

“We would give them the results and wouldn’t hear anything back for two months,” says Jonathan Childs, one of the engineers trained to operate the system. “But we wanted to become more involved, get faster and become a trusted advisor,” Childs says.

Two years ago, Childs talked to English about trying something new. His plan was straight out of GE’s simplification playbook. Childs proposed rewriting the software, liberating design system from the Rugby office, and moving it instead to a laptop he could bring to customers anywhere in the world.

Today, the software, called Vessel Performance Analyzer (VesPA), combines data about thrusters and propulsion manufactured by third party providers with electrical design models supplied by GE. It also blends in wind, current and other sea and weather data.

VesPA allows ship designers to digitally optimize thrusters (green circles on the left) and other equipment in as little as one hour. The old manual process used to take 16 hours on average, spread out over several months. Image credit: GE Power Conversion

The system allows GE engineers to work collaboratively with customers in real time by providing multiple equipment comparisons and electrical configurations. “If a customer wants to work in 3 knots of current and 30 knots of wind in the North Sea, we can help him chose the right drive and the right voltage in one hour,” Childs says.

Customers now know very quickly what their options are, and the system turns them into educated buyers when the start shopping for propulsion equipment. (GE makes power distribution systems for ships, but it has only a limited offering of propulsion technology.)

Childs says that the current version of the software is still close to a minimum viable product, to borrow language from Lean Startup pioneer by Eric Ries. (GE has collaborated with Ries and David Kidder to help develop FastWorks, a simplification program designed to foster a startup mentality inside the company.)

But he is already working on the next version that “intends to add the meat to the bones” by recommending the generation voltage, switchboards and specific drive types from GE’s portfolio.

Childs says that dozens of customers have already taken the VesPA for a spin, and several large ship builders want to see how it works. Drill ships designed with the system’s help could soon start battling North Sea swells between Norway, Greenland and Canada.

Sounds like the perfect for place for some modern Bulkington.

The airplane was still barely a teenager when the United States entered World War I, and the fledgling U.S. Air Force wanted to make its airplanes fly higher without losing power.

Sanford Moss, a GE engineer and one of the brightest minds in the steam turbine business, had an idea. He had been the first person to figure out how to use hot exhaust gas to power a turbine, and he thought that the same principle could apply to airplanes.

Moss and his team set out to design a device called supercharger. It pumped exhaust fumes back into the engine to increase the pressure in the cylinders and give the engine more oomph, especially at high altitudes where the air is thinner.

In 1918, Moss took the device to Pikes Peak in Colorado, elev. 14,000 ft., (pictured above) and proved that a supercharged Liberty V-12 aircraft engine performed much better at this height than the standard version. The government was pleased and GE got the job.

Moss shrunk his Pikes Peak supercharger to fit on a plane.

The contract launched GE into the aviation business, and it took off from there. In 2013, the unit had $22 billion in annual revenues, making aircraft parts, avionics and, of course, entire engines. There are more than 30,000 of them in service, from tuboprops powering crop dusters and commuter planes to the world’s largest and most powerful jet engine used by Boeing’s 777 planes. Here’s a flight through the unit’s history.

First supercharger: In 1921, a LePere biplane (above) equipped with Moss’ turbo-supercharger set a world altitude record, reaching 40,800 ft. In 1937, Howard Hughes used the device on his record-breaking transcontinental flight from Newark, N.J., to Los Angeles lasting 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. GE Aviation made turbo-superchargers for several decades. Later versions of the technology, called turbo-superchangers, served on B-17, B-24 and B-29 bombers during World War II. Since GE was not yet making engines, they worked with Pratt & Whitney and Curtiss-Wright piston engines.

First U.S. Jet Engine: In the fall of 1941, a top secret group of GE engineers nicknamed the Hush-Hush Boys (above) used Sir Frank Whittle’s engine design to build America’s first jet engine. The prototype flew in 1942, and the jet engine entered service in 1944, powering the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, the first jet fighter in the U.S. Air Force’s arsenal.

First U.S. Commercial Jet Engine: In 1947, GE’s J47 engine became the first jet engine certified for commercial aviation in the U.S. GE made more than 35,000 of them, each with a $32,000 price tag. They found a number of applications. The Spirit of America jet car used one, and a pair of them powered what is still the world’s fastest jet-propelled train (above).

First Mach 3 Engine: In 1948, GE hired German aviation pioneer Gerhard Neumann, who quickly went to work on the jet engine. He developed a revolutionary design called variable stator (above). It allowed pilots to turn the vanes on the engine’s stator, change the pressure inside and make planes routinely fly faster than the speed of sound. When GE started testing the first jet engine with Neumann’s variable stator, engineers thought that their instruments were malfunctioning because of the amount of power it produced.

In 1957, a GE-powered XB-70 Valkyrie (above) became the first plane to break Mach 3, three times the speed of sound.

Two experimental reactors for testing nuclear-powered jet engines in Arco, Idaho. Image credit:  Wtshymanski

Nuclear-powered jet engine: In 1954, GE even put a nuclear-powered jet engine on a test stand in Arco, Idaho. It accumulated more than 100 trouble-free running hours before the project was shelved. In service, it would use nuclear heat from a reactor aboard the plane . A plane with these engines could theoretically stay in the air for days and weeks. Although the U.S. Air Force did modify a B-36 Peacemaker bomber to carry a nuclear reactor, it never used the engines.

First high-bypass turbofan engine: In the 1960s, GE engineers started working on a new powerful jet engine that could lift heavy loads across long distances, but also made planes more fuel efficient. They came up with the TF39 engine (above), which clocked in at a record 40,000 pounds of thrust. Although it was developed for the military, later versions of the engine launched the CF-6 family have powered Boeing 747 planes, DC-10, Lockheed L1011, and Airbus A-300 passenger jets. CF-6 engines are still serving on the U.S. President’s Air Force One.

First unducted turbofan: Following the oil crisis in the 1970s, GE and NASA developed a funny looking engine design called “unducted turbofan” (pictured above and also in the lead image). The engine, named GE36, was a cross between a jet and a propeller engine. The fuel efficient machine used for the first time blades made from light and tough carbon fiber composites. GE is still the only company in the jet engine business using these materials on engine fans. In 1988, a GE36-powered MD-80 passenger jet flew from the U.S. to the Farnborough Air Show in England. 

The world’s largest and most powerful engine: Although the unducted turbofan didn’t catch on, the carbon fiber blade technology allowed GE engineers to build new a line of massive high-bypass turbofans, including the GE90-115B (above), which is the world’s most powerful jet engine with 115,000 pounds of thrust, the GEnx, and the GE9X, the world’s largest engine with a fan that’s 11 feet in diameter (that engine is still in development).

First engines with 3-D printed parts and new ceramic materials: The LEAP jet engine is the first jet engine with 3-D printer fuel nozzles and components made from strong ceramic matrix composites (CMCs), which are much lighter than even high-grade alloys. The LEAP, which is 15 percent more fuel efficient than comparable GE engines, was developed by CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aviation and France’s Snecma (Safran). CFM has received more than $100 billion in orders and commitments (U.S. list price) for over 7,700 LEAPs, even though they won’t enter service until 2016.

With its roller doors and a squat build, GE’s composites manufacturing lab in Munich looks from the outside like many other garages in this Bavarian city where mechanics might work on Audis and BMWs. But walk through those doors and you’ll be greeted by a large robotic arm weaving composite parts from a long strand of a light and strong carbon fibers.

Carbon fiber composites have been around for decades, of course. The material, which can be as strong as steel or aluminum but much lighter, is being used for car chassis, aircraft fuselage and other parts where the mix of strength and light weight is valued at a premium. 

But making composites has traditionally been a manual process. A typical composite part looks like high-tech baklava made from alternating layers of carbon fiber sheets and resin. Workers lay down each layer by hand and bake the final shape in an industrial-size pressure cooker called autoclave.

However, the latest generation of composite components like jet engine fan blades (see below) have complex 3D shapes, which are very difficult to make. That’s where robots could come handy. The Munich team, which is part of the GE Global Research center there, is giving these robots more powerful brains and senses so they can get better at the job.

The LEAP jet engine has 18 carbon fiber composite fan blades woven in 3D. Image credit: CFM International

The carbon fiber running through the robotic arm (see top image) is smooth like linen, but also up to five times stronger than steel and more than four times lighter. “You’d like to put it everywhere,” says Dragan Filipovic, a GE composites manufacturing research engineer working at the Munich lab. ”But it’s very expensive.”

Filipovic is on a team trying to optimize robotic composite manufacturing and lower the cost of components made from the material. He is making his robots listen to special design software, lay down the material efficiently, and eventually create complex shapes that humans have struggled to achieve.

The LEAP is the only commercial jet engine with a carbon fiber composite fan and fan case woven in one piece.  Image credit: CFM International

Composites manufacturers have already started to deploy industrial robots in factories. They are helping workers make complex 3D structures from layers of woven carbon fiber. The composite fan blades for the LEAP jet engine, for example, are made by a proprietary process that weaves fiber in three dimensions on a loom into their final shape. Workers then they inject these carbon fiber “preforms” with resin and bake them in an autoclave. (The final step is adding a titanium leading edge to increase durability.)

Filipovic and his colleague Stefaan Van Nieuwenhove are now endowing their robots mathematical modeling skills, real-time 3D laser scanning abilities, computer vision analytics and other sensing talents. They want to make them aware of the work they are doing while it is happening.

“Eventually our instruments will be fully integrated into the brains of these machines,” says Van Nieuwenhove. He says that the process will allow the machine to know “how it needs to react to changes in the manufacturing process it is working on.”

"That’s a smart machine," he says. "We call it adaptable manufacturing.”

From space, Norfolk Southern’s 20,000-mile rail system resembles a neural network and it increasingly works like one, too. The railroad has rolled out a big data system called Movement Planner, which helps intelligently direct the hundreds of trains that ply its rails through 22 states from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River every day.

Movement Planner, which was developed by software and transportation engineers at GE, is an example of using data to improve the efficiency of machines and infrastructure, and also help the environment. “This merging is transformational in terms of resource productivity,” says economist Brandon Owens, who works as the strategy and analytics director for GE’s ecomagination program.

Owens just published a report that explains how software and big data help companies improve the management of resources as diverse as oil and water. “We’re talking about savings that really add quickly because of the scale,” Owens says. “If we double productivity from 1 to 2 percent as we predict by using the Industrial Internet and big data to manage efficient machinery, we’re talking savings by 2030 of about a third of global oil consumption.”

Movement Planner, for example, takes logistical information such as the type of cargo and the urgency of delivery, and combines it with schedules, track grades, train movement and other information. The result is optimized plans that allow locomotives to run at higher speeds and more efficiently on existing routes without laying new tracks. The software can look up to eight hours ahead, for example, and figure out what the railroad can do to get a train back on schedule without delaying any of the other trains moving through the network.

Deborah Butler, Norfolk Southern’s chief information officer, told O’Reilly Media that since her company turned on Movement Planner a few years ago, it has seen a 6.3 percent drop in fuel usage and a 10 to 20 percent increase in velocity.

Such smart technology is sorely needed to get us closer to sustainability. Owens calculated that if we fail to get more efficient at moving, building and operating things, both materials extraction and energy consumption will grow by a staggering 80 percent by 2030. (If we improve energy productivity by 2 percent annually, that increase will be less than 30 percent by 2030.) Those figures track with numbers from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which has estimated that without more water conservation and productivity improvements, the number of people living in areas under water stress will grow from 1 billion to 3.9 billion in 2050.

Such scenarios illustrate the idea behind GE’s ecomagination program. Since its launch in 2005, GE invested $15 billion in R&D in “ecomagination” technologies like the Movement Planner, but also jet engines, gas turbines, wind turbines, locomotives and other efficient machines and systems designed to improve productivity and cut their environmental impact. The investment has so far fetched $180 billion in revenue for GE, and potentially billions more for its customers.

One of them, the Brazilian airline Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes, has deployed another ecomagination big data system, GE Flight Efficiency Services, to optimize the flight paths of its jets. The technology, which Gol introduced five years ago, is saving the airline an average of 22 miles per flight and 77 gallons of jet fuel. That adds up to some $100 million in savings for the company, and an average reduction of 1,628 pounds of CO2 emissions per flight.

“The real winners in the business world will be the ones who integrate their hardware and IT software to improve their bottom line but also help the environment in the process,” Owens says. “The economics and environment align on this one because you don’t have to be focused on the environmental benefits to get them. We’re entering a world where we squeeze waste out of industrial systems while optimizing productivity.”

There are few people who know more about bad days for flying than Brian De Bruin and his team at GE’s jet engine testing facility in Peebles, Ohio. The team’s job is to make sure that GE engines keep working when they run into bad thunderstorms or a stray seagull. They expose the machines to hail and monsoon rain, hit them with bird carcasses, and even set off small explosions inside to simulate blade failure. “Some of these tests are relatively benign, but others are quite damaging,” De Bruin says. “You’ve got to prove that your engines are good.”

De Bruin is the site leader at the Peebles Test Operation, located in a bucolic corner of Ohio where GE has been putting engines through their paces for six decades.

When the site opened in 1954, the five technicians who worked there poured concrete for the first test stand and brought their measuring instruments in a moving van. They were led by Leo “Pappy” White, a legendary GE engineer who had been previously firing captured German V-2 rockets at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

White and his team started testing new jet fuels and engines at Peebles. "Back then, you could stand 100 feet behind the jet engine and have a conversation," remembers Orvile Jones, 93, who took over as manager of the site after White left.

At the time, Peebles was a lonely place. “Besides the five of us, there were five security guards patrolling the property on horses and making sure that people didn’t come near where we running secret operations,” Jones says.

The secret operations included testing borane jet fuel. “They idea was that the fuel would give us more power, but it produced terrible white smoke instead,” Jones says. “The local fire department thought the place was on fire.”

Business was so slow that Jones decided to buy hundreds of Christmas trees for a penny a piece and plant them on the 5,000-acre property. He planned to sell them to GE employees in Cincinnati and make the company some money. “We wanted to make profit rather than just noise,” he says. “But the idea was a clunker. When management found out, they got mad. They thought we were wasting time and resources.” 

After four years at Peebles, Jones moved out to California to work on the first spy satellites, the site was mothballed and the Christmas tree farm has grown into a forest.

Engines must survive encounters with golf ball-size hail. Top image: Internet sensation Marquese Scott recently danced inside a Peebles test cell. Image credit: GE Aviation

The machine that rescued the Peebles facility from disuse was the U.S. Army’s odd-looking vertical-takeoff aircraft called the XV-5A. The plane used two GE jet engines to fly forward and two large fans embedded in the wings that were driven by the jet exhaust to hover or move vertically.

“It was primarily the experience we had gained with the large fans in the XV-5A…which enabled General Electric to develop an advanced technology engine core culminating in the creation of the first high-bypass turbofan—the engine of today and the near future,” wrote Gerhard Neumann, the late aviation pioneer who ran GE’s jet engine business in the 1960s and 1970s.

The XV-5B, which followed the XV-5A, in a hover mode. You can see the two large fans on the bottom of the wings. Image credit: NASA Test Pilot Daniel Dugan

Today, pretty much every commercial jet engine is using this high-bypass turbofan design, which combines the thrust of the classic turbojet engine with power produced by a massive fan at the front of the engine – hence the name turbofan. GE developed the first high-bypass turbofan, the TF39 engine for Lockheed’s C-5 transport plane, and tested it at Peebles.

 The TF39 begot the commercial high-bypass line of engines: the CF6, which still powers many Boeing 747s, including Air Force One; the GE90, the world’s most powerful jet engine; the GEnx for the Dreamliner; the LEAP; and many other engines.

Every single design had to prove its mettle at Peebles, which now has 11 test stands and covers an area equal to nine of New York City’s Central Parks.

Plenty of land helps keep GE from being a noisy neighbor, especially when engineers are testing engines at takeoff speeds. Extra space also allows it to stay within environmental regulations, which limit emissions per square acre, since testing gobbles up millions of gallons of jet fuel every year.

There are four indoor test cells and seven outdoor stands sprinkled on hilltops around the property. Seven of the sites are capable of testing engines pumping out 150,000 pounds of thrust. That upper limit hasn’t been necessary yet, since the world’s most powerful jet engine, GE90-115B, is rated at 115,000 pounds. 

Drinking from a fire hose does not seem so  hard after watching a water ingestion test. The test test blasts 800 gallons of water per minute inside a GEnx engine running at full thrust. Image credit: GE Aviation

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators require engine makers to run jet engines through dozens of tests before they are certified to fly. One of the most dramatic trials performed at Peebles involves testing for a “blade-out incident,” an event when a fan blade breaks and the fragments get sucked inside the engine. “It’s not pretty, but the engine casing must be strong enough to contain the debris and protect the aircraft,” De Bruin says.

 Workers simulate a blade-out by removing material from the fan blade and replacing it with a piece of plastic explosive. “We set it off remotely when the engine is in the right phase, say, operating at fan red-line speed,” De Bruin says, referring to the highest speed the fan can run.

Perhaps the strangest structures at Peebles are the turbulence control sphere (on the left) and the wind generator (right). The sphere serves as a wind shelter for controlling wind intake during simulations of engine distress. Image credit: GE Aviation

Researchers also use pneumatic air cannons to fire bird carcasses at engines to simulate bird strikes, and shoot hail the size of golf balls into the fans.

Another tribulation called the endurance test exposes engines to the equivalent of years of service in just a few months by letting them run continuously, save for normal servicing. “Nobody says it’s easy, but our engine must meet the highest standard,” De Bruin says.

Up to 10 “development” engines are built for each new engine design, De Bruin says. Technicians test them, open them up for inspection, rebuild them and test them again.

The team at Peebles is currently testing the LEAP jet engine developed by CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aviation and Snecma (Safran). It is the first jet engine with 3D-printed fuel nozzles and ultra-light parts made from heat-resistant ceramic matrix composites (CMCs). CFM has received more than $100 billion (U.S. list price) in orders and commitments for over 7,700 LEAPs. The engine will enter service in 2016.

The LEAP recently took its maiden flight on GE’s Boeing 747 test jet over the Mojave Desert. Image credit: GE Aviation 

The demand for GE’s new aircraft engines is making Peebles grow. GE has hired more than 100 people at the site over the last three years. The company  has also invested $70 million in technology upgrades, like a new indoor testing unit  that is big enough to accommodate the GE9X, the largest jet engine ever built with an 11-foot-diameter fan. (The engine is still in development.)

But technicians at Peebles are not only developing jet engines, they also making them. De Bruin and his team take every single one for a spin before it leaves the gate. “It’s us whom the engines now put through an endurance test,” he says. “But it’s a good thing.”

Here’s the skinny on conventional water-cooled nuclear reactors: they produce hundreds of megawatts of carbon-free power, but when they are done digesting their nuclear fuel, more than 95 percent of the available energy still remains locked inside. “If that happened to us with regular food, we would never be able to stop eating,” says Jonathan Allen, spokesman for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

But nuclear engineers working for Allen’s business have turned the equation on its head. Led by Eric Loewen, whom Esquire magazine described as “the man who could end global warming,” they’ve developed a new reactor that can produce 99 times more power per unit of uranium fuel compared to conventional nuclear power plants. “It’s like cars,” Loewen told Business Green. “Do you want to drive around in an old Ford [or] Buick that gets 10 miles to the gallon, or do you want to get in a hybrid that goes 40 miles per gallon?”

Top image: A pellet of plutonium PU-238. Scientists have used this isotope for powering thermoelectric generators on space probes, navigation beacons and other devices. Fast nuclear reactors like PRISM use PU-239, PU-240 and other isotopes. Image credit: NASA

Loewen’s reactor is called PRISM (above), short for Power Reactor Innovative Small Module. It eats used nuclear material like plutonium and other artificially made “transuranic” elements like americium and neptunium, and converts them into electrical energy. The technology was just named among several advanced nuclear projects that will receive $13 million in new funding from the Energy Department as part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. GE Hitachi will use the money to update statistical safety modeling of the reactor to assess the probability of external, design and operational risks.

The efficiency of the PRISM’s stomach combined with GE Hitachi’s Advanced Recycling Center has another benefit: the waste that comes out has a half life of just 300 years, as opposed to 300,000 years for nuclear fuel currently used. “Can humans make a structure that can last 300,000 years?” Loewen told Business Green. “No. For 300 years? Sure, you can see them outside.”

PRISM is a so-called “fast reactor.” It uses liquid sodium, rather than water, to cool the reactor. The sodium allows the neutrons to maintain higher energies and cause fission in elements such as plutonium more efficiently than water-cooled reactors.

The PRISM design also incorporates “passive safety,” a design feature using the laws of physics, instead of human, electronic or mechanical intervention, to reduce the risk of an accident. PRISM relies on natural air circulation for cooling – hot air rising and cold air coming down – and does not need automatic systems, valves or operators to remove reactor heat after a shutdown with a complete loss electrical power.

PRISM is also relatively small. It can be built in modules in a factory, lowering the costs and adding another level of component control.

A few years ago, GE Hitachi proposed to the U.K. government to use a PRISM for managing the world’s largest civilian stockpile of plutonium and converting it into electricity and more benign waste. Soon, the U.K. will have 140 metric tons of plutonium. The government accumulated  it mostly in the 1970s and 80s when countries worried that they may run out of nuclear fuel.

The plutonium is stockpiled in the coastal town of Sellafield in northern England. GE Hitachi said that the PRISM reactor could use practically all of the plutonium stored at the site, produce low-carbon electricity, turning it from liability into an asset.

Of the many Eureka! moments experienced by scientists since Archimedes, Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of X-rays in 1895 was among the least auspicious.  When he trained his cathode ray apparatus on his wife’s hand and imaged the bones of her fingers, she recoiled and exclaimed: “I have seen my death!”

But first impressions can be misleading. Today, the idea of doctors using technology to look inside bodies has become as common as the stethoscope on their necks. “Radiology permeates all kinds of medicine,” says Jorg Debatin, chief technology officer at GE Healthcare. “The clinical power and incredible insight that modern-day medical imaging provides is staggering and impacts millions of patients every day.”

Debatin talked to GE Reports about medical imaging in connection with the International Day of Radiology, which falls on Nov. 8. GE Healthcare has decided to celebrate the event with a social media campaign called #SeeInsideIt. Workers at GE labs in Brazil, China, Hungary, Japan, Korea and the United States have imaged 100 everyday objects with X-rays, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Take and look at a sample, and good measure, don’t miss Mrs. Roentgen’s hand, the image that started it all.

Top image: An MRI animation of a cauliflower. Above: An MRI animation of a tomato. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of a crab. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image on a Rubik’s cube. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of an electric shaver. Image credit: GE Healthcare

A CT scan of a lock. Image credit: GE Healthcare

A CT animation of a grapefruit. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of a pumpkin. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of a coffee machine. Image credit: GE Healthcare

A CT animation of a toothpaste. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of a seashell. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of fish. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of a lobster. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An X-ray image of eggs. Image credit: GE Healthcare

A print of one of the first X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) of the left hand of his wife Anna Bertha Ludwig. (The bump on her second finger is her wedding ring.) It was presented to Professor Ludwig Zehnder of the Physik Institut, University of Freiburg, on 1 January 1896. Source: NASA

Who invented the color red? Well, nobody of course. But in another sense, you might say that Nick Holonyak did in the modern era, when he created the red LED at GE’s labs in 1962. Now, materials scientist Anant Setlur has reinvented the color. Working with a team of researchers at GE Lighting and in Europe, Setlur found and patented a way leading to the perfect red light.

Setlur says that the new LED technology could “vastly improve” the color and crispness of LED and LCD displays for everything from smartphones and tablets to TV sets. “We were able to make LEDs emit the color red in a narrow band that makes everything look sharper and cleaner than the current state-of-art technology,” Setlur says. “It really makes the pictures pop.”

His idea is one example why GE has been on the Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators list every year ever since its inception in 2011. The information and analytics firm released the most recent list on Friday. The list “honors the 100 corporations and institutions around the world that are at the heart of innovation as measured by a series of proprietary patent-related metrics.”

LED displays with PFS phosphor makes colors pop.

Here’s why Setlur’s LED is a breakthrough. A large part of how we see colors boils down to the spectrum of light emitted by the source. (Although light appears white, we can see its colored components corresponding to the particular wavelengths during a rainbow.)

Of these colors, the red has been the most difficult to produce. Deep red makes other colors like green and yellow more vivid. But to the human eye, it appears dim since it moves quickly to the invisible, infrared part of the spectrum. “For a long time, we had to choose between brightness and appearance,” Setlur says. The result was a compromise that yielded displays and screens with a broad red profile with enough brightness, but also washed out yellows, greens and oranges.

Setlur and a colleague at GE Lighting started looking for a “Goldilocks” red that was just right. They found clues in a material called potassium fluorosilicate (PFS). “This material looks like pure yellowish powder that does not do much, but when you dope it with manganese, it emits a beautiful narrow red line,” he says. “We were able to coax that manganese to do the heavy lifting for us.”

This yellowish potassium flourosilicate powder manufatured in GE labs was key to making a better red light. Top Image: PFS radiates clean red light under a UV lamp in the lab.

GE has already licensed the technology to Japan’s Sharp Corp. and Nichia Corp. Both companies are manufacturing and packaging LEDs containing the PFS phosphor material for use as LED backlights in a wide range of LCD display products. Several display companies have recently launched tablets, smartphones and large screen TV’s containing these LED devices supplied by the two licensees.

Says Setlur: “It took us a few years to get there but soon everyone will be able to see the light.”

Although many improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, are crude, homemade bombs, they’re among the most destructive weapons U.S. soldiers have encountered over the last decade. “When we got into Iraq and Afghanistan, we weren’t prepared for that kind of fight,” Lt. Gen. D. Johnson, director of the U.S. Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), said in July. “IEDs are not new,” he added. “Unfortunately for the world, their use is growing.”

During the 12 months ending in July, JIEDDO recorded more than 27,000 IED incidents, which caused 56,000 casualties around the world. While training and protection have improved, the military and its partners are also exploring the use of big data to fight injuries caused by the bombs.

There are at least two separate projects, including one involving GE, collecting data on injuries caused by IEDs. The research could make soldiers safer, lead to better equipment, and improve treatment and recovery. It could also help injured veterans return faster to civilian life. (GE alone employs more than 10,000 veterans and is looking to hire more.)

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Brazell, assigned to 1221st Route Clearance Company, South Carolina Army National Guard, prepares C-4 explosives to detonate an IED during a route clearance training scenario at McCrady Training Center, Eastover, S.C., June 24, 2014. Image credit: Tech. Sgt. Jorge Intriago, U.S. National Guard

Surgeons at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research are behind the first project. They have created a database called the Joint Trauma System (JTS), which gathers information on injuries, treatments and results coming from field hospitals and medical centers to obtain a more complete picture of what therapies work. “We realized we were generating all this data and that we needed to put it in a system,” JTS director Col. Jeffrey Bailey told the Txchnologist blog. “If you want to start talking about probabilities of treatment success, you need to start talking about populations of patients. This system quantifies care more than [just] on a patient-by-patient basis.”

The database applies some of the same principles used by digital patient records systems and outcome-based medicine. Trauma nurses on the battlefield input data into the web-based front end of the database as patients come in. “We now link the point of injury to the surgeon to the movement from the forward hospital all the way home,” Bailey says. He explains that the database is “a communication link that gives a global perspective to the system so you can see all the way downrange to actions that might affect an individual patient later on. This is about getting up above the level of the individual facility you’re working in—it’s about raising the consciousness of the entire system.”

The database now holds more than 150,000 records. Bailey says that the system has already helped surgeons improve the scheduling and timing of surgeries, and see what drugs work best to control major bleeding. “This isn’t a static system, it’s dynamic,” he says. “The information that gets entered in can be analyzed concurrently — data collection and analysis drive near real-time improvement in our operational practices.”

Top image: Douglas Woods of Georgia Tech is holding gear embedded with blast sensors. Image credit: Georgia Tech

The second project is underway at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), where scientists are helping the military understand how IED blasts affect the human body. They’ve developed a wearable network of pressure sensors, a data recorder and an accelerometer, called the Integrated Blast Effects Sensor Suite (IBESS) to analyze explosions.

IBESS helps record and recreate the conditions of the explosion, a complex event where a supersonic blast wave and the compressed air riding in front of it can cause major types of damage to a person’s body. “No one knows to what extent overpressure or acceleration causes injuries,” said Marty Broadwell, another GTRI principal research scientist. “Nor do we know how quickly an injury will show up, how long it will last or which soldiers are more resistant to harm than others. The only way to understand the impact of a blast is to collect data, which is precisely what IBESS does.”

GE’s Intelligent Platforms unit supplied the Georgia Tech team with a rugged, off-the-shelf computer system, which can process large amounts of raw data from the body sensors and also sensors located on vehicles. The sensors record time, GPS location, pressure changes when an explosion goes off and other information.

The researchers will use the data to better understand how to prevent injuries and improve care. “We don’t really have the information on how a soldier was injured,” said Dr. Shean Phelps, a GTRI principal research scientist. “We don’t really know in an underbelly blast all the pieces of the puzzle.”

Remote security monitors, thermostats and other home technology that adjusts to customers’ habits— these smart devices have been for several years mostly the domain of the well-off and techies.

No more. Initiatives like the Quirky + GE partnership between GE and the collaborative invention company Quirky are helping to make the smart light bulbs, air conditioners and home monitors affordable for any homeowner or renter. Today, GE + Quirky launched Wink.com, a place where consumers can shop and explore what’s possible in smart home technologies. It also introduced seven new products that will make homes smarter but also help customers save power and money.

“In just 18 months, we have introduced an entire ecosystem of products [and] a powerful app that interacts with hundreds of connected devices from leading brands,” says Ben Kaufman, Quirky’s founder and chief executive. “Today [we are starting] a comprehensive campaign to educate the world on what it means to live in the connected home.”

Spotter UNIQ can connect four home sensors.

Since the beginning of their partnership in 2013, Quirky and GE have launched a new line of smart home products like the Link LED light bulb and the Aros AC. They allow customers to turn on the lights and change the temperature inside their homes from their smartphones while they are away, better manage their energy use, and cut their utility bills.

Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer of GE, says that “GE and Quirky see an exceptional opportunity to make the connected home accessible and affordable to the masses, with focus on lighting, energy management and safety,”

Ascend allows customers to control your garage door from anywhere.

The partnership is building on the nimbleness of Quirky’s designers and the company’s speed to market with GE’s scale and technological expertise.

To be sure, most American adults have yet to adopt smart home technology. According to a national study carried out by GE and Quirky, one of the biggest barriers to a wider adoption is the belief that smart devices are a luxury. Only about a quarter of people surveyed view smart home technologies as affordable, with a third agreeing that they’re a good value for the money. Wink.com is part of a campaign to convince that that the connected is not a passing fad but a smart investment.

Here’s a list of the latest smart home offerings available for pre-sale on Wink.com:

Tapt— Two smart switches that enable one-touch control over connected devices, including smart bulbs.

Norm— A thermostat that allows you to set your home’s temperature and control it from anywhere.

Outlink—In-wall outlet that lets you control power and monitor energy usage from anywhere.

Tripper— A sensor that allows you to keep tabs on any door or window in your house from anywhere. It will send you an alert whenever a connected hatchway opens or shuts.

Ascend— Connects your existing garage opener to the Wink app so you can control your garage door from anywhere.

Overflow— A sensor that alerts your mobile device when it detects water leakage at the washing machine and the toilet, among other fixtures and appliances

Spotter UNIQ– Links up to fours sensors to keep tabs on what’s going on at home no matter where you are.

Aon Hewitt, the global human resources and consulting company, ranked GE first on its annual Global Aon Hewitt Top Companies for Leaders list. In 2011, the last time the company ran the survey, GE finished in 11th place.

Since Aon Hewitt launched the list in 2001, it has become the most comprehensive global leadership survey, analyzing links between leadership and financial performance.

The companies on the 2014 list were ranked by a panel of independent judges based on a number of criteria, including strength of leadership practices and culture, examples of leader development on a global scale, alignment of business and leadership strategy, company reputation, and business and financial performance.

The Aon Hewitt ranking is the latest in a string of recent honors received by GE. LinkedIn put the company on its World’s 100 Most InDemand Employers list, and it was also one of the Hay Group’s Best Companies for Leadership.  

“We are immensely proud to be ranked first on the Aon Hewitt list,” said Raghu Krishnamoorthy, vice president for executive development and GE’s chief learning officer. “This global recognition affirms the strength of the GE leadership philosophy, which holds that when one person grows we all grow, and together, we all rise. We believe every GE employee is a leader.  Every employee therefore has a hand in this accomplishment, and should feel a deep sense of pride.”  

GE invests $1 billion in employee development every year and the company says that building leadership has been integral to its culture since it was founded 130 years ago. GE’s top leaders spend a third of their time on leadership development and the company’s “corporate university” in Crotonville, N.Y. (top image and above), has become a global hub for developing new thinking about leadership, strategy, innovation and global performance.

For example, the company recently embraced a new set of leadership and performance initiatives, including simplification, FastWorks and the GE Beliefs.

The Beliefs are a set of principles like accountability and autonomy designed to change employee and management mindset and make everyone “focus on delivering results to customers, who determine GE’s success,” says Jeff Immelt, GE Chairman and CEO. “That’s the only way we can move fast and grow at scale and at a lower cost. When we win, we win together.”

GE opened its Brazil Technology Center in Rio de Janeiro today. The $500 million research hub will focus on developing advanced technologies for offshore oil and gas exploration and production.

The center, GE’s first in Latin America, will employ 400 researchers by the end of the decade. They will work with Petrobras, Statoil, BG Group and other GE customers in the region on solving engineering challenges such as drilling 40,000-foot deep wells 100 miles off shore, and processing oil and gas 10,000 feet below the sea level, in an alien world dominated by darkness and crushing pressures.

“Our new research center in Brazil will allow GE to innovate locally for our customers in Latin America and then export those innovations to the world, “ said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, who is in Rio for the opening. “Over the past decade, we have doubled down on our R&D investment and expanded our global network of research centers to address customers’ growing needs for breakthrough technology that we develop with them. We see significant growth opportunities in Latin America and having the best technology and solutions will ensure we maintain GE’s competitive edge.”

One company developing new technologies to unlock deep-water oil and gas resources is Norway’s Statoil. The energy giant was recently awarded new exploration licenses in the Espírito Santo basin located almost 100 miles off the coast of Brazil. “The licenses are located in the deep water sector of the Espírito Santos basin, in 2,000-to-3,000-meter water depth, and, assuming we are successful finding hydrocarbons, it will be a challenge to develop cost-effectively,” says Statoil’s Magnus Bernt, who is in charge of the company’s subsea research in Brazil. “At these water depths we have to think differently about field development, and Statoil believes subsea factory concepts, applying processing and boosting technologies at the sea bottom, can increase oil recovery and reduce capital expenditures.”

Click here to download. Top image: Statoil’s rendering of the subsea factory. Image credit: Statoil

In 2008 GE and Statoil established a formal technology cooperation agreement on subsea technology development.  In 2009, Statoil decided to start R&D in Brazil, focusing on research in IOR [improved oil recovery], CO2, carbonate reservoirs, and subsea technologies. “Together with GE, we are currently investigating technology collaboration opportunities for the deep water subsea factory, taking advantage of the test facilities of the new GE R&D center in Brazil,” Bernt explains.

GE is already working with Petrobras and BG Group on research projects to develop the technologies and equipment that will be required to move production from floating platforms to the seabed.

Some of the biggest commercial opportunities in the oil industry today are in offshore exploration and production and particularly in the so-called “pre-salt” layers that dominate the deep water off the coast of Brazil.

The pre-salt is a layer of sedimentary rocks formed by the separation of the current American and African continents. It comprises large accumulations of valuable high quality light oil.

Today, the processing of offshore oil and gas happens at the surface on platforms often located miles from a wellhead. This limits how much oil and gas can be recovered and makes what can be recovered more costly to process.

The subsea factory takes some of the surface processing functions and moves them to the sea floor. New technologies that use subsea pumps and compressors will also increase recovery and could offer more economical oil field development with lower emissions. This reduces the capital and operating costs  and minimizes the risks associated with having a manned platform out at sea. 

Thomas Edison opened GE’s first research labs in 1900 in Schenectady, in upstate New York. Nobel winners such as radio telegraph inventor Guglielmo Marconi, Niels Bohr, who deciphered the structure of the atom, and I.P. Pavlov famous for his conditioned dogs came for a visit.

GE has since added labs in San Ramon, California, Shanghai, Bangalore, Munich and now in Rio. They employ over 3,000 people, including 1,125 PhDs.

GE spends annually between 5 and 6 percent of revenues on R&D. Its scientists are working on a long list of problems, from new materials for jet engines and gas turbines to molecular diagnostics, better batteries, and software analytics that crunch machine data coming over the Industrial Internet.

GE once hired St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson to throw a fastball through a window made from Lexan, a sheer plastic glass developed in GE labs by chemist Daniel Fox and resistant to impact. Gibson threw more than 50 pitches and failed.

GE engineer Ivar Giaever tried something similar on the atomic scale and succeeded. Using electrons instead of baseballs, Giaever figured out how to send them through a piece of superconductor and demonstrated the “quantum tunneling" effect in the material. Giaever shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for his breakthrough, which helped GE build its magnetic resonance machine (MRI) a decade later.

Both Fox and Giaever did their research at the mothership, GE’s global research headquarters near Schenectady, N.Y. But that lab is now part of a global research network of some 3,000 scientists stretching from New York to Germany, India, and China. Yesterday, GE added Brazil to that list, when it opened the Brazil Technology Center in Rio de Janeiro, its first R&D center in Latin America. 

Charles Steinmetz (wearing light suit in the middle) flanked by Albert Einstein at RCA’s wireless station in Brunswick, N.J., in 1921. Steinmetz’s barn in Schenectady was the original GE research lab. Image credit: Franklin Township Public Library archive

The gleaming $500 million center (above) has come a long way since GE’s R&D beginning more than a century ago: a barn behind the house of engineer Charles Steinmetz. “It does seem to me therefore that a company as large as the General Electric Company, should not fail to continue investing and developing in new fields,” said GE co-founder Elihu Thomson. “There should, in fact, be a research laboratory for commercial applications of new principles, and even for the discovery of those principles.”

The barn lab (above) opened in 1900 and employed three people. But it caught fire (below) and Steinmetz and Thomson found bigger and safer premises in Schenectady.

Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

The new lab soon attracted many famous visitors, including wireless telegraph pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, quantum physicist Niels Bohr, and I.P. Pavlov famous for his conditioned dogs. Steinmetz hired MIT chemistry professor Wilis Whitney as the lab’s first director and each visitor had stop by his desk and sign a guest book.

Elihu Thomson at his observatory. Image credit: GE Global Research

Visitors to GE labs included Lord Kelvin (light suit in the middle) and his wife. The Kelvin absolute temperature scale was named in his honor. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

The labs also attracted famous non-scientists, including Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Nixon, as well as Amelia Earhart and Harry Houdini. They spoke to local citizens from WGY, GE’s radio station in Schenectady. It began broadcasting in 1922 from a 1,500-watt transmitter. It was one of the first radio stations in the U.S.  with regularly scheduled programming.

Amelia Earhart visited GE. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

As did Harry Houdini: Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

Charles Lindbergh. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

F.D.R. came to Schenectady during his 1932 presidential campaign. Image credit: Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science

Whitney’s guest book. Image credit: GE Global Research

Edison’s signature (middle left) and Marconi’s (top left). Image credit: GE Global Research

Kunihiko Iwadare began his career by working for Edison. When he returned to Japan, he founded Nippon Electric Co., known today as NEC Corporation. German chemist Fritz Haber found a way to fix ammonia and synthesize fertilizer. His discovery helped feed the world. Niels Bohr (sixth down) won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics. Frank C. Hoyt worked closely with Erwin Schroedinger on quantum theory. Image credit: GE Global Research

Pavlov, who traveled to Schenectady from Russia,  won the  1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology. He is best known for discovering conditioned reflexes, which was a result of his famous experiments with dogs. But his research also contributed to medicine and physiology. Image credit: GE Global Research

On October 6, a Boeing 747 modified for testing jet engines taxied along a concrete runway on the edge of the Mojave Desert and took off with a brand new engine strapped to its left wing. Although the engine’s maiden flight was short, it made aviation history.

For the first time, the engine, called LEAP, flew with 19 fuel nozzles 3D-printed by a computer-guided laser from layers of metal powder (see below). “We designed these nozzles to efficiently feed fuel into the jet engine, but they are also a work of art,” says Greg Morris, a 3D-printing pioneer who leads additive manufacturing research at GE Aviation. (GE Aviation acquired his company, Morris Technologies, in 2012.) “Methods like 3D printing give designers new freedoms and unleash their imagination. You couldn’t make this nozzle any other way.”

A 3D-printed fuel nozzle for the LEAP. Image credit: CFM International

GE is making sure that 3D printing and other additive manufacturing tools like it liberate every designer on its payroll. The company just announced it would spend $32 million to build a new research and education center focused on additive technologies in Pennsylvania. “We want to light the fire behind additive,” Morris says. “This is still a young tool, but it’s also a very powerful and disruptive tool. We want to maximize its use across all of GE’s businesses.”

Additive manufacturing is the opposite of traditional “subtractive” manufacturing methods like turning, milling and drilling, which remove material from the product to achieve its final shape. Additive techniques, as the name implies, makes parts by adding one thin layer of material on top of another. It’s like building a loaf of bread from individual slices.

This approach allows designers to achieve lighter and more durable shapes that were previously impossible to produce. Since the finished components are very close to the final look, the technology can also dramatically reduce manufacturing waste.

Additive manufacturing allows designers to create parts like this jet engine combustor that would be very difficult to make on conventional machines. Image credit: GE Aviation.

The 3D-printed LEAP fuel nozzle, for example, is five times more durable than the previous model, and 25 percent lighter. Additive manufacturing allowed engineers to reduce the number of individual pieces that were brazed and welded together from 20 to just one part, and achieve the best fuel flow geometry. “These tools unleash incredible creativity,” Morris says.

 (The nozzles are made by Advanced Atomization Technologies, a joint venture between GE and Parker Aerospace. The LEAP engine was developed by CFM International, a joint company owned equally by GE and France’s Snecma.)

GE will use the new 125,000-square-foot facility, which will be located in western Pennsylvania, to train designers and engineers on additive manufacturing design and production, and work closely with students at nearby Carnegie Mellon University, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh.

Last year, GE and GrabCAD held an open 3D-printing challenge to redesign a jet engine bracket. The original bracket weighed 2,033 grams (4.48 pounds), but the winner was able to reduce its weight by nearly 84 percent to just 327 grams (0.72 pounds).

The center will have 3D printers and other additive machines that can work both with plastics and metal. GE businesses will have access to the machines to handle overflow orders, make prototypes and produce new parts without spending capital on their own. “The idea is to bring everyone together, share costs and explore our common needs,” Morris says. “It will also help us keep certain intellectual property in house.”

Besides using additive manufacturing to make things, the center’s 50 engineers will also work on developing new materials for additive technologies.

The new center will join five advanced manufacturing centers GE businesses opened in the U.S. in the last two years: Greenville, S.C. (Power & Water), Asheville, N.C. (Aviation), Auburn, Ala. (Aviation), Jacksonville, Fla. (Oil & Gas), and Rutland, Vt. (Aviation).

Dan Heintzelman, GE vice chairman, said that a recent $75 million upgrade of the Rutland center has allowed GE Aviation to apply new advanced manufacturing technology to jet engine production and save $300 million.

“We made a big bet that additive manufacturing is not a flash in a pan,” Morris says. “We know  this is a way we are going to make various parts in the future. We are now in the process of training people and building awareness throughout the company. Engineers need to realize that they have this very powerful and enabling tool at their disposal.”

The new center is scheduled to open in 2015.

Last spring, the National Football League, the sports performance brand Under Armour, and GE called on researchers, scientists and enthusiasts to find new tools for detecting concussions and protecting football players from traumatic brain injuries.

The partners just announced the first seven winners of the latest stage of the Head Health Challenge. Their solutions range from 3D virtual reality systems designed to detect brain injury to 3D printed “microlattice” materials engineered to reduce the force of the impact and a helmetless training technique. Take a look.

A team at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, has developed a special plastic called  “rate-dependent strapping material.” It stretches like bubblegum when pulled slowly, but becomes much stiffer when you try to jerk it.  The material could be used to attach the head to the torso and control head motion.

Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., and Georgia Tech came up with a portable device called iDetect. They plan to use the system to measure changes in the brain affecting memory, reaction time and balance after a person is hit in the head.

A team of researchers from the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Neuro Kinetics, Inc. came up with easy to use, portable 3D virtual reality goggles. They use fast miniature cameras to look for changes in eye movement and abnormal responses associated with concussions. 

Scientists from University of California, Los Angeles partnered with the firm Architected Materials, Inc. on a new energy-absorbing material that could replace the foam padding in existing helmets and reduce the force of a head hit. The plastic, which resembles a delicate honeycomb, is made from a special 3D-printed “microlattice.” The team can also use the material to collect data, see where the hits are coming from and detect their severity.

Scientists at the University of Washington and VICIS, Inc. in Seattle are also building a better helmet that can protect players against skull fractures and traumatic brain injury. Their helmet is better able to absorb impact forces believed to cause concussions.

University of New Hampshire researcher Erik Swartz took a different approach. He is placing pill-sized accelerometers, gyroscopes and other head sensors behind players’ ears to measure the effectiveness of Helmetless Tackling Training (HUTT), a training technique he developed to teach players to “keep their heads out of the game.” The players are working through tackling drills, but without helmets and shoulder pads in place. “The concept is that when you go into contact with another person and your head is not protected, you are much more likely to leave your head out of the contact,” Schwartz says. 

Detroit’s Viconic Sporting, Inc. is using its car industry expertise to develop yet another approach to prevent head injury. The company is working on special resilient plastic pads that would go underneath the artificial turf on the field, buckle and absorb the impact energy when players fall down.

The Head Health Challenge is part of a four-year, $40-million R&D drive funded by the NFL, GE and Under Armour.  It set aside as much as $20 million for two open innovation challenges. The winners of the first challenge, which looked at improving the diagnosis and prognosis of traumatic brain injuries, were announced in the January, 2014. This week’s winners were competing in the second challenge exploring innovative ways for identifying and preventing brain injury.