3D printing has come a long way over the past 20 years. Engineers and designers already print jewelry, airplane parts, bone implants, and even toothbrushes directly from a computer file, layer by layer, using a laser or an electron beam. But the process can take hours or days. No wonder companies active in the space are looking for ways to step on the gas.

“One of the limitations of the technology today is that we can only print so fast,” says Bob Filkins, a senior principal engineer in Additive Technologies at GE Global Research. Filkins and his team are betting on lasers.

First some background: Right now, 3D printers for metals typically form parts using a 400-watt laser beam to weld together fine layers of powder no thicker than the width of a human hair, or 100-150 microns. “If we just arbitrarily took larger lasers and shot them at the powder bed, it would blow up,” says Filkins.

That’s exactly the point of Filkins’ research. He would like to bring more power to the process and find a way to use lasers 10 times more intense than those currently in use. It would allow him to cover more ground and print faster without compromising the design.

Why? Filkins says that 3D printing is a little like painting a room. A painter with a tiny paintbrush can do a very precise job, but it will take her a long time. Swapping the paintbrush for a paint roller would allow her to cover much more ground faster.

Above: Faster 3D printers could one day allow aircraft manufacturers print parts of planes. This is a “bionic” concept design for an Airbus jet. Image credit: Airbus Operations. Top: Many 3D printers for metals print parts directly from a computer file, layer by layer. The machines fuse together fine layers of metal powder with a laser. Image credit: GE Additive.

Building on this analogy, Filkins and his team are developing laser paint rollers for the 3D-printing world. In this case, that doesn’t mean a huge broad brush as opposed to a tiny one. The shape of the beam hitting the bed of powdered metal could have a complex pattern and look like a cloverleaf, a donut or a ring.

He says that expanding its footprint even by a small amount would allow 3D printers to work with more powerful lasers. The extra watts would go mostly to the broader laser footprint, which in turn would cover more ground faster. “Just consider that GE Aviation will be printing well over 200,000 fuel nozzles to meet their CFM LEAP engine orders,” Filkins says. “If we could print these parts 10 times faster, we would save 40 million build-hours.”

Faster printing also will be key in large 3D-printing machines like Project ATLAS, which GE Additive unveiled in November. The new machine will be able to print parts 1 meter long along each of the three axes. “As the industry looks to scale in size of machines and parts being made, higher speeds are essential to keep build times feasible,” Filkins says.

Filkins and his team, which includes National Inventors Hall of Fame member Marshall Jones, expect to have a working prototype next year.

“In 60 years, laser technology itself has transformed so many industries and applications from surgery in the operating room to the internet itself,” Filkins says. “Now we have an opportunity to transform manufacturing as we know it, which is very exciting.”

3D printing may still seem a bit like science fiction, but in truth, it’s all around us — in luxury vehicles, jet engines and customized implants used to rebuild skulls and bones.

And now the technology is moving deeper into the hot belly of industry — inside power plants, where it’s helping utilities generate more electricity and reduce emissions. “It’s a total disruptor,” says Guy Deleonardo, executive product manager for gas turbines at GE Power’s Gas Power Systems business. GE Power has already shipped more than 9,000 3D-printed components for use in gas turbines to customers the world.

Deleonardo says that in the past, it took GE up to a decade to move the efficiency of a turbine up a single percentage point. But with 3D printing at the company’s disposal, the time can now be counted in just years. That’s because the technology enables designers to quickly manufacture prototypes, test them, tweak their design and hit print again.

When they are happy with the result, 3D printing also allows them to mass-produce the final parts with efficiency-boosting shapes that are too complex or expensive to make with traditional manufacturing methods.

One example are 3D-printed fuel nozzles for GE’s latest HA-class gas turbines. A French power plant with an HA turbine earned a spot in “Guinness World Records” in 2016 as the most efficient combined-cycle power station, clocking in at 62.2 percent efficiency.

But even before the news about the record came out, GE engineers were already beginning to make prototypes of a new 3D-printed nozzle that allowed them to push up efficiency to 64 percent this fall.

The engineers had to reach temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit to achieve efficiency this high. The design of the new nozzle mixes fuel and air in such a way that it also allows them to do this and also maintain low nitrogen oxides emissions at the same time. This combination was an important breakthrough. The team is now using it to bring efficiency of the HA turbines even higher — to 65 percent.

GE engineers 3D-printed a new fuel nozzle (top) that allowed them to push up the efficiency of a GE HA-class gas turbine to 64 percent this fall. Images credit: GE Power.

Engineers considered several options when designing the new nozzle, but they quickly settled on using additive manufacturing methods like 3D printing. The same part manufactured in a machine shop would have many thousands of brazed joints. The actual 3D-printed part they developed has no need for such joints. “That’s very exciting to engineers, as each of those joints creates [an opportunity for] a potential leak and decreased reliability,” Deleonardo says.

This zero-joint design enabled them to achieve shorter, hotter flames and faster combustion. The hotter, shorter combustion cycle means power plants need less fuel and produce fewer emissions, saving both money and the environment. Moving from 63 percent to 64 percent efficiency saves a large gas-fired power plant about $50 million in fuel costs over its life cycle.

3D printers produce parts layer by layer, directly from a computer file. GE Power uses a cobalt-chrome alloy in the nozzle, and the powdered metal used for printing must meet exact specifications. Deleonardo’s team also has to keep an eye on more than 150 process parameters to make sure that the nozzle will survive in the harsh environment inside the gas turbines for as long as planned. “It’s all about chemistry and particle size of the metal powder,” Deleonardo says.

In 2016, GE acquired a majority stake in Arcam, which makes 3D printers as well as printing powders, providing the company with new, valuable know-how. “With companies like Arcam, which make printers, powder and also provide 3D-printing expertise, we have a complete offering,” says Mohammad Ehteshami, who runs GE Additive.

As with all 3D-printed parts, the ability to quickly boost production and incorporate new designs is another huge benefit because iterating the design and building more nozzles simply requires more printers. Additive manufacturing also cuts costs by making the supply chain simpler, compared with traditional production methods like casting and machining.

GE Aviation already prints fuel nozzles for jet engines that carry passengers, and Deleonardo sees continued growth of 3D-printed part capability in the future. He expects advancements in available materials, the speed of production, part durability and the physical size of what we can print, allowing for greater efficiencies — and fewer emissions for a healthier environment. “Additive opens the design space to areas that we have yet to explore,” he says. “Engineers don’t have to follow the rules, just their imaginations.”

A French power plant with an HA turbine earned a spot in “Guinness World Records” in 2016 as the most efficient combined-cycle power station, clocking in at 62.2 percent efficiency. Image credit: GE Reports.

In October, engineers at Avio Aero, a GE Aviation company, used a futuristic process called cold spray to repair a gearbox on the GE90, the largest and most powerful jet in the world. The technology uses a special supersonic nozzle attached to a robotic arm. The nozzle shoots a barrage of tiny metal specks at four times the speed of sound at metal components like the gearbox. The bits land with such force that the solid-state particles start behaving like liquid, form a new layer and restore worn-out sections without changing the mechanical properties of the original.

The feat was a major milestone in the world of additive manufacturing, a family of new technologies that includes 3D printing. But GE engineers barely stopped to take a victory lap.

Leo Ajdelsztajn and his team of scientists at GE Global Research are already taking the technology to the next level. They are working on ways to use cold spray to build new parts instead of just fixing them. “One of the advantages of cold spray as an additive manufacturing modality is that we are not confined to a specific build volume or size,” says Ajdelsztajn.

Additive manufacturing usually happens in a confined space. GE recently introduced a beta version of the world’s largest 3D printer for metals, which can build parts as large as 1 meter along each of three axes.

Cold spray could work on a larger scale. Recently, Ajdelsztajn and his team added a second robotic arm and machine learning into the mix. Moving in perfect sync, one arm holds the part, always moving it to a precise location, while the other sprays it with powdered metal, adding material to it. The robots move together in a fully coordinated 12-degrees-of-freedom space, which means they can move not only forward and backwards and up and down, but they also can tilt and pitch in different directions. The team already used the experimental design to build an airfoil for a jet engine.

For this technique to be effective, and repeatable on a large scale, the robots have to move with exact precision. If one is off by as little as the width of a human hair, Ajdelsztajn says, the entire part could be ruined.

That’s why the team reached out across the hall to Joe Vinciquerra, a GE scientist exploring ways to include artificial intelligence and machine learning into 3D printing and other manufacturing technologies. The idea is to make the robots learn as they work and improve with every new part they make. “Imagine painting the same picture 40,000 times per year,” Vinciquerra says, referring to typical production numbers of additive parts. “Not every picture will be identically the same — even if a machine is doing it. Some will be better than others, and we can learn from those minute differences. By applying those changes in real time, the quality of every new painting increases.”

Vinciquerra says that the robots should be able to improve as time goes on and limit mistakes by analyzing the set of instructions the robots followed each time they made a part.

There are many different modalities of 3D printing, some using lasers to build a part, for example, and others using an electron beam. Adelsztajn says that cold spray is “a different brush in the painter’s kit. One way in which we are building our additive toolbox is by looking at how each additive technique balances the others — an artist wouldn’t limit themselves to one color of paint and one size brush.”

A musician who lost an arm played the piano again thanks to a special prosthesis, new muscles allowed robots to lift as much as 1,000 times their own weight, and glowing trees could one day illuminate our streets. This week, the future seems especially bright!

Player Piano 2.0

What is it? Gil Weinberg, a professor at the Georgia Tech College of Design, built an extraordinary prosthetic limb for a musician who lost his arm below the elbow in an electrocution accident five years ago. The prosthesis allows him to control individual fingers and even play the piano. “It’s completely mind-blowing,” the musician, Jason Barnes, told Georgia Tech. “This new arm allows me to do whatever grip I want, on the fly, without changing modes or pressing a button. I never thought we’d be able to do this.”

Why does it matter? The prosthesis “provides fine motor hand gestures that aren’t possible with current commercially available devices,” the university reported. “If this type of arm can work on music, something as subtle and expressive as playing the piano, this technology can also be used for many other types of fine motor activities such as bathing, grooming and feeding,” Weinberg said. “I also envision able-bodied persons being able to remotely control robotic arms and hands by simply moving their fingers.”

How does it work? Weinberg and his Georgia Tech colleagues attached an ultrasound probe — the same kind doctors use to examine expectant mothers — to the muscles left in his arm after amputation. The probe can distinguish between muscle contractions when Barnes tries to move different fingers. Combined with machine learning, the prosthesis “can detect continuous and simultaneous movements of each finger, as well as how much force he intends to use,” the university reported. “By using this new technology, the arm can detect which fingers an amputee wants to move, even if they don’t have fingers,” Weinberg said.

Robots Flexing Muscles

What is it? Scientists working at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory designed origami-inspired “muscles” that allow soft robots to lift as much as 1,000 times their own weight.

Why does it matter? Each muscle is really an actuator, allowing the robot to better control its movement. “Now that we have created actuators with properties similar to natural muscle, we can imagine building almost any robot for almost any task,” said Wyss Institute’s Rob Wood, corresponding author of the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

How does it work? The muscles have an inner skeleton made from metal coils and plastic sheets folded in a special pattern. The skeleton is sealed in a plastic or textile bag filled with air or water. The team can flex the muscles by applying vacuum pressure at certain points of the system.

Fishing Around For Power

What is it? Researchers at the University of Michigan, the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and the University of California in San Diego built a soft, transparent power generator inspired by the electric eel. The University of Michigan reported that the device, made from hydrogel and salt is “the first potentially biocompatible artificial electric organ that generates more than 100 volts” and could be powerful enough to run a pacemaker.

Why does it matter? The technology is still in its early stages, but it could be used one day “for powering implantable or wearable devices without the toxicity, bulk or frequent recharging that come with batteries,” the university reported. “Further down the road, it could even lead to bioelectric systems that could generate electricity from naturally occurring processes inside the body.”

How does it work? Emulating the compartments eels use to generate electricity, the team created two special sheets that produce an electric current when pressed together. “The electric organs in eels are incredibly sophisticated; they’re far better at generating power than we are,” said Michael Mayer, a professor of biophysics at the Adolphe Merkle Institute. “But the important thing for us was to replicate the basics of what’s happening.”

DNA Mining

“Using our method, one needs only a few DNA reads to infer a match to an individual in the database,” says Sophie Zaaijer, the lead author of the study. Image credit: Getty Images.

What is it? Scientists at Columbia University and the New York Genome Center have found a way to “quickly and accurately identify people and cell lines from their DNA.”

Why does matter? The university reported that the technology could help police investigate crimes and also “flag mislabeled or contaminated cell lines in cancer experiments, major reason that studies are later invalidated.”

How does it work? The team developed a special machine learning algorithm and combined it with a portable MinION DNA sequencer the size of a credit card. The combination allows the team to fine-tune results from the MinION with genetic data available online “to validate the identity of people and cells by their DNA with near-perfect accuracy.” The team used data from the public DNA.land database to identify Sophie Zaaijer, the lead author of the study, “within minutes.” Zaaijer compared the approach “to the brain’s ability to make out a bird from a few telling features in an abstract Picasso line-drawing,” according to the university. Said Zaaijer: “Using our method, one needs only a few DNA reads to infer a match to an individual in the database.”

This Watercress Can Give Us The Green Light

What is it? Engineers at MIT have developed watercress that glows in the dark.

Why does it matter? The team believes that “with further optimization,” such plants could one day illuminate indoor spaces. “The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp — a lamp that you don’t have to plug in,” said Michael Strano, professor of chemical engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study published in the journal Nano Letters. “The light is ultimately powered by the energy metabolism of the plant itself.”

How does it work? The researchers embedded special nanoparticles in the leaves of the watercress plant and made it “give off dim light for nearly four hours.” But this is just the beginning, Strano says. “Our target is to perform one treatment when the plant is a seedling or a mature plant, and have it last for the lifetime of the plant,” Strano told MIT News. “Our work very seriously opens up the doorway to streetlamps that are nothing but treated trees, and to indirect lighting around homes.”

Top image: Nanobionic light-emitting watercress plants illuminate John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The team placed the book and the plants in front of a reflective paper to increase the effect. Image credit: Seon-Yeong Kwak.

The Concorde, the iconic pointy-nosed supersonic jet that shuttled passengers between Paris, London, New York and other choice destinations, landed for the last time 14 years ago, after 27 years in service. The only civil supersonic airplane to enter service apart from Russia’s TU-144 jet, the plane was never replaced. “The Concorde was successful from a technical standpoint, but in terms of economics, it was too expensive to operate, its range was limited, it was noisy and its fuel consumption was high,” says Jeff Miller, vice president of marketing at the U.S. aircraft design firm Aerion.

But engineers at Aerion, Lockheed Martin and GE Aviation are working to change that. According to a memorandum of understanding they signed today in Washington, D.C, they agreed to “explore the feasibility of a joint development of the world’s first supersonic business jet,” and will spend the next 12 months working together “to develop a framework on all phases of the program, including engineering, certification and production.”

The jet, called AS2, could shuttle as many as 12 passengers over water at a maximum speed of Mach 1.4, 60 percent faster than the speed of sound, or about 1,000 miles per hour. The plane’s special design could also allow it to fly at  Mach 1.2 without a sonic boom reaching the ground over areas permitted by regulation. Sonic boom is the loud sound set off by shockwaves caused by an aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound.

The AS2 could fly nonstop from Los Angeles as far as Paris. It shrink transatlantic travel to just 3 hours, allowing executives and the jet set to turn a visit to Europe or the East Coast into a day trip.

Aerion has already spent the last 15 years developing AS2, a supersonic jet that could carry up to 12 people in high comfort from London to Seattle, Miller says. “We’ve been focusing on improving efficiency so we can lower the cost of operations and extend the range of the plane so it’s not limited to just barely getting across the Atlantic,” he says. “Now you’ve got an airplane that will really take you places.”

The company has been working with NASA and Airbus’ Defense & Space unit on finding the most optimal design for the aircraft, and with GE Aviation on selecting the best engine for the jet. “We’ve reached the conclusion that it’s not feasible to start with a clean-sheet engine design,” Miller says. “It would cost too much and take too long. With GE, we have a good opportunity to take an existing engine core and adapt it.”

The key to Aerion’s design is a concept called natural laminar flow proposed by aerodynamicist and Aerion founder Richard Tracy, who has had a hand in such diverse and innovative aircraft as the Canadair Challenger business and the single-stage-to-orbit Rockwell X-30 spaceplane concept. Supersonic natural laminar flow allows smooth layers of air to travel over wings without turbulence. Aerion has used proprietary software to design thin, composite wings with a low “aspect ratio” similar to jet fighter wings.

Unlike the delta-shaped wings of the Concorde, the Aerion wing design has a modestly swept leading edge, which promotes laminar flow. The design allowed Aerion to reduce drag over the wing by as much 60 percent. Together with a laminar flow tail and an optimized airframe, the net friction drag of the entire plane is up to 20 percent lower, “which, in aeronautical terms, is a huge leap in efficiency,” the company says.

Lower drag means that the plane can use smaller, more efficient engines and still achieve speeds of up to Mach 1.4. “Clearly, GE’s experience with supersonic engines is going to be tremendously valuable to us,” Miller says.

Top: “Now you’ve got an airplane that will really take you places,” Miller says. Above: Aerion is building a full-scale model of the plane. Images credit: Aerion.

GE Aviation is best known for giant turbofan engines for long-distance passenger jets like the Dreamliner or the Boeing 777. But it also built the first American jet engine for the country’s first fighter jet during World War II, and its supersonic engines currently power planes like the  F-16 Fighting Falcon, made by Lockheed.  “Aerion sees an opportunity to pioneer a new segment in business aviation and more broadly for civil aviation,” says Brad Mottier, runs GE Aviation’s business and general aviation division. “Their goal is to design and certify the first civil supersonic aircraft in half a century.”

These types of engines are much smaller than the latest turbofans and are a good fit for Aerion. “If you look at the last 40 or 50 years, the aviation industry has achieved tremendous gains in fuel efficiency, in large part through increasing bypass ratio,” or the amount of air that flows around the engine core, Miller says. “However, the most efficient engine for a supersonic aircraft is a low bypass ratio engine, as you may find on today’s fighter jets, but these are too noisy for civil use. The solution is a moderate bypass engine that will meet today’s strict noise regulations. That will be the focus of our work with GE.”

The AS2 could take a first flight as soon as 2023 and receive certification from the FAA two years later.

“Aerion sees an opportunity to pioneer a new segment in business aviation and more broadly for civil aviation,” says GE Aviation’s Brad Mottier. Image credit: Aerion.

The AS2 could carry up to 12 people in high comfort from London to Seattle, Miller says. Image credit: Aerion.

Aerion says the laminar flow design will allow its plane to fly at Mach 1.4 over the ocean and also cruise efficiently just under the speed of sound overland. Image credit: Aerion.

In October, employees at LM Wind Power’s wind turbine blade factory in Castellón, Spain, briefly left their posts to send off their biggest achievement to date — all 241 feet of it. They sent the slender blade — four times longer than a bowling lane and the largest ever produced in Spain — to the local port, loaded it on a boat and shipped it to Germany, where it will harvest wind at the Merkur wind farm in the North Sea.

Bigger is better when it comes to wind turbines, especially those working offshore. Taller turbines with longer blades are able to reach higher into the sky, where winds are stronger and steadier. That makes them more efficient and able to generate more power more consistently. Turbines with long blades like those made by LM Wind Power, for example, generate about 100 times more energy than their predecessors made in the 1980s, whose blades were more than four times shorter on average.

But bigger is also harder to build. Extra-large blades weigh more, and to combat heavier sustained winds, they require stronger and more flexible components to attach them to the turbine rotor. The new LM Wind Power blades weigh 27 tons, even though they are hollow and the company makes them from a lightweight polyester fiber. They’re about 14 feet across at their widest spot near the base. Workers polish the blades’ sinuous, aerodynamic skin to precise specification so they can capture wind and turn the rotor even at lower wind speeds. The polishing takes place in a humidity- and temperature-controlled space because any variation in the surface can decrease the blade’s efficiency by as much as 2 percent.

Logistics is another stumbling block for the big blades. Transporting something nearly seven times longer than a telephone pole requires enormous preparation. Jose Luis Grau, LM Wind Power’s Castellón plant director, and his team spent 13 months working with state and local governments and the port authority to figure out how to move the first monster blade 29 miles from the factory to the port, located on Spain’s Mediterranean coast north of Valencia. Part of the preparation to get the blades to the port included removing lampposts and street signs, as well as paving throughways across roundabouts so the blades didn’t have to turn much.

But the trouble is worth it. Larger, more productive blades mean that wind farms will be able to generate the same amount of electricity with fewer turbines, making wind power more cost-effective. Wind power currently accounts for 11 percent of Europe’s electricity, and that number is expected to grow to 25 percent by 2030. Although onshore farms are the cheapest way in Europe to generate new power, offshore farms may be more flexible because they can grow to heights and scales impossible for their land-based cousins due to government height and noise restrictions and lack of available space. Plus, the wind offshore is simply better, in that it’s faster and more consistent.

Wind farm operators also have started adding sensors and software such as GE Digital’s Asset Performance Management (APM) system to make their turbines even more efficient. AMP uses data analytics to spot potential problems sooner and allow maintenance workers to fix them before they get out of hand. GE estimates customers will pay 15 percent less in maintenance costs because of new features like real-time diagnostics, which can help them avoid the expense of sending large marine cranes to carry out repairs.

GE Renewable Energy acquired LM Wind Power earlier this year. The company makes blades for GE turbines as well as those made by other manufacturers.

It’s not just Europe that’s interested in wind power. Renewable energy capacity in the U.S. tripled this decade, mainly due to wind and solar power growth. As turbine blades continue to lengthen, driving down costs, expect to see more wind farms whipping up energy and savings around the globe.

Over the last decade, Dr. Ferran Rosés i Noguer, head of the pediatric cardiology department at Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, Spain, has dedicated his efforts to studying his tiny patients’ hearts to help them get better.

This year, Rosés got his hands on a new ultrasound system that has changed the way he is able to care for patients like David, who was born with a congenital heart defect.

Immediately after birth, David underwent a heart operation, but one of the valves in his heart began leaking. The baby boy had symptoms of heart failure and could not be discharged from the hospital. After extensive evaluation, the team decided to surgically implant a new valve to help his heart.

The surgery was successful, yet a few days later, while recovering in Cardiac Intensive Care, things took a turn for the worse. David had developed a fever and had signs of an infection. To take a closer look, Rosés used GE Healthcare’s Vivid E95 ultrasound system with the new Productivity. Elevated. release. The image quality and definition were outstanding and allowed him to see the valve clearly, like never before. “It was as if someone turned on the lights,” Rosés recalls.

That’s because the software enabled his team to enhance ultrasound images pouring in from the scanner at a rate of more than 300 frames per second. The software then tracked the cells as they traveled through the heart.

Top and above: Software from GE Healthcare enabled Dr. Ferran Rosés i Noguer and his team to enhance ultrasound images and track the blood cells as they traveled through the heart. GIF credits: GE Healthcare.

Rosés was checking that the valve in David’s heart was not clotted or infected. Rosés knew that any restricted blood flow through that valve eventually could lead to heart damage or a new complex heart operation.

To the relief of the boy’s parents, results showed that blood was flowing freely. “I wouldn’t have been able to see the valve so clearly with other echo machines,” Rosés says. Today, David continues to be monitored but is doing well.

Rosés also has used the machine to help him implant a pacemaker in a 13-year-old girl who suffered from severe heart failure. The surgery was particularly delicate, requiring Rosés to insert wires into three of the four chambers of her heart. He needed to make sure that the wires, which pulse electricity into the heart to force it to contract, were in perfect synchronization and at the right level of power to allow the heart to beat but not put unnecessary strain on the muscle.

“I was able to add the electrodes, test them and then adjust the pacemaker practically in real time thanks to the new system’s excellent tissue definition,” Rosés says.

Rosés believes this Productivity. Elevated. release will help treat patients with complex hearts, in particular because of new tools that have significantly improved the image quality.

“It’s amazing. We can spend time looking at things we couldn’t see before,” Rosés says.

One day last spring at a hospital in North Carolina, Dr. Joshua Broder prepared to examine a 7-month-old patient while she slept in her mother’s arms. Doctors suspected she had hydrocephalus — a buildup of fluid in the brain that is quite dangerous and that normally requires surgery to drain.

The condition is usually marked by abnormal swelling of a child’s head. But, Broder wanted to know, was this really hydrocephalus? He needed a richly contoured, detailed three-dimensional image to confirm the diagnosis — the kind that usually requires putting a baby, and her terrified parents, through the clatter and stress of an MRI exam.

But on this day, Broder was able to collect those images of the child’s brain in a few moments while scarcely disturbing her nap. Broder turned to a standard ultrasound scanner that normally produces 2D images but that he had souped up with a $10 computer chip that is usually used in video games to track the movements of wireless controllers. In minutes, he had all the imagery and confirmation he needed.

“Sure, 3D ultrasound exists,” says Broder, a physician and researcher at Duke University School of Medicine. “But we’re building a better mousetrap — one that’s smaller, cheaper, more effective — so we can bring it to more healthcare providers.”

There are problems with existing high-grade imaging technology, especially when it comes to working with infants. The scans cost about $1,000 and often require transporting the baby from an ER or a clinic.

Meanwhile, an MRI exam costs about $2,000, and doctors may need to choose between a longer, more detailed scan, which requires sedating a squirming baby, or a faster scan, which may produce blurred details. Most hospitals have only one MRI machine and a long waiting list; plus, even though GE has developed a quiet MRI scanner, much of the equipment in use today can be cold, noisy and claustrophobia-inducing.

“Ultrasound is such a beautiful technology because it’s inexpensive, it’s portable and it’s completely safe in every patient,” Broder says. Hospitals have been slow to embrace expensive high-end 3D ultrasound machines. But upgrading their older 2D ultrasound scanners with Broder’s solution would cost just $2,000 per unit.

Broder found the inspiration for his innovation a few years ago, while playing Nintendo Wii with his son. Why, he found himself wondering, couldn’t the ultrasound probes he used at work know their orientations in space just as the game controller he used to whack imaginary tennis balls did? He took his idea to the engineers at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.

We’re building a better mousetrap — one that’s smaller, cheaper, more effective — so we can bring it to more healthcare providers, says Duke University’s Joshua Broder. Images credit: Duke University.

They went to work. They affixed a computer chip with a gyroscope and an accelerometer inside it to the outside of a probe. They found that they could then run the ultrasound probe over a curved surface like a baby’s head or a pregnant woman’s tummy and generate a more three-dimensional image. A machine originally designed to produce a flat, maplike picture could now show doctors something rounded and three-dimensional.

The latest version of the team’s system uses a simple off-the-shelf video cord to hook a 2D ultrasound machine into a computer running special software that combines the 2D image with information coming from the chip on the probe.

Although the results are not as detailed as images coming from a 3D machine, they provide enough extra information to make diagnosing serious ailments like hydrocephalus much easier. While Broder is quick to caution that he and his colleagues are still testing concepts — they’ve received a grant from the Emergency Medicine Foundation of the American College of Emergency Physicians and GE Healthcare to further develop their work — he’s excited about the technology’s potential, especially in developing nations.

“There’s vital importance here to regions of the world where high-tech may not be available,” says Broder. “This 3D ultrasound innovation could make low-cost imaging available to billions of people.”

In the spring of 2016, 32-year-old Nicole Gularte grew weak and lost her ability to see colors from her left eye. She knew that her leukemia had returned.

Gularte’s form of the disease was called acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL. She had been in an exhausting on-and-off battle with cancer for six years, and she was desperate to avoid yet another debilitating round of chemotherapy. She wasn’t particularly thrilled when doctors told her they had gotten lucky and found two nearly perfect bone marrow matches. Long-term studies have shown that nearly half of leukemia patients who receive a bone marrow transplant die or relapse within two years.

The story of what she did next offers a fascinating look into the future of cancer treatment. She rejected the transplant and opted to let the relapse of her ALL take full hold. That allowed her to enroll in a clinical trial of a promising new cancer treatment called CAR T-cell therapy that was run by the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “I called UPenn,” Gularte says. She made her circumstances clear to the doctors, telling them: “I’ve given up a 10-out-of-10 bone marrow transplant so I can relapse so I can qualify for your CAR-T trial.”

In cell therapy, doctors remove some of a patient’s T-cells, the immune cells that fight against infection, reprogram them to fight and kill cancer, then put them back into the patient. Developed by doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the treatment gained prominence after it saved a young girl named Emily Whitehead in 2012. It’s had a 93 percent success rate in trials with patients with advanced leukemia, but it’s still a very new type of therapy. A refined version of the treatment that saved Whitehead, now called Kymriah and made by Novartis, was the first CAR T-cell therapy approved by the FDA, which in August cleared it for use in children. In October, the FDA approved a second version of CAR T-cell therapy, called Yescarta and made by Kite, to treat b-cell lymphoma for adults.

Gularte next to University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Carl June, a leading cancer researcher. Image credit: Nicole Gularte.

Most other, similar versions of the treatments are still in the testing phase. But this new form of treatment is a welcome alternative to patients who, like Gularte, find chemo dismaying and bone-marrow transplants too uncertain. “I realized that if there was a chance of something better out there, I needed to research it and come up with my own decision,” Gularte says.

The University of Pennsylvania’s adult cell therapy trials proceeded haltingly until they gained momentum in 2016, just in time for Gularte. She gained admittance to the program, and on September 7, she received her modified T-cells. Doctors had previously removed them from her body, modified them with a virus to recognize her cancer, multiplied them and transfused them back into her body.

She spent the next few days wracked with 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit fever and suffering from several seizure-like episodes as the T-cells started fighting her disease. But her temperature soon lowered, and, on the tenth day, something surprising happened. Her eyesight, which had deteriorated during her fight with leukemia, returned.

“I was half blind in one eye, and totally color blind,” she recalls. “Then, while I was watching TV, I noticed that the girls on the screen had bright green skirts.” When she had her color vision tested, she scored 13 out of 15. Soon, her T-cell levels, which plummet when leukemia patients are battling the disease, returned to normal. She was released from the hospital.

A year later, Gularte’s T-cell activity is elevated, but she is still in remission. She’s become a passionate advocate for CAR T-cell therapy. The University of Pennsylvania’s cell therapy trial is one of more than 800 studies in gene and cell therapy currently underway globally. And based on the 80 percent complete remission rates of these trials, experts anticipate that cell therapy is poised to become a major means for fighting cancer.

Top: In 2016, Nicole Gularte entered a cell therapy trial run by the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with the hopes of fighting her acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It worked, and today her cancer is still in remission. Image credit: Nicole Gularte. Above: GE scientists and others are working to accelerate the manufacturing processes of such cell therapies at the Center for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies in Toronto. Image credit: CCRM.

Tens of thousands of patients per year could be receiving the treatment by 2024, and by 2030, the cell therapy industry is expected to be worth an estimated $30 billion.

While these emerging therapies bring new hope, the process to manufacture them can be lengthy and expensive, and producing enough to meet potential demand is challenging. “Now we need to help make cell therapy affordable and scalable,” says Phil Vanek, general manager for cell therapy growth strategy at GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

GE’s cell therapy business and others are racing to provide technology and processes to make that happen. In collaboration with Center for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) and the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, they’ve embraced a new cell therapy research and process-development facility called the Center for Advanced Therapeutic Cell Technologies, which officially opened this September in Toronto. Designed to help pharma companies, university researchers, startups and technology companies scale up manufacturing faster, the new center already employs a team of more than 30 biologists, virologists, and biomedical and other engineers, from both GE and CCRM.

“We’re transitioning into the future,” says Gularte. “It’s not just about traditional drug discovery anymore, it’s now about the innovative life sciences industry, and the ways that doctors are learning to work with the body. Cell therapy could potentially eradicate many diseases. I wanted to be part of that.”

A Ukrainian startup is 3D-printing tiny homes, Israeli researchers helped paralyzed rats walk again and engineers in Japan built a robot that rolls — or rather crawls — with the punches. We find all this progress deeply moving, don’t you?

Robot Carpenters

What is it? A Ukrainian startup says it can build an off-the-grid tiny smart home in just 8 hours with the aid of 3D-printing robots.

Why does it matter? Tiny houses are relatively affordable, mobile and eco-friendly. But building them still involves a lot of time of labor. Using robots to shoulder some of the grunt work speeds up the process and cuts down on costly man-hours.

How does it work? The company, PassivDom, says it uses industrial 3D-printing robots to build the home’s walls, roof and floor out of such materials as carbon fiber, fiberglass and polyurethane. The result is a house frame six times as strong as steel, the company claims. After the basic structure is complete, humans add a door, furniture, appliances, solar panels, a water-capture system and a “smart” thermostat, and finish out the electrical and plumbing work. The smallest model is 421 square feet and starts at $64,000. Those who want more space and have a bigger budget could choose the 775-square-foot “gadget house,” which costs between $97,000 and $147,000.

The Rats Are On The Move

Within three weeks, 42 percent of the rats that received this treatment could support weight on their hind limbs, and 75 percent responded to sensory stimuli, according to the researchers. Illustration credit: Getty Images.

What is it? Researchers from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University say they’ve restored paralyzed rats’ ability to walk by implanting human stem cells into their spinal cords.

Why does it matter? Roughly 17,000 new spinal cord injury cases are reported each year in the U.S., according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center. Such injuries frequently result in irreversible sensory or motor impairment of the limbs, including paraplegia and quadriplegia, that can carry severe health, economic and social consequences.

How does it work? The researchers embedded human stem cells that had been induced to support neural growth onto biodegradable scaffolds that they then implanted at the site of the rats’ spinal cord injuries. “Tissue engineered (TE) scaffolds provide a 3D environment in which cells can attach, grow and differentiate, maintain cell distribution, and provide graft protection following transplantation,” the team wrote in its study, which appears in Frontiers in Neuroscience. The procedure created a conduit for impulses to travel between the brain and body. Within three weeks, 42 percent of the rats that received this treatment could support weight on their hind limbs, and 75 percent responded to sensory stimuli. “Although there is still some way to go before it can be applied in humans, this research gives hope,” lead researcher Dr. Shulamit Levenberg told The Times of Israel.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Brittle Star

Top image credit: The Pentabot robot developed by Tohoku and Hokkaido universities in Japan. Image credit: Tohoku University.

What is it? Engineers at Tohoku and Hokkaido universities in Japan have created a robot inspired by a relative of the starfish that can self-amputate appendages that are damaged in the line of duty.

Why does it matter? Robots that work in disaster sites and other hazardous environments are prone to damage that can slow down or entirely derail their mission.

How does it work? The brittle fish (Ophiarachna incrassata) lacks a central nervous system and has five functionally interchangeable arms whose radial configuration enables the creature to move in any direction. It can also self-amputate an appendage to escape from a predator, while its remaining limbs keep on trucking toward its destination. This inspired the researchers to equip a similarly shaped robot with arm sensors that communicate with one another. If one arm stops moving, the others recalibrate to maintain their direction. “Such a design is expected to enable robots to adapt to physical damage in real time and is applicable to unforeseen circumstances such as disaster scenarios,” the team wrote in a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Mellow Yellow

“The amber lenses used in the insomnia study block out a substantial portion of blue light but do not result in an overall dimming of the light levels reaching the eye,” the Columbia researchers reported. “Orange lenses (not tested) may be more effective for improving sleep because they block out blue light almost completely and reduce the intensity, or brightness, of light.” Caption credit: Columbia University. Image credit: Ari Shechter.

What is it? Scientists at Columbia University Medical Center say they’ve found a way to counteract the sleep-leaching effects of light-emitting devices like smartphones and tablets.

Why does it matter? People are sleeping less — and using their mobile devices more. Doctors blame sleep deprivation for a number of health problems, including obesity, hypertension and metabolic disorders such as diabetes. The blue light in mobile devices and computer displays suppresses melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate sleep. The light also increases alertness — not something you want at 11 p.m. while you’re “winding down” by scrolling through Facebook and GE Reports.

How does it work? Columbia researchers figured that physically blocking blue light would enable their subjects to watch celebrity dachshund videos to their hearts’ content before bed without inducing insomnia. They rigged up amber-tinted glasses that shut out the blue light and had their subjects wear them for two hours before lights-out for a week. The subjects reported sleeping an additional 30 minutes on the nights they wore the glasses as opposed to frames with clear lenses.

“Blue light does not only come from our phones. It is emitted from televisions, computers, and importantly, from many light bulbs and other LED light sources that are increasingly used in our homes because they are energy-efficient and cost-effective,” said Ari Shechter, lead author on the team’s study. “The glasses approach allows us to filter out blue-wavelength light from all these sources, which might be particularly useful for individuals with sleep difficulties.”

Woman Can Smell Parkinson’s

A Scottish woman named Joy Milne told doctors she was able to smell Parkinson’s after she detected a change in her husband’s scent six years before he learned he had the disease. Image credit: Getty Images.

What is it? Researchers at Manchester University credit a woman who can smell Parkinson’s disease for helping them pinpoint 10 molecules involved in the neurodegenerative disorder.

Why does it matter? Approximately 60,000 Americans receive a Parkinson’s diagnosis each year and more than 10 million are living with the disease worldwide, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation. Currently there is no definitive test for the disorder, which causes tremors and impairs movement, balance and cognitive function. Prompt diagnosis could lead to faster treatment, which in many cases can dramatically improve symptoms.

How does it work? A Scottish woman named Joy Milne told doctors she was able to smell Parkinson’s after she detected a change in her husband’s scent six years before he learned he had the disease. Subsequent tests on other patients — including one who hadn’t yet been diagnosed with Parkinson’s — proved her ability. Researchers at Manchester University then performed tests to isolate the molecules that caused the musky odor Milne reported. So far they’ve found 10 Parkinson’s-specific molecules and hope to use their findings to develop new diagnostic tests. “It is very humbling as a mere measurement scientist to have this ability to help find some signature molecules to diagnose Parkinson’s,” Manchester University chemistry professor Perdita Barran told the BBC. “It wouldn’t have happened without Joy.”

Almost every day, 13-year-old Valerie Cameron-Goodwin carries a wooden business card etched with her name, email address and dream job: surgeon. She’s proud of what this card says — and prouder still that she made it herself using an industrial-grade laser cutter in a 32-by-8-foot trailer parked by her middle school’s front door.

“At first it was confusing — how can you create something on a computer and then transfer it to a machine?” says the eighth-grader. “But then it all made sense, and it was so exciting watching my design get carved on the wood.”

Valerie produced her prized card this fall in a mobile science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) lab at Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester, a neighborhood in Boston. The Boston Celtics and the GE Foundation created the Brilliant Career Play lab, which provides middle schoolers with fresh opportunities to use their hands and minds to work on innovative projects — often with a basketball theme.

“It’s a way for kids to get excited about how many different connections there are to STEM careers,” says Alethea Campbell, program manager at Fab Lab, which made and operates the mobile unit. “Celtic player Aron Baynes met the kids at the launch and told them that no matter if on the court or off, he’s committed to learning — that was really powerful for the students to hear.”

Top: The Celtics’s center Aron Baynes visited students at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester in December. Above: The lab is “a way for kids to get excited about how many different connections there are to STEM careers,” says Alethea Campbell, program manager at Fab Lab.  Images credit: GE Foundation.

The mobile lab, which is based off the GE Brilliant Career Lab created for high schoolers last year, is essentially an industrial warehouse in a trailer. The lab’s name is evocative of GE’s Brilliant Factory concept — a facility that uses equipment such as lasers, robots and sensors, as well as data and analytics, to constantly improve.

Under the guidance of the lab’s traveling teacher, Fab Lab’s Aiden Mullaney, students test their manufacturing chops on the laser cutter, milling machines, 3-D printers and a vinyl cutter for making clothing designs. Students learn how to use design tools on the computer and then use the lab’s machinery to bring those designs to life. For instance, they can create a custom athletic shoe on the computer and then print it with the 3-D printer. “It opens their doors and helps them understand their career options,” Campbell says. “We had one student who thought his only path was to be a doctor — we showed him he [could consider] designing wearable medical devices.”

Kelli Wells, executive director of education and skills at the GE Foundation, says that the partnership with the Celtics has given the lab the opportunity to spin a number of lessons into sports themes. That’s a big hit with the students — even those who didn’t think sports were for them. “We have them thinking about wearable-device engineering and data analytics for the scoreboard,” she says. “So many kids are doing some critical thinking and learning. There is more to sports than being a player.”

The Celtics’s Baynes and Jayson Tatum also got their wooden business cards made on a laser cutter. Image credit: GE Foundation.

After the relatively simple activity of making business cards, Valerie and her classmates worked together to develop an item basketball players could use to keep their shoes tied. “They came up with all different kinds of designs,” Campbell says. “It was really empowering for them to learn that they can create anything with these essential skills.”

After a two-week pilot run at Frederick, the Celtics lab is moving on to eight other Boston-area middle schools. The Brilliant Career Labs are part of $50 million in funding the GE Foundation is providing to Boston Public Schools students, community health centers and initiatives for diversity in the STEM workplace.

Valerie says she is holding on to two great moments from her lab experience: that wooden business card and the moment she got to ask Baynes an important question. “I asked him how tall he is.”

Baynes inside the Brilliant Career Play lab.  The students found out that he is 6’10”. Image credit: GE Foundation.

Stephen Erickson was just 13 years old when he fell in love with planes — inside a Boston movie theater. He was watching aircraft mechanic Joe Patroni, played by George Kennedy in the original “Airport” movie, extricate a Boeing jet full of worried passengers from a snowdrift. “That moment was the spark that changed my life,” he says. “I wanted to build aircraft engines.” He enrolled in a technical school and joined GE Aviation, where he has become an ace test engineer — a real-world Patroni.

Now 59, Erickson normally works at a GE Aviation plant in Lynn, Massachusetts. But in September, he moved to Prague on a special assignment: getting GE’s first 3D-printed commercial aircraft engine ready for its inaugural test, and then firing it up for the very first time. Last week, Erickson was in his element, attaching the final sensors to the engine, called Advanced Turboprop, or ATP. He worked methodically inside a bunkerlike test cell located on the snowy outskirts of the Czech capital. “There is no engine like it in the world,” Erickson said.

The engine passed the first test last Friday. “This is a pivotal moment,” says Paul Corkery, general manager of the Advanced Turboprop program. “We now have a working engine. We are moving from design and development to the next phase of the program, ending with certification.”

Some 400 GE designers, engineers and materials experts in the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, Poland, the U.S. and elsewhere spent the last two years developing the engine. More than a third of the ATP is 3D-printed from a special titanium alloy.

3D printing and dozens of other new technologies used for the first time in a civilian turboprop engine allowed the team to combine 855 separate components into just 12, shave off more than 100 pounds in weight, improve fuel burn by as much as 20 percent, give it 10 percent more power and simplify maintenance. “This engine is a game changer,” Corkery says.

Above: 3D printing and dozens of other new technologies used for the first time in a civilian turboprop engine allowed the team to combine 855 separate components into just 12. GIF credit: GE Aviation. Top image: Steve Erickson in his Prague test cell. “There is no engine like it in the world,” Erickson said. Image credit: Tomas Kellner/GE Reports.

For example, the designers included components in the engine’s compressor that were originally developed for supersonic engines. These parts, called variable vanes, will allow it to fly efficiently even in thin air at high altitudes. They also developed a new digital way to control the turboprop engine that will enable pilots to fly it like a jet, with just a single lever instead of three. How easy is it to fly with the new controls? “I would use the phrase ‘revolutionary simplicity,’” says Brad Thress, senior vice president of engineering at aircraft maker Textron Aviation. Textron’s new Cessna Denali will be the first plane to use the engine.

During his three decades at GE Aviation, Erickson has been involved in testing the company’s workhorse engines, including the T700 engine for Black Hawk helicopters and the T408 engine for the Super Stallion and King Stallion, America’s most powerful helicopter. But he says that in his career he hasn’t seen “anything like the ATP.”

Textron’s Cessna Denali will be the first plane to use the engine. Image credit: Textron Aviation.

Erickson’s long and tall test cell in Prague is one of several attached to GE Aviation’s factory here. Employees at the plant assemble and service GE turboprop engines for commuter, agricultural and even acrobatic planes flying on six continents, like the L-410 and the Thrush crop duster.

Workers at the plant spent the fall assembling the first ATP engine in a special room next to the test cell. In early December, the team carefully loaded the new engine onto a special cart and moved it across the hall into the test cell. By then the group included engineers from the Italian aviation company Avio Aero, which is already designing and printing parts for jet engines. GE acquired Avio Aero in 2013.

Inside the cell, the team connected the ATP to a boxy water brake, which simulates the torque cause by the propeller, and connected the engine to tubes supplying air, fuel and oil and removing exhaust.

They also attached hundreds of wires, tubes and cables to the engine, leading to sensors located in gray, metal cabinets along the wall. The sensors gather information about vibrations, torque, thrust and other inputs. The test cell also has numerous cameras that keep an eye on fuel and oil leaks.

Data from the sensors travels to large computer servers located one floor above the cell. The servers already hold information GE gathered from testing individual components of the engine over the last year. For example, the ATP team tested the compressor with the variable vanes at a special custom-built rig located at the Technical University of Munich. “We can push it to stalling point and test the entire operating range,” Rudolf Selmeier, one of the GE engineers involved in running the tests, said.

“This is a pivotal moment,” says Paul Corkery, general manager of the Advanced Turboprop program. “We now have a working engine. We are moving from design and development to the next phase of the program, ending with certification.” Image credit: Tomas Kellner/GE Reports

GE plans to build a total of 10 test ATP engines and open five more test cells. The company will use them to run a battery of tests before the engine can be certified for flight by government authorities, including altitude, performance and high-vibration testing. GE will also test the engine on the wing of a flying “test bed” later this year, and plans to certify it for passenger flight over the next two years.

By last Friday morning, everything was ready for the first engine’s big moment. The team secured the test cell’s thick steel-and-concrete doors and decamped into a control room upstairs. They watched the engine spin to life on a bank on large screens, starting a new chapter in aviation history.

Last Friday, Erickson watched the engine spin to life on a bank on large screens, starting a new chapter in aviation history. Image credit: Tomas Kellner/GE Reports.

Last summer, we started turning our stories into video. The move was a huge hit and GE Reports videos have been seen by millions of people. Below are some of our most popular 2017 videos.

1. Meet the GE9X, the world’s largest jet engine.

2. These robots put a new twist on 3D printing.

3. This GE gas turbine helped break the Guinness world record for the most efficient combined-cycle power plant.

4. When GE engineers needed to move an 8-million-pound power plant part, they sent it by barge down the Hudson River.

6. Women in GE Healthcare reshaped the mammography experience with a machine that makes the exam less uncomfortable. 

7. GE Aviation teamed up with Aerion and Lockheed Martin to explore the development of a new supersonic business jet.

8. A new, table-sized CO2 turbine could power up to 10,000 U.S. homes. 

8. The solar eclipse of 2017 temporarily covered over 100 million solar panels. This is how the modern grid handles it.

9. Scientists at GE Global Research and GE Additive are using computer vision to engineer the future of additive manufacturing.

 10. This snake-like robot arm inspects hard-to-reach areas so workers can stay safe. 

11. Luca Iaconi-Stewart spent the last nine years building an exquisitely precise replica of an Air India Boeing 777, including a pair of GE jet engines, made entirely from cut-up paper folders. 

Top image: The GE9X is the largest jet engine in the world. Image credit: GE Aviation.

When GE Reports visited the renowned plastic surgeon Laurent Lantieri in his office in Paris last summer, the first thing we noticed was a row of cheerfully colored plastic skulls lined up on top of his bookshelf. Lantieri and his team carried out the world’s first full face transplant and the skulls represent the injuries he has fixed, some of them with the help of 3D printing. “In the past, I was just guessing,” Lantieri told us. “We never had the correct shape. But using 3D-printed skulls — to have them in my own hands — to determine what are the difficulties, where are the impediments in advance, it makes a huge difference.”

3D printing and other additive manufacturing methods, used to print human bones as well as jet engine parts, were popular themes for GE Reports readers in 2017. Other top stories covered the latest technology for power plants, jet engines, healthcare and STEM. Here’s our selection

An Epiphany Of Disruption: GE Additive Chief Explains How 3D Printing Will Upend Manufacturing

Mohammad Ehteshami, who leads GE Additive, says that additive manufacturing methods like 3D printing are coming into the mainstream and disrupting how companies make things. “Additive is so powerful that you either lead it or you get victimized by it,” Ehteshami says.

Survivor: This Woman’s Battle With Leukemia Is Pointing The Way To The Future Of Healthcare

A little over 800 cell therapy trials are underway around the country, and their remission rate stands around 80 percent. The cell therapy industry could be worth about $30 billion by 2030. GE’s cell therapy business and other companies are already working to scale it. Image credit: Nicole Gularte.

“We picked the best technology across GE and built the biggest and most powerful aeroderivative engine ever made,” said Maurizio Ciofini, the engineering director of the project. Image credit: Baker Hughes, a GE Company.

GE engineers took the world’s largest jet engine and turned it into a power plant. The machine’s beating heart comes from the GE90-115B, capable of producing 127,900 pounds of thrust, according to “Guinness World Records.” The electricity generator, which GE calls LM9000, will be able to produce a whopping 65 megawatts — enough to supply 6,500 homes — and reach full power in 10 minutes.

Where Turbines Are Born: An Inside Look at GE’s Big Iron Maternity Ward

There are places in the world that make us feel small and force us to marvel at the skills and ambitions of their architects and engineers. They include cathedrals in Europe, NASA’s Cape Canaveral rocket launchpad and the Panama Canal. GE’s gas turbine plant in Greenville, South Carolina, may not be on everyone’s list. But it comes close.

Image credit: GE Power.

Engineered By Women For Women: Colleagues Band Together To Take Fear Out Of Breast Screening

Fearing test results can be a major deterrent to proper health care. But what about when patients fear the test itself? Mammograms, though the most effective breast cancer screening tool for most women, are one example. One in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, yet studies have found that as many as 30 percent of women in the United States, and 40 percent in Europe, skip the mammogram.  So a group of engineers at GE Healthcare designed the Senographe Pristina, a mammography machine that “mixes science with empathy.”

The team used feedback directly from doctors, technicians and patients, and was largely female. Their scanner has subtle features designed to make the experience more pleasant — from smooth, round surfaces to arm rests and relaxing LED lights. Clinics with the Pristina are also taking cues from the device to improve the feel of the exam rooms themselves, with features like calming music and walls painted with warm colors. Studies have shown that the screening can reduce breast cancer mortality rates by 20 percent, so improvements to make patients feel at ease are crucial. The Pristina is a great example.

New One-Of-A-Kind Turboprop Engine Delivers Jet-Like Simplicity To Pilots

GE Aviation just fired up its Advanced Turboprop. Designers used 3D printing to produce more than one third of the engine and combined 855 parts into just 12. Image credit: GE Aviation.

For the first time, GE test engineers just fired a new Advanced Turboprop engine with large sections made on a 3D printer. 3D printing and dozens of other new technologies used in a civilian turboprop engine allowed the team to combine 855 separate components into just 12, shave off more than 100 pounds in weight, improve fuel burn by as much as 20 percent, give the engine 10 percent more power and simplify maintenance. “This engine is a game changer,” says Paul Corkery, general manager of the Advanced Turboprop program.

GE And Apple Team Up To Bring The Industrial Internet To The iPhone and iOS

The Industrial Internet is getting the Apple treatment. GE and Apple announced at GE’s Minds + Machines conference in October that they will bring Predix, GE’s app-development platform for the Industrial Internet, to Apple’s iPhone smartphones and iPad tablets, used by 700 million people around the world.

Image credit: GE Reports.

An Engineer’s Dream: GE Unveils A Huge 3D Printer For Metals

In November, GE unveiled a beta version of the world’s largest 3D printer for metals, which uses a laser and a powder bed to make parts. It is capable of printing parts as large as 1 meter in diameter directly from a computer file by fusing together thin layers of metal powder with a 1-kilowatt laser. And because the technology is scalable, the machine has the potential to build even bigger parts.

Image credit: GE Additive.

Da Vinci Code 2.0: How 3D Printing And Digital Technologies Are Altering The Face Of Aircraft Engine Manufacturing In Italy

Avio Aero engineers are working with additive technologies like cold spray. Image credit: Yari Bovalino/Avio Aero.

Additive technologies like 3D printing are revolutionizing manufacturing in much the same way as the internet transformed information and shopping. Instead of removing material, these techniques grow parts from the ground up by either depositing or fusing layers of material. Engineers can design parts on their computers and then send their drawings directly to a 3D printer. The machines break down the design files to individual layers and join them together in the right pattern. “There are no limits to complexity,” says Dario Mantegazza, a manufacturing engineer at Avio Aero, a GE Aviation company. “You can create hollow structures if you want, or something like a bone.”

Bone Machine: 3D Printing Is Revolutionizing Plastic Surgery

Plastic surgeon Laurent Lantieri has been working with Materialise, a Belgian additive manufacturing and design company, to build bone implants for his patients. Using a 3D CAT scanner, Lantieri creates a 3D scan of a patient’s face, for example. Materialise clinical engineers then use a virtual 3D model of the patient’s undamaged bones, based on a CT scan, as a guide to building patient-specific implants that replace the damaged bones. A shattered cheekbone on the left side of a person’s face is replaced with a mirror image from the right side. A destroyed orbital socket can be made whole by matching it to the remaining socket.

School’s In: GE’s New “Brilliant Learning” Program Will Train Workers For Jobs Of The Future

Robots  equipped with software from companies like Avitas are helping workers inspect industrial plants. Image credit: Avitas.

Last spring, GE launched a new “brilliant learning” program for employees around the world. It includes “massive open online courses” in several languages, workshops, “immersion boot camps on lean manufacturing” and other training designed to help factory employees get ready for the arrival of 3D printing, big data, robotics, digital and lean manufacturing, and other advanced technologies.

Top image: The Belgian additive manufacturing and design company Materialise uses a virtual 3D model of the patient’s face, based on a CT scan, as a guide to build patient-specific implants to replace damaged bones. Images credit: Materialise.

Sci-fi writers love to scare readers with tales of robots becoming sentient and taking over the world. The reality is a little more comical. Consider the self-driving Las Vegas bus that 2 hours into its maiden voyage failed to avoid another truck whose human mistakenly backed into it. Or the Roomba that neglected to account for the pile of fresh dog poop on a living room carpet in Little Rock, Arkansas. Or the security robot that tumbled into the fountain in the lobby of its office building in Washington, D.C.

Enter roboticist John Hoare and his colleagues Kori Macdonald, Steve Gray and Justin Foehner at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, New York. They have a fix: Develop powerful robots that can take us to places we can’t reach and do things that we can’t do, but leave us Earthlings very much in control.

“Telerobotics,” they call it. The robotics team at Global Research has gained attention for designing wee robots that can slip into somevery small spaces. But its bigger achievement may be figuring out how, as Hoare puts it, to “use virtual reality to teleport into that robot’s working environment, and control it.”

(Gray and his colleague Shiraj Sen second place last year in NASA’s $1 million competition seeking solutions to programming and controlling the agency’s R5 Valkyrie robots designed to operate on Mars.)

Top and above: GE engineers are developing powerful robots that can take us to places we can’t reach and do things that we can’t do, but leave us Earthlings very much in control. Image credit: GE Global Research.

Why keep humans in the loop? Hoare says that the problem with autonomous robots is that they “are very good nowadays at doing things over and over again, repeated things. What they’re not good at is dealing with is new data, with things they haven’t seen before, things they haven’t been pre-programmed to do.” And quality AI is way too far off to help.

The world needs robots endowed with “the abilities of the human, the knowledge and intuitiveness of the human.” That’s what the robotics team members are giving us now. They’re thinking far beyond ordinary remote control. They want telerobot operators to “feel” they are genuinely at the wheel. It’s critical, Hoare explains, that “the human being obtains the surrounding image of the environment, so the human can operate in it.”

Some of their telerobots can fit in the palm of your hand. Their small size, explains GE Global Research principal scientist Don Lipkin, will allow humans to go into an engine or a turbine and make repairs without taking it offline, a process that costs time and money.

Ideal tasks for the first generation of telerobots fit a certain profile: simple yet complex, Hoare says. Think of a failing gas-plant valve that must be manually turned open or closed. Things can get enormously expensive if the valve is in a spot that a maintenance crew has trouble reaching. So Hoare’s team has been working on a telerobot designed to turn a valve.

“Once the human sees what the robot’s going to do and is happy with it, the human can tell the robot, ‘Yes, go ahead,’” says GE’s John Hoare. “It’s safe. It’s predictable.” Image credit: GE Global Research.

Sure, telerobots can be mounted with tiny video cameras. But a more powerful way for the robots and their operators to see involves lidar — a form of radar that relies on laser lights instead of radio waves. The telerobot uses lidar to precisely map out the contours of its surroundings and then relays a 3D image to its operator, who is wearing VR goggles. “They can move around in it,” Hoare explains. “They can get different views of that environment, very naturally, by just walking around and moving their head location.”

Next, with “controllers in their hands that they can use to grasp things in their virtual representation,” he says, they can manipulate the robot’s hand in the field. Crucially, this system even allows an operator to model its next moves virtually in advance before giving the robot a new command. “Once the human sees what the robot’s going to do and is happy with it, the human can tell the robot, ‘Yes, go ahead,’” Hoare says. “It’s safe. It’s predictable.”

Telerobots are also flexible. With a human brain in the loop, the same robot becomes capable of doing many tasks in various places. And what’s truly exciting is the ability to take humans to new places previously unreachable. That’s bordering on superhuman.

The telerobot uses lidar to precisely map out the contours of its surroundings and then relays a 3D image to its operator, who is wearing VR goggles. Image credit: GE Global Research.

Many of Kassy Hart’s first attempts at 3D printing didn’t end well.

Back in 2015, Hart was trying to print a special metal probe from a cobalt-chrome alloy at GE Power’s Advanced Manufacturing Works in Greenville, South Carolina. 3D printers build parts, step by tiny step, by fusing together superthin layers of fine metal powder with a laser or other powerful energy source.

Hart succeeded in printing her probe, a device called a super-rake, which gathers data during engine tests. But it ran right up to the edge of the printer’s build space — a high-tech “sandbox” holding the powder — giving her little wiggle room to remove it when it was finished. “It took technicians more than an hour of finagling it — cursing me the entire time,” she says ruefully.

Forgetting to leave room for retrieval wasn’t Hart’s only rookie mistake. Another time, she printed over the bolt securing the support plate under a part. When it came time to remove the piece, the team could barely access the bolt to get it out of the printer. “When you consider quality requirements, we didn’t print a single good part in the first four months due to the maturity of the technology and team,” she says. “Our motto was ‘Fail fast to learn fast.’”

She did. Hart, 30, is now a lead additive manufacturing engineer for GE Power. She discovered additive manufacturing, better known as 3D printing, just as the field was starting up. “A lot of times, there’s an expert somewhere to ask questions,” she says. “But it was just us and a few printers we’d never seen before, so we had to figure it out.”

Top image: “We were all learning one step — one mistake — at a time,” says GE Power’s Kassy Hart says. “We were feeling our way through uncharted territory.” Above: GE recently unveiled a 3D-printed fuel nozzle for GE’s latest HA-class gas turbine that’s setting efficiency records and making power plants cleaner and more cost-effective.  Images credit: GE Power.

The experience with 3D printing in Greenville was during her final rotation for GE’s Edison Engineering Development Program, a two- to three-year regimen for training talented engineers straight out of college. She started after finishing her graduate work at the University of Kentucky, rotating every six months through industrial assignments until she arrived at 3D printing.

She enjoyed it so much that when the last leg of the program was over, she decided to stay.

At the time, the Greenville plant didn’t even have a dedicated space for 3D printing development. “We were all learning one step — one mistake — at a time,” Hart says. “We were feeling our way through uncharted territory.”

But three years later, she and her team members are leading the field. They recently unveiled a 3D-printed fuel nozzle for GE’s latest HA-class gas turbine that’s setting efficiency records and making power plants cleaner and more cost-effective. The new nozzle, a key part of the turbine that mixes fuel and air and injects it into the combustion chamber, was crucial in helping to boost the HA turbine’s efficiency to 64 percent (among other forward-thinking upgrades). That’s higher than GE’s own record listed in Guinness World Records. The latest HA turbines will enter operation in the next few years.

There are fewer mistakes these days, but there’s still a locked scrap bin for discarded parts — ideas that didn’t work or parts that didn’t print out properly. The parts can take hours or days to print, and engineers must monitor them especially closely during the first few layers, when things are most likely to go wrong.

As for Hart, she’s still learning. A recent challenge was ensuring that 40 parts being printed simultaneously were laid out properly on the build plate. “Always check those bolt holes!” she says with a laugh.

Closer trade, economic, political, military, and education ties among ASEAN nations are some of the main benefits touted by supporters of regional integration.

Cross-country energy partnership is one of the priority areas for member countries after the first tripartite electricity transmission agreement in ASEAN was signed in Manila in November.

The long-discussed partnership became reality when Malaysia, and Laos, confirmed an Energy Purchase and Wheeling Agreement (EPWA). Under the EPWA, Laos will generate and sell 100 megawatts (MW) of low-carbon hydroelectric power to Malaysia.

Although the two nations sit almost 2,000 km apart, the cross-border transfer of power relies on the cooperation of their common neighbor, Thailand – the electricity will be distributed from Laos to Malaysia via Thailand’s transmission system.

The utility companies involved in the deal are Electricite du Laos, Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, and Tenaga Nasional Berhad in Malaysia.

Connecting and powering ASEAN

While the concept of an ASEAN Power Grid (APG) was first raised in 1997, it has taken nearly 20 years for the first project to materialize. Greater energy security and a network to accelerate electrification throughout the region were some of the priorities put forward by supporters of the APG.

Location, location, location

Thailand is the logical electricity transmission hub for the region as it shares land borders with Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar. Parts of the Kingdom are also less than 100km from China and Vietnam. In addition, the connection through Malaysia also opens-up an existing power link through to Singapore.

Infrastructure-wise, Thailand boasts a comparatively modern grid network to support cross-country deals. In terms of transmission loss, Thailand’s grid is three or four times more reliable than the legacy infrastructure installed elsewhere in the greater Mekong region.

Laos – the small nation with big power generation ambitions

While Thailand is eager to support more regional electricity transmission deals, Laos is currently expanding its power generation infrastructure. Laos has an estimated 26,000 MW of hydroelectric power potential and up to 75% of this is projected to be exported to neighboring countries via Thailand.  Cambodia has similar hydroelectricity ambitions with new dams and hydropower plants in development to support domestic demand, as well as potential exports in the future.

Sparking a brighter more united future

The historic multi-lateral power trade deal between Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand is expected to the first of more energy collaboration in the years ahead.

ASEAN members have identified 16 cross-border projects through $6 billion of investment under the APG initiative, which could transfer up to 23,200 MW of power across the region.

Through the APG network, government leaders view regional power trading as an effective way for countries with excess installed capacity to export to neighboring countries facing blackout issues, and those who need more energy to speed up economic, industrial, and infrastructure plans.

With an array of technologies poised to converge in 2018, this year is likely to be one of transformation — for consumers, for individual companies and for entire industries. The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics, data sharing and new energy technologies all are gaining ground. The global economy is growing. The U.S. manufacturing sector is picking up steam. Add it all up, and the conditions are ripe for innovation and new business models. None of this has escaped the notice of GE Ventures, GE’s venture capital unit, whose experts have flagged the following trends to watch in the year ahead.

Energy and Sustainability

New power distribution models move away from the centralized utility model toward a distributed network of solar power generated by individual homes and businesses. Image credit: Getty Images.

Gains in mobile and stationary storage are making renewable electricity a possibility for some 2 billion people who previously didn’t have access to power. In fact, two-thirds of net new-energy-generation capacity worldwide is from renewable sources, says Marianne Wu, president for equity investing at GE Ventures. Smart software is also making it easier to distribute energy to new locations and new assets, including electric vehicles.

As new power distribution models move away from the centralized utility model toward a distributed network of solar power generated by individual homes and businesses,  GE Ventures foresees existing utilities becoming power managers rather than power generators.

The flurry of merger and acquisition activity in 2017 suggests a trend toward decentralizing and de-carbonizing energy assets that Wu says is certain to accelerate. It will result in “new models and new markets,” along with increased reliability and reductions in cost and carbon footprints.

Manufacturing Technology 

A 3D-printed “bionic” aircraft wing bracket (bottom) for Airbus A350 XWB jets. 3D printed parts can be much lighter and stronger than components manufactured by traditional methods (top). Image credit: Airbus Operations.

New software tools and applications are making industrial processes such as inventory management and delivery smarter, more efficient and easier to track. On the hardware side, 3D printing and other additive manufacturing techniques are revolutionizing how we make both industrial and consumer products.

Take, for instance, GE’s new Advanced Turboprop, which will power Textron Aviation’s Cessna Denali. The engine’s designers were able to consolidate 855 parts into just 12 components — reducing its weight by one-quarter, cutting development time by one-third and increasing lifespan fivefold. Similarly, a new 3D-printed jet fuel nozzle combines 20 parts into one unit, weighs 25 percent less than the original, and lasts five times longer.

Additive manufacturing also makes it possible to produce parts on demand in decentralized facilities closer to customers, significantly reducing warehousing and transportation costs. It can even create “economies of one,” says Karen Kerr, executive managing director for advanced manufacturing enterprise at GE Ventures. A recent example: a partnership between Adidas and Carbon, a Silicon Valley startup, to produce a customized 3D-printed athletic shoe.

Healthcare

In 2016, Nicole Gularte (right) entered a cell therapy trial run by Dr. Carl June and his colleagues (middle) at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with the hopes of fighting her acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It worked, and today her cancer, which had relapsed seven times before the trial, is still in remission. Image credit: Nicole Gularte.

The latest technology and science mean little if people can’t get the healthcare they need, says Lisa Suennen, senior managing director of healthcare investing at GE Ventures. Technology, married with clinical expertise, offers the health care industry ways to improve patient satisfaction levels and clinical outcomes.

Change already is afoot. For example, access to massive amounts of data can help a physician know what drug may work best against a patient’s tumor. Doctors can reprogram immune-system cells into powerful cancer-fighters. Predictive and prescriptive analytics can help clinicians intervene before an adverse medical event happens. And 3D printers can manufacture medical devices on demand.

But healthcare remains a human service. “If anyone believes we can take the people and human touch out of healthcare, they are sorely mistaken,” says Suennen. “We need to make healthcare more personalized, more accurate, and more efficient but avoid using technology for technology’s sake.”

Technology Transfer And Licensing Policy

GE is leveraging its vast intellectual property portfolio through new models such as equity partnerships and other arrangements. Image credit: GE Global Research.

The current global marketplace has created an opportunity for a different strategic model from the traditional system of patenting inventions and licensing them to others that’s been around for decades, says Pat Patnode, president of GE Ventures Licensing. For example, GE is leveraging its vast intellectual property portfolio through new models such as equity partnerships and other arrangements. “We are leveraging strategic partners that help us generate business plans, build teams, raise money and bring our technology to market in new ways,” Patnode says.

New Cloud Technology

Thanks to machine learning and deep learning, edge computing — which places data analytics and memory directly on machines like wind turbines and jet engines — also becoming smarter and able to control devices in real time. Image credit: Getty Images.

Industrial companies are capitalizing on cloud computing’s core benefits: efficiency, agility, and scalability. Software “container” and “edge” technologies will extend those benefits even further, according to Michael Dolbec, managing director of digital ventures for GE Ventures. “Traditional enterprises using containers typically only have to worry about them in the cloud — where there are lots of resources and lots of help,” Dolbec says. Cleverly designed and fairly lightweight software stacks at the edge of the system, say, on a wind turbine, jet engine or a locomotive, when designed properly with container-embedded security, can run the right processes and scale up or down, with industrial-grade performance. Thanks to machine learning and deep learning, edge computing is also becoming smarter and able to control devices in real time.

Conclusion

Top and above: 2018 will usher in smart integration of breakthrough technologies, like this VR-controlled robot from GE Global Research, enabling business leaders to grow smarter and faster. Image credit: GE Global Research.

Overall, GE Ventures expects 2018 to usher in smart integration of breakthrough technologies enabling business leaders to grow smarter and faster. Streamlined data analysis can provide executives with better information before they make decisions. Physicians can tap libraries of thousands of genes before planning treatments. Consumers can get products tailored specifically to their needs. And renewable energy can become a more prevalent source of power for it all.

These new technologies are additive — making human resources more valuable and efficient. The year ahead will be when business leaders focus on integrating and capitalizing on the potential of innovation in new, dynamic ways.

Patrik Paul loved riding his bike everywhere growing up in the Slovak capital Bratislava. He dreamed of the perfect mountain bike — one that exactly matched his center of gravity and perfectly gripped the track on curves. But such a bike simply wasn’t within his reach. The costs and technology for that level of customization would make it prohibitively expensive.

Enter 3D printing. Using a powerful printer for metals — the largest available, in fact — Paul, CEO and co-founder of Slovakia-based Kinazo Design, recently realized his dream and built, in partnership with Volkswagen, the Kinazo ENDURO e1, a new electric mountain bike.

Because the bike frame’s individual components are customizable, designers are able to match each frame to a customer’s particular needs. The company use special body-fitting equipment to take into account factors such as arm and leg length, weight and balance. Kinazo can print the frames with differences in size, wall thickness, inside structures or other specifications. At the same time, the process allows for changes, even during printing, without added expense or time. “This simply couldn’t be done using a conventional manufacturing process,” Paul says.

Riding the Kinazo eBike is like stepping out in a custom-tailored suit and shoes, Paul says. “Having a bike handmade directly to your size is simply better, more personalized,” Paul says. “It is in complete alignment with your body.”

Top and above: Riding the Kinazo eBike is like stepping out in a custom-tailored suit and shoes, Paul says. “Having a bike handmade directly to your size is simply better, more personalized,” Paul says. “It is in complete alignment with your body.” Images credit: Kinazo.

Right now, that bespoke bike is pretty pricey — customers can order it for $23,500, two to three times as much as other high-end e-bikes.

But Paul says that over time, the price will come down as additive manufacturing techniques like 3D printing chip away at conventional manufacturing. “3D printing is revolutionary,” Paul says. “It’s the future of manufacturing.”

Paul didn’t set out to print the bicycle. But limited financial resources forced him to consider manufacturing alternatives. “3D printing was the fastest and cheapest way to get a fully functional, ready-to-ride frame, without a huge investment in the conventional production forms,” he says.

The technology gave Paul new freedom in the design process, allowing him to shake off limitations imposed by welding and traditional manufacturing methods. “The shapes we used on our model would have been impossible to use with conventional aluminum production,” he says. “It was more fun, and we had so much freedom designing the eBike.”

“3D printing was the fastest and cheapest way to get a fully functional, ready-to-ride frame, without a huge investment in the conventional production forms,” Paul says. Image credit: Kinazo.

The process wasn’t without challenges. Additive manufacturing methods like 3D printing use lasers and other energy sources to print objects directly from a computer file, layer by layer. Building the bike pushed Paul to master whole new sets of competencies, including software, design and available printers. In the beginning, half of the frames Kinazo printed had flaws. But the team learned and improved with every new bike. “Now we have the experience printing these large and complex parts,” he says.

Since Paul and his team needed as much printing space as possible, they picked the largest commercial 3D printer for metals available on the market — the Concept Laser X Line 2000R 3D printer. The machine has a build area — the space available for printing — roughly 2.5 feet by 1.5 feet by 1.5 feet. That gave them enough space to print the largest part of the bike frame as a single part. 3D printing also allowed them to print individually designed channels for cables inside the frame, which ultimately means easier assembling and maintenance.

GE acquired a controlling stake in Concept Laser in 2016. The company, which is now part of GE Additive, is currently building an even larger machine called Project ATLAS that will be able to print parts as large as 1 meter in diameter.

A robot in California is acting like a total baby, researchers in the U.K. smuggled a tumor-tracing virus into patients’ brains, and plants in Australia are breeding like rabbits. We’d say 2018 is off to a promising start.

Going Viral

Above: A MRI image of brain tumor. Image credit: Getty Images. Top: A CT image of blood vessels leading into the brain. Image credit: GE Healthcare.

What is it? Scientists at the University of Leeds in the U.K. have found a virus that can sneak through the blood-brain barrier to attack cancer. “This study was about showing that a virus could be delivered to a tumor in the brain,” said Adel Samson, co-lead author and medical oncologist at the Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology at the University of Leeds. “Not only was it able to reach its target, but there were signs it stimulated the body’s own immune defenses to attack the cancer.”

Why does it matter? Samson said that this was “the first time it has been shown that a therapeutic virus [was] able to pass through the brain-blood barrier,” a selectively permeable membrane that protects the brain from pathogens. He said that the finding “opens up the possibility this type of immunotherapy could be used to treat more people with aggressive brain cancers.”

How does it work? Scientists have used viruses to attack cancer in the past. They use them to put a bull’s-eye on tumors, making them visible to the immune system. “Our immune systems aren’t very good at ‘seeing’ cancers — partly because cancer cells look like our body’s own cells, and partly because cancers are good at telling immune cells to turn a blind eye,” said co-lead author Alan Melcher, professor of translational immunotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. “But the immune system is very good at seeing viruses.” The virus, called reovirus, infects cancer cells but leaves healthy cells alone, the researchers reported. They used an intravenous drip to get the virus into nine patients suffering from brain cancer. Follow-up surgery found that “in all nine patients, there was evidence that the virus had reached its target and stimulated the body’s immune system.”

This Robot is Such A Baby

What is it? Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, programmed a robot to learn about its environment by manipulating objects like a toddler and “imagine future actions.”

Why does it matter? The university reported that, “in the future, this technology could help self-driving cars anticipate future events on the road and produce more intelligent robotic assistants in homes, but the initial prototype focuses on learning simple manual skills entirely from autonomous play.”

How does it work? The team programmed a one-armed Sawyer collaborative robot made by Rethink Robotics with “visual foresight” technology that allows robots to “predict what their cameras will see if they perform a particular sequence of movements.” Although the technology is still in its infancy, it could allow robots to “imagine the future of their actions so they can figure out how to manipulate objects they have never encountered before” without any prior knowledge of physics or the environment around them. “In the same way that we can imagine how our actions will move the objects in our environment, this method can enable a robot to visualize how different behaviors will affect the world around it,” said Sergey Levine, assistant professor in Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, whose lab developed the technology. “This can enable intelligent planning of highly flexible skills in complex real-world situations.”

Move Over Speed Dating, Here Comes Speed Breeding

University of Queensland’s Lee Hickey is standing in his wheat patch. Image credit: University of Queensland.

What is it? Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have developed a “speed breeding” process that allows plant breeders to develop new, more robust crop types much faster. NASA research into growing wheat in space inspired the team. “We thought we could use the NASA idea to grow plants quickly back on Earth, and in turn, accelerate the genetic gain in our plant breeding programs,” Lee Hickey, senior research fellow at the university.

Why does it matter? It can take a decade or more to develop a new crop variety for farmers, the team said. Plant breeders could use their new speedy breeding method to accelerate the process and quickly transfer genes for, say, disease, pest or drought resistance into new crops. The team says the approach can deliver a new seed in just six weeks,” Hickey said. “There has been a lot of interest globally in this technique due to the fact that the world has to produce 60-80 per cent more food by 2050 to feed its nine billion people.”

How does it work? The team used modified glasshouses and lighting to “grow six generations of wheat, chickpea and barley plants, and four generations of canola plants in a single year — as opposed to two or three generations in a regular glasshouse, or a single generation in the field,” Hickey said.

He Makes Plastic Crawl

What is it? Japanese designer Hiroshi Sugihara working at the University of Tokyo’s Prototyping and Design Laboratory 3D printed “skeletal” bio-robots inspired by animals. The robotic lizards, scorpions and other crawly creatures use tiny electrical motors to move around like their living cousins.

Why does it matter? The work is part of Sugihara’s Ready to Crawl project. He said using 3D printing to design “original transmission mechanisms” allows him to show the possibilities of the technology “for designing motion and transmission mechanisms.”

How does it work? Sugihara and his team design the creatures on a computer print them on a selective laser sintering machine, a type of a 3D printer. “In this project I tried to make robots which were born is completed state like creatures by making all parts, excluding a DC motor, assembled by [additive manufacturing] as one machine.”

Bacterial Submarines

This image is a transmission electron micrograph (TEM) image of a single commensal bacterium, E. coli Nissle 1917, which has been genetically engineered to express gas-filled protein nanostructures known as gas vesicles. The cell is approximately 2 micrometers in length, and the lighter-colored structures contained inside of it are individual gas vesicles. Caption and image credits:  AnupamaLakshmanan/Caltech

What is it? Scientists at the California Institute of Technology designed ultrasound sonar that can track bacteria in the body like submarines. “We are engineering the bacterial cells so they can bounce sound waves back to us and let us know their location the way a ship or submarine scatters sonar when another ship is looking for it,” says Mikhail Shapiro, assistant professor of chemical engineering at CalTech.

Why does it matter? The university reported that the research could allow doctors one day to “inject therapeutic bacteria into a patient’s body—for example, as probiotics to help treat diseases of the gut or as targeted tumor treatments—and then use ultrasound machines to hit the engineered bacteria with sound waves to generate images that reveal the locations of the microbes. The pictures would let doctors know if the treatments made it to the right place in the body and were working properly.”

How does it work? Shapiro and his team transferred genes for special “gas-filled protein structures in water-dwelling bacteria that help regulate the organisms’ buoyancy” to different types of bacteria and used them to bounce back ultrasound signals. “We wanted to teach the E. coli bacteria to make the gas vesicles themselves,” says Shapiro. “I’ve been wanting to do this ever since we realized the potential of gas vesicles, but we hit some roadblocks along the way. When we finally got the system to work, we were ecstatic.” The team successfully tracked the bugs in the guts of mice.