Before Louise Goetz became one of the first women to work the floor of an oil and gas equipment factory, before she helped lead a major European workforce and before she sold oil field equipment to the world’s biggest oil companies, she was standing in a rain-soaked field in Scotland, shooing bulls away from people’s gardens as they were moved from one field to another.

Goetz is the Europe director of oil field equipment at Baker Hughes, a GE company (BHGE), the $40 billion market-cap business that was formed through the merger of GE Oil & Gas and Baker Hughes in 2017. She had no idea she would do any of this oil industry stuff as a kid, but there she was anyway, coaxing 30 or so giant, lumbering bulls from field to field with just a stick. 

 “I was lucky enough that I didn’t have them charge at me,” she says matter-of-factly. (Goetz’s job frequently flies her to Houston, the unofficial oil capital of the world, and so a Texan twang creeps occasionally into her dominant Scottish brogue, an accent heavy enough to change the word “can’t” to “cannae.”)

Her rise to one of the highest positions in industrial engineering started in the most unlikely of places: a 250-acre farm in the windswept North East of Scotland. The nearest village, Fyvie, was about 3 miles away. Goetz, her parents and two siblings scratched out an isolated existence in the cold and often rainy weather — summer highs were a balmy 55 degrees Fahrenheit — growing barley to feed hundreds of bulls that were destined for someone’s rib-eye dinner. 

As a kid, Goetz (top) was coaxing 30 or so giant, lumbering bulls from field to field with just a stick on a 250-acre farm in the windswept North East of Scotland. Images credit: Louise Goetz.

Sometimes Goetz’s dad would call his dog to come and round the large animals over to a field with fresher grass. Many times he’d get his kids to help. “Everyone had to muck in,” she remembers today, speaking from the warmth of a meeting room in the BHGE office in Aberdeen, Scotland. “It’s just what you did, and you didn’t know any different.”    

Also on the farm were around 200 sheep that had to be lambed each year. To see themselves through the bitterly cold winters, Goetz’s family dug peat, the dark, decomposed plant matter used for fuel (perhaps an omen for her future career). She would take a wheelbarrow to an earthy bank to dig it up before shaping it into squares and piling it into pyramids to dry and eventually be burned. “That was our weekends in the summer,” she says. Was there much downtime at all? “Well,” she says, pausing to think. “No, not really.” 

It was a summer excursion in the late ’80s, when Goetz was around 16, that sparked her journey to the top of the oil industry. She had chosen a wide array of subjects at school to boost her chances of getting a job outside of farming. “I wanted to do something where [one] didn’t have to work so hard,” she jokes.

When the school saw she was one of the only girls in her year studying physics and math, it sent her to the northern English city of Bradford on a trip sponsored by the government aimed at getting girls interested in engineering. It was eye-opening. She toured factory floors and met female engineers, including one woman who ran maintenance for an entire power plant. “It exposed to me a whole world of engineering and women that I had no other frame of reference around,” she says, adding that the same kind of experience can impact girls today. “What holds people back isn’t capability, but exposure.” 

Goetz (on the right) became one of the first women to work the floor of an oil and gas equipment factory. Image credit: Louise Goetz.

Goetz went on to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering, something that aligned with her practical sensibilities better than electrical engineering. Practical was in her DNA, after all. “I never had a new bike,” she says by way of example. “My dad always assembled one from the bits and pieces of old ones lying around.” 

 She did her coursework at nights while working at a helicopter firm during the day, and sat her exams at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle during the holidays. Soon after Goetz graduated in 1992, her mother took some time away from the peat digging and lambing to cut out an ad from the local newspaper and send it to her daughter. It was a job advert for graduates from the oil company ABB Vetco Gray. 

Goetz hesitated. Her heart was set on working in what she assumed was the more thrilling world of aviation. “I had the impression that [the oil industry] was big, ugly and dirty, but I needed a job, so I interviewed,” she says. Goetz got the job, and told herself she’d only work in the industry for two years. “That was 25 years ago.” 

The last two decades have seen Goetz take a comprehensive journey through all manner of engineering subsystems, and when GE bought her employer in 2007 she finally got to work with GE’s aviation business, too. Among other things, the industry is using repurposed jet engines to power rigs and other equipment.

In the world of oil, she’s found herself engaging with everything from the blowout preventer assemblies to the corporate customers buying them. That desire to “muck in” with all aspects of an industrial conglomerate doesn’t sound all that different from her varied, nonstop work on a farm once upon a time. “The responsibility and the exposure can be overwhelming,” she says of her current job, before adding, “I love it.”     

Hackathons, the whirlwind competitions that challenge developers to solve complex problems in a short period, are like the Olympics for computer programmers. Teams compete for prizes, professional accolades and bragging rights among their peers. But one week last fall, they set their sights on a loftier goal: saving Mother Earth.

The 100 competitors at the first Appathon, held during GE’s Minds + Machines conference in San Francisco, had just 30 hours to conceive and develop a working app for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). “We were forced to make sure we had something of value in a very short period of time,” says competitor Christian Berg, a senior program manager at Microsoft. “We had to be laser-focused.”

Berg and his four Microsoft teammates, Mike Zawacki, Maarten van de Bospoort, Jenna Goodward and Shirley Wang (who came all the way from China) brought their A game. The team won its division with a “bring your own device” app, named BYODevice Demand Response, that could maximize renewable energy consumption by suggesting the best time to use electric devices based on demand on the grid and renewable energy output.

The BYOD app takes advantage of the increasing number of IoT devices. If the BYOD app comes to market, users could download it to any of the growing number of IoT devices, including electric cars, printers, dishwashers, mobile phones, thermostats, washers, smart refrigerators, lamps and laptops. The more devices are connected, in theory, the better informed the app will be.

The Microsoft team’s app would mine data collected using Predix to determine the optimal time to charge, consume power or discharge power, making the devices “smart” energy users. The app would consider the current demand on the grid and what percentage of the power is being generated by renewables at a given time, among other factors. “The app will send a signal to the devices all around us alerting them to the best time to use electricity,” says Microsoft’s Jenna Goodward, senior program manager for renewable energy. A laptop with the app, for example, might be plugged in at 10 p.m. but won’t start charging until 3 a.m., while a thermostat would be alerted throughout the day to cool buildings when the electricity being generated is as close to 100 percent renewable as possible. Renewable energy sources can vary as wind speeds change or when the sun sets.

The team started with a lightning round of brainstorming that yielded two potential ideas. The BYOD app stood out because it could be easily scalable — dozens or millions of people could use it.

The app takes into account a number of factors — when renewables make up the most energy supplied to the grid, the price of energy on the commodity market, and consumption history, for example — to predict when the energy supply is cleanest and most cost-effective for powering the app-enabled device.

“It’s an opportunity to make demand match supply,” says Zawacki, a senior developer at Microsoft.

Top image: A new app could maximize renewable energy consumption by suggesting the best time to use electric devices based on demand on the grid and renewable energy output. Image credit: GE Renewable Energy. Above: If the app comes to market, users could download it to any of the growing number of IoT devices, including electric cars, printers, dishwashers, mobile phones, thermostats, washers, smart refrigerators, lamps and laptops. Image credit: Getty Images.

A large number of devices using the BYOD app could also make power companies less susceptible to big swings in demand. Now, for example, electricity use surges on hot summer days around 6 p.m., when people arrive home from work and crank up the air conditioner. The BYOD app could alert ACs to keep the house a little warmer and reduce the spike in consumption. That would make the grid more efficient and cheaper to operate.

The app would also allow energy producers to create what-if scenarios to find ways to smooth out surges in demand on the grid. For example, dishwashers and clothes dryers connected to the app might be told to delay running right before rush hour, leaving more power available for electric vehicles to top up for the ride home. Or the data collected using Predix apps may indicate a temporary drop in electricity costs on a sunny day, so laptops and space heaters might be alerted to charge immediately.

Now if only they could design an app that predicts other types of surges — like one in the stock market.

In 1913, Henry Ford famously offered customers a choice of any color they wanted for their Model T — as long as they chose black. That’s because Japan black paint was the only color that dried fast enough to keep cars moving along his new assembly line. The line allowed him to crank out cars by reducing the time it took to assemble a Model T from 12.5 hours to 93 minutes, revolutionizing production along the way.

More than a century later, the first locomotive built using that same method will roll off the line later this month at GE’s Contagem factory in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The assembly line will reduce the time required to build a locomotive by 21 percent, from 19 days to 15 days. As workers gain more experience building on the line, that number is expected to drop even more.

Why did it take the train industry 100 years to catch up? “A locomotive is an entirely different animal than a car,” says Afonso Borges, Contagem industrial director. “We aren’t making millions of them a year. It took a complete change in culture, everything from sourcing to tools to materials and labor to make the switch.”

Above: The team used cardboard models to mock-up the line and eliminate bottlenecks. Top: A locomotive moving along the assembly line at GE Transportation’s Contagem factory. Images credit: GE Transportation.

The new moving assembly line is the culmination of four years of planning to revamp the way locomotives are built, deploying lean manufacturing principles, which Toyota pioneered and are designed to eliminate waste in manufacturing. The approach engages suppliers, workers and customers to improve quality and reduce costs, among other things.

Borges and his team started on the lean path in 2014 as a way to cut production time and save money. The Contagem factory produces two freight locomotives, the AC44i and ES43BBiThey’re sold mostly to Brazilian customers, who use them to haul agricultural products, iron ore and general cargo. In the past, locomotives were built in place by teams of specialized workers. Welders, for example, would work on the support harnesses, while mechanics installed various pipes running through the trains.

Borges and his team integrated the moving production lines slowly, starting with a few test lines to build components such as the wheel base. It took them a year to design the line and determine the order of assembly, and they even had to renumber parts to accommodate the new assembly pattern.

“A locomotive is an entirely different animal than a car,” says Afonso Borges, Contagem industrial director. “We aren’t making millions of them a year. Image credit: GE Transportation.

Employees initially were skeptical, but soon those who were working in the traditional fashion started asking when they, too, could work on the new assembly line, says Caroline Gurjao, Contagem’s lean manager. “They started to notice the people working on the lines had an easier time with the build, and were finishing faster, and they wanted in on it,” Gurjao says.

As of January, all locomotives are constructed on a moving line. Hydraulic cylinders slowly pull chains to move the locomotive along the line as blue-uniformed workers assemble it from the wheels up. The operators have been retrained so the workforce is more flexible, says Borges. “We can move people where we need them,” he says. The assembly line also will reduce inventory by $1.75 million and create more than 13,000 square feet of space savings within the factory.

The moving assembly line also means workers immediately flag any problems that arise. “Issues are more visible now because they stop the line, so we are aware of them very fast,” Borges says. “It helps us fix issues quickly, and it means we’re producing a higher-quality product because we know as soon as we have a problem.”

Borges says everyone in the plant is excited about the changes, seeing themselves as pioneers, even though the process itself is more than a century old. Others are taking notice. Next month, visitors from GE Transportation headquarters will visit the factory to determine where they will replicate the moving line in GE’s locomotive plants worldwide. The customers are happy, too, with the prospect of shorter production times. As for the color of the locomotives, “We’ll tell them any shade of black,” jokes Borges.

Ever tried riding a bicycle up a steep hill and ran out of strength? That’s when an electric bike with a built-in battery might have come in handy and carried you to the top. GE Renewable Energy is now pioneering a similar solution for wind turbines. The batteries store power when there is low demand on the grid, say, on a Sunday or at night. The batteries discharge when the wind stops blowing and people and factories need power. But the battery in question isn’t the solid mass you’d find on a bike, though. It’s millions of gallons of water.

Four wind turbines of this design have just started spinning in Germany’s southwestern Swabian-Franconian Forest. Built by GE, they stretch up into the sky at a record-breaking 584 feet, almost double the height of the Statue of Liberty. Each has a large, concrete barrel-like container at its base capable of holding 1.6 million gallons of water. The turbines bring to mind a giant electric toothbrush with a AA battery at the bottom. Below each of the turbines is an even larger, underground reservoir holding five times as many gallons of water.

The giant battery at the base of each turbine can hold 70 megawatt-hours, equivalent to 20 hours’ worth of work by a single wind turbine. When demand on the grid spikes these reservoirs send water to a separate hydropower plant on the edge of the River Kocher, turning the stored water’s potential energy into electricity. The system reverses the process to recharge the battery, using electricity when demand is low to pump the water back up. (See image below. Click to enlarge.)

Top image: The giant battery at the base of each turbine can hold 70 megawatt-hours, equivalent to 20 hours’ worth of work by a single wind turbine. Image credit: Max Bögl Wind AG, Photographer: Reinhard Mederer. Illustration credit: Max Bögl Wind AG.

The clean-energy hybrid should help keep Germany’s electric grid more stable, says Thorsten Mack, GE’s project leader for the wind turbines project, and help the country reach its goal of getting nearly half its power from renewables by 2030. Electricity grids will often turn to other power sources like fossil fuels when the wind dies down, but in this case, they’ll be able to turn to another renewable energy.

The hydropower plant will be operational by the end of 2018, but even without the water-sourced power, each GE 3.4-137 turbine can already produce 10 gigawatt-hours, enough to supply 2,500 average German four-person homes. GE also provided software like the Digital Wind Farm application, which parses through turbine, grid and weather data to predict how much power should flow into the grid. Part of GE’s Predix platform, an app-building environment for the industrial internet, it can help crews plan maintenance more efficiently too.

GE built the wind turbines between March 2016 and December 2017 for Max Boegl Wind AG, and the team behind it finished two weeks early. “Everyone was home at Christmas,” Mack says.

This massive concrete structure stores water under the turbine. Image credit: Sylvio Matysik.

Out of the 100 or so people who might be on the site at any one time, a brave handful would have to take an elevator to the very top of each windmill, leaving any fear of heights or claustrophobia at the door. The steel elevator, surrounded by metal brackets and cables, was so small only two people could fit inside, and typically they’d have to stand facing one another during the 8-minute ride. “You become very close friends,” says Mack, laughing. “It’s very, very small.”

The elevator takes its occupants to the top of the windmill’s stem and stops directly under the machine head, called a nacelle. Once at the top, some of these workers had the unenviable job of climbing out on top of the nacelle and guiding the 19-ton turbine blades into place. “The people on the top need to make sure the blades are installed in the right position,” Mack says. Each blade was installed on a blade bearing connected to center of the turbine’s rotor — precision work that had to be done to the millimeter, Mack says. All the while, his team had to carefully monitor the weather forecast. A sudden gust of wind at the wrong time could be dangerous. “You need to consider that the blade is not only very big,” he adds. “It is designed to catch wind.”

During construction, workers climb out on top of the nacelle and guide the 19-ton turbine blades into place. Image credit: Max Bögl Wind AG

While that would be a terrifying job for most, these specialist workers typically have 10 or 20 years of experience under their belts. (Wind turbines are growing taller each year, though, so nerves of steel are increasingly in order.) The photo above shows one of the water battery turbines during construction in 2017, and a blade-installation tool (the yellow, crane alongside the shaft) lifting one of the turbine blades into position. Mack explains that the blades’ weight and vast length meant that it was difficult to install them without also breaching the limit of the crane’s capacity.

Just getting all the parts to the site was an adventure in itself. The wind  turbines had “the biggest single-piece blades ever shipped over German streets by GE,” Mack remembers. The team hoisted the blades made by LM Wind Power onto an enormous truck with a trailer longer than the width of a football field, and planned out a slow, methodical drive through German highways and tiny villages in the Swabian forest.

“That was extraordinary,” he says. “It was a challenge to build such a blade, but another to transport it in one piece.”

Image credit: Max Bögl Wind AG, Photographer: Reinhard Mederer.

An AI took a crack at decoding the mysterious language of the medieval Voynich manuscript, Chinese scientists used 3D printers to grow new ears for kids suffering from a rare medical condition, and their peers developed a coating for cellphones that could allow scratches to heal themselves. Even in the dead of winter, the world of science is writhing with life.

AI Cracks The Voynich Mystery Manuscript Wide Open

After polishing up the language with Google Translate, the computer scientists came up with this opening gem: “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.”  Image credit: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University.

What is it? Computer scientists from the University of Alberta used artificial intelligence to take the first steps toward decoding a 600-year-old manuscript whose meaning has eluded linguists and cryptologists for more than a century.

Why does it matter? The Voynich manuscript, named for the Polish rare-book collector who obtained it at one point in its history, presents two inscrutable puzzles — a set of unrecognizable letters coded in an unknown language — wrapped into one 240-page book. Computer scientists and cryptologists alike are hoping that the algorithms used to partially crack the Voynich manuscript will also unlock other textual mysteries.

How does it work? First, the AI program studied the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in roughly 400 different languages to identify patterns. From there, AI concluded that the Voynich manuscript was written in Hebrew and then encrypted. Next, the scientists worked off a hunch that the texts used an alphagram (where letters in a word are rearranged alphabetically, e.g., COOLEST is CELOOST) to devise an algorithm to turn each word into real Hebrew. After polishing up the language with Google Translate, the computer scientists came up with this opening gem: “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.” It’s a start.

3D-Printed Ears

“We were able to successfully design, fabricate, and regenerate patient-specific external ears,” the researchers wrote in their study. Image credit: Shutterstock.

What is it? Chinese researchers used 3D printing to grow ears for five children who suffer from microtia, a congenital condition where the external ear is deformed or completely missing.

Why does it matter? Microtia, which occurs in roughly one in 5,000 births, can impair hearing and is tough to treat. Patients must undergo reconstructive surgery using cartilage from their ribs or wear a prosthetic ear made from plastic. This new procedure could offer kids another option.

How does it work? Scientists took a CT scan of each child’s fully formed ear and used its mirror image to 3D-print a mold for housing biodegradable scaffolding. Then they filled the scaffolding with cells taken from the child’s deformed ear and cultured those cells for three months. Once the lab-grown cartilage began to resemble the patient’s ear shape, doctors implanted the new ear onto the patients. “We were able to successfully design, fabricate, and regenerate patient-specific external ears,” the researchers wrote in their study, which appears in the journal EBioMedicine.

Miniature Robots Powered By Moisture

Moisture-related movement could help hygrobots treat patients internally. Caption and GIF credit: Shin et al., Sci. Robot. 3, eaar2629 (2018)

What is it? Researchers at Seoul National University in South Korea have created tiny robots — called hygrobots — that run on moisture. Though they look like primitive animal shapes fashioned out of office supplies, hygrobots can move themselves across surfaces by creeping like inchworms or wriggling like snakes.

Why does it matter? Medical scientists have longed dreamed of using autonomous microbots to treat patients internally. However, no one wants to swallow a device with a battery that might go awry. A bot that runs on moisture is perfectly organic (not to mention gluten-free), and its simple design enables “autonomous yet directional locomotion,” according to its creators. To demonstrate the hygrobot’s potential, researchers loaded it with antibiotics, then placed it in a petri dish full of bacteria. The hygrobot cut a path free of bacteria.

How does it work? Inspired by plants that move in response to moisture, such as self-burrowing seeds, scientists built the hygrobots out of a nanofiber consisting of two layers, each of which responds differently to moisture. When dampened, the first layer will stretch and expand, while the second remains unmoved. That tension triggers an up-and-down movement strong enough to send the bot crawling forward.

Laser Vision

What is it? Electrical engineers at Brigham Young University have devised a new laser system that can create free-floating images that, unlike holograms, appear three-dimensional from any angle. That means the ethereal shape of Princess Leia in “Star Wars” could become a reality. Cue the joyous cheers of sci-fi nerds everywhere.

Why does it matter? Holograms may appear three-dimensional, but they are actually created by bouncing light from flat images at angles to create the illusion of depth — one that’s only convincing from the right vantage point. The new images actually occupy a 3D space, appearing right no matter where the observer stands. Hovering 3D images could help heart surgeons hone their skills without cutting open a patient, or Olympic skiers could record their performance and review details as minute as the placement of their pinkies. Advertising would never be the same either. Imagine how enticing a 3D visual of an iced latte would seem on a hot summer day.

How does it work? Researchers trap a single particle of cellulose within a nearly invisible laser beam, which allows them to move it through the air. Next, a second laser swoops in to shine red, green and blue lights onto the cellulose, which “the particle scatters in all directions,” according to Science News. The particle moves rapidly enough through the air to make the shape it traces appear solid at any angle. So far, the new laser system can only generate images the size of a fingertip. However, the researchers expect to scale up very soon.

Smartphone, Heal Thyself

Top and above: The inner layer of the coating is supple and dynamic enough to self-heal. The outer layer consists of the same chemical components but includes a dash of graphene oxide to keep it rigid. Image credit: Shutterstock.

What is it? Scientists in China recently wrote in the ACS Nano journal that they invented a new “smart” coating for consumer goods that combines the healing property of skin with the wear-and-tear strength of tooth enamel.

Why does it matter? Selling products that can repair themselves has long intrigued manufacturers. The problem is that most “smart” coatings are made of soft polymers that wear out quickly. Harder materials are resilient but too rigid to weave themselves back together. A coating that can do both unleashes a whole new market of consumer devices — like a cellphone capable of fixing its own scratches.

How does it work? Like human skin, the coating consists of layers. The inner layer is supple and dynamic enough to self-heal. The outer layer consists of the same chemical components but includes a dash of graphene oxide to keep it rigid. According to the researchers’ study: “The hybrid multilayers can achieve a complete restoration after scratching thanks to the mutual benefit: The soft underneath cushion can provide additional polymers to assist the recovery of the outer hard layer, which in turn can be a sealing barrier promoting the self-healing of the soft layer during stimulated polymer diffusion.” Aside from healing itself, the new coating can also kill bacteria.

A cancer diagnosis or a stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) often bring confusion, fear and questions about the best course of treatment. That’s why a group of doctors and scientists at GE Healthcare and Roche Diagnostics are looking for a new way to predict the most effective treatment for an individual by applying data analytics to the problem.

Over the last decade, big data made inroads into personal fitness, energy, politics and other fields. Now it’s moving into healthcare. The idea is that smart algorithms looking for insights in terabytes of medical information will help physicians better serve their patients with earlier diagnoses and customized treatment plans.

The partnership between GE and Roche announced in January will create digital platforms for so-called “precision health” in oncology and critical care. The oncology platform, the first of its kind, will take “in-vivo” data obtained directly from the patient by radiological imaging and monitoring equipment to characterize the tumor at the anatomical and physiological level. It will combine the data with “in-vitro” information from laboratory tests that characterize the tumor at the molecular level by looking at tissue pathology, blood-based biomarkers, genomic alterations (cancer-relevant mutations) and other factors. The system also will integrate data from electronic medical records, medical best practices and the latest research.

“Say someone comes to the ER with a fever, but it’s not obvious why,” says GE’s Ishaque. “All the information — vital signs, physiological parameters, blood tests, X-rays, ultrasounds — will be combined and analyzed immediately to help with a diagnosis for quicker and safer treatment.” Top and above images credit: Shutterstock.

Today in oncology, the team of specialists assembled to treat individual cancer patients typically meets on a set schedule to swap details about the patient and test results to make a diagnosis and assess how the disease is progressing. “Everyone gets together and pulls up all these images and slides and spreadsheets,” says Nadeem Ishaque, chief innovation officer at GE Healthcare’s Imaging business. “It’s inefficient when time is of the essence.”

The new platform will provide care teams with a comprehensive data dashboard that pulls together information from diagnostic imaging (such as CT or MRI scans), blood tests, tissue samples, gene sequencing, the latest clinical trials, and other sources. The idea is to give oncologists all the information they need in one place to arrive at an accurate diagnosis and determine the most effective course of treatment for a specific patient. Software apps available on the system, using analytics and machine learning, will compare the patient’s data with historical treatment data and outcomes. “The electronic board will be accessible to everyone [involved in caring for that patient] all the time, no matter where they are,” Ishaque says. “Software apps will integrate all the longitudinal data on the patient, from seven years ago, three years ago and today, so the oncologist can manage the patient throughout their lifetime and through every stage of the disease.”

Roche Diagnostics and GE Healthcare also are working on another platform for critical care that will have applications in the ICU and the emergency room (ER). The new combined dataset can then be integrated into existing clinician workflows and help physicians to identify or even predict infectious diseases. Infectious diseases are a huge risk for patients in the ICU because they are more susceptible. “Say someone comes to the ER with a fever, but it’s not obvious why,” Ishaque says. “All the information — vital signs, physiological parameters, blood tests, X-rays, ultrasounds — will be combined and analyzed immediately to help with a diagnosis for quicker and safer treatment.”

Says Ishaque: “The end game is saving lives and a better quality of life for the patients.”

If you’ve read a business, financial, or computing magazine, or website, in the past 12 months there’s a high chance that their front pages, and homepages have been dominated by stories about bitcoin and blockchain.

Blockchain is often mentioned in stories on the emerging digital cryptocurrency bitcoin because (in simple terms) it is the technology behind bitcoin. It also been in the headlines recently following the recent ‘split’ of bitcoin economies.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a simple, distributed, digital ledger. The ‘distributed’ feature of blockchain enables accountancy on a global scale and it’s this benefit that makes blockchain disruptive and revolutionary.

The ‘chain’ of records in blockchain applications ensures a live, constantly updated structure of shared information in real-time, that allows transactions to be verified by multiple parties across a distributed network, ensuring the accuracy of data.

Security-wise, it is impossible to hack, forge, or corrupt a single record for personal gain, because records are held, and verified independently, by a network of ledgers. And with users of a system being the custodians of data, it removes the need for a middle man, or bank to verify your accounts – this function is done by thousands of users across a distributed network.

 Shared value in distributed knowledge

As blockchain enables shared value, how much impact could it make in the future?

• US$113 billion is the global spend on cyber security expected by 2020 according to Gartner
• US$3.6 million is the estimated cost per incident of a security breach according to an IBM study
• US$2 trillion is the cost estimated by Juniper Research that cybercrime will inflict on businesses by 2019

Blockchain’s distributed ledger is poised to revolutionise the way we tackle these challenges as it offers greater transparency in securing networks. Distributed ledgers, and the public history of transactions displayed by blockchain offers unrivalled oversight and audit trails, so if the system is breached, it will be instantly detected.

Crossing into mainstream

These security, and resulting speed of payment benefits, have lured major corporates such as J.P. Morgan Chase and IBM to launch their own cross-border payment networks using blockchain technology in recent months.

GE’s Blockchain journey

Industrial applications are also in development and Ben Beckmann, who works as the lead scientist in the complex systems engineering lab at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, New York, is one of the team investigating how bitcoin and blockchain can make a difference for the company.

He and others at GE discovered that the real magic of this new technology was blockchain’s public digital ledger function that keeps a chronological record of all bitcoin transactions. The technology could be used also for tracking trade, contracts, and even renewable energy.

Maja Vujinovic, technical product manager at GE Digital, is leading a push to explore and develop blockchain across the company. She’s looking at everything from purchase orders and budget reconciliation and parts tracking. “The bank receives a fee for every transaction,” Vujinovic  says. “If we can remove the bank and establish a trust mechanism instead, that will save us a lot of money.”

Vujinovic is also exploring applications in additive manufacturing. Maintenance workers, for example, could use blockchain to make sure that a 3D printed turbine blade has the same geometry as the part it is replacing. In the energy space, it could allow an owner of solar panels to sell extra energy at the best price instantaneously. Factory owners could use it to track inventory and reduce costs.

“Today, blockchain is where the internet was in the 1990s,” Beckmann says. “I believe it has the same potential.”

GE forecasted that connected machines and the Industrial Internet can add $10 to $15 trillion to the global economy over the next two decades. Bitcoin could help speed up the process, but Vujinovic cautions that a lot still needs to be done.

Back in 1967, Allegheny Airlines was a small business with a big idea — connect dozens of American cities with regular flights.

But to do that, Allegheny needed wings. It bought regional carriers like Indiana’s Lake Central airlines and New York’s Mohawk Airlines to provide coverage east of the Mississippi River and in parts of Canada. But it still wasn’t enough. The problem: Planes are expensive and Allegheny couldn’t afford to buy the new aircraft it needed.

So, the company reached out to GE, whose credit corporation had been offering financing on things like household appliances since the Great Depression.

To be sure, airplanes are a little bigger, and a lot more expensive, than a washing machine. But GE came up with a creative way to help Allegheny: it would buy the three DC 9 jets that Allegheny needed and then lease them back to the airline over the next 12 years. The deal helped Allegheny build the first U.S. commuter airline, offering service to 50 cities up and down the Eastern seaboard and as far west as Indiana. In 1979, the airline rebranded itself — as USAir.

Half a century after that first lease, General Electric Capital Aviation Services, or GECAS, is the world’s leading airline leasing company, with a fleet of 1,950 airplanes in operation or on order it leases to 270 airline customers in 75 countries around the world.

Above: GE helped Allegheny build the first U.S. commuter airline, offering service to 50 cities up and down the Eastern seaboard and as far west as Indiana. In 1979, the airline rebranded itself — as USAir. Top: Some of the largest and fastest-growing airlines around the world, including Southwest, Jet Blue and AirAsia (below) are GECAS customers. Images credit: GECAS.

The GECAS story straddles the Atlantic Ocean. It got its start with the help of the Irish national carrier Aer Lingus.

In 1973, as fuel prices were shooting skyward in the wake of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Aer Lingus found itself with more planes than it could afford to fly. The air carrier’s leadership devised a plan to lease those idled planes to the Thai airline Air Siam and used them to generate revenue. The deal helped the Irish airline through a difficult time and after the crisis passed, Aer Lingus kept expanding its leasing business, spinning it out as its own company, Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA), in 1975.

During the next two decades, GPA thrived as leased planes, which in 1980 accounted for only 2 percent of all planes, climbed to 15 percent of the global fleet.

But much of that business was built on the easy flow of credit. In 1991, when the Gulf War sent the global economy into a tailspin, GPA came close to bankruptcy and needed to find a strong financial partner to help keep it afloat. GE, which had slowly been building its own airline leasing business, saw an opportunity. It merged with GPA to create GECAS.

When AirAsia founder Anthony “Tony” Fernandes started building his airline in the early 2000s, AirAsia had just two jets. Today it has an 180-plane fleet, 7,000 employees and a $2 billion valuation. Images credit: Charles Pertwee/Bloomberg.

Within a few years, the new company was the worldwide leader in airplane leasing, with 445 planes in its fleet, contracts to manage 430 more and an order in place for $6 billion worth of new Boeing and Airbus jets.

In the decades since, GECAS has expanded to include a variety of aircrafts, including helicopters. It has also expanded its leasing options from a few days, for customers that need a quick rental, to several years. In the early 2000s, it helped a wave of low-cost carriers — like JetBlue and Southwest — quickly grow their fleets through leasing.

Today, an estimated 38 percent of all planes carrying passengers around the world are leased and some experts predict that number will grow to 50 percent by 2020. Most of that growth will come from air carriers India and China, where air travel is booming. Analysts predict that, in the next 20 years, China will surpass the U.S. as the top aviation market, with 1.3 billion passengers per year.

In the meantime, business leaders, like AirAsia’s Anthony Fernandes, are using leasing to quickly build airlines to serve a growing middle class. As more people take to the air, GECAS continues to find new ways to finance that growth.

One day, when he was still barely a teenager, the film director Steven Spielberg came to visit his father, Arnold, at work. It was the late 1950s and the elder Spielberg was building computers for GE in Phoenix. His designs included a revolutionary machine that a group of computer scientists at Dartmouth College later used to write BASIC, the programming language that revolutionized personal computing. “I walked through rooms that were so bright, I recall it hurting my eyes,” Steven Spielberg told GE Reports about the factory. “Dad explained how his computer was expected to perform, but the language of computer science in those days was like Greek to me. It all seemed very exciting, but it was very much out of my reach until the 1980s, when I realized what pioneers like my dad had created were now the things I could not live without.”

Arnold Spielberg, who turns 101 today, may have been a pioneer, but standing in that bright room in Arizona he was in the dark about many things we consider ordinary today. “At the time I never envisioned anything like the internet,” he said when GE Reports visited him at his bungalow high above Los Angeles.

Surrounded by photographs with President Barack Obama, Hollywood personalities and family, and framed patent certificates — he received 12 patents in total — Arnold Spielberg talked about computers, his love for science fiction and his work on Hollywood blockbusters such as Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.” What follows is an edited version of our discussion.

GE Reports: When you started designing computers back in the 1950s, the technology was still very new. How did you choose that line of work?

Arnold Spielberg: I was always interested in electricity. I liked working with magnets, and I liked working with radios. I knew about Edison and Tesla, but not in detail. I got my first crystal radio set when I was 9. It’s basically a diode that can detect radio waves, and I played around with it. But I never could get it working until a radio repairman who lived next door helped me set it up.

GER: What else were you building?

AS: Once I saw an Erector Set in a hardware store. I went inside and asked the owner if I could use it to make a steam shovel and put it in the shop window so they could sell more Erector Sets. He grudgingly agreed and I sat in the back every day after school until it was finished. Later, I brought my mom over and showed her what I built. Sure enough, I got the construction set for Hanukkah. But I was also influenced by science fiction. There were twins in our neighborhood who read one of the first sci-fi magazines, called Astounding Stories of Science and Fact. They gave me one copy, and when I brought it home, I was hooked. The magazine is now called Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and I still get it.

GER: How did you end up at GE?

AS: I studied electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati, and I got my degree in 1949. The first job I had was with RCA. I was designing electronic circuits for missile systems. When they started working on computers, I joined that group. After that, I moved to GE.

I joined GE’s computer department in Schenectady, New York, in 1955. My first job was designing circuits for the first computer process controls. The department was just starting. I stayed at the YMCA and visited my family, which was still back in New Jersey, on the weekends.

Top: Arnold Spielberg at his house in Los Angeles in 2016. Image credit: GE Reports. Above: Spielberg helped build computers that monitored steel mills, steam turbines and other technology. His GE-225 machine even correctly predicted election results. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GER: Who were the computers for?

AS: The first ones were used for the industrial market. Our customers were paper mills and steel mills like Jones and Laughlin Steel Company in Pittsburgh, Youngstown Sheet and Tube in Ohio, and McLouth Steel in Michigan. They were the first customers ever to have a control system for a hot strip mill.

GER: What did the computers do?

AS: The first computers I built were data-acquisition systems. Their job was to monitor defects. They were a wire-programmed system, which means that they were uniquely designed to do just that job. Another computer called GE-312 monitored a turbine for Southern California Edison. We didn’t dare to control it because that required stops and starts, which could have endangered the machine’s life. The function then was just to make sure that it stayed within specified temperature ranges and that all the contacts were opened or closed as prescribed.

Students and professors at Dartmouth University used a GE-225 machine like the one pictured above to write the first version of BASIC in 1964. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GER: Tell me about the computer Dartmouth used to write BASIC.

AS: Unlike the previous computers, the GE-225 — as it was called — was a business computer. It stored its own software, handling the input and output of data. We relocated the factory to Phoenix and sold it within GE as well as to the external market. GE used them for general business applications and some scientific work, but mostly to do business processing. I was in charge of the small-computer-systems group, whose job it was to design the circuits, design the logic, plan the system and put it all together.

Arnold Spielberg in 1961. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GER: How small was this small computer?

AS: The computer consisted of three racks of equipment. Each rack was 2 feet wide and 7 feet tall. There was air conditioning at the bottom of each rack to cool it off because the circuits ran pretty warm. The memory could range from 8,000 to 16,000 20-bit words. It had an auxiliary memory that could go to 32,000 20-bit words. The computer interfaced with magnetic tapes, with punch cards and punch tapes, among other things.

One of our colleagues, Bill Bridge, designed a computer interface for Dartmouth that could transfer information from the computer to dumb terminals. They had no memory and no capability of doing computation. These were just input and output devices with keyboards. People could connect between 15 to 20 terminals to one computer and use that for time sharing. GE was one of the first companies to do time sharing and allow multiple terminals to talk to a computer.

Dartmouth had one of our computers, and they programmed it to develop the computer language BASIC. It allowed people to use the system to solve problems and handle data coming in out of the computer. Steve Wozniak may have used one such remote terminal to write software for Macs.

GER: Did your friends or family understand what you were doing?

AS: Back then I didn’t have that many friends who were interested in computers. It was like a big mystery to them. My son Steven came to visit once, and I showed him the factory and the engineering floor. I tried to get him interested in engineering, but his heart was in movies. At first I was disappointed, but then I saw how good he was in moviemaking.

GER: You were also involved in movies.

AS: I went to Caltech, and met with the astrophysicists Kip Thorne and Lisa Randall and several other scientists, and we sat there and brainstormed ideas about black holes for the movie “Interstellar.” It was a lot of fun because we kicked around all kinds of ideas about the size of black holes and how feasible they are and how likely there actually may be one.

GER: You didn’t turn Steven into an engineer, but he turned you into a moviemaker.

AS: It’s in the family now.

In the 1960s, airports started using air traffic control technology that allowed them to swiftly transition from scheduling a few hundred flights a day to managing thousands. Now, many airports handle millions of passengers every day. Despite the vast complexity of such a logistical challenge, the airline industry also became significantly safer and more efficient along the way.

This “air traffic control” concept soon spread to other industries. Bricks-and-mortar businesses and restaurants use it to track busy times and appropriately staff those periods, for example. Utilities like the New York Power Authority deploy similar systems to monitor their networks of power plants and power lines. Now the healthcare industry is taking its turn.

Last fall, Toronto’s Humber River Hospital (HRH) opened Canada’s first analytics-based hospital “command center” in collaboration with GE Healthcare Partners. The mission-control-style center serves as a central hub for the hospital’s many functions and services. It helps address issues that have plagued healthcare in Canada for decades, such as capacity, safety, quality and wait times. “Our goal in the Command Center is to combine cutting-edge technology, insight-rich data and human expertise to deliver impact that is felt immediately by patients, physicians and care providers,” says Barbara Collins, president and CEO of HRH.

The new 4,500-square-foot Command Center uses machine learning and complex algorithms developed by GE Healthcare Partners to produce real-time and predictive insights. The center’s staff can use these insights to deliver safer, faster and better patient care. HRH leaders expect the center, in combination with HRH’s recently implemented hospital-wide digital transformation, to improve hospital efficiency by 40 percent.

For patients, the center promises to result in less wait time and improved care. For clinicians, it can mean more time freed up to focus on those patients. “This isn’t about telling doctors how to be doctors, but rather it’s about helping and supporting them in doing their work, removing roadblocks and barriers,” says Dr. Susan Tory, the Command Center’s medical director.

Top and above: The new 4,500-square-foot Command Center uses machine learning and complex algorithms developed by GE Healthcare Partners to produce real-time and predictive insights. Image credits: CNW Group/Humber River Hospital.

The Command Center’s most striking feature is what GE Healthcare calls the Wall of Analytics. It processes real-time data from multiple sources across the hospital and visualizes the information and corresponding alerts for staff in the Command Center to act upon. “The Command Center helps us rethink how we run the hospital,” Collins says.

For example, hospital staff members run bed meetings one or more times a day to understand bed needs and current and future bed availability. In the past, managers from each unit would gather data about available beds and input it into an information system for discussion at the meeting. “By the time they arrived at the bed meeting, the information was outdated,” Collins says. “The Command Center replaces that by pulling the information together in real time and presenting it in a way that is useful.”

Hospital teams now work together to synchronize care delivery.  Information on the Wall of Analytics helps them streamline the flow of patients in and out of beds, eliminate delays in care such as inpatients waiting for their imaging exam, and resolve bottlenecks by prioritizing care activities. In this way, HRH is working to ensure that is makes full use of available capacity and that patients are properly cared for.

HRH began its digital transformation in 2005, when planning started for the new Humber River Hospital, which opened October 2015 and serves a region of more than 850,000 residents. Patient volumes have grown at a higher-than-anticipated rate, and hospital leaders are projecting a shortfall of 40 to 50 beds for nonsurgical patients by 2021. “We’re at full capacity today, and we’re only going to see more and more patients through our front door. How are we going to deal with that?” says Peter Bak, the hospital’s chief information officer. “We can’t just say, ‘Sorry, you’re going to wait longer.’ That’s not acceptable.”

“This isn’t about telling doctors how to be doctors, but rather it’s about helping and supporting them in doing their work, removing roadblocks and barriers,” says Dr. Susan Tory, the Command Center’s medical director. Image credit: CNW Group/Humber River Hospital.

In addition to addressing capacity and access issues, the Command Center also will help with Humber’s goal of improving patient safety. “We need to drive hospitals to a point where they don’t make errors,” Bak says. “The Command Center acts as a second set of eyes and allows us to reduce the potential for mistakes.”

Hospital leadership will analyze each day’s alerts and the actions they trigger to identify and resolve system-level issues such as portering capacity or discharge-process effectiveness.

In much the same way airports transformed in the 1960s to today, HRH is leading the way in the healthcare industry by implementing innovative technology that will enable it to serve its community well through the next era. Collins is confident the Command Center positions HRH for the future. “For the first time in 40 years, we have a tangible way to sustain change.”

GE Healthcare Partners expects to bring more command centers online in 2018. The unit says that by 2020, command centers will be a critical feature that hospitals can’t survive without.

This story originally appeared on GE Healthcare’s Pulse blog.

This week we learned about a facial recognition system for cows, a bacterium that consumes toxic metals and poops out gold without poisoning itself, and a live worm that lives inside a computer and can balance a pole on the tip of its tail. Together with the car now orbiting Earth, this week got a lot of mileage out of science.

Old MacDonald Had A Farm, AI, AI, O

Top and above: Cainthus has developed “proprietary software” that can identify cows by their hide patterns and faces, and track “key data such as food and water intake, heat detection and behavior patterns.” GIF and image credit: Getty Images.

What is it? The Irish machine vision company Cainthus is putting facial recognition and remote sensing out on the pasture. The company, which just received an investment from the U.S. agricultural giant Cargill, has developed “proprietary software” that can identify cows by their hide patterns and faces, and track “key data such as food and water intake, heat detection and behavior patterns,” according to a Cargill news release. “The software then delivers analytics that drive on-farm decisions that can impact milk production, reproduction management and overall animal health.”

Why does it matter? Predictive analytics are already monitoring planes and power plants, but they are clearly spreading into farming. “Our shared vision is to disrupt and transform how we bring insights and analytics to dairy producers worldwide,” said SriRaj Kantamneni, managing director for Cargill’s digital insights business, said the release. “Our customers’ ability to make proactive and predictive decisions to improve their farm’s efficiency, enhance animal health and wellbeing, reduce animal loss, and ultimately increase farm profitability are significantly enhanced with this technology.”

How does it work? Cainthus’ imaging technology “can identify individual cows by their features in several seconds to memorize a cow’s unique identity, recording individual pattern and movements,” Cargill said. “That information is used as part of an artificial intelligence-driven mathematical algorithm that conveys imagery into feed and water intake analysis, behavioral tracking and health alerts that can be sent directly to the farmer. Data gleaned from those images is used to anticipate issues and adjust feeding regimens. What used to be a manual process that took days or weeks now takes place in near real-time.”

The Ultimate Gold Bug

C. metallidurans can produce small gold nuggets. Caption and image credits: American Society for Microbiology.

What is it? University researchers working in Germany and Australia have shed light on a trick that allows a special kind of bacteria to swallow miniscule amounts of toxic metals and poop out “tiny gold nuggets” — without poisoning itself.

Why does it matter? The process could help miners produce gold “from ores containing only a small percentage of gold without requiring toxic mercury bonds as was previously the case,” Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg said in a news release.

How does it work? The team, working at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, the Technical University of Munich and the University of Adelaide, studied C. metallidurans, a bacterium known to extract gold from soils full of poisonous heavy metals. “Apart from the toxic heavy metals, living conditions in these soils are not bad,” said Dietrich H. Nies, a microbiologist at MLU. “There is enough hydrogen to conserve energy and nearly no competition. If an organism chooses to survive here, it has to find a way to protect itself from these toxic substances.” The team observed that the bacteria use a pair of enzymes to transform copper and gold compounds found in the soil into forms that are difficult to absorb. “This assures that fewer copper and gold compounds enter the cellular interior,” Nies said. “The bacterium is poisoned less and the enzyme that pumps out the copper can dispose of the excess copper unimpeded. Another consequence: the gold compounds that are difficult to absorb transform in the outer area of the cell into harmless gold nuggets only a few nanometres in size.”

This Computer Worm Is For Real

“The project raises the question whether there is a fundamental difference between living nerve systems and computer code,” the team wrote in a news release. Image credit: Shutterstock.

What is it? It’s going to be a while before we can upload our brains into a computer. But programmers at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria have taken what might be the first step on that journey, blurring the boundaries between a living being and a being living inside a computer. They uploaded into a computer a copy of the neural system of a simple worm, C. elegans. Once running inside, they trained the worm’s digital doppelganger to balance a pole at the tip of its tail.

Why does it matter?“The project raises the question whether there is a fundamental difference between living nerve systems and computer code,” the team wrote in a news release. “Is machine learning and the activity of our brain the same on a fundamental level? At least we can be pretty sure that the simple nematode C. elegans does not care whether it lives as a worm in the ground or as a virtual worm on a computer hard drive.”

How does it work? With only 300 neurons, the worm is “the only living being whose neural system has been analyzed completely,” the team reported. The team uploaded the worm’s neural system inside the computer and started manipulating it by emulating the ways it normally responds to touch and other basic stimuli in nature. “With the help of reinforcement learning, a method also known as ‘learning based on experiment and reward,’ the artificial reflex network was trained and optimized on the computer,” explained the university’s Mathias Lechner. The approach allowed the team to teach the virtual worm to balance a pole. “The result is a controller, which can solve a standard technology problem – stabilizing a pole, balanced on its tip,” said Lechner’s colleague Radu Grosu. “But no human being has written even one line of code for this controller, it just emerged by training a biological nerve system.”

Saving Skin

“Essentially, we can manipulate wound healing so that it leads to skin generation rather than scarring,” said George Costarelis, the chair of the Department of Dermatology at Penn and the project’s principal investigator. Image credit: University of Pennsylvania/University of California, Irvine.

What is it? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Irvine, have found a way to help wounds heal without scars. “Essentially, we can manipulate wound healing so that it leads to skin generation rather than scarring,” said George Costarelis, the chair of the Department of Dermatology at Penn and the project’s principal investigator.

Why does it matter? The university said in a news release that “the first and most obvious use” would be to develop a therapy that helps wounds heal without scarring. Skin regeneration could also lead to new anti-aging treatments.

How does it work? The team found a way to transform myofibroblasts, the most common cells found in healing wounds, into fat cells called adipocytes — a feat long considered impossible. Adipocytes are common in healthy skin but not in scars. “The secret is to generate hair follicles first,” Costarelis said. “After that, the fat will generate in response to the signals from those hair follicles.” His colleague Maksim Plikus working at the University of California, Irvine, said that “the findings show we have a window of opportunity after wounding to influence the tissue to regenerate rather than scar.

A New Meaning For Spine Tingling

What is it? Scientists at Columbia University have developed a lithium battery shaped like the human spine that they say retains “high energy density and stable voltage no matter how it is flexed or twisted.”

Why does it matter? The battery could power a wide range of flexible wearable devices, patches, sensors and smart fabrics. “The energy density of our prototype is one of the highest reported so far,” said Yuan Yang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Columbia. “We’ve developed a simple and scalable approach to fabricate a flexible spine-like lithium ion battery that has excellent electrochemical and mechanical properties. Our design is a very promising candidate as the first-generation, flexible, commercial lithium-ion battery. We are now optimizing the design and improving its performance.”

How does it work? Like the human spine, the battery alternates “thick, rigid segments” that store energy with flexible parts that connect them together. “Our spine-like design is much more mechanically robust than are conventional designs,” Yang says. “We anticipate that our bio-inspired, scalable method to fabricate flexible Li-ion batteries could greatly advance the commercialization of flexible devices.”

Every day, we rely on a dizzying array of ingenious machines that keep our homes warm and lit, fly us from continent to continent, and, sometimes, keep us alive. Yet we give little thought to how they work and who built them.

That’s the main theme of a trio of GE ads the company launched during the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, on Sunday.

The ads feature GE products — an incubator, a jet engine, and a power generator for a remote village that had never had electricity — and focus on how this technology transforms life, individually and collectively.

GE Reports went looking for the GE employees who built these technologies — and discovered two who’d not only helped shape the products but also experienced them on a more personal level. Muge Pirtini is a lead systems designer at GE Healthcare’s maternal and infant care unit. Pirtini helped design the Giraffe Omnibed, a machine that does double duty as an incubator and radiant warmer. But she also got to use it when her daughter was born prematurely. “I had visited the same neonatal intensive care unit several times for business purposes and saw babies with all the cables,” she recalls. “It was always heartbreaking. But this time, it was not a business visit. It was my own child.”

Pirtini’s daughter spent four days in the unit before she was discharged. “During that time, I was the designer of these products, but I was also one of the parents,” she says. “I know how important these products are for the babies as well as for parents.”

In 2016, Pirtini’s colleague Ricky Buch, who works as senior strategy leader at GE Power, helped organize a trip to bring electricity to Rakuru, a 700-year-old Indian village perched high in the Himalayan mountains. The eight-member GE expedition gathered in the medieval mountain city of Leh and spent the next several days hiking to Rakuru, with solar panels and other gear strapped to a small caravan of donkeys. The mission was cold and treacherous, but deeply rewarding to the team in the end. “People want to be working on significant things that leave a lasting impact,” Buch says. “We tapped into that desire.”

Top image: Ricky Buch, who works as senior strategy leader at GE Power, helped organize a trip to bring electricity to Rakuru, a 700-year-old Indian village perched high in the Himalayan mountains. Image credit: GE Power.

GE has spent the last 100 years building GE Aviation into a leading force in the aerospace industry. Since it was founded in 1918, the business unit, which brought in $27 billion in revenue last year, has introduced key innovations: It built the first jet engine in the United States and the largest and most powerful jet engines in the world; supplied engine parts for the largest commercial jetliner; and pioneered new materials and technologies like composites and 3D printing.

But it’s been only in the last decade that its Business and General Aviation unit, which is building engines and other technology for private and business planes, decided to pay close attention to the multibillion-dollar turboprop market. “The turboprop segment has been underserved for decades,” says Brad Mottier, who runs the GE Aviation division. “Airframe customers and operators alike complained about the lack of innovation.”

This week, Mottier and his business said they are inviting the sharpest young engineers in the Czech Republic to help them transform the way we power small aircraft. The company will partner with Prague’s Czech Technical University (CVUT) to help bring up a new generation of aerospace engineers. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Steve King were present at the announcement.

Above: Aviation has a long history in the Czech Republic. In 1910, Jan Kaspar became the first Czech pilot. He designed his own plane and engine, but later flew in this Bleriot XI. Top: Brad Mottier, who runs GE Aviation’s Business and General Aviation division says that “the turboprop segment has been underserved for decades. Airframe customers and operators alike complained about the lack of innovation.” Images credit: Tomas Kellner for GE Reports.

Why Prague? The Czech capital is the place where GE decided to jump into the turboprop engine market in 2008, when it took a bet on a storied but struggling turboprop manufacturer, Walter Engines. Just like the Wright brothers, founder Josef Walter started out fixing and building bicycles before venturing into aviation. Established in 1911, his company ran aviation factories in Italy, Spain, Poland and elsewhere in Europe that produced record-breaking engines for planes used by 13 sovereign air forces.

After World War II, the government nationalized Walter, and the company spent the next four decades building some of the most successful engines serving in the Eastern bloc and beyond. Still, years of communism and management problems took their toll and cost Walter many markets. When GE came in, the company was barely surviving. “The West moved on, and the industry here froze over,” says Milan Slapak, a manager at GE Aviation in Prague.

But it didn’t disappear. Rather, it moved into private backyards and garages. Slapak says that the Czech Republic’s engineers remained a “superpower” in ultralight aircraft, “which they could build at home,” he says. “There’s a deep pool of engineering talent here,” he adds. “It’s incredible what they’ve achieved.”

The European turboprop’s Cinderella comeback began with GE infusing technology and investment into what was Walter’s popular turboprop engine line. GE has spent the last decade importing advanced machines and technologies to Prague, and in 2016 announced plans to invest $400 million in Europe to build a powerhouse turboprop business. It also is developing, building and testing turboprop components in Italy, Poland and Germany.

GE first launched its H-Series H-80 engine line, squeezing more horsepower from Walter’s M601 machines and finding new customers in the U.S., China, Brazil and elsewhere. Next, it turned the volume of insights received from airframe customers and operators into the industry’s first “all-new, clean-sheet” turboprop engine in 30 years, the Advanced Turboprop, or ATP. “This is by far the biggest win of my 35-year career in aviation,” Mottier said.

GE Aviation’s Milan Slapak in a Czech-made ultralight plane. He says that the Czech Republic’s engineers are a “superpower” in ultralight aircraft. “There’s a deep pool of engineering talent here.” CVUT students are using sensors in the wings of this plane to study tension and other forces during flight. Image credit: GE Aviation.

The engine uses cooled turbine blades and components originally developed for supersonic jet engines. Digital engine controls, another innovation,  allow the pilot to fly planes equipped with the ATP like a jet, with a single lever, which controls both the engine and the propeller. (Most turboprop-powered aircraft have multiple levers, making the aircraft more complicated to fly.) The ATP also will include 3D-printed parts. GE engineers started using this disruptive new technology in the last decade, and 3D-printed components will account for more than a third of the engine.

The infusion of additive manufacturing and jet propulsion know-how allowed GE engineers to shave off more than 100 pounds in weight from the ATP. The lighter weight will help reduce fuel burn by as much as 20 percent, give the engine 10 percent more power compared with engines in its class and simplify maintenance. Textron Aviation has selected the engine for its brand-new Cessna Denali plane. “This engine is a game changer,” says Paul Corkery, the general manager for the ATP.

Since GE’s 2016 announcement of its plans to assemble the ATP engine in Prague, the number of undergraduate students enrolled to study aircraft engine construction at CVUT jumped from one to 15. The interest was so intense that last year the school gave two GE engineers offices at the university. They set up shop at the school with the sole purpose of tutoring students and helping with research. “The new engine was a strong impulse that brought new students,” says Michael Valasek, dean of CVUT’s mechanical engineering school. “They can now see that studying aircraft engines has a future in this country.”

Dean Michael Valasek in a CVUT test cell next to an ATP engine. He said that since GE announced its plans to assemble the ATP engine in Prague in 2016, the number of undergraduate students enrolled to study aircraft engine construction at CVUT jumped from one to 15.  Image credit: CVUT.

Valasek is keen on stoking this interest. Today, his department and GE said they will partner on aerospace research. GE will provide the university with engine data, access to Predix — its app-development platform for the industrial internet — and other know-how.

Students will use the technology and data to build digital twins of turboprop engines. These virtual models will enable pilots and maintenance crews to monitor the performance of each turboprop in real time and predict the best time for service and maintenance. “This technology exists for jet engines, but there’s nothing like it in the turboprop space,” Valasek says. “Pilots often feel when an engine is a little off, but when they take it in for service, maintenance crews can’t find anything wrong. It’s just like when you feel under the weather, but the doctor says that you are fine. Our digital twin will simulate conditions inside the engine and pinpoint problems before they manifest themselves.”

The digital twin’s software will combine and analyze the inputs for individual engines and allow operators to get more power out of them, extend their longevity and make them available for flying more often. “Just like a human being, every single engine is different, depending on operations,” Valasek says. “The digital twin will be able to run through thousands of combinations and flag potential problems. Humans would never be able to do this.”

The ATP’s cubist-looking 3D-printed fuel heater. The part is honeycombed with a complex of tiny passages that would be impossible to manufacture before the advent of additive manufacturing. GE will 3D print more than a third of the engine. Image credit: Tomas Kellner for GE Reports.

To provide access to a steady supply of fresh data, GE also will help CVUT set up four test chambers to study turboprop engines on the ground, plus a “flying test bed,” a King Air aircraft modified to test engines and gather data in flight.

In addition to the digital twin, the partnership also will focus on engine design and advanced manufacturing techniques like 3D printing, which GE has been using to produce parts for jet engines, gas turbines, medical scanners and other machines. “This level of partnership and sharing of know-how is absolutely unprecedented,” says Slapak, who serves as the ATP manager for GE Aviation in Prague.

GE benefits, too, Slapak says. GE has hired 285 new employees since the launch of the ATP program in early 2016 and plans to hire 80 more this year. “We need to develop the talent and ecosystem, and this partnership is a great way to do it.”

CVUT is a great place to find talent. Founded in 1707 in an apartment below Prague Castle, the school is Europe’s oldest technical school not affiliated with the military. Over the centuries, graduates like Jan Zvonicek and Jan Perner helped electrify the country and built its first railroads. “It produced a lot of the intelligentsia that helped industrialize the country and sparked the national enlightenment when we were still part of Austria-Hungary,” Valasek says. The curriculum is also notoriously demanding. Reportedly only half of the first eight students who enrolled in 1707 obtained a degree. The attrition rate at the engineering school has remained pretty much the same, Valasek says.

GE engineer Pavel Rensa is one of the two GE engineers already working at CVUT. He is helping students reengineer the twin-engine King Air flying test bed so that it can accommodate different engines. “GE wants to open its turboprop headquarters in Prague,” he says. “We need experts to do that, and the university can get them ready.”

CVUT opened its new test cell earlier this year. Below is a timelapse video capturing its construction.

What is the state of innovation? GE recently asked some 2,000 business executives from around the world, and the results are in.

What are some of the more surprising findings included in the 2018 GE Global Innovation Barometer? The United States and Germany lost some of their sheen as innovation champions – though the U.S. still towers head and shoulders above the rest — while Japan and China rose. Globally, business executives also see multinational companies as the leaders of innovation, more so than entrepreneurs, startups, and small and medium-size companies.

The survey also revealed that business executives are favoring protectionism as a way to keep jobs in their countries. Some 55 percent of global executives think that policies like import tariffs and quotas would benefit domestic companies. They believe that such measures would give businesses a competitive edge and protect the workforce. “I was shocked,” Marco Annunziata, GE’s former chief economist, told Axios. “We have known that protectionist winds were blowing but always thought that business was the last bastion of open markets and globalization. It’s a bit of a reality check.”

Top image: The Innovation Barometer found that executives were interested in additive manufacturing technologies like 3D printing. GE researchers are testing a new additive manufacturing technique called cold spray to build jet engine parts. GIF credit: GE Global Research.

Still, many of these same executives believe that governments are neither driving innovation nor able to keep up with the pace of change, and that regulations around privacy and data are stifling innovation. Those who believe that globalization is a driving force for innovation reflect this sentiment, saying that protectionism would give governments too much control and create barriers to investment.

The respondents were also worried about having enough skilled workers. Some 74 percent say a lack of skilled workers is an issue facing their industry, up eight percentage points from 2014.

This finding is even more urgent when you consider that many of the survey’s respondents are excited about new technologies like additive manufacturing, which includes 3D printing. They will need workers who understand the technology, given that some 53 percent believe that the field has yet to reach its full potential.

You can explore the full results here.

Last fall, a woman shopping at Walmart in Livonia, Michigan, approached the store manager with an unsolicited comment. “I don’t know what you did in here,” she said, “but suddenly I can read your food labels.” The reason? Not the packaging. The lettering was the same size and color it had always been. The only difference: Walmart had changed the lights.

Specifically, like many Walmarts around the globe, the Michigan store had recently replaced most of its fluorescent light bulbs with LED fixtures from the company called Current, powered by GE. “You get great color and better visual acuity with the LED lights,” says Vicki Garten, global and strategic accounts manager for Current. “It allows you to see labels and even the textures of fruit more clearly.”

But the benefits go beyond a customer’s in-the-moment shopping experiences. LED lights have made a visible impact on the retailer’s energy bill, as well. Walmart estimates it has saved more than $100 million in energy costs since it first contacted GE to install LED lights in its refrigeration displays 10 years ago. Today, there are more than 1.5 million GE LED fixtures installed across 6,000 Walmart stores, parking lots, distribution centers and corporate offices in 10 countries.

Top: Walmart estimates it has saved more than $100 million in energy costs since it first contacted GE to install LED lights in its refrigeration displays 10 years ago. Image credit: Walmart. Above: Members of the GE team involved in Walmart project. Today, there are more than 1.5 million GE LED fixtures installed across 6,000 Walmart stores, parking lots, distribution centers and corporate offices in 10 countries. Image credit: Current, Powered by GE.

Walmart, like other companies including JPMorgan Chase and GM, are switching to LEDs to reduce energy costs by 30 to 60 percent. They’re also enabling future innovation. That’s because companies like Current are transforming lighting into connected digital solutions that can help buildings work more efficiently, simplify employee tasks and improve customer experiences.

Walmart’s LED transformation is part of the company’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent by 2025 (from 2015 levels). The company is ramping up its sustainability efforts not just by using LEDs but also by purchasing energy from wind farms, installing solar panels and setting up store-wide recycling stations for a variety of materials.

The giant retailer is using a variety of Current’s LED products in many corners of its stores. They are inside refrigeration display units where customers can puzzle over ice cream and pizza options, across its parking lots and above its sales floors. Now in many of the stores’ produce sections, managers are starting to turn to LED lights that feature Current’s TriGain technology.

Fluorescent lights and even some LED lights can wash out the colors and textures of fabrics and foods, giving them an almost monotone bluish hue on the shelves. But TriGain, developed in partnership with the GE Global Research Center, incorporates red phosphor in LEDs to create a greater color range that allows colors to pop and gives the products in the room a warmer glow.

“TriGain produces a much narrower and more intense red peak than most red phosphors used in LEDs. It’s being widely adopted for sharper, brighter color in LCD televisions, smartphones and tablets, too,” Garten says.

TriGain also adds depth to the texture. As a result, plums appear to have a richer velvet layer, orange peels appear more puckered, and strawberries appear more dimpled by their yellow seeds. In the age of point-and-click shopping, this is an important physical draw. “Consumers come back and buy fresh produce every week,” Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart eCommerce U.S., told Digiday in September.

The LED lights also provide Walmart stores with a sense of uniformity so shoppers will feel a sense of familiarity no matter where they are.

“It’s more important than ever to have your stores looking great; after all, if you can’t see the merchandise well, you can just stay in your house and shop online,” Garten says. Last year, Walmart announced its multi-million-dollar remodeling investment in brick-and-mortar stores — to make in-store pickups more attractive to online shoppers. “Their energy savings allows them to have this kind of cash flow to invest in their stores.”

How deep is your love? Neuroscientist Melina Uncapher devised a system in her lab that can supply an answer.

In 2013, Uncapher and her friend the filmmaker Brent Hoff invited seven men and women ranging in ages from 10 to 75 to engage in a “love competition.” Uncapher, who did the experiment at Stanford University but now works at the University of California San Francisco, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which can monitor brain activity in real time, to measure the strength of their brain signals associated with love. “We chose [the participants] for their diversity, because we wanted to highlight the different experiences of love,” Uncapher says. “There may be familial love that a boy can feel for his cousin, romantic love among young lovers, and bonding love between a couple that has been beautifully married for 50 years.” Hoff made a short film about the project.

Love contestants Kent and Marylin Pelz . Image credit: Brent Hoff.

Kent Pelz with his results. Image credit: Brent Hoff.

Uncapher, whose specialty is the cognitive neuroscience of memory and attention, focused on a pea-size area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, located deep in the center of the brain. “It’s the place where the pathways of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin – the neurotrasmitters and hormones thought to be involved in love – converge. It seemed to be the lowest-hanging fruit in terms of detecting a signal indicative of whether we are experiencing love.”

Each love contestant climbed into a magnetic resonance imaging machine, the GE-built Discovery MR750, for about 15 minutes. After a few quick calibration scans, Uncapher asked them to think about someone or something they love. “When you are using your muscles, they get pumped full of oxygenated blood,” she says. “The brain works in a similar way. By visualizing possible changes in the blood flow to various parts of the brain, we can start making educated guesses as to which parts may be responding to the experience.”

The competitors thought about their family, romantic partners, spouses and former lovers. Who won? The answer is in Hoff’s film.

Uncapher focused on a pea-size area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. Image credit: Brent Hoff

The competitors thought about their family, romantic partners, spouses and former lovers. Who won? The answer is in Hoff’s film.

Even before its launch in February, new software that keeps track of Olympic athletes’ healthcare started providing data that matters.

In November, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) held a test event on the new luge track for the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang 2018, in South Korea. Athletes started crashing during runs. Crashes are not unusual for such a speedy event, but doctors and IOC officials looking at the Athlete Management Solution(AMS) software noticed that a surprisingly high number of crashes occurred on a specific turn on the course, which features a hard left followed almost immediately by a hard right. “We were able to respond quickly because of a peak in the data,” says Ray Bender, one of the product managers in charge of the AMS program for GE.

As athletes, trainers and other staff move around the Olympic Village and the 15 competition venues during the games, their medical information is moving with them, thanks to AMS. Designed by GE Healthcare in partnership with the IOC, the solution allows doctors to access Olympic participants’ medical, venue and sport-specific records, and track their treatment. (Read a Q&A with IOC member and Chief Medical Officer for the Pyeongchang 2018 Organizing Committee, Dr. YoungHee Lee, here.)

The IOC and their medical staff also are using the system to monitor for disease outbreaks, injury clusters and other medical issues that require a rapid response. “Let’s say a bunch of athletes all staying on the same floor of the Olympic Village are coming down with the same infectious disease,” says Jonathan Murray, the managing director of the tech development company GE Research Circle Technology. The IOC, which runs the games, can spot the issue and work with medical staff to find out how the illness is spreading, he says. Public health agencies from South Korea, the U.S. and the U.K. also have access to the information and can use it to monitor for diseases, Murray says.

Above: Designed by GE Healthcare in partnership with the IOC, the AMS system allows doctors to access Olympic participants’ medical, venue and sport-specific records, and track their treatment. Image credit: Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images.

The AMS is the only medical record system doctors can use at the games — to avoid errors, no paper is allowed. And the AMS is cloud-based so that the more than 500 doctors and trainers can access and input data from a laptop computer or tablet regardless of whether they are on the slopes, at the clinic or in a local hospital. “Being able to work on a tablet was key because it allows access from anywhere,” Bender says.

With the help of native speakers recruited to work on the project and the use of SNOMED global standardized clinical technology, doctors can view patients’ records in nine languages, including, for the first time, languages using Asian, Cyrillic and Arabic characters.

All conditions have a universal code that’s matched with the right diagnosis across the nine languages. For example, “Ligament rupture, grade 3” in Korean “인대 –파열 등급 3” will translate exactly into French “Ligament – Rupture de grade 3,” Murray says. This avoids the problem of unsophisticated translations that can turn terms such as “fall” — a common cause of injury — into “autumn.”

The IOC and GE Healthcare partnership didn’t start with Pyeongchang. At the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, doctors used GE Healthcare’s electronic medical record system — the Centricity Practice Solution — to track athletes’ medical conditions. For example, at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio the system noticed that swimmers were visiting the clinics because their eyes were irritated. Doctors were able to alert organizers, who discovered the pool’s chlorine levels were too high, Bender says.

Bender was a logical choice to co-manage the AMS development. A pharmacist by training and Air Force veteran, he helped create the world’s first electronic medical record system for the U.S. Department of Defense in the late 1980s. That system is still in use today at U.S. military bases, including those in South Korea.

Bender and the project’s other chief manager, Rachel Hiatt, guided the software’s design from scratch over the past year. They traveled frequently to Hungary, where GE has a large base of software engineers, to work with the tech team coding the software, numbering from 15 to 50 during the year. The developers spent the first half of the year building the content and the rest of the time putting in security features.

After the games, the IOC and the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) will be able to use the data from the AMS to plan for the next Olympic Games, Murray says.

The software’s developers will continue to add analytics features for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. In addition to more data on health and safety, the team plans to bring in competition and training data, including information from wearable gadgets that track exercise and heart rates. “With the growth of wearable devices, there will be enormous amounts of data available to be mapped and correlated with more conventional medical data” Bender says.

The resulting AMS could be useful not only for Olympic Games organizers, but also for organizations that put on other top athletic events, such as professional sports leagues, Murray says.

This week we saw a chimeric robot with a doglike body and a snakelike head break out of a Boston lab, learned about molecular machines that can be programmed to starve tumors of blood, and learned about a blood test that can help doctors detect concussion. All this progress makes us feel sanguine about science.

Who Let The Dogs Out?

What is it? The engineering wizards at Boston Dynamics were at it again this week, releasing an eye-popping video of a nimble yellow robot called SpotMini. The chimeric machine, which isn’t exactly cute or small, has a doglike body and a snakelike head. The footage shows SpotMini use its reptilian jaws to open a heavy door, prop it open with a foot, let another four-legged mechanical creature sneak out and follow behind.

Why does it matter? Robotics is obviously quickly gaining strength. It was just last November that Boston Dynamics showed the world the latest version of Atlas, a 180-pound, 5-foot-9 humanoid robot that could do a backflip. The company, which spun out of MIT, says it is “combining the principles of dynamic control and balance with sophisticated mechanical designs, cutting-edge electronics, and software for perception, navigation, and intelligence.”

How does it work? The battery-powered robot is 0.84 meters tall, weighs 30 kilograms and can carry up to 14 kilograms. Boston Dynamics says it can run 90 minutes on a single charge. SpotMini has 17 joints and uses a 3D vision system to get around. “The sensor suite includes stereo cameras, depth cameras, an IMU, and position/force sensors in the limbs,” according to Boston Dynamics.

Top image credit: Boston Dynamics.

All-Terrain Microrobot

What is it? If SpotMini were a real dog, then Purdue University’s “microscale tumbling robot” could be a flea in its fur. But that doesn’t mean that the tiny robot — it measures 400 by 800 microns — can’t do great things, including navigating complex dry as well as wet surfaces and climbing slopes as steep as 60 degrees.

Why does it matter? The team reported that the robot, called μTUM — pronounced “microTUM” — could be used for targeted drug delivery inside the body, for example. “Robotics at the micro- and nano-scale represent one of the new frontiers in intelligent automation systems,” said David Cappelleri, an associate professor in Purdue University’s School of Mechanical Engineering. Postdoctoral research associate Maria Guix added that the μTUM’s “ability to climb is important because surfaces in the human body are complex. It’s bumpy, it’s sticky.”

How does it work? The school reported that the robots take advantage of electrostatic and van der Waals forces between molecules. (You learned about them in secondary school.) The Purdue team used a “continuously rotating magnetic field” to take advantage of the “stiction” caused by the forces and move the robots around “in an end-over-end or sideways tumbling motion.”

There Won’t Be Blood

The treatment blocked tumor blood supply and generated tumor tissue damage within 24 hours while having no effect on healthy tissues. Image and caption credit: ASU Biodesign Institute.

What is it? But the flea-sized μTUM isn’t even the tiniest robot we learned about this week. Researchers at Arizona State University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have programmed nanorobots, which are 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, to shrink tumors in mice by cutting off their blood supply.

Why does it matter? The team folded the nanorobots like origami from strands of DNA and unleashed them on models of breast cancer, melanoma, and ovarian and lung cancer growing in mice. “We have developed the first fully autonomous, DNA robotic system for a very precise drug design and targeted cancer therapy,” said Hao Yan, director of ASU’s Biodesign Institute’s Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics. “Moreover, this technology is a strategy that can be used for many types of cancer, since all solid tumor-feeding blood vessels are essentially the same.” The technology also could be used in computing and electronics, ASU reported.

How does it work? The team used the nanorobots to starve tumors of blood. They built the robots from “a flat, rectangular DNA origami sheet, 90 nanometers by 60 nanometers in size,” ASU reported. Researchers used another molecule to program the robots so they would sniff out only tumors and deliver to their surface a payload of thrombin, a blood-clotting enzyme. “These nanorobots can be programmed to transport molecular payloads and cause on-site tumor blood supply blockages, which can lead to tissue death and shrink the tumor,” said Baoquan Ding, professor at the nanoscience center in Beijing.

A Stretch Of Imagination

A prototype of the triboelectric nanogenerator. Caption and image credit: Nano Energy.

What is it? Researchers at the University of Buffalo and another set of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are working on a device “capable of generating electricity from bending a finger and other simple movements.” Their prototype, which is 1.5 centimeters long and 1 centimeter wide, “delivered a maximum voltage of 124 volts, a maximum current of 10 microamps and a maximum power density of 0.22 milliwatts per square centimeter,” the university reported. “That’s not enough to quickly charge a smartphone, however it lit 48 red LED lights simultaneously.”

Why does it matter? Devices like this one could turn our bodies into flesh-and-blood power plants. “No one likes being tethered to a power outlet or lugging around a portable charger,” says lead author Qiaoqiang Gan, associate professor of electrical engineering in UB’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “The human body is an abundant source of energy. We thought: ‘Why not harness it to produce our own power?’”

How does it work? The stretchy generator the team developed relies on a sandwich of two thin slivers of gold separated by a layer of a silicone-based polymer, the same stuff used in contact lenses and Silly Putty. Friction between the gold and the polymer “causes electrons to flow back and forth between the gold layers,” says another lead author, Yun Xu, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Semiconductors. “The more friction, the greater the amount of power is produced.”

Head Start

“Availability of a blood test for concussion will help health care professionals determine the need for a CT scan in patients suspected of having [mild traumatic brain injury] and help prevent unnecessary neuroimaging and associated radiation exposure to patients,” the FDA wrote. Image credit: Shutterstock.

Why does it matter? Mild traumatic brain injuries like concussions can be difficult to detect. Doctors typically examine patients on a neurological scale and order a computed tomography (CT) scan of the head to look for bleeding, lesions and other brain damage. “Availability of a blood test for concussion will help health care professionals determine the need for a CT scan in patients suspected of having [mild traumatic brain injury] and help prevent unnecessary neuroimaging and associated radiation exposure to patients,” the FDA wrote. In 2013, there were about 2.8 million emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deaths related to traumatic brain injuries, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How does it work? The blood test looks for proteins that the brain releases into the bloodstream within 12 hours after head injury. “Levels of these blood proteins after [mild traumatic brain injury] concussion can help predict which patients may have intracranial lesions visible by CT scan and which won’t,” the FDA wrote. “Being able to predict if patients have a low probability of intracranial lesions can help health care professionals in their management of patients and the decision to perform a CT scan. Test results can be available within 3 to 4 hours.”

Last December, several members of the U.S. Air Force volunteered for a sweaty mission. During extra workout sessions at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio, the volunteers wore on their backs adhesive patches that collected their perspiration. Sensors in the patches were able to detect the specific levels of electrolytes in the sweat the volunteers released. That data was transmitted wirelessly to a laptop computer app where researchers could analyze it in real time.

“We can measure the sodium and potassium levels — the electrolyte balance that correlates with dehydration,” says GE materials scientist Azar Alizadeh, who is developing the patch with her team at GE Global Research and outside partners including the Nano-Bio Manufacturing Consortium, NextFlex, Air Force Research Laboratory, State University of New York, Binghamton, and New York State’s Empire State Development arm. “This could be so important to anyone who is working in hot or high-stress conditions, like firefighters, miners or elite athletes.”

The disposable wireless patch, which can fit in the palm of your hand, is made from materials used in medical tape and wound dressings. It contains two key elements: microfluidics technology and a sensor. GE engineers originally used microfluidics in jet engines to manipulate the natural airflow currents coming through the engine and channel them to optimize efficiency and performance. In a similar sense, Alizadeh has created a patch with tiny pathways and valves that can channel sweat into a conduit that contains a sensor.

“At the sensing site, the sensor is designed to detect the sodium or potassium levels, and when that happens, an electric signal is produced,” Alizadeh says. “This signal is transmitted via Bluetooth to the computer.” Right now, the wireless range of the patch is approximately 30 feet. If the person wearing the patch is getting dehydrated, those electrolytes will be off-balance, and whoever is monitoring the patch program will be able to see this in real time.

Alizadeh says that her team at GE Global Research is now “in the process of converting this program to a mobile app.” They are working with Dublin City University, the wearable technology company Shimmer Sensing, and the technology company UES, Inc. Alizadeh says the patch — which is still about two years away from getting on the market — eventually will be programmed to establish a hydration baseline for individual people. Every person has a slightly different electrolyte balance and sweat rate, which the patch will pick up on over time. The more the wearer uses the patch, the better it will be at determining through an algorithm if and when the user is dehydrated.

“Wearable devices already are having a dramatic impact in changing the healthcare system,” GE’s Alizadeh says. “But we believe if you can buy these devices at very low cost like you buy a box of Band-Aids, the impact could be transformative.” Images credit: GE Global Research.

Self-monitoring is one application, but the device might also tell a trainer to allow an elite athlete to rest, warn a supervisor of an occupational safety concern or notify a fire crew to pull back a firefighter experiencing dangerous levels of dehydration. Thirst, after all, is not always the first sign that someone is not properly hydrated.

The technologies underlying the sweat patch can also be beneficial for patient monitoring in the healthcare space. ABI Research forecasts the market for patient-monitoring wearables, which includes remote and on-site devices, will grow from 8 million shipments in 2016 to 33 million in 2021. Their increasing availability is expected to significantly reduce healthcare costs in a variety of ways.

For example, wearables can help patients and their doctors detect medical conditions like high blood pressure early. They encourage patients to take control — by making fitness goals and tracking their progress, for example — so that they aren’t showing up at the doctor’s office with more serious ailments down the road. And they allow physicians to remotely access a patient’s vitals without an office visit. One estimate shows that wearables and digital apps could save more than $200 billion in healthcare costs over the next 25 years in the United States. “Wearable devices already are having a dramatic impact in changing the healthcare system,” Alizadeh says. “But we believe if you can buy these devices at very low cost like you buy a box of Band-Aids, the impact could be transformative.”

The Air Force has been an eager test subject during the research and development phase. “We are very excited about beginning to demonstrate and realize the impacts that new materials, processing and manufacturing concepts can have on delivering new capabilities to diverse communities of Air Force personnel,” says AFRL scientist and government lead for NBMC Jeremy Ward.

Dr. Malcolm Thompson, executive director of NextFlex, one of the research partners, says that “monitoring the chemistry of humans non evasively is the next frontier of medicine for the chronically sick, warfighters, athlete and that highly stressed premature baby who is so small that you have limited access to sampling their blood.  We are very proud to have GE as a member and partner in this major milestone in medical care which saves lives and reduces medical costs,” Thompson says.

In 2015, the National Geographic Channel launched a new television series called “Breakthrough,” focusing on scientific discovery. The series was developed by the channel and GE, and produced by Oscar winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.

But “Breakthrough” was not the company’s first brush with Hollywood. In 1954, it hired actor and future President Ronald Reagan to host a national TV show called “General Electric Theater.”

Don Herbert, the creator and host of “Mr. Wizard,” was Reagan’s “progress reporter,” gathering news on GE’s “contributions to progress through research, engineering and manufacturing skill,” according to a story published in The Monogram, a GE magazine.

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

By 1956, it was the third-most-popular show on American television, reaching over 25 million viewers every week.

“Apparently the people at GE assume that we are not idiots and are interested in some intelligent facts about their company and its work,” the Boston Herald wrote. “It won’t start a trend but we thank them anyway.” Top image: The whole family, including Ronald Jr., then 31/2 years old, and Patricia, 9, greeted viewers during the Christmas Eve episode in 1961. Above: Reagan and future first lady Nancy Reagan opened their “all-electric” house in Pacific Palisades, California, to TV cameras while it was still under construction. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Stars on the show, which aired every Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS television and radio until 1962, included Fred Astaire, Lou Costello, James Dean, Joan Fontaine, Ernie Kovacs and others. Former first lady Nancy Reagan appeared in four episodes as an actress, and their “all-electric” home was the star of two more segments. “It wouldn’t be same house without the lighting, which is so unique and beautiful … the real thrill comes with sundown when the lights come on,” future first lady Nancy Reagan told The Monogram. The whole family, including Ronald Jr., then 31/2 years old, and Patricia, 9, greeted viewers during the Christmas Eve episode in 1961.

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

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

For many in the U.S., Presidents’ Day is a well-deserved day off, but how much do we really know about the holiday itself? It’s been around for a while: Americans have been celebrating it since 1885 to honor their first President, George Washington – and GE has its own storied history with U.S. presidents.

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

Top image and above: Over eight seasons, Reagan and Herbert crisscrossed the country to visit more than 130 GE labs and factories. Images credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady