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

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

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

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

What Difference a Light Makes (1925)

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

Good Housekeeping (1925)

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

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

Grandpa’s Treasure Chest (1920)

What a Protection Electric Light Is (1925)

And the Symbol of Welcome is Light (1920)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

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

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

All views expressed are those of the authors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

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

All views expressed are those of the author.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Not yet commercially available

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Top image: Courtesy of Thinkstock)

This piece first appeared in GE Look ahead.

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

All views expressed are those of the authors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s be honest: November isn’t the best time to visit Helsinki. But the gloom that envelops the Finnish capital every autumn didn’t stop some 15,000 visitors from descending on Slush, one of the world’s largest tech gatherings, which drew 1,700 startups this year as well as GE, Google and Nokia.

There are only 5.4 million Finns but they’ve had an outsized influence on the technology of our modern lives. Finland, after all, is the home of the open-source operating system Linux as well as Nokia, which set off the explosive growth of mobile communications. “We have a tradition of working together,” says Peter Vesterbacka, co-founder of Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, who helped start Slush in 2008. “Maybe it has something to do with our cold winter. If you don’t get your house built, you’ll die.”

Top: Wireless sensors will help remove the spaghetti of wires attached to patients in intensive care units. Above: Some 15,000 people visited Slush, one of the world’s largest tech gatherings that drew 1,700 startups this year as well as GE, Google and Nokia. Image credits: GE Reports

GE is tapping into this spirit. Last year, the company’s healthcare business opened the Health Innovation Village, a startup incubator that is helping 26 local companies develop products tied to healthcare and medicine. The Village just partnered with the U.S.-based  StartUp Health, the world’s largest digital health hub, which opened its first international location in Helsinki in November.

But GE is also using local brainpower to change the face of medicine by moving healthcare into the cloud. Its engineers in Helsinki are specifically looking at patient monitoring. They are building wireless tools that could one day be no larger than a Band-Aid and constantly stream heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration and other information into the cloud, where software could analyze it and alert doctors to anomalies and looming crises.

Within five years, the technology could enable patient monitoring over a wireless network that will allow doctors to learn what’s happening with a patient from any connected device. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Like many members of his team of 60 scientists and engineers, Muuranto came to GE after cutting his teeth at Nokia. The researchers, who specialize in everything from miniaturization and wireless protocols to user experience design, are developing the first generation of wireless sensors that can monitor heartbeat, blood pressure and several other parameters.

“The world is going wireless and wearable,” says GE’s Erno Muuranto. “We could run hospitals like smart factories. Wireless sensors and data analytics will help correctly diagnose patients in the ambulance.” Image credit: GE Reports

On a recent visit his lab, Muuranto attached one such device to a colleague and then monitored her heartbeat and blood oxygen level with an iPhone app the team built using Predix, a software platform GE developed specifically for the Industrial Internet. “It’s still early, but remember how quickly we moved from the mobile phones that looked like a brick to devices that slipped in our pockets,” he says.

GE Healthcare’s head office in Helsinki has the feel of a startup. It includes Warrior Coffee, an artisanal espresso joint complete with tattooed baristas piping Nirvana and Joy Division into the sitting area. Image credit: GE Reports

The first opportunity for the tech is to remove the spaghetti of wires attached to patients in intensive care units and to use algorithms and analytics to eliminate false alarms. “Some 90 percent of alarms are not actionable,” Muuranto says. “We are looking for ways to use signals from multiple sensors to generate meaningful alarms.”

Within five years, the technology could enable patient monitoring over a wireless network that will allow doctors to learn what’s happening with a patient from any connected device.

The sensors would draw power from a tiny integrated battery and use radio waves to communicate with a receiver either in the patient’s pocket or in his hospital room. Outside the hospital, the information aggregated locally from the sensors could be relayed into a cellular network and automatically provide doctors and hospitals with round-the-clock patient monitoring and an uninterrupted flow of data.

GE and other companies are already building so-called medical body area networks (MBANs) and have applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for access to the radio spectrum, where wireless medical devices could operate.

“This is the digital health we’ve been talking about,” says Mikko Kauppinen, finance director at GE Healthcare Finland and cofounder of the Health Innovation Village. “This is different from gadgets. We already know how to build super-robust monitoring devices you see today in hospitals that meet FDA standards. This is a platform. Mobile phones got smaller and our devices will also shrink. We are building an ecosystem for Industrial Internet for the body.” Says Kauppinen: “It will transform patient monitoring. Before long, you could see these devices everywhere.”

The future of wireless healthcare is dawning in Helsinki. Image credit: GE Reports

For retailers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday can make or break a year. For global industrial companies like GE Oil & Gas, demand for solutions, resources, and technology doesn’t come up on a single weekend – it comes up every day. Around the world, the business extracts, transports, and refines natural resources, providing full-stream solutions to hundreds of customers for more than 20 years. Last year, the business generated $19 billion in revenues.

Talking to investors this week preceding GE’s Annual Outlook Investor Meeting, Lorenzo Simonelli, chief executive of GE Oil & Gas, said the business is well-positioned for long-term growth and endurance, and he sees valuable opportunities in the midst of industry volatility. For Simonelli, the GE Store– the way that GE shares technology and knowledge between businesses – is enhancing innovation and capabilities for GE Oil & Gas. In return, the business is giving back to GE’s other businesses and industrial verticals. Here are a few examples of how the business works with the GE Store:

Taking from the Store:

Additive Manufacturing– For years, GE Global Research has been exploring applications for additive manufacturing. GE Aviation was the first business to experiment with this technology, but GE Oil & Gas produced another first – in Japan. Earlier this year, the business introduced the country’s first metal 3D printers, opening opportunities for substantial improvements to supply chain, manufacturing time, and integrated design methods. This technology is currently piloting at GE’s Kariwa plant in the Niigata Prefecture, Japan, where the business is 3D printing control valve parts for various applications across the Energy industry.

Imaging & Diagnostics – When doctors need to look inside the human body, they use a number of medical imaging and diagnostics technologies at their disposal. GE Oil & Gas is doing the same – for pipelines. Using scanning, x-ray and ultrasound capabilities from GE Healthcare, GE Oil & Gas can perform noninvasive, efficient inspections for pipelines operating thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface. Microscopic cracks, corrosion, and other evidence of wear and tear can be fixed before they become a problem.

Compressor Technology – GE Oil & Gas machines work on land and in the sea, but they’re doing with help from the sky. GE’s high pressure ratio compressor, a state-of-the-art compression technology for various gas processes, draws from GE Aviation’s aerodynamic expertise to produce the business’ smallest, lightest, most efficient compressor yet – lowering power consumption, reducing operating costs, and increasing reliability for substantial savings. 

Winning Projects – Last year, GE Oil & Gas partnered with GE Energy Management to deliver a suite of solutions for one of the world’s largest electrical LNG plants in Texas. Freeport LNG selected GE to supply compressors from GE Oil & Gas and motors and drivers from GE Energy Management, which provided a comprehensive solution for their project.

Giving to the Store: 

Tier 4 Locomotive– At the beginning of the year, the EPA’s Tier 4 emissions standards were put into effect, moving many freight locomotive businesses to invest in new aftertreatment systems and technology. With careful planning and investment, GE Transportation produced the GE Tier 4 solution without aftertreatment technologies, leveraging compressor and turbine expertise from GE Oil & Gas and our Marine engine business. To date, more than 1,000 orders have been placed for GE’s Tier 4 freight locomotives – a huge win made possible by the GE Store.

Powering Thailand– The developing world needs power, but power plants are both costly and slow to implement. In response, GE Power’s LM6000-PF+ aeroderivative gas turbine is flipping the switch and supplying Bangkok with power– even in the most challenging situations. Most recently installed in Egypt in only three months, the turbine’s origin stems from technologies from GE Aviation (the CF6 engine pictured above), GE Energy Management, and GE Oil & Gas, which helped develop the gearbox connecting the turbine to generators.

Talent Transfer– Dan Heintzelman, the former head of GE Oil & Gas, is currently working across GE’s industrial businesses to enhance services, advanced manufacturing and product development, using best practices and experience from years of energy sector experience to move the company’s strategy forward. Lorenzo Simonelli, the business’ current chief executive, came from GE Transportation, which is an example of both a give and take for GE Oil & Gas and the GE Store.

Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE, recently spoke with CNBC Mad Money’s Jim Cramer about the company’s digital industrial future — and the outlook appears bright.

“The long-term bets we’ve made on technology, digitization, globalization — those are all paying off right now,” said Immelt. GE is integrating software with hardware, capitalizing on new capabilities and opportunities that position the company for strong organic growth, margin expansion, and returns for its investors.

Check out full interview on CNBC,tune in to GE’s Annual Outlook Investor Meeting on Dec. 16, or sign up for GE’s investor newsletter for more information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Not yet commercially available

From the Brink: As part of a regular series featuring content from BRINK, François Austin discusses the need for greater international cooperation on sustainable energy.

Energy sustainability is not only an opportunity to transform societies and grow economies, but it is also a necessity—a prerequisite to meet growing energy demand in many parts of the world and to reduce the global carbon footprint. In order to build a strong basis for prosperity and competitiveness, individual countries must balance the three core dimensions of what Oliver Wyman and the World Energy Council have defined as the energy trilemma: affordability and access, energy security and environmental sustainability.

The annual Energy Trilemma Index ranks 130 countries on their performance in meeting the energy trilemma and assesses how well countries are balancing the three dimensions.

As highlighted in the 2015 Index released today, the transition towards balanced and sustainable energy systems is slowly taking place. Over the last five years, positive developments have been recorded in access to energy, share of renewables in the electricity generation mix and rate of energy-efficiency improvements. Global energy intensity has decreased by 4.2 percent and CO2 emissions intensity has fallen by 4.5 percent in that time, while the global electrification rate has risen to 85 percent with an additional 222 million people gaining access to electricity from 2010-2012.

Still, many countries face obstacles to achieving a successful balance across the energy dimensions. This year, only two countries, Switzerland and Sweden, managed to obtain an AAA balance score across all three dimensions. The United Kingdom’s score was amended to AAB, as its energy equity performance suffered in comparison to other leading countries.

Several countries, including the UK, Japan and Germany, are identified on the 2015 Watch List as being likely to experience a significant change in Index performance in the near future. These positive or negative changes can be driven by deep transitions in their energy systems—be they of a regulatory nature, concerning the energy supply mix or related to infrastructure changes to improve the resilience of their energy systems. In 2015, South Africa and the U.S. were added to the negative watch list, while the Philippines and Serbia are now on watch for overall positive trends in the coming years.

The energy challenges faced by each country are unique and complex, as evidenced by the variability in performance across the trilemma dimensions and contextual factors. Yet the transnational nature of energy markets and environmental issues necessitates a perspective that extends past the country level. Energy leaders have emphasized the need to adopt regionally coordinated approaches to energy resources, infrastructure and regulation.

Accordingly, the Index report includes regional profiles designed to characterize the challenges and opportunities faced by various regions in relation to the energy trilemma. The growth in global investment in renewable energy in Asia is noted alongside the rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions there, while Latin America faces increasing challenges driven by changing weather patterns and concerns related to the energy-water-food nexus.

In the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris on November 30 through December 11, energy sector leaders have spoken about the need for a clear international dialogue and a robust, sustainable policy framework to ensure research and investment is targeted at delivering sustainable energy systems. Progress across the dimensions of the energy trilemma remains slow, and can only be sped up by creating such frameworks that give certainty to investors.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

This piece first appeared in BRINK.

François Austin, Partner and Head of Oliver Wyman’s Energy Practice, has 20 years of consulting experience focused on translating business strategies and ideas into demonstrable results. François specializes in business strategy, post-merger integration, performance improvement, risk management, and leadership development, and has led a number of change improvement programs working at board level within the Oil and Gas, Utilities and Financial Services sectors.

All views expressed are those of the author.

Making football safer may not only be about the equipment players wear; it could have just as much to do with the turf under their cleats. This systemic approach to improving safety in football was highlighted last week when GE, the National Football League and Under Armour announced the three final winners of Head Health Challenge II. In an open competition, the University of Washington, Viconic Sporting and the Army Research Laboratory bested four other finalists to find innovative approaches for preventing brain injury and tracking head impacts in real time.

At Detroit’s Viconic Sporting, researchers are developing a layer meant to be installed under synthetic turf to make fields safer for players. The company’s engineers have developed a “shockpad” that can be used under turf and playgrounds to reduce the risk of injury for all players, from youth to professional athletes. The material is studded with small hollow cones that can crush down to 10 percent of their original height to absorb force. It’s already widely used in the automotive industry and in military applications to better protect today’s soldiers.

“Viconic’s underlayer acts like a spring underneath the artificial turf surfaces, absorbing the energy of an impact and reducing the risk of injury,” says Joel Cormier, the company’s director of development engineering. “We have engineered our system to ensure we don’t change the playability of the surface, so players can continue to focus on their performance.”

Viconic will use the award money to develop the material further and optimize head-impact protection while minimizing the chances of lower-limb injuries.

University of Washington and allied private sector researchers, meanwhile, are developing a new impact-absorbing helmet designed to mitigate the type of forces most likely to cause skull fractures and traumatic brain injuries. They are testing industrial design elements created specifically to slow the head’s acceleration after an impact. The intention is to build gear for elite pros, then extend the product line down to high school and youth players.

“The next innovation in football-helmet technology is long overdue,” says Dave Marver, CEO of Seattle’s VICIS, which is developing the technology. “Our helmet features a novel impact-absorbing structure that performs very differently than today’s helmets, but offers the style, performance and overall experience players desire.”

Engineers and scientists at the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Md., round out this challenge’s winners. They propose using smart materials to make tethers that connect a player’s helmet to the torso. The material is built to stretch when pulled at slow or moderate speeds, such as during normal sports action. But when pulled quickly, as when a player’s head snaps back during a backwards fall, the material offers enough resistance to prevent the back of the head from a hard, injury-causing head-to-ground impact.

The team’s conceptual prototype uses a close-fitting body harness and a snap-in helmet insert to connect the tethers between the helmet and the body. Eric Wetzel, who works for the Army developing materials to protect soldiers, realizes that an entirely new piece of equipment might not be viewed favorably by football players. “Athletes could certainly run faster and jump higher if they wore no helmet, if they wore no pads, but they’ve learned to live with certain compromises to protect their well-being,” he says. “This has the potential to be the next generation of protective devices.”

The next step for the winners is to carry through with the challenge’s intent: prepare for market. All three Head Health Challenge II-winning teams still have work to do before the new helmet, turf underlayer or protective head tethers see any time on the playing field. Still, they open the door to a new era of safer football.

As farmers once again rise to the challenge of overcoming resource scarcity with the help of water-conservation technologies, other industries should take note. Part of a series exploring what can be achieved on the energy and the environmental front this decade.

Necessity is the mother of innovation. Ask farmers, who have long lived by these words — as the need to feed communities gave rise to aqueducts, plows and seed drills. With the next agricultural revolution poised to take off in the face of increasingly scarce water supplies, other industries can learn from how the sector harnesses the latest technologies to produce more crop per drop.

Farmers will need to continue to maximize yield, but will now have to do so with less water. With three-quarters of our irrigated agriculture experiencing water shortages, innovation within the agriculture sector and application of new technologies — such as precision irrigation and real-time data management — will be critical to better managing limited freshwater resources and feeding growing populations around the world.

Today, half of the world’s population is impacted by water shortages. One in four cities is located in an area with an over-allocated watershed, and farmers around the world have been forced to fallow fields due to lack of water supplies. Agriculture accounts for about 70 percent of global water withdrawals (and over 90 percent of consumption), and demand could grow by 20 percent by 2030 without efficiency gains.

The traditional solution to this problem has been to build more supply infrastructure — reservoirs, canals, diversion — but options are becoming increasingly narrow, as we run into the limitations of what nature can provide in many parts of the world. We need to get smarter about how we use every drop.

While water may not be the traditional muse for the high-tech industry, the answer to the global water challenge must rest in part on technology to better manage scarce water supplies — especially in the agricultural sector. Technology has the potential to help the sector reduce water consumption and remotely measure surface and groundwater levels, providing real-time data to help make more informed withdrawal decisions. These improvements could lead to better water management at the local level, and build sustainability into our global water outlook.

In California, the drought has limited water allocations from surface sources, forcing farmers to rely even more on groundwater supplies. These valuable “water banks” risk depletion, yet we haven’t been able to say when — due to the lack of data. While the state works on developing sustainable groundwater plans that work to rebalance the current water challenge across the state, advancements in satellite technology could play an important part in the solution.

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has been able to provide the first picture of the state of water resources below the surface, using two satellites that measure the impact of large deposits of water, such as the aquifer under the Central Valley in California, on the earth’s gravitational field. The latest analysis shows that one-third of the world’s aquifers are being rapidly depleted. This type of data, when integrated with other sources of remote sensing information on surface water conditions, could be used by farmers, utilities and regulators can make more informed decisions on withdrawals and replenishment needs, including those in the Central Valley.

On-the-ground technology is just as important to improve water management — if not more. Drip irrigation systems are becoming increasingly popular on farms around the world. The more direct watering and fertilizer application from drip irrigation systems have shown positive results, often achieving significant water reductions.

Center pivot irrigation uses sprinklers attached to a center pivot to more evenly distribute water to plants. University of Georgia faculty improved the system to allow farmers to remotely turn off specific nozzles on pivot irrigators as they cross over roads, ponds or other areas where crops aren’t grown.

While improvements to drip or center pivot irrigation may not be the most trendy water-efficiency technologies on the market, they have the potential to demonstrate water savings in the next five years if applied at scale. Investments in this area can start changing the trajectory of our current water consumption to a more sustainable direction.

In the not so distant future, we may see agricultural water savings right down the street. A new trend has emerged for high-value agricultural production — vertical farming. Vertical farming companies report using much less water than traditional farming and generating less waste. If the method can overcome the high cost of lighting required to sustain plant growth, fresh food can be grown in places once deemed unsuitable for agriculture year-round.

Farmers have long endured the variance of weather patterns and continued to feed the world — so there’s no doubt they will rise to the challenge of producing more with less. With farmers and the tech sector working together on solutions to better manage what limited resources we have, there’s hope that the next agricultural revolution can spark a transformation in how other industries approach water management, as well.

Giulio Boccaletti is Global Managing Director, Water, at The Nature Conservancy.

All views expressed are those of the author.

In the 1950s, GE hired renowned comics artists, including George “Inky” Roussos of Batman fame, to draw a series of books called Adventures in Science. The series covered everything from space travel to electricity, and the company is now taking its heroes out of retirement. It partnered with the storytelling app Wattpad and asked its resident writers to create short fiction based on the ideas featured in six books with titles ranging from Adventures in Electricity to Inside the Atom. Take a look.