GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt took over Studio 8H inside New York’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza this afternoon to give his annual vision for the company in 2016 today. Addressing a crowd of investors and analysts who packed the theater – best known as the set of Saturday Night Live – Immelt outlined the steps he’s made to turn GE into the world’s largest digital industrial company. “We’re the only company that will have the machines, analytics and operating systems,” he said. “That’s how we’ll play the Industrial Internet.”Immelt said GE’s acquisition of Alstom’s energy and grid business, the largest industrial acquisition in its history, added to the company’s industrial strength and provided an opportunity to connect GE’s digital services to Alstom’s global industrial footprint. He also said GE was ahead of its plan to sell most of GE Capital’s assets and exit the majority of banking operations.

GE’s biggest task in 2016 will be to “keep executing on the digital industrial strategy,” Immelt stressed.  Here’s a look at some key milestones from 2015 and cornerstones for 2016:

Portfolio transformation:

GE Capital said it would sell assets valued at $200 billion by the end of 2017. As of today, the company has closed transactions valued at more than $100 billion and signed transactions valued at $154 billion. GE Capital also successfully completed the $20.4 billion public offering of Synchrony Financial. The deal will allow GE to return more than $90 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. But the company will still provide jet engine and infrastructure  financing for projects like the Caithness Moxie Freedom power plant in Pennsylvania, which will use a pair of America’s largest and most efficient gas turbines. The turbines, called 7HA, were developed by GE and like other GE technology, they can be connected to the Industrial Internet.

Last fall GE acquired the energy and grid business of Alstom , including Alstom’s huge Haliade offshore wind turbines shown above. Alstom was GE’s largest acquisition ever. Their combined power generation assets can now supply with energy 30 percent of the world. 

GE also launched GE Digital, the foundation for its transformation into the world’s largest digital industrial company. The new unit will work closely with all GE businesses and help them and their customers take advantage of the Industrial Internet. One new solution is the digital power plant  complete with the physical plant’s “digital twin.” The digital power plant will help operators reduce costs and predict problems before they lead to unplanned downtime.

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

GE can move fast because of the GE Store, which allows it to quickly transfer technology, expertise, talent, and culture across its global industrial businesses. The store holds next-generation components like silicon carbide chips. They will have applications in energy, aviation, healthcare and many other industries.

Transforming the World:

Last spring, as Egypt faced a record-breaking heat wave, GE supplied the country with turbines and other technology capable of generating 2.6 gigawatts of electricity.

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

A Vietnam Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner powered by a pair of GEnx engines.

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

GE also launched Predix, a cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet and opened it to outside developers. Predix is similar to iOS or Android, but built for machines. The platform allows developers to write apps for everything from CT and MRI scanners (above) to jet engines and help move GE, its customers and partners into the digital industrial era.

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

Subscribe to GE’s investor newsletter for more GE financial news. You can watch the replay of GE’s Annual Outlook Investor Meeting here.

Nobody wants to be told they are going to die. Yet that’s the prognosis Wayne Eskridge received from his doctors in 2010. The diagnosis was a stage-four case of cirrhosis of the liver. As he and his family despaired over the future, he received another medical opinion, saying this time that he was fine with no liver disease. He was counting his blessings, but later the emotional rollercoaster took another dive when the diagnosis reversed once more. “Over a period of four years I was told I was seriously ill and then told I was not and later I was told that I had a progressive liver disease caused by iron,” Eskridge said from his home in Boise, Idaho. “I did not know where I stood, but I gave seven liters of blood to treat the iron problem. Later that diagnosis was judged to also be wrong. I felt the information I was getting was insufficient but didn’t know where to turn. It’s a journey that drove my wife and me crazy.”

Eskridge’s nightmare finally ended in 2014 when a new MRI scan aided the doctors in their diagnosis of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) – a “silent” liver disease afflicting people who drink little or no alcohol. Eskridge now knows he has stage-three/four cirrhosis — an advancing case of liver disease, but not necessarily a fatal diagnosis. He believes his prognosis would be better had he been diagnosed four years earlier.

Top and above: A 16 year old obese patient with elevated liver enzymes and fatty liver infiltration on ultrasound and MR. The MR elastography (MR Touch) was performed to evaluate tissue stiffness prior to a planned biopsy. The MRE showed normal liver stiffness, indicating the presence of simple steatosis, but no fibrosis or inflammation. The biopsy was cancelled. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Doctors performed an MRI scan with an imaging technique called MR-Touch. MR-Touch is a medical imaging technique that provides an elastogram – a color-coded anatomical image showing varying degrees of elasticity or stiffness in soft tissue which then aids the clinicians in their diagnosis of disease. In this case it was liver disease. GE developed MR-Touch in partnership with the Mayo Clinic. It can capture the image in just 14 seconds, a short time for most patients to hold their breath.

Eskridge’s liver trouble began in December 2010, after surgery to remove his gangrenous gallbladder. The initial diagnosis was based on obvious liver damage observed by his surgeon. A subsequent biopsy showed no liver disease, a finding that made little sense. That started Eskridge on his tortuous four-year journey of back-and-forth visits to primary care physicians, gastroenterologists and hematologists. He underwent a battery of tests, including blood draws, ultrasounds, biopsies and MRIs, and received diagnoses ranging from no liver disease to hemochromatosis — too much iron in the body resulting in stage 4 cirrhosis.

“We had several years of trying to figure out what was going on and not being successful,” he says. Frustrated, the 73-year-old engineer, who runs an online lighting business, went so far as to take a pathology course online at Tufts University to learn more about his liver.

MR Touch assesses the stiffness of a patient’s liver and is especially valuable in evaluating and assisting the clinician in their treatment plan for fatty liver disease. Image credit: GE Healthcare

In 2014, Eskridge’s liver mystery was solved when he and his wife, Rosemary, met Dr. Michael Charlton of Salt Lake City, who prescribed an MR-Touch scan that assisted the clinicians in their diagnosis of NASH and visualized the extent of the liver damage. NASH is difficult to detect because most patients are asymptomatic and don’t have high risk factors.

Eskridge believes that if he had not been diagnosed by his clinician using the MR-Touch imaging technique his disease likely would have progressed to a fatal stage-four case of cirrhosis. He now has hopes — and a fighting chance — of stopping the disease.

He’s keeping himself healthy through lifestyle changes, including increased exercise, weight loss and the elimination of harmful saturated fats. He instead consumes significant amounts of unsaturated fats in extra-virgin olive oil and liver-supportive supplements as part of a restricted Mediterranean diet — things he says he would have done earlier had doctors correctly diagnosed his illness. “Had I had the same counsel after my 2010 surgery, I probably would not be at stage-three/four cirrhosistoday,” he says.

At least 30 million people in the United States — one in 10 — have some form of liver disease. Medical imaging techniques like MR-Touch and new cloud-based software that precisely highlight what clinicians need to see for them to effectively treat liver disease could mean more precise care for patients and productivity for clinicians.

“Absent better diagnostic tools, my doctors did all that I could ask of them. My story is not unique as many people have silent liver disease. It’s a problem that may become more common as my generation, with our industrialized diet and poor habits, gets older,” Eskridge says.

Already the MR-Touch imaging technique and GE software called FlightPlan for Liver are helping doctors treat liver cancer. Previously, liver cancer was particularly difficult to deal with because the liver’s complex vascular structure made it hard for doctors to find which blood vessels fed a tumor. Using MR-Touch and the software, surgeons now have more detailed imaging to help them prepare for an embolization to surgically block blood vessels feeding a tumor.

Without sensible water prices, industry has no incentive to innovate and conserve.

Industrial users are not paying enough for water. The same goes for farmers, commercial businesses, municipal residents — and every other user group.

The way we price water in the United States may have made sense historically when water was abundant, but it makes no sense in the 21st century. It undermines our water security, creates a tragedy of the commons problem and impedes access to water for new and expanding businesses. Ironically, it drives up the cost of water, as water suppliers chase innovative but expensive alternatives to diverting surface water and pumping groundwater.

In the United States, we take water for granted because we enjoy the cheapest water rates in the world, excepting only Canada. When homeowners or apartment dwellers turns on the tap, out comes as much water as they want for less than they pays for cell phone service or cable television.

The truth is that no one pays for water. We pay only for the cost of service. If a residential, commercial or industrial user gets water from a municipal water department or from a private utility regulated by the state public utility commission, the money paid for water merely offsets the expenses incurred by the water provider to deliver it.

Most industries “self supply” water, meaning that they get water from a nearby river or from a groundwater well. In these situations, the companies directly pay the costs to divert, pump, treat and dispose of the water they use. But whether the water is self supplied or provided, there is no commodity charge for the water.

Even worse, for some domestic, agricultural and industrial users, there are no meters to measure their water consumption. Users pay a flat fee, often at a deep discount to the replacement cost of the water they consume. And some cities use decreasing block rates, with the price paid per unit of water declining as consumption increases. These pricing practices obviously incentivize wasteful consumption.

Can Water Pricing Unleash Innovation?

Even though water rates have not provided industrial users an incentive to conserve, industrial water use has declined significantly. Use fell by 12 percent in the five years leading up to 2010, according to the latest report by the U.S. Geological Survey. One driver behind this reduction was the Great Recession, which resulted in lower industrial production.

But industry also achieved greater efficiencies in industrial processes and placed more emphasis on water reuse and recycling. These two factors reflected, in part, efforts to reduce the costs of regulatory compliance. Mandates under the Clean Water Act, for example, have incentivized utilities and other businesses to devise ways to use less water which, in turn, means the companies have less water they need to treat onsite in order to comply with their federal permits.

The same phenomenon has occurred in the residential sector. E.P.A. standards for appliances from toilets to showerheads are gradually reducing the water used in homes and apartments. Government rules and regulations have played a significant role in reducing industrial and municipal water use.

Still, our water supplies are under stress. Population growth is a major factor, as is internal migration. People continue to move in the United States from where the water is to where it isn’t. As the impact of climate change becomes increasingly obvious, it becomes a national priority to mitigate the risks of water shortages.

The optimal tool in water suppliers’ portfolios of policy alternatives is to price water sensibly. Let’s create a life-line rate to protect access to water for basic needs and tiered rates for uses above that threshold. Not only would higher water rates encourage consumers, farmers and industry to conserve water, they would also unleash the creative impulse to drive innovations in water management, measurement and infrastructure.

As I travel around the United States, I often meet engineers and inventors who have built better water mousetraps. Their devices work. But what is so sad is that virtually none of these individuals has a viable business plan. The price of water is so low that homeowners, farmers and industrial users have little incentive to adopt new technologies.

Sitting on the shelf in labs around the world are drawings and models just waiting to be rolled out for commercial adoption. What is needed to bring these inventions and technologies to market are the right price signals.

(Top image: Credit: David McNew, Getty Images)

Robert Glennon is Regents’ Professor and Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. His books include: “Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It.”

All views expressed are those of the author.

As aging nuclear reactors require increased maintenance, and even shut down completely, the strain on their production is being felt far beyond the energy industry: inside oncology and cardiac clinics. But help is on the way.

Every year, doctors order as many as 40 million medical imaging scans that require a radioactive isotope called technetium-99m (Tc-99m). The scans help them diagnose cancer, heart disease and other serious maladies.

Tc-99m comes from molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), another isotope. Mo-99 is typically produced in nuclear reactors, but many of those reactors are working beyond their planned life spans, going offline and at times causing shortages that can severely delay medical imaging scans.

Moreover, the United States, which accounts for half of the world’s demand for Mo-99, imports all of its Mo-99 from reactors abroad. The reliance on isotopes from only a few reactors around the world has made the Mo-99 supply chain a delicate one. The end result: a steadily growing need to find alternative sources of Mo-99.

Above: The mineral molybdenite. Top: A decommissioned cooling tower of a nuclear power plant. Images credit: Shutterstock

GE Healthcare and SHINE Medical Technologies have done just that: they tested and verified a new way to manufacture Mo-99. Jan Makela, general manager of core imaging for GE Healthcare, and his team went out to the industry to find another source of Mo-99 that could help break through the bottleneck. SHINE answered with an innovative new way to produce Mo-99 in the United States, without relying on a nuclear reactor. The GE Healthcare team shipped in SHINE’s Mo-99 and tested it by processing it inside GE Healthcare DRYTEC generators to yield Tc-99m.

The team then used the Tc-99m to prepare two finished radiopharmaceuticals, confirming that SHINE’s Mo-99 could be an alternative source for their production.

Here’s why it matters: When a batch of Mo-99 arrives at a hospital or nuclear pharmacy, it decays to the medically usable isotope Tc-99m. Doctors then prepare imaging agents compounded with Tc-99m for injection into the body to highlight organs or specific parts of the body using medical equipment such as SPECT (single-photon emission computed tomography) cameras. These imaging procedures can assist in assessing heart disease or determining the stage of bone cancer progression by highlighting abnormalities picked up by the scan.

With a relatively short shelf life — 2.75 days for Mo-99, and only six hours for Tc-99m — suppliers must quickly manufacture, ship and deliver generators to make sure that patients can get the scans they need. There’s no “stocking up” of these materials to prepare for future shortages, so delays in production immediately impact the healthcare facilities that need a continuous supply. “Our customers — clinics, hospitals and imaging specialists — rely on a secure supply of technetium-99m from Mo99 to make sure that they can conduct important diagnostic imaging scans their patients need,” Makela said. “We are working hard to make this key isotope readily available and cost-effective for them.”

An image of the molybdenum atom. Image credit: Shutterstock

SHINE’s alternative Mo-99 can be integrated into today’s current Tc-99m production methods without making changes to the process. The company is expected to begin commercial production in 2019 using this new process, and expects to be able to produce enough Mo-99 to supply two-thirds of the country’s need.

A worker with Drytec generators. Image credit: GE Healthcare

A room filled with Drytec generators. Image credit: GE Healthcare

It’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when GE still needed to sell the general public on the value of artificial illumination. So it made sense for the company to devote an episode of the General Electric Fantasy Hour to a show about a little reindeer who saves the day with his bright red nose.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, still a staple of holiday TV, pranced onto the screen half a century ago with help from GE executive William Sahloff. He likely didn’t know that, just a couple of years earlier, a GE engineer had invented the red LED in the company’s labs.

Sahloff was the vice president of the company’s Housewares division and saw the TV special as a chance to hawk the company’s wares – note that the elves are wrapping up GE hair driers, vacuum cleaners, can openers and other household goods.

But he also wanted to promote the work of a friend.

Before he joined GE, Sahloff was a marketing executive with the mail order catalog Montgomery Ward. One of his copy writers, Robert May, came up with the Rudolph character and Sahloff started using him in Montgomery Ward’s Christmas brochures from 1939 until 1946.

The company also gave May the copyright to the most famous reindeer of all and Sahloff encouraged the writer to promote the story in print and on records.

Rudolph’s big TV breakthrough came on December 6, 1964. Sahloff, who had moved to GE, created the Christmas Spectacular to celebrate the reindeer’s 25^th anniversary.

He was so adamant about the show’s potential that he convinced Rankin Bass, the show’s producer, to bump the General Electric College Bowl football game from prime time until after the premiere. The rest is history.

Building a house or renovating an apartment typically involves brute force and noise, frayed nerves, busted budgets and, sometimes, poisoned relations with neighbors. But homeowners in Japan can now rely on software-enabled technology to take out some of the pain.

“Remodeling requires many specific capabilities and techniques, like how to install units without affecting other rooms; or, the ability to control construction noise and vibration,” says Isao Hihara of LIXIL, the Japanese manufacturer of housing materials and equipment. “Sometimes [you need] a team that can say, for example, ‘Let’s use a crane from the narrow alley to load the bathtub into the upper story.’”

Earlier this year, LIXIL Total Service, a subsidiary that handles installation and maintenance of LIXIL products — everything from bathtubs to high-tech toilets — started using Predix, GE’s cloud-based software platform developed for the Industrial Internet. Typically, Predix handles data generated by jet engines, gas turbines, CT scanners and other big machines. But the versatile platform can handle most professional tasks. LIXIL uses it to schedule and dispatch the right team to the correct job at the optimal time.

Top and above: A LIXIL bathroom. Images credit: LIXIL

That’s more complicated than it sounds. There are more than 13 million people living in Tokyo and Hihara says that LIXIL’s branch in the Japanese capital receives orders for some 1,000 bathroom jobs per month. The office has about 50 work teams, each specializing in a different aspect of construction. The mathematical possibilities of who should be where and when can quickly grow astronomical.

That’s where Predix comes in. Last fall, the Japanese telecom and Internet corporation Softbank became the first strategic global partner to license Predix. This year, LIXIL, GE and SoftBank developed a Predix-based app called Job Scheduler that assigns the optimal team for each construction site depending on certain conditions. They include site location, timeframe, past experience in handling a particular product, ability to use special machines and having skills that match the difficulty of the work. “Whether it was defining the ideal process or developing the user interface, we made sure that we always thought from the perspective of the customer and users,” says Keisuke Toda of GE Digital.

LIXIL has about 50 work teams in Tokyo, each specializing in a different aspect of construction. The mathematical possibilities of who should be where and when can quickly grow astronomical. Image credit: LIXIL

Predix also keeps gathering data, learning from it and keeping tabs on the accomplishments and skill levels of each construction team. The goal is to prevent construction schedule delays and reduce costs. To date, the app is in being used by LIXIL’s remodeling group and the company hopes to roll it out to other teams in the future.

Says GE Japan’s Tetsuya Nakamura, who leads the collaboration with SoftBank: “In the coming age, the Industrial Internet and software analytics will transform society and the economy in ways that will go beyond our imaginations.” In Japan, the transformation can start in your bathroom.

John Flannery, GE Healthcare’s chief executive officer, told the Financial Times that when he started his job last year, he “didn’t come with a mandate to do big M&A.” Instead, Flannery, who held many different GE jobs during his 27 years with the company, said he would be focusing on organic growth. He’s taking advantage of GE’s digital industrial transformation and the GE Store, the idea of applying the knowledge from one GE business across other units to speed up innovation and product development.

GE Healthcare has been primarily known for its imaging machines like MRI and CT scanners. “There will always be a need for imaging — if anything it’s going to grow as we have more testing and diagnostics in an ageing population,” Flannery told the FT earlier this week. “But it’s important we don’t just remain a technology box company selling pixels.”

That’s why Flannery introduced the GE Health Cloud earlier this month at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), the medical imaging industry’s largest trade show. Built on GE’s cloud-based software platform, Predix, 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. Read more about the GE Health Cloud here.

Explore some of the more thought-provoking opinions and lively debates among contributors to our Perspectives section over the past year.

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to look back at some of the technological innovations and global challenges that sparked discussion and debate among thought leaders around the world — including on GE Reports.

In the Perspectives section, we featured the opinions of dozens of leaders from across industry, government, academia and the nonprofit world. We explored everything from the impact of trade and globalization, the future of work and industry, the challenges of achieving sustainable energy and water policies, and the promise and peril of artificial intelligence and cyborg technology. And the new debate platform fostered lively discussions around such timely topics as how technology is impacting humans, how the Internet of Things will evolve, and what role natural gas should play in a low-emissions energy future.

Here are 15 of the top Perspectives of 2015:

1. Jeffrey R. Immelt: The Importance of Growth

U.S. businesses are fighting an economic war for exports, says Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE. We need market access and tools to compete and win. (Image: Thinkstock)

2. Amb. Michael Froman: If We Don’t Write the Rules of the Global Economy, Others Will

America is at a crossroads in the world economy, says Michael Froman, the U.S. Trade Representative. If we don’t take the lead in writing the economic rules of the road through trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), other countries will. (Image: David Teran)

3. Dr. Tom Frieden: Protecting the World from the Next Pandemic

It wasn’t just luck that the Ebola epidemic didn’t spread once it reached Lagos, says Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Here’s what other countries can learn from Nigeria’s effective response. (Image: CDC)

4. Marco Annunziata: The Industrial App Economy Is Ready for Its Download

The industrial app economy will spur innovation by enabling a more seamless environment for people and machines to work smarter and more efficiently together, says Marco Annunziata, chief economist and executive director of Global Market Insight at GE. (GIF: GE)

5. Steve Bolze: Investing in the Future of Electricity

The world is in the midst of a major power shift, says Steve Bolze, president and CEO of GE Power & Water and co-Chair of the WEF Energy Utilities & Energy Technology community. Not political power, but actual electricity power being generated by an increasingly diverse and distributed range of sources — from natural gas to renewables. (GIF: GE)

6. Debate: What Role Should Natural Gas Play in Improving Access to Energy?

In a debate over the role of natural gas in improving access to energy for all, Charles McConnell, executive director of the Rice University Energy and Environment Initiative, argues that while renewable energy is important, natural gas is the key to improving access and sustainability. However, John Rogers, senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that while gas may have a supporting role to play in our transition to a low-carbon energy future, renewables and efficiency are the real stars. (Image: Getty Images)

7. Debate: Is Africa Still Rising?

There has been much talk of late about Africa’s growth potential. In the latest Perspectives debate, we consider Is Africa Still Rising? On one side, Simon Freemantle, senior political economist at Standard Bank, considers five elements investors should examine to assess whether growth across African markets is sustainable. On the other side, Alex Vines, head of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, urges us to “look westward” in Africa. (Image: Getty Images)

8. Debate: Are We Headed for One Internet of Things — Or Many?

In this debate over the future of the Internet of Things, Richard Soley, executive director of the Industrial Internet Consortium, says industrial machines equipped with advanced analytics have the potential to transform economic growth and innovation — if they can work together. But Jared Weiner, executive vice president and chief strategy officer of The Future Hunters, argues that despite the promise of the Internet of Things to redefine how we interact with the things around us, the reality may be closer to many competing Intranets of Things — each with its own network of users and products. (Image: Thinkstock)

9. Debate: Will the Integration of Robotics and People Create More Social Inequality?

In this debate, Amal Graafstra, founder and CEO of Dangerous Things, argues that instead of fearing cyborgs such as himself, we should be working toward a future when everyone has access to human-enhancing technologies. James J. Hughes, executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, counters that robotics may promise to enhance human capabilities beyond our imagination, but for whom? (Image: Thinkstock)

10. Debate: Is Technology Making Us Less Human?

In this debate, L. Mark Carrier, co-founder and co-director of George Marsh Applied Cognition Laboratory, argues for a new set of social norms for the Internet era to prevent online interactions from doing more harm than good. On the other side, Steve Gullans, managing director at Excel Venture Management, says the pace of innovation may be accelerating, but our ability to adapt to the latest technologies remains undeterred. (Image: Thinkstock)

11. 3D Printing the Soul and Other Ideas From the Final Frontier — Q&A with Adam Steltzner of NASA

The Industrial Internet faces perhaps it’s biggest challenge in space — though also some of the greatest opportunities for breakthroughs in machine-to-machine communication and Big Data analytics, says Adam Steltzner, a fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Chief Engineer of Mars2020. (GIF: NASA)

12. Aneesh Chopra: Startup Government

Beneath the noise of the Obamacare rollout, a quiet revolution was taking place in how government delivers digital services, says Aneesh Chopra, co-founder & executive vice president of Hunch Analytics. (Image: Thinkstock)

13. Driving a 3D-Printed Car Through Manufacturing — Q&A with Jay Rogers of Local Motors

From micro-manufacturing and co-creation to the first 3D-printed car, Jay Rogers, CEO and co-founder of Local Motors, is remaking the manufacturing process. (GIF: Local Motors)

14. Jim Lawton: When Humans and Robots Work Together

When you hear about innovative technological advances that are reshaping industries, chances are you aren’t thinking about a factory floor. Not much has changed there since the first industrial robots were deployed in the 1960s — until now. Jim Lawton, chief product and marketing officer at Rethink Robotics dishes on a new category of automation: collaborative robotics. (GIF: Rethink Robotics)

15. Freya Williams: 6 Reasons Why Green Is the New Black

Freya Williams, CEO, North America for Futerra, has spent a lot of time compiling evidence that brands can both maximize profit and be a force for social good. So what is the business case for sustainability? The answer: a $9 burrito. (GIF: GE)

All views expressed are those of the authors.

GE engineers started lighting the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C. in 1963, one year after their colleague Nick Holonyak invented the world’s first visible light-emitting diode (LED).

Today, GE LEDs illuminate not only the First Spruce outside the White House, but also streets in San Diego and Jacksonville. Those cities that have started testing the latest generation of an “intelligent” LED lighting system developed by Current, a new energy startup that GE launched last fall. GE scientists also found a way to make LEDs shine in more vivid colors.

The streetlights are equipped with cameras, microphones and other sensors. They stream sound, images and data over the Industrial Internet to Predix, GE’s cloud-based software platform. Apps built on Predix can help cities optimize traffic, improve parking and even fight crime.

The light bulb and electrical lighting, of course, were been the seminal breakthrough that allowed Thomas Edison and his partners grow GE into a global industrial powerhouse. Take a look at the history through the holiday lens.

Early GE Christmas tree lights advertisements. The history of Edison’s Christmas lights goes back to the winter of 1880, when Edison strung a line of electric lights outside his Menlo Park laboratory in New Jersey, enchanting travelers on passing trains. Just two years later, Edward H. Johnson, his partner in the Edison Illumination Company, hung the first string of 80 red, white and blue electric Christmas lights from a revolving tree in the parlor of his New York City home. All images credit: The Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science.

Electric lights ceased being a novelty item and became more mainstream in 1895, when President Grover Cleveland had the White House family Christmas tree decorated with hundreds of multi-colored electric light bulbs, for the first time. However, it wasn’t until 1903 that GE began selling pre-assembled kits of Christmas lights to the general public. By then, electricity got cheaper and more ubiquitous and the market for electric lighting took off. Above, President Coolidge at the first National Christmas Tree in 1923. Image credit: Library of Congress

A box of Christmas tree lights from 1905. Image credit: The Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science.

Christmas tree lights soon came in many shapes and colors. The selection above in from 1910. Image credit: The Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science.

Christmas in 1919. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GE illuminated the National Christmas Tree for 53 consecutive seasons. There are more than 60,000 LEDs on the tree, which stands at President’s Park in Washington, D.C. LEDs use 80 percent less energy than traditional bulbs and can last 20,000 hours. Photo credit: Paul Morigi for the National Park Foundation

New GE jet engines must pass a litany of hardships on the test stand — from bird strikes to hailstorms — before they get to take to the air.

But even then they are not finished. One of the steps required to win FAA certification actually looks like fun — though the engines might object. It involves flights on GE’s Flying Test Beds. GE has two of them, each one a converted Boeing 747 packed with computers, electronics and other gear. The newer one, which GE acquired in 2011, can safely climb as high as 45,000 feet, some 5,000 feet above maximum cruising altitude.

Earlier this year, when GE was testing LEAP and Passport engines, the engineers invited a photographer in a separate plane to join them for test flights over California’s Sierra Nevada. Take a look at the haul he brought back.

Top Image: GE Aviation acquired its original flying test bed (red stripe) two decades ago. That plane, called Clipper Ocean Spray, was the 16th Boeing 747 ever built and flew for two decades in Pan Am livery. Earlier this year, it was testing the new Passport engine GE developed for Bombardier’s Global 7000 and Global 8000 business jets. Above: GE’s two flying test beds over Sierra Nevada. All image credits: Wolf Air Vectorvision/GE Aviation

A Passport engine on wing of GE’s original flying test bed is powering through tests.

GE flies the planes from its Flight Test Operations Center in Victorville, Calif., located on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

GE bought its new flying test bed (blue tail) from Japan Airlines. After two decades in commercial service, GE spent 14 months puling out seats, rewiring the plane and installing state-of-the art avionics. The first test engine on wing was the next-generation LEAP.

The flying test beds and filled with computers and test equipment. The new plane holds nearly 900 miles of wiring and fiber optic cable.

The cables connect sensors embedded in the engines to rows of computers inside the economy cabin and help engineers analyze terabytes of complex data in flight.

The fiber optic cable will stream digital data from some 1,700 instruments and sensors monitoring thrust, temperature, fuel consumption and other readings from the engine.

The LEAP was developed by CFM International, a joint company between GE and France’s Safran (Snecma). Even though the engine won’t enter service until 2016, it’s already the best selling jet engine in GE’s history. CFM has have received more that 7,000 orders and commitments for the LEAP valued at more than $125 billion.

There will be three versions of the LEAP engine: LEAP-1A for the Airbus A320neo, LEAP-1B for Boeing 737MAX, and LEAP-1C for the Comac C919. It’s the first engine with GE technology that contains 3D-printed parts and components from a groundbreaking material called ceramic matrix composites.

GE engineers reinforced the wing structure of the new test bed, drilled new holes in the fuselage for extra cables and modified the wing leading edge around engine No. 2 (the engine on the left side closest to the body).

The changes will allow engineers to attach to the wing any of the new engines the company is developing, including the giant GE9X engine. With 132 inches in fan diameter, the GE9X is largest jet engine ever designed.

Besides the test engine, the new flying test bed uses GE’s CF6 engines, the same kind that power Air Force One.

Nobody wants to be told they are going to die. Yet that’s the prognosis Wayne Eskridge received from his doctors in 2010. The diagnosis was a stage-four case of cirrhosis of the liver. As he and his family despaired over the future, he received another medical opinion, saying this time that he was fine with no liver disease. He was counting his blessings, but later the emotional rollercoaster took another dive when the diagnosis reversed once more. “Over a period of four years I was told I was seriously ill and then told I was not and later I was told that I had a progressive liver disease caused by iron,” Eskridge said from his home in Boise, Idaho. “I did not know where I stood, but I gave seven liters of blood to treat the iron problem. Later that diagnosis was judged to also be wrong. I felt the information I was getting was insufficient but didn’t know where to turn. It’s a journey that drove my wife and me crazy.”

Eskridge’s nightmare finally ended in 2014 when a new MRI scan aided the doctors in their diagnosis of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) – a “silent” liver disease afflicting people who drink little or no alcohol. Eskridge now knows he has stage-three/four cirrhosis — an advancing case of liver disease, but not necessarily a fatal diagnosis. He believes his prognosis would be better had he been diagnosed four years earlier.

Top and above: A 16 year old obese patient with elevated liver enzymes and fatty liver infiltration on ultrasound and MR. The MR elastography (MR Touch) was performed to evaluate tissue stiffness prior to a planned biopsy. The MRE showed normal liver stiffness, indicating the presence of simple steatosis, but no fibrosis or inflammation. The biopsy was cancelled. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Doctors performed an MRI scan with an imaging technique called MR-Touch. MR-Touch is a medical imaging technique that provides an elastogram – a color-coded anatomical image showing varying degrees of elasticity or stiffness in soft tissue which then aids the clinicians in their diagnosis of disease. In this case it was liver disease. GE developed MR-Touch in partnership with the Mayo Clinic. It can capture the image in just 14 seconds, a short time for most patients to hold their breath.

Eskridge’s liver trouble began in December 2010, after surgery to remove his gangrenous gallbladder. The initial diagnosis was based on obvious liver damage observed by his surgeon. A subsequent biopsy showed no liver disease, a finding that made little sense. That started Eskridge on his tortuous four-year journey of back-and-forth visits to primary care physicians, gastroenterologists and hematologists. He underwent a battery of tests, including blood draws, ultrasounds, biopsies and MRIs, and received diagnoses ranging from no liver disease to hemochromatosis — too much iron in the body resulting in stage 4 cirrhosis.

“We had several years of trying to figure out what was going on and not being successful,” he says. Frustrated, the 73-year-old engineer, who runs an online lighting business, went so far as to take a pathology course online at Tufts University to learn more about his liver.

MR Touch assesses the stiffness of a patient’s liver and is especially valuable in evaluating and assisting the clinician in their treatment plan for fatty liver disease. Image credit: GE Healthcare

In 2014, Eskridge’s liver mystery was solved when he and his wife, Rosemary, met Dr. Michael Charlton of Salt Lake City, who prescribed an MR-Touch scan that assisted the clinicians in their diagnosis of NASH and visualized the extent of the liver damage. NASH is difficult to detect because most patients are asymptomatic and don’t have high risk factors.

Eskridge believes that if he had not been diagnosed by his clinician using the MR-Touch imaging technique his disease likely would have progressed to a fatal stage-four case of cirrhosis. He now has hopes — and a fighting chance — of stopping the disease.

He’s keeping himself healthy through lifestyle changes, including increased exercise, weight loss and the elimination of harmful saturated fats. He instead consumes significant amounts of unsaturated fats in extra-virgin olive oil and liver-supportive supplements as part of a restricted Mediterranean diet — things he says he would have done earlier had doctors correctly diagnosed his illness. “Had I had the same counsel after my 2010 surgery, I probably would not be at stage-three/four cirrhosistoday,” he says.

At least 30 million people in the United States — one in 10 — have some form of liver disease. Medical imaging techniques like MR-Touch and new cloud-based software that precisely highlight what clinicians need to see for them to effectively treat liver disease could mean more precise care for patients and productivity for clinicians.

“Absent better diagnostic tools, my doctors did all that I could ask of them. My story is not unique as many people have silent liver disease. It’s a problem that may become more common as my generation, with our industrialized diet and poor habits, gets older,” Eskridge says.

Already the MR-Touch imaging technique and GE software called FlightPlan for Liver are helping doctors treat liver cancer. Previously, liver cancer was particularly difficult to deal with because the liver’s complex vascular structure made it hard for doctors to find which blood vessels fed a tumor. Using MR-Touch and the software, surgeons now have more detailed imaging to help them prepare for an embolization to surgically block blood vessels feeding a tumor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This piece first appeared in GE Look ahead.

France Córdova is Director of the National Science Foundation.

All views expressed are those of the author.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The World Health Organization reported earlier this year that more people die from cardiovascular disease than from any other cause. A new MRI imaging system can see the heart in 7 dimensions– 3 in space, 1 in time, and 3 in velocity direction – showing the actual blood flow in the heart as a moving image. It can help physicians distinguish scarred or damaged tissue from healthy heart muscle and tell them whether blood is flowing through the heart the way it should be. The system is not yet commercially available.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This piece first appeared in GE Look ahead.

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

All views expressed are those of the author.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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