A group of scientists were surprised recently when they trained a powerful new microscope on a colony of dangerous drug-resistant bacteria responsible for thousands of hospital-acquired infections and hundreds of deaths in the U.S. alone annually. They watched microbes from the family Pseudomonas aeruginosa blow themselves up and rain the contents of their cells on their nearby kin. The ejecta contained bits of cellular membrane, DNA, carbohydrates, proteins and other raw materials that the colony used like Lego blocks to grow the slimy biofilm that protected and nourished them.

“The normal bacteria look like little rods or pills,” said Lynne Turnbull, a microbiologist at Australia’s University of Technology Sydney who was involved in the research. “One day, as we looked under the microscope, we saw one of the cells turn from a hard, structured rod into a round, soft ball. Within a few more seconds, it then violently exploded — it’s amazing how quickly it happens and is likely the reason it hasn’t been observed before.”

Cynthia Whitchurch, another UTS microbiologist and a lead investigator on the project, explained what the group saw. “When most people think about bacterial cell death, they think of cells dying and their contents slowly leaking out, similar to what you would see with a piece of fruit rotting,” she explained. “What’s so amazing about this discovery is that we now know the bacteria have a process that enables them to actively explode, and therefore efficiently release all of their internal contents, making these available for use by the remaining members of their community.”

Top image: Extracellular DNA (yellow) is released by exploding bacteria in biofilms of the bacterial pathogen P. aeruginosa (blue). Image by E. Gloag and L. Turnbull, UTS ithree institute

Scientists call this behavior explosive cell lysis. It releases shards of the cell’s membrane and DNA into the surrounding environment in as little as six seconds. In a paper published in April in the journal Nature Communications, the international team of scientists revealed that the fragments re-form into little bubbles called membrane vesicles, which help the remaining cells reinforce the tough biofilm matrix that serves as their scaffolding and armor.

“This was completely unexpected, as until now bacterial membrane vesicles were thought to form from membranous protrusions at the cell surface,” said study co-author Masanori Toyofuku, a microbiologist with the University of Tsukuba and University of Zurich.

Because explosive lysis happens so quickly — in a matter of seconds — researchers needed special microscopy equipment to catch it. They first used a special stain that glows when it is in the presence of DNA outside the cellular membrane.

Then they peered through an instrument called a GE DeltaVision OMX super-resolution microscope, which let them see objects two times smaller than what traditional microscopes allow. (It’s so powerful that some researchers call it the “OMG microscope.”) They were able to catch members of the rod-shaped P. aeruginosa colony squish down into spheres before blowing up, revealing fluorescing DNA “like starbursts or fireworks,” said UTS’s Turnbull.

A photograph of a dividing cell taken with the OMX microscope taken by Indiana University researcher Jane Stout.

Here’s what’s interesting. The study found that only a few members of a colony of P. aeruginosa trigger their own premature demise. The rest progress through the microbe’s normal life cycle.

The scientist also saw an uptick in these cellular suicides when the colony came under pressure, like when they came into contact with potentially deadly antibiotics. For that reason, the team believes that explosive lysis is a survival mechanism that is key to the colony’s well-being. It’s a case of a few sacrificing themselves to provide a communal good — the raw materials needed for the majority’s survival.

The exploded microbes’ liberated guts help form the biofilm that allows the surviving colony members to grow on hospital equipment and medical supplies like catheters. This then puts patients at risk for infection when they come into contact with the virulent organisms.

The discovery could open new paths to fight the menace of antibiotic-resistant bugs. The first is finding a way to prevent bacterial cells from undergoing explosive lysis and stopping them from providing the raw materials needed to produce biofilms. The second approach could be to figure out how to get all of the colony’s members to undergo explosive lysis, causing the whole population to die instead of just a few martyrs.

“This is really important work in the fight against a major public health crisis,” said Kimberly Collins, a biologist at GE Healthcare who is familiar with the team’s research. “And it is something that couldn’t have been done not too long ago. Fast imaging of living cells made this discovery possible.”

GE’s new Center for Additive Technology Advancement (CATA) looks like a futuristic set for a Stanley Kubrick movie. Everything seems to be white: the walls, the gleaming floors, even the noise from rows of laser-powered 3D printers near the entrance, quietly making everything from jet engine blades to oil valves.

Located by a new highway exit just minutes from the Pittsburgh airport, the center, which opened in April, is so new even Uber drivers require human navigation. But the center is no mirage.

Few cities embody the boom-and-bust cycle of American industry more than Pittsburgh. Today there are no steel mills left, but the city is rising again, in part because it focused on science, research and education. Carnegie Mellon University is the place to study robotics, Google and Tesla Motors opened offices here and the world’s most sustainable building is located at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. “We’ve tapped into America’s best-kept secret,” says Jennifer Cipolla, who runs CATA.

Top image: Additive manufacturing engineer Brian Adkins in full gear. Above: 3D printing reduces waste and allows engineers manufacture objects with complex internal geometries that would be otherwise very difficult or expensive to achieve, such as this fuel nozzle. Images credit: GE Reports/Chris New

Additive technologies like 3D printing are the latest twist on manufacturing. “Normally when you want to produce a part, you start with a big piece of metal and machine it down,” Cipolla says. “But you also create a lot of waste. Additive allows you to grow something from the ground up from a bed of metal powder, sand or other material. There’s hardly any waste because you can reclaim pretty much everything. It also allows you to create much more complex internal geometries that would be otherwise very difficult or expensive to achieve, creating parts with improved performance.”

GE Aviation, for example, is already printing parts for jet engines, and GE Oil & Gas is using printers to make valves. The idea behind CATA, which is funded by each of the various GE businesses, is to bring additive into the mainstream for all of them. “Our mission is to ensure additive technology becomes a standard part of the tool kit for each business,” Cipolla says. “By having a shared facility, they can share the cost burden and we can advance the technology across the entire company much more rapidly than if they were to invest individually.”

3D printers at CATA can use as many as four polymers at once (including one for the support structure), allowing designers to produce samples like this foot. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

Cipolla says there are a number of factors that are not yet well-understood in additive. Even though the machines can print very sophisticated fuel nozzles, for instance, “most additive machines are still not production-ready,” she says. “But GE is at the forefront of innovation in this area, pushing the boundaries and driving their industrialization.”

That’s why CATA also has an “industrialization lab,” where GE businesses can bring their 3D designs and figure out how to speed up the process from lab- to full-scale production. Cipolla and her team will help them optimize the design and simulate what actual production would look like.

CATA’s DMLM 3D printers can make parts from cobalt chrome alloys, the high temperature alloy Inconel and stainless steel. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

GE invested nearly $40 million in CATA, which will employ 50 workers. The facility has several direct metal laser melting (DMLM) machines, which can print parts in metal alloys. The company is planning to add $10 million worth of machines this year, including a $2 million DMLM printer with four lasers that can print four different parts at the same time and a laser hot-wire machine that can quickly and precisely restore worn-out parts.

Each DMLM machine breaks down a CAD design file layer by layer and uses the laser to fuse one fine layer on metal powder after another in the right design pattern. Each layer is between 20 to 80 microns thick and there are as many as 1,250 layers per inch — each less than the thickness of a human hair. The laser power ranges from 400 watts to 1 kilowatt, enough to burn a hole in a wall. “It’s exactly like welding, but on a microscopic scale,” says Brian Adkins, additive manufacturing engineer in charge of the machines.

“We are making the Jell-O mold for the jelly,” says Dave Miller, the engineer working with the sand binder jetting machine. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

While DMLM machines can be used for mass production, the sand binder jetting machine is a great tool for rapid prototyping. Instead of a laser, it uses a chemical binder to print casting molds from layers of fine sand, each 280 microns thick, infused with an activator. When the two chemicals mix, they start an exothermic reaction that hardens the sand into the desired shape. “We are making the Jell-O mold for the jelly,” says Dave Miller, the engineer working with the machine. “The sand mold gets stronger as it ages. It’s like concrete.”

Miller can print one complex mold in a day and have the casting back from the foundry the next day. “This is a huge breakthrough for rapid prototyping,” Miller says. “You’d normally spend many thousands of dollars and many weeks to achieve the same results. With this 3D printer you are cutting down costs and also your lead time.”

PolyJet machines machines harden polymer layers with UV light. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

The final group of printers creates products from polymers. After printing a layer from a liquid resin, the machine zaps it with UV light, which hardens it. The machine can print from four different polymers at the same time, including one used for support material. The polymers can be used in combination, resulting in material with different qualities and colors. “There’s a cookbook that allows us to juggle the ingredients,” says Ed Rowley, the engineer presiding over the machines. “It allows us to create everything from elastomers to rigid plastic.”

The machines have applications from prototyping to tooling. Last week Rowley was printing an LED chandelier designed by the GE energy startup Current. It’s currently displayed in the lobby of the CATA facility.

GE Reports visited CATA last week. Take a look.

DMLM laser printers can be working on dozens of components at the same time. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

Brian Adkins programs the machine from a touch-screen. The green bar below his finger tells him long until the print is finished. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

A finished 3D-printed sample for attendees of CATA opening on Tuesday. They included Congressman Tim Murphy, Pennsylvania Secretary of Community and Economic Development Dennis Davin, and GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. The gears inside the part can rotate. It would be virtually impossible without a 3D printer. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

After printing, engineers place metal parts inside a pair of curing ovens filled with argon or nitrogen. “It’s like going into a sauna,” says quality leader Michelle Merwin. “The printed part heats up and relaxes. You can cut it off the support plate like butter.” Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

A worker is checking the temperature of components leaving the oven. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

CATA workers are using electric discharge machines to separate printed parts from the support plate. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

The finished product. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

Brian Adkins is vacuuming a DMLM machine to salvage unused metal powder and prevent cross-contamination. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

DMLM machines print parts on a support structure. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

After vacuuming, the powder flows into sieves for recycling. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

Brian Adkins wearing a protective suits is getting ready to vacuum. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

The sand binder jetting machine is a great tool for rapid prototyping. Instead of a laser, it uses a chemical binder to print casting molds from layers of fine sand, each 280 microns thick, infused with an activator. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

An engineer is removing unused sand. The printed mold is the green part. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

The machine can print one complex mold in a day and have the casting back from the foundry the next day. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

The machine’s high-tech sandbox that holds the mold is 1.8 meters long, 1 meter wide and 0.7 meters deep. “You’d normally spend many thousands of dollars and many weeks to achieve the same results,” says GE’s Dave Miller. “With this 3D printer you are cutting down costs and also your lead time.”

Ed Rowley is printing plastic components for an LED chandelier designed by the GE startup Current. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

The chandelier (in white) is surrounded by support material (brown) that needs can be stripped of with just hands. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

Rowley is holding the finished product in front of a polymer 3D printer. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

PolyJet printers can print from as many as four polymers at once. Their combination can produce soft as well as hard parts and hundreds of different colors. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

A gift printed on a PolyJet machine. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New

For millennia, doctors hoping to catch a glimpse of what’s happening inside a patient had very few options aside from cutting the body open. But that changed in 1957, when American electrical engineer Hal Anger invented the gamma camera and doctors were able to see what was going on inside of cells.

The tool allowed physicians to inject patients with special markers tagged with radioactive molecules emitting gamma rays, the most energetic segment of electromagnetic radiation. These markers quickly concentrated in parts of the body affected by disease, like tumors and sites of infection. The camera detected the radioactivity and pinpointed trouble. Changes in the radioactivity signal also gave doctors clues where treatment was working.

The new machine combines nuclear medicine and CT imaging. It allows doctors to spot cancer, infections and other diseases inside the body (glowing red, yellow and white) as well as study in detail the surrounding anatomy (the skull in gray). All images credit: GE Healthcare

The camera performed well, but like all radiation imaging, it included a number of trade-offs involving dose and clarity. “The technology has been around for almost 60 years without any major changes,” says Nathan Hermony, general manager of nuclear medicine at GE Healthcare. “It’s as if the radio industry was still using vacuum tubes. We are changing the status quo.”

Hermony and his team developed a new kind of digital photon receptor that translates the signal coming from the body directly into electrical impulses that can be analyzed by a computer. All other nuclear imaging machines require one more step to process the signal. “This is important because that extra conversion can dramatically reduce the number of gamma rays that leave the body by several factors before they reach the processing stage,” Hermony says.

The new detector is part of a hybrid imaging system that pairs the nuclear imaging system with GE’s 600 Discovery series CT (computed tomography) machine. The combination allows doctors to spot cancer, infections and other diseases inside the body as well as study in detail the surrounding anatomy. Says Hermony: “Bringing this information to the radiologists is huge.”

Both patients and hospitals benefit. The improved contrast of the detector provides radiologists the opportunity to adjust injected dose or scanning time. “We now have the chance to optimize patient scan time, injected dose or both,” says Dr. Barry Siegel, professor of radiology and medicine and senior vice chair and division director of nuclear medicine at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University in St. Louis. “Things seem to look sharp even if we manipulate the data. The total imaging time is reduced and the image quality seems to be maintained.”

Barnes-Jewish Hospital at Washington University Medical Center is the first medical facility in the United States to install the brand-new machine. Siegel’s team started testing it a month ago. The scanner’s key innovation is the new cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) digital detector. When gamma rays coming from the radioactive tracer in the body hit the detector, they get directly converted into an electrical signal. The conversion in the legacy systems includes two steps – a special crystal that gathers the signal and a photomultiplier tube that translates it. “It’s the same as listening to someone through an extra door,” Hermony says. “What’s being said gets lost unless they raise their voice.”

Radiologists use different tracers to study different problems. The most common one, technetium 99m, helps them image the heart, for example, while indium 111 and iodine 123 are good for rare cancers and the thyroid, respectively. The CZT scanner allows doctors to mix “a unique tracer cocktail” of them, distinguish between their signals and run different tests all at once. “It allows you to do more detailed treatment planning and follow up,” Hermony says. “We can help doctors see what treatment is working. This helps pave the way to personalized medicine.”

History remembers the soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy; General George Patton, whose Third Army swept over France and Germany all the way to Czechoslovakia; and the GIs who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, America’s bloodiest World War II fight.

But let’s not forget Marie Kappa, a government ordnance inspector stationed at GE Erie Works who also contributed to Hitler’s fall. The picture of Kappa above, pale, serious and with impeccably polished nails, peering down the barrel of a Howitzer artillery piece in March 1943 is a reminder of the total immersion of the U.S. public in the war effort. Their images, preserved by GE’s publicity department, remain an indelible evocation of a completely mobilized society.

Bells will ring all over Europe this weekend to commemorate the end of the war in the European theater 71 years ago. Veterans will return to old battlefields, cities will reenact liberation and people will toast each other in the streets.

The event, popularly known as V-E Day, marked the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. The war in Japan, however, threatened to grind on. “Our victory is but half won,” cautioned President Harry S. Truman. Still, GE gave its workers the day off from making bazookas and turbines to drive aircraft carriers — presumably for a job well done.

Below are some of the images of wartime mobilization distributed by GE.

The turbines, electronics and weapons the home front produced served American and Allied soldiers fighting in Europe as well as in the Pacific and in Africa.

GE engineer converted a gas turbine used for generating electricity into a supercharger for aircraft engines. The technology launched GE into the aviation business. It was another example of the GE Store at work. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

In 1942, GE engineers built the jet engine for the first American fighter jet. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GE engineers also designed a heated flying suit for high-altitude sorties over Europe by drawing on previous experience from a successful but decisively non-military product: electric blankets. GIF credit: GE Reports/Flux Machine

5 Recommendations to Make Modern Energy Access Meaningful for People and Prosperity

Energy is fundamental to modern life, but 1.3 billion people around the world live without access to “modern electricity.” But what does that mean exactly? The current definition is a mere 100 kilowatt-hours kWh per person per year for urban areas — or enough to power a single lightbulb for five hours per day and keep a mobile phone charged — and half as much in rural areas. Such a low bar can have profound implications for national targets, for international goals such as Sustainable Development Goal 7, and on a wide range of critical investment decisions with long-term effects on development.

Human and Developmental Implications

The harm to people living with little energy is very real. Indoor air pollution from burning biomass contributes to 3.5 million premature deaths per year, killing more people worldwide than AIDS and malaria combined. Lack of power also does profound damage to education, the empowerment of women and girls and many other development outcomes (see figure 1).

At a macroeconomic level, energy shortages are a massive drag on economic growth and job creation. Typically, some 70 percent of a nation’s energy is consumed for commercial or industrial purposes, not in the home, and data suggest that power shortages are among the very top constraints to private-sector growth.

All rich countries use large amounts of energy (see figure 2).

Efforts Underway

Aggressive electrification was an essential strategy to fight poverty and promote development in countries that are now rich, and it is now the same for the still-developing regions. Power is among the top priorities for governments and citizens alike. The international community is also on board, with efforts such as the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All, the US government’s Power Africa, and many other similar initiatives. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7, for instance, is to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.”

The efforts underway, however, are not enough and pose at least two great risks:

1. They aim too low by measuring progress against a single, very low level of electricity consumption.
2. They focus too much on household usage at the expense of building a modern energy system that can compete in a global economy.

Five Recommendations for Tracking Energy Access

Given the shortcomings of the current approach to defining and measuring modern energy access, we put forward the following five recommendations for the UN, International Energy Agency, World Bank, national governments, major donors, and other relevant organizations.

1. Maintain the existing energy access threshold but rename it, more appropriately, the “extreme energy poverty” line. The current use of 100 kWh per capita per year remains valuable as an indicator for the initial rung on the energy ladder. But this level of energy consumption is consistent with only very basic lighting and phone charging. It is the notional equivalent of the extreme poverty line when measuring income, merely a bare minimum starting point rather than the finish line of development success.

2. Measure and track household consumption at higher levels for “basic energy access” and “modern energy access.” Energy consumption should be measured at thresholds that balance the competing needs of being simple and aligning with energy demand and historical development patterns. The following two measurements should be added:

• Basic energy access at 300 kWh per capita per year, which would enable running basic appliances such as fans, televisions, and refrigerators, which families demand once they have modest additional income.
• Modern energy access at 1,500 kWh per capita per year, a level of consumption consistent with the label “modern” that includes on-demand usage of multiple modern appliances, including air conditioning.  

3. Create energy-level categories to encourage ambitious national energy targets that go beyond household consumption. Modern competitive economies require high levels of energy, the vast majority of which is consumed outside households in the commercial and industrial sectors. We propose the following categories (see also figure 2):

• extreme low energy (national average of less than 300 kWh per capita per year)
• low energy (300–1,000)
• middle energy (1,0000–5,000)
• high energy (>5,000)

4. Adopt the new thresholds to inform progress-tracking and investment decisions. The new household definitions and country categories could be used by the UN, the African Union, bilateral donors, the World Bank and regional development banks, the US government (for use in Power Africa monitoring and evaluation), and most especially by national governments.

5. Invest in data collection on energy consumption, utilizing new technology to improve collection. Additional higher-quality data would allow a better understanding of energy use, help identify gaps, and enable better targeting of new investments.

Top Image: Getty Images.

This piece first appeared on the Center for Global Development’s site.

Todd Moss, Co-Chair of the Energy Access Targets Working Group, is Chief Operating Officer and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Mimi Alemayehou, Co-Chair of the Energy Access Targets Working Group, is a Managing Director at the Black Rhino Group.

All views expressed are those of the author.

This week we learned about a robot surgeon that successfully operated on a live pig for the first time, genetically engineered immune cells that sent into remission 93 percent of patients with advanced leukemia involved in a medical trial and fat-seeking nanoparticles loaded with medicine that can help doctors fight obesity. Take a look.

Robot Surgeon Successfully Sutures A Live Piglet For The First Time

Top illustration: A robot surgeon. Image credit: Getty Images Above: An illustration of a robotic surgery. Image credit: Shutterstock

Surgeons at the Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C., used a robot to stitch up a piglet and complete what might be the first robotic surgery. Besides having robotic arms that can suture cuts, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) can see in 3D, sense force and find a location with “submillimeter” precision. “Inspired by the best human surgical practices, a computer program generates a plan to complete complex surgical tasks on deformable soft tissue, such as suturing and intestinal anastomosis,” the team wrote in a paper published in the journal Science. The team reported that “no complications were observed in the postsurgery follow-up of 7 days.” They wrote: “The operating room may someday be run by robots, with surgeons overseeing their moves.”

Clinical Trial With Genetically Engineered Immune Cells Sends 93 Percent Of Patients With Advanced Leukemia Into Remission

Scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, using genetically modified cells to cure patients suffering from an advanced type of leukemia, achieved a stunning success when 93 percent of them went into remission after treatment. For this type of immunotherapy, doctors first remove each patient’s disease-fighting T cells, then reengineer them so they recognize the cancer, multiply them in a bioreactor and pump them back into the patient’s body. The team reported that 27 of the 29 patients in trial with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which had proved resistant to multiple other forms of therapy, went into remission after treatment. “A few weeks after the infusion, a high-sensitivity test could detect no trace of their cancer in their bone marrow,” the team reported. “This is just the beginning,” said study leader Dr. Cameron Turtle. “It sounds fantastic to say that we get over 90 percent remissions, but there’s so much more work to do [to] make sure they’re durable remissions, to work out who’s going to benefit the most, and extend this work to other diseases.”

Fat-Guided Nanomissiles Make Obese Mice Lose Weight

Nanoparticles can attack individual cells. Image credit: Getty Images

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have engineered tiny missiles that can deliver anti-obesity drugs to fat tissue. The team injected the medicine-laden nanoparticles into overweight mice. The particles then targeted fat-storing cells and converted them into a fat-burning variety. The scientists reported that the mice lost 10 percent of their body weight over 25 days, without showing any negative side effects. “This is a proof-of-concept approach for selectively targeting the white adipose tissue and ‘browning it’ to allow the body to burn fat,” said Omid Farokhzad, director of the Laboratory of Nanomedicine and Biomaterials at Brigham and a senior author of the study. “The technology could then be used with other drug molecules that may be developed or other targets that may come up.” The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This Floating Solar Plant Can Survive On Rough Seas

Meet the Heliofloat. Image credit: Technical Univesity Vienna

Engineers at the Technical University in Vienna, Austria, have proposed building a football-field-long floating platform that doubles as a solar power plant. The team says the lightweight design, called Heliofloat, uses barrels made from a soft, flexible material that floats on water. The team says it can be used to “build platforms spanning one hundred meters long which remain steady and firmly in place — even in rough sea weather.”

HIV Virus Attacked By CRISPR Lives Another Day

This illustration shows how HIV viruses attack a cell. Image credit: Getty Images

The gene-editing tool CRISPR pulled off impressive feats recently and showed its disease-fighting promise. But it’s not invincible. According to a story in the journal Nature, an HIV virus attacked with CRISPR to make it harmless was able to recover and possibly emerge stronger. “The very act of editing — involving snipping at the virus’s genome — may introduce mutations that help it to resist attack,” the journal reported.

Engineer Mark Leary has been helping GE Aviation build jet engines for three decades. The work is in his blood — literally. More that 60 years ago, Mark’s mother, Patricia, helped the company design the supersonic engine that allowed Lockheed to build the F-104 Starfighter jet, known as “the missile with a man in it” and capable of sustained flight at twice the speed of sound, or Mach 2.

Patricia, now 87, worked next to aviation legend Gerhard Neumann on the engine for the Starfighter. She joined GE as an engineering assistant in 1949. At the time, there were just 4,000 female engineers in the entire country, including a handful at the GE Aviation plant in Lynn, Massachusetts, where GE built the first American jet engine. “They were looking for people to hire for the Lynn plant,” Patricia said. “I had a fresh degree in mathematics from Boston’s Emmanuel College so I gave it a shot.”

She started out in a “calculating pool,” crunching engine test data with a slide rule and a couple of “really fancy” calculators. “I liked the idea that math was being used to produce something,” Patricia said.

Top image: Leary’s colleagues included aviation engineers (from left to right) Loren Ingraham, Eleanor Semple, Betty Lou Bailey, and Janet Neely. Above: Many of them started out as “computers” in a “calculating pool,” crunching engine test data with a slide rule. Image credit: Museum Innovation and Science Schenectady

Her boss in Lynn was Neumann, a jet propulsion legend and innovator, and she quickly learned that she needed to expand her skills to work on cutting-edge projects like supersonic jet engines. She borrowed books and took GE classes in aerodynamics and gas turbine theory. She also kept math close and enrolled for an advanced degree at Boston University. “This was well before the string theory,” she laughed. “Complex variables and the Kutta-Joukowski theorem were about as high as we ever got.” The theorem just happens to be the cornerstone of aerodynamics.

Gerard Neumann (left) and GE Aviation executive Neil Burgess with the J79 engine. Image credit: GE Aviation

The new skills quickly came in handy. Neumann had just started working on GE’s first supersonic jet engine, the J79, which went on to power the Starfighter as well as many other planes. The key part of the engine that permitted Mach 2 speeds was a compressor that controlled the amount of air coming inside the engine. The technology they developed is called the variable vane. It’s still being used inside GE’s latest jet engines, like the GE9X, the world’s largest, as well as massive power generation equipment like the Harriet, the world’s most powerful gas turbine. GE calls this transfer of knowledge and technology between its businesses the GE Store.

In 1949, GE moved Neumann and his team to Evendale, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. The Ohio plant quickly grew from 1,200 to 12,000 employees. When Patricia first arrived, in the summer of 1952, everything was still in flux. “They ran a bus directly from the downtown hotels to the plant,” she said. “So many people were transferring.”

Art and Pat Leary met on a GE bus in Cincinnati. Image credit: Mark Leary

One of the young engineers on the bus was her future husband, Art, a fellow young Bostonian who worked for GE in logistics. They married, and in 1955 Patricia left her job. “We were a nuclear family, just my husband, myself and the baby, with no relatives nearby,” Patricia said. Not for long, though. Patricia soon became a mother of six.

The J79 engine and the planes it powered – Convair B-58 aloft and F-104 Starfighter on the tarmac – graced the cover of GE comics explaining how jet engines work. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Art spent 37 years with GE Aviation, and Mark’s older brother also worked for the company. Patricia still keeps tabs on jet engines. “I look at the pictures of the engines today and they don’t look anything like the engines then,” she confessed.

“Yeah, but I’m sure some of yours are still flying across the country,” Mark replied. He’s right. The J79 went on to serve on a number on fighter planes like the F-4 Phantom. GE estimates that more than 1,300 of the J79 engines are still in service, and many are projected to continue to fly through 2020.

Mark Leary next to the J79 engine his mom helped design. Image credit: Mark Leary

When Edith Clarke was born, the odds that she would one day join a group of celebrated inventors including Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, the Wright Brothers and Alexander Graham Bell seemed microscopic. She lived in a pre-computer era when the few women with science education worked mostly as “human computers,” helping their male colleagues solve labor-intensive equations. But Clarke, who was the first woman to receive a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), rebelled against that reality. “I had always wanted to be an engineer, but felt that women were not supposed to be doing things like studying engineering,” she told The Dallas Morning News.

But she did it anyway and last year, Clarke got the last of her many satisfactions. She was elected into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF), a rarefied group of some 500 engineers and scientists whose technological achievements have changed the U.S. and beyond. “In effect, she wrote what now would be called software for machines that set the stage for electronic digital computers,” says James E. Brittain in an early profile of Clarke, who alternated between roles at GE and in academia throughout her career.

Clarke, who was born in 1883, grew up on a farm near Ellicott City, outside Baltimore, Maryland. There were eight other kids in the busy household. As a small girl, Edith “suffered from what probably now would be diagnosed as a ‘learning disability’ in reading and spelling,” Brittain writes, “but she exhibited a good aptitude for mathematics and card games, especially duplicate whist.”

Downtown Ellicott City. Image credit: Shutterstock

Hers was a tragic childhood. Edith’s father died when she was 7 and her mother when she turned 12. Edith’s uncle, who served as her legal guardian, sent her to a boarding school in Maryland. But when she turned 18, she received a little money from her parents’ estate and used it to pay for tuition at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

At Vassar, she studied math and astronomy, and after graduation joined AT&T as a “computer.” She became part of the company’s effort to build the first transcontinental telephone line from New York to California, but was still drawn to engineering. So in 1918, she enrolled as a graduate student in electrical engineering at MIT.

After graduation in 1919, she found a job at GE in Schenectady. America was rapidly electrifying and Clarke filed her first patent for a “graphical calculator” to improve methods for solving complicated power transmission problems over distances as long as 250 miles. “She was the one of the engineers who really understood and expanded Charles Steinmetz’s equations of alternating current theory,” says Chris Hunter, a GE historian and curator at the Schenectady Museum of Innovation and Science.

Clarke filed her first patent for a “graphical calculator” to improve methods for solving complicated power transmission problems over distances as long as 250 miles. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

But even a graduate degree from MIT wasn’t enough to free her from the ranks of women computers “calculating mechanical stresses in high-speed turbine rotors,” Brittain writes. So she left her job in 1921 and traveled to Egypt and Istanbul, where she became a professor of physics at the Istanbul Women’s College.

Clarke traveled to Istanbul to teach local girls the “rudiments of physics.” Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Clarke eventually rejoined GE in 1923, this time as full engineer. The job made her the first woman professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the U.S., according her biography published by NIHF. She also joined the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, where she became the first woman to present a paper and, later, the first woman with full voting rights. The paper, called “Steady-state stability in transmission systems-calculation by means of equivalent circuits or circle diagrams,” apparently held her audience rapt.

GE’s Charles Steinmetz, wearing a light suit in the center, with Albert Einstein, on his right in a trench coat, during Einstein’s visit to the U.S. Clarke was the one of the engineers who really understood and expanded Charles Steinmetz’s equations of alternating current theory. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Clarke spent the next 25 years at GE, writing papers dealing with power transmission, a crucial topic as electricity became the lifeblood of the industrial world. She was the first person to publish a mathematical examination of power lines longer than 300 miles. She also figured out how to use an analyzer to obtain data about power networks, arguably the first step leading to the smart grid.

“She translated what many engineers found to be esoteric mathematical methods into graphs or simpler forms during a time when power systems were becoming more complex and when the initial efforts were being made to develop electromechanical aids [like computers] to [help with] problem solving,” Brittain writes.

Clarke retired from GE in 1945 and spent the last decade of her life teaching electrical engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. She died in November 1959, in Baltimore.

Clarke is one of 22 engineers and scientists inducted in NIHF who were employed by GE during their career. They are all men, except her and physicist Katherine Blodgett. The list includes Edison; Tesla; Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir; Charles Brush, who built the first wind turbine; William Coolidge, who revolutionized the X-ray machine; and Robert Hall and Nick Holonyak, who pioneered LED technology and came close to a Nobel a few years ago.

Clarke’s obituary from 1959.

Although Prius hybrids and Tesla sedans are thick on the ground in many well-off neighborhoods, alternative fuel vehicles still account for just about 5 percent of all cars in the U.S. Their wider adoption is often a matter of price. Hybrids, for example, cost almost a fifth more than conventional cars. Drivers might make a lot of that cost up in gas savings, but when oil prices are cheap – like they are now – the math gets more complicated.

But GE Global Research partnered with Amphenol Advanced Sensors, Ford Motor Company and the University of Michigan to build more efficient batteries and take some of the cost out. The Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is sponsoring the project.

Battery packs used in automobiles are actually made up of bundles of smaller batteries called cells. Batteries inside hybrid cars typically hold 76 cells, which use lithium-ion technology to store electricity. The goal of the partnership is to shrink the battery size to 60 cells and shave production expenses by 15 percent, all while maintaining long-term reliability and life.

Getting the same amount of energy out of a smaller battery could lead to more efficient hybrids, and also hybrid trucks and SUVs. There are some secondary benefits, too. Removing cells lowers weight, which helps overall fuel economy. Smaller packs also mean you can put it in different places, giving carmakers new design options.

“Researchers are constantly looking to new materials and chemistries to improve performance,” says Aaron Knobloch, a senior scientist at GE Global Research and the principal investigator on the project. “But we wanted to find ways, with controls and sensors, to improve performance using the cell chemistry we have today.”

The team is using a physics-based modeling approach called the digital twin to achieve its goal. It essentially creates a digital model of the operations of an asset — GE is building digital twins for wind turbines and jet engines, and also in the healthcare sector— and continually updates the performance model with feedback from actual operation conditions.

The digital twin essentially creates a digital model of the operations of an asset, say, a power plant and continually updates the performance model with feedback from real life operations. Image credit: GE Power

Lithium-ion batteries have been around since the ’70s, but scientists are still learning about of the chemical reactions and cell physics that take place when a battery charges and discharges.

Car batteries always include very basic sensors that measure things like temperature, current and voltage. But GE has developed new measurements that, along with new physics-based models from the University of Michigan, allow the digital twin to track the complex electrochemical changes and mechanical and thermal behavior of the cell.

The digital twin has already helped the group get a more in-depth look into what is happening to the battery during different driving conditions. For example, batteries actually swell and contract depending on how much charge they’re holding. Dr. Knobloch’s team has been able to find a correlation between the amount of expansion and the state of charge. This helps them get a better understanding of the amount of power available at any given time.

“By knowing the state of charge more accurately, we know how much juice is in the battery,” Dr. Knobloch says. “That’s valuable because you can then operate the battery more aggressively. It also allows us to reduce the size of the battery because you’re using more of the total battery capacity.”

The “ears” researchers used to listen to the battery. Pictured is one of the thin film sensors developed by GE scientists that were used to collect insights about the battery’s function and operation that formed the Digital Twin profile.

The team has been at this for three years and expects to have final results later this year. They have been testing their digital insights using an actual battery pack from a 2014 Ford Fusion Hybrid located at Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan. This pack is fitted with GE sensors and runs University of Michigan models and control algorithms. The team compares the results from this pack with a regular Ford pack to quantify the benefits of the sensors, models and algorithms.

The packs are inside what is basically a huge oven, where the temperature can be controlled to approximate the seasons, such as going down to minus 5 degrees Celsius in the “winter.” The batteries are hooked to a battery cycler, which simulates different power demands and driving conditions, like city versus highway driving. “We have been able to show with our models and sensors the ability to drive the batteries harder in these conditions,” Dr. Knobloch says. “Cells heat as you operate them and getting them warmer sooner improves the performance of the battery pack and consequently the car for the driver.”

The research is specifically focused on lithium-ion batteries for hybrid vehicles, but Dr. Knobloch believes the monitoring technology is cell agnostic and could be used with other cell chemistries. 

“What’s interesting about this project is we’re using new data to inform our models,” Dr. Knobloch says. “That’s really where the digital twin technology is going to go in the future — to tell us what are the key measurements we need and how we can make our models better by asking the right questions and having the right information.”

(Top image: A view of the car battery under its hood. As part of the ARPA-E program, GE scientists attached thin film sensors to different parts of the battery to create a digital profile or “Twin” of the battery itself. The insights gained from the “Twin” have enabled them to reduce the size of the battery by 16 cells and shave the cost by 15 percent.)

The glue that will cement Africa’s rising prosperity is good leadership, which demands robust education institutions. A new model is needed to develop efficient higher education policies and systems.

Good leaders do not fall from the sky. The experience of successful nations, the world over, emphatically points to the centrality of strong education institutions, and particularly robust higher education systems in deliberately training the leaders who take societies to great heights. In the best of these institutions, leaders are not only imparted with the hard skills of leadership, but also socialized on value systems that make them the creators and custodians of social ideals.

The Africa Rising narrative presents the most compelling argument for the continent’s prosperity. Investments in traditional sectors are necessary to realize its promise, as is the imperative to build robust enterprises and institutions. But the glue that cements all this together is good leadership. Therefore, there is an indisputable imperative to build a new generation of dynamic leaders with the skills to be effective and with the values to ensure the socio-economic transformation of the continent.

By 2030, a bulk of the world’s workforce will live in Africa. Already, experts project that at current rates, Africa’s population will snowball to 2.5 billion by 2050, which should translate to a demographic dividend which will feed the continent’s growth. Yet it is clear that without certain investments in policy and education, this dividend along with the benefits of hosting the world’s workforce will remain elusive.

A threat to the vision

Running against the Africa Rising narrative is the continent’s soft under-belly: a frayed higher education system that is buffeted by a combination of resource constraints, limited university places, declining quality, and a growing rift between academic education and the hard skills that the labour market demands.

Africa’s imperative to invest in education raises several questions. How can we ensure that the education Africa’s burgeoning and young population receives prepares them to tackle the challenges of tomorrow’s economy? Indeed, given the continent’s resource constraints, can Africa’s higher education system provide quality education at scale? If not, as the evidence suggests, can Africa quickly build internationally recognized capabilities for excellence within education?

Simply put, the current state of higher education across the continent is a real threat to the dream of an African Century. Access to university education is limited for many. For perspective, Africa’s tertiary enrollment rate today stands at an average of 7%. The American tertiary enrollment rate is just over 72%, while China’s sits at about 30%. This means even if Africa builds 200 new Harvard-sized universities each year for the next 15 years, it still will not close its prevailing skills gaps with India, and will have barely impacted the lot of its young population. Which is poignant if you consider that 70% of the global labour force in 2050 will be African. At the same time, the workload for teaching staff is unsustainable, with lecturers having to teach classes of up to 500 students. It is a system at breaking point.

Searching for a new model

Ironically, the weaknesses of current tertiary education systems across Africa provides a framework for a solution. Any Minister of Education in Africa will tell you that, already, their government is dedicating, on average, at least 30% of the national budget to education. Even if we wanted to, we cannot marshal the kind of resources to build new institutions from scratch, or expand the capacity of current institutions enough to meet present, and future, demand.

A new model is needed.

Developing tomorrow’s African leaders

As I see it, the solution lies in innovation: to develop resource-efficient higher education models, with the ability to produce graduates at scale, at a faster rate than we are doing today, while maintaining world class standards.

At the African Leadership University (ALU), we have designed a university system that is built not around a scarce African resource (professors with PhDs), but around a resource we have in abundance—brilliant young students. By allowing our students to teach themselves (with the help of cutting-edge technology) and then to teach each other as peers, we have removed the constraint to scale and cut costs dramatically. We have also taken an explicit approach to developing the skills that employers need in the 21st century— collaboration, communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership and entrepreneurship—to prepare our graduates for the workforce of tomorrow.

Our students spend at least a year, within their degree, in work placement to supplement their theoretical education. Class assignments are framed as projects delivered for real managers in organizations as they would in the real world. Our curriculum and learning model was designed with input from employers across the continent. The idea is to break down the barriers between the lecture hall and the world outside.

To achieve scale, we’re looking to replicate this model across several sites on the continent. We are already fully operational in Mauritius at our flagship campus, the African Leadership College. We have recently received the green light from the Rwandan Higher Education Council (HEC) to set up ALU in Rwanda along with the ALU School of Business, which will offer the first pan-African MBA programme and executive education for senior African business leaders. We have an audacious ambition: to train 3 million African leaders by the year 2066, via a network of 25 campuses across Africa, each with at least 10,000 students actively enrolled.

This is but one example. We cannot claim to be the “silver bullet” that will solve all of Africa’s education and leadership challenges. Many more innovations like this need to emerge. If the long-term catalyst for the African Century is institutions that are distinctively African, then we must start with the institutions that educate the generations to come, designed to solve the problems of today but constructed to stand the test of time.

Top Image: Courtesy of the African Leadership Academy.

This piece first appeared on the blog of the World Economic Forum.

Fred Swaniker is the Founder of the African Leadership Group.

All views expressed are those of the author.

Back in Thomas Edison’s day, Americans could pick out a Sears Modern Home from a mail-order catalog and have it shipped to their new address for assembly. “Not only did precut and fitted materials shrink construction time up to 40 percent, but Sears’s use of ‘balloon style’ framing, drywall, and asphalt shingles greatly eased construction for homebuyers,” the company boasted. Now GE Healthcare has taken a page from the same book and delivers an entire high-tech pharmaceuticals factory — walls and all.

In this age of personalized medicine, biologics are key to treating diabetes, cancer and other diseases. They’re changing the face of medicine and bringing the promise of longer, healthier lives. But many of those treatments are still only made and available in wealthy countries.

Enter KUBio, GE’s prefabricated biologics factory design, made up of 62 portable modules. GE will open the first one in May in Wuhan, China. “By bringing manufacturing capabilities directly to local areas, those drugs are now accessible to a broader part of the population, making them more affordable,” says Lisa Stack, GE Healthcare’s head of Enterprise Solutions Project Management.

“This concept of a factory in a box has been floating around GE for quite a while,” she says. “It’s a facility where everything has been thought out in advance, predesigned, and all GE’s expertise is built into a template. Things can then be adjusted, but you start with this well-proven design that is recognized and desirable and can be shipped directly to the end user.”

Top image: KUbio, made of 62 modules, KUBio can be built and dispatched anywhere in the world in just 18 months. Above: The new biologics plant in Wuhan, China. Images credit: GE Healthcare

Biologics, or biopharmaceuticals, are a class of medicines made from strings of complex proteins. Of the top 10 therapeutics on the market today, seven are biopharmaceuticals, according to Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

These drugs are about to become even more commonplace — more than 5,000 biologic drug candidate products are in research and development.[1] The global market for these medicines is more than $170 billion and is growing 15 to 18 percent annually.[2] Biologics include synthetic insulin as well as medicines that battle rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and other diseases.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in China, which has low access to biologics. Last year, about 4.3 million new cancer cases were reported in China, according to the American Cancer Society. JHL Chief Executive Racho Jordanov says the biologics his company can now make in the GE KUBio factory in China would otherwise be unavailable.

“It was important to us to establish our scale-up manufacturing capacity in Asia with a facility capable of producing biologics to a world-class standard, because we believe that the need for the innovative medicines that we are developing is the greatest in Asia,” he says.

The equipment inside the new plant. Image credit: GE Healthcare

The 2,400-square-meter plant — nearly half the size of a football field — makes biologics inside 2,000-liter single-use bioreactors. Making drugs in single-use disposable plastic bags in reusable containers eliminates costly cleaning and sterilization and makes the plant more efficient.

Stack says the factory can also quickly switch between drugs, allowing the operator to meet an unexpected need for a biopharma drug, like in the case of disease outbreaks.

Most biotech factories are still “stick-built and based on stainless-steel equipment,” Stack says. Pharmaceutical companies design and construct the building first, and then spend another year getting it up and running. But KUBio modules arrive 80 to 90 percent pre-equipped; units include heating, ventilation and air handling systems, the clean room, most of the utility equipment, and all of the piping needed to run the plant.

Stack says that GE is now building another KUBio and is discussing project opportunities in such countries as Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, among other places. Stack says her team is also working on nine projects in such countries as Russia, Taiwan and the U.S.

“We are finding that this approach is desirable both in the developing world and the developed world,” she says. “The level of popularity is something we did not expect.”

[1] Source: BIOPLAN ASSOCIATES, INC, Report and Survey of Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Capacity and Production, Apr 2012)

[2] Source: BIOPLAN ASSOCIATES, INC, Report and Survey of Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Capacity and Production, Apr 2012)

Female role models in traditionally male-dominated technical fields like computer science can help others overcome feelings of loneliness, intimidation and unworthiness. Without this support, these industries will continue to suffer from a lack of diverse opinion and qualified employees.

Over recent years, women have made significant inroads into a number of science and technology fields that used to be dominated by men. There are now roughly the same number or more females working in the medical, life and social sciences than males, according to the National Science Foundation.

The same parity, sadly, has not yet been achieved in computer science, engineering and math jobs. In just one data point, women comprise only around eight percent of mechanical, electrical and electronics engineers in the U.S. The problem isn’t just one of equity, though. Many technical fields aren’t getting the number of qualified graduates they need to fill jobs. The situation is especially dire in computing, where new bachelor’s degree graduates can fill only 30 percent of open positions. Yet the share of computer science bachelor’s degrees earned by women has actually fallen in the last decade.

One of the contributors to the problem is that women in these fields have few role models and mentors to help keep them involved and guide them. Beena Ammanath, the Executive Director for Data and Analytics at GE, knows this problem well. While working across GE to unleash the power of big data, she has also been strongly advocating for women in positions of technology leadership.

To what do you attribute the lack of women in technology roles today?

Around the mid-1980s, the number of women majoring in computer science began to drop, from 40 percent to less than 17 percent today. When looking at what precipitated this change, one explanation is that the number of women in computer science started to fall around the time personal computers began to appear in U.S. households. Early home computers were not much more than toys – and these computers were increasinglymarketed to boys. Today, women hold less than 27 percent of all computer science jobs— and only seven percent of venture capital funding goes to women-owned businesses. Fifty-six percent of women in technology leave their employers midcareer. This is double the turnover rate of men.

How does being a woman affect your daily work life?

I work to nudge the gender diversity stats higher each day. When I speak to my male colleagues, I speak on behalf of my entire gender. Over time, I’ve overcome the intimidation and fear often related to having my voice heard. I know I bring a unique perspective and am fortunate my teams have recognized and appreciated my value. With this support, I’m pushed to be a stronger professional, leader and woman to in-turn support those who lack that validation.

What have some highlights been for you while working at GE Digital?

I get to act as a role model. I have the power to set an example for middle school girls, high school girls and women who are just starting out in their technical careers, simply by excelling at my own job. Leading a Big Data and analytics team and pushing the limits of Big Data to derive meaningful insights from machines, my job is to consider the machines we all heavily rely on – aircraft engines, locomotives, MRI scanners or wind turbines – and determine how they perform more efficiently and more cost effectively. Ultimately, I believe this work helps make the world better.
What challenges have you faced professionally?

I’ve walked into technology leadership meetings and immediately stood out as the only woman in the room. At times it can be a bit lonely and intimidating—but it’s often the feeling of being undeserving of my seat at the table that is the most overwhelming. This feeling, however, is where I find my strength to work extra hard to be heard on behalf of the other “female techies” who may be too overcome by feelings of inadequacy that society imparts on us. It’s crucial, as we try to close the gender gap, to assert how valuable a diverse range of perspectives is in driving the sought-after disruption in this crowded industry.

What advice would you offer young women considering a technology career?

I believe this is one of the best, most rewarding times to be a woman in technology. As little as a decade ago, women were told to be tough and thick-skinned to succeed in the male-dominated tech world because the dated structure of the industry and long-standing biases would ultimately prevent true success. The good news? Women in tech today are thriving and being celebrated. Stakeholders and investors are noticing that it pays to have a woman in charge.

What do you see for the future of women in tech?

A recent Harvard Business Review study evaluating men and women in the workplace found:

“At every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows.”

I know it will take time to even out the gender ratio. I recognize the problem is not a result of intentional exclusion or malice, but rather stems from deeply rooted social preconceptions. Now is the time to move beyond the implicit inferiority complex, to avoid assumptions or assigning traits to only one group, to encourage more girls to join technology fields – ultimately including both genders in building more diverse teams.

Top Image: Andrea Schmitz is a Senior Sensor Electronics Engineer at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY.  Photo by @linaxli.

Beena Ammanath is the Executive Director for Data and Analytics at GE.

All views expressed are those of the author.

When Katherine Blodgett became the first woman scientist working in GE’s labs in 1918, she already held the distinction of being the first female to earn a PhD in physics from Cambridge University in England. In 1923 GE hired Edith Clarke, the first woman with a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also the first female electrical engineer in the entire United States. Despite the progress, when Betty Lou Bailey helped design the company’s first supersonic jet engine and America’s first weather satellites in the 1950s and 1960, only “one percent of the engineers employed by General Electrics were women,” she told a newspaper.

Things have changed since. Blodgett, Clarke and other pioneers have inspired a generation of engineers, scientists, researchers and medical specialists. What unites these engineers, past and present, is their curiosity and passion for learning new things, figuring out how things work and working hard to make a difference. “I can’t remember ever not knowing that I’d go into a career where I could do the same thing,” says GE scientist Kristen Brosnan. “Otherwise, it would be just a job.” To celebrate Mothers’ Day, we reached out to some of them and asked them about their work.

Lara Crouch is an occupational health nurse at GE’s locomotive plant in Fort Worth, Texas. Photo by @laurenmarek and @carrasykes.

Who inspires you? “My mother. She’s always taught me two things: if you love what you do, you will be a success, and if you set your mind to it, you can do anything.”

How did you choose your career? “I was hospitalized for an infection when I was 12, the care of my doctors and nurses inspired me to pursue a career in the medical field. I started as a combat medic in the U.S. Army and later got my Bachelor of Science in Nursing.”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in science? “Search for books that interest you. My personal favorite was Laurie Garrett’s “The Coming Plague.” Find out what company is doing the most exciting things and try and work there. Surround yourself  with like-minded, motivated people.”

Kara Hall works at the same locomotive factory as Crouch as production control leader. Photo by @laurenmarek and @carrasykes.

Where do you go for inspiration? “I remember when I was younger, my mother was never afraid of tools. If she wanted something done, she’d just do it herself. That taught me to enjoy working with my hands too, whether that’s putting parts together on [locomotive] production floor, or doing my own home improvements.”

What keeps you going? “My little girl. I want to be able to give her every opportunity she wants.”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in pursuing scientific careers? “Don’t be afraid to ask questions. When you are open to asking lots of questions, I feel that’s when you are most open to learning and growing.”

Katharine Dovidenko builds fuel cells at GE. Photo by @linaxli

Why did you choose a career in science and engineering? “I’ve been fascinated with science and technology since I was five. My dad led a radio amateurs club for teens and he used to bring me along, well before I was a teenager myself. I got to play with radio stations and ‘help out’ in a small machine-shop they had. I couldn’t get enough.”

What keeps you going? “The people I work with; their talent and passion for finding solutions and their collaborative nature on the most technical challenges.”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in science? “Go for it! Try things at school, summer programs or labs.”

Kristen Brosnan has a PhD and manages a ceramics laboratory at GE Global Research. Photo by @linaxli.

What sparked your curiosity for science and engineering? “My siblings and I spent a lot of time playing outside, creating our own adventures with what we had around us. We built worlds out of dirt, trees, bugs, sticks – you name it. The outdoors was the place where I learned to explore and bring my imagination to life. I can’t remember ever not knowing that I’d go into a career where I could do the same thing.”

What keeps you going? “I’m inspired by the people around me and the technology we work on. No day is ever the same!”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in a career in science? “Choose a career path you are passionate about. I love what I do and I am lucky to have a career in a field that I love. Otherwise, it would be just a job.”

Nayeli Romero works at GE’s locomotive factory in Fort Worth, Texas. She’s been working at GE for 17 years. Photo by @laurenmarek and @carrasykes.

Who inspires you? “My mom. As a physician, she was very into science and technology. Early in high school, I got interested in biomedical engineering because of my mom’s background. She inspired me to pursue a career in STEM.”

Do you have a favorite scientist, inventor or engineer? “I really admire Katharine Burr Blodgett. She was the first woman hired by GE to work as a scientist, and during WW II she contributed with important developments on military applications like gas masks, smoke screens, and a new technique for de-icing airplane wings. Her most influential invention: non-reflective glass.”

What advice would you give to young girls who are interested in pursuing a career in STEM? “Pursue your dreams with hard work and creativity. These are great foundations for a career where you can make a difference.”

Sonya Jolivette is an operations manager at the CMC Lean Labs in Evendale, Ohio, when GE develops a supermaterial for jet engines called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs). She’s been working at GE for 11 years. Photo by @katerentz.

Who inspires you? “Growing up, there was a librarian who gave me books to read and advice on how to find my own path. She opened up the doors so I could find out more about science and technology.”

What sparked your curiosity for science and engineering? “As a young child, I was given the opportunity to have some small tools. I loved taking things apart, and I loved exploring how things worked. I’d also take things that had one purpose and make something totally different– I had a tape deck and I made it into a pottery wheel.”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in pursuing a career in the sciences? “I have my own daughter build and install things… It’s just a matter of knowing you can do what you want to do. There’s nothing that dictates your future other than yourself.“

Stephanie Conrad is the shop operations manager at GE’s Additive Technology Center in West Chester, OH. Photo by @katerentz.

What made you interested in science and engineering? “I was always curious about how things worked and why things happened. I worked with my Dad a lot around the house, and I remember wanting to understand the science behind building things, and what had to go where and why.”

Why did you choose a career in the sciences? “To me, one of the coolest things is combining art and science – being able to make something out of nothing. I always had a knack for science and math, so there was no question in mind that I wasn’t going to be an engineer.”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in pursuing scientific careers? “Don’t be afraid to learn, to try and fail, and try again. That’s a lot of what we do here – learning from failure.”

Laura Dial is a metallurgist with a PhD at GE Global Research. She analyzes different types of metals to determine which will best fit GE manufacturing projects. Photo by @linaxli.

What made you interested science and engineering? “I knew fairly early in high school that I would likely follow a STEM career since I really enjoyed my math and science classes.  But it wasn’t until late in college and even graduate school that I really knew exactly what kind of career I should choose!  I actually selected my undergraduate institution partially based on the wide variety of STEM-type majors it offered.”

Why science? “I had several female professors and mentors throughout college who always encouraged me. They helped me gain the confidence to pursue a PhD in materials science and engineering. Without them, I’m not sure I would have made that decision. I love my work because it keeps me inspired. I get to work on solving real-world problems. When you work in a research and development environment, you don’t always have a ‘breakthrough’ every day, but when you do, it keeps you energized for months.”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in pursuing a career similar t yours? “I think that experiencing some level of doubt is natural when thinking about your future career.  However, it certainly should not be for any reason related to being a female in a STEM field!  Nothing is stopping you!  Go for it!”

Tiffany Westendorf is a senior chemical engineer at GE Global Research. She makes sure chemicals meet the highest safety, quality, and engineering standards. Photo by @linaxli.

Who inspires you? “My mom went back to school when I was in middle school to renew her teaching certification for math. She showed by example that it is always worth investing in yourself in the form of education.”

Why did you choose a scientific career? “When I took applied physics in high school, I had to make a Rube Goldberg machine to show that I mastered Newtonian mechanics.  My partner on that project and I had so much fun creating this utterly ridiculous device. It felt really satisfying to run a calculation that gave us clues how to design the machine, then almost immediately test and adjust our design accordingly.”

What advice would you give to young girls interested in following your example? “I’m continually inspired by Hedy Lamarr’s story. She was a movie star in the 1940s, but she was bored with how few roles there were for women. So she turned her attention to invention. She patented military radio guidance technology that ultimately informed Bluetooth, wifi and mobile phones. Hedy’s story is part of what I’d tell any woman who wants to go into STEM: follow your curiosities and be open to new opportunities to learn and grow.”

Andrea Schmitz is a senior sensor electronics engineer at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY. She develops sensor technology that detects information to make machines safer and more effective.  Photo by @linaxli.

What advice would you give to girls interested in going into science? “Follow blogs that talk about women scientists and engineers. Don’t be afraid to speak up, ask questions or answer them. Get to know your math and science teachers. I‘m lucky to have had several great teachers. They were strong women who encouraged me to experience as much as I could, without putting up any gender barriers or pretenses. We need passionate scientists and engineers who want to make a difference. I love that my work will help change people’s lives, even if they won’t know it directly.”

Desktop 3D printing is empowering a world of innovators by enabling those without formal design or engineering skills to find solutions to their own problems.

At the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., surgeons and scientists are exploring whether they can replace patients’ damaged or diseased windpipes with customized ones grown in the lab.

It’s a lofty goal made possible only in recent years with advances in biomedical engineering. But the team ran into a major obstacle in trying to make it a useful therapy. Though researchers already know how to grow cartilage, the problem has been shaping it into the right form. So they turned to another field that has exploded with possibility in recent years—3D printing.

They first looked at machines called bioprinters, which are specifically designed for this kind of work, but their cost — as much as $180,000 per unit — can be prohibitive. Instead, Todd Goldstein, a researcher at the Feinstein Institute, modified the dual extruders on a much more economically priced MakerBot Replicator 2X 3D printer. Their work got the machine to print both a scaffold of standard plastic filament and seed cartilage cells on top of it. The precisely shaped piece of cartilage that came out of the printer could be designed to fit into any patient.

By iterating on this design with input from surgeons, the institute has come up with a proof of concept that could become a viable treatment in years to come.

For all the recognized value of 3D printing in design, engineering and education, there’s one story that’s just not discussed enough. 3D printing is democratizing innovation by empowering those without formal technical training to find solutions to their own problems.

Whether in a school, business, startup or research lab, you may have experienced a problem like the institute’s researchers encountered: the best, most proven resources aren’t always affordable or available. Hinging success on whether or not you have the best can discourage you from looking for resources that are newer, more innovative, and more effective, albeit less established. Operating in this way can also discourage you from creating solutions that improve upon what’s conventionally been the best.

3D printers are empowering a world of accidental innovators to solve their own problems. These are people who do not have formal engineering skills but are able to turn their ideas into physical objects because desktop 3D printing has become more accessible than ever before — from easy-to-use 3D design software to printers that are more reliable and produce higher-quality parts. They may not have started out thinking of themselves as innovators, but their curiosity, persistence, and ingenuity have turned them into just that.

In this context, desktop 3D printers can be more effective and efficient than established resources. They can also allow you to create your own solutions.

The list of innovative solutions uncovered by 3D printers grows every day. At Pfizer, as part of their preclinical testing for rheumatoid and osteoarthritis drugs, scientists 3D printed a tube for holding tiny bone samples in the exact same position for many, many micro CT scans. With it, they can obtain highly detailed images to learn the effects of a particular drug. This solution saved the company time and thousands of dollars that would be needed to have another firm design a one-off piece.

Desktop 3D printing is also lowering the barrier to entry for young inventors. Matt Sauer, a 17-year-old Missouri high school student, wanted to help his father, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and had lost the ability to open his own pill bottles. So Matt designed a bottle opener and printed it out. His invention was so successful that Sauer has been approached by companies wanting to commercialize his design.

These are just a few of the new and useful objects that people not trained as engineers have produced to solve problems. With the willingness to learn, the persistence to follow through on an idea, and the creativity to iterate, anyone can now create a solution to a problem through 3D printing. In so doing, what might seem like small innovations can actually amount to cheaper, faster, safer and more effective breakthroughs. There is little doubt that the 3D printer is democratizing innovation so that anyone can become a maker. Your breakthrough moment is just a 3D print away.

Top Image: Daniel A. Grande, PhD, director of the Orthopedic Research Laboratory at the Feinstein Institute, and Todd Goldstein, an investigator at the Feinstein Institute, part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, with their MakerBot Replicator Desktop 3D Printer that they used to 3D print cartilage to repair tracheal damage. Courtesy of the Feinstein Institute.

Jonathan Jaglom is CEO of MakerBot.

All views expressed are those of the author.

The Boston Bruins didn’t make it to the Stanley Cup play-offs this year, but hockey sticks are the buzz in Beantown this week. These are figurative hockey sticks — the ones with rapidly rising curves that signal momentous change.

Some 500 inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs and investors followed futurist and Google engineering director Ray Kurzweil and innovation guru Peter Diamandis to Boston’s Waterfront district for the first Exponential Manufacturing summit. They have been talking about how artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, 3D printing, “atom hacking” and other technologies are upending how we make things. The event was organized by Singularity University, the future-facing think tank/startup incubator that Kurzweil and Diamandis co-founded in 2008. GE, which is already 3D-printing jet engine and gas turbine parts and connecting factories to the Internet, is one of the main sponsors.

“This decade is the most extraordinary time in human history,” Diamandis said. “We are linear thinkers, but the world we are building is exponential. Moore’s law, the doubling of computing power every two years, leads to unexpected results.”He pointed out that the power of computer chips has increased 100 billion times since Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby built the first one in 1958. “We are in a period when extraordinary things are starting to happen,” Diamandis said. “You have to surf on top of the tsunami of change or you will be crushed by it.”

He pointed out that the power of computer chips has increased 100 billion times since Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby built the first one in 1958. “We are in a period when extraordinary things are starting to happen,” Diamandis said. “You have to surf on top of the tsunami of change or you will be crushed by it.”

Top image: GE’s additive manufacturing engineer Brian Adkins in full gear at the company’s new Center for Additive Technology Advancement (CATA). Above: GE is using this binder jetting machine for rapid prototyping. It uses a chemical binder to 3D-print casting molds from layers of fine sand, each 280 microns thick, infused with an activator. Image credit: GE Reports/Chris New Images credit: GE Reports/Chris New

Everyone present has been trying to figure out how. The first day focused on the latest developments in fields like robotics, AI, big data, augmented reality, additive manufacturing and their convergence. “3D printing is a 30-year-old technology, but it is now hitting the knee of a curve and becoming disruptive,” Diamandis said. “Manufacturing is a trillion-dollar industry that will be reinvented over the next few years.”

Andre Wegner, founder and CEO of the 3D-printing strategy firm Authentise, offered some insights. He has been studying the convergence of additive manufacturing with sensors, data and software and the emergence of what’s being called the digital thread: a digital birth certificate that will allow companies to monitor products at every stage of their life, from birth to death. Wegner says parts will soon come equipped with sensors that will report back to the design system when the component breaks. The system will use the data to generate insights, redesign the microstructure of the material the part was made from, and send it to the factory floor for manufacturing. “We’ve gone from an environment that required multiple steps to a process that is almost entirely digital in some parts,” he said.

The Laser MicroJet sends a laser beam through a thin stream of water and cuts delicate shapes into the hardest metals. Image credit: GE Power

Robots have been also playing a starring part at the conference. They were often mentioned in the same breath with AI. “Robotics is a combination of programming and motion,” said Hod Lipson, professor of engineering at Columbia University and co-author of “Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing.” “The explosive combination of data and algorithms is opening new doors. We’ve always had data, but we didn’t have the algorithms to make sense of it. AI is allowing robots to see and understand what’s happening.”

Lipson said that robots were learning to adapt and showed an example of a machine endowed with software that allowed it to build its own self-image. In the near future, he said, an entire manufacturing plant could create “an image of itself, adapt and become a giant robot that can recover from malfunction in a very interesting and creative way. Can you imagine?”

Many people may not be able to. That’s why Diamandis decided to hold the summit in the first place. “We can’t think exponentially,” he said. “Our brains aren’t wired that way. We have to support our linear thinking with regular exponential updates.”

Meet Sawyer (left) and Baxter, Rethink Robotics’ two collaborative robots. Image credit: Rethink Robotics

Henry Wolfson doesn’t ride horses, but that didn’t stop him from bringing Sleipnir the robot, named after an eight-legged steed from a Norse myth, to St. Louis, Missouri, last month.

Wolfson, who is 15 and goes to Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, built Sleipnir with his schoolmates to engage other fearsome robots in a medieval-like battle at FIRST Championship, a robotics contest created by the legendary inventor Dean Kamen. Sleipnir had to collect rubber boulders, maneuver past obstacles and fling the projectiles at the opposing team’s stronghold. The robot breached the castle’s wall by hitting it with the right amount of rocks. The robot could try to climb the wall for extra points. Out of 600 teams, Wolfson’s group finished eighth in its division. “I kind of felt like a rock star,” Wolfson says. “Coming together as a team for each match, fixing problems together and sharing a common goal was an incredible experience.”

Wolfson was one of more than 29,000 students from 43 countries who tested their engineering and robotics skills at FIRST Championship. Kamen started FIRST— meaning For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — in 1995 to promote science and engineering education and innovation. The group held its inaugural FIRST Championship the same year and the program has grown every year since then.

Top image: Competing robots had to collect rubber boulders, maneuver past obstacles and fling the projectiles at the opposing team’s stronghold. Above: Some 29,000 students from 43 countries tested their engineering and robotics skills at FIRST Championship. Images credit: FIRST Championship.

Wolfson and the 30 other members of team No. 1712 had learned just six weeks before the contest date what task their robot would have to accomplish. They built and perfected their robot every day after school and on Saturdays. Added up, Wolfson estimates it took them a total of 6,000 man-hours.

But FIRST is also getting kids interested in science. This year, 17-year-old Amanda Horne, who also competed in the event and studies at New York’s Albany Academies, received a Dean’s List Award nomination for mentoring elementary and middle school girls in robotics and other achievements. She was inspired by her own personal experience. Horne always liked math and science, but couldn’t figure out how to apply them to her life until she discovered robotics and taught herself to program robots in Java. This fall, she heads to Clarkson University to study software engineering.

Teams had learned just six weeks before the contest date what task their robots would have to accomplish. Image credit: FIRST Championship

Parents catch the bug too. Steven Hartman, chief technology officer at GE Power Services, was in St. Louis with his 14-year old son Brody, who was also competing. “Here’s what struck me,” the engineer says. “Every team received similar parts but no two robots look alike. It’s unbelievable.” While teams were required to use the same base parts, they relied on their insights and resourcefulness to design additional components, often applying the latest technologies like 3-D printing and CAD modeling.

Henry Wolfson with Sleipnir, his team’s robot. Image credit: Emily Wolfson

More than 120 of Hartman’s GE colleagues have dedicated thousands of hours every year since 1998 to mentor FIRST kids as young as 6 and as old as 18. They compete at four different levels of FIRST— from elementary school children constructing Lego structures to teenagers building sophisticated robots in the FIRST Robotics Competition, the most advanced of the contests. “When I see the teams at the FIRST Robotics Competition competing with each other, I think of those kids as being the next generation of researchers,” says Lynn DeRose, a principal investigator at GE Global Research. “They’ll be taking my place.”

The frenetic four-day event concluded with a crowd of more than 43,000 fans cheering on the final four teams in an atmosphere that Wolfson says was evocative of a major sporting event. “I am seriously considering going into one of the engineering fields, either mechanical or electrical engineering,” he says. “This is awesome.”

The four-day event concluded with a crowd of more than 43,000 fans cheering on the final four teams. Image credit: FIRST Championship

Diversifying developing economies require a social compact, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former finance minister of Nigeria, explains in a CGD podcast.

Cared for by her grandmother in a village in Nigeria, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is emphatic that her experiences as a child are what led her into a career in public service and development.

“I lived some of the issues that people are concerned about in development,” she explains in a Center for Global Development podcast.

These days, Okonjo-Iweala is widely known as a leading figure in development. She served as finance minister of Nigeria from 2011 to 2015, and as foreign affairs minister before that — the first woman to hold either of those positions.

As finance minister, Okonjo-Iweala oversaw a plan to reduce Nigeria’s debt burden by $30 billion, helping to boost Nigeria’s economy. Today, Okonjo-Iweala is a CGD board member and distinguished visiting fellow, and her recent essay, “Six Questions African Policymakers Must Answer Now,” has been getting attention around the world.

She joined Rajesh Mirchandani, vice president of communications and policy outreach at the CGD, in a podcast to discuss those questions, which include: How will African policymakers finance the global goals? How can African countries diversify their economies?

“If you truly want to diversify, you need a plan,” Okonjo-Iweala says. “In a democracy… you need a social compact where the population agrees that no matter who takes over the government, they’re going to continue developing certain things in certain ways.”

“That’s not happening in many of our countries,” she says in the podcast:

(Top image: Courtesy of Evgeni Zotov)

This piece first appeared on the Center for Global Development’s site.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is a former finance minister of Nigeria, and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Rajesh Mirchandani is Vice President of Communications and Policy Outreach at the Center for Global Development.

All views expressed are those of the author.

This week we learned about a subsea dig into the massive crater left behind by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, mice that took a two-week vacation aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis and returned to Earth with damaged livers, and a cell that broke one of the most basic laws of biology. Take a look.

 Hold The Champagne: Mice Astronauts Return To Earth With Liver Damage

The Space Shuttle Atlantis sailing above Earth at 17,500 mph. Image credit: Getty Images

Mice that spent two weeks orbiting planet Earth aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2011 landed with “nascent liver disease,” according to Karen Jonscher, a physicist and associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “We saw the beginning of nascent liver damage in just 13.5 days,” Dr. Jonscher said. “The mice also lost lean muscle mass. We have seen this same phenomenon in humans on bedrest — muscles atrophy and proteins break down into amino acids. The question is, how does that affect your liver?” The findings, which could have implications on human space travel, appeared this week in the journal PLOS ONE.

This Robotic Hand Can Learn New Tricks On Its Own

A team of engineers and computer scientists at University of Washington in Seattle built a robotic hand with five fingers that can learn to grab and lift objects without instructions from humans. The hand uses custom algorithms that allow it to perform different tasks and learn from success and failure. “As the robot hand performs different tasks, the system collects data from various sensors and motion capture cameras and employs machine learning algorithms to continually refine and develop more realistic models,” according to UW Today. “It’s like sitting through a lesson, going home and doing your homework to understand things better and then coming back to school a little more intelligent the next day,” said Vikash Kumar, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering. The team will present the hand on May 17 at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Scientists Start Drilling In The Subsea Crater Left Behind By Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid

An asteroid that smashed into Earth 66 million years ago helped wipe out the dinosaurs. Illustration credit: Getty Images

Australian scientists started drilling in the giant crater at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico left behind by an asteroid that smashed into Earth 66 million years ago and helped wipe out the dinosaurs. The crater is 180 kilometers in diameter and 30 kilometers deep — 3.5 times the height of Mount Everest. The explosion that caused it released energy equivalent to 100 million nuclear bombs. “We hope to find information about species such as plankton that do not leave behind fossils that can be studied by eye or under a microscope, and can only be identified via molecular fossils left behind such as DNA and lipid biomarkers,” the team reported. “This way we can make connections between past ecosystems and environments and identify reasons for why certain species adapted or disappeared,” molecular fossil expert Kliti Grice told the Science Network.

This Cell Is Breaking The Law Of Biology

The anatomical structure of a typical animal cell. Image credit: Getty Images

Scientists at the University of British Columbia have discovered a eukaryotic cell that somehow survives without mitochondria, the cellular generators that supply them with energy. Humans, other animals, plants, trees and mushrooms are all built from eukaryotes. The new finding could rewrite biology textbooks.

This is a light micrograph of the microbe that evolutionary biologists say lives just fine without any mitochondria. Image credit: Naoji Yubuki/Current Biology

“We’ve been working under the unwritten rule that every eukaryote had mitochondria of some form, even if highly reduced, but this paper suggests the idea is flexible,” researcher Anna Karnkowska told the journal PNAS. Mark Van Der Giezen, an evolutionary biochemist at the University of Exeter in the UK, told NPR the discovery “shows you that life is extremely creative in finding a way to eke out an existence.” The team published the findings in the journal Cell Biology.

Mysterious Dwarf Galaxy Could Shed New Light On Big Bang

An image of the galaxy AGC 198691 (nicknamed Leoncino, or “little lion”) taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. | Photo by NASA; A. Hirschauer & J. Salzer, Indiana University; J. Cannon, Macalester College; and K. McQuinn, University of Texas

The band Talking Heads used to sing that “heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” Now Astronomers at Indiana University, Bloomington, discovered a faint “small blue galaxy” some 30 million light years away — essentially in our cosmic neighborhood — that fits the description. The dwarf galaxy, called Leoncino — “little lion” — contains the lowest level of heavier chemical elements past hydrogen and helium in the periodic table “ever observed in a gravitationally bound system of stars,” the team wrote.

Here’s why that’s important: The early universe was largely made of hydrogen and helium and most stars, including our sun, spend their lives cooking them into carbon, iron and other elements as they age. But that process doesn’t seem to be happening in Leoncino. As a result, the galaxy could offer a close-up picture of what the first stars looked like and shed new light on the big bang — the idea that our universe started in a titanic explosion some 13.7 billion years ago. “Low metal abundance is essentially a sign that very little stellar activity has taken place compared to most galaxies,” said Alec S. Hirschauer, the lead author of a paper the team published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Top image: This five-fingered robot hand can learn how to perform dexterous manipulation — like spinning a tube full of coffee beans — on its own, rather than having humans program its actions. Image credit: University of Washington

We are witnessing the dawn of digitized, intelligent cities, where sensors are being deployed to monitor air quality, infrastructure health, traffic and even available parking spots. If this new layer of data is to help citizens realize a better quality of life, officials must show leadership in deploying the technology and helping people use it.

There’s a big shift coming in the Smart City movement that will reshape our cities and create economic opportunities for decades to come. The pervasiveness of technology and the expansion of open data policies is about to unleash an economic growth engine for urban innovation that we have never seen. For the first time in history, we are creating digital cities.

The idea of leveraging technology to help cities run better is far from a new concept. Many innovative city leaders have taken steps to use technology within City Hall to help their departments work better or collaborate more effectively. Cities may have worked on data projects that would, for example, help firefighters access building plans electronically when they arrived at the scene of a fire. Other cities tracked asset information on roads or water systems to predict areas in need of repair. Some cities even went as far as using analytic models to predict crime incidents to redeploy their police force.

All of these solutions helped unlock data that was trapped within a single department of City Hall and put it to more effective use. I am proud to have had the opportunity to work with many of these teams, delivering better city coordination in Rio de Janeiro, better transportation in Singapore and better public safety in Memphis and Chicago.

But what’s happening today is much bigger. We are moving from leveraging information to fully digitizing cities. We are moving from analyzing data that exists within City Hall, to generating new data from sensors that are deployed all across cities. And we’re starting to move from just making this data available to City Hall, to making it available to anyone in the city.

For example, sensors are being deployed across cities already. From environmental sensors that measure air quality, to vibration sensors that measure road and bridge safety, to parking sensors that identify available parking spots, we have begun to digitize our cities in steps. This is creating a whole new world of data to show not just what has happened historically in a city, but what IS HAPPENING now. By understanding what is happening in a city, innovative entrepreneurs can help create solutions to help with traffic and parking, to find restaurants without long lines, to find a way across the city during a parade (recent problem for me!).

These are more than services that a City offers its citizens. They are solutions that citizens will create for themselves to make THEIR cities better places to live, work and play.

But to truly unleash the creativity and innovation of cities, city leaders have to deploy the infrastructure to make this possible, and then allow individuals and companies to leverage the data. Some innovative cities, like Boston, are already taking strong leadership positions in open data delivering scorecards and information in near real-time to the citizens. These are the beginnings of initiatives that will start to allow economic development and quality of life improvement that comes, not from City Hall itself, but from the way City Hall has empowered its citizens in a way that has never before been possible.

We are entering a shift in the Smart City movement. As industrial companies are figuring out how to create a new kind of digital infrastructure, the kind that can deploy broad sets of sensors across a city economically, cities are figuring out how to engage their citizens by providing more data. As those trends combine, we will see a new revolution in urban technology that affects entrepreneurship, student education and quality of life for all. Cities have always provided infrastructure to their communities. With the emergence of the digital industrial age, a new type of urban infrastructure is coming available and city leaders that embrace it stand to be the ones that win in the urban innovation era.

Top Image: Courtesy of Thinkstock.
This piece first appeared on LinkedIn.

John Gordon is the Chief Digital Officer of Current, powered by GE.

All views expressed are those of the author.

The thought of sewage treatment plants is enough to make most people hold their noses. But Jason Nichols, who works as a chemical scientist at GE’s Global Research Center, decided to jump into the pool of data that such plants produce. He and his team will use it to build computer models — what GE calls “digital twins” — of the treatment process, in hopes of finding out what’s really going on inside the murky waters. “A well-operated plant smells like fresh soil, or compost,” Nichols says. “A fetid smell is an indication that something is going wrong with a plant.”

The digital twin could help identify the source of a nasty smell — and much more. It uses computerized real-world information and algorithms to re-create the plant (minus the odor) in the data cloud. The insights will allow Nichols and his team to make wastewater treatment more efficient. “Few people think about it, but some really expensive stuff happens after you flush the toilet,” Nichols says. “We’ve got great treatment technology, but we don’t always operate it in the most efficient fashion. If we built a digital twin of every sewage treatment plant, for example, we could save $4 billion to $6 billion globally over the next decade.” Since GE is also in the wastewater treatment business, connecting its membrane bioreactors and other technology to the twin could save customers between $200 and $300 million.

Sanitation is an expensive business. U.S. municipalities spend nearly $100 billion per year in tax money installing, upgrading and operating water and sewage treatment systems. With costs expected to keep growing, town councils are desperate for savings.

Top and above: Jason Nichols in his lab. Image credit: GE Global Research

Nichols, who has a PhD in organometallic chemistry and did postdoc work at the University of California at Berkeley, smelled an opportunity. His team has spent months analyzing data from physics and biokinetic models of sewage treatment plants. They concluded that many of them waste a small fortune by pumping too much air into ponds of partially treated sewage.

Nichols and his team intend to fish for insights to make the process more efficient by first installing chemical sensors inside a plant and then building cloud-based algorithms that suck in data and mimic the biochemical work taking place inside the plant. The team has quickly started getting some clarity using biochemical and physical simulations as the first step in creating a digital twin. Although the amount of sewage that arrives at the plant varies considerably over days, weeks and months, most facilities set the air pumps that feed their waste ponds to maximum. “It makes sense,” Nichols says. “If you can’t reliably predict how much sewage you’ll be dealing with, you’ll pump in the maximum amount of air so you don’t oxygen-starve your microbes in their treatment ponds.”

Using the digital twin, Nichols expects to discover hidden patterns in plant operations, anticipate the amounts of sewage coming in and calibrate the oxygen level needed. “We can see reasons why certain things might be happening and propose solutions,” he says.

For example, an early warning about high nitrate or phosphorus levels could protect municipalities from polluted waterways. The digital twin would not only alert plant operators to a problem, but identify what portion of the plant is most likely the cause and reduce response times for repairs. Early warning and rapid response in such cases would save plant operators from paying costly fines and ensure cleaner waterways for communities.

The digital-twin technology could have other valuable benefits. Operators can use it to monitor the health of bacteria in their systems, schedule the right time for maintenance or even predict the cost of future plant expansions to accommodate a growing community.

Several hundred GE scientists like Nichols are building digital twins of jet engines, wind farms and subsea blowout preventers. The company wants to build a digital model of every machine it makes, to make them work more efficiently and save customers money from unplanned downtime. Based on data from its digital twin, for example, a jet engine that might normally be overhauled every 24 to 36 months may not end up requiring such a service until after 38 months.

How soon might wastewater treatment plants start embracing Nichols’ proposals? He recently made a presentation to water utilities and plant operators and is in discussions with a number of plants to find a suitable facility to become a development partner in what will be the first practical demonstration of the technology. “Once we show them what their data can do for them, we’ll be in business,” he says.