Every fall for the past 15 years, before the President and the First Family turn on the National Christmas tree in President’s Park outside the White House, Jim Riccio has strung thousands of Christmas lights on a nearly identical spruce outside GE’s headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. “The design is the same as the one in DC,” Riccio says. “It’s as close as you can get to an exact duplicate.”
For most of the year, Riccio works as senior facilities technician in Fairfield. “I do anything that needs doing, from changing light bulbs to fixing air conditioning and plumbing,” he says. But come Columbus Day, Riccio embarks on a mission of national significance: testing the lighting design for America’s premier holiday tree.
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The First Spruce: The 2012 National Christmas Tree in President's Park outside the White House. The tree design changes every year.
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Every year for the last 15 years, GE's Jim Riccio has been building a replica of the National Christmas Tree at GE's headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut.
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Every year for the last 15 years, GE's Jim Riccio has been building a replica of the National Christmas Tree at GE's headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut.
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GE Lighting has designed the lights display and provided bulbs and lamps for the national tree for the last 50 years. About 20 years ago GE lighting designers started testing their designs in Fairfield. “In Washington they have a very strict deadline and limitations because they are right in front of the White House,” Riccio says. “We build it here a week or two earlier so that they can see what it looks like. If things don’t look right, they still have time to fix it.”
The computer-controlled design changes every year. Riccio starts working from a “power point presentation the designers used in Washington to get the design approved,” he says. The red, white and green lights, cables, and golden star ornaments weighing in at 1,000 pounds arrive on three wooden packing skids in mid-October.
It takes and Riccio and a few assistants from the landscaping crew five or six weeks to adorn the 45-foot spruce, depending on weather. “Sometimes you can’t get out there when it’s too windy and stuff,” he says. They work methodically from a 65-foot high bucket truck and a step ladder for the lower branches. Riccio keeps the design team at GE Lighting in Cleveland, Ohio, informed about his progress. “We email and talk back and forth about how it is supposed to be designed, and what the decoration set up is,” he says.
Riccio aims to be done by Thanksgiving, two weeks before the President lights the National Christmas Tree on the first Thursday in December. Since 2007, GE has been using LEDs instead of standard incandescent Christmas lights. “The LEDs cut our power consumption by 80 percent,” he says.
The Fairfield tree stands outside the main gatehouse on Easton Turnpike where everybody in the neighborhood or just passing by can see it. Riccio starts taking down the lights after the New Year, a job that takes about two weeks. He ships them back to Cleveland.
Does he use any of his decorating tricks on his own tree? “No,” Riccio says. “I let my wife and son decorate the tree at home.”
Friday, December 28, 2012
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Body Check: How a Brainy GE Scientist Helped Revolutionize Medical Imaging
Late one October night 30 years ago, GE scientist John Schenck was lying on a makeshift wooden platform inside a GE lab in upstate New York. Surrounding his body was a large magnet, 30,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. Standing at his side were a handful of colleagues. They were there to peer inside Schenck's head and take the first magnetic resonance scan (MRI) of the brain.
The 1970s were a revolutionary time for medical imaging. Researchers at GE and elsewhere improved on the X-ray machine and developed the computed tomography (CT) scanner that could produce images of the inside of the body. Other groups were trying to adapt nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for medical imaging, a technology that already used powerful magnets to study the physical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules. But their magnets were not strong enough to image the human body.
At the time, GE imaging pioneer Rowland “Red” Redington (he built the first GE CT scanner) also wanted to explore magnetic resonance and hired Schenck, a bright young medical doctor with a PhD in physics. Schenck spent days inside Redington’s lab researching giant magnets and nights and weekends tending to emergency room patients. “This was an exciting time,” Schenck remembers.
Schenck’s unique background allowed him to quickly grasp the promise of MRI. Unlike CT and X-ray machines that generate radiation which travels into the body, the strong magnetic field produced by MRI machines tickles water molecules inside body parts and makes them emit a radio signal that travels out of the body. Since every body part contains water, MRIs can recognize the source of the signal, digitize it, and apply algorithms to build an image of the internal organs.
It took Schenck and the team two years to obtain a magnet strong enough to penetrate the human body and achieve useful high-resolution images. The magnet, rated at 1.5 tesla, arrived in Schenck’s lab in the spring of 1982. Since there was very little research about the effect of such strong magnetic field on humans, Schenck turned it on, asked a nurse to monitor his vitals, and went inside it for ten minutes.
The field did Schenck no harm and the team spent that summer building the first MRI prototype using high-strength magnetic field. By October 1982 they were ready to image Schenck’s brain.
Many scientist at the time thought that at 1.5 tesla, signals from deep tissue would be absorbed by the body before they could be detected. “We worried that there would only be a big black hole in the center” of the image, Schenck says.
But the first MRI imaging test was a success. “We got to see my whole brain,” Schenck says. “It was kind of exciting.”
The 1.5 tesla magnet has since become the industry standard for MRI. Today, there are some 22,000 1.5 tesla MRI machines working around the world and generating 9,000 medical images every hour, or 80 million scans per year.
Schenck, now 73, still works at his GE lab and works on improving the machine. “When we started, we didn’t know whether there would be a future,” he says. “Now there is an MRI machine in every hospital.”
The 1970s were a revolutionary time for medical imaging. Researchers at GE and elsewhere improved on the X-ray machine and developed the computed tomography (CT) scanner that could produce images of the inside of the body. Other groups were trying to adapt nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for medical imaging, a technology that already used powerful magnets to study the physical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules. But their magnets were not strong enough to image the human body.
At the time, GE imaging pioneer Rowland “Red” Redington (he built the first GE CT scanner) also wanted to explore magnetic resonance and hired Schenck, a bright young medical doctor with a PhD in physics. Schenck spent days inside Redington’s lab researching giant magnets and nights and weekends tending to emergency room patients. “This was an exciting time,” Schenck remembers.
Heady Times: John Schenck (standing) and Bill Edelstein at the front opening of the first whole-body 1.5 tesla magnet in 1983.
Schenck’s unique background allowed him to quickly grasp the promise of MRI. Unlike CT and X-ray machines that generate radiation which travels into the body, the strong magnetic field produced by MRI machines tickles water molecules inside body parts and makes them emit a radio signal that travels out of the body. Since every body part contains water, MRIs can recognize the source of the signal, digitize it, and apply algorithms to build an image of the internal organs.
It took Schenck and the team two years to obtain a magnet strong enough to penetrate the human body and achieve useful high-resolution images. The magnet, rated at 1.5 tesla, arrived in Schenck’s lab in the spring of 1982. Since there was very little research about the effect of such strong magnetic field on humans, Schenck turned it on, asked a nurse to monitor his vitals, and went inside it for ten minutes.
The field did Schenck no harm and the team spent that summer building the first MRI prototype using high-strength magnetic field. By October 1982 they were ready to image Schenck’s brain.
Many scientist at the time thought that at 1.5 tesla, signals from deep tissue would be absorbed by the body before they could be detected. “We worried that there would only be a big black hole in the center” of the image, Schenck says.
But the first MRI imaging test was a success. “We got to see my whole brain,” Schenck says. “It was kind of exciting.”
The 1.5 tesla magnet has since become the industry standard for MRI. Today, there are some 22,000 1.5 tesla MRI machines working around the world and generating 9,000 medical images every hour, or 80 million scans per year.
Schenck, now 73, still works at his GE lab and works on improving the machine. “When we started, we didn’t know whether there would be a future,” he says. “Now there is an MRI machine in every hospital.”
Monday, December 3, 2012
A Light in the Dark: GE Turbine Helps Power Cogeneration Plant at Princeton through Blackout
Hurricane Sandy’s winds uprooted lives and wiped out power lines from Delaware to Massachusetts, breaking branches, knocking down trees, and driving a devastating ocean surge. In New Jersey, which took the brunt of the storm’s fury and saw the largest blackout of all the states impacted, more than 2.6 million outages to homes and businesses were reported.
In the heart of this widespread darkness, though, there was an area where the lights stayed on. The Princeton University cogeneration plant kicked into action when the electricity from the local power grid went out.
The Princeton plant is using a GE “aeroderivative” turbine (it has a modified supersonic fighter jet engine inside.) It began operating in 1996 and on a normal day it is supplying all the steam and half of the electricity to the university community of approximately 12,000 people. (The other half still comes from PSE&G, the local utility.)
During the storm, when the utility stopped transmitting electricity to the substation that regularly powers the campus, the Princeton plant’s three-person crew sprang into action. They stepped up the facility’s electrical generation and shut down power to a small number of lower-use areas like administrative spaces.
While hundreds of campus maintenance workers were repairing storm damage, three shifts of plant personnel worked through the storm and its aftermath, keeping the electricity flowing throughout the campus while much of the surrounding community remained without power because they had to rely on local utility companies.
"We originally built the cogeneration plant to reduce campus energy bills and provide reliable utilities,” says Ted Borer, energy plant manager at Princeton. “Its ability to serve the campus in 'island' mode made all the difference during the hurricane.”
At the heart of the cogeneration plant is a GE aeroderivative LM1600 gas turbine. Think of the turbine and others in its family as jet engines afraid of heights. GE engineers have built upon the company’s aviation roots and modified the jet engine technology to generate electricity. Instead of pushing a plane, the gas turbine spins a shaft that is attached to a generator. That unit produces the electricity.
But before the hot exhaust can escape, it is marshaled to do more work—heating water to produce steam for the campus’s heating and air conditioning systems.
Plant personnel worked without leaving campus for 56 hours during and after Sandy, according to a report from campus news. They rotated between operating the system, ensuring the campus load didn't exceed capacity, conducting maintenance to prevent problems and sleeping when they could.
By that Wednesday night, two days after Sandy struck, PSE&G had electricity flowing to Princeton again and the next morning saw power fully restored to the campus.
In the heart of this widespread darkness, though, there was an area where the lights stayed on. The Princeton University cogeneration plant kicked into action when the electricity from the local power grid went out.
The Princeton plant is using a GE “aeroderivative” turbine (it has a modified supersonic fighter jet engine inside.) It began operating in 1996 and on a normal day it is supplying all the steam and half of the electricity to the university community of approximately 12,000 people. (The other half still comes from PSE&G, the local utility.)
Fighter Power: GE's LM1600 aeroderivative gas turbine is based on technology developed for the F404 supersonic fighter jet engine (above). These engines power some 4,000 F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets.
During the storm, when the utility stopped transmitting electricity to the substation that regularly powers the campus, the Princeton plant’s three-person crew sprang into action. They stepped up the facility’s electrical generation and shut down power to a small number of lower-use areas like administrative spaces.
While hundreds of campus maintenance workers were repairing storm damage, three shifts of plant personnel worked through the storm and its aftermath, keeping the electricity flowing throughout the campus while much of the surrounding community remained without power because they had to rely on local utility companies.
"We originally built the cogeneration plant to reduce campus energy bills and provide reliable utilities,” says Ted Borer, energy plant manager at Princeton. “Its ability to serve the campus in 'island' mode made all the difference during the hurricane.”
At the heart of the cogeneration plant is a GE aeroderivative LM1600 gas turbine. Think of the turbine and others in its family as jet engines afraid of heights. GE engineers have built upon the company’s aviation roots and modified the jet engine technology to generate electricity. Instead of pushing a plane, the gas turbine spins a shaft that is attached to a generator. That unit produces the electricity.
But before the hot exhaust can escape, it is marshaled to do more work—heating water to produce steam for the campus’s heating and air conditioning systems.
Plant personnel worked without leaving campus for 56 hours during and after Sandy, according to a report from campus news. They rotated between operating the system, ensuring the campus load didn't exceed capacity, conducting maintenance to prevent problems and sleeping when they could.
By that Wednesday night, two days after Sandy struck, PSE&G had electricity flowing to Princeton again and the next morning saw power fully restored to the campus.
Can You Knit a Wind Turbine?: GE Wind Turbine Blades Made From Fabric Aim To Revolutionize Renewable Energy
Contrary to popular belief, taking a piano to a fourth-story walk up apartment in New York City may not be the toughest moving job. Consider the wind turbine. The stiff fiberglass blades of the largest turbines span half the length of a football field. Moving them from the factory to the wind farm requires custom cranes, oversize rigs, hours of careful route and traffic planning, and expert drivers to execute precarious turns. What if you could do away with all that and also eliminate the million-dollar molds used to make them for good measure?
Scientists at GE Global Research, Virginia Tech, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have started working on a new blade design using fabric wrapped around a skeleton of metal ribs resembling a fishbone. GE estimates that that the new design could revolutionize the way wind blades are designed, made, and installed, cut blade costs by 25 to 40 percent. “We are weaving an advanced wind blade that could be our clean energy future,” says Wendy Lin, a GE engineer and leader of the three-year project, which the government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) is backing with $5.6 million. “The fabric we are developing will be tough, flexible, and easier to assemble and maintain” than fiberglass, Lin says.
The use of fabrics as a tool to lower weight is not a new idea. Aircraft manufacturers used them to cover the wings of fighter planes in World War I. GE already makes rugged fabrics for wind protection and architectural design.
But Lin says that the new high-tech fabrics, which are based on fiberglass, will help spur the development of larger, lighter turbines that can capture more wind at lower wind speeds. Current technology makes it hard to produce turbines that have rotor diameters exceeding 120 meters (nearly 400 feet) because of design, manufacturing, assembly, and transportation constraints. GE’s new fabric-based technology would all eliminate these barriers.
Experts estimate that in order for the U.S. to generate 20 percent of electricity wind, the currently installed wind blade area would have to grow by 50 percent. Fabric blades can make this possible. “Developing larger wind blades is the key to expanding wind energy into areas we wouldn’t think of today as suitable for harvesting wind power,” Lin says. “Tapping into moderate wind speed markets, in places like the Midwest, will only help grow the industry in the years to come.”
Blowing in the Wind: A section of a wind blade depicting a new manufacturing concept that covers the blade with a "tensioned" fabric. This new approach could significantly reduce production costs.
Scientists at GE Global Research, Virginia Tech, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have started working on a new blade design using fabric wrapped around a skeleton of metal ribs resembling a fishbone. GE estimates that that the new design could revolutionize the way wind blades are designed, made, and installed, cut blade costs by 25 to 40 percent. “We are weaving an advanced wind blade that could be our clean energy future,” says Wendy Lin, a GE engineer and leader of the three-year project, which the government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E) is backing with $5.6 million. “The fabric we are developing will be tough, flexible, and easier to assemble and maintain” than fiberglass, Lin says.
The use of fabrics as a tool to lower weight is not a new idea. Aircraft manufacturers used them to cover the wings of fighter planes in World War I. GE already makes rugged fabrics for wind protection and architectural design.
But Lin says that the new high-tech fabrics, which are based on fiberglass, will help spur the development of larger, lighter turbines that can capture more wind at lower wind speeds. Current technology makes it hard to produce turbines that have rotor diameters exceeding 120 meters (nearly 400 feet) because of design, manufacturing, assembly, and transportation constraints. GE’s new fabric-based technology would all eliminate these barriers.
Experts estimate that in order for the U.S. to generate 20 percent of electricity wind, the currently installed wind blade area would have to grow by 50 percent. Fabric blades can make this possible. “Developing larger wind blades is the key to expanding wind energy into areas we wouldn’t think of today as suitable for harvesting wind power,” Lin says. “Tapping into moderate wind speed markets, in places like the Midwest, will only help grow the industry in the years to come.”
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Long-Distance Learning: When a Turbine Tripped on Nexen’s North Sea Oil Platform, GE Found the Cause from 500 Miles Away
Nexen’s Buzzard offshore complex is a system of three oil platforms anchored in the cold and choppy Atlantic some 62 miles northwest of Aberdeen, Scotland. Nexen, a Canadian energy company, designed the platforms to produce 200,000 barrels of oil per day, making the field one of the largest in the North Sea. But several years ago, one of Nexen’s three main power turbines generating Buzzard's electricity experienced a series of “trips” – or power fluctuations that result in a turbine shutdown, putting production in jeopardy.
Nexen, however, had equipped its turbines with GE's remote diagnostics software. A GE services team sitting 500 miles away quickly found the cause of the shutdowns and prevented severe equipment damage costing Nexen more that $10 million per day in lost oil output.
The Buzzard turbines were monitored GE’s System 1 diagnostics software. The technology is part of GE’s Industrial Internet services solutions connecting people, data and machines. The software quickly gathered information from sensors inside the affected turbine and fed it for analysis to GE’s remote diagnostics centers in Aberdeen and the Netherlands. When GE service engineers went over the results, they noticed that some of the bearings sensors were reporting changes in temperature and voltage, tell-tale signs of bearing damage. A deeper analysis indicated that the control system in a lubricating pump was the likely culprit – a discovery that would not have been made until much later, or perhaps not at all, without accurate data about the exact time the incident occurred.
Acting on GE’s findings, Nexen fixed the bearing and corrected the pump's control system, solving the problem and averting potential damage and downtime. GE and Nexen estimate the System 1 technology has saved the energy company millions over the life of their service contract by detecting faults outside planned maintenance schedules, avoiding lost production, and mobilizing personnel and back-up equipment during outages. After GE helped fix the broken bearing, Nexen reviewed all of its rotating machinery to prevent similar accidents. The software has been monitoring machine vibrations, temperature, performance and emissions for machines ranging from gas turbines, compressors, pumps, fans and heat exchangers.
"Intelligent" service solutions like System 1 make good business sense. A new report from GE on the Industrial Internet estimates that by reducing capital expenditures by just 1 percent in the oil and gas sector, Industrial Internet systems and services could save the industry $90 billion over the next 15 years.
Nexen, however, had equipped its turbines with GE's remote diagnostics software. A GE services team sitting 500 miles away quickly found the cause of the shutdowns and prevented severe equipment damage costing Nexen more that $10 million per day in lost oil output.
Remote Control: GE's Industrial Internet diagnostics system helped fix Buzzard's power turbine from 500 miles away.
The Buzzard turbines were monitored GE’s System 1 diagnostics software. The technology is part of GE’s Industrial Internet services solutions connecting people, data and machines. The software quickly gathered information from sensors inside the affected turbine and fed it for analysis to GE’s remote diagnostics centers in Aberdeen and the Netherlands. When GE service engineers went over the results, they noticed that some of the bearings sensors were reporting changes in temperature and voltage, tell-tale signs of bearing damage. A deeper analysis indicated that the control system in a lubricating pump was the likely culprit – a discovery that would not have been made until much later, or perhaps not at all, without accurate data about the exact time the incident occurred.
Acting on GE’s findings, Nexen fixed the bearing and corrected the pump's control system, solving the problem and averting potential damage and downtime. GE and Nexen estimate the System 1 technology has saved the energy company millions over the life of their service contract by detecting faults outside planned maintenance schedules, avoiding lost production, and mobilizing personnel and back-up equipment during outages. After GE helped fix the broken bearing, Nexen reviewed all of its rotating machinery to prevent similar accidents. The software has been monitoring machine vibrations, temperature, performance and emissions for machines ranging from gas turbines, compressors, pumps, fans and heat exchangers.
"Intelligent" service solutions like System 1 make good business sense. A new report from GE on the Industrial Internet estimates that by reducing capital expenditures by just 1 percent in the oil and gas sector, Industrial Internet systems and services could save the industry $90 billion over the next 15 years.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Printing Jet Engines: GE Aviation Acquires Two 3-D Printing Pioneers
Last October, Michael Idelchik, vice president for advanced technologies at GE Global Research, pointed to 3-D printing called it “the next manufacturing revolution.” Idelchik said that 3-D printing, also described as additive manufacturing, “had the potential to fundamentally disrupt” how we make complex machines and transform industries. “The potential impact of additive manufacturing is huge,” Idelchik said. The technology “prints” intricate designs by adding thin layers of material on top of each other. “Four decades from now, we could be printing an entire engine this way,” says Michael Idelchik.
A full engine is still a tall order but printed jet engine parts are already here. The newest GE jet engines like the CFM LEAP, which GE Aviation makes in a joint venture with France’s Snecma, will have printed combustion system components and other parts inside.
This is only the beginning. GE Aviation just announced that it acquired two U.S. additive manufacturers who have developed advanced technologies for rapid 3-D prototyping and production. “Morris Technologies and Rapid Quality Manufacturing are parts of our investment in emerging manufacturing technologies,” said Colleen Athans, vice president and general manager of GE Aviation’s supply chain division. “Our ability to develop state of the art manufacturing processes for emerging materials and complex design geometry is critical to our future. We are so fortunate to have Morris Technologies and Rapid Quality Manufacturing just minutes from our headquarters. We know them well.”
Both companies are located in Cincinnati, close to GE Aviation’s plants. Morris Technologies and Rapid Quality Manufacturing operate 21 additive manufacturing machines. This makes them possibly the largest additive manufacturers in the world. The companies have been making prototype components for GE jet engines for several years. They have also made parts for GE Global Research and GE Power System. The price of the acquisitions has not been disclosed.
Tag: GE Aviation, GE Global Research
Beyond Testing: 3-D printers can manufacture parts from plastics and metals, just like these printed test samples of aircraft parts.
A full engine is still a tall order but printed jet engine parts are already here. The newest GE jet engines like the CFM LEAP, which GE Aviation makes in a joint venture with France’s Snecma, will have printed combustion system components and other parts inside.
This is only the beginning. GE Aviation just announced that it acquired two U.S. additive manufacturers who have developed advanced technologies for rapid 3-D prototyping and production. “Morris Technologies and Rapid Quality Manufacturing are parts of our investment in emerging manufacturing technologies,” said Colleen Athans, vice president and general manager of GE Aviation’s supply chain division. “Our ability to develop state of the art manufacturing processes for emerging materials and complex design geometry is critical to our future. We are so fortunate to have Morris Technologies and Rapid Quality Manufacturing just minutes from our headquarters. We know them well.”
Both companies are located in Cincinnati, close to GE Aviation’s plants. Morris Technologies and Rapid Quality Manufacturing operate 21 additive manufacturing machines. This makes them possibly the largest additive manufacturers in the world. The companies have been making prototype components for GE jet engines for several years. They have also made parts for GE Global Research and GE Power System. The price of the acquisitions has not been disclosed.
Tag: GE Aviation, GE Global Research
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
When Saving Lives is Contagious: Can Successful Treatments Spread From One Hospital to Others? GE is Working on Finding Out
Making people healthier does not always involve developing a more potent pill or building a better body imaging machine. Sometimes it pays to keep your eyes open and listen. A few years ago a group of care delivery professionals from GE Healthcare noticed that some hospitals were getting much better results than others. “Their ideas were new and innovative, but they were also incremental and did not turn the facility upside down,” says Denise Kruzikas, a healthymagination director at GE Healthcare. “They made care smoother, faster, and more efficient.”
What were these hospitals doing right and could it serve as a “best practice” for others? “We started looking for the true pioneers,” Kruzikas says. GE’s first visit was to Saint Luke’s Neuroscience Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, a leading stroke treatment center. Doctors at Saint Luke’s, a long-time GE customer, were using GE imaging technology to diagnose stroke patients. They were getting better results than others and the GE team wanted to know why.
Typically, no more than 5 percent of stroke patients receive “interventional treatment,” where doctors remove the blood clot in the brain that blocked an artery. This is because patients were not diagnosed properly or did not arrive at the hospital in time. However, Saint Luke’s developed an innovative stroke treatment protocol and increased this number to 40 percent, say Dr. Marilyn Rymer, medical director at the Neuroscience Institute. When stroke patients leave her hospital, they are doing better, have lower stroke severity scores, and stand a better chance to resume their lives. “Saint Luke’s combines education, outreach, and coordination with efficient care,” Kruzikas says. “They’ve got people, process and technology working together.”
Starting in 2005, Dr. Rymer’s team turned stroke treatment at the hospital into a series of interconnected steps, each with a measurable outcome. The steps ranged from teaching regional hospitals and EMT personnel to recognize stroke, performing a CT scan on suspected stroke patients to help inform treatment, and also starting physical, occupational and speech therapy a lot sooner to speed up the recovery and the quality of life. “It is critical for us to be as fast as we can at all times,” says Bridget Brion, a “Code Neuro” nurse at Saint Luke’s intensive care unit. “Every minute of a stroke one million brain cells die.” “Code Neuro” ICU nurses like Brion work directly with emergency room staff to care for a stroke patient. “Instead of having the emergency room acting as an independent silo taking care of stroke, we have a continuity of care that starts immediately when a stroke patient arrives until they go home,” Dr. Rymer says.
The GE team came in 2009 and took a “full download” of Saint Luke’s stroke data since the beginning of the new program. The researchers looked at patient volumes and outcomes, stroke education, time to diagnosis and treatment, length of stay, and costs.
The analysis showed that between 2005 and 2010, the hospital increased the amount of stroke patients by 23 percent and boosted transfers by 17 percent. Around 40 percent of stroke patients at Saint Luke’s receive interventional stroke treatment such as clot-dissolving medication deployed directly at the site of a blood clot in the brain. The average across the healthcare system is only 3 to 5 percent. Given the important stroke related information it provides in a relatively short time, nearly all stroke patients at Saint Luke’s receive a CT scan followed by specialized post-processing analysis. “The bottom line was that patients were doing better and they were able to get discharged earlier,” Kruzikas says.
Last June, Dr. Rymer traveled to GE’s training and education center in Crotonville, New York, and presented the results as “best practice” steps to stroke doctors from the U.S. and abroad. “Every hospital around the country should be stroke ready and stroke able,” Dr. Rymer says. “That just hasn’t happened.” Stroke is the leading cause of disability among adults in the U.S. Approximately 795,000 strokes occur in the U.S., costing $25 billion in 2007.
The Saint Luke’s study was part of GE’s healthymagination program, whose goals include finding innovative solutions to healthcare and improving access to treatment. The GE team is already seeking out facilities that excel in treating breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and low-dose radiation management. “It’s about using what’s out there in a more efficient and productive way,” Kruzikas says. “We want to address our customer’s need and support best practice models that can be replicated around the world.”
What were these hospitals doing right and could it serve as a “best practice” for others? “We started looking for the true pioneers,” Kruzikas says. GE’s first visit was to Saint Luke’s Neuroscience Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, a leading stroke treatment center. Doctors at Saint Luke’s, a long-time GE customer, were using GE imaging technology to diagnose stroke patients. They were getting better results than others and the GE team wanted to know why.
Typically, no more than 5 percent of stroke patients receive “interventional treatment,” where doctors remove the blood clot in the brain that blocked an artery. This is because patients were not diagnosed properly or did not arrive at the hospital in time. However, Saint Luke’s developed an innovative stroke treatment protocol and increased this number to 40 percent, say Dr. Marilyn Rymer, medical director at the Neuroscience Institute. When stroke patients leave her hospital, they are doing better, have lower stroke severity scores, and stand a better chance to resume their lives. “Saint Luke’s combines education, outreach, and coordination with efficient care,” Kruzikas says. “They’ve got people, process and technology working together.”
Starting in 2005, Dr. Rymer’s team turned stroke treatment at the hospital into a series of interconnected steps, each with a measurable outcome. The steps ranged from teaching regional hospitals and EMT personnel to recognize stroke, performing a CT scan on suspected stroke patients to help inform treatment, and also starting physical, occupational and speech therapy a lot sooner to speed up the recovery and the quality of life. “It is critical for us to be as fast as we can at all times,” says Bridget Brion, a “Code Neuro” nurse at Saint Luke’s intensive care unit. “Every minute of a stroke one million brain cells die.” “Code Neuro” ICU nurses like Brion work directly with emergency room staff to care for a stroke patient. “Instead of having the emergency room acting as an independent silo taking care of stroke, we have a continuity of care that starts immediately when a stroke patient arrives until they go home,” Dr. Rymer says.
The GE team came in 2009 and took a “full download” of Saint Luke’s stroke data since the beginning of the new program. The researchers looked at patient volumes and outcomes, stroke education, time to diagnosis and treatment, length of stay, and costs.
The analysis showed that between 2005 and 2010, the hospital increased the amount of stroke patients by 23 percent and boosted transfers by 17 percent. Around 40 percent of stroke patients at Saint Luke’s receive interventional stroke treatment such as clot-dissolving medication deployed directly at the site of a blood clot in the brain. The average across the healthcare system is only 3 to 5 percent. Given the important stroke related information it provides in a relatively short time, nearly all stroke patients at Saint Luke’s receive a CT scan followed by specialized post-processing analysis. “The bottom line was that patients were doing better and they were able to get discharged earlier,” Kruzikas says.
Last June, Dr. Rymer traveled to GE’s training and education center in Crotonville, New York, and presented the results as “best practice” steps to stroke doctors from the U.S. and abroad. “Every hospital around the country should be stroke ready and stroke able,” Dr. Rymer says. “That just hasn’t happened.” Stroke is the leading cause of disability among adults in the U.S. Approximately 795,000 strokes occur in the U.S., costing $25 billion in 2007.
The Saint Luke’s study was part of GE’s healthymagination program, whose goals include finding innovative solutions to healthcare and improving access to treatment. The GE team is already seeking out facilities that excel in treating breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and low-dose radiation management. “It’s about using what’s out there in a more efficient and productive way,” Kruzikas says. “We want to address our customer’s need and support best practice models that can be replicated around the world.”
Friday, November 9, 2012
Hybrids of the High Seas: Electric Hybrid Ships Cut Millions from Navy’s Fuel Bill
When the U.S. Navy’s USS Makin Island leaves base, it does not steam across the ocean. It motors. The amphibious assault ship, commissioned in 2009, is the Navy’s first hybrid ship. “It’s like a floating Prius, but much bigger,” says Paul English, a marine leader in GE’s Power Conversion business. “If you consider a hybrid car, it makes sense to run the gas engine on the highway and switch to an electric motor in stop-and-go traffic. It’s the same on the ocean.”
GE gave the Makin Island a new system using a combination of two advanced gas turbines for high-speed sailing (they use the same jet engine technology that powers Air Force One and many Boeing 747 jumbos) and a pair of 10,000-horse-power electric motors that kick in when the vessel slows down below 12 knots. The motors draw power from six diesel generators. “Most ships spend the overwhelming majority of their working life doing something other than rushing from one place to another at top speed,” English says. “In fact, for about 70 percent of their operational life, ships tend to kind of hang around, deploy troops and aircraft, or support marines on the ground.”
English says that when a typical gas turbine falls well below maximum output, it becomes “tremendously inefficient, burning fuel just to turn over.” The GE propulsion system solves the problem and saves millions in fuel costs along the way. The Navy estimates that hybrid propulsion will save $250 million in fuel over the life of the ship. “If you work that up over a fleet of ships, you’ll see that something big is going on,” English says.
The 800-foot long USS Makin Island, which can carry close to 100 helicopters and 3,000 sailors and marines, saved the Navy more than 4 million gallons of fuel worth $15 million during its first 7-month deployment. GE has already received orders for two more hybrid ships, including one for the Navy’s latest large-deck amphibious assault ship, USS Tripoli, announced this week.
Says English: “It’s astonishing, it’s big time, it’s kind of catching on.”
In the Navy: Sailors and Marines with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit scrub down the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island. The ship is the Navy’s first vessel powered by hybrid propulsion.
GE gave the Makin Island a new system using a combination of two advanced gas turbines for high-speed sailing (they use the same jet engine technology that powers Air Force One and many Boeing 747 jumbos) and a pair of 10,000-horse-power electric motors that kick in when the vessel slows down below 12 knots. The motors draw power from six diesel generators. “Most ships spend the overwhelming majority of their working life doing something other than rushing from one place to another at top speed,” English says. “In fact, for about 70 percent of their operational life, ships tend to kind of hang around, deploy troops and aircraft, or support marines on the ground.”
English says that when a typical gas turbine falls well below maximum output, it becomes “tremendously inefficient, burning fuel just to turn over.” The GE propulsion system solves the problem and saves millions in fuel costs along the way. The Navy estimates that hybrid propulsion will save $250 million in fuel over the life of the ship. “If you work that up over a fleet of ships, you’ll see that something big is going on,” English says.
The 800-foot long USS Makin Island, which can carry close to 100 helicopters and 3,000 sailors and marines, saved the Navy more than 4 million gallons of fuel worth $15 million during its first 7-month deployment. GE has already received orders for two more hybrid ships, including one for the Navy’s latest large-deck amphibious assault ship, USS Tripoli, announced this week.
Says English: “It’s astonishing, it’s big time, it’s kind of catching on.”
Monday, November 5, 2012
GE Donates $1.1 Million to Sandy Relief Effort in Struggling Region
Thousands of volunteers have fanned out this weekend across towns and neighborhoods still reeling from damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. In Brooklyn’s Red Hook, for example, New Yorkers and visitors hauled out debris from flooded basements and handed out blankets and warm clothes from church steps and garages. At shelters in Park Slope, locals were helping the ill and the elderly with basic human necessities such as using the bathroom and brushing the teeth. In Coney Island, teams of volunteers carried food and water to residents stranded in high rise buildings still without power. Sandy’s victims need all the help they can get. According to the latest estimates, more than 1.3 million homes and business along the East Coast are still without electricity.
GE and its employees have been helping out, too. GE Foundation gave $1 million to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and another $100,000 to the United Way of America for local community needs. The company will also match in full employee donations to the American Red Cross and other disaster relief organizations. GE volunteers have also reached out to local non-profits to help on the ground.
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Friends in Need: Hundreds of volunteers traveled to Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood to help clearing out flooded basements and handing out water, food, and warm clothing.
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Friends in Need: Hundreds of volunteers traveled to Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood to help clearing out flooded basements and handing out water, food, and warm clothing.
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“While state and local governments as well as relief organization are still in the middle of determining the exact needs as a result of Hurricane Sandy, we have employees, customers and neighbors who have lost or damaged homes, or who are still living without power,” said Bob Corcoran, vice president of GE Foundation. “Through our partner relief organizations, GE can help those in need in the aftermath and we will.”
In addition to the Sandy relief donations, the GE Foundation supports disaster relief through a $1 million grant to the American Red Cross Annual Disaster Giving Program. The money helps the Red Cross mount an immediate response to any disaster and help people who are affected by it. GE also helps local communities through more than $8 million in contributions to 500 United Way organizations throughout the United States and in other countries.
GE and its employees have been helping out, too. GE Foundation gave $1 million to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund and another $100,000 to the United Way of America for local community needs. The company will also match in full employee donations to the American Red Cross and other disaster relief organizations. GE volunteers have also reached out to local non-profits to help on the ground.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Sandy-Brooklyn.jpg"]
Friends in Need: Hundreds of volunteers traveled to Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood to help clearing out flooded basements and handing out water, food, and warm clothing.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Sandy-Brooklyn2.jpg"]
Friends in Need: Hundreds of volunteers traveled to Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood to help clearing out flooded basements and handing out water, food, and warm clothing.
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“While state and local governments as well as relief organization are still in the middle of determining the exact needs as a result of Hurricane Sandy, we have employees, customers and neighbors who have lost or damaged homes, or who are still living without power,” said Bob Corcoran, vice president of GE Foundation. “Through our partner relief organizations, GE can help those in need in the aftermath and we will.”
In addition to the Sandy relief donations, the GE Foundation supports disaster relief through a $1 million grant to the American Red Cross Annual Disaster Giving Program. The money helps the Red Cross mount an immediate response to any disaster and help people who are affected by it. GE also helps local communities through more than $8 million in contributions to 500 United Way organizations throughout the United States and in other countries.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Like Salt in the Wound: Dealing with Sandy’s Salt Water Menace
Hurricane Sandy has cut power to six million homes across the northeast of the U.S. on Monday night, breaking trees and ripping power lines. But also insidious was the surging sea that knocked out electricity across New York City and in many seaside towns. Consolidated Edison had preventively shut down the grid in neighborhoods prone to flooding, but the utility still experienced “the largest storm related outage in our history.”
That’s in part because of Sandy's salty surge. “You can’t just pump the sea water out,” says John McDonald, director of technical strategy and policy development at GE Digital Energy. “Dry salt is an electrical conductor. When it covers insulators, the material that prevents the flow of electricity in transformers, switches, and other equipment, it can make electricity flash over and cause a short circuit. It’s also corrosive.” As a result, utility crews in Manhattan and elsewhere have to first pump out Sandy’s brackish tide, spray the equipment thoroughly with fresh water, and dry it with powerful fans, before they can turn the power back on. The same is true for the city’s submerged subway tunnels.
Cleanup can be tedious work, especially when salt water seeps through air vents inside transformers and other machinery. “When the equipment is all washed and completely dry, only then you can energize it step by step, test the functions and make sure that it still works,” McDonald says. “The crews do it by experience.”
That's something that McDonald does not lack. He’s is one of GE’s experts on the so called smart grid. He says that during bad storms like Hurricane Sandy, the smart grid, which is a network of smart meters, sensors, and other “intelligent” devices and systems, can quickly detect and isolate the biggest problems so that they do not cascade and cause a blackout. “You restore service to customers on the healthy sections of the system and focus the repair crews on the part of the system that had the disturbance,” McDonald says.
McDonald says that smart meters are an effective tool for scoping out the size of a power outage. “If you have smart meters at homes, you know specifically which customers are without electricity,” he says. A utility can mash the smart meter data with information from a distribution management system, an outage management system, and the geographic information system that includes digitized network maps and facility data. These maps include the geographical coordinates of all the switches, poles, meters and other assets that the utility owns. “The integration of these systems shows you the present state of each asset, whether it’s energized or de-energized, under maintenance or out of service,” McDonald says. “As repair crews work, they know exactly what’s being done, they know exactly how many customers are being affected in each area and whether the problem is a pole that is down, or a transformer that is out of service because of water problems.”
McDonald says that the smart grid also helps utilities “figure out which customers should be restored first, it helps you to prioritize, and verify that customers have had their power restored.”
It also helps power companies and their customers stay in touch, which is key during chaotic storms like Sandy. “With a smart meter in their homes, and with the other intelligent devices and systems, you can let the customer know that we know that there is a problem, that we have a crew on the way or already on site, and that we expect to have power restored in a certain number of hours,” McDonald says. “That’s important.” It may not turn the power on right away, but it brings customers peace of mind.
That’s in part because of Sandy's salty surge. “You can’t just pump the sea water out,” says John McDonald, director of technical strategy and policy development at GE Digital Energy. “Dry salt is an electrical conductor. When it covers insulators, the material that prevents the flow of electricity in transformers, switches, and other equipment, it can make electricity flash over and cause a short circuit. It’s also corrosive.” As a result, utility crews in Manhattan and elsewhere have to first pump out Sandy’s brackish tide, spray the equipment thoroughly with fresh water, and dry it with powerful fans, before they can turn the power back on. The same is true for the city’s submerged subway tunnels.
Water World: The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel, formerly known as the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, connects Wall Street with Brooklyn. It remains filled with Sandy's surge.
Cleanup can be tedious work, especially when salt water seeps through air vents inside transformers and other machinery. “When the equipment is all washed and completely dry, only then you can energize it step by step, test the functions and make sure that it still works,” McDonald says. “The crews do it by experience.”
That's something that McDonald does not lack. He’s is one of GE’s experts on the so called smart grid. He says that during bad storms like Hurricane Sandy, the smart grid, which is a network of smart meters, sensors, and other “intelligent” devices and systems, can quickly detect and isolate the biggest problems so that they do not cascade and cause a blackout. “You restore service to customers on the healthy sections of the system and focus the repair crews on the part of the system that had the disturbance,” McDonald says.
McDonald says that smart meters are an effective tool for scoping out the size of a power outage. “If you have smart meters at homes, you know specifically which customers are without electricity,” he says. A utility can mash the smart meter data with information from a distribution management system, an outage management system, and the geographic information system that includes digitized network maps and facility data. These maps include the geographical coordinates of all the switches, poles, meters and other assets that the utility owns. “The integration of these systems shows you the present state of each asset, whether it’s energized or de-energized, under maintenance or out of service,” McDonald says. “As repair crews work, they know exactly what’s being done, they know exactly how many customers are being affected in each area and whether the problem is a pole that is down, or a transformer that is out of service because of water problems.”
McDonald says that the smart grid also helps utilities “figure out which customers should be restored first, it helps you to prioritize, and verify that customers have had their power restored.”
It also helps power companies and their customers stay in touch, which is key during chaotic storms like Sandy. “With a smart meter in their homes, and with the other intelligent devices and systems, you can let the customer know that we know that there is a problem, that we have a crew on the way or already on site, and that we expect to have power restored in a certain number of hours,” McDonald says. “That’s important.” It may not turn the power on right away, but it brings customers peace of mind.
Taking Off: How GE Invented the Modern Jet Engine
It was the 1960s and the U.S. Air Force came to GE with a big problem. It had ordered from Lockheed a huge new cargo jet, the largest plane in the world in fact, and needed a jet engine that could match it and haul 50,000 tons of tanks, transporters and equipment 5,000 miles anywhere in the world at a clip of 500 miles per hour. Over the next few years GE engineers huddled with machinists and mechanics and came up with a revolutionary engine design that boosted thrust to record 40,000 pounds but also cut fuel burn by a quarter. The cargo plane, called C-5 Galaxy, was so massive that GE had to test the engines on a B-52 bomber, the closest jet in size. The Air Force received the first C-5 in 1969. The planes have since ferried troops and cargo in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and will remain in service through 2040.
But the Galaxy was only the beginning. Today, nearly all jet propelled passenger and cargo planes use the Galaxy's groundbreaking engine design called high-bypass turbofan. The design has allowed airlines to fly more people farther, faster and with less fuel.
GE saw the commercial potential of the technology first and quickly built a passenger version on the Galaxy engine. That engine, called CF6, first flew in 1971 and workers at GE Aviation’s Evendale plant in Ohio are still building several every day. Today, the CF6 is the most common jet engine in the world. GE has delivered more than 7,000 of them to 250 airlines in 87 countries. More than two thirds of the engines still remain is service, powering all makes of planes, from Boeing 747 jumbos like the President's Air Force One to Airbus long-haul jets and Beluga cargo lifters. The newest versions on the engine will still be flying in 2040, 70 years after it first one debuted.
GE is now applying the CF6 know-how to its latest and most advanced engines, GEnx and LEAP. GEnx, which started flying last year, is 15 percent more efficient than comparable engines in service today, produces 15 percent fewer CO2 emissions, and 30 percent less noise. New materials and design cut weight by hundreds of pounds and boosted thrust. Where the fan in the front of the CF6 engine needs 36 metal blades, GEnx employs half the number of blades manufactured from light-weight carbon fiber composites. As a result, GEnx-powered Boeing 787 Dreamliner recently set new distance and speed records on a round-the world flight.
The LEAP engine, which GE manufactures with France’s Snecma, is scheduled to take off in four years. It will have some parts made from light ceramic composites and others “printed” layer by layer by a new production method called additive manufacturing. “Four decades from now, we could be printing an entire engine this way,” says Michael Idelchik, vice president for advanced technologies at GE Global Research. That’s just in time to replace the last CF6 engine in service.
Larger than Life: Two airmen stand in the shade under the wing of a GE-powered C-5 Galaxy sitting on the runway at Baghdad International Airport.
But the Galaxy was only the beginning. Today, nearly all jet propelled passenger and cargo planes use the Galaxy's groundbreaking engine design called high-bypass turbofan. The design has allowed airlines to fly more people farther, faster and with less fuel.
GE saw the commercial potential of the technology first and quickly built a passenger version on the Galaxy engine. That engine, called CF6, first flew in 1971 and workers at GE Aviation’s Evendale plant in Ohio are still building several every day. Today, the CF6 is the most common jet engine in the world. GE has delivered more than 7,000 of them to 250 airlines in 87 countries. More than two thirds of the engines still remain is service, powering all makes of planes, from Boeing 747 jumbos like the President's Air Force One to Airbus long-haul jets and Beluga cargo lifters. The newest versions on the engine will still be flying in 2040, 70 years after it first one debuted.
GE is now applying the CF6 know-how to its latest and most advanced engines, GEnx and LEAP. GEnx, which started flying last year, is 15 percent more efficient than comparable engines in service today, produces 15 percent fewer CO2 emissions, and 30 percent less noise. New materials and design cut weight by hundreds of pounds and boosted thrust. Where the fan in the front of the CF6 engine needs 36 metal blades, GEnx employs half the number of blades manufactured from light-weight carbon fiber composites. As a result, GEnx-powered Boeing 787 Dreamliner recently set new distance and speed records on a round-the world flight.
The LEAP engine, which GE manufactures with France’s Snecma, is scheduled to take off in four years. It will have some parts made from light ceramic composites and others “printed” layer by layer by a new production method called additive manufacturing. “Four decades from now, we could be printing an entire engine this way,” says Michael Idelchik, vice president for advanced technologies at GE Global Research. That’s just in time to replace the last CF6 engine in service.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Eyes on the Nobel Prize: GE Has Employed 2 Nobel Winners, Opened Labs to Others
GE once hired St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson to throw a fastball through a piece high-tech glass. Gibson pitched six innings and failed. GE engineer Ivar Giaever tried something similar on the atomic scale and succeeded. He figured out how to pitch electrons through a thin layer of an insulating material, a technique called electron tunneling. The discovery helped GE build the world’s first full-body magnetic resonance machine (MRI) and earned Giaever a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973.
October is Nobel Prize season and GE researchers have scored two Nobels of their own. Besides Giaever, GE scientist Irving Langmuir won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his research on lamp filaments. His work allowed GE to take the first images of blood vessels.
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Ivar Giaever's 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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Ivan Giaever in front of Irving Langmuir's portrait.
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Giaever at the Nobel awards ceremony in Stockholm with his prize.
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Giaever's Nobel acceptance telegram.
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Irving Langmuir received his Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932.
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Langmuir's Nobel Prize replica.
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Nobel-winning physicists Richard Feynman, who coined the word nanotechnology, and Ernest O. Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron and whose name graces two U.S. national laboratories (Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley), spent time at GE as research fellows. Martin Perl, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for the discovery of the tau lepton elementary particle, worked at GE as a chemical engineer for two years.
The awards are no accident. GE spends annually $6 billion on R&D. The company develops innovative machines, technologies, and materials, but it also grows its own research talent. “In a company like GE, it was clear that an engineering degree gave you a vast opportunity,” Giaever said. “I got really fired up by that.” He joined an in-house training course for engineers and got his Nobel-winning “tunneling” idea while splitting time between GE’s research lab in Schenectady, New York, and classes at nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute(RPI), where he was working on a PhD. in physics. "When I grew up in Norway, believe it or not, I knew the name Schenectady,” Giaever told a local paper. “I could even spell it."
Thomas Edison moved the company’s machine works to Schenectady in 1886, and GE opened its research labs close by in 1900. Early visitors to Edison’s labs included radio telegraph inventor Guglielmo Marconi, Niels Bohr, who cracked the structure of the atom, I.P. Pavlov famous for his conditioned dogs, and other Nobel winners.
GE research labs now employ 3,000 people, including 1,125 PhDs. The global research center is still in New York, but GE has labs also in San Ramon, California, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Bangalore, and Munich. Just in 2011, GE researchers received more than 3,600 patents. All this innovation is helping to create new jobs, and companies. GE’s newest business, GE Energy Storage, makes high-tech Durathon batteries in a new $170 million plant just outside Schenectady.
Then there is the flip side. “Unfortunately, most people take Nobel Prize winner seriously, and that includes some of the Nobel winners themselves,” Giaever told a GE newsletter. “Because I’m a winner, people tend to think that I should have some unique insights into everything, from the Middle East crisis to every conceivable scientific field. Of course, I don’t know any more about them than anyone else, so I’ve got to watch what I say – which I’m not very good at.”
October is Nobel Prize season and GE researchers have scored two Nobels of their own. Besides Giaever, GE scientist Irving Langmuir won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his research on lamp filaments. His work allowed GE to take the first images of blood vessels.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/NobelPrize1.jpg"]
Ivar Giaever's 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/NobelPrize2.jpg"]
Ivan Giaever in front of Irving Langmuir's portrait.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/NobelPrize3.jpg"]
Giaever at the Nobel awards ceremony in Stockholm with his prize.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/NobelPrize4.jpg"]
Giaever's Nobel acceptance telegram.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/NobelPrize5.jpg"]
Irving Langmuir received his Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/NobelPrize6.jpg"]
Langmuir's Nobel Prize replica.
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Nobel-winning physicists Richard Feynman, who coined the word nanotechnology, and Ernest O. Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron and whose name graces two U.S. national laboratories (Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley), spent time at GE as research fellows. Martin Perl, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 for the discovery of the tau lepton elementary particle, worked at GE as a chemical engineer for two years.
The awards are no accident. GE spends annually $6 billion on R&D. The company develops innovative machines, technologies, and materials, but it also grows its own research talent. “In a company like GE, it was clear that an engineering degree gave you a vast opportunity,” Giaever said. “I got really fired up by that.” He joined an in-house training course for engineers and got his Nobel-winning “tunneling” idea while splitting time between GE’s research lab in Schenectady, New York, and classes at nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute(RPI), where he was working on a PhD. in physics. "When I grew up in Norway, believe it or not, I knew the name Schenectady,” Giaever told a local paper. “I could even spell it."
Thomas Edison moved the company’s machine works to Schenectady in 1886, and GE opened its research labs close by in 1900. Early visitors to Edison’s labs included radio telegraph inventor Guglielmo Marconi, Niels Bohr, who cracked the structure of the atom, I.P. Pavlov famous for his conditioned dogs, and other Nobel winners.
GE research labs now employ 3,000 people, including 1,125 PhDs. The global research center is still in New York, but GE has labs also in San Ramon, California, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Bangalore, and Munich. Just in 2011, GE researchers received more than 3,600 patents. All this innovation is helping to create new jobs, and companies. GE’s newest business, GE Energy Storage, makes high-tech Durathon batteries in a new $170 million plant just outside Schenectady.
Then there is the flip side. “Unfortunately, most people take Nobel Prize winner seriously, and that includes some of the Nobel winners themselves,” Giaever told a GE newsletter. “Because I’m a winner, people tend to think that I should have some unique insights into everything, from the Middle East crisis to every conceivable scientific field. Of course, I don’t know any more about them than anyone else, so I’ve got to watch what I say – which I’m not very good at.”
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Chips Off the Old Block: Where Michelangelo Once Chiseled, GE Workers Build Engineering Marvels
For millennia artisans and craftsmen flocked to the coastal Tuscan town Carrara and scouted its famous marble quarries for the perfect stone. “Oh cursed a thousand times are the day and the hour when I left Carrara,” Michelangelo Buonarroti wrote to his brother 500 years ago. He made his David from Carrara marble, and died chiseling at a block of the same provenance. The marble is still there and so are the craftsmen. Many, however, don’t chisel stone, but weld steel. They are building some of the world’s largest and most complex engineering marvels: mobile power plants called power "modules."
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The massive steel structure contains a mobile power plant and weighs as much as four A380 double-decker jumbo jets. Some 3,700 people came to see the first power module in the Marina di Carrara port before it pushed off for Australia.
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Carrara and the adjacent towns of Avenza and Massa are home to a pair of huge plants and testing fields for GE Oil & Gas. At Avenza, GE workers and engineers are working on five gigantic power modules for the Chevron-operated Gorgon Project, one of the world’s largest natural gas developments that is under construction off the northwest coast of Australia. The Greater Gorgon Area gas field holds an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of gas. The power modules, each fitted out with a GE Frame 9 gas turbine, will supply the project with 650 megawatts of electricity used for compressing and cooling natural gas into liquid that can be shipped in supertankers to customers around the world. Chevron has ordered $1.8 billion from GE in machinery and services, including the Avenza power generators. Gorgon is an example of the "tremendous opportunities to grow" for GE's Oil & Gas business. "We've got the right stuff in the right places," Jeff Immelt, GE chairman and CEO told analysts in September. He expects the business to grow "double digits this year and next."
The first of the 90-foot modules, each big enough to cover half of a football field and weighing 2,300 tons, shipped for Australia aboard of a customized Japanese freighter Yamato last Friday. It took the module 4.5 hours to cover the 500-yard distance between the GE plant and the Marina di Carrara port. The behemoth rolled, centipede like, on 578 computerized wheels attached to four orange self-propelled transporters. At one point the module hugged a residential complex so close that a quarter would be too fat to pass between them.
The tight turn was just one of many unique obstacles facing the engineers. GE nearly tripled the size of the Avenza plant to build the modules. The company also quarantined the construction area. The Gorgon modules will generate power on Barrow Island, a pristine nature preserve, where Australian authorities imposed strict environmental regulations to prevent soil and wildlife contamination. As a result, GE workers and welders at the Avenza plant must walk through pressurized air cabins to clean their clothes every time they enter the building lot. An automatic system washes the soles of their shoes. No food or drink with the exception of bottled water is allowed in either. Each module takes more than a year to complete. Workers must apply six miles of structural welding to assemble the steel trusses that support each structure, and attach 12 miles of electric cable.
Some 3,700 people came to the port to see the module on its 12,400-mile journey. If the seas stay fair, the first module will disembark in Australia in 40 days. Its four brethren should ship out by the end of the third quarter next year.
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[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Avenza9.jpg"]
The massive steel structure contains a mobile power plant and weighs as much as four A380 double-decker jumbo jets. Some 3,700 people came to see the first power module in the Marina di Carrara port before it pushed off for Australia.
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Carrara and the adjacent towns of Avenza and Massa are home to a pair of huge plants and testing fields for GE Oil & Gas. At Avenza, GE workers and engineers are working on five gigantic power modules for the Chevron-operated Gorgon Project, one of the world’s largest natural gas developments that is under construction off the northwest coast of Australia. The Greater Gorgon Area gas field holds an estimated 40 trillion cubic feet of gas. The power modules, each fitted out with a GE Frame 9 gas turbine, will supply the project with 650 megawatts of electricity used for compressing and cooling natural gas into liquid that can be shipped in supertankers to customers around the world. Chevron has ordered $1.8 billion from GE in machinery and services, including the Avenza power generators. Gorgon is an example of the "tremendous opportunities to grow" for GE's Oil & Gas business. "We've got the right stuff in the right places," Jeff Immelt, GE chairman and CEO told analysts in September. He expects the business to grow "double digits this year and next."
The first of the 90-foot modules, each big enough to cover half of a football field and weighing 2,300 tons, shipped for Australia aboard of a customized Japanese freighter Yamato last Friday. It took the module 4.5 hours to cover the 500-yard distance between the GE plant and the Marina di Carrara port. The behemoth rolled, centipede like, on 578 computerized wheels attached to four orange self-propelled transporters. At one point the module hugged a residential complex so close that a quarter would be too fat to pass between them.
The tight turn was just one of many unique obstacles facing the engineers. GE nearly tripled the size of the Avenza plant to build the modules. The company also quarantined the construction area. The Gorgon modules will generate power on Barrow Island, a pristine nature preserve, where Australian authorities imposed strict environmental regulations to prevent soil and wildlife contamination. As a result, GE workers and welders at the Avenza plant must walk through pressurized air cabins to clean their clothes every time they enter the building lot. An automatic system washes the soles of their shoes. No food or drink with the exception of bottled water is allowed in either. Each module takes more than a year to complete. Workers must apply six miles of structural welding to assemble the steel trusses that support each structure, and attach 12 miles of electric cable.
Some 3,700 people came to the port to see the module on its 12,400-mile journey. If the seas stay fair, the first module will disembark in Australia in 40 days. Its four brethren should ship out by the end of the third quarter next year.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Saving Tiny Lives with help from LED Lights and Warm Beds
Dr. Rajesh Kumar and his team of 20 pediatricians inside Rani Children’s Hospital in the impoverished Indian state of Jharkhand are facing a daunting task. Dr. Kumar is one of the few neonatologists serving Jharkhand, population 32 million. On a typical day, he and his team scramble to care for as many as 100 newborns, some weighing less than two pounds at birth. Technology is a matter of life and death for Dr. Kumar’s tiny patients, and it had been slow to reach them.
Click to enlarge
Until last fall, when Rani Children’s Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit installed first Lullaby baby warmers and phototherapy units from GE. GE built the machines specifically for the Indian market, using a process called “reverse innovation.” Vijay Govindarajan, professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and author of Reverse Innovation: Create Far from Home, Win Everywhere, says that smart companies innovate in developing markets, meet local needs and constraints, and then bring the results home. “Once you do that, your solutions become very novel,” he says.
The baby warmer’s easy controls, pictogram buttons, and simple dials, for example, are intuitive and give nurses and doctors more time to focus on the baby, not switches. Hospitals in 65 countries, including some from Western Europe, have placed orders.
Speaking on his cell phone one busy Monday morning from the hospital, Dr. Kumar said that he was managing 50 babies using the Lullaby warmers. “They cannot maintain their own body temperature,” he explained. His staff have been using the warmers in combination with GE's LED phototherapy system. The system is very efficient in treating infants with neonatal jaundice, a common illness caused by an immature liver. If left untreated, bilirubin, the yellow byproduct of dying blood cells, can build up in the body and cause irreversible brain damage. Phototherapy helps transform the bilirubin into a new compound that the baby can excrete. “Technologies like low cost baby warmers and LED phototherapy systems can help save many newborn lives every day, especially in a country like India,” said Dr. Kumar.
The LEDs in the Lullaby last 50,000 hours, almost six years, compared to 1,000 or 2,000 hours for standard fluorescent lamps that require replacement every 3 months and use five times as much energy. The infants depend on the lights to get better, or they must receive a blood transfusion. Lullaby phototherapy devices at Rani Children’s Hospital use LEDs that were developed in India to specifically replace the high-intensity bulbs.
Last month the Lullaby LED phototherapy system won an innovation award from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), ahead of 120 other new entrants in the field of low cost sustainable innovations that help enable better healthcare for more people.
Says Dartmouth’s Govindarajan: “Every GE employee must have a reverse innovation mindset. It’s the biggest opportunity for GE going forward.”
Click to enlarge
Until last fall, when Rani Children’s Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit installed first Lullaby baby warmers and phototherapy units from GE. GE built the machines specifically for the Indian market, using a process called “reverse innovation.” Vijay Govindarajan, professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and author of Reverse Innovation: Create Far from Home, Win Everywhere, says that smart companies innovate in developing markets, meet local needs and constraints, and then bring the results home. “Once you do that, your solutions become very novel,” he says.
The baby warmer’s easy controls, pictogram buttons, and simple dials, for example, are intuitive and give nurses and doctors more time to focus on the baby, not switches. Hospitals in 65 countries, including some from Western Europe, have placed orders.
Speaking on his cell phone one busy Monday morning from the hospital, Dr. Kumar said that he was managing 50 babies using the Lullaby warmers. “They cannot maintain their own body temperature,” he explained. His staff have been using the warmers in combination with GE's LED phototherapy system. The system is very efficient in treating infants with neonatal jaundice, a common illness caused by an immature liver. If left untreated, bilirubin, the yellow byproduct of dying blood cells, can build up in the body and cause irreversible brain damage. Phototherapy helps transform the bilirubin into a new compound that the baby can excrete. “Technologies like low cost baby warmers and LED phototherapy systems can help save many newborn lives every day, especially in a country like India,” said Dr. Kumar.
The LEDs in the Lullaby last 50,000 hours, almost six years, compared to 1,000 or 2,000 hours for standard fluorescent lamps that require replacement every 3 months and use five times as much energy. The infants depend on the lights to get better, or they must receive a blood transfusion. Lullaby phototherapy devices at Rani Children’s Hospital use LEDs that were developed in India to specifically replace the high-intensity bulbs.
Last month the Lullaby LED phototherapy system won an innovation award from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), ahead of 120 other new entrants in the field of low cost sustainable innovations that help enable better healthcare for more people.
Says Dartmouth’s Govindarajan: “Every GE employee must have a reverse innovation mindset. It’s the biggest opportunity for GE going forward.”
Friday, October 12, 2012
One, Two, Three Strikes, It’s Lights Out: How GE Engineer Reinvented Baseball
Late night baseball is as common as peanuts and Cracker Jack, but it has not always been the case. For many decades baseball was a daytime pursuit. Weekday games often clashed with the company clock and stands were empty. Everything changed in the 1930s when GE lighting designer Robert J. Swackhamer hit on an idea for stadium lights. His lights forever changed the economics of the game. They also saved at least one baseball team from ruin.
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The first night baseball game ever played. Salem beat Lynn 7-2 at the General Electric Athletic Field at Lynn, Massachusetts in June 1927.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball3.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The packed stands included players from the Boston Red Sox and Washington Americans who came to see Swackhamer's innovation.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball5.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
Night baseball scored a homerun at Lynn.[/image]
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Swackhamer's drawings for lighting the GE stadium in Lynn.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball4.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The Cincinnati Reds owner Powel Crosley took a gamble and asked GE to raise the lights over the Reds’ Crosley Field.[/image]
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The first night game in Major League’s history took place on Friday, May 24, 1935. A crowd of 20,000 people watched the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1.[/image]
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The team played just seven night games in 1935. They brought in a total of 130,000 fans, or 18,500 visitors on average per game. Not bad for a $50,000 investment.[/image]
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Crosley Field, illuminated.[/image]
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The Anaheim Angels are using GE lights.[/image]
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So do the Pittsburgh Pirates.[/image]
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Swackhamer was thinking about freight trains, not homeruns, when he started working on his lights. In the 1920s, GE’s railroad customers asked Swackhamer to design special arrays of high-wattage lamps to keep rail yards open overnight. The system performed so well that Swackhamer convinced his bosses to try the lights at the General Electric Athletic Field at Lynn, Massachusetts. On June 24, 1927, towers supporting 72 flood lamps illuminated the first night baseball game between Lynn and Salem.
Salem won 7-2 and the packed stands, which included players from the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Americans who played in Boston that afternoon, got the GE sales team thinking. Within three years GE signed up several Minor League teams and by 1935 it had the first big customer. The Cincinnati Reds were on the brink of bankruptcy at the time. No more than 3,000 fans would show up for the average weekday game. Maybe more people will come after work, the Reds owner Powel Crosley and general manager Leland “Larry” MacPhail reasoned. Crosley took a gamble and asked GE to raise the lights over the Reds’ Crosley Field.
The first night game in Major League’s history took place on Friday, May 24, 1935. A crowd of 20,000 people watched the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1. It was narrow win, but it caused a revolution in baseball. “As soon as I saw the lights come on I knew they were there to stay,” said Cincinnati’s Red Barber who was announcing on the first night. The fans liked the night game idea. The Reds drew 207,000 people in 77 home games in the 1934 season. The team played just seven night games in 1935. They brought in a total of 130,000 fans, or 18,500 visitors on average per game. Not bad for a $50,000 investment.
Some large teams viewed the idea of night games with trepidation. “They wanted to turn me over to the sheriff in 1930 when I put in the first [Minor League] baseball lighting system in Des Moines and said it wouldn’t be long before the major leagues would do it,” Swackhamer told the writer David Pietrusza. He had a point. “Undoubtedly an attempt will be made to introduce night baseball in the major leagues, and it can not be considered lightly,” New York Giants manager John McGraw worried. But many teams soon followed the Reds’ lead. By 1941, 11 of the 16 Major League baseball fields had installed GE lights, including the Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and even the Giants.
GE has turned on the lights at 21 baseball arenas around the country, including the St. Louis Cardinals’ Busch Stadium, the Baltimore Orioles’ Camden Yards, and the San Francisco Giant’s AT&T Park. Lighting a baseball stadium is no trifle. The entire process, from planning to installation, can take roughly two years. Debbie Johnson, a lighting designer with GE Lighting, says the most challenging aspect of the process is “coordinating the fixture locations to achieve the optimum lighting levels.” Johnson says that there are “many obstacles like speakers, scoreboards and banners” that can get in the way. Her colleague, lead lighting designer Rick Owen, says that the “aiming process” is the most arduous part of the job and can take days on non-stop work. “We crisscross the field so many times that we end up walking several miles throughout each day," Owen says. Even details such as the way the grass is mowed effect reflectivity and the end result.
But for Johnson, it’s all good. “I love being able to make the game more enjoyable for fans across the nation,” she says. “In the end, it’s all for them.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball2.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The first night baseball game ever played. Salem beat Lynn 7-2 at the General Electric Athletic Field at Lynn, Massachusetts in June 1927.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball3.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The packed stands included players from the Boston Red Sox and Washington Americans who came to see Swackhamer's innovation.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball5.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
Night baseball scored a homerun at Lynn.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball1.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
Swackhamer's drawings for lighting the GE stadium in Lynn.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball4.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The Cincinnati Reds owner Powel Crosley took a gamble and asked GE to raise the lights over the Reds’ Crosley Field.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball7.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The first night game in Major League’s history took place on Friday, May 24, 1935. A crowd of 20,000 people watched the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball6.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The team played just seven night games in 1935. They brought in a total of 130,000 fans, or 18,500 visitors on average per game. Not bad for a $50,000 investment.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball8.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
Crosley Field, illuminated.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball9.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
The Anaheim Angels are using GE lights.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lighting_Baseball12.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]
So do the Pittsburgh Pirates.[/image]
[/slides]
Swackhamer was thinking about freight trains, not homeruns, when he started working on his lights. In the 1920s, GE’s railroad customers asked Swackhamer to design special arrays of high-wattage lamps to keep rail yards open overnight. The system performed so well that Swackhamer convinced his bosses to try the lights at the General Electric Athletic Field at Lynn, Massachusetts. On June 24, 1927, towers supporting 72 flood lamps illuminated the first night baseball game between Lynn and Salem.
Salem won 7-2 and the packed stands, which included players from the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Americans who played in Boston that afternoon, got the GE sales team thinking. Within three years GE signed up several Minor League teams and by 1935 it had the first big customer. The Cincinnati Reds were on the brink of bankruptcy at the time. No more than 3,000 fans would show up for the average weekday game. Maybe more people will come after work, the Reds owner Powel Crosley and general manager Leland “Larry” MacPhail reasoned. Crosley took a gamble and asked GE to raise the lights over the Reds’ Crosley Field.
The first night game in Major League’s history took place on Friday, May 24, 1935. A crowd of 20,000 people watched the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1. It was narrow win, but it caused a revolution in baseball. “As soon as I saw the lights come on I knew they were there to stay,” said Cincinnati’s Red Barber who was announcing on the first night. The fans liked the night game idea. The Reds drew 207,000 people in 77 home games in the 1934 season. The team played just seven night games in 1935. They brought in a total of 130,000 fans, or 18,500 visitors on average per game. Not bad for a $50,000 investment.
Some large teams viewed the idea of night games with trepidation. “They wanted to turn me over to the sheriff in 1930 when I put in the first [Minor League] baseball lighting system in Des Moines and said it wouldn’t be long before the major leagues would do it,” Swackhamer told the writer David Pietrusza. He had a point. “Undoubtedly an attempt will be made to introduce night baseball in the major leagues, and it can not be considered lightly,” New York Giants manager John McGraw worried. But many teams soon followed the Reds’ lead. By 1941, 11 of the 16 Major League baseball fields had installed GE lights, including the Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and even the Giants.
GE has turned on the lights at 21 baseball arenas around the country, including the St. Louis Cardinals’ Busch Stadium, the Baltimore Orioles’ Camden Yards, and the San Francisco Giant’s AT&T Park. Lighting a baseball stadium is no trifle. The entire process, from planning to installation, can take roughly two years. Debbie Johnson, a lighting designer with GE Lighting, says the most challenging aspect of the process is “coordinating the fixture locations to achieve the optimum lighting levels.” Johnson says that there are “many obstacles like speakers, scoreboards and banners” that can get in the way. Her colleague, lead lighting designer Rick Owen, says that the “aiming process” is the most arduous part of the job and can take days on non-stop work. “We crisscross the field so many times that we end up walking several miles throughout each day," Owen says. Even details such as the way the grass is mowed effect reflectivity and the end result.
But for Johnson, it’s all good. “I love being able to make the game more enjoyable for fans across the nation,” she says. “In the end, it’s all for them.”
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Leaving on a Jet Plane: 70 Years Ago America’s First Jet Took Off, Powered by GE Engines
There were no television cameras to record the top-secret flight, no flowers and champagne to greet the pilot. But his landing has changed the world and the way we live and travel.
On October 2, 1942, test pilot Laurence C. “Bill” Craigie climbed into the cockpit of his experimental jet plane, the Bell XP-59A Airacomet, parked on the flat dry bed of Muroc Lake in California’s Mojave Desert. He briefly taxied on the dusty runway, roared a pair of I-A GE jet engines – the first jet engines made in America – and aimed the plane at the deep blue sky. “The flight itself was quite uneventful,” Craigie told the writer Steve Pace years later. “My clearest recollection of my flight in the XP-59A was the extreme quiet and complete lack of vibration as I took off.” It was the first official jet flight in U.S. history.
A handful of GE engineers were on hand at the desert military base that day. Joseph Sorota, now 93 years old, is one of the last living veterans of the secret project to build the jet engines. “They called us the Hush-Hush Boys,” Sorota says.
Much of the development work took place inside a wooden shack in the back lot of GE’s plant in Lynn, Massachusetts. In September 1941, Sorota’s team received a large package from England, under attack by Nazi Germany. Inside was one of the world’s first jet engines developed by British Royal Air Force officer Sir Frank Whittle. Because of GE’s extensive experience with turbo superchargers and steam turbines, the U.S. Air Force picked GE to improve on Whittle’s design.
Problems appeared up almost immediately. “We didn’t have the right tools,” Sorota says. “Our tools didn’t fit the screws because they were on the metric system. We had to grind our tools open a little more to get inside.” Calling for help was out of the question. “The work was top secret, we couldn’t call in the maintenance department,” he says. “I was knocking down walls with a jackhammer when we had to make more room for a test chamber.”
In just 10 months, the GE team had an engine ready for flight. Sorota was not at Lake Muroc when Craigie took off. He was back at Lynn, teaching mechanics how to fix the engine inside a public school, which the government commandeered for that purpose. With World War II still raging, the jet engine was the Pentagon’s secret weapon.
GE has been now making jet engines for seven decades. Its jet technology propels small commuter aircraft, high-tech fighter jets, as well as giant A380 double-decker jumbos and even power plants. A quartet of GE engines powers the Presidential Air Force One.
GE, alone and in partnership with firms like France’s Snecma, has built almost 150,000 jet engines. They are linking continents and shrinking the world. Always innovating, the company has introduced revolutionary designs and materials like ceramic composites that boost efficiency and cut weight, fuel costs, and emissions. Where Craigie’s jet engines had each 1,250 pounds of thrust, GE’s largest engine, the GE90-115B, hit 127,500 pounds, a world record. How much is that? Consider that the Redstone rocket that took Alan Shepard to space had just 78,000 pounds of thrust, and the combined thrust of all eight engines that power the huge B-52 Stratofortress bomber clocks in at 136,000 pounds.
Says Tom Brisken, former general manager at GE Aviation: “We apply every piece of technology we have to our advantage.”
On October 2, 1942, test pilot Laurence C. “Bill” Craigie climbed into the cockpit of his experimental jet plane, the Bell XP-59A Airacomet, parked on the flat dry bed of Muroc Lake in California’s Mojave Desert. He briefly taxied on the dusty runway, roared a pair of I-A GE jet engines – the first jet engines made in America – and aimed the plane at the deep blue sky. “The flight itself was quite uneventful,” Craigie told the writer Steve Pace years later. “My clearest recollection of my flight in the XP-59A was the extreme quiet and complete lack of vibration as I took off.” It was the first official jet flight in U.S. history.
Into the Great Wide Open: Bill Craigie took off in his XP-59A Airacomet from Muroc Lake 70 years ago. He climbed to 6,000 feet during the first official jet flight in U.S. history. The Airacomet was powered by two GE jet engines - the first jet engines made in America.
A handful of GE engineers were on hand at the desert military base that day. Joseph Sorota, now 93 years old, is one of the last living veterans of the secret project to build the jet engines. “They called us the Hush-Hush Boys,” Sorota says.
Much of the development work took place inside a wooden shack in the back lot of GE’s plant in Lynn, Massachusetts. In September 1941, Sorota’s team received a large package from England, under attack by Nazi Germany. Inside was one of the world’s first jet engines developed by British Royal Air Force officer Sir Frank Whittle. Because of GE’s extensive experience with turbo superchargers and steam turbines, the U.S. Air Force picked GE to improve on Whittle’s design.
Problems appeared up almost immediately. “We didn’t have the right tools,” Sorota says. “Our tools didn’t fit the screws because they were on the metric system. We had to grind our tools open a little more to get inside.” Calling for help was out of the question. “The work was top secret, we couldn’t call in the maintenance department,” he says. “I was knocking down walls with a jackhammer when we had to make more room for a test chamber.”
In just 10 months, the GE team had an engine ready for flight. Sorota was not at Lake Muroc when Craigie took off. He was back at Lynn, teaching mechanics how to fix the engine inside a public school, which the government commandeered for that purpose. With World War II still raging, the jet engine was the Pentagon’s secret weapon.
GE has been now making jet engines for seven decades. Its jet technology propels small commuter aircraft, high-tech fighter jets, as well as giant A380 double-decker jumbos and even power plants. A quartet of GE engines powers the Presidential Air Force One.
GE, alone and in partnership with firms like France’s Snecma, has built almost 150,000 jet engines. They are linking continents and shrinking the world. Always innovating, the company has introduced revolutionary designs and materials like ceramic composites that boost efficiency and cut weight, fuel costs, and emissions. Where Craigie’s jet engines had each 1,250 pounds of thrust, GE’s largest engine, the GE90-115B, hit 127,500 pounds, a world record. How much is that? Consider that the Redstone rocket that took Alan Shepard to space had just 78,000 pounds of thrust, and the combined thrust of all eight engines that power the huge B-52 Stratofortress bomber clocks in at 136,000 pounds.
Says Tom Brisken, former general manager at GE Aviation: “We apply every piece of technology we have to our advantage.”
Friday, September 28, 2012
The Right Stuff: New “Flexible” Power Plant from GE Has Supersonic Pedigree
When GE engineers decided to build a better power plant a few years ago, they looked up at the sky. In the 1950s, aviation legend Gerhard Neumann built the first GE supersonic jet engine by using a system of compressor blades called “variable vanes” that could turn and alter the flow of air coming inside the engine during flight. “It changed everything,” says former GE aviation engineer Jim Johnson.
Today, nearly every jet engine uses Neumann’s technology and so does GE’s new “flexible” power plant. It dramatically cuts emissions and saves utilities fuel and money by allowing them to quickly change output and generate electricity only when customers need it. “Typically, efficiency drops off quickly and emissions go up as you reduce output,” says Eric Gerbhardt, vice president for thermal engineering at GE Power & Water. “Now we can come down to as low as 14 percent of maximum output and still remain emissions compliant. That’s something customers have been asking for.”
Here’s why. An electricity socket is like a shower head in your bathroom. When you take a shower in the morning, you expect the same strong water pressure. When utilities tap renewable electricity from wind farms and solar plants, they can keep the same power “pressure” flowing to your home and cut the amount of power they generate by burning gas and other fuels. The problem is that ordinary power stations are rigid and can’t respond to power gyrations caused by renewables dependent on the wind and the sun. The new GE plant, called FlexEfficiency 60, however, can ramp up power as fast as 100 megawatts per minute, twice as fast as the industry standard.
Advanced combustion technology, also developed for jet engines, keeps emissions like nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide in check. The technology is using blades made from single-crystals of nickel-based superalloys to manage extremely high temperatures and reduce emissions in the combustion chamber. “The whole blade is grown from a single metal kernel,” Gerbhardt says. Other blades are hollow and peppered with tiny holes, like miniature strainers. The ducts and holes channel cooler air to keep the temperature around the blades just right and prevent the blades from melting. “It’s a very precise science how every hole is positioned,” Gerbhardt says. “We shine infrared light on the blades on our test stand in Greenville and pick out the hot and cool spots,” he says. “We feed that data back to our design team.”
All this innovation and research means that new plant can stay as efficient as 61 percent even at low electricity output. According to the New York Times, the U.S. Department of Energy had compared such efficiency to running a four minute mile. Gerbhardt said that before the GE “flexible” plant came along, utilities would idle their plants overnight when demand drops and restart them in the morning. This is inefficient. “Now they can run it at a very low load for several hours and turn it back on when power is needed.”
Today, nearly every jet engine uses Neumann’s technology and so does GE’s new “flexible” power plant. It dramatically cuts emissions and saves utilities fuel and money by allowing them to quickly change output and generate electricity only when customers need it. “Typically, efficiency drops off quickly and emissions go up as you reduce output,” says Eric Gerbhardt, vice president for thermal engineering at GE Power & Water. “Now we can come down to as low as 14 percent of maximum output and still remain emissions compliant. That’s something customers have been asking for.”
Jet Son: GE's new "flexible" power plant is using some of the same GE technology that allowed Chuck Yeager to fly at twice the speed of sound.
Here’s why. An electricity socket is like a shower head in your bathroom. When you take a shower in the morning, you expect the same strong water pressure. When utilities tap renewable electricity from wind farms and solar plants, they can keep the same power “pressure” flowing to your home and cut the amount of power they generate by burning gas and other fuels. The problem is that ordinary power stations are rigid and can’t respond to power gyrations caused by renewables dependent on the wind and the sun. The new GE plant, called FlexEfficiency 60, however, can ramp up power as fast as 100 megawatts per minute, twice as fast as the industry standard.
Advanced combustion technology, also developed for jet engines, keeps emissions like nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide in check. The technology is using blades made from single-crystals of nickel-based superalloys to manage extremely high temperatures and reduce emissions in the combustion chamber. “The whole blade is grown from a single metal kernel,” Gerbhardt says. Other blades are hollow and peppered with tiny holes, like miniature strainers. The ducts and holes channel cooler air to keep the temperature around the blades just right and prevent the blades from melting. “It’s a very precise science how every hole is positioned,” Gerbhardt says. “We shine infrared light on the blades on our test stand in Greenville and pick out the hot and cool spots,” he says. “We feed that data back to our design team.”
All this innovation and research means that new plant can stay as efficient as 61 percent even at low electricity output. According to the New York Times, the U.S. Department of Energy had compared such efficiency to running a four minute mile. Gerbhardt said that before the GE “flexible” plant came along, utilities would idle their plants overnight when demand drops and restart them in the morning. This is inefficient. “Now they can run it at a very low load for several hours and turn it back on when power is needed.”
Monday, September 24, 2012
Smart Water: From Uganda to Pakistan, Two GE Volunteers Clean Water with Table Salt and Ingenuity
One day last November, GE engineer Steve Froelicher got a phone call from Sister Mary Ethel Parrott. Sister Mary Ethel is a nun, a teacher and a physicist who helped set up a boarding school for girls in rural Uganda. She needed clean water for her Ugandan pupils and Froelicher, a “senior product architect” who designs washing machines and water heaters at GE Appliances in Louisville, had just the thing for her.
For a whole year, Froelicher, his colleague Sam DuPlessis, and two GE retirees had volunteered every Wednesday night inside Froelicher’s Louisville garage, building an inexpensive water purification device the size of a tea kettle for WaterStep, a local charity. The device uses a car battery, a couple of electrodes, table salt, and some basic chemistry to make chlorine from brine and kill pathogens in polluted water. “The gas mixes with contaminated water much like carbon dioxide mixes with soda pop,” Froelicher says. “In Uganda, they can get their hands on salt, but they can’t get their hands on much more. With salt, a car battery and some solar panels you could be making clean water for years.”
WaterStep, which is working to provide clean water to people in Haiti, India, Pakistan and 23 other developing countries around the world, estimates that a child dies every 20 second due to a waterborne illness and that 1.2 billion people, one sixth of the planet’s total, lack daily access to safe drinking water.
Froelicher and DuPlessis first heard from WaterStep in November 2010. A cholera epidemic had just hit Haiti. The non-profit was looking for a rugged, portable device made from ordinary materials that could treat 1,000 gallons of water in less than an hour. They started by asking a lot of questions. “We had to learn many details that were not part of our jobs,” Froelicher explains. “I’m not a chemical engineer and neither is Sam. Like any typical new product development, we had to go back to school to understand what we were trying to do to make an excellent device.”
Within weeks, they were making prototypes inside Froelicher’s garage, a basic handyman’s workshop with a vice, a drill, a saw and a handful of other woodworking tools. This turned out to be a blessing. “By limiting ourselves, we developed a simple design and assembly techniques,” DuPlessis says. The team went through a “battery of testing,” Froelicher says. When one prototype was too small and another too large, they made a third that was taller. They manufactured six protypes before they settled on a design.
The device fits inside a 10-inch PVC cylinder with two plastic tubes attached at the top. It strips chlorine from salt water by applying battery voltage across a circular membrane, a process called electrolysis. The chlorine bubbles off one of the electrodes and floats to the top where the device captures it and mixes it with contaminated water. The chlorine begins to oxidize organic matter and kills the pathogens in the water. The water is usually safe to drink two hours after chlorination.
In November 2011, a group of Louisville doctors serving in a flooded area in Pakistan asked WaterStep for 50 chlorinators. The GE volunteers moved production from Froelicher’s garage to the non-profit’s small workshop. “We did a five-week crash course in building these things,” DuPlessis says. But the Pakistan team got their order. Each device traveled as a kit of some 100 parts inside a rugged tote. “The kit has tubing and clamps, spare parts and all kinds of stuff they need to build a mini-water treatment system,” Froelicher says. “You can check it like luggage.”
After the first order, more GE volunteers signed on. The sourcing team jumped in, talked to suppliers who either discounted or donated materials for the cause, and slashed material costs by 50 percent. A lean manufacturing team set up a production line that could scale from making 10 chlorinators per day to producing hundreds if required.
Froelicher and DuPlessis are now working to reduce the required battery power from 120 watts to 25 watts. Sister Mary Ethel's school in Uganda can already recharge its chlorinator battery from a solar panel. Says Froelicher: “If we can pull that off, we can run the device on a very small solar panel practically anywhere in the world.”
For a whole year, Froelicher, his colleague Sam DuPlessis, and two GE retirees had volunteered every Wednesday night inside Froelicher’s Louisville garage, building an inexpensive water purification device the size of a tea kettle for WaterStep, a local charity. The device uses a car battery, a couple of electrodes, table salt, and some basic chemistry to make chlorine from brine and kill pathogens in polluted water. “The gas mixes with contaminated water much like carbon dioxide mixes with soda pop,” Froelicher says. “In Uganda, they can get their hands on salt, but they can’t get their hands on much more. With salt, a car battery and some solar panels you could be making clean water for years.”
Worth His Salt: Steve Froelicher, second from the right, and volunteers from GE and WaterStep built 100 chlorinators at Louisville's IdeaFestival held last week.
WaterStep, which is working to provide clean water to people in Haiti, India, Pakistan and 23 other developing countries around the world, estimates that a child dies every 20 second due to a waterborne illness and that 1.2 billion people, one sixth of the planet’s total, lack daily access to safe drinking water.
Froelicher and DuPlessis first heard from WaterStep in November 2010. A cholera epidemic had just hit Haiti. The non-profit was looking for a rugged, portable device made from ordinary materials that could treat 1,000 gallons of water in less than an hour. They started by asking a lot of questions. “We had to learn many details that were not part of our jobs,” Froelicher explains. “I’m not a chemical engineer and neither is Sam. Like any typical new product development, we had to go back to school to understand what we were trying to do to make an excellent device.”
Within weeks, they were making prototypes inside Froelicher’s garage, a basic handyman’s workshop with a vice, a drill, a saw and a handful of other woodworking tools. This turned out to be a blessing. “By limiting ourselves, we developed a simple design and assembly techniques,” DuPlessis says. The team went through a “battery of testing,” Froelicher says. When one prototype was too small and another too large, they made a third that was taller. They manufactured six protypes before they settled on a design.
The device fits inside a 10-inch PVC cylinder with two plastic tubes attached at the top. It strips chlorine from salt water by applying battery voltage across a circular membrane, a process called electrolysis. The chlorine bubbles off one of the electrodes and floats to the top where the device captures it and mixes it with contaminated water. The chlorine begins to oxidize organic matter and kills the pathogens in the water. The water is usually safe to drink two hours after chlorination.
In November 2011, a group of Louisville doctors serving in a flooded area in Pakistan asked WaterStep for 50 chlorinators. The GE volunteers moved production from Froelicher’s garage to the non-profit’s small workshop. “We did a five-week crash course in building these things,” DuPlessis says. But the Pakistan team got their order. Each device traveled as a kit of some 100 parts inside a rugged tote. “The kit has tubing and clamps, spare parts and all kinds of stuff they need to build a mini-water treatment system,” Froelicher says. “You can check it like luggage.”
After the first order, more GE volunteers signed on. The sourcing team jumped in, talked to suppliers who either discounted or donated materials for the cause, and slashed material costs by 50 percent. A lean manufacturing team set up a production line that could scale from making 10 chlorinators per day to producing hundreds if required.
Froelicher and DuPlessis are now working to reduce the required battery power from 120 watts to 25 watts. Sister Mary Ethel's school in Uganda can already recharge its chlorinator battery from a solar panel. Says Froelicher: “If we can pull that off, we can run the device on a very small solar panel practically anywhere in the world.”
Friday, September 21, 2012
Blood Diamonds of Ore: GE Takes On Conflict Minerals
The Democratic Republic of Congo is Africa’s second largest country, but also the continent’s most violent. Over the last two decades, foreign and domestic armies, militias and gangs of armed thugs have been waging war and staging rebellions that have killed at least 5.5 million people and displaced many more. The fighters sustain their troops with money from the DRC’s rich mineral deposits. Observers estimate that armed groups control half of the tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold mines in the vast eastern part of the country and generate as much as $225 million annually from the mineral quarries. “They may own the mines in the conflict region, or tax the mines or tax the trade routes used to export the minerals,” says Sandy Merber, counsel for international trade regulation and sourcing at GE.
Because manufacturers around the world use these minerals in everything from digital cameras and cell phones to paint and golf clubs, NGOs seeking to cut off the funding have pushed companies to audit their supply chains to reduce the risk that the minerals they are using may support the conflict. In August, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced a new reporting rule that requires listed companies to “publicly disclose their use of conflict minerals that originated in the DRC or an adjoining country.” GE, through its citizenship initiatives, has been working with companies, NGOs, investors as well as government agencies to foster a system that supports cutting out conflict minerals from the supply chain and improves reporting.
One way is to create a network of certified conflict-free smelters. “There are thousands and thousands of suppliers and many layers of the supply chain, but the choke point in the system is the smelters,” Merber says. There are only about 200 significant smelters around the world. GE works with groups like the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition and Global e-Sustainability Initiative that have created a program to verify the sources and origins of the minerals at the smelters. “As this smelter verification program matures, companies can pass down through their supply chains a requirement that minerals be sourced from conflict-free smelters,” Merber says.
The GE Foundation, along with HP and Intel, is now participating in the Conflict-Free Smelter Early Adopters Fund, which provides grants to small smelters to help offset the costs of being audited. The Foundation also supports some of the leading NGOs monitoring the minerals trade.
GE is also one of 30 companies participating in a pilot program to implement guidelines on conflict minerals due diligence developed by the OECD. (You can find more details on GE’s new citizenship website.)
The GE Foundation is also an initial contributor to the Public Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade. Merber says that the Alliance will support efforts “to map supply routes from mines in the conflict region and elsewhere in the Congo to prove that you can actually source from the Congo and still get verified.” According to estimates, some 3 million people are working in this industry in the Congo. “You want to have a conflict-free policy but not a Congo-free policy,” Merber says. “If you shut down their place of business, that’s another humanitarian crisis.”
Wolframite Mining in the DRC's Kailo Province: Wolframite rocks are the source of tungsten, a rare hard metal used in light bulb filaments, machine tools, and catalysts in coal-fired power plants.
Because manufacturers around the world use these minerals in everything from digital cameras and cell phones to paint and golf clubs, NGOs seeking to cut off the funding have pushed companies to audit their supply chains to reduce the risk that the minerals they are using may support the conflict. In August, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced a new reporting rule that requires listed companies to “publicly disclose their use of conflict minerals that originated in the DRC or an adjoining country.” GE, through its citizenship initiatives, has been working with companies, NGOs, investors as well as government agencies to foster a system that supports cutting out conflict minerals from the supply chain and improves reporting.
One way is to create a network of certified conflict-free smelters. “There are thousands and thousands of suppliers and many layers of the supply chain, but the choke point in the system is the smelters,” Merber says. There are only about 200 significant smelters around the world. GE works with groups like the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition and Global e-Sustainability Initiative that have created a program to verify the sources and origins of the minerals at the smelters. “As this smelter verification program matures, companies can pass down through their supply chains a requirement that minerals be sourced from conflict-free smelters,” Merber says.
The GE Foundation, along with HP and Intel, is now participating in the Conflict-Free Smelter Early Adopters Fund, which provides grants to small smelters to help offset the costs of being audited. The Foundation also supports some of the leading NGOs monitoring the minerals trade.
GE is also one of 30 companies participating in a pilot program to implement guidelines on conflict minerals due diligence developed by the OECD. (You can find more details on GE’s new citizenship website.)
The GE Foundation is also an initial contributor to the Public Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade. Merber says that the Alliance will support efforts “to map supply routes from mines in the conflict region and elsewhere in the Congo to prove that you can actually source from the Congo and still get verified.” According to estimates, some 3 million people are working in this industry in the Congo. “You want to have a conflict-free policy but not a Congo-free policy,” Merber says. “If you shut down their place of business, that’s another humanitarian crisis.”
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Cleared For Take-Off: Air Traffic Control Flies into the Cloud
Imagine it’s a summer Friday at Hartsfield-Jackson International, the world’s busiest airport. A thunderstorm this morning has broken dozens of connections in and out of Atlanta. Departing planes crawl in a long line along the tarmac. A few thousand feet up, some pilots are free to land while others groan as they turn into their fourth lap. Everybody wants faster updates from the control tower.
Air traffic delays don’t just spoil meeting plans or dinner at home. A second layer of frustration comes from not knowing what is happening. Even the pilots use the intercoms to vent: “Folks, I am still waiting to hear what gate we have been assigned.” Or, “We are 22nd in line to take off, and I am not sure what the hold-up is.”
But what if technology could solve the information problem and tame the delays? That solution is cloud computing, the same massive computer data farms that already hold your Gmail email, Picasa pictures, or Spotify music. “The cloud will get passengers from A to B quicker,” says Mike Durling, manager of GE’s supervisory controls and systems integration lab, at GE Global Research. “It allows speedy decisions about the plane’s position and path, allowing more seamless trips.”
Right now, air-traffic control uses technology that is hosted locally. A plane relies on the information it gets from the local tower. Air-traffic information has not yet been networked. But in the future, pilots will be able to fly into a figurative cloud of information that receives feeds from all over the world.
Soon air traffic controllers, whether in Atlanta or Zurich, will share real-time data through the cloud (really huge, earth-bound warehouses filled with thousands of data servers). Pilots will use that information to determine routes and altitude and prepare for any delays that may be brewing. Instead of radioing the tower, a pilot can pull down gate assignments herself, shaving minutes from the flight.
Durling’s lab won a contract this year to add cloud computing capabilities to ‘NextGen’ Air Traffic Management technology, the name given to a new National Airspace System due to be rolled out in the U.S. by 2025. NextGen will haul the country’s air traffic control from an aging ground-based system to a satellite-based system.
One benefit of such an upgrade is that journey times will shorten. So this new technology means less fuel-guzzling and lower emissions. Looked at a different way, shorter trips mean lower ticket prices.
Cloud computing is already a popular way to store music or word processing. But it’s been slow to progress to the aviation sector. The concept’s the same. Various users can tap into a remote location where there are no limits on data storage, performance and agility. GE teams feed the cloud with reams of data about wind speed, altitude and journey times, which are the building blocks of larger models that manage air traffic.
“The cloud fills in the gaps between the different independent platforms, such as those in the cockpit and on the ground,” says Durling. It reduces the impact of unknown factors—such as poor weather, off-schedule airplanes or the lack of empty gates—that add time to the journey.
So if you’re reading this at 10,000 feet while waiting for a landing slot—help’s on the way.
Cloudy With a Chance of Data: Storing air traffic management data in the cloud is part of GE’s push to build the Industrial Internet.
Air traffic delays don’t just spoil meeting plans or dinner at home. A second layer of frustration comes from not knowing what is happening. Even the pilots use the intercoms to vent: “Folks, I am still waiting to hear what gate we have been assigned.” Or, “We are 22nd in line to take off, and I am not sure what the hold-up is.”
But what if technology could solve the information problem and tame the delays? That solution is cloud computing, the same massive computer data farms that already hold your Gmail email, Picasa pictures, or Spotify music. “The cloud will get passengers from A to B quicker,” says Mike Durling, manager of GE’s supervisory controls and systems integration lab, at GE Global Research. “It allows speedy decisions about the plane’s position and path, allowing more seamless trips.”
Right now, air-traffic control uses technology that is hosted locally. A plane relies on the information it gets from the local tower. Air-traffic information has not yet been networked. But in the future, pilots will be able to fly into a figurative cloud of information that receives feeds from all over the world.
Soon air traffic controllers, whether in Atlanta or Zurich, will share real-time data through the cloud (really huge, earth-bound warehouses filled with thousands of data servers). Pilots will use that information to determine routes and altitude and prepare for any delays that may be brewing. Instead of radioing the tower, a pilot can pull down gate assignments herself, shaving minutes from the flight.
Durling’s lab won a contract this year to add cloud computing capabilities to ‘NextGen’ Air Traffic Management technology, the name given to a new National Airspace System due to be rolled out in the U.S. by 2025. NextGen will haul the country’s air traffic control from an aging ground-based system to a satellite-based system.
One benefit of such an upgrade is that journey times will shorten. So this new technology means less fuel-guzzling and lower emissions. Looked at a different way, shorter trips mean lower ticket prices.
Cloud computing is already a popular way to store music or word processing. But it’s been slow to progress to the aviation sector. The concept’s the same. Various users can tap into a remote location where there are no limits on data storage, performance and agility. GE teams feed the cloud with reams of data about wind speed, altitude and journey times, which are the building blocks of larger models that manage air traffic.
“The cloud fills in the gaps between the different independent platforms, such as those in the cockpit and on the ground,” says Durling. It reduces the impact of unknown factors—such as poor weather, off-schedule airplanes or the lack of empty gates—that add time to the journey.
So if you’re reading this at 10,000 feet while waiting for a landing slot—help’s on the way.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Can You Hear Me Now? Telecom Orders For Next-Gen Durathon Battery Top $63 Million Since July Launch
Every day, Kenya’s capital Nairobi goes four hours without power. That’s the price of a growing economy bumping against creaky infrastructure struggling to keep up. The blackouts are big problem for people like Bernard Njoroge, whose company Adrian Group keeps cellphone towers running for Kenya’s largest telecom, Safaricom. Njoroge used to rely on noisy power generators belching diesel fumes into Kenya’s hot air, and lead-acid batteries that could barely bridge the outage gap.
Not anymore. Njoroge just purchased 200 next-generation Durathon batteries made by GE. The batteries can last for as long as nine hours, a plenty of time to cover a power outage and recharge from the grid. “For a long time, I’ve been looking for an innovation like Durathon,” Njoroge says. “I have no need to run the generators, no more trouble with noise. With the batteries we can provide 99 percent availability of the network.”
GE introduced Durathon, the flagship product of a new business unit called GE Energy Storage, only two months ago. Njoroge’s Adrian Group is one of 10 new customers from Africa, Asia, and the U.S. who just placed orders for batteries valued at $63 million. That’s on top of an order placed earlier in the summer by South Africa’s Megatron Federal.
Durathon is using innovative sodium chemistry to generate charge. The batteries, which contain more than 30 patents, can recharge 3,500 times, ten times more often than ordinary batteries, and last for two decades. They work in temperatures from minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit to 140-degree heat. They are non-toxic, fully recyclable, and take half the amount of space as lead-acid batteries.
GE is spending $170 million on a brand new Durathon plant the size of four football fields in Schenectady, New York. At full capacity, the plant will employ 450 workers. GE engineer Glen Merfeld was one of the lead engineers involved in developing Durathon. “We had to bring together expertise in materials science, ceramics, metallurgy, and manufacturing technology,” Merfeld says. “But there was almost nothing we couldn’t work through. I think that’s part of the story, why it’s so exciting that we have this incredibly cool new factory.”
Njoroge’s Adrian Group supports telecoms in five East African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. “They’ve caught the word of what we are doing,” he says. “There’s going to be a lot of traffic, people coming to see the application in Nairobi. This product will be a fast seller in the region.”
Not anymore. Njoroge just purchased 200 next-generation Durathon batteries made by GE. The batteries can last for as long as nine hours, a plenty of time to cover a power outage and recharge from the grid. “For a long time, I’ve been looking for an innovation like Durathon,” Njoroge says. “I have no need to run the generators, no more trouble with noise. With the batteries we can provide 99 percent availability of the network.”
Telecom operators in Africa and elsewhere will soon start powering cell phone towers with GE’s next-generation Durathon batteries. The low-maintenance batteries last twice as long as ordinary lead-acid batteries and can work for 20 years. They are also non-toxic and fully recyclable.
GE introduced Durathon, the flagship product of a new business unit called GE Energy Storage, only two months ago. Njoroge’s Adrian Group is one of 10 new customers from Africa, Asia, and the U.S. who just placed orders for batteries valued at $63 million. That’s on top of an order placed earlier in the summer by South Africa’s Megatron Federal.
Durathon is using innovative sodium chemistry to generate charge. The batteries, which contain more than 30 patents, can recharge 3,500 times, ten times more often than ordinary batteries, and last for two decades. They work in temperatures from minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit to 140-degree heat. They are non-toxic, fully recyclable, and take half the amount of space as lead-acid batteries.
GE is spending $170 million on a brand new Durathon plant the size of four football fields in Schenectady, New York. At full capacity, the plant will employ 450 workers. GE engineer Glen Merfeld was one of the lead engineers involved in developing Durathon. “We had to bring together expertise in materials science, ceramics, metallurgy, and manufacturing technology,” Merfeld says. “But there was almost nothing we couldn’t work through. I think that’s part of the story, why it’s so exciting that we have this incredibly cool new factory.”
Njoroge’s Adrian Group supports telecoms in five East African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. “They’ve caught the word of what we are doing,” he says. “There’s going to be a lot of traffic, people coming to see the application in Nairobi. This product will be a fast seller in the region.”
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Rocket Science: New “Ceramic” Jet Engine Has Space Shuttle Pedigree
Soon after the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on descent from orbit in February 2003, material scientists and engineers at GE’s plant in Newark, Delaware, started building a set of repair kits long thought impossible. Columbia suffered a crack in its left wing by a briefcase-sized insulating foam fragment that fell from a fuel tank during take-off. During her return, superheated air entered the spacecraft through the wound and ripped the shuttle apart 15 minutes before touchdown. The GE team, in collaboration with NASA and industry partners, helped design and fabricate unique patches to plug up in space similar damage on the shuttle’s wings and belly, and prevent disasters in the future.
The team designed the patches from a special ceramic composite material that could survive wild temperature swings, from minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit in orbit to a 3,000-degree inferno caused by the drag of Earth’s atmosphere during the shuttle’s 17,000 miles-per-hour descent. “You could bolt it on the wing leading edge in space and cover the damaged portion,” says Robert Klacka, technology marketing manager at GE Ceramic Composite Products. “The repair kit had 30 different patches that could cover a hole located on over 80 percent of the wing leading edge surface. The thin, flexible panels used a high temperature toggle bolt to attach it through the hole on the wing. Thankfully, we never had to use them.”
That’s not entirely true. The shuttle fleet retired last year, but the materials live on vicariously inside GE’s innovative LEAP engines, as steering components for ballistic missile defense systems, and as rocket motor thrusters for a new commercial space transportation aircraft. “The [Space Shuttle] kits were basically using the same family of materials,” Klacka says.
Ceramic materials can take a lot of heat but are notoriously fragile. Just think of the coffee mug. Scientists at GE Aviation, GE Global Research and at Klacka’s Delaware plant have spent the last two decades developing ceramic composites that are tough and one-third the weight of the best nickel super-alloys. They can work beyond the alloys’ melting temperatures, a property that allows jet engines like the LEAP to become more efficient.
GE makes two types of ceramic composites. Ceramics strengthened with carbon fibers withstand over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and serve as hot gas valves and thrusters inside of rocket systems, or heat shields for hypersonic aircraft and re-entry vehicles in the aerospace industry. The second group, which is reinforced with ceramic fibers and operates at 2,400 degrees, is more durable, and has applications as turbine tip shrouds, combustor liners, blades, and fairings in turbine and jet engines like the LEAP.
GE workers in Delaware make the composite parts from specially engineered fiber tapes that are formed into turbine engine components, infiltrated with silicon and converted to ceramic. “I’ve seen a lot of different materials,” says Klacka, who has been in the composites business for over 25 years. “Our materials have the strength, durability and manufacturability that other ceramic composites lack. That’s why they work.”
Return to Flight: The Space Shuttle Discovery returned to flight in July 2005. It was the first shuttle to fly after the Columbia disaster. It carried two wing and body repair kits made from a revolutionary ceramic composite material developed by GE scientists.
The team designed the patches from a special ceramic composite material that could survive wild temperature swings, from minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit in orbit to a 3,000-degree inferno caused by the drag of Earth’s atmosphere during the shuttle’s 17,000 miles-per-hour descent. “You could bolt it on the wing leading edge in space and cover the damaged portion,” says Robert Klacka, technology marketing manager at GE Ceramic Composite Products. “The repair kit had 30 different patches that could cover a hole located on over 80 percent of the wing leading edge surface. The thin, flexible panels used a high temperature toggle bolt to attach it through the hole on the wing. Thankfully, we never had to use them.”
That’s not entirely true. The shuttle fleet retired last year, but the materials live on vicariously inside GE’s innovative LEAP engines, as steering components for ballistic missile defense systems, and as rocket motor thrusters for a new commercial space transportation aircraft. “The [Space Shuttle] kits were basically using the same family of materials,” Klacka says.
Ceramic materials can take a lot of heat but are notoriously fragile. Just think of the coffee mug. Scientists at GE Aviation, GE Global Research and at Klacka’s Delaware plant have spent the last two decades developing ceramic composites that are tough and one-third the weight of the best nickel super-alloys. They can work beyond the alloys’ melting temperatures, a property that allows jet engines like the LEAP to become more efficient.
GE makes two types of ceramic composites. Ceramics strengthened with carbon fibers withstand over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and serve as hot gas valves and thrusters inside of rocket systems, or heat shields for hypersonic aircraft and re-entry vehicles in the aerospace industry. The second group, which is reinforced with ceramic fibers and operates at 2,400 degrees, is more durable, and has applications as turbine tip shrouds, combustor liners, blades, and fairings in turbine and jet engines like the LEAP.
GE workers in Delaware make the composite parts from specially engineered fiber tapes that are formed into turbine engine components, infiltrated with silicon and converted to ceramic. “I’ve seen a lot of different materials,” says Klacka, who has been in the composites business for over 25 years. “Our materials have the strength, durability and manufacturability that other ceramic composites lack. That’s why they work.”
Monday, September 10, 2012
Appetite for Destruction: Giant Fridge Shredder Hits 100,000 Milestone
Brian Conners likes to break things down. “I am a manufacturing engineer,” he says. “But I like taking things apart, rather than building them.” He’s got the perfect job. Conners is president and chief operating officer of ARCA Advanced Processing, which runs a hulking 40-foot shredder that can chomp down one two-door refrigerator-freezer to chip-sized bits every 50 seconds, or 600 of them per day. “Think of it as a giant paper shredder,” he says.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CuttingEdge.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]Showing Its Teeth: Think of the 40-foot recycling behemoth as a giant paper shredder. Knives like these can cut up a refrigerator to chip-sized bits in 50 seconds.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT1.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]Conners’ shredder is the only such machine in the U.S. manufactured by UNTHA Recycling Technologies (URT).[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT2.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system can process approximately one refrigerator per 50 seconds. [/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT4.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system can transform refrigerator insulating foam into pellets for use as fuel or other products.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT5A.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system recovers approximately 95 percent of the insulating foam in refrigerators in a sealed system, reducing greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance emissions. [/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT6.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]“Industry Way” – one refrigerator’s shredded insulating foam which is typically landfilled (three large blue barrels). “The RAD Way” – one refrigerator’s degassed and pelletized insulating foam, which can be used as fuel or other products (lower, far right bucket).[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT8.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system recovers high-quality plastics, aluminum, copper, steel and even pelletized foam. They can be used to make new products. Shown here: steel. [/image]
[/slides]
Speed is only one of the machine’s virtues. Americans junk about nine million refrigerators and freezers every year. Most are recycled for metals at auto shredders along with cars. As a result, the plastics and the insulating foam, suffused with blowing agents like the ozone-depleting Freon and potent greenhouse gases, end up in landfills and in the atmosphere. The shredder can recover approximately 95 percent of the insulating foam and the harmful gasses in it. “The environmental benefit of treating the foam is tremendous,” he says.
GE partnered with Conners' joint-venture partner, Appliance Recycling Centers of America, in 2009. GE ships to Conners old refrigerators from customers who buy a new one from The Home Depot and other retailers connected to GE’s vast appliance distribution network. Since last summer, the shredder recycled 100,000 refrigerators and fridges, diverting 5.5 million pounds of foam and plastics from landfills for reuse. Pellets of the “degassed” foam, for example, can be used as fuel in cement manufacturing. “GE is the first and only appliance manufacturer to implement the EPA’s Responsible Appliance Disposal Program,” says Mark Vachon, GE’s vice president for ecomagination. “We are reducing emissions of ozone depleting substances, greenhouse gasses and the amount of waste entering our landfills, and protecting our air and water.”
Conners’ plant is in Philadelphia, but on a typical day trucks haul in old fridges from a dozen eastern states between Vermont and North Carolina. “They don’t come in at the same rate every day,” Conners says. “In the summer and during the holiday season we get more. But we take all brands.” Workers at the recycling plant first remove cords, shelves, the refrigerant and oil from the compressor.
A conveyor belt takes the empty fridge shell inside a sealed vacuum chamber, where large knives made from hardened steel cut it to bits one and half inches long. The machine then mechanically sorts out the different materials. Air suction hoods pull off the foam, magnets handle steel, and special “eddy current separators” handle aluminum and copper. The final recycling product, plastics, exits in large bags.
The recycling machine automatically pumps out the harmful gasses trapped in the shredding chamber and cools them down with liquid nitrogen to minus 90 degrees Celsius. At that freezing temperature, the gasses turn into liquids. The shredder bottles the liquefied gasses in tanks, and workers ship them for destruction to a special incinerator in Arkansas. “It’s the cutting edge of technology,” Conners says.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CuttingEdge.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]Showing Its Teeth: Think of the 40-foot recycling behemoth as a giant paper shredder. Knives like these can cut up a refrigerator to chip-sized bits in 50 seconds.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT1.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]Conners’ shredder is the only such machine in the U.S. manufactured by UNTHA Recycling Technologies (URT).[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT2.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system can process approximately one refrigerator per 50 seconds. [/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT4.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system can transform refrigerator insulating foam into pellets for use as fuel or other products.[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT5A.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system recovers approximately 95 percent of the insulating foam in refrigerators in a sealed system, reducing greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance emissions. [/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT6.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]“Industry Way” – one refrigerator’s shredded insulating foam which is typically landfilled (three large blue barrels). “The RAD Way” – one refrigerator’s degassed and pelletized insulating foam, which can be used as fuel or other products (lower, far right bucket).[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/URT8.jpg" class="imagePlugin"]The URT system recovers high-quality plastics, aluminum, copper, steel and even pelletized foam. They can be used to make new products. Shown here: steel. [/image]
[/slides]
Speed is only one of the machine’s virtues. Americans junk about nine million refrigerators and freezers every year. Most are recycled for metals at auto shredders along with cars. As a result, the plastics and the insulating foam, suffused with blowing agents like the ozone-depleting Freon and potent greenhouse gases, end up in landfills and in the atmosphere. The shredder can recover approximately 95 percent of the insulating foam and the harmful gasses in it. “The environmental benefit of treating the foam is tremendous,” he says.
GE partnered with Conners' joint-venture partner, Appliance Recycling Centers of America, in 2009. GE ships to Conners old refrigerators from customers who buy a new one from The Home Depot and other retailers connected to GE’s vast appliance distribution network. Since last summer, the shredder recycled 100,000 refrigerators and fridges, diverting 5.5 million pounds of foam and plastics from landfills for reuse. Pellets of the “degassed” foam, for example, can be used as fuel in cement manufacturing. “GE is the first and only appliance manufacturer to implement the EPA’s Responsible Appliance Disposal Program,” says Mark Vachon, GE’s vice president for ecomagination. “We are reducing emissions of ozone depleting substances, greenhouse gasses and the amount of waste entering our landfills, and protecting our air and water.”
Conners’ plant is in Philadelphia, but on a typical day trucks haul in old fridges from a dozen eastern states between Vermont and North Carolina. “They don’t come in at the same rate every day,” Conners says. “In the summer and during the holiday season we get more. But we take all brands.” Workers at the recycling plant first remove cords, shelves, the refrigerant and oil from the compressor.
A conveyor belt takes the empty fridge shell inside a sealed vacuum chamber, where large knives made from hardened steel cut it to bits one and half inches long. The machine then mechanically sorts out the different materials. Air suction hoods pull off the foam, magnets handle steel, and special “eddy current separators” handle aluminum and copper. The final recycling product, plastics, exits in large bags.
The recycling machine automatically pumps out the harmful gasses trapped in the shredding chamber and cools them down with liquid nitrogen to minus 90 degrees Celsius. At that freezing temperature, the gasses turn into liquids. The shredder bottles the liquefied gasses in tanks, and workers ship them for destruction to a special incinerator in Arkansas. “It’s the cutting edge of technology,” Conners says.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Pretty on the Inside: New BodyMaps App Lets Users Explore the Inside of the Body
Some of earliest and best anatomical drawings come from Leonardo da Vinci. The renaissance polymath would sit in on human and animal autopsies (he would sometimes cut the bodies himself) and record his observations in detailed drawings fringed with copious notes. He also made realistic body part models by injecting molten wax inside the cranium and the aortic valve and studied their shape and function. His work, however, progressed in fits and starts. Leonardo was hamstrung by the lack of cadavers (often the bodies of criminals) and a ban on human dissections issued by the Pope. His drawings remained out of sight for 400 years after his death in 1519, despite their revolutionary nature.
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/male.gif"]
Body Check: The BodyMaps app allows users see inside and learn about the body. Doctors can use it to explain medical procedures.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/female.gif"]
The app, which was specifically developed for the iPad’s Retina display, features anatomy models of both sexes.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/heart.gif"]
BodyMaps features 3D, high-resolution images of more than 1,000 body parts, tissues, bones and organs, all captured in a searchable index.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/foot.gif"]
BodyMaps features 3D, high-resolution images of more than 1,000 body parts, tissues, bones and organs, all captured in a searchable index.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/abdomen.gif"]
Doctors and nurses can draw directly on the images and highlight information for patients.
[/image]
[/slides]
There is no need to worry about Papal wrath or corpse supply in the digital era. Anybody, from medical students and professionals to enthusiasts and artists, can view the inside of the human body in sharp detail with a new app called BodyMaps and launched today by GE and Healthline Networks. The app, which was specifically developed for the iPad’s Retina display, features 3D, high-resolution images of more than 1,000 body parts, tissues, bones and organs, all captured in a searchable index. Just like Leonardo’s multi-view models, users can rotate more than 30 body parts for a better look. They can also toggle between the male and female body.
BodyMaps also contains 200 videos covering various medical conditions, procedures, and treatments, as well as a mark-up tool. Doctors and nurses can draw directly on the images and highlight information for patients. The app is social media ready and users can share their mark-ups and notes through email and Facebook.
“For patients, the [visual] resources were very scarce all through the medical world,” says Gloria Horns, a nurse educator and well-known patient advocate at University of California, San Francisco. “You were creating your own, reinventing the wheel every time, and working with diagrams, charts, and flat images.”
Horns has cared for many organ transplant patients during her long career. She says that the new app “is really going to be a terrific tool for the nurses that are teaching these patients through the whole course of the illness.”
Says Horns: “They are really going to get it. It’s hard to describe how this will help us. It’s pretty phenomenal.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/male.gif"]
Body Check: The BodyMaps app allows users see inside and learn about the body. Doctors can use it to explain medical procedures.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/female.gif"]
The app, which was specifically developed for the iPad’s Retina display, features anatomy models of both sexes.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/heart.gif"]
BodyMaps features 3D, high-resolution images of more than 1,000 body parts, tissues, bones and organs, all captured in a searchable index.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/foot.gif"]
BodyMaps features 3D, high-resolution images of more than 1,000 body parts, tissues, bones and organs, all captured in a searchable index.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/abdomen.gif"]
Doctors and nurses can draw directly on the images and highlight information for patients.
[/image]
[/slides]
There is no need to worry about Papal wrath or corpse supply in the digital era. Anybody, from medical students and professionals to enthusiasts and artists, can view the inside of the human body in sharp detail with a new app called BodyMaps and launched today by GE and Healthline Networks. The app, which was specifically developed for the iPad’s Retina display, features 3D, high-resolution images of more than 1,000 body parts, tissues, bones and organs, all captured in a searchable index. Just like Leonardo’s multi-view models, users can rotate more than 30 body parts for a better look. They can also toggle between the male and female body.
BodyMaps also contains 200 videos covering various medical conditions, procedures, and treatments, as well as a mark-up tool. Doctors and nurses can draw directly on the images and highlight information for patients. The app is social media ready and users can share their mark-ups and notes through email and Facebook.
“For patients, the [visual] resources were very scarce all through the medical world,” says Gloria Horns, a nurse educator and well-known patient advocate at University of California, San Francisco. “You were creating your own, reinventing the wheel every time, and working with diagrams, charts, and flat images.”
Horns has cared for many organ transplant patients during her long career. She says that the new app “is really going to be a terrific tool for the nurses that are teaching these patients through the whole course of the illness.”
Says Horns: “They are really going to get it. It’s hard to describe how this will help us. It’s pretty phenomenal.”
Friday, August 31, 2012
Tongue Twister: When A Diving Accident Left a GE Engineer Quadriplegic, He Turned to Bionics for Help. Now He Is Driving His Wheelchair with the Flick of His Tongue
Four years ago, Jason Disanto’s life took a skid. For a dozen years, Disanto, who is 38-years old and has an easy smile, had been a globe-trotting GE engineer bringing electricity to people in West Africa, China, and South America. “Basically, there would be a green field,” he says. “We would go in and leave behind a power plant.” Then in April 2009, at home in Atlanta, he dove into his backyard pool and rammed his head against the concrete bottom.
The accident left Disanto paralyzed from the neck down. But it failed to subdue his spirit and the curiosity and engineering drive that animated his life and career.
Disanto spent the next four months in the hospital, first in the trauma center and then at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center, a renowned specialty hospital for people with severe spine and brain injuries. He soon made new friends. A group of graduate students and engineers from the Bionics Lab at the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology were at Shepherd testing high-tech gear designed to makes simple tasks, like turning a wheelchair or moving a computer cursor, easier for quadriplegics.
One such device was the tongue drive system. The technology tracks the position of a magnetic stud attached to the tongue and allows users to steer their wheelchairs by its movements. Disanto was intrigued.
One member of the team was Xueliang Huo, a graduate student from Ningbo, a Chinese seaport where Disanto built a power plant. They hit it off. Disanto started working with the team, using the tongue drive to navigate an obstacle course and control a computer. “We had a lot of sessions on functionality and the esthetics we needed to develop,” Disanto says. “For them, it’s a little bit difficult to understand the little nuances and the little ins-and-outs that somebody like me can provide.” For example, he helped the team to improve the steering. “They had it very jagged and jerky,” he says. “When you move faster the drive is actually more smooth.”
An early version of the tongue drive system tracked the magnetic stud with two plastic “booms” running down Disanto’s jawbones, like a couple of hands-free headsets. “When I moved my tongue to the top right-hand corner of my mouth, that would be a stop command,” he says. “If I go to the top left-hand corner of my mouth, that would make my wheelchair go forward. For the lower teeth, I can set up the left and right movement of the chair.”
The booms were a good first step. “One of the problems we encountered with the earliest headset was that it could shift on a user’s head and the system would need to be recalibrated,” says Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo, founder of the Bionics Lab. Disanto helped Ghovanloo test a new system with sensors fitted tightly inside a dental retainer.
The system links the retainer wirelessly via a Bluetooth with an iPhone running special software that interprets the tongue stud signals. Disanto can use the tongue drive to operate a computer, make calls, or flip a TV channel. “It’s an independence tool,” he says. “It’s also a little fashionable, I guess,” he says about his tongue stud. “I try to keep it discrete for business reasons.”
Disanto has business in mind because he is back at work as product service engineer. GE has set him up with a modified desk, voice activated software, a head mouse to operate the computer, and flexible hours. He goes to work with his personal assistant. “There are a lot of things I did before that I don't do too much of these days, such as car racing,” he says. “I used to travel a lot, and I'm slowly getting back into that.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/George-Cowles.gif"]
Jason Disanto with Georgia Tech's Hung Yoo Park, Xueliang Huo, and Dr. Ghovanloo, mom Victoria Disanto, and GE colleagues Sherwyn Applewhaite and Abdul Wahab Memon (from left to right).
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Hung-Yoo-Park.gif"]
Jason Disanto with his family. His brother-in-law George Cowles III, sister Ginalyn Cowles, nephew George Cowles IV, father Joseph Disanto, and mom Victoria Disanto.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Tongue-Drive-System.gif"]
The circuitry for the new intraoral Tongue Drive System developed at Georgia Tech is embedded in this dental retainer worn in the mouth (right). The system interprets commands from seven different tongue movements to operate a computer (left) or maneuver an electrically powered wheelchair. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/sensors.gif"]
The dental appliance for the new intraoral tongue drive system contains magnetic field sensors mounted on its four corners that detect movement of a tiny magnet attached to the tongue. It also includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and an induction coil to charge the battery. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/wheelchair-interface.gif"]
Georgia Tech researchers designed this universal interface for the intraoral Tongue Drive System that attaches directly to a standard electric wheelchair. The interface boasts multiple functions: it not only holds the iPod, but also wirelessly receives the sensor data and delivers it to the iPod, connects the iPod to the wheelchair, charges the iPod, and includes a container where the dental retainer can be placed at night for charging. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
[/image]
[/slides]
The accident left Disanto paralyzed from the neck down. But it failed to subdue his spirit and the curiosity and engineering drive that animated his life and career.
Disanto spent the next four months in the hospital, first in the trauma center and then at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center, a renowned specialty hospital for people with severe spine and brain injuries. He soon made new friends. A group of graduate students and engineers from the Bionics Lab at the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology were at Shepherd testing high-tech gear designed to makes simple tasks, like turning a wheelchair or moving a computer cursor, easier for quadriplegics.
One such device was the tongue drive system. The technology tracks the position of a magnetic stud attached to the tongue and allows users to steer their wheelchairs by its movements. Disanto was intrigued.
One member of the team was Xueliang Huo, a graduate student from Ningbo, a Chinese seaport where Disanto built a power plant. They hit it off. Disanto started working with the team, using the tongue drive to navigate an obstacle course and control a computer. “We had a lot of sessions on functionality and the esthetics we needed to develop,” Disanto says. “For them, it’s a little bit difficult to understand the little nuances and the little ins-and-outs that somebody like me can provide.” For example, he helped the team to improve the steering. “They had it very jagged and jerky,” he says. “When you move faster the drive is actually more smooth.”
An early version of the tongue drive system tracked the magnetic stud with two plastic “booms” running down Disanto’s jawbones, like a couple of hands-free headsets. “When I moved my tongue to the top right-hand corner of my mouth, that would be a stop command,” he says. “If I go to the top left-hand corner of my mouth, that would make my wheelchair go forward. For the lower teeth, I can set up the left and right movement of the chair.”
The booms were a good first step. “One of the problems we encountered with the earliest headset was that it could shift on a user’s head and the system would need to be recalibrated,” says Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo, founder of the Bionics Lab. Disanto helped Ghovanloo test a new system with sensors fitted tightly inside a dental retainer.
The system links the retainer wirelessly via a Bluetooth with an iPhone running special software that interprets the tongue stud signals. Disanto can use the tongue drive to operate a computer, make calls, or flip a TV channel. “It’s an independence tool,” he says. “It’s also a little fashionable, I guess,” he says about his tongue stud. “I try to keep it discrete for business reasons.”
Disanto has business in mind because he is back at work as product service engineer. GE has set him up with a modified desk, voice activated software, a head mouse to operate the computer, and flexible hours. He goes to work with his personal assistant. “There are a lot of things I did before that I don't do too much of these days, such as car racing,” he says. “I used to travel a lot, and I'm slowly getting back into that.”
[slides image_align="left"]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/George-Cowles.gif"]
Jason Disanto with Georgia Tech's Hung Yoo Park, Xueliang Huo, and Dr. Ghovanloo, mom Victoria Disanto, and GE colleagues Sherwyn Applewhaite and Abdul Wahab Memon (from left to right).
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Hung-Yoo-Park.gif"]
Jason Disanto with his family. His brother-in-law George Cowles III, sister Ginalyn Cowles, nephew George Cowles IV, father Joseph Disanto, and mom Victoria Disanto.
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Tongue-Drive-System.gif"]
The circuitry for the new intraoral Tongue Drive System developed at Georgia Tech is embedded in this dental retainer worn in the mouth (right). The system interprets commands from seven different tongue movements to operate a computer (left) or maneuver an electrically powered wheelchair. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/sensors.gif"]
The dental appliance for the new intraoral tongue drive system contains magnetic field sensors mounted on its four corners that detect movement of a tiny magnet attached to the tongue. It also includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and an induction coil to charge the battery. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
[/image]
[image src="http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/wheelchair-interface.gif"]
Georgia Tech researchers designed this universal interface for the intraoral Tongue Drive System that attaches directly to a standard electric wheelchair. The interface boasts multiple functions: it not only holds the iPod, but also wirelessly receives the sensor data and delivers it to the iPod, connects the iPod to the wheelchair, charges the iPod, and includes a container where the dental retainer can be placed at night for charging. Image credit: Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo
[/image]
[/slides]
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