It’s the classic New Year’s Resolution. This year, I am going to shed those extra 15 lbs., lay off the sweets, start eating better… and drink lots of water. So you join a gym and what’s the first thing to do? You get a body composition assessment. That’s when you hear terms like BMI (body mass index) and waist-to-hip ratio. Also, many weight scales that you buy today can determine both your weight and body fat percentage.

BMI, waist-to-hip ratio and body fat percentage are standard ways to assess a person’s body composition. But what if we could something more to extract even more valuable information? Combining state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging technologies with scientific knowledge in diet, nutrition and lifestyle with, GE is joining forces with Nestlé’s Research Center in a research collaboration to take body composition assessment to a whole new level.

Nestlé scientists, who conduct research into the effects of nutrition, diet and lifestyle on health and wellness, will conduct clinical trials with individuals using GE Healthcare’s Lunar iDXA^TM imaging system. The Lunar iDXA^TM system can provide information beyond the traditional body measurements by providing images of body fat location, and the amount of muscle and bone. These measurements will play a key part in helping Nestlé scientists learn more about the relationships between diet, lifestyle and metabolic health. See the following two Lunar iDXA^TM images. The one on the left shows the skeleton from which bone mineral density is determined. The image on the right shows the body composition information as well. From that information, the amounts of fat and muscle in the differents of the body can be determined (including the abdominal region).

The news today is filled with stories about how food, exercise and lifestyle impact our weight and overall health. I think it is something most everyone has a strong curiosity about. We want to know how our actions - what we eat, how much we exercise - impact our well-being. Measuring body weight provides us with one piece of information about our health. Knowing the location of your body fat, and how that affects your health can provide an individual with more definite goals for weight management. Being able to also measure muscle and bone simultaneously is also key for managing bone health.

I will be leading team here at GRC on the diagnostic side, and we are really looking forward to participate in this new endeavor. The coming together of medical imaging and diagnostics with diet, lifestyle and nutrition research represents an extraordinary opportunity to discover new frontiers in nutrition and health.

Hi everyone. I recently did an interview with Hank Green, who has a blog called EcoGeek. I talked about GE’s solar technology platform and the state of solar technology in general. Here is a link to the article for anyone interested in reading it.

The GE Hybrid Vehicle team has reached another milestone with a successful demonstration of a hybrid off-highway vehicle modified with a 600hp battery pack that captures braking energy to save fuel and increase productivity. The US Department of Energy is cost sharing the technology development and joined our team for a sunny, but chilly day in Arizona to ride along in the world’s first and only hybrid mine haul truck!

An off-highway vehicle, also known as a haul truck, is a very big dump truck used for open pit mining operations. In general, the larger the truck, the lower the operational cost for transporting ore from the mine face to the processing facility. There are two types of trucks, mechanical and electric. The mechanical trucks are just like the vehicles you are familiar with, just bigger. They use a diesel engine to turn a transmission through a torque converter. The transmission transmits torque to the wheels through shafts and gears. Braking is accomplished with wet disc brakes to help conduct the massive heat generated from the rotors.

An electric truck replaces the mechanical drivetrain with electrical power components. The diesel engine spins an alternator that generates electricity. The electricity is used to power traction motor inverters the spin induction motors mounted in the wheel hub. Reduction gears increase the motor’s torque by about 30x to provide the massive torque required to move these large trucks. During braking, the electric truck is able to utilize the wheel motor as a generator! Conventional trucks dissipate this power as heat in a big air-cooled resistor box (kind of like a big hair dryer). This is where the hybrid system steps in – we capture the generated electricity in batteries to use later.

When the driver calls for acceleration or power to climb a hill, the energy that was captured from the wheel motors during braking is released from the battery. The energy is used to supplement the engine and reduce fuel usage or provide a power boost to increase speeds. The hybrid OHV uses the same batteries as our hybrid locomotive demonstration shown publically last May in California.

GE will continue testing the hybrid OHV to learn how to best utilize the batteries and understand how long we can expect the batteries to last in harsh applications such as the mine haul truck. I’m looking forward to next steps in the OHV project and in other hybrid applications – these technologies continue to gather interest and value against the continuing increase in fuel prices and price pressures on manufacturers and distributors.

Hello everyone … Here’s a brief update on some exciting developments in micro and nano-mechanics at GE Global Research.  Some quick background… I am a Senior MicroSystems Project Manager in Global Research’s Micro and Nano Structures Technologies (MNST) organization. Our organization is about 250 people strong at GE across our global sites.  We’ve been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years with major developments in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidics, wide band gap devices, harsh environment applications, packaging, thin films, solar cells, specialized electronics, digital X-ray and nanotechnology to name a few! In the area of MEMS, we are developing various novel devices for applications of interest to several GE businesses. We are also performing advanced research in nano-enabled MEMS (NEMS).

It was quite an opportunity when DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) invited me to the DC area back in 2006 for discussions on how we can keep pace with Moore’s law - in other words, how we can continue to double the performance of computers every 2 years or so. Today, solid-state transistors are the fundamental building blocks or switching elements of a logic device. Unfortunately, silicon transistors are not ideal switches - they are leaky when they turn off and don’t do very well in high temperature environments. These issues work against the paradigm of scaling - putting more transistors in less space. The industry also takes a lot of trouble to make sure that these chips run cool.

DARPA currently funds GE and other institutions as well for investigating tiny mechanical NEMS switches that can switch extremely fast - these can potentially get around the limitations of transistors. However, several aspects of this technology still remain to be proven.  Computerworld recently interviewed both myself and the Principal Investigator (PI) on this project, Loucas Tsakalakos.  Other team members in this project include: Marco Aimi, Joleyn Balch, Albert Byun, Jody Fronheiser, Joseph Iannotti, Christopher Keimel, Xuefeng Wang and Le Yan. This is a great example of how we work collaboratively at GE Global Research; in this case, combining several MEMS technologies that we are developing with the unique Nanotechnologies that Dr. Tsakalakos and various teams across the center are developing.

Here is a link to the article titled “Different engines: The return of the mechanical computer”.

The article talks about the efforts of GE and others towards creating the basic elements of a mechanical computer. The technologies we develop could have potential benefits across several GE businesses in the long term. Once we can prove that the technology is small, reliable and cost-effective, we may open the doors to new paradigms that keep us on track with Moore’s law for many years to come!

We’ve been continuing to experiment with the Imagination Market technology and have executed over 8 pilots across several of the GE businesses. We piloted Imagination Market technology with the Healthcare IT organization back in 2006 and they’ve been continuing to work with the technology. You can hear their take on Imagination Markets, as well as learn about work that others are doing with idea markets in the following article from the New York Times.

Hi everyone! I’m a third year EEDP and I will be taking over Jon Jansen’s role as the Edison rep on the blog. A quick refresher. The Edison Engineering Development program is a program that GE offers for early engineers. You work full-time with the company while taking supplementary course work and leadership training. You also do three to four rotations to experience working with various technology areas. It’s a great program!

Currently, I’m in my last rotation and am working on fiber optic sensors for temperature, strain, and combustible gas sensing. Fiber sensors are great because many sensors can be incorporated into a single fiber, which minimizes the number of wires needed in a typical monitoring system. You can also use a single fiber to monitor different measurements such as temperature and strain. If you are thinking, “why not just use thermocouples and foil strain gages?” think again.

In-situ monitoring of large equipment such as power generators and wind turbines may need tens to hundreds of measurement points. For example, we are currently looking into using fiber optic cable to measure the temperature inside an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC, a.k.a Clean Coal) plant. Because the IGCC radiant syngas cooler is more than 100 feet, it would take hundreds of thermocouples to measure the temperature profile along the cooler. Fiber optic sensors require fewer wires than thermocouples, which means that at the same cost, we can have more measurement points, and more measurement points give us more accurate monitoring of the entire system! Optical fibers are also immune to electromagnetic interference, an added bonus. 

GE businesses such as Energy, Aviation, and Healthcare are interested in using fiber optic sensors to improve their monitoring systems. Although commercially available fiber sensors can be used for some applications, some of our applications require high temperature operation and special packaging. We are working on unique technology developed at GRC to fit these specific applications.. There is much potential in the technology and its impact to our business. It’s all very exciting!

Wind blows night and day. You only get one chance to extract the energy of a passing breeze by a wind turbine. In an effort to make wind energy more like traditional fossil generation, large-scale energy storage to deliver the energy when needed would be highly beneficial.

The concept of adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is a promising candidate, representing an emission-free storage technology with a high storage efficiency, a large power capacity and a potentially competitive cost. The idea is to store inexpensive base-load power during off-peak periods in the form of compressed air and deliver this power during peak demand.

Existing CAES plants in Huntorf (Germany) and in McIntosh (Alabama) are “diabatic” concepts, where co-firing of natural gas is needed in order to compensate for the lost compression heat. Adiabatic CAES, on the other hand, uses a thermal energy store that recovers the heat of the compressed air during the charge of the air reservoir (typically an underground cavern). During the discharging phase, the compressed air exiting the reservoir is reheated in the thermal energy store, and is then expanded through an air turbine to produce power.

Adiabatic CAES offers significant improvements in cycle efficiency compared to the diabatic concept, and as no fuel is used, it generates no carbon dioxide. There are planned projects to implement adiabatic CAES, but so far nothing has been built as some challenges remain: how to design a cost-effective compression train and turbine train that meet the required fast ramp rates and good part-load performance? How to build a large thermal energy store with very limited heat losses over daily cycles and that operates at high pressures and temperatures?

Together with our colleagues of the GE businesses and with Germany’s largest utility RWE, we investigate at GE Global Research the pathway to make adiabatic CAES plants become a reality. Any question around CAES at GE ? Feel free to submit a comment on my blog.

I was talking to a couple of colleagues the other day about times that we remembered when some technical innovation showed up on TV or in a newspaper article and had a real impact on us.  One of those times that we all recalled was in 1989 when folks at IBM wrote the letters “IBM” on a nickel crystal with xenon atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope.  Well, it dawned on me that the holographic storage team here at Global Research did something very similar back in 2005 using micro-holograms in the volume of our holographic material, only this time it was the GE logo!

Hey everyone. We have a big development in the lab to report.

Since the early days of OLED research, people have said that OLEDs could potentially be made at very low cost because they don’t require expensive semiconductor manufacturing techniques.  The ultimate low cost fabrication method would be a continuous “roll-to-roll” process like what is done in newspaper printing.  However, so far, no one has demonstrated that OLEDs can be made this way.   So about 4 years ago, we set out to find out for ourselves whether it could be done.  We found a partner company (Energy Conversion Devices or ECD) with great experience at making roll-to-roll equipment and together we were successful in winning a proposal that we submitted to a government agency (NIST) looking to help fund high risk technology development. 

Our proposal was to build a research roll-to-roll line for making OLEDs and our deliverable was to show that OLEDs could be made on it.  We’ve been working to make this happen for the past 4 years.  This means that we’ve been working to develop OLED device designs and fabrication processes that are compatible with roll-to-roll processing and to design and build individual equipment modules and then integrate them into a working line.  Because this had never been done before, we faced some real technical challenges - especially given our program time constraints that often meant we had to start designing machine modules before we had the device fabrication process completely figured out!  Anyway, in the end it all came together and we were successful in making our deliverable.  Here’s picture proof that we were able to make OLEDs using our roll-to-roll machine.

Going forward, we’ll be using this machine to try to move from manufacturing research to real manufacturing.  Still a lot of process and machine development to go but our recent success has energized us to keep going!

Hi, this is Roger Hoerl with the final blog entry on my Coolidge sabbatical studying HIV/AIDS.  As noted in my previous update, I traveled for a month to Africa in August/September, spending time in Zambia, Uganda, and four regions of South Africa, after a brief stop at the Munich Research Center on the way.  We visited numerous non-government organizations, orphanages, clinics, and AIDS activists, and met people suffering from AIDS along the way.  By design, we tended to avoid the official government establishments, and focused more on interacting with people from all walks of life who are on the “front lines” of the battle against AIDS in Africa.  As you can imagine, it was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience, while at the same time being somewhat disturbing.  We obtained a tremendous amount of information, too much to possibly summarize here.  Let me say only that all of us, my family, my research colleague - Professor Presha Neidermeyer of West Virginia University, and one of her students, came away convinced that the AIDS crisis will not be solved anytime soon, but can be solved.  We believe that it will be solved one village, one person at a time. 

After my return, I gave a presentation at GE Global Research in Niskayuna on our experiences in Africa.  This was not a formal presentation of our overall research findings from the six-month sabbatical, but rather an informal sharing, via pictures, of the people we met in Africa, and the fascinating stories they told us. 

Based on the trip to Africa, as well as our ongoing research, Presha and I have identified five macro issues that will need to be addressed to produce a solution to the AIDS pandemic:

1.      The need for more economically sustainable plans by HIV/AIDS assistance agencies.  Much has been done, but more thought needs to go into making these efforts economically sustainable over time, once deaths from AIDS are no longer front-page news.

2.      The need for more holistic approaches to addressing HIV/AIDS.  By holistic, we mean efforts that address the whole needs of the individual, including their overall health needs.  We need to avoid “stove-piped”, disease-specific programs, because these have the potential to debilitate, rather then reinforce basic health care infrastructure, thereby doing more harm than good.  For example, some AIDS relief organizations have hired so many local doctors to implement their initiatives that basic health care needs have gone unmet, with the natural result that infant mortality, maternal mortality (death in childbirth), and death from other treatable diseases have increased.  Fortunately, there are many good examples of how to address AIDS while at the same time enhance basic health infrastructure.

3.      The need for broader access to basic education.  In our research it is clear that those who have received a basic education are much more likely to take appropriate steps to protect themselves, and to receive proper medical treatment if they are infected.  Significant ignorance exists about what HIV and AIDS are, how you get them, and how you can be treated, not only in the developing world, but also in the US.

4.      The need to empower women with basic human rights on a global basis.  In some cultures, women still do not have control over the most basic and fundamental aspects of their lives, including their sexuality.

5.      The need for bolder leadership among political, religious, commercial, and community organizations to create the cultural changes needed to fight AIDS.  Because of the controversial nature of AIDS, too many leaders, in all walks of life, have been uncomfortable discussing AIDS publicly.  Bolder societal leadership is needed to develop and implement concrete plans to prevent and treat HIV infection.

Of course, HIV/AIDS is not just an African problem.  There is serious concern among researchers about epidemics developing in India and China.  Recent literature indicates that AIDS is on the rise again among gay men in the US and Western Europe, after decades of consistent decline.  Current statistics show that AIDS is the #1 cause of death among African-American women between the ages of 25 and 34 in the US.  So while Africa remains the epicenter of the battle against AIDS, Presha and I are not limiting the scope of our research to Africa.  This research continues (on nights and weekends now!), and we have a proposal for a book on HIV/AIDS and what can be done about it under review by Wiley.  In this book, which we are currently writing, we will elaborate on these five macro issues, and how we believe they should be addressed.  In addition, we will present a model we have developed to depict the continuum of approaches to social investment, from one-time charitable contributions to the development of economically self-sustaining enterprises.

On the purely statistical front, I am working with Harry Ma, my colleague in the Applied Statistics Lab, to perform sensitivity analyses of published HIV infection models - used by the World Health Organization and others to project the future path of AIDS - in order to quantify their uncertainty, and their sensitivity to model assumptions.  For some reason, such quantification has not been published previously.  We plan to present our results at the American Statistical Association meetings this August.

In summary, I would again like to sincerely thank the General Electric Company for providing such a unique opportunity.  If this research can help prevent one person from dying of AIDS, the time, money, and effort spent will have proven well worth it.  Thanks for your interest!