General Electric

About: General Electric is a company organization based out in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Turbine & Rotor (electric). The organization has 76365 authors who have published 110557 publications receiving 1885108 citations. The organization is also known as: General Electric Company & GE.

Non–Small Cell Lung Cancers with Kinase Domain Mutations in the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Are Sensitive to Ionizing Radiation

Abstract: Non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) bearing mutations in the tyrosine kinase domain (TKD) of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) often exhibit dramatic sensitivity to the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors gefitinib and erlotinib. Ionizing radiation (IR) is frequently used in the treatment of NSCLC, but little is known how lung tumor-acquired EGFR mutations affect responses to IR. Because this is of great clinical importance, we investigated and found that clonogenic survival of mutant EGFR NSCLCs in response to IR was reduced 500- to 1,000-fold compared with wild-type (WT) EGFR NSCLCs. Exogenous expression of either the L858R point mutant or the DeltaE746-E750 deletion mutant form of EGFR in immortalized human bronchial epithelial cells, p53 WT NSCLC (A549), or p53-null NSCLC (NCI-H1299) resulted in dramatically increased sensitivity to IR. We show that the majority of mutant EGFR NSCLCs, including those that contain the secondary gefitinib resistance T790M mutation, exhibit characteristics consistent with a radiosensitive phenotype, which include delayed DNA repair kinetics, defective IR-induced arrest in DNA synthesis or mitosis, and pronounced increases in apoptosis or micronuclei. Thus, understanding how activating mutations in the TKD domain of EGFR contribute to radiosensitivity should provide new insight into effective treatment of NSCLC with radiotherapy and perhaps avoid emergence of single agent drug resistance.

Fault-tolerant permanent magnet machines: a review

Abstract: Synchronous permanent magnet (PM) machines have been gaining a lot of interest over the years. This is due to their several advantages including high power density, high efficiency and high reliability. One of the key concerns about PM machines especially in safety-critical applications (such as the more-electric aircraft) has been the issue of fault-tolerance since the machine cannot be de-excited. A lot of work has been done both on the machine side as well as the power converter side (including power converter configuration and remedial control strategies). This study will provide a thorough review and summary of what has been covered in literature up-to-date. The study will highlight the tradeoffs (including weight, cost and reliability) involved in the various proposed methods and strategies with more emphasis on the machine side. The methods discussed in this study include active control methods form converter side, memory motors, doubly-salient and flux-switching machines, use of auxiliary windings, mechanical flux-weakening methods, use of shunts and shields, thermal protection and transverse flux machines. The study will also include some comments about where the research in this area is heading in the future.

Sealing in Turbomachinery

Abstract: Clearance control is of paramount importance to turbomachinery designers and is required to meet today's aggressive power output, efficiency, and operational life goals. Excessive clearances lead to losses in cycle efficiency, flow instabilities, and hot gas ingestion into disk cavities. Insufficient clearances limit coolant flows and cause interface rubbing, overheating downstream components and damaging interfaces, thus limiting component life. Designers have put renewed attention on clearance control, as it is often the most cost effective method to enhance system performance. Advanced concepts and proper material selection continue to play important roles in maintaining interface clearances to enable the system to meet design goals. This work presents an overview of turbomachinery sealing to control clearances. Areas covered include: characteristics of gas and steam turbine sealing applications and environments, benefits of sealing, types of standard static and dynamics seals, advanced seal designs, as well as life and limitations issues.

Magnetic resonance-guided thermal surgery

Abstract: A demonstration of MR guided thermal surgery involved experiments with imaging of focused ultrasound in an MRI system, measurements of the thermal transients and a thermal analysis of the resulting images. Both the heat distribution and the creation of focused ultrasound lesions in gel phantoms, in vitro bovine muscle and in vivo rabbit muscle were monitored with magnetic resonance imaging. Thermal surgical procedures were modeled by an elongated gaussian heat source where heat flow is controlled by tissue thermal properties and tissue perfusion. Temperature profiles were measured with thermocouples or calculated from magnetic resonance imaging in agreement with the model. A 2-s T1-weighted gradient-refocused acquisition provided thermal profiles needed to localize the heat distribution produced by a 4-s focused ultrasound pulse. Thermal analysis of the images give an effective thermal diffusion coefficient of 0.0015 cm2/s in gel and 0.0033 cm2/s in muscle. The lesions were detected using a T2-weighted spin-echo or fast spin-echo pulse sequence in agreement with muscle tissue sections. Potential thermal surgery applications are in the prostate, liver, kidney, bladder, breast, eye and brain.