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Transforming Communities into Smarter Cities

Tim Paydos Ibm
March 03, 2014
Government officials are constantly facing pressure to do more with less. With smaller budgets, it takes leaders with vision and energy to make strategic investments to improve how their cities function. That’s where smarter cities come in.
One of my favorite anecdotes of how governments and communities can partner to make a smarter city is about using big data and analytics to combat a common urban problem: Potholes.
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Engineering Design 2.0: From Ancient Egypt to the Future of Engineering Design

Adam Rasheed GE
William T Carter GE
February 28, 2014
For all the changes in engineering design, the basic principles have remained the same since the time of Ancient Egypt.
In Ancient Egypt there exists evidence of the basic design process of defining objectives, performing research, specifying requirements, iterating while developing solutions, and prototyping before building the final version. The same process is followed today.
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Fracking’s Water Habit Needs Swift Attention

Mindy Lubber Ceres
February 27, 2014
Fracking is a thirsty business.
A typical hydraulic fracturing well requires two to four million gallons of fresh water. Multiply that times hundreds of thousands of wells developed in the U.S. and Canada over the last decade and you get the idea – the shale revolution has an unquenchable water habit.

Although water use for hydraulic fracturing is a relatively small proportion of a state’s overall water use, at the local county or municipal level it is typically very high, often exceeding the water use of all residents in a region.
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Is Natural Gas Worse for Climate Change Than Diesel Fuel?

Michael Levi Council On Foreign Relations
February 26, 2014
Science has published an interesting and useful new paper on methane leaks in natural gas operations – but the New York Times chose to highlight the one thing in it that’s both unoriginal and shaky. Understanding that flaw reveals some useful pointers for policymakers.
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Bright Future for Diesel in the Natural Gas Revolution

Allen Schaeffer Diesel Technology Forum
February 26, 2014
Let’s get one thing straight right up front.  A booming domestic energy economy producing and using more domestic oil and natural gas is a good thing. The potential for expanded supply of these fuels is important for jobs, economic growth and our collective future.
The question is what role natural gas will play in the future of trucking, which is today dominated by diesel fuel.
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The Distributed Power Transformation

Brandon Owens GE
February 25, 2014
Decentralization is a growing, global trend.  The organization of resources and people is moving away from centralized systems toward integrated networks that include both distributed and centralized elements.
Distributed power technologies, which have been around since Thomas Edison built the first power plant in 1882, are increasingly used today to provide electrical and mechanical power at or near the point of use.
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Diversity and Divergence at Play in Natural Gas Boom

James Cameron Climate Change Capital
February 24, 2014
Companies, using technologies like horizontal drilling and fracking, are responding to the world’s massive and growing demand for natural gas when there is the right combination of geology, finance, technology, regulatory framework and public acceptance.
These factors are not universally present. We have diversity and divergence – and an absolute requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide – at play.

There is cause for caution because, as in all complex processes, there is risk.

Risk
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Rise of Africa's Petro-States

Amy Myers Jaffe University Of California Davis
February 24, 2014
Africa has been hailed by Time Magazine as “the world’s next great growth engine.” China’s trade with Africa is gigantic at over $166 billion. The U.S. is the continent’s second largest trading partner at $126 billion. Other nations, including India, Japan, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey and the Gulf Arab states, are in hot pursuit of Africa’s oil and gas, timber, coal, minerals and farmland.
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Government is Here to Help

Greg Horowitt Is Co Founder And Managing Director Of T2 Venture Creation
February 21, 2014
Contemporary economic thought is flawed, assuming that efficient allocation of traditional economic inputs (land, labor, capital, and knowledge) drives productivity and profit.
In reality, it is the core values of a society, as well as the complexity of human networks and social behaviors, that allow innovation systems to thrive. We call these systems Rainforests, and the secrets lie not in the ingredients used, but rather in the recipe itself.
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Electrifying the Globe: 2014 and Beyond

February 21, 2014
Editor’s Note: Following the launch of the International Energy Agency’s much-anticipated World Energy Outlook, GE’s Power Conversion Business wanted to take a closer look at the electricity landscape, seeking to foster insight and conversation around the realities that the marine, oil and gas, energy and general industry markets face.
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