News Briefs (Jan. 19, 2006)

Bruker Optics of Billerica, Mass., announced that it has finalized an agreement worth more than $15 million -- the largest single order in the company's history -- with the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) and 28 regional Food and Drug Administration offices in the People's Republic of China for the purchase and delivery of over 300 FT-NIR spectrometers. The instruments are to be integrated into a large fleet of mobile laboratory vehicles, which will be deployed across China to screen pharmaceutical products for counterfeit drugs. The US Food and Drug Administration estimates that counterfeit drugs comprise more than 10 percent of the global medicines market, and other reports indicate that millions of Chinese are hospitalized due to counterfeit drug usage each year. The SFDA project is the largest of its kind in the world, and has been led by the National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products of China. . . . ILX Lightwave announced it has donated $10,000 worth of LDC 3700B series precision laser-diode control instruments to California Polytechnic State University. Dennis Derickson and Xiaomin Jin, assistant professors, will use the controllers to upgrade a photonics teaching lab in the electrical engineering department. The donation will provide programmable laser diode current and temperature controllers at each laboratory workstation. Among other projects, students will control 980- and 1480-nm pump devices while experimenting with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers. . . . The Metrology Div. of Leica Geosystems has been made an additional business line within Hexagon Metrology as part of Leica's integration into the company. Leica Geosystems makes products that capture spatial information. General manager of the new business line will be Duncan Redgewell, formerly vice president and Europe sales manager for Leica Metrology. Leica Metrology has headquarters in Unterentfelden, Switzerland, and manufactures portable measuring solutions based on laser technology.