Source: Mass High Tech

GlaxoSmithKline has signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with Waltham-based Phase Forward Inc., which offers data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety. The deal centers around Phase Forward's InForm Integrated Trial Management solution, which GSK has used since 2004 in conducting about 600 clinical trials to date.

In addition to the licensing and study support services contract, Phase Forward (Nasdaq: PFWD) and GSK have also signed a multi-year deal pertaining to hosting services.

Financial details of the contract were not disclosed.

In April, Phase Forward announced a multi-year, multi-million dollar extension of an earlier agreement with contract research organization (CRO) Everest Clinical Research Services Inc. Like the deal with GSK, the Everest agreement centered around Phase Forward's InForm Integrated Trial Management and its hosted Central Designer module Electronic Data Capture solution.

To read more, click here.

Source: OptoIQ

June 22, 2009--"The performance of this breakthrough camera is without an equivalent anywhere in the world," says Norbert Hubin head of the Adaptive Optics department at the European Southern Observatory (ESO; Garching, Germany). The camera, called Ocam, will be part of the second-generation very large telescope (VLT) instrument called SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research). "The camera will enable great leaps forward in many areas of the study of the Universe," Hubin notes.

Ground-based telescopes such as SPHERE suffer from the blurring effect induced by atmospheric turbulence. Adaptive optics, based on real-time corrections computed from images obtained by a special high-speed camera, overcome this drawback. The new generation instruments require these corrections to be done at more than one thousand times a second.

"The quality of the adaptive optics correction strongly depends on the speed of the camera and on its sensitivity," says Philippe Feautrier from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble (LAOG; Grenoble, France), who coordinated the overall project. "But these are a priori contradictory requirements, as in general the faster a camera is, the less sensitive it is." This is why cameras normally used for very high frame-rate movies require extremely powerful illumination, which is of course not an option for astronomical cameras.

OCam and its CCD220 detector, developed by e2v technologies (Chelmsford, England), solve this dilemma, by being not only the fastest available, but also very sensitive, making a significant jump in performance for such cameras. Because of imperfect operation of any physical electronic devices, a CCD camera suffers from so-called readout noise. OCam reportedly has a readout noise ten times smaller than the detectors currently used on the VLT, making it much more sensitive and able to take pictures of the faintest of sources.

"Thanks to this technology, all the new generation instruments of ESO's Very Large Telescope will be able to produce the best possible images, with an unequalled sharpness," declares Jean-Luc Gach, from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France, who led the team that built the camera.

"Plans are now underway to develop the adaptive optics detectors required for ESO's planned 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, together with our research partners and the industry," says Hubin.

Using sensitive detectors developed in the UK, with a control system developed in France, with German and Spanish participation, OCam is truly an outcome of a European collaboration that will be widely used and commercially produced. To read more, click here.

Source: OptoIQ

JUNE 25, 2009--MIT professor and optical coherence tomography (OCT) pioneer James Fujimoto became the fifth annual Hounsfield memorial lecturer at the UK's Imperial College London Imaging Sciences Centre earlier this month. The annual event, designed to recognize the contribution of Sir Godfrey Hounsfield to medical imaging, is meant to showcase a world-leading researcher and review developments in imaging science. As part of the event, Fujimoto was presented with the 2009 Hounsfield medal.

Sir Roy Anderson, Rector of Imperial College London, presided over the meeting of more than 200. He introduced Prof. Fujimoto as a man passionate about teaching, a model advocate of interdisciplinary collaboration, and one who has the motivation to make a difference in the world.

This is supported by a range of posters produced by imaging related research groups in Imperial which demonstrate the scope and depth of research going on at the College.

In his talk, titled "Biomedical Imaging and Optical Biopsy with Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)," Prof. Fujimoto, charted the ups and downs of OCT from the 1990s, which he said nearly died through lack of commercial opportunity. However by 2006, there were over 6,000 systems being used in the ophthalmic field from Carl Zeiss alone with their Stratus system. Retinal imaging, identification of glaucoma and macular degeneration are all now well established applications for OCT, which can generate high-resolution, cross-sectional and three-dimensional images of microstructure in biological systems. Imaging is performed by measuring the echo time delay of light backscattering in tissue. OCT can perform "optical biopsy" enabling the in situ, real time visualization of tissue pathology. To read more, click here.

Source: Xconomy

Boston-area entrepreneurs unveiled their inventions for optimizing decision-making, delivering drugs to the bladder, and providing a "check-engine light" for the human body. Investors shrugged off the bitter economy and talked about their future plans to create new tech companies. Inventor and educator Dean Kamen delivered an inspirational speech on ways to train the coming generation of inventors and entrepreneurs. Indeed, there were plenty of signs that the innovation economy is on the mend yesterday at XSITE, The Xconomy Summit on Innovation, Technology, & Entrepreneurship.

Hundreds of innovators came from all over New England for the all-day summit at Boston University's School of Management. The tagline of the event was "The Recovery Starts Here," which rang true throughout the day as startup leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors shared their ambitious plans and terrific accomplishments in the fields of energy, education, life sciences, and technology.

Before we highlight some of the themes of the day, let's cover the several breaking news announcements made:

Tech entrepreneur and investor Vinit Nijhawan announced the launch of the Boston University Kindle Mentorship Program, which aims to unite mentors from the innovation community with aspiring entrepreneurs to drive the creation of startups and retain young talent in the Boston area. [The name has nothing to do with the Amazon Kindle reading device, by the way---it's all about kindling mentorship, according to BU.] The program is already supporting three startups, including Novophage, a new developer of anti-infective treatments to combat antibiotic resistance, which has mentors such as MIT inventor Bob Langer and his BU counterpart Jim Collins. "I believe that startups will solve any human problem we have," said Nijhawan, who joined the BU faculty last year as an executive-in-residence. To know more, click here.

Source: Medical Device Link

According to the International Trade Administration (ITA; Washington, DC), the world medical device market is expected to exceed $250 billion by 2012. As markets and opportunities develop, this number could increase, along with challenges. As a result, ITA is targeting four areas-quality, regulatory structure, pricing and reimbursement, and intellectual property (IP) issues-and is especially concentrating efforts in China, India, and Brazil.

As more manufacturers move overseas, quality will become a global issue, said Vince Suneja, director of the health product and technologies team in the Office of Health and Consumer Goods at ITA. Suneja discussed the global market at the Medical Device Manufacturers Association's annual meeting, held in Washington, DC, in June. One main risk, he said, is the introduction of low-quality products, which can weaken public confidence and negatively affect trade. ITA employs quality initiatives through training with industry and FDA on good manufacturing practices and counterfeit detection.

Differences in regulatory systems create trade barriers as well. In addition to encouraging transparency, fairness, and harmonization, ITA is working to ensure that devices aren't treated as pharmaceuticals. Other trade barriers include disparity in national reimbursement, which introduces adoption hurdles for more-complicated devices. ITA discourages such discrimination against imports and the use of foreign reference pricing, a method of cost containment. To read more, click here.

Source: optics.org

Industrial laser companies must be ready to meet a potentially rapid increase in demand from the manufacturing industry when the world economy starts to recover. That was the headline message at the 9th International Laser Marketplace seminar held in conjunction with the Laser World of Photonics 2009 trade fair in Munich, Germany, this month.

Addressing marketing and R&D professionals, the seminar comprised a series of presentations organized in co-operation with Optech Consulting, a market research firm based in Taegerwilen, Switzerland. The seminar offered expert analysis and commentary on the impact of the recession on the international laser marketplace.

David Belforte, president of Belforte Associates, MA, US, presented sales figures from the last two quarters that paint a very bleak picture of the industrial laser market. According to Industrial Laser Solutions March 2009, PennWell Corporation, global laser sales have dropped by 20% compared with 2008. The data also reveal that CO₂ lasers have been hit hardest in terms of both production and revenues. To read more, click here.

Source:Applied Clinical Trial online

Microsoft announced the winners of its 2009 Pharmaceutical and Life Science Innovation Awards, which recognize companies within industry for their innovative use of Microsoft-based solutions. This year, Harvard Clinical Research Institute (HCRI) walked away with the award for "Clinical Development." The academic research organization was honored for its successful adoption of TranSenda's Office-Smart Clinical Trial Manager to provide a higher level of efficiency. "We're proud of this award," J. Spencer Goldsmith, HCRI's president, told Applied Clinical Trials. "As an academic research organization we rely upon many different systems. We're pleased with how we can integrate Microsoft."

 
PHT, Almac, and Medidata Solutions co-hosted an exhibit floor event whereby attendees would visit each booth to track a patient from randomization in Almac's IXRS integrated IVRS and Web response system, to electronic patient diary entries in the PHT LogPad system, and ending with CRF data entries in Medidata Rave, where they could view all previously entered data in one system.

Source: Applied Clinical trials online

Phase Forward, a leading provider of data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety, today pointed to a growing list of customers adopting its Empirica^TM Trace safety solution over the past year for comprehensive adverse event management. Among others, customers such as Thallion Pharmaceuticals, Panacea Pharma Projects Limited, Bavarian Nordic A/S, Alapis S.A, and the International Institute for the Safety of Medicines Ltd. (ii4sm) are turning to Empirica Trace to efficiently capture and manage spontaneous report data across the full product life cycle, from clinical development through post-marketing.

"We believe that the marked increase in customer pick-up is a clear indicator that our Empirica Trace product is meeting a need across organizations of all sizes and therapeutic areas for a comprehensive safety solution," said Chan Russell, president, Phase Forward's Lincoln Safety Group. "These customers tell us that Empirica Trace provides a fundamental building block for efficiently capturing and managing adverse event data."

The Empirica Suite of Products
The Empirica Suite of products is Phase Forward's complete solution set for pharmacovigilance and risk management. In addition to the Empirica Trace product, the suite includes Empirica Study (see related release: Phase Forward Introduces Empirica^TM Study, Major New Release of Clinical Trials Signal Detection Solution), an award-winning product that provides a dynamic visual data environment for reviewing safety data and detecting signals in trial data, and the Empirica Gateway E2B submission product which offers full support for E2B submission of case reports to regulators, affiliates and partners and receipt of data via E2B standard files. The suite also includes Empirica Signal, a state-of-the-art data mining and signal management product. It provides detection and quantification of safety signals through the use of advanced data mining techniques that can be applied to any spontaneous reporting database. To know more, click here.

Source: OSA OPN

Scientists have known for years that the crystalline lens of the human eye loses its ability to focus on nearby objects with advancing age; many people first notice the condition, called presbyopia, when they reach their 40s and can no longer read without glasses. However, researchers have not yet reached consensus about the exact cause of the condition: Is it an actual stiffening of the lens material, a change in the muscles and ligaments that alters the surface curvature of the lens, or something else?

Using a non-invasive light-scattering approach from materials science, a
team from Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A.) found no appreciable change in the bulk modulus-a key measure of resistance to compression-in lenses from people over a 40-year age range. The scientists presented their results at a recent American Physical Society meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.A.

(...) A team at the University of Rochester (N.Y., U.S.A.) has taken the first images of this layer of so-called "dark cells" in a living retina (Invest. Ophthalmol. Visual Sci. 50, 1350). The imaging technique, which involves adaptive optics and autofluorescence, could someday help doctors catch certain eye diseases in their early stages. (...)

To know more, click here.

Source: OSA OPN

Astronomers will soon be using the 25-m Giant Magellan Telescope to probe the universe with a sensitivity and resolution that go far beyond anything that can be achieved today.

In August 2006, the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab cast a 3.75-m mirror under the stands of the University of Arizona football stadium. Twenty years earlier, this mirror could have become the primary mirror for the sixth largest optical telescope in the world. Today, it's a piece of the test optic system that is guiding the manufacture of the 25-m primary mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).

The GMT is part of a wave of new, ever-larger telescopes that first came on the astronomical scene in the early 1990s. Astronomers will use them to study distant planets, stars, galaxies and black holes. In some cases, their goal is to understand the structure and evolution of the objects themselves. In others, they will study objects to reveal the fundamental structure and evolution of the universe as a whole. A large telescope can capture supernovae (catastrophic explosions of stars that have run out of nuclear fuel) at such great distances that scientists can use the images to trace the expansion and acceleration of the universe. And slight distortions in the images of distant galaxies can map the distribution of the invisible dark matter that appears to make up over 80 percent of the universe's mass.

With their unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution, these telescopes open new windows onto the universe. Sensitivity scales with area, and resolving power scales with diameter if a coherent wavefront can be maintained. One quest that demands all of the sensitivity and resolution that can be squeezed out of a telescope is the direct imaging of planets around other stars. Several hundred extrasolar planets have been detected by their star's tiny oscillation around the common center of mass, or the slight darkening that appears when they pass in front of the star.

Direct imaging is much more difficult because the planet is so close to the billion-times-brighter star. Just last year, astronomers reported the first images of several large planets orbiting other stars-planets several times larger than Jupiter with orbits similar to those of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The new generation of telescopes, including the GMT, will be able to image mature planets down to about Jupiter's size, with orbits as small as Earth's, as well as smaller Earth-like planets that are young enough to glow in the infrared as their gravitational energy leaks out. Direct imaging will one day lead to spectroscopy and the ability to detect oxygen in a planet's atmosphere, the signature of life. To know more, click here.

Source: The Economist

IF LIGHT passed through objects, rather than bouncing off them, people might now talk to each other on “photophones”. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated such a device in 1880, transmitting a conversation on a beam of light. Bell’s invention stemmed from his discovery that exposing certain materials to focused, flickering beams of light caused them to emit sound—a phenomenon now known as the photoacoustic effect. It was the world’s first wireless audio transmission, and Bell regarded the photophone as his most important invention. Sadly its use was impractical before the development of optical fibres, so Bell concentrated instead on his more successful idea, the telephone. But more than a century later the photoacoustic effect is making a comeback, this time transforming the field of biomedical imaging.

A new technique called photoacoustic (or optoacoustic) tomography, which marries optics with ultrasonic imaging, should in theory be able to provide detailed scans comparable to those produced by magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI) or X-ray computerised tomography (CT), but with the cost and convenience of a hand-held scanner. Since the technology can operate at depths of several centimetres, its champions hope that within a few years it will be able to help guide biopsy needles deep within tissue, assist with gastrointestinal endoscopies and measure oxygen levels in vascular and lymph nodes, thereby helping to determine whether tumours are malignant or not. There is even scope to use photoacoustic imaging to monitor brain activity and gene expression within cells.(more)

Source: The Economist

Alamy

A FEW years ago Yadong Yin was experimenting with tiny beads that changed colour when a magnetic field was applied to them. This was interesting but, as the beads floated around in water with no obvious way to turn them into a product, people asked: What could be done with them? Now Dr Yin and his colleagues at the University of California, Riverside, have carried out more experiments and have come up with possible applications that range from a new type of paint to lipsticks and giant advertising billboards.

Dr Yin’s beads are magnetochromatic microspheres. They are made from tiny blobs of polymer that contain particles of iron oxide. The structure of these particles changes in a magnetic field in a way that produces “interference” colours when light is shone on them. Interference, in which fine details on an object’s surface cause light waves to cancel each other in some places and reinforce one another in others, is what creates the iridescent colours of many bird feathers, butterfly wings and beetle shells. In the case of Dr Yin’s beads, it is the rearrangement of the particles’ microstructures that produces the pertinent detail.(more)

Source: Forbes

new biomarker that may help predict whether someone with a brain tumor will respond to a given treatment has been identified by U.S. researchers.

Looking to see who would respond to anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy, they used MRIs to scan the brains of people with recurrent glioblastoma, or malignant brain tumors, after they took an experimental drug called cediranib. By measuring vascular normalization, the researchers were able to identify, even after a single dose, people who benefitted from the drug and those who did not.

People with a greater degree of vascular normalization had longer overall survival and longer progression-free survival, according to the phase 2 study, which included 31 people.(more)

Source: Yahoo! News

EU farm ministers revived the row over 'Frankenfoods' Monday by retaining the possibility of cloned animal products being sold in Europe, despite scientific uncertainty and Green opposition.

Meeting in Luxembourg, the agriculture ministers agreed a set of new rules for the cloned products, included in the category of "novel foods."

The EU nations want "novel foods to be authorised only if they do not present a danger for consumers, do not mislead them and are not nutritionally disadvantageous for them," the farm ministers said in a statement.

Therefore the agreed scheme includes a strict and uniform procedure for cloned animal products throughout the EU, with centralised authorisation including risk assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and approval by the European Commission.

Supporters of the scheme argue that it will toughen up the current rules, as the commercialisation of cloned animal products is not clearly policed in Europe at present.(more)

Source: The Wall Street Journal 

Seeking more precise ways to take control of nerve cells and probe the mind, researchers are lighting up the brain. Using flashes of light delivered via fiber optics threaded through the skull, they have made mice run in circles and flies flap their wings.

These techniques may someday lead the way to more effective treatments for brain diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and epilepsy, which are poorly understood and generally lack cures. Drugs are clumsy, neuroscientists say: They flood the entire brain with chemicals, instead of treating only the part that needs fixing.

View Full Image

Raag Airan/Karl Deisseroth

Light delivered via fiber-optic cables causes a mouse's brain cells to fire. The new technique, called "optogenetics" because it combines genetic engineering of brain cells with fiber optics, could someday yield advances in treating mental and neurological diseases. Yet it also raises concerns about the prospect of Orwellian mind control and intelligence enhancement.(more)

Source: optics.org

Researchers and industry will need to work closely together if Europe is to maximize the returns on its investment in a planned new generation of high-power laser facilities being built over the next decade. Caryl Richards reports on the challenges and opportunities of big science.

It's got the power

Europe is thinking big - big lasers, big science, big budgets. Over the next decade, a trio of planned pan-European research facilities will give scientists access to unprecedented laser powers and intensities, opening the door to exotic science that will shed light on the origins of the universe and, it is hoped, provide the foundations for a sustainable energy future. To read more, click here.

Source: StarTribune

Applying nanotechnology to existing medical products could profoundly change treatments and products, experts say. Summary. In a cluster of rather drab buildings overlooking the Charles River, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are incubating a tiny technology that packs an enormous punch.

By manipulating matter at less than a billionth of a meter, MIT scientists are using nanotechnology to create next-generation biomedical therapies that hold enormous promise and peril for Minnesota's medical device industry. (more)

Source: R&D Magazine

To read the article, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

The marine energy research center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth received confirmation this week that it will receive $1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The funding, expected to be announced next week, will help a consortium of researchers working at the Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center's Marine Renewable Energy Center continue developing technologies to harness power from offshore wind, waves and tidal action. The researchers come from a swath of local universities and institutions, including UMass, MIT, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the University of New Hampshire and the University of Rhode Island.

As the Obama administration places an increased focus on developing and implementing renewable and alternative energy resources, the relatively obscure world of marine energy is receiving significant attention.
To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

It's small comfort if you are a professional type standing in line at the local supermarket, hoping for a bagger job. But jobs in the tech sector do exist, and despite forecasts that employment won't pick up until mid-2010, there are signs of confidence and stabilization among New England tech companies.

Defense firms such as Raytheon Co. list hundreds of jobs, while game makers and biotechs want programmers.

New England companies surveyed by Mass High Tech indicate that company payrolls are stabilizing after months of turmoil. Almost half of those surveyed between April and early June expect no change in their work force over the next six months. 
To read more, click here.

Source: SF business times

There's a hint of hope among penny-pinching biotechs.

Biotech financings like public offerings and venture funding through early June are ahead of last year. What's more, several companies have inked licensing deals with significant upfront payments and the lure of billions of dollars overall.

"The companies getting financed represent big breakthroughs," said Larry Blatt, CEO of Alios BioPharma, a 3-year-old South San Francisco company that recently raised $32 million. "The incremental ones are tending not to get funded."

Biotechs raised $5.9 billion through June 4, with public offerings in May alone more than doubling those in the first four months of the year, according to the trade publication BioWorld Insight. That compares with $5.4 billion in the same period last year. To read more, click here.

Source: Mercury News

A red herring of whopper proportions is being perpetrated in the current budget debate. An effort led by organized labor, and endorsed by the Mercury News in a June 14 editorial, falsely pits certain tax reforms enacted in February against deep cuts in programs and services under the banner of fairness.

At the top of the target list is California's sole tool to attract and retain new investments from life-sciences companies - the single sales factor tax apportionment. The reform adopts the approach of 22 other states to tax corporations based on in-state sales, rather than facilities and jobs, to remove the current disincentive to invest in facilities here.

Here's the problem with targeting this reform.

State Controller John Chiang says California will be out of cash by the end of June. Lawmakers are grappling with a $24 billion gap for the 2009-10 budget year. But the sales tax reform does not take effect until 2011. Its repeal would do nothing to close the budget deficit this year.

Rather, it would resurrect a failed tax policy that penalized companies for growth and job creation in the world's largest life-sciences cluster. Taking this backward step also threatens the development of promising new treatments and cures.

There are two other problems with criticisms of this reform. nTo read more click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

To know more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Music blared from the computer, and a middle-aged man with long hair was rocking out to Guitar Hero, the blockbuster game developed by Harmonix Music Systems Inc. of Cambridge.

But instead of watching the screen to pick up the music cues, this player, who is blind, wore a glove with buzzers on it to tell him when to strum. It's an invention by Bei Yuan, a researcher at the University of Nevada.

"This was something this group of people never had before," she said. Yuan's glove was one among scores of novel health and gaming concepts on display last week at the Games for Health conference in Boston. Organizers plan to make Boston its permanent home.

"This conference was sold out. Every other conference I've heard of has been down 30, 40 percent in attendance," said Jason Schupbach, the creative economy industry director for Massachusetts.

The health care industry is taking notice, exploring the possibility that games could reduce costs to manage or prevent conditions such as diabetes, obesity and dementia. Event attendees included representatives from Children's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital and disease foundations. Local developments are taking root.

To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

At game development studio 2K Boston, the name of the game is expansion, and the company is on a hiring tear that started last fall when it had 35 employees. When it ends its hiring spree in another
12 months, it plans for a head count of just under 100.

While Quincy-based 2K Boston is growing at an astounding rate, many of the game developers in the area also have open positions they are looking to fill, as the game sector experiences its own burst of growth in New England.

For 2K Boston specifically, the studio is looking to follow up on the massive success of its 2007 release, Bioshock - a dystopian alternate-reality game based on the writings of Ayn Rand that won awards from nearly every game-reviewing entity that year. Its latest project is being kept in stealth, which Ryan Oddey, office manager and recruiter at 2K Boston, would only describe as "the project of a lifetime."

Now with a staff of about 68 people, Oddey says 2K Boston has nearly 30 positions left to fill. 
To read more, click here.

Source: optics.org

Demand for laser equipment remains flat, but rising RFQ activity promises a modest recovery later this year.

The latest data from Longbow Associates, a market-research firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, indicates that the laser and optics industry might have bottomed out. While demand remains flat since Longbow's last market update in April, optics companies have seen an increase in both the quantity and quality of RFQs over the last two months.

Mark Douglass, senior equity analyst for industrial technology at Longbow, explained: "RFQ activity has picked up recently, reflecting expectations for a recovery in the second half of 2009 as industrial production starts to rebound off the severe contraction in 1Q09. However, the bounce will only be to recessionary levels."  To read more, click here.

Source: OptoIQ

I was most interested to read the article "Fluorescent microspheres enable adaptive-optics microscopy" (February, p. 53) Although an adaptive optical system may well be an effective way to improve deep tissue imaging, it is usually best to limit the work the adaptive system has to perform, which can result in tissue depths much greater than the 40 µm shown in the article.

For example, using an objective lens that is telecentric in object space results in an optical system that is invariant in astigmatism and coma as one focuses at different depths into tissue. This leaves only spherical aberration. It is also possible to eliminate changes in spherical aberration by using an immersion liquid index matched to the tissue index. As one images deeper into the tissue, the depth of the immersion fluid is reduced to maintain a constant depth to the object plane. Hence all optical aberrations can be held constant as one focuses into tissue. The only induced wavefront errors left are due to inhomogeneities in the tissue and spherical aberration due to errors in index matching.

To read more, click here.

Source: Information Week

Cloud models are starting to provide an attractive option for large and influential regional medical centers to get lots of small, local, laggard doctor offices trading in their paper patient files for electronic medical records. Are there clouds in your forecast?

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), together with its Beth Israel Deaconess Physicians Organization (BIDPO), is just one of a handful of large and prestigious health care organizations in the country helping small doctor offices in their region (in this case, the Boston area) to deploy e-medical record systems.

A cloud model allows these doctor offices to use software to manage their practices and patient data, but the servers are located remotely and supported by BIDMC and Concordant, a services provider. BIDMC is covering about 85% of the non-hardware expenses for the practices to deploy the eClinicalWorks software, and the doctor offices pay a monthly subscription fee of between $500 and $600 for support.

A similar cloud plan is also being used by University Health System of Eastern Carolina to get small doctor practices in rural North Carolina using 21st century technology, says CIO Stuart James. "Most providers can't afford to hire IT people to keep these systems running," he says. "This keeps the costs down."

The loosening nearly two years ago of federal Stark anti-kickback regulations allows hospitals to donate e-health record software and services to doctors.

To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

Zygo Corp. reports it has sold inventory and certain assets to competing optical metrology technology company Nanometrics Inc. of California, in a deal that will have Middlefield, Conn.-based Zygo supplying sensors to Nanometrics.

Zygo is selling its semiconductor business to Nanometrics (Nasdaq: NANO) and, as part of the deal, will be providing interferometer sensors to Nanometrics that will go into that company's Unifire line of products. The sensors are also used in Nanometrics' own line of automated metrology systems.

No financial details of the deal were disclosed. The deal does allow for joint development of other technologies aimed at the semiconductor industry and related industries, according to officials of the two companies.

In January, Zygo's board of directors withdrew its recommendation of a previously announced merger with photonic and laser systems developer Electro Scientific Industries Inc. The board said at the time that its withdrawal of recommendation stemmed from "changes in conditions" since the agreement was signed in October. In April the two companies called off the merger and Zygo had to pay ESI a $5.4 million termination fee.

Founded in 1970, Zygo supplies the semiconductor equipment industry with electro-optical design and manufacturing services, optical metrology instruments and precision optics. For fiscal 2008, the company reported a profit of $1.24 million on revenue of $159 million.
To see the original article, click here.

The times are changing, with Washington being the new Wall Street, and billions in federal money heading to the life sciences sector, and lots of unresolved questions around regulation. That was the theme Thursday night at the Convergence: The Life Sciences Leaders Forum in Newport, R.I. Four panelists from industry and the public sector discussed the changes during a forum entitled, "The shifting winds of policy and regulation in the Obama Era."

There was general agreement that Washington has supplanted Wall Street as the most powerful financial center in the country. With that in mind, the panel moderator Scott Kirsner, a Boston Globe columnist, believed the biggest single change for the region's biotech industry is the more than $8 billion recently voted by Congress to supplement the National Institutes of Health's research grant budget. However, the effect probably won't be felt this year. Moreover, another major change is the new leadership at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, he noted, "It's still too early to tell what will happen at the FDA."

Indeed, the new FDA administrators are "just getting settled in," said panelist Steve Usdin, senior editor of BioCentury. The new leadership is very focused on public health and "will be receptive to what the life sciences industry wants and will align with it if life sciences wants to drive public health." Other major issues include a transparency initiative seeking to make public more information around clinical trials and to emphasize comparative effectiveness in drugs. To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

The processing of systems, both large and small scale, has always been an interest for David Cochran, whether it is the way political structures work or how to process and update medical records for patients. His broad experience on the internal workings of health care systems has helped him move his career from Massachusetts to Vermont by accepting a position as president and CEO of Vermont Information Technology Leaders Inc.

VITL, based in Montpelier, is a nonprofit organization that receives state and federal funding to operate Vermont's health information exchange network and to work with initiatives including the National Health Information Network of the federal office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the national eHealth Initiative and the Vermont Department of Health's Blueprint for Health initiative.To read more, click here.

In school, the geeks get the grades and the jocks get the glory and the prominent place in the yearbook (except for valedictorian, of course). Come time for the 20th reunion, it's the geeks and the outliers who get the last laugh - the entrepreneur who never fit the classroom mold, broke the rules and built the billion-dollar business, and the geeks who built the technology engines that eventually powered the world.

Where does Massachusetts (and New England) want to be in 20 years? Do we want short-term gains and empty headlines, or do we want to build a lasting economic engine the region can enjoy? Do we want short-term wins that lead in several directions at once, or do we want a long-term goal that takes us farther than anyone else?

This week marked the first time that disparate voices of the tech business community and key government officials actually sat in the same room and confronted (honestly) the challenges facing the Massachusetts innovation economy. Fueled by early data from the UMass Donohue Institute (and perhaps some desperation from an ailing economy), the mobilization of the state's IT sector got a jump-start this week at the IT Collaborative Workshop at Microsoft in Cambridge. The right questions - work force retention, education, collaboration - were asked and there was genuine willingness to seek answers together. To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

One of the things that's special about energy and water markets is that there often are many different ways to accomplish the intended goal. At the end of the day, even the wildest scientific innovations in these fields are directed at very basic commodities, like producing electricity, saving energy or purifying water. The fact that there are so many viable alternative solutions means that costs and payback periods are critical to understand.

Most clean tech entrepreneurs already understand how important it is to provide a compelling offering to their customers in terms of dollars and cents. The economic value proposition is the single most critical factor that will determine the eventual success or failure of a clean tech startup.

Unfortunately, as a venture investor I have also seen many clean tech entrepreneurs lose sight of this fact in their planning and in their pitches to venture capitalists. In part, that's because it is never really as simple a question as it might seem at first blush. Some potential pitfalls include:

Picking the wrong comparison: Many entrepreneurs present their economic advantage versus an overly easy target. I met with a manufacturer of a fluorescent lighting fixture who took great pains to point out how economically advantaged their products were versus decades-old High Intensity Discharge (HID) systems. But were the fixtures advantaged versus other fluorescent fixtures? Or even versus newer-generation HID systems? This management team didn't really understand their emerging competition, so they compared themselves versus the status quo. So yes, the status quo was poised to lose versus new technologies. But which new technologies would win? To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High TechWhat if the imagination of a video game developer became the seed bed for a crop of Hollywood epics and TV series? And what if movie and TV directors left the backlot to build video games?

Massachusetts companies are betting these developments are around the corner. Between film production and video game development lies fertile ground for New England's peculiar blend of expertise in graphics software and large data problems.

"The industries are definitely converging," said Brett Close, president and CEO of Maynard-based 38 Studios LLC, which he hopes can turn the typical model on its head, by spinning film and book franchises out of video game characters and stories. That's been done before, but Close plans to do it better.

He talked about the emotional impact of the first few minutes of the Star Trek feature film released last month, where a ship's captain sacrifices himself to save his crew and his family. "A lot of people don't understand that's possible in video games," he said. "You imagine those kinds of sequences; by the way, you can embed them in video games."

Starting in about 2004, a repurposing of computer graphics processing units (GPUs) allowed personal computers and consoles to render film-quality images in a fast-moving video game. Some developers were shy of the new coding paradigms required to handle the data, said GenArts Inc. chief scientist Gary Oberbrunner. To read more, click here.

Source:Newsletter Entreprise Florida

No, IT is not sick, it just wants to help doctors. But, until recently, doctors have been slow or reluctant to accept the help. Now however, with a dedicated $19 billion from the economic stimulus legislation, IT may just be what the (proverbial) doctors order for themselves. Known as Health IT or the more popular, Electronic Health Records (EHR), this trend promises to deploy information technology where pen and paper reign. In the process, it will cut medical errors and expenses, improve diagnosis and treatment and facilitate better communications throughout the U.S. healthcare system.

The process won't be easy or fast. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine discovered that only 8-11% of general hospitals around the country have a basic EHR system installed. Computerized drug-prescribing had a 17% penetration rate, but physician note-taking was digitized in only 12% of the hospitals.

Much of the resistance can be attributed to the costs of implementing EHR, which can run into the tens of millions for larger hospitals. The lack of standards for such systems-an issue the government is looking to eliminate soon -as well as privacy and training concerns are also factors. But the strongest opposition seems to be coming from the doctors themselves, who have been hesitant to adopt new technologies.

The stimulus funding is designed to eliminate some of the cost concerns, as is the 2% built-in bonus in Medicare reimbursements for using EHR, which runs from 2009 to 2011. To get even the most unenthusiastic doctors on board after 2012, Medicare will begin withholding 1% of their reimbursements if they are not using e-prescriptions. Whether this "carrot and stick" approach will work remains to be seen, but many progressive communities and organizations are not waiting around for the next three years.

Source: Mass High Tech

With the auto industry under increasing financial and environmental pressures to improve the efficiency and cost of passenger vehicles, a number of local innovators have launched products aimed at solving the international auto industry's woes.

A group of recent MIT graduates represent the latest entry into the burgeoning local automotive technology cluster, proposing the newest and most "shocking" technology.

Levant Power Inc., which is in the process of moving to a new office in Cambridge, has developed a new type of shock absorber that takes the wasted energy from a bouncing and gyrating vehicle and turns it into useful electric power. Dubbed the GenShock, the system is in testing phases with AM General LLC, the maker of military Humvee vehicles, and is in the negotiation phase of testing programs with additional automakers in the U.S. and Japan, according to Levant officials.

Founded by CEO Shakeel Avadhany, COO Zack Anderson and vice president of sales and marketing Vladimir Tarasov - all recent graduates of MIT - Levant was started as a student project, as the team looked for wasted energy in the traditional automotive environment. To know more, click here.

Source: Laser Focus World, June

Anti-speckle technique uses dynamic optics, p.11

Higher order modes limits pulse broadening in ultrafast fiber lasers, p.11

Bravo: Amplitude Systemes ad on page 45!

European report: surviving the downtowrn, p.49

Fluorescence microscopy benefits from advances in single photon detectors, p.59

Source: Mass High Tech

Though spatially smaller than a wart on a tick's chin when compared to rivals like California, Massachusetts has been amazingly eminent over its brief 400-year life in a wide number of industries and endeavors.

Imagine a midget wrestler who could trounce Hulk Hogan, if you will. In no particular order, some of the Bay State's great enterprises include: cod fishing, beaver trapping, whaling and shipping, political corruption, sectarian zealotry, and last but far from least, witch detection and disposal. Now, some smart people at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Milken Institute, a nonprofit think tank, claim the Boston city-state wins the life sciences laurels. This conclusion is based on research and development capacity, government funding, work force, investment and other measures.

Of course, one of the prime commissioners for the report, Greater Philadelphia was No. 2, with the Bay Area limping in at third. To read more, click here.

Source: optics.org

The high-power laser-diode manufacturer has been rescued by an unknown group of investors.

QPC Lasers, the Californian maker of high-power laser diodes, has emerged from near-bankruptcy to continue operating under new ownership.

On 1 June, a limited-liability corporation (LLC) known as Laser Operations acquired all of the assets belonging to Quintessence Photonics Corporation, the operating subsidiary of QPC Lasers, Inc.

According to its official statement, the new company will "leverage its financial stability and the deep business and managerial experience of its ownership group to support the customer base acquired from Quintessence".

To read more, click here.

There was a time not too long ago when computer giants ruled New England. Digital Equipment Corp., Wang Laboratories Inc., Data General Corp. and Prime Computer were just three of the names that anyone with even a passing knowledge of computers knew. But those days are gone, never to return. Right? Well, not so fast. There's hope for the IT hardware industry in New England, you just have to know where to look. And the giants may be less giant than they were.

To be clear, the consensus among industry professionals and investors is that basic computer hardware manufacturing in New England as we knew it - the high-volume production of minicomputers and PCs - is dead, killed off in part by the high cost of labor and insurance and the low cost of offshore manufacturing. Today, arguably the only major IT hardware manufacturing company left in the area is EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC), the Hopkinton-based storage and information infrastructure products giant.

To read more, click here.

Source: Mass High Tech

New England has a well-deserved reputation as a leader in computer-aided design software (CAD) - the applications that help engineers map out the structure of everything from running shoes to wind turbines.

But the region's dominance in the CAD field, which dates back four decades to the founding of Computervision Inc. and Prime Computer Corp., has over the years waned as firms like California-based Autodesk Inc. and France's Dassault Systemes SA have taken over market share.

At the same time, a second tier of firms is growing here, feeding off the region's CAD and enterprise talent, making software that helps engineers and designers who have to bring the products of CAD software into the business realm. 
To read more, click here.

Source: Industrial Laser Solutions

Newport Corporation today announced it has signed definitive agreements with Oclaro Inc. for an exchange of assets and cash between the two companies. Under the terms of the agreements, Newport will acquire Oclaro's New Focus business and its portfolio of high-performance products that includes opto-electronics, high-resolution actuators, opto-mechanics, tunable lasers, vacuum and ultraclean solutions, and OEM-engineered solutions. Simultaneously, Oclaro will acquire Newport's high-power diode laser manufacturing operations, located in Tucson, Arizona.

Robert Phillippy, Newport's president and chief executive officer, said, "The New Focus acquisition brings a strong intellectual property position, a well-recognized brand, and a highly differentiated product portfolio to Newport. New Focus' product lines are an exceptionally good fit with Newport's existing offerings. New Focus' sales in 2008 were approximately $30 million, of which 70% consisted of products that will be integrated into our Photonics and Precision Technologies Division and marketed through our industry-leading product catalog and e-commerce website. Another 20% consisted of a family of tunable and single-wavelength lasers that we currently do not offer, and that will fit well with our Lasers Division. The remaining 10% of New Focus' 2008 revenues were from subsystems for OEM applications, primarily for semiconductor equipment manufacturing customers. While this market is currently at the trough of a deep cyclical downturn, it has performed well for both companies in the past and we believe that New Focus' OEM subsystems business has excellent upside potential over the longer term."

Source: Industrial Laser Solution

Ultrafast fiber laser manufacturer Fianium announces the opening of its new micro-materials processing applications facility. Based in Portland, OR, the facility enables Fianium to work closely with OEMs to test material samples and highlight the processing results attainable with its range of versatile picosecond fiber laser attributes. Through the facility Fianium will prove ultrafast fiber lasers as a unique and superior solution for laser processing of a diverse range of materials, including materials that have historically proven difficult to process using conventional DPSS lasers, such as polymers, glasses, organic tissue, and reflective metals.

In setting up the facility, Fianium has partnered with photonics engineering services provider Summit Photonics, which is led by 25-year industry veteran Dr. Brian Baird. Dr. Baird has pioneered multiple generations of industry-leading solid state photonics solutions for laser processing of microelectronics, semiconductors, and photovoltaic devices during his career at Summit Photonics and Electro Scientific Industries (ESI). His expert guidance is an ongoing asset for customers using the facility.

To read more, click here.

Source: Medical Device Link

The FDA has long operated under strict confidentiality rules. Its scientists routinely handle reams of private information from drug companies, medical device manufacturers, even laboratories working on genetically engineered animals. The clinical data is critical for government experts to make decisions about the safety and effectiveness of products that could be sold to the public. But improper disclosure _ for example, to a competitor _ can severely damage a company laboring to bring a new product to market.(more) 

Source: Life Science Leader

G. Steven Burrill has devoted his entire career to helping life sciences companies start up operations and sustain their growth. In 1994, he started Burrill & Company - a venture capital (VC), private equity, merchant banking, and media life sciences firm. The Burrill family of life sciences venture capital funds now manages more than $950 million in assets and has played a pivotal role in helping establish the next generation of American biotechnology companies.

A prolific writer and highly sought after biotechnology speaker, analyst, and financial advisor (both nationally and internationally), Burrill is one of the early pioneers and shepherds of the American life sciences industry. Last year, he was awarded the Alan Cranston Living Legend Award and the BayBio Pantheon DNA lifetime achievement award for biotechnology leadership. He is the author of a series of annual biotechnology reports which are a must-read for life sciences executives and scientists alike. His latest and most intriguing report is entitled Biotech 2009-Life Sciences: Navigating the Sea Change.

Burrill contends there are three things driving the sea change that is occurring in today's life sciences industry: 1) restructuring of the financial markets, 2) changes in regulatory and healthcare reimbursement policies, and 3) major advances in science and medicine. I had an opportunity to chat with Burrill about his views on the impact of the financial crisis, personalized medicine, and healthcare reform on the future of the life sciences industry.

The financial meltdown has affected almost all sectors of the American economy. What impact has it had on the U.S. life sciences industry?

Burrill: For the past 40 years or so, we have had a reasonably good equity market with available and relatively cheap access to capital. Although there were significant economic downturns in the life sciences sector, first in 1987 and then again in 2002 (which the industry weathered), by and large the financial rules guiding equity markets hadn't changed much during the past 20 years. That is to say if public companies built value, financial markets appreciated that, stock prices went up, and investors were happy. However, the current economic meltdown has caused a dramatic and permanent restructuring of the financial markets and has changed the way we do business. This has resulted in a lack of access and availability of investment capital to many life sciences companies that desperately need capital infusions to maintain operations.

Source: R&D magazine

In nature, trees pull vast amounts of water from their roots up to their leaves hundreds of feet above the ground through capillary action, but now scientists at the Univ. of Rochester have created a simple slab of metal that lifts liquid using the same principle-but does so at a speed that would make nature envious.

The metal, revealed in an upcoming issue of Applied Physics Letters, may prove invaluable in pumping microscopic amounts of liquid around a medical diagnostic chip, cooling a computer's processor, or turning almost any simple metal into an anti-bacterial surface.

"We're able to change the surface structure of almost any piece of metal so that we can control how liquid responds to it," says Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the Univ. of Rochester. "We can even control the direction in which the liquid flows, or whether liquid flows at all."

Guo and his assistant, Anatoliy Vorobyev, use an ultra-fast burst of laser light to change the surface of a metal, forming nanoscale and microscale pits, globules, and strands across the metal's surface. The laser, called a femtosecond laser, produces pulses lasting only a few quadrillionths of a second-a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 million years. During its brief burst, Guo's laser unleashes as much power as the entire electric grid of North America does, all focused onto a spot the size of a needlepoint, he says. To read more, click here.

Source: optics.orgResearchers claim "paradigm shift" in the design of commercial femtosecond lasers.

Engineers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) in Aachen, Germany, are set to unveil a femtosecond laser boasting a world-beating power output of 400 W at LASER World of Photonics in Munich, Germany, next month. That's a monumental improvement on most commercial femtosecond lasers, which produce an average output power around the single-watt level, while even high-end models are limited to the 50-100 W range.

"The Fraunhofer ILT is introducing a paradigm shift in the design of commercial femtosecond lasers," claimed Axel Bauer, head of the institute's marketing and communications group. "Our laser module holds the world record for average output power among lasers with pulse durations of less than 1 ps." To read more, click here.

Source: Biosmart briefsMicrosoft is buying Rosetta's software, which analyzes genomic data, from pharmaceutical company Merck.

Rosetta Biosoftware has 53 employees in South Lake Union. Rosetta was started in Seattle, grew to 300 employees, and was then purchased by Merck in 2001 for $630 million. In October, the pharmaceutical company said it was eliminating or transferring 240 Seattle jobs.

Microsoft wants to incorporate Rosetta's software into its Amalga Life Sciences platform, a software system that the company's Health Solutions Group built for research institutions such as drug companies and universities. The company has also developed software products targeting health-care providers, to store patient medical records, and consumers, to help manage medical conditions.To read more, click here.

Source: Laser Focus World

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; Boulder, CO) say they have built a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system that can pinpoint multiple objects with nanometer precision over distances up to 100 kilometers (~62 miles). The novel system combines the best of two different distance measurement approaches with an optical frequency comb. It promises to impact applications from precision manufacturing to the maintenance of perfectly-aligned satellite networks that could enable space research. To read more, click here.

Source: The Economist

YOU are now officially permitted to blame the pigs. When a strain of influenza with pandemic potential struck in April, it was generally referred to as “swine flu” because it seemed similar to an existing group of strains, known as A/H1N1, which are commonly found in pigs. But when it became clear that the new bug was being spread by people, not porkers, the pig-breeding industry complained that it was being unfairly maligned. It also became apparent that the new virus contains bits and pieces derived from avian and human strains of influenza, as well as porcine ones, further muddying its origins.(more)  

Source: R&D MagazineAn ultra-powerful laser can turn regular incandescent light bulbs into power-sippers, say optics researchers at the Univ. of Rochester. The process could make a light as bright as a 100 W bulb consume less electricity than a 60 W bulb while remaining far cheaper and radiating a more pleasant light than a fluorescent bulb can.

The laser process creates a unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament-the tiny wire inside a light bulb-and these structures make the tungsten become far more effective at radiating light.

The findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

"We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament," says Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the Univ. of Rochester. "We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament. When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament, but there was no change in the bulb's energy usage."

The key to creating the super-filament is an ultra-brief, ultra-intense beam of light called a femtosecond laser pulse. The laser burst lasts only a few quadrillionths of a second. To get a grasp of that kind of speed, consider that a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 million years. During its brief burst, Guo's laser unleashes as much power as the entire grid of North America onto a spot the size of a needle point. That intense blast forces the surface of the metal to form nanostructures and microstructures that dramatically alter how efficiently can radiate from the filament.

In 2006, Guo and his assistant, Anatoliy Vorobyev, used a similar laser process to turn any metal pitch black. The surface structures created on the metal were incredibly effective at capturing incoming radiation, such as light.

"There is a very interesting 'take more, give more' law in nature governing the amount of light going in and coming out of a material," says Guo. Since the black metal was extremely good at absorbing light, he and Vorobyev set out to study the reverse process-that the blackened filament would radiate light more effectively as well.

"We knew it should work in theory," says Guo, "but we were still surprised when we turned up the power on this bulb and saw just how much brighter the processed spot was." To know more, click here.

Source: FierceBiotech

It's now quite common to combine an experimental oncology therapy with an approved drug to see if it can enhance the therapeutic effect of the treatment. But AstraZeneca and Merck are doing something unique in teaming up on a Phase I trial, pairing MK-2206 from Merck and AZD6244 from AstraZeneca to test on solid tumors.(More) 

Source: Mass High TechThe cost of doing business and taxes are perennial complaints from New England manufacturers, but those aren't the only factors impacting the success of the region's manufacturers. A handful of manufacturing sector representatives who were heading to the Eastec 2009 show in Springfield last week shared their thoughts on what it takes for manufacturing to succeed here, and the impact of the federal stimulus bill.

Agree with the comments or disagree? Join the discussion using the comments box after reading the article, and let us know what challenges your company faces and whether the stimulus package can help your sector.

Q. What's the greatest challenge for a manufacturing company in New England?

It's taxes and labor cost. Our competition, more and more, is coming from Italy and Spain and China. China is our market, but as they find out what we are doing and try to parallel design it, they can do it with a lower cost of labor. The tax structure is very difficult in Massachusetts. We've made great progress on workmen's comp, but we've gone backward a bit.
Howard Gries, president, Kinefac Corp.
Worcester
Manufacturer of parts and threaded components

As with many areas of the country it is the burden that is put on small business with regard to taxes, high cost of insurance, etc. These drive manufacturing out of the state. Additionally I do not see the state government promoting and offering incentives to lure manufacturers to the state.
Jim Cepican, general manager, accessories division, Citizen Machinery America
Agawam
Distributor of machine tools, manufacturer of accessories

The greatest challenge comes from the fact that manufacturing does not attract the interest or attention of government officials that set the agenda for investments in education, research and infrastructure. We have in recent years found it difficult to recruit sufficient numbers of engineers and technicians with the skill sets for laser assembly and test and for industrial laser-related R&D.
Terry L. VanderWert, president, PRIMA North America Inc.
Chicopee
Manufacturer of machinery and lasers

To read more, click here.