Bruker BioSciences Corp. (BRKR)

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Spectrometer installation under way at Core Lab

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 By Ben McNeely - independenttribune.com

KANNAPOLIS - The room is ready and the crane is in place.

Workers began installation of four nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers Monday at the Core Research Laboratory. The supermagnets will be the centerpiece of the Core Lab’s state-of-the-art equipment cache at the North Carolina Research Campus.

Castle & Cooke president Lynne Scott Safrit said the installation process will probably take about three to four weeks.

“It’s really exciting here,” she said. “This month is when you really start to see the scientific equipment start to move in.”

The NMRs - powerful supermagnets that allow researchers to study component parts of molecules - are just some of the major pieces of scientific equipment to be installed in the Core Lab. Bruker Biospin, a German scientific equipment company, is manufacturing the NMRs for the research campus.

Outside the Core Lab, workers set up a crane that will lift the 950-mHz into the air and down into the Core Lab’s basement. Drivers on Main Street slowed down to see what was going on.

Inside the basement laboratory, four NMRs will sit - two of them, the 950 mHz and the 700 mHz, on a specially designed floating floor, Safrit said, to keep them stable. Another NMR lab, on the fourth floor, will feature a 400 mHz NMR. Two technicians from Bruker will spend about a year in Kannapolis, calibrating the NMRs to make sure they are working within optimal working parameters.

In the basement, workers are completing work on the vivarium, a large containment area for keeping live plant and animal specimens used in research, Safrit said.

Dole Food Company owner David Murdock left Kannapolis on Friday after a visit with TV’s Martha Stewart. Safrit said Murdock was “very excited” about the progress made at the research campus.

“He hadn’t seen it since late May, when he was last here,” Safrit said.

Since May, new streetscapes and landscaping have been installed on the campus. As the Core Lab nears completion, the UNC and N.C. State buildings are also close to opening.

Safrit said Castle & Cooke is eyeing a date in late September or early October for a grand opening celebration for the Core Lab.

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