News Briefs (Feb. 14, 2006)

Cleveland-based test measurement instruments maker Keithley Instruments Inc. announced that Thomas A. Saponas has been elected to its board of directors. Saponas spent his career with Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies, serving the electronics industry. . . . Lighting company PolyBrite International's Westinghouse LED Lighting Systems, a provider of LED lighting solutions, LED light bulbs and safety products based in Naperville, Ill., announced that Nadhmi Auchi, founder, chairman and CEO of General Mediterranean Holding SA (GMH) based in Luxembourg, has been named honorary chairman. Auchi established GMH in Luxembourg in 1979 after owning and managing construction and trading companies in Iraq. . . . Spire Corp. of Bedford, Mass., a provider of solar energy manufacturing equipment, biomedical devices and optoelectronic components, has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of up to $70,000 to develop a new type of thermophotovoltaic power cell that produces electricity from heat. The cells are similar to solar cells that convert visible photons to electricity, but the semiconductor material is adjusted to convert long-wavelength or thermal photons to electricity. The grant is from NASA's John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Spire says NASA could one day use the technology developed to generate electricity from heat sources for long space missions when other solar cells are too far from the sun. Bandwidth Semiconductor LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Spire, will develop the indium gallium arsenide-based thermophotovoltaic cells.