View Hopson Road / Church Street / NC Railroad project in a larger map

The state Department of Transportation says it has awarded a $10.9 million contract for a project near Research Triangle Park that will close two dangerous rail crossings, straighten tracks to allow faster train speeds, and build a bridge to lift the tracks over Hopson Road.

The Fred Smith Co. of Raleigh won the contract to:

* Close the Church Street rail crossing and nearby N.C. 54 intersection. The north end of Church Street will be realigned with Keystone Park Drive, and the north end of Keystone Park drive will be extended to form a new intersection with Hopson Road. ... [MORE]

Agribusiness giant Syngenta posted a 6 percent increase in sales in the third quarter driven by a strong start to the Latin American growing season.

The company had sales of $2.7 billion for the quarter and has $11 billion in sales for the first nine months of the year.

Sales in Latin America increased 18 percent. The company said high soybean prices are causing increased investment in the crop in Brazil and Argentina.

Switzerland-based Syngenta employs about 400 workers at its biotechnology research arm in Research Triangle Park.

The company is in the midst of a $71 million, 147,000-square-foot expansion at RTP that includes high-tech greenhouses. It's expected to be completed later this year.

View Triangle Expressway in a larger map

For better (a much-needed road!) or worse (you pay for every trip!), drivers started using a new stretch of the 540 Outer Loop in western Wake County on Wednesday.

And they started paying tolls today (see 8/1/12 story with reader comments).

So what do you think? Is it getting you to work faster in the morning, or to the mall? Is it getting you home faster in the afternoon? Email me with your contact info, so I can call you. Or share your experiences below.

The Triangle Expressway (TriEx) is a toll road that combines  parts of N.C. 147 and N.C. 540. The busiest part of TriEx also is part of Raleigh's 540 Outer Loop.  So TriEx has too many names already, but many drivers will think of it as an NC 55 Bypass around Apex and Cary.

Here are TriEx toll rates.

View Triangle Expressway in a larger map

When the N.C. Turnpike Authority opens a new 6.6-mile stretch of the 540 Outer Loop in western Wake next week as part of the Triangle Expressway toll road, it also will start collecting tolls on an old 2.8-mile leg of 540 where drivers have traveled for free since it opened in 2007.

If you drive on 540 now between N.C. 54 and N.C. 55, I'd like to speak with you for a story to be published next week.  Please email me with you comments, your name, and your workday telephone number.

Car owners have received unusual bills in recent weeks from the Turnpike Authority, charging them $0.00 for these 540 trips. It’s the state’s way of preparing them for a big change that takes effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

Just as drivers will be charged (after a toll-free Wednesday) for driving on the new section of 540 from RTP to U.S. 64 at Apex, they also will start paying tolls for the previously-free stretch between N.C. 54 and N.C. 55.

Bayer CropScience opened a new $20 million greenhouse in Research Triangle Park on Friday that will be used to conduct crop research on soy, corn and other crops.

Half of the 60,000-square-foot facility is greenhouse space. The building also has office and meeting space and growth chambers, lab space, and seed handling and storage areas. A 70,000 gallon underground water storage tank will harvest rainwater for plant irrigation.

“This investment in research and people will help drive our developments in producing crops even more efficiently and sustainably,” said Dr. Wolfgang Plischke, a Bayer AG management board member, in a statement.

An experimental treatment for HIV being developed by GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Shionogi Co. reduced the virus in more patients than another treatment that is currently the top-selling AIDs medicine.

Eighty-eight percent of patients who took the drug, dolutegravir, saw the virus suppressed, compared to 81 percent of participants who took a single tablet regimen of Atripla, Gilead Sciences AIDs drug. Atripla generated $3.2 billion in revenue last year.

GSK and its partners announced the results for dolutegravir on Wednesday.
Dolutegravir was jointly created by Shionogi and GSK and while it was developed in the United States and the United Kingdom, where GSK is based, a significant amount of the work on the drug was done at its U.S. headquarters in Research

Triangle Park. The Medicine Development Leader for dolutegravir, Garrett Nichols, is based in RTP, said GSK spokeswoman Melinda Stubbee.

GSK has a long history with HIV treatments. The first AIDS pill, known as AZT, was developed by a GSK predecessor company, Burroughs-Wellcome.

Patheon, the Canadian drug maker with headquarters in Research Triangle Park, reported an operating loss in the first quarter as revenues declined 12 percent.

The company reported revenues of $153.9 million, down from $175.7 million during the same period a year ago.

Patheon had an operating loss of $20.9 million, compared to operating income of $13.5 million in the first quarter of last year.

The company manufactures prescription drugs and provides other services, such as developing the formulation of experimental drugs. It employs about 50 in RTP. None of Patheon's nine manufacturing facilities is based in the Triangle.

IBM is going through another layoff that could last all day and into the week, according to a labor union trying to represent the company's workers.

The Alliance@IBM in New York state, where IBM is based, began receiving calls and emails from IBM workers this morning. The layoffs are scattered across various sites and affect numerous divisions, said Lee Conrad, the union organizer.

The scale of the layoffs won't be know for days, but the union reports 350 layoffs as of late afternoon, based on reports received from affected employees. The employees receive layoff notifications that reveal how many colleagues in their departments were affected and how many spared, but don't identify the other employees.

Conrad said he didn't know if anyone lost work today at IBM's Research Triangle Park site, where the company is estimated to employ about 10,000 people.

IBM reported higher net income and revenue in the fourth quarter late today.

Net income was $5.5 billion, up four percent from the same period a year ago.

Revenue for the quarter was $29.5 billion, up 2 percent from the same period a year ago. That was below the consensus of $29.7 billion of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Earnings per share for the quarter was $4.71, up 11 percent from a year ago. That beat Wall Street estimates of $4.62 per share.

IBM's revenue for the year was 106.9 billion, up 7 percent from 2010.

"We had a strong fourth-quarter performance capping a year of record earnings per share, revenue, profit and free cash flow," said CEO Ginni Rometty in a release.

IBM, which has about 10,000 workers in Research Triangle Park, is one of the region's largest employers.

IBM shares closed down 55 cents at $180.52 in trading today. The stock has increased 16 percent over the past year.
 

Cisco Systems, one of the region’s biggest employers, saw its stock close today at its highest point since February, a sign that CEO John Chambers' reorganization of the company is impressing investors.

This latest bump came after the company reported solid first-quarter earnings Wednesday.

Net sales for the three months that ended Oct. 29 were $11.3 billion, up from $10.75 billion the prior year. Minus one-time charges, net income was $2.3 billion, or 43 cents per share, compared to $2.4 billion, or 42 cents per share, a year ago.

That beat the consensus among analysts who cover the company of 39 cents per share.