News and Events
Isabelle Coutand is awarded a Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant to renovate and update the Fission Track Laboratory. Renovations will begin Spring 2012.
A new ICP-OES has been ordered, and will be housed in the CFI-funded ICP laboratory currently being renovated on the 5th floor of Oceanography. It is a Teledyne-Leeman Lab Prodigy High Dispersion ICP-OES, with halogen capabilities. The ICP will be used principally for geochronology research but also for training in geochemistry.
The ultra high vacuum (UHV) carbon extraction line will run background experiments in January 2012. The NSERC-funded line was assembled by Keith Taylor, who modified the design of the only other stainless steel UHV low-background 14C system in the world at ETH-Zurich. The line will produce pure CO2 gas targets to accelerator mass spectrometry at ETH-Z. The first samples to be analysed in Spring 2012 will be for Annina Margreth's Ph.D. thesis which concerns the measurement of 14C produced in quartz from cosmic ray interactions in order to solve questions pertaining to the glaciation of easternmost Baffin Island. Markus Kienast (Dalhousie Oceanography) and Greg Slater (McMaster) will also use the line for protein-specific radiocarbon measurements.
