9405215 Boudreau This award provides 42% of the funds for the acquisition and upgrade of a used electron microprobe that will be installed and operated in the Geology Department at Duke University. The instrument will be added to the microanalytical equipment pool covered by a Cooperative Agreement of the Triangle Earth Science Micro-analytical Consortium, assuring that it will be freely available for shared use by staff and students of Duke University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and The North Carolina State University at Raleigh. The upgraded electron microprobe system will be capable of accurate elemental chemical analysis of major and minor elements in solid samples with a spatial resolution on the order of micrometers. The electron microprobe is a basic tool of geological research dealing with the chemistry of earth materials and will be used in a variety of research and teaching projects in the earth sciences. *** 9406684 Johnson This award provides partial funding for the support of a technician assigned to the Radiogenic Isotope Laboratory in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The technician will assist in the operation and maintenance of the laboratory's equipment that includes a multicollector thermal ionization mass spectrometer and associated instrumentation for sample preparation and data analysis. The laboratory is a resource for mass spectrometric analysis needed in research and teaching projects in the earth sciences by a large number of researchers on-campus and off-campus. Research applications include work on Arctic Ocean sediments, mantle geochemistry, volcanism, geochronology of carbonates in the Michigan Basin and Wisconsin Arch provinces, and Archean and Proterozoic granites. The technician will also participate in the technical developmental work of the laboratory, including the development of new methods for the quantitative measurement of the isotope s of hafnium. ***
