9417917 Rutherford This award provides partial (75%) funding for an upgrade to the electron microprobe installed and operated in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown University. The institution is committed to providing the remaining funds necessary to carry out the project. The components of the upgrade will include a new computer for the operating system and a new wave-length dispersive X-ray spectrometer system. The electron microprobe is a heavily used analytical instrument combining accurate chemical composition measurement capabilities with micrometer scale spatial resolution. Several active research faculty and their students at Brown are dependent on the capabilities of the upgraded microprobe for their research in petrology, volcanology, planetary science, experimental geochemistry, and oceanography. ***
