At the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS), located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, fast electrostatic bouncing is employed in the measurement of the rare and stable isotope levels. A data cycle consists of one data grab each of the rare isotope and the stable isotope, during their respective count times. For each measurement, multiple data cycles are run until either a set number of rare isotope counts is obtained or a defined rare isotope count time is reached. Our data acquisition system, generates a table of tab-delimited text for each measurement of a sample. This table, written to one file, consists of data summaries (either averages, summations or annotations) of the individual data grabs within each measurement; for example, the isotope ratio, the total number of counts in the rare isotope detector, the integrated charge of the stable isotopes, the location of the sample on the wheel, its name, identification number, sample type, and the system time in which the data was recorded. All of this information can be used in evaluating the validity of a measured isotope ratio. At CAMS, a program, written in REALbasic, is used to analyze AMS data generated from our in house data acquisition system. This program can also analyze data generated from the acqusition system provided by National Electrostatic Corporation AMS systems. The program, Fudger, provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that organizes the data by its unique location on a sample wheel. Users are able to visualize the data in plots and tables. Errant measurements can be easily crossed out with averages instantly recalculated. Users may also generate their own ratios using a simple calculator. Isotope and user-defined ratios can be normalized to defined standards. Finally, several output options exist, including a tab-delimited text file of all the cleaned data and a text file of normalized isotope ratios. The program is executable on Macintosh (OS X and Classic), as well as on IBM-PC compatible operating systems. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.
See more of Poster Session I
See more of The 10th International Conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (September 5-10, 2005)