The Center for Applied Isotope Studies (CAIS) is a multidisciplinary organization dedicated to research in the geosciences. The CAIS serves as a unique interface to join academia - with its resources, ideas, and position at the forefront of research – with the immediate technological needs of industry and government. In operation on the UGA campus since 1968, the Center has an established national and international reputation as a pioneer in development and application of radioisotope and stable isotope analytical techniques, as a premier analytical laboratory, and as a technical training center.
Mission: To develop safe, efficient, and cost-effective nuclear analytical methods and technologies that can be applied to solve existing problems of the scientific and industrial communities; To adapt and utilize new methods and technologies in a program of applied research; To provide the public and private sectors with quality, state-of-the-art analytical and technical services; To provide service to the University of Georgia by serving as an analytical service laboratory and a nuclear methods reference/training center responsive to UGA staff and graduate level researchers; and To serve as UGA representatives in technology transfer and public outreach efforts.
Congratulations Tom Maddox of our Stable Isotope Ecology Lab on his paper in Nature! https://go.nature.com/2XkU1ra
Carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of sediments and soils from hominin locales in Kenya coupled with results from hominin taxa suggest that a dietary shift from C3 to C4 resources occurred in the genus Homo circa 1.65 million years ago despite palaeoenvironmental continuity.
Student research spotlight!
Devin Pettigrew (grad student at U Colorado, Boulder) and Jared Pebworth of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey are conducting an analysis of ancient weaponry from rock overhangs in the Ozarks of Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas. Excavations under the bluffs have uncovered a large collection that is currently housed at the University of Arkansas Museum in Fayetteville, including bow and arrow fragments, complete and fragmentary atlatls and darts, and a sword-form war club.
Atlatls are extensions of the arm, with a handle at one end and a hook at the other that engages the end of a light and flexible spear called a dart. In the Ozarks two distinct types of atlatl have found. Under nearby bluffs specimens of a dart point type called Williams were uncovered with remnants of bark bindings. Bark represents a unique strategy for hafting points to darts in North America, where most points were hafted with animal sinew. Samples of these bindings were dated by the Center for Applied Isotope Studies and showed them to be ~2000 years old. The next step is to date the two atlatl types to see which one matches the timing of this point type.
Under another bluff, a complete sword-form war club was found. It has a sharpened edge along the blade, grooves at the end of the handle for grip, and a flared out portion between the handle and blade. It is stylistically reminiscent of the Southeastern Ceremonial Mace, a symbolic weapon associated with large mound-building societies. The artifact from the Ozarks seems to be the only complete example of a functional wooden sword from the continental US. A date from the Center of Applied Isotope Studies shows it to be ~600 years old, within the time frame of developing complex societies.
Ozark weapons
Check out our director, Dr. Jeff Speakman, giving a talk on the history of CAIS at the Radiocarbon and Archaeology Symposium!
Happy #EarthDay! Climate change is a major issue facing contemporary society. Did you know stable isotope research can contribute to our understanding of long-term climate change? Check out this foundational article on tree cellulose, carbon isotopes, and climate: https://www.nature.com/articles/265133a0.
Letter
Check out this UGA news story on our STEM comic series.
Author wanted a way to hook undergraduate students and teach critical thinking.
Good morning! Today we are highlighting the work of Dr. Margaret M. Bender. Dr. Bender, chemistry professor at University of Wisconsin Madison, discovered that C4 plants are isotopically distinct from C3 plants. This discovery is foundational for isotopic studies in many fields today including ecology, archaeology, and biomedicine. Check out her foundational article: https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/174/179.
Mass spectrometric studies of carbon 13 variations in corn and other grasses.
If you’re in Albuquerque for the Society for American Archaeology meetings, check out the awesome talks by UGA grad student and faculty. And be sure to stop by our booth!
Are you attending the Society for American Archaeology conference in Albuquerque this week? Make sure to check out all these great presentations by UGA faculty and graduate students.
We are set up and ready for the 2019 Society for American Archaeology meeting in Albuquerque. If you’re attending the meeting be sure to stop by and pick up a copy of our newest STEM comic on Pb isotopes.
We have to take a second to brag about our students who presented at the annual CURO Symposium yesterday! The symposium highlights excellence in undergraduate research at the University of Georgia.
Here's what they've been working on:
Marshall Liss: Paleoclimate Reconstruction of the Ten Thousand Islands Region of Everglades National Park.
Keiyanna Sealey Woodard: Forensic Entomology: The Correlation of Fly Larvae Growth and Development to Stage of Decomposition through Photography
Austin Bryan: Mercury Cycling in a Coastal Georgia Salt Marsh
Way to go!
Seven graduate students from UGA were recipients of this year’s NSF GRFP. Among them are Anthropology graduate students, Jordan Chapman and Cydney Seigerman. Congrats Jordan and Cydney!
Happy Monday! Today we are featuring Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen who is well known for his discovery of X-Rays, which are sometimes referred to as Rontgen Rays in his honor.
The discovery of X-Rays not only advanced medical techniques but geochemical and archaeological as well. Portable and tabletop X-Ray instruments are generally non-destructive and are commonly used in elemental analysis, which can be used to source geologic material and analyze sediment cores. CAIS uses both types of instruments in its X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) Lab. Check out our website to learn more and click the link to learn more about Rontgen.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1901/rontgen/biographical/
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1901 was awarded to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him".
New PLoS One article coauthored by CAIS' Sayed Hassan, Richard Bauer, and Kathy Loftis shows rat poison is the agent responsible for parrot deaths in the Telegraph Hill area of San Francisco.
Study caps a multi-year effort to determine cause of a neurological disease.
Happy Tuesday! Today we are highlighting the work of Michael Faraday. You may recognize his surname from the Faraday cup, a component of the mass spectrometer that counts ions to calculate isotope ratios.
Faraday made several discoveries in his lifetime including electro–magnetic rotations, benzene, electro-magnetic induction, the laws of electrolysis and coining words such as electrode, cathode, the magneto-optical effect and diamagnetism, together formulating the field theory of electro-magnetism. For more on Faraday, check out https://www.rigb.org/our-history/people/f/michael-faraday.
Biography of Michael Faraday
Check out this article written by Rachel Priest on Scott Noakes' Scientific Diving class and our Scientific Diving program. It is published in the Spring 2019 issue of Ampersand Magazine (p. 18). https://issuu.com/redandblack/docs/ampersand_spring2019
Ampersand Magazine Spring/Summer 2019
March 31st is the Transgender Day of Visibility, dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide. To honor this day, we encourage our UGA colleagues to join us in becoming safe-space certified through the UGA LGBT Resource Center.
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Diversity in all walks of life is a critical part of the human scientific endeavor, and CAIS is excited and honored to celebrate all students, faculty, and staff who make our work possible.
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For more information, or to sign up with the LGBT Resource Center, please see the links below. @lgbtrcatuga
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https://lgbtcenter.uga.edu
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https://lgbtcenter.uga.edu/content_page/safe-space
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#transgenderdayofvisibility #transvisibility #diversity #lgbtquga #transhigherEd #lgbtqscience
Happy Monday! March is the anniversary month of Willard Libby’s 1949 publication in Science which was the first publication to apply radiocarbon dating methods to archaeological material. The paper was entitled “Age Determination by Radiocarbon Content: World-Wide Assay of Natural Radiocarbon”. Radiocarbon dating remains a common method for dating archaeological material and has other applications as well. CAIS is well known for its radiocarbon dating lab. Check out our new website to find out more about radiocarbon and all our other labs!
https://cais.uga.edu/
The Center for Applied Isotope Studies is the largest and oldest Isotope Geochemistry Laboratory / Radiocarbon AMS Dating Facility in the United States that is accredited under ISO/IEC 17025:2005. Our commitment to experiential STEM education, research excellence, and superior service sets us apart....
Post doc opportunity in UGA's Laboratory of Archaeology
The Laboratory of Archaeology at The University of Georgia anticipates being able to hire a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Geographic Information Systems and Computer Modeling in Archaeology. This would be a three-year, 12-month, full-time position. The primary role of the individual will...
Good morning! Today we are featuring the work of Drs. Martin Kamen and Samuel Ruben. Seventy nine years ago this week (Feb 27), Kamen and Ruben discovered 14C, which led development of radiocarbon dating. Did you know we have a radiocarbon lab at CAIS? Check it out: https://cais.uga.edu/analysis_ams.html.
Good morning! Today we are featuring the work of Luis Alvarez and his team including Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Vaughn Michel (featured previously). Using iridium isotopes, these researchers discovered that an asteroid struck the earth at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. This discovery led to the Alvarez (impact) hypothesis for the extinction of dinosaurs. To learn more about Luis Alvarez and his other accomplishments, check out his biography on the Nobel Prize page: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1968/alvarez/biographical/.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1968 was awarded to Luis Walter Alvarez "for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analy...
Happy Monday! Theodore William Richards was awarded the 1914 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing techniques to accurately measure the atomic weights of several important elements. By 1912, Richards had determined the atomic weight of over 30 elements.
To learn more visit his biography: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1914/richards/biographical/
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1914 was awarded to Theodore William Richards "in recognition of his accurate determinations of the atomic weight of a large number of chemical elements".
Good morning! This Monday we are featuring the work of Samuel Epstein and his colleagues, Ralph Buchsbaum, Heinz A. Lowenstam, C. R. McKinney. These researchers developed a critical method for ascertaining ocean temperatures in the past using stable oxygen isotope analysis of calcium carbonate. Check out their foundational article https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article/62/4/417-426/4426.
Are you interested in stable oxygen isotope analysis for your research? Check out our stable isotope analysis page: http://cais.uga.edu/analysis_stable_iso.html!
SAMUEL EPSTEIN, RALPH BUCHSBAUM, HEINZ LOWENSTAM, HAROLD C UREY; CARBONATE-WATER ISOTOPIC TEMPERATURE SCALE. GSA Bulletin ; 62 (4): 417–426. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1951)62[417:CITS]2.0.CO;2
Good morning! Today we highlighting the work of two isotope researchers, Drs. Masao Minagawa and Eitaro Wada. Dr. Minagawa is a professor in the School of Environmental Science at Hokkaido University and Dr. Wada is a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Science, and Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto. The collaborations of Drs. Minagawa and Wada in the early 1980s were instrumental in establishing stable nitrogen isotope ratios as indicators of trophic position. Here is a link to one of their foundational studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0016703784902047.
If you are interested in stable nitrogen isotope analysis, be sure to check out the Stable Isotope Ecology Lab at CAIS (http://siel.uga.edu).
The isotopic composition of nitrogen was measured in marine and fresh-water animals from the East China Sea, The Bering Sea, Lake Ashinoko and Usujiri…
New Faculty Spotlight!
Today we would like to introduce Dr. Sarah Jantzi, our new Research Scientist to the Plasma Chemistry Lab here at CAIS! Sarah comes to us from her previous position as an Interim Facility Manager following her postdoc in the Trace Evidence Analysis Facility of the International Forensic Research Institute at Florida International University (FIU). Some notable research she conducted includes elemental and strontium isotope analysis of heroin for the DEA to geographically provenance its source.
Sarah earned her doctorate in Analytical Chemistry at FIU with her dissertation topic in laser-based elemental analysis of soil using LA-ICP-MS and LIBS for forensic analysis. Other research areas she has focused on over the years are in biotechnology growing DNA for biosensors and studying transgenic wheat, and analyzing fireworks to determine false positives for gunshot residue tests for forensic purposes.
What interested Sarah most in accepting this position is the study of archaeometry. Sarah is very excited to do research, collaborate and provide mentorship to students throughout the facility, and find new ways to develop and improve analytical and instrumentation methods.
Feel free to drop by and introduce yourself - and don’t forget to ask her about her time as a bassist in a Bengali rock band! Welcome Sarah to CAIS - we look forward to having you here!
Broken glass lab equipment? The Scientific Glass Shop can help! Kyle Meyer, Master Glass Blower at the University of Georgia, can save you money in replacement/repairs for any of your glass needs. Here we have the before and after fixes of a condenser and five position manifold. You are welcome to contact him with any questions at [email protected] or stop by the shop in the UGA Chemistry Building, room 335. Happy experimenting!
Good morning! This week instead of featuring the work of a historical isotope researcher, we are featuring an element: nitrogen! Nitrogen was discovered in 1772 by Daniel Rutherford. Stable nitrogen isotope ratios are used in identifying trophic position, distinguishing marine from terrestrial environments, and much more! We measure d15N in the Stable Isotope Ecology Lab at CAIS. For more information, check out the SIEL website: http://siel.uga.edu.
Offering elemental and nutrient analysis for ecological, agricultural and environmental sciences. Specializing in research, development and consulting for new analytical chemistry techniques. Soil Analysis We analyze all types of soils for nitrogen and carbon stable isotopes and total content. We ca...
Happy 2019! For our first feature this year, we are highlighting Francis William Aston, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1922. He was awarded the prize for his discovery of isotopes in non-radioactive elements via mass spectrograph. Through this, he established the whole number rule. To find out more read his bio: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1922/aston/biographical/
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1922 was awarded to Francis William Aston "for his discovery, by means of his mass spectrograph, of isotopes, in a large number of non-radioactive elements, and for his enunciation of the whole-number rule".
Good morning! This week we are featuring Helen Vaughn Michel. Dr. Michel is a chemist who co-pioneered neutron activation analysis (NAA). This method has been widely used to trace pottery and stone origins and trace elements. Her work with iridium analysis also contributed to the Alvarez hypothesis regarding the extinction of dinosaurs. For more info on Dr. Michel, check out the feature by our friends at Trowel Blazers: https://trowelblazers.com/helen-vaughn-michel/.
120 Riverbend Rd
Athens, GA
30602
The Center for Applied Isotope Studies (CAIS) is a multidisciplinary organization dedicated to research and development of nuclear analytical technology. The CAIS serves as a unique interface to join academia - with its resources, ideas, and position at the forefront of research – with the immediate technological needs of industry and government. With 40+ years in operation on the UGA campus, the Center has an established national and international reputation as a pioneer in development and application of radioisotope and stable isotope analytical techniques, as a premier analytical laboratory, and as a technical training center.
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The big surprise!
UGA students enrolled in the Scientific Diving class taught by CAIS' Scott Noakes had an amazing opportunity to dive in the 6.3 million gallon Georgia Aquarium this past weekend. The class is offered every semester (since Fall 2014) through Marine Science at UGA.
micro-milling oyster shell growth increments #science #backtoschool #uga
Have you ever wondered how scientists measure radiocarbon? In this step of the process, Carla Hadden seals a quartz tube that contains a sample that will be combusted and later graphitized for radiocarbon analysis using an AMS (accelerated mass spectrometer).
CAIS has teamed up with UGA Laboratory of Archaeology to provide an exciting new service for our AMS radiocarbon dating customers: 3D scanning and 3D printing of bone artifacts (and other materials) prior to destructive sampling. The service includes a complete set of digital files and a 3D print(s) of the object. Each object will need to be quoted individually, but most objects smaller than 1" x 1" x 4" will be only about $250. Contact us for additional information. (note FB rendered the video below in low resolution select HD to view a higher quality version)
Today at Camp DIVE students made a cake relay before learning with CAIS scientist Alice Hunt about how sugar influences body functions such as energy, concentration & digestion
What's in those new plates you just bought for summer?
As part of the MARS 4740L Scientific Diving class, students search a simulated crime scene underwater. Students dive with their masks blanked out to simulate diving in little to no visibility and have to follow a guide line while searching for objects in their path. This CAIS experiential learning course is filling up fast for the fall semester.
Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics, & Geno
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55 Carlton StCenter for Physical Activity and Health
Ramsey Student Center 330 River Road
Sculpture Program, Lamar Dodd School of Art,
263 South Thomas St (Mail To: Lamar Dodd School of Art, 270 River Road, UGA)
Anthropology at the University of Georgia
355 South Jackson Street, Baldwin Hall Room 250
LACSI Latin American & Caribbean Studies Inst
290 S Hull St
UGA Flavor of Georgia Food Product Contest
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University of Georgia Department of Education
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