We document the utility for in situ Rb-Sr dating of a one-of-a-kind tribrid mass spectrometer, ‘Proteus’, coupled to a UV laser ablation system. Proteus combines a pre-cell quadrupole mass-filter,collision cell,...

The last decade has seen widespread adoption of triple quadrupole-based inductively coupled plasma−tandem mass spectrometry (ICPMS/MS) technique using a collision/reaction cell in combination with a precell bandpass mass analyzer to measure isotopes otherwise masked by spectral interferences. High-precision isotope ratio analysis containing such isotopes would benefit from a similar capability on a multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICPMS) platform, but using a quadrupole-based precell mass analyzer for MC-ICPMS/MS has several limitations. To overcome these limitations, we developed a novel precell mass analyzer for MC-ICPMS/MS using sector field technology. The new precell mass analyzer, comprising two Wien filters and a selection aperture, and a hexapole collision/reaction cell were integrated together in a single module and added to the commercially available Thermo Scientific Neptune XT MC-ICPMS to create a prototype MC-ICPMS/MS we named Vienna. Vienna was proven to retain the same performance of the base MC-ICPMS in terms of sensitivity, accuracy, and precision. Using the Vienna mass filter to eliminate Ar-based species, the abundance sensitivity achievable was equivalent to TIMS at mass 237.05, which was used to accurately determine the low 236 U/ 238 U isotope ratio of the uranium reference material IRMM184 (certified value, 1.2446 × 10 −7 ). The performance of Vienna was then tested for a variety of geoscience applications that were expected to benefit from MC-ICPMS/MS technique, including Ca, K, Si, and in situ Rb/Sr dating by laser ablation.

It is well known that bereavement presents major challenges of adjustment to the individuals so affected, but what is much less well recognized is the major challenges bereavement can present to organizations in general and their managers and human resources professionals in particular. This article explores the significance of death for the workplace and argues that organization that fail to give adequate attention to such matters will be poorly placed when it comes to promoting workplace well-being.The idea that death and taxes are the two unavoidable aspects of life has become a common cliche´, but, cliche´or not, it remains the case that death is something that we all have to face up to sooner or later. We can indulge in bad faith and try to live our lives as if we were immortal-perhaps finding that all the more difficult to do as we get older-or we can face the daunting task of accepting our mortality and all that this entails. This is a spiritual challenge for each and every one of us. How we respond to it will depend on a number of factors.One key factor is our belief system, whether that is an explicitly religious one or some other set of values that give us a sense of who we are and how we fit into the wider world-what Moss (2005) calls our worldview, a key part of our spirituality. This is, of course, not just a spiritual matter, but also a sociological one, in so far as shared beliefs, whether religious or otherwise, are necessarily social

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Different approaches for the determination of the 87Sr/86Sr isotope ratio of high-Rb glass are compared in this work to assess the suitability of minimally invasive approaches for applications on medieval stained glass (from the ancient Abbey of Stavelot in Belgium). It was found that pneumatic nebulization multicollector inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (PN-MC-ICP-MS) after acid digestion and chromatographic isolation of the target analyte out of the sample matrix can still be seen as the preferred method for the high-precision isotopic analysis of Sr in glass with high Rb and rare-earth element (REE) concentrations. Alternatively, the use of laser ablation (LA) for sample introduction is a powerful technique for the direct analysis of solid samples. However, both the high Rb/Sr ratios in the samples of interest and the presence of REEs at sufficiently high concentrations lead to a large bias in LA-MC-ICP-MS, which cannot be corrected for, even by operating the MC-ICP-MS instrument at higher mass resolution and/or using mathematical corrections. It was demonstrated that LA tandem-ICP-MS (LA-ICP-MS/MS) using CH3F/He as the reaction gas to overcome spectral overlap in a mass-shift approach (chemical resolution) provides a viable alternative when (quasi) nondestructive analysis is required. This approach relies on the monitoring of Sr+ (m/z = 86, 87, and 88) ions as the corresponding SrF+ reaction product ions (m/z = 105, 106, and 107), thus avoiding the occurrence of spectral interference. Self-evidently, the isotope ratio precision attainable using sequential quadrupole-based ICP-MS instrumentation (0.3% RSD) was found to be significantly worse than that of high-precision MC-ICP-MS (0.03% RSD) with simultaneous detection, although it was still fit for the purpose of current applications. In addition to Sr isotopic analysis, the REE patterns and their potential influence on the Sr isotopic composition were evaluated by LA-ICP-MS.