“…This method was expanded to include the examination of a wide range of sedimentary components following the development of high-resolution Ge(Li) -ray detectors, e.g., soils, marine and nonmarine sediments, volcanic deposits, biogenic detritus, aerosols, the dissolved and suspended fractions of steams and seawater, moon rocks, and chondrites. Instrumental neutron activation analysis remained widely used for some 20 years until it was largely supplanted by other techniques, coupled with various leaching and extraction procedures that have allowed for the analysis of the complete group of REE in a wide range of sample types [1,5,8,9,16,25]. These techniques also greatly improved the analytical accuracy and precision, now better than ca 5%.…”