Interesting posts

Hi all,

As you may be aware, the Iolite team have been busy working on a new release and the Iolite workshop (August 14th) as part of the Goldschmidt conference.

But the forum has been busy with interesting and important questions asked by users. I recommend having a quick look at these topics:

There's a new feature in the Trace_Elements_IS DRS

Here's a discussion of how ratios are calculated in Iolite

...or how stats are calculated in Iolite

And a nifty tip for manually setting image parameters

Also, Dany Savard, one of the regular contributors to the forum, has added some additional standard files for users to download. But, as Jon says "Ultimately, it will always be up to the user to confirm that the reference material values they are using are the ones that they believe in/wish to use." So please check any files you download before you trust them.

That's all for now, but we'll have a release out in the next few weeks, and there will likely be some more activity around here after the workshop.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to post on the forum!

Blog update

Hi, you may have noticed that things have been a little quiet here lately – that's not because we're not doing anything, but because we're busy organising the workshop in Prague. We're also busy getting ready the next release of Iolite, which we expect to have ready in late July. It will contain some great new features for laser imaging, as well as some bug fixes.

If you haven't yet signed up for the workshop on August 14th it's not too late, we still have places left – the cost is 30 € (euro) before July 14th, or 50 € (euro) after that date, see here for details.

Masking your results in Iolite - tips and pitfalls

REMEMBER, masking is on by default! So watch this video to find out how masking affects your data! Included is a brief example of how masking works and how masking can affect your results. Also includes things to look out for when setting mask thresholds. If you have any comments or questions, please post on the Iolite forum at http://iolite.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/forum/

Iolite workshop: registration is now open

(Please note that registration has now closed for the 2011 workshop in Prague)

Hi,
Registration for the Iolite workshop is now open!


Just as a quick reminder (the full original post can be found here), the workshop will be run in Prague on the 14th of August, 2011 (the sunday prior to Goldschmidt). It will be in the Prague Conference Center, which is the same venue as the conference, and will start at 1pm and run for 5 hours. To make life easy for anyone planning on attending both the detrital zircon UPb workshop and our Iolite workshop, we'll be using the same venue, and will follow on directly from the UPb workshop with lunch, then start the Iolite session.


To register, please send an email to Iolitesoftware@gmail.com including the following information:
---Name (and title)
---Institution
---Contact details (unless told otherwise, we'll assume you want to use email address you mail from)
---Any comments or special requests
We will then reply to your email with an invoice and payment details.

Cost of the workshop is 30 € (euro) before July 14th, or 50 € (euro) after that date. The cost is per participant, including lunch and afternoon tea.

We encourage all participants to bring their own laptop, and if possible to install the latest versions of Iolite and IgorPro prior to the workshop (we will have install files with us on the day for those unable to pre-install).

For information about the detrital zircon UPb workshop (including registration) click here.

Selecting integration periods automatically (Part 2)

As promised, this post will cover the 3rd option of automatic integration selection called "detect from beam intensity". This option allows you to select portions of your data that satisfy up to three different criteria (e.g., where U238 is greater than 10000 counts per second). Because such criteria are independent of how your data were collected (e.g., numerous small files vs. a single large file), the method is particularly useful for sessions that don't include some sort of labelling for each analysis. This first short video demonstrates the basics of the interface using a U-Pb dataset as an example:



So you would have noticed the extra level of feedback in this option, with the graph showing not only the location of each integration period, but also which ones you've selected, and the location of any pre-existing integration periods for the selected integration type.

But there's one other thing about this new option which we think makes it really powerful, which is that in addition to your input channels you can also use intermediate and output channels as selection criteria. This means you can use an isotopic ratio, or even the calculated 206/238 age of an analysis to distinguish between analyses, as this next video demonstrates:



The other benefit of being able to use intermediate and output channels is that anyone who's really keen can make waves in their DRS specifically for assisting in selecting integrations. For example, you could make an intermediate wave that is given the value 0 for all parts of your data that you don't want to select, and the value 1 for time intervals of interest, then use this wave as your selection criterion in the "detect from beam intensity" interface. In this way, you could either come up with discriminating criteria that are more complex than what's provided in the current interface, or just make your life a little easier by, for example, rolling three different criteria into a single wave, so that you don't need to set everything up in the interface every time you use it.

Selecting integration periods automatically (Part 1)

For anyone trying to process an even moderately sized dataset, the ability to select integration periods automatically is a huge timesaver. In addition, if you're trying for reproducibility in the way you're selecting each analysis, using an automated approach makes this a lot easier than trying to manually select exactly the same intervals over and over again.

Iolite has several ways for you to select integrations automatically, and these will be the focus of a couple of separate blog posts. In this post, I'm going to show you how to use the "information from import" option, which is most useful for sessions consisting of numerous discrete analyses (either in separate files or within a single file). For those of you acquiring laser log files, you can use the "laser log file" option, and the actual selection of integration periods will be virtually identical to what's presented here (there's a bit of extra stuff for synchronising your laser log file with your acquired data, but I'm not going to go into that here).

If your analyses were all acquired in large files, you won't get much benefit from this approach, but luckily for you we've just added a 3rd option called "detect from beam intensity". It's quite a powerful tool that uses channels from your DRS to discriminate time periods of interest, but it will have an entire post to itself in the near future, so I won't go into it more here...

So now to the main event – I've put together the following video to walk you through the process of selecting integration periods automatically:

Iolite Workshop - sunday August 14, 2011

(Please note that registration has now closed for the 2011 workshop in Prague)

We'll be running our first Iolite workshop in conjunction with the Goldschmidt conference in Prague later this year!

[Please note: registration is now open, see here for the latest post with details]

The workshop will be aimed at introducing Iolite to new users, and will focus on everything you need to know to get started processing your mass spec. data with Iolite, including:
--- Importing your data
--- How to get the most out of viewing data in Iolite
--- Using the Report Window and X-Y Plot Window
--- Selecting data and using different interpolation methods
--- The basics of modifying an existing DRS

We intend to make it a very hands-on workshop, with participants working through example datasets on their own laptops, instead of just staring at powerpoint slides and handouts. There will of course still be amazingly stunning slides and mindblowingly brilliant handouts, but the hands-on stuff will be so much fun that they'll just fade into insignificance by comparison...

There will be a bias towards laser ablation data in the workshop, particularly U-Pb zircon geochronology and trace element imaging, but we'll also be covering solution mode ICPMS and TIMS data.

Note also that the workshop is being run in cooperation with the Detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology workshop, and will follow on in the same venue to make it easy on anyone wanting to attend both.

Finally, if you have requests or suggestions for other topics you'd like included in the workshop, feel free to comment on this post, or on our forum.