NSF-Arizona Accelerator Facility for Radioisotope Analysis

该奖项提供了每年运行美国国家科学基金会-亚利桑那放射性同位素分析加速器设施所需资金的大约一半。其余的年度运营资金将从用户费用中筹集。“碳-14”方法利用这种碳同位素已知的放射性衰变速率，以及它在大气-生物圈-岩石圈-水圈循环中的化学系统，以便将其作为一种极有价值的工具，用于测定100年至6万年范围内的自然样品和人工制品的年代。该奖项支持的加速器设施将碳-14方法的使用扩展到极小的样品，碳浓度非常低的样品，或碳-14含量非常少的非常古老的样品。

This award provides approximately one-half of the funds required to operate the NSF-Arizona Accelerator Facility for Radioisotope Analysis on an annual basis. The rest of the annual operational funds are to be raised from user fees. The "carbon-14" method makes use of the known rate of radioactive decay of this carbon isotope and the well-determined systematics of its chemistry in the atmosphere-biosphere- lithosphere-hydrosphere cycles in order to use it as an extremely valuable tool in dating natural samples and artifacts in the 100- 60,000 year range. The accelerator facility supported by this award extends the use of the carbon-14 method to extremely small samples, samples with very small concentrations of carbon, or very old samples with very little carbon-14 content.