Component selection for a compact micro-XRF spectrometer

The performances of a number of commercially available components which together can be employed to assemble a compact micro-XRF spectrometer were compared. The purpose of such a spectrometer is to permit local, non-destructive analysis of various materials; its compact nature will allow it to be used on-site, i.e. at the location where the investigated objects/materials are present rather than in a laboratory. The performances of two polycapillary lenses (of different manufacture) and one monocapillary tube were compared in combination with a mini-focus x-ray tube with Mo anode. The use of an Si-drift chamber and an Si PIN-diode detector was investigated and the achievable minimum detection limits for trace elements in glass and silver matrices were determined. Finally, the effect of using mini-focus tubes (with 250 µm focus) as opposed to the use of a more conventional x-ray source (1 mm focus) on the obtained beam size was investigated. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

A Song for My Supper: More Tales of the Field

This essay tries to be true to a podium talk I presented at a conference in March, 2008. But, of necessity, certain consolidation liberties are taken. Beginning with a brief and broad treatment of ethnography as a paired written representation of and lengthy personal experience in a particular social world, I move to consider why the former, the text, has been so infrequently examined in lieu of the latter, the so-called method. I then move to ethnographic texts themselves and look at what I take to be some broad changes the seem apparent — particularly within the organizational ethnography domain — over the past 20 or so years. Alongside these changes comes the emergence of several distinct genres treated only lightly (or not at all) in Tales of the Field. I end by considering what seems to have stayed the course in ethnography and why