Invited Talk in Dresden

[bibshow] Scientific insights into arts and cultural heritage The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden and the Hochschule der bildenden Künste Dresden cooperate to host a series of evening lectures where scientists from France, Germany and Austria will present their research on cultural artefacts dating from the stone age to the modern era to the […]

A nostalgic exercise in radiation measurements

This week I’m running the “Radiochemisches Praktikum” here at the Atominstitut. With only 5 students this week it has been a good experience and some interesting discussions. Our example today is a very nice one we’ve been using for quite a long time. Way back, Prof. Buchtela built a nuclide generator out of a steel […]

Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis

I had the honor to be invited to contribute a chapter to the Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis by the editor Alice Hunt of the Center of Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia. Only recently she informed me that the book is being advertised here and here. Right now production is set […]

Cyber Security

I was offered recently to participate in a Regional Advanced Training Course on Computer Security for Nuclear Facilities. So, here I am at the KIT in Karlsruhe, following a very intense course with multiple exercises on Cyber Security. It is very intersting to see how closely related Cyber Security and Physical Protection are for long […]

MTAA Baby!

As I’m writing this, I’m waiting to board my plane to Amsterdam to participate in the 14th Modern Trends in Activation Analysis conference to be held in Delft this year. And even though between private holidays and other travel thus was quite a busy summer, I’m really looking forward to this! I’ve been poring over […]

Across Borders

Yesterday, I crossed the border between Austria and Germany to participate in the Across Borders Workshop Julia Budka kindly invited me. So I find myself sitting in the very impressive Musem of Egyptian Art in Munich, listening to all those colleagues from archaeology give their talks and reports. And while I’m able to gain quite […]

Nuclear Activation AMS

[bibshow file=all.bib] Recently, I have been cooperating with the VERA laboratory on dedecting minute amounts of Chlorine in steel [bibcite key=Winkler2015]. Usually, the detection of Cl is easily done by regular Neutron Activation Analysis (see e.g. [bibcite key=Steinhauser2006c,Steinhauser2006b]), in this case the very small amount of chlorine in combination with the interference from the matrix […]

Anton Wallner featured on 2Physics

[bibshow file=all.bib] Anton Wallner, from VERA, Austria as well as Dept of Nuclear Physics, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia (insert appropriate joke about the existence of Kangaroos here) was recently featured on 2Physics with our work on the half-life of 60Fe [bibcite key=Hall2013]. It’s always good to see that colleagues get the attention that they […]

Interesting Article on Open Source Tools in Archaeology

While reading through R-bloggers, I came across an interesting article: Doing quantitative archaeology with open source software by ATOR not only lists several open-source tools that can be applied in Archaeology, they also explain why this is a good idea. Especially their argument about click trails hit a spot with me. This is something I […]

RHX-Dating revisited…

[bibshow file=all.bib] Our latest publication on RHX-Dating is online! Rehydroxylation-Dating is based on the observation that fired clay grows heavier and larger over time. This gain in mass is associated with water that is slowly moved very deeply into the material in a process called diffusion. The water is bound not as water molecule but […]