ACE : Age Calculation Engine

The Sample Browser is the window you see when ACE starts, and the place to import data, date samples, etc.  It looks slightly different depending on operating system, but the functionality is the same and data can be exchanged across all platforms to make collaboration easy.  The windows below show how the sample browser appears in Windows XP, Macintosh OS X and Ubuntu Linux:

The top part of the sample browser is designed to help with viewing sample details, and is divided into three sections.  The upper section (View) chooses which samples to show, the middle section (Sort) chooses the order to show them, and the lower section (Search) reduces the list of samples to only one or two for quick reference.  We describe these sections below.

View

The upper part of the sample browser is designed to make it easier to view the samples and sample attributes.  In the top left hand corner of the browser is a pull down menu titled View.  Click on this menu, and from the available options select ‘Ages’:

The sample browser columns change so that only attributes related to age (calculated, published, or independent) are shown. Note that ages shown in this example are set to ‘None’, as these samples have not yet been dated. To calculate an age for a sample we need to Date Samples, which is performed by clicking on the button on the lower panel.

Several different types of views (such as ‘Ages’) are available by default, and new ones can be created using the View Editor. The view option determines which sample attributes to show, but the Filter option determined which samples to show. To see this click on Filter (next to View) and select ’10Be and 26Al Samples’:

When this filter is selected, only the 10Be and 26Al samples are shown.  As with the View Editor, new filters can be tailor made using the Filter Editor.

For initial use we include only a handful of samples with ACE, and additional data can be imported using the Import Samples button at the bottom of the screen.  We describe this process in the next section.

To generate high latitude, sea level production rates which are consistent with the experimental designs (scalings, muon contributions, etc), calibration datasets are supplied ACE.  Sometimes you will want to see these calibration datasets (for example to compare computed with independent ages), sometime you won’t.  The Include Calibration Samples checkbox next to the Filter panel toggles whether samples with independent ages should be listed or not.  Therefore to see all the calibration samples for 10Be and 26Al (the current filter), click this checkbox:

All of the calibration samples are now shown alongside the original samples.

Sort

The View panel (View, Filter, Include Calibration Samples) determines which samples, and which sample attributes to display.  The sort panel determines the order in which to display the samples.  This is useful if you are searching for a particular type of sample attribute, or interested in the maximum and minimum values for the attribute.  As an example, let’s look for the youngest calibration sample which is supplied with ACE.  Change the “10Be and 26Al Filter” option to <No Filter> and the Sort By option to ‘independent age’:

The youngest sample is now listed first, followed by the second youngest, etc. To see the oldest sample change the Ascending sort type to Descending.

The Plot Sort Attributes allows a quick visualization of the attributes which are listed in the sort columns.  For example if we wanted to see the distribution of ages for each nuclide calibration database, we select ‘nuclide’ in Sort By and ‘independent age’ in and then by.  Now the samples are listed first by nuclide type, then by independent age:

Now click the Plot Sort Attributes button.  A new graphics window will open:

The plot function allows you to become familiar with the data you are working with. If you find outliers or interesting points you can retrieve the name of the sample by clicking on the data point in the graph. The figure also contains tools which allow for panning, zooming and saving.  Details are given here.

Search

The Search: panel at the top of the ACE sample browser is designed to quickly find matching attributes to what is typed in.  For example if we know that some calibration samples have an independent age of 2250 yr, but don’t know which samples they are, we can type this in the Search panel:

The sample browser returns two samples. The Use Exact Match checkbox is for when you want to return exactly what you typed in, and not show results which contain what you typed in. It is useful for strings like sample names, landform types, etc.

The panels at the top of ACE help with viewing data, but the real action occurs at the bottom of the sample browser. Using these buttons you can import samples, determine sample ages, analyze the age distributions of landform groups, delete unwanted samples, and output your results to a csv file for further analysis and display.  To explain how these processes work in ACE, we suggest you follow on with the quick-start guide.  The next section regards importing new data into ACE and can be found here.

To watch a demonstation of the sample browser functionality described on this page click here (requires Quicktime)