1.1.5 Future Development Plans
The ArArCALC software is currently being sponsored through NSF-EAR Instruments and Facilities to further the development of this data reduction package, to make it useful and available to the international 40Ar/39Ar community, and to make it interoperable with the new online GEOCHRON database. The first upgrade already was released as Version 2.4 on 22 November 2006, encapsulating numerous upgrades and bug fixes collated over the last four years. On 8 December 2010 a major overhaul of the software was published as Version 2.5 including 34 bug fixes, improvements and upgrades.
Please register at EarthRef.org to stay posted on any ArArCALC news or return to this page to stay on top of any new Future Development Plans. If you have any Requests or Suggestions that will help improve ArArCALC or if you want to share your own Software Code, please contact Anthony Koppers by email.
Version 3.0
- Custom Charting Tools will be included that allow you to plot your "own" parameters against each other. Although ArArCALC already provides age and K/Ca plateau diagrams, normal and inverse isochrons, and a tool to study the "degassing patterns" for an entire experiment, you might want to plot a variety of different measured and derived parameters. For example, plotting the 37Ar/39Ar and 40Ar/39Ar ratios against each other might be very useful when studying multi-mineral samples or whole-rocks, you may also like to plot K/Cl or Cl/Ca plateau diagrams instead of the standard K/Ca diagram, and in some cases you may want to overlay multiple incremental heating experiments within the same age plateau diagram. These improvements (plus others) will also include the ability to export the resulting plots for later use in Microsoft Excel or your favorite drawing program.
- Current data regressions do not weight the errors on the individual data points. Weighted regressions, based on York's equations (York, 1969) for linear fits and on Kyoungwon Kyle Min's (personal communications, 2003) equations for the parabolic fit and the exponential Yi = a Exp(cXi) b fit, will allow you to make statistically robust data regressions with more realistic (and slightly larger) error estimates on the intercept values for each measured isotopic mass (40, 39 ... 36).
- The current online help files are already extensive, but far from complete. A User Guide will added to make the use of ArArCALC more transparent and will benefit scientists and students that start to use this software for the first time. It will also allow for a complete description of the programming philosophy and calculation approach, which is necessary to make this software a truly user-friendly and scientific product.
Version 4.0
- Data reduction capabilities for Potassium Salts and Calcium Fluorites will be added allowing you to calculate irradiation induced correction constants. Historically these constants have been measured only occasionally by a handful of laboratories, yet by including this functionality in ArArCALC you can perform these measurements on a more regular basis. Creating a state-of-art database for these measurements will allow for a more robust characterization of irradiation corrections on a reactor-by-reactor basis, and maybe on a irradiation-by-irradiation basis.
