Word: bada
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dating technique was conceived by Chemist Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography while he was trying to date some fossil-laden sediment from the ocean floor. The standard method for determining the age of fossils is the so-called carbon 14 clock, which is based on the ratio of ordinary carbon atoms to atoms of the radioactive isotope carbon 14 found in the specimen. The carbon 14 atoms decay at a known rate and are not replenished after the creature dies; thus the proportion of ordinary carbon to carbon 14 slowly increases. But the carbon clock only works...
...Bada decided amino acids might help open those pages. Using standard lab equipment, he found that it was an easy matter to measure the ratio of left-handed to righthanded molecules in a common amino acid called isoleucine, and he was able to estimate the age of fossils from that ratio. What is more, his tests required only a tiny sampling of material and could be completed in a few hours. There is one serious hitch, he reports in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Because the rate at which amino acids change their configuration varies significantly with heat, the temperature...
...check his theory, Bada dated a number of objects, including an ancient hominid bone dug up from East Africa's Olduvai Gorge by Anthropologist Louis S.B. Leakey. Its age, based on amino-acid dating, turned out to be 135,000 years-almost exactly the same as that deduced by Leakey from indirect geological evidence. Bada is still incredulous over the seemingly accurate results obtained by using his new clock. "It was so obvious and simple," he says, "I was just amazed that it hadn't been discovered before...
...Command of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Nepal on the auspicious occasion of the wedding of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Bierenda Bir Bikram Shah Dev with Her Royal Highness Princess Aishwarya Rajyalaxmi Devi, the Chairman of the wedding committee and Chief of the Royal Household Bada Casi Puspa Raj has the honour and pleasure to request the company of-at Narayanhiti Royal Palace...