To address several issues relating to the analysis of near-edge XAS data, Mario Delgado spearheaded an intense effort over the last three years to develop an approach to data analysis that would remove user bias in the fitting of near-edge and background features. The Monte Carlo-based approach minimizes user bias and provides a statistical analysis of obtained fit parameters. With the help of Craig Mewis, he has implemented this approach in a Matlab program entitled BlueprintXAS, which is available on SourceForge.Net. The results were published in a pair of manuscripts in the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation. We look forward to further development of the methodology and software.
