Ivo Leito

Ivo Leito

Car Battery and Winter (Auto aku ja talv)

Most people (especially in the northern countries) have had the extremely annoying experience that in some (usually somewhat colder than average) morning the car will not start, because there is not enough charge in the battery. The battery is a…

Acidity measurements of superacids

Among the central reserach topics at Institute of Chemistry, University of Tartu is design and acidity measurements of superstrong acids – so-called superacids. These are acids that are more acidic than sulfuric acid (H2SO4), which is usually considered an epitome…

MSC Euromaster Graduation Ceremony

On Oct 26-27, 2010 a graduation ceremony was held at the EC JRC-IRMM (Geel, Belgium) where the first Euromaster certificates of the MSC Euromaster consortium were awarded to the first 32 graduates of the MSC consortium. The home universities of…

A Universal pH Scale for all Phases

pH value is the best known parameter for characterizing acidity of a solution. The pH of a neutral solution is around 7. In acidic solutions, such as battery acid, pH is around 0. In alkaline solutions, such as certain bleaches…

Determination of Mycotoxins in Food

Mycotoxins are a class of food contaminants that are synthesized by certain species of fungi. Differently from, e.g. pesticides, mycotoxins are non-anthropogenic – they are not added to food by humans. However, correctness in handling and production of food can…

Defence of AMS master’s theses: Success!

Today all seven AMS master’s candidates successfullt defended their theses. Congratulations! The PDF files of all the theses are available for download from here (See at the end of the list: Dana-Maria Bunaciu, Klodian Dhoska, Urmas Joost, Madis Juurma, Liina…

Defence of AMS master's theses

Seven AMS students will defend their master’s theses on June 8, 2010. The topics of the theses range from high-accuracy metrology (Klodian Dhoska – Systematic effects in automated mass measurements) and thermal imagers (Madis Juurma – Effects of environmental conditions…

Detecting "date rape" drugs

Date rape drug refers to a drug that can be used to assist in the commission of a sexual assault, such as date rape (Wikipedia). detection of traces of date rape drugs in drinks is very important in criminalistics and…

AMS is going for Erasmus Mundus

Last Friday we finalized the submission of the proposal for obtaining the prestigious Erasmus Mundus label for our programme. The proposal was submitted as a collaborative effort (which is the essence or Erasmus Mundus) of University of Tartu, Uppsala University,…

Nobel lecture by John B. Fenn

Every now and then measurements or chemical analyses show up in the awarded Nobel prize descriptions. I recently came across the Nobel lecture of John B. Fenn, the inventor (together with Koichi Tanaka) of the ESI ionization method for mass…

Decision threshold and detection capability

Besides the well-established LoD and LoQ as measures of detection ability of a procedure, laboratories are increasingly often required to establish also the decision threshold (CCalpha) and detection capability (CCbeta) for their procedures. There is still quite some confusion how…

AMS in the EstCube project

AMS Student Martynas Pelakauskas participates in the EstCube satellite project. His task is to design and check the power supply electronics. ESTCube-1, the first Estonian student satellite (www.estcube.eu), is a student project which is aiming to create, build and launch…

Pesticide information online

There is a very good online database of pesticides hosted by the EU Community Reference Laboratories for Residues of Pesticides available at It is free and the data are indeed serious and useful. For example, data on behavior of…

VIM – International Vocabulary of Metrology

Posted by Ivo Leito Measurement science (metrology) is a lucky area in the sense that there a very good and authoritative “single-point-of-reference” terminology vocabulary available: the VIM (Vocabulaire international de métrologie, International Vocabulary of Metrology). The current edition – third edition…

GPS

Did you know that time measurement accuracy of roughly 10 nanoseconds – that is 0.00000001 seconds (!) – is required for accurate positioning provided by GPS devices? Amazing! This time measurement uncertainty leads to the positional uncertainty contribution of ca…

Lead in drinking water

Safety and quality of drinking water are among the important responsibilities of analytical chemists and measurement scientists. Toxic elements, such as lead, cadmium, selenium, etc are an important health risk if found in water and their content has to be…