More than half of the solar energy that reaches the Earth and is absorbed by land srfaces is used for evaporation of water. Evapotranspiration is a joint process of moisture evaporation from the land and transpiration from plants. Recently a…
OECD has published the results of PISA 2009, the most recent edition of its Programme for International Student Assessment. The assessment methodology evaluates a number of abilities and skills of students, such as accessing and retrieving, integrating and interpreting information,…
Perfluorochemicals – most notably perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and related compounds – have numerous industrial uses. They are highly stable molecules that do not decompose easily in the environment. It has been established that polar bears – the top predators in…
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…
With the continuing globalization authenticity of food is becoming more and more important. This is especially true for highly valued types of food, such as certain olive oil, wines, honey, etc. Determination of authenticity – both geographical and botanical –…
On 29.09.2010 Maiu Varner defended her master’s thesis “The role of coatings in maintaining stability of panel paintings” at UT Institute of Chemistry. Panel paintings made on wood (e.g. icons) are very common in European Churches, especially in the eastern…
Compilation containing the full set of lecture slides of the Measurement Science in Chemistry (MSC) Summer School 2010 is now available for download in the Summer school section of the MSC web page (). These lecture materials in a compact…
Mass spectrometer (MS) with electrospray ionization (ESI) coulpled to a liquid chromatograph (LC) has during the recent decade become the most widespread analysis method of analysis for a vast number of microconstituents and contaminants (pesticides, mycotoxins, drug residues, etc) in…
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…
Yesterday (on July 31, 2010) the closing ceremony of the MSC Summer School 2010 took place in Lepanina (Estonia). Results of the learning evaluation and student game were presented and certificates were awarded to the participants. Traditionally the summer school…
The trend of increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is well known. During recent years another, possibly as serious and wide-ranging, trend has caught the attention of scientists: decrease of dissolved oxygen concentration (deoxygenation) in the world’s oceans. In a…
Today (23.07.2010) the summer school continued on water: canoeing on the Navesti River (Soomaa National Park), followed by bogwalking in the bogs. A very typical for Estonia form of nature. Pictures are available from Picasaweb (please scroll down).
On Monday, July 19, 2010 the third Measurement Science in Chemistry International Summer School started at the coast of the Baltic Sea in Lepanina (Pärnumaa, Estonia). There are students from nine countries (Slovenia, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, France, Portugal, Finland, Thailand,…
Passive House is a concept followed after the energy efficient house but it shouldn’t be confused with Zero Energy Buildings. Passive House is a building designed carefully and built with modern insulation and building materials and techniques and controlled with…
In passive house design and construction we have 2 main measurements. First one is the differential pressure measurement (also called as the Blower-Door Test) (EVS-EN 13829:2001) (modified version of ISO 9972:1996, Determination of air permeability of buildings). Differential pressure measurement…
Sudan dyes (most important of them are Sudan I, II, III and IV) are a family of compounds in the class of azo dyes that are used for different industrial and scientific applications (coloring of fuel, staining for microscopy, etc).…
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…
In roughly one month – on Monday Jul 19 – the 2010 Summer School of the Measurement Science in Chemistry consortium will start. This is already the third of its kind and is this time organized by the Applied Measurement…
On Tuesday Jun 8 Gert Suurkuusk defended his master thesis on a very interesting topic: Determination of Cannabinoids by Gas Chromatography. The title of the thesis is Validation of the gas chromatographic method for THC, CBD and CBN determination. THC…
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…
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…
More and more measurements are made by means of different sensors. At the same time estimation of measurement uncertainty of measurement results is becoming increasingly important. Traditionally there has been no “single-point-reference” with information and guidance on uncertainty estimation for…
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…
On May 3, 2010 Signe Vahur from chair of analytical chemistry defended her doctoral thesis “Expanding the possibilities of ATR-FT-IR spectroscopy in determination of inorganic pigments”. ATR-FT-IR has been used by conservation scientists for a long time. This technique enables…
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,…
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…
In one week time the Student Days in Tartu will start. Every year before the beginning of exam session in the middle of spring Student Days are held. On 26th of April at 6 o’clock the program starts with awakening…
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 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…
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…
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…
On Saturday 20th March this semester’s Applied Measurement Science seminar was held in Chemicum. Almost all of the students – both first and second year – were participating and making presentations about their research. The projects range from students’ satellite…
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…
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…
Measurements must be considered in the broadest sense and have very many applications: toxic metals in drinking water; cholesterol level in blood; strength of construction materials; protein content in wheat; octane number of gasoline Importance of measurements is enormous for…