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…