The course included presentations by experts from two US universities, a UK hospital and members of NPL's own Radiation Dosimetry Section. The first deliveries are currently being made of a new radionuclide calibrator for radiopharmaceutical dose measurement in nuclear medicine departments in Birmingham and Belfast. The unit, manufactured and sold by Southern Scientific of West Sussex, provides unrivalled accuracy and traceability as each chamber is a certified secondary standard traceable to the UK national standard. NPL has recently completed the measurements of 10 steel and10 tungsten carbide gauge blocks which had previously been measured by the Swiss national laboratory and PTB in Germany. The gauges have now been sent to the next recipient in France, from where they will return to Switzerland before being sent to the Americas, Canada and then the Far East.
Initial indications are that the comparison is progressing well.
The meeting which was attended by 50 delegates from Canadian and American industries proved a useful source of information for planning the new Length Programme. A range of DTI-sponsored materials research projects was displayed, including the NPL Virtual Testing system using a live demonstration over the Internet. A display area highlighted the benefits of measurement technology in various industrial sectors, featuring exhibits of gloss and colour measurements, mass standards, and composites in aircraft manufacture. It is further enhanced through access to standard Windows functions such as drag and drop and printing operations, and much easier control. SGTE has agreed with Springer Verlag to publish the data, as part of the Landolt Boerstein tables.