The 8th international conference MEASUREMENT 2011 took place in the Congres Center of Slovak Academy of Sciences in Smolenice castle on April 27 - 30, 2011. Detailed information about the conference can be found on the conference web page. Conference proceedings can be purchased on that web page, too.

The 8th international conference on measurement was held from 27 to 30 April, 2011 in the Smolenice castle, conference center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. The conference is organized every other year since 1997. This time the castle welcomed 95 specialists from 14 countries of Europe and Asia, including such personalities as prof. Havlíček, rector of CTU in Prague (Czech Republic), prof. Regtien (The Netherlands), prof. Fujiwara (Japan), prof. Hoffman (Germany), prof. Zakrzewski (Poland), prof. Durakbasa (Austria), prof. Andrejev (Russia), prof. Moses (Wales) and spacialists from Slovakia - prof. Smieško, president of the Council of Sovak Universities and prof. Michaeli, chairman of Slovak IMEKO committee. During the opening ceremony vicepresident of the Slovak Academy of Sciences Dr. Juraj Lapin welcomed the conference participants.

The conference was devoted to three main topics:  theoretical problems of measurement, measurement of physical quantities and measurement in biology and medicine. Two invited lectures opened the scientific sessions. The first one, presented by Dr. Ing. Köning from PTB Braunschweig (Germany), was about new measuring methods and systems for metrology in the micro- and nanodimensions. The second one, presented by prof. Kozmann from Panonia University Veszprém (Hungary) was devoted to new methods for evaluation of multilead ECG measurements and their topographical mapping on the chest surface. In 11 sessions another 49 oral presentations were given and 42 contributions were presented during two poster sessions in the castle tower. From the presented topics let us mention the uncertainty and tolerance interval estimation in micro and nanotechnologies, trends in using tomographic techniques in metrology, new optical measuring methods for microelectronics or computer aided noninvasive measuring and imaging methods in medicine.

Conference organizers also this time tried to motivate young specialists in measurement science and to support publishing of their outstanding works by a Young Investigator Award competition. Scientific value and quality of presentation was evaluated by an international jury with members from 8 countries. From 19 submitted works, the best oral and best poster presentation was selected. In the first category, poster of  Michael Vogel and coworkers (Germany) was selected. The paper is devoted to improvement of efficiency of dimensional measurements on multi-sensor coordinate measuring machines. As the best oral presentation lecture of Milan Pavúk and coworkers (Slovakia) was selected. In the paper a synchrotron X-ray diffraction study of the crystallization process was introduced. Besides the award with financial contribution the winners got the possibility to publish full length papers in the on-line journal Measurement Science Review.

Authors of selected presentations will be also invited to submit extended papers for publication in the on-line journal Measurement Science Review published by Versita and indexed in Web of Science, Thomson Scientific SSCI, Scopus, EBSCO and several other databases.

To express their solidarity with the victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, participants of the conference organized a symbolic collection. For every donation they received a hand made Japanese origami. President of the conference, Dr. Tysler passed the result of the collection to Dr. Kawate who will hand it to a humanitarian organization in Japan.

Beautiful Smolenice castle and its surrounding contribute to a good working atmosphere during the conference and stimulated informal discussions in the lobbies and starting new cooperations. Besides the scientific program, excursions to castle "Červený kameň" and a hiking tour to Little Carpatians were organized. Program for accompanying persons included also walking tour to Driny cave and Molpír archaeological park. During the evening meetings, Varga trio and folk music Červeník offered pleasing music to the participants.

Printed proceedings of presented  papers were available at the time of the conference. Conference proceedings can be purchased from the conference organizers. For more information on the conference and its program see conference web page.