Diverse fields of Metrology reveal manifold perceptions concerning the meaning of the classical procedure «measurement» and of the trendy procedure «observation». No common consensus has become visible so far. The following systematic investigations of metrological tasks and structures develop and propose a self-evident definition of both procedures and the resulting analytical relationship. This is feasible by modelling and visualising dynamic subsystems by means of Signal and System Theory. In particular, one can consistently demonstrate and justify the complementary tasks of measurement and observation. Thus, we gain an extended and modern version of basic metrological structures.

Uncertainties in results caused by human factors of test persons are well known in the area of testing the speech quality of telephone connections. The presence of this kind of uncertainty components were already known when this test methodology was introduced. For elimination or reduction a new approach by using emotion detection is presented. First results and limits are given. In order to get a universal method standardization is urgently needed.

The General Conference on Weights and Measures agreed in principle at its 24^th meeting in October 2011 on new definitions for four of the seven base units of the International System of Units (SI). Kilogram, ampere, kelvin, and mole will be defined in terms of fixed numerical values of the Planck constant, elementary charge, Boltzmann constant, and Avogadro constant, respectively.
A refined value of the Boltzmann constant suitable for defining the kelvin is presently determined by fundamentally different primary methods like acoustic gas thermometry, dielectric constant gas thermometry, noise thermometry, and the Doppler broadening technique. Details of the measurements, progress to date, and further perspectives will be reported.
Necessary conditions to be met before proceeding with changing the definition are given. The consequences of the new definition of the kelvin on temperature measurement will be outlined. After the new definition has been adopted as well the present method, the International Temperature Scale of 1990, ITS-90 and primary thermometers can be both used to realize the temperature unit. Both methods to realize the kelvin will be reviewed in this presentation.

The reference thin metal film to calibrate for the thermal diffusivity is being developed in NMIJ. Mo thin film with a nominal thickness of 400 nm is candidate for the reference film. To inspect the fabrication process of the reference material, test films were prepared and estimated in terms of scatter of the physical properties. Thermal diffusivity of those films were measured using the pulsed light heating thermoreflectance apparatus originally developed by NMIJ. The measured thermal diffusivity is 3.46 × 10^-5 m² s^-1 and the standard deviation is 0.05 × 10^-5 m² s^-1 (1.6%) for 8 films sampled from a total of 75 films. We plan to supply the reference thin films based on above mentioned technology in 2014FY.

This paper introduces the design and calibration of a capacitive position sensor used for measuring the mechanical deflection of a beam with sub-nanometer resolution. It is known that the most accurate and SI traceable method for displacement measurement is the laser interferometry. However, in our application we need to know not only the displacement of the object under measurement but also its distance to a reference origin. To measure the distance with a common two-beam interferometer, in which the measured displacement is proportional to the number of fringes counted, one needs to move the object from the reference origin to the desired position and continuously track the readout of the laser interferometer. To meet this need, we have developed a capacitive position sensor dedicated to this application. The capacitive sensor consists of three planar electrodes, i.e. two stationary electrodes and one movable electrode attached to the beam under measurement. The position sensing is based on differential capacitance detection and realized by a capacitive-inductive bridge circuit. We present the design and working principle of this sensing circuit. The performance of the capacitive position sensor was evaluated by calibrating it against a laser interferometer. The calibration also supplies the lack of SI traceability of the capacitive sensor. The calibration results show that the capacitive position sensor is able to measure position with sub-nanometer resolution. The sensing coefficient of the capacitive position sensor was found to be (14.0 ± 0.1) mV/nm.