MST Best Paper Award for 2001

Abstract

For the last ten years, Measurement Science andTechnology has awarded a Best Paper prize. The Editorial Boardof the journal believes that such a prize is an opportunity tothank authors for submitting their work, and serves as anintegral part of the on-going quality review of the journal.An Editorial Board working party, comprising Patrick Gill (Chairman), Ralph Tatam and David Birch, was convened to determine a single contributed paper describing new and significant work, well aligned with the measurement scope of the journal, and presented in clear and rigorous form. They received a significant number of recommendations from the Editorial and International Advisory Board Members, and they would like to record their thanks to the Members for these recommendations, as they form an all-important first stage in the assessment process. There were responses from some 15 Board Members, from which a shortlist of five papers was drawn up. To aid the process, additional information in the form of the 2000 MST papers top rated by referees, and the top papers ranked by most electronic accesses, was accessed. Reviews, papers in special issues or features, and papers which included a Board Member as an author, were automatically excluded. From the shortlist, there emerged a clear winner. It was recommended by five Board Members, significantly more than the other shortlisted papers, and was also rated highly by the referees.Thus the paper recommended by the working party for the MST Best Paper Award for 2001 was: 'Current sensing noise thermometry using a low-Tc DC SQUIDpreamplifier' by C P Lusher, Junyun Li, V A Maidanov, M E Digby, H Dyball, A Casey, J Nyéki, V V Dmitriev, B P Cowan and J Saunders, 12 1-15 (2001)The paper describes the design and performance of a current sensing noise thermometer over a wide range from 4.2 K down to below 1 mK. It builds on previous ideas to measure thermal noise in a resistor, using a sensitive DC SQUID amplifier, from which the temperature is determined. The authors have shown how to turn this concept into a very fast measurement device with 1% precision, limited by amplifier noise at the30 µK level, and applicable over four orders of magnitude. The operation of the device has been calibrated against three separate thermometers operating on very different principles and excellent agreement was achieved. The paper is very well structured, giving an excellent introduction to the field and its position within it. Full accord has been given to alternative approaches, complete with references and sub-notes. The experimental details and results are clearly and fully explained. Conclusions drawn are fully supported by the data. The readability of the paper is excellent, allowing the non-specialist reader to readily gain a good insight. The prize is awarded for the totality of these attributes.The four other papers short-listed for the Award are also to be congratulated. These were: 'Measurement of surface tension and contact angle using entropic edge detection' by C Atae-Allah, M Cabrerizo-Vílchez, J F Gómez-Lopera, J A Holgado-Terriza, R Román-Roldán and P L Luque-Escamilla, 12 288-298 (2001) 'A multimode-fibre laser Doppler anemometer for highly spatially resolved velocity measurements using low coherence light' by L Buettner and J Czarske, 12 1891-1903 (2001) 'A combined scanning tunnelling microscope and x-ray interferometer' by A Yacoot, U Kuetgens, L Koenders and T Weimann, 12 1660-1665 (2001) 'Five techniques for increasing the speed and accuracy of PIVinterrogation' by G I Roth and J Katz, 12 238-245 (2001)