Press

Electricity from renewable energy sources contributes to combat climate change. One of the challenges is to develop technologies for storing excesses in energy supplies quickly and without loss. Organic redox flow batteries (RFBs) promise a viable route to this end: operated where needed, they rely on matter-bound storage – just in analogy to nature's example.

With the new website "covid19-knowledgespace.de", Fraunhofer SCAI – together with Fraunhofer IME, Fraunhofer IAIS, the Information Center for Life Sciences ZBMED and other research partners – is opening a new kind of knowledge space with analysis tools and information on COVID-19. Central services in the COVID-19 Knowledge Space are the Biomedical Knowledge Miner "BiK>Mi" containing a highly curated cause-and-effect model for SARS-CoV-2, the literature mining environment "SCAIView", which has been optimized for COVID-19 text mining, and a special terminology representing major entities and concepts of COVID-19.

Without the printed circuit board (PCB), there would never have been the electronic revolution that has so transformed our lives and jobs. A PCB is the platform upon which minuscule electronic components interact with one another. Today, PCBs are found in an ever-greater number of increasingly complex applications. This in turn has led to more and more stringent require-ments with regard to design and quality assurance. It is vital, for example, to avoid any electrical interference and ensure electromagnetic compatibility. The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT has developed a modular AI platform to optimize the design and testing of PCBs, thereby reducing the requisite outlay by as much as 20 percent.

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is an industry association for the development of Open Solutions, in which all well-known players of the worldwide telecommunications industry are represented. The aim is to give everyone in the world access to the Internet. Fraunhofer FIT's "Wireless Backhaul" (WiBACK) radio relay technology will be a key component of TIP’s OpenCellular project for bringing the Internet to remote, sparsely populated regions.

Demand for apps for preventive health care is growing all the time. Particularly popular are diagnostic assistants that record physiological and fitness data. However, there are data protection concerns with these tools. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Application Center SYMILA in Hamm have developed two prevention apps that safeguard users’ data protection rights. While teamFIT is aimed at sports trainers who want to monitor the current state of fitness of their teams, BAYathlon is designed to help detect a specific form of cardiac arrythmia at an early stage. From November 18 to 21, the team of researchers will be demonstrating how the apps work at MEDICA 2019 in Düsseldorf (Hall 10, Booth G05).

At the invitation of Martha Lucía Ramírez, Vice-President of Colombia, the International Council of Wise Men (Misión Internacional de Sabios) met for its second Summit on 16-19 September 2019. The meeting of this elite group of nationally and internationally renowned scientists took place in the Center of the Spanish Consulate in Cartagena de Indias. Dr. Markus Eisenhauer from Fraunhofer FIT had been invited to take part as an expert for Industry 4.0 and Convergent Technologies, with a particular focus on establishing a research system according to the Fraunhofer model. The Council's task is to draw up a road map for the strategic promotion of science, technology and innovation in Colombia.

Chemical reactions and molecular modifications change the genome of each and every human over the course of their lifetime. These modifications can result in disease, but they also provide a basis for determining a person's biological age. Fraunhofer scientists participating in the project “DrugTarget” have now developed a method that can quickly check the condition of the genome. This will help develop points of intervention for new medicines and will help inform people how youthful their bodies are.

Spectacular fireworks, a large crowd, and music with a driving beat – on the first weekend in May the Rhine in Flames event will set the large parks along the Rhine in Bonn topsy-turvy. In 2019, a team of researchers from Fraunhofer FIT provided innovative support for the security staff: they set up a new tracking system that displayed, in real time, the locations of all police officers, firefighters, emergency care assistants, and stewards involved in the event in a digital situation map in the command center.

At Hannover Messe 2019, Fraunhofer FIT will present data-driven modeling supporting production planning and optimizing resource utilization. The models help to understand and optimize complex processes, and can be used as predictive tools. In addition, we demo a system that uses AI-based image processing to monitor and evaluate, in real time, the situation and behavior of people, e.g. in a production setting. The system may be used, for instance, to automatically raise the alarm if a person is sitting or lying on the floor, indicating a dangerous situation. Meet us in hall 2, booth C22.

More than six million people in Germany suffer from osteoporosis. The disease is characterized by chronic bone resorption, leading to frequent fractures as a consequence of the bone loss. In many cases, treating the condition with drugs does not work well, and people with osteoporosis often suffer from cardiovascular diseases at the same time. Research partners in the OsteoSys project are working toward customized, personalized treatment. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT are contributing, among other things, their development of a sample management system to the project. This system will be presented for the first time at the MEDICA 2018 trade fair in Düsseldorf.