Offenburg University of Applied Sciences
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Audit protocol for evaluating diversity in sport performance footwear research: Assessing footwear design, participant representation, and author demographics in published studies
No full textEquity, diversity and inclusiveness have been identified as areas for improvement across sports and biomechanics research. To identify and prioritise areas for improvement, it is important to understand the current ‘state of play’. This protocol outlines an audit process designed to (1) characterise and compare demographic data of both participants and researchers in published performance shoe research and (2) profile considerations of equity, diversity and inclusiveness in performance shoe design. A comprehensive multi-language, search strategy will be conducted across 4 primarily English and 1 Chinese data base. Sport specific journals published in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish and Portuguese will be hand-searched. All studies, published since 2015, investigating the design or testing of a shoe, insert or orthotic required or facilitating for sports performance will be considered for inclusion. For the purposes of this audit, sports will be limited to those recognised by the International Olympic Committee Summer Olympic International Federations. Footwear company websites will be searched for details on specific performance footwear. Studies will be grouped based on the sports the shoe is designed for. Participants’ gender and/or sex, race and ethnicity will be directly extracted from included studies or by contacting the authors. Researchers’ gender and/or sex, position within the authorship group and location where the study was conducted will be extracted from included studies or obtained through university profiles, professional pages or by directly contacting authors. Differences in demographic data will be compared between shoe type and representativeness of participants, researchers and footwear will be calculated using participation to prevalence ratios. The proposed protocol represents a committed step towards improving equity, diversity and inclusiveness throughout footwear science
Fungal β-Glucosidases with dual Activity: Linking biomass saccharification to cellulase induction in Trichoderma reesei
Full text linkThe cellulolytic system of Trichoderma reesei depends on β-glucosidases as central enzymes completing biomass hydrolysis and generating inducers such as sophorose. Three β-glucosidases from Aspergillus clavatus (AC), Penicillium oxalicum (PO) and Talaromyces stipitatus (TS) were expressed in Komagataella phaffii and characterized for parameters relevant to biomass conversion and inducer formation. PO and TS showed higher thermostability between 60 and 70 °C, whereas AC was inactivated above 50 °C. All variants were glucose inhibited, with AC least affected (Ki = 8.4 mM), followed by PO (Ki = 6 mM) and TS (Ki = 2.3 mM). Supplementation of Celluclast® with TS increased glucose release from cellulose and wheat straw and reached levels comparable to Cellic®CTec2 on wheat straw after 24 h. All enzymes catalyzed condensation reactions and produced up to 55 g/L disaccharides, with TS yielding the highest sophorose titers at 700 g/L glucose. Induction performance was assessed using T. reesei RUT-C30 cultivated with glucose, a TS derived disaccharide solution or steam-ex wheat straw hydrolysate. For each enzyme class, the highest activity across all conditions was defined as 100 %. The disaccharide solution generated the strongest cellulase response, while glucose yielded only 26 % BGL and 20 % CBH1 activity relative to these maxima, and hydrolysates produced intermediate levels of 65 % BGL and 24 % CBH1 activity while concurrently generating the highest hemicellulolytic activities, set to 100 %. Proteomics confirmed that the disaccharide solution upregulated core cellulases (EGL1 +2.80, CBH1 +1.66, EGL5 +3.16), whereas hydrolysates enriched CBH2 (−2.02), GH11 xylanases (−3.27) and GH3 β-xylosidases (−6.45, −2.49)
Biogas Optimization Using Context Specific Flux Balance Analysis (CSFBA) and Context Specific Metabolic Coherence Analysis (CSMCA)
No full textThe microbial consortia have a strong control over the stability and efficiency of the process of biogas production, as biogas is one of the promising environmentally friendly ways of producing renewable energy. Biogas results from various syntrophic associations between different microbial consortia, yet digesters with similar microbial consortia tend to have varying methane yields. This proves that community function depends on more factors than community composition alone. The majority of studies assume the abundance and activity of microorganisms, whereas metabolic structural information remains under-researched. In this work, we have used two complementary genome-resolved structures to connect microbial metabolism and anaerobic digestion, a biological process by which microorganisms break down organic molecules in the absence of oxygen. At first, we constructed transcript-informed, context specific metabolic modelling workflow between genome scale metabolic models (GEMs) and a read-mapping and normalizing strategy, context-specific metabolic coherence analysis (CSMCA) and Gene Inactivity Moderated by Metabolism and Expression (GIMME) based inconsistency diagnostics. While applying this pipeline on high-quality dataset (PRJNA929705), we came to know that average community coherence is a weak predictor of methane yield however, small subsets of sentinel taxa (Bacillota and Actinomycetota) have strong positive correlations. Shifts in the metabolic condition of these sentinel taxa also add to fluctuations in the methane output by about one month. Further we found network level inconsistency localized to a small number of bottleneck reactions (eg., nucleoside diphosphate kinase; diaminopimelate epimerase), which implies that instability is a discrete set of bottleneck reactions and not a diffuse community-wide failure. Second, we present the MAG level Metabolic Coherence (MMC) which determines the integrity of internal metabolism architecture independent of the expression data. MMC applied to 339 non-redundant MAGs (assembled from the dataset PRJNA929705 following strict methodology, Wirth et al., 2023) suggested that ecological generalists have well-organized metabolic network more than partial and specialized taxa and forecasts metabolic stability in the form of niche breadth and temporal abundance. The work extends between condition-specific feasibility (GIMME and CSMCA) and metabolic architecture (MMC) to bridge ecological persistence, metabolic association and engineered bioprocess performance
Konzeption und Umsetzung einer barrierefreien E-Learning Plattform zum Thema 'Fortgeschrittener Umgang mit KI'
No full textDie vorliegende Bachelorarbeit befasst sich mit der Konzeption und prototypischen Umsetzung der barrierefreien E-Learning-Plattform „AICADEMY“, die sich dem Thema des fortgeschrittenen Umgangs mit Künstlicher Intelligenz widmet. In einer zunehmend digitalisierten Welt stellt der Erwerb von KI-Kompetenzen eine zentrale Zukunftsqualifikation dar. Gleichzeitig verdeutlicht die aktuelle Rechtslage, dass digitale Bildungsangebote inklusiv gestaltet sein müssen. Dennoch weisen viele bestehende Plattformen erhebliche Barrieren auf, die Menschen mit Einschränkungen von der Teilhabe ausschließen.
Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, eine Webanwendung zu entwickeln, die komplexe techno-logische Inhalte didaktisch sinnvoll aufbereitet und dabei die strengen Anforderungen der Web Content Accessibility Guidelines auf der Konformitätsstufe AA erfüllt. Die methodische Grundlage für die Entwicklung bildete das ADDIE-Modell, ergänzt durch lerntheoretische Ansätze wie den Konstruktivismus, die Cognitive Load Theorie und das Prinzip des Micro-Learnings.
Die technische Realisierung erfolgte auf Basis des Frontend-Frameworks Vue.js 3 unter Verwendung von Vite und Vuetify. Das inhaltliche Konzept umfasst sechs modulare Kurse, die Themen von Prompt Engineering über KI-gestützte Programmierung bis hin zu ethischen Fragestellungen abdecken. Ein innovativer Aspekt des Projekts war die Nutzung von KI-Werkzeugen wie NotebookLM zur effizienten Produktion der multimedialen Lerninhalte.
Die Qualitätssicherung durch automatisierte Tests sowie manuelle Prüfungen der Tastaturbedienbarkeit und Farbkontraste bestätigen die technische Barrierefreiheit der Plattform. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass moderne Webtechnologien und eine konsequente didaktische Planung die Grundlage für ein inklusives digitales Lernangebot bilden können, das technologische Innovation mit sozialer Verantwortung verbindet
Integration and Modeling of Electrolyzers in Medium-Voltage Grids: Methodological Development and Impact Assessment
No full textThe rapid expansion of variable renewable energy, together with the growing need to decarbonize industrial energy use, has increased the demand for flexible and grid-aware power-to-hydrogen operation. Within this context, electrolyzers should be regarded not only as hydrogen production units but also as controllable electrical loads whose operating behavior directly affects medium-voltage (MV) grid performance, renewable-energy utilization, and economic outcomes. This thesis develops a reproducible methodology for the integration and operation of a grid-connected electrolyzer in an MV distribution network under realistic technical, operational, and market constraints. The proposed methodology integrates an electrolyzer and hydrogen-storage model, an MV grid interaction model, and a predictive control framework within a unified workflow. The aim is to coordinate hydrogen production with local grid limits, renewable availability, and time-varying electricity prices. To ensure practical relevance, the approach is implemented on a real sub-network of the Freiburg 20 kV MV grid and evaluated in a quasi-static time-series (QSTS) simulation environment using the open-source software pandapower. The control concept is formulated as a two-layer architecture consisting of an optimization-based decision core for active-power scheduling and a supervisory logic layer for plant-executable operation. The supervisory layer explicitly represents electrolyzer operating states (OFF, STANDBY, ON), start-up restrictions, and hydrogen-storage constraints. This architecture enables realistic rolling-horizon operation while avoiding the computational burden associated with fully integrated hybrid optimization. The framework is assessed through benchmark comparisons and structured scenario analyses. Relative to reference methods based on dynamic programming and MINLP, the proposed controller achieves substantially lower computation times while maintaining strong economic performance, which makes it suitable for repeated QSTS execution. The scenario analysis further shows that longer prediction horizons improve profitability primarily through better operational timing and more effective use of hydrogen-storage headroom, whereas grid-aware weighting improves voltage and loading performance at a measurable economic cost. In addition, reactive-power capability at the point of common coupling is evaluated, and the results show that smart inverter operation with Q-droop control improves local voltage support with only a minor economic penalty. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that electrolyzer integration in MV grids should be treated as a coordinated techno-economic control problem rather than solely as a grid-connection or market-dispatch problem. The pandapower-based methodology provides a transparent and transferable framework for future planning and operation, particularly for the coordinated deployment and control of multiple electrolyzers in increasingly electrified and hydrogen-coupled distribution systems
Comparison of Gas Chromatography and High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography Methods for Quantitative Analysis of Chitin Oligosaccharides
No full textAccurate quantification of chitin oligosaccharides (COS) is essential for enzymatic hydrolysis research and bioactivity exploration, yet current analytical methods lack harmonization and limit profiling and quantitative accuracy. This study addresses these challenges by optimizing a gas chromatography (GC) method, validated to achieve precise quantification of COS in the range of DP1-DP4. By optimizing the silylation protocol, we increased the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio in all DP standards, including a sevenfold increase in the S/N ratio of DP4. This GC method demonstrated robust linearity ( R 2 ≥ 0.99), high sensitivity (DP1 range from 10 to 2000 µg mL −1 ), strong precision (< 15% coefficient variation), high accuracy (recoveries 90–100%) and repeatability (< 10% coefficient variation) with COS standards. Additionally, a quantitative high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) method for COS DP1-DP6 was validated, offering a rapid and cost-effective alternative. A comparative analysis was done using real-world samples produced from a novel endochitinase from Thermothelomyces thermophilus applying the two novel validated methods, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and a non-specific reducing sugar assay (DNS). Both novel methods demonstrated agreement in the ratio of COS products generated, which ranged from DP1 to DP3, and in the theoretical degree of hydrolysis reached (96 ± 9.2% and 95 ± 3.3%, for GC and HPTLC, respectively), while the conventional methods reported a lower product yield of 75 ± 1.2% with HPLC and 53 ± 1.0% with DNS. This analytical toolkit enhances low-DP COS characterization and facilitates more accurate in chitin hydrolysis research.
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Advancing Robotics Education with Novel, Practical Teaching Approaches
No full textThis paper presents the concept and implementation of a university-level robotics course that integrates theoretical instruction with practical, project-based learning. The course is structured to develop core competencies in industrial robotics by combining lectures with hands-on laboratory work using real industrial hardware, including a collaborative robot, vision systems, and linear actuators. Emphasizing pedagogical methods such as team based learning, problem based instruction, and iterative problem solving. The course fosters both technical proficiency and essential soft skills such as communication, critical thinking, and project management. A central objective is to bridge the gap between academic education and industrial practice by aligning course content with current automation demands. Through authentic tasks and industry relevant challenges, students acquire the skills necessary to operate and adapt robotic systems in modern manufacturing environments. The approach demonstrates the potential of practice oriented engineering education to prepare students effectively for Industry 4.0 and positions in advanced automation
World Conference of AI-Powered Innovation and TRIZ Methodology
No full textThis book constitutes the proceedings of the 25th IFIP WG 5.4 International TRIZ Future Conference on AI-Powered Innovation and Inventive Design, TFC 2025, held in Paris, France, during November 5–7, 2025.
The 48 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 75 submissions. They were focused on topical section as below.
Part I: Neuro-Symbolic and AI-Assisted Contradictions; Generative Agents for Ideation and Design; Tech Mining, Forecasting and Cross-Domain Exploration; Modeling, Verification and Optimization of Technical Systems and Frameworks for Digital Transformation and Industry 5.0.
Part II Cognition, Causality and Systematic Prototyping; Innovation Governance and Standardization; Innovation Governance and Standardization; Data, Forecasting and Intelligent Services and User Experience and Interoperable Public Policies
Erfolgsfaktorenforschung
Full text linkDie Erfolgsfaktorenforschung will die Determinanten ermitteln, die den Erfolg oder den Misserfolg eines Unternehmens langfristig beeinflussen. Sie geht dabei von der Grundannahme aus, dass nur einige wenige Variablen über den Erfolg und Misserfolg eines Unternehmens entscheiden. Ausgangspunkt einer Untersuchung der Erfolgsfaktoren ist stets, die Variablen zu bestimmen, mit denen der Erfolg quantifiziert werden kann. Diese Größen werden dann als Erfolgsindikatoren bezeichnet. Häufig sind dies Gewinn, Rentabilität oder Umsatz. In der Folge wird dann untersucht, welche Variablen einen Erfolgsindikator beeinflussen. Diese Variablen werden als Erfolgsfaktoren bezeichnet
Führungserwartungen der Generation Z und ihren Führungskräften im Produktionsumfeld
No full textAusgangspunkt der vorliegenden Bachelorthesis sind wahrgenommene Veränderungen im Arbeitsverhalten von Mitarbeitenden der Generation Z in produktionsnahen Arbeitsumgebungen. In der betrieblichen Praxis wird insbesondere eine geringere Bereitschaft zu freiwilligem Zusatzengagement beobachtet, was häufig mit generationsspezifischen Zuschreibungen verknüpft wird. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht die Arbeit, welche Führungserwartungen Mitarbeitende der Generation Z im Produktionsumfeld haben, inwiefern Führungskräfte diese Erwartungen zutreffend wahrnehmen und ob sich aus möglichen Diskrepanzen Hinweise für das frei-willige Zusatzengagement ableiten lassen. Zur theoretischen Einordnung wird das Konzept des Organizational Citizenship Behavior herangezogen. Als empirischer Untersuchungsrahmen dient die Robert Bosch GmbH am Standort Bühl.
Die Ergebnisse der qualitativen Einzelinterviews zeigen, dass die grundlegenden Führungserwartungen der Generation Z im Produktionsumfeld weitgehend den in der Literatur beschriebenen Dimensionen beziehungs- und entwicklungsorientierter Führung, einer offenen Kommunikations- und Feedbackkultur sowie klarer Orientierung entsprechen. Diese Erwartungen werden von den befragten Führungskräften grundsätzlich wahrgenommen. Diskrepanzen zeigen sich weniger auf inhaltlicher Ebene als vielmehr in der konkreten Umsetzung, die durch strukturelle und organisatorische Rahmenbedingungen des Produktionsumfelds begrenzt sind. Eine geringere Bereitschaft zu Zusatzengagement erweist sich nicht als generationenspezifisches Merkmal, sondern als stark individuell ausgeprägt und durch organisationale Bedingungen beeinflusst.
Die Arbeit leistet einen Beitrag zur differenzierten Einordnung generationenbezogener Zuschreibungen im Produktionsumfeld. Sie zeigt auf, dass die Förderung frei-willigen Zusatzengagements weniger durch generationenspezifische Maßnahmen, sondern vielmehr durch verlässliche Führungs- und Organisationsstrukturen über alle Generationen hinweg unterstützt werden kann