Fraunhofer Society

About: Fraunhofer Society is a government organization based out in Munich, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Laser & Silicon. The organization has 24736 authors who have published 40168 publications receiving 820894 citations.

The ultrasmoothness of diamond-like carbon surfaces.

Abstract: The ultrasmoothness of diamond-like carbon coatings is explained by an atomistic/continuum multiscale model. At the atomic scale, carbon ion impacts induce downhill currents in the top layer of a growing film. At the continuum scale, these currents cause a rapid smoothing of initially rough substrates by erosion of hills into neighboring hollows. The predicted surface evolution is in excellent agreement with atomic force microscopy measurements. This mechanism is general, as shown by similar simulations for amorphous silicon. It explains the recently reported smoothing of multilayers and amorphous transition metal oxide films and underlines the general importance of impact-induced downhill currents for ion deposition, polishing, and nanopattering.

Molecular farming for new drugs and vaccines. Current perspectives on the production of pharmaceuticals in transgenic plants

Abstract: The European Union Framework 6 Pharma–Planta Consortium The first recombinant plant‐derived pharmaceutical protein (PDP) was human serum albumin, initially produced in 1990 in transgenic tobacco and potato plants (Sijmons et al , 1990). Fifteen years on, the first technical proteins produced in transgenic plants are on the market, and proof of concept has been established for the production of many therapeutic proteins, including antibodies, blood products, cytokines, growth factors, hormones, recombinant enzymes and human and veterinary vaccines (Twyman et al , 2005). Furthermore, several PDP products for the treatment of human diseases are approaching commercialization (Table 1), including recombinant gastric lipase for the treatment of cystic fibrosis, and antibodies for the prevention of dental caries and the treatment of non‐Hodgkin's lymphoma (Ma et al , 2003). There are also several veterinary vaccines in the pipeline; Dow AgroSciences (Indianapolis, IN, USA) announced recently their intention to produce plant‐based vaccines for the animal health industry. View this table: Table 1. Plant‐derived pharmaceutical proteins that are closest to commercialization for the treatment of human diseases As molecular farming has come of age, there have been technological developments on many levels, including transformation methods, control of gene expression, protein targeting and accumulation, the use of different crops as production platforms (Twyman et al , 2003), and modifications to alter the structural and functional properties of the product. One of the most important driving factors has been yield improvement, as product yield has a significant impact on economic feasibility. Strategies to improve the recombinant protein yield in plants include the development of novel promoters, the improvement of protein stability and accumulation through the use of signals that target the protein to intracellular compartments, and the improvement of downstream processing technologies (Menkhaus et al , 2004). Attention is now shifting from basic research towards commercial exploitation, and molecular farming is reaching the stage at which it could challenge established production technologies that use bacteria, yeast and cultured mammalian cells. …

6D SLAM with an application in autonomous mine mapping

Abstract: To create with an autonomous mobile robot a 3D volumetric map of a scene it is necessary to gage several 3D scans and to merge them into one consistent 3D model. This paper provides a new solution to the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem with six degrees of freedom. Robot motion on natural surfaces has to cope with yaw, pitch and roll angles, turning pose estimation into a problem in six mathematical dimensions. A fast variant of the Iterative Closest Points algorithm registers the 3D scans in a common coordinate system and relocalizes the robot. Finally, consistent 3D maps are generated using a global relaxation. The algorithms have been tested with 3D scans taken in the Mathies mine, Pittsburgh, PA. Abandoned mines pose significant problems to society, yet a large fraction of them lack accurate 3D maps.