Hof University of Applied Sciences

Abstract The digital product passport is becoming an essential tool to increase transparency about the sustainability of products and to boost the circular economy in the European Union. With the revised Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation having entered into force in July 2024, the digital product passport will become a necessary extension for many products placed on the European market. Industry practitioners are faced with the challenge of fulfilling content requirements while maintaining interoperability at the same time. Although industry practitioners face challenges in implementing digital product passports, existing research has largely focused on digital product passport systems, often overlooking the crucial aspect of digital product passport data. Work on this data typically falls short of addressing comprehensive interoperability. This research therefore proposes a minimal digital product passport data model that integrates current regulatory requirements while ensuring interoperability through the use of standardised submodel templates of the asset administration shell. We demonstrate that the current regulatory requirements can be met, but foreseeable extensions will require adjustments and therefore close synchronisation between standardisation initiatives and the institutions that further specify regulatory requirements.

The present study analyses the changes in antioxidative behavior of biodegradable Poly(lactic acid) (PLA)-based composite films with bioactive additives derived from pomegranate peel, an abundant agricultural by-product rich in antioxidants and antimicrobials. PLA-based composites were prepared by incorporating industrial-grade pomegranate peel powder (PoP) via melt extrusion at concentrations of 1-5 percent by weight (wt.%). For mechanical characterization, the resulting films were subjected to tensile testing. Their thermal properties were further characterized using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic oxidation induction temperature measurements (OIT), complemented by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), color analysis, rheology, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and UV-Vis spectroscopy. Results show that the incorporation of PoP had no significant impact on the characteristic transition temperatures (Tg, Tm, and Tc) of PLA, indicating that the thermal behavior of the polymer matrix was largely preserved. However, while the thermo-oxidative stability of PLA was improved in the presence of PoP, with a maximum at 3 wt.% of PoP, increasing the OIT by 30 °C, the mechanical performance of the composite films was adversely affected, as evidenced by decreased tensile strength and elongation at break indication embrittlement, especially for ≥3 wt.% of PoP. Significant changes were observed in the films' surface properties, as well as in their color parameters and UV transmittance values. Consequently, while PoP offers potential bioactive functionality for use as a sustainable additive, its content must be carefully optimized to maintain an acceptable balance between functionality and mechanical integrity.

This study introduces a novel benchmark dataset designed to evaluate the capabilities of Vision Language Models (VLMs) on tasks that combine visual reasoning with subject-specific background knowledge in the German language. In contrast to widely used English-language benchmarks that often rely on artificially difficult or decontextualized problems, this dataset draws from real middle school curricula across nine domains, including mathematics, history, and biology. The benchmark includes over 2,000 open-ended questions grounded in 486 images, ensuring that models must integrate visual interpretation with factual reasoning rather than rely on superficial textual cues. We evaluate thirteen state-of-the-art open-weight VLMs across multiple dimensions, including domain-specific accuracy and performance on adversarial crafted questions. Our findings reveal that even the strongest models achieve less than 45% overall accuracy, with particularly poor performance in music, mathematics, and adversarial settings. Furthermore, the results indicate significant discrepancies between success on popular benchmarks and real-world multimodal understanding. We conclude that middle school-level tasks offer a meaningful and underutilized avenue for stress-testing VLMs, especially in non-English contexts. The dataset and evaluation protocol serve as a rigorous testbed to better understand and improve the visual and linguistic reasoning capabilities of future AI systems.

The design review process is part of the building permit in Germany. In a paper-based process, the exchange of information is performed by sending a set of documents and drawings to the relevant parties. Documents and drawings in the format PDF become more accepted by building authorities in Germany. Also, the application of BIM in the construction industry is increasing. The change of accepted digital formats requires also adjusted methods for the exchange of information. Especially the problem of transferring meta data related to documents arises. Existing proposals for the exchange of meta data given in codes are analyzed in this paper. The suitability for design review processes is evaluated and legal issues are considered. Known methods for the exchange of meta data are only partly suitable in the context of design review processes. Hence, a proposal for standardized meta data in design review processes for buildings is developed.

In this paper we present a stable-diffusion based zero-shot approach to realistically transform the image of a human body into a more fit version of that depicted person. Therefore we combine a modified stable diffusion model with inpainting techniques and incorporated constraints. We introduce a prototype which allows users to upload a photo and visualize a more fit version of themselves. We evaluated our approach in various experiments and focused on the applicability and effectiveness of these techniques, with attention to gender-specific results. This work contributes to the fields of computer vision and generative AI by demonstrating practical applications and identifying areas for improvement in realistic body transformation visualizations. All results and the complete code is released on GitHub.

The support and therapy of hearing impaired patients has been successfully established for many years and follows different therapy concepts and principles depending on the therapy approach. In the future, care and therapy should continue to meet the growing quality requirements of the health care system and at the same time be oriented towards the individual needs of the patients. Before looking at future developments, it is helpful to reflect the current situation within the support and therapy of profoundly deaf patients. What challenges do therapists and educators face? What demands are placed on their work, and what resources are currently available to meet these demands?

Daniel Roßner is preparing to defend his PhD thesis and serves as a Technical Co-Lead for Identity and Access Management at one of Germany's largest car insurance companies. His research focuses on spatial hypertext and information retrieval, particularly the development of spatial composition algorithms and the relationship between knowledge and spatial proximity.