Biometrics: Lufthansa will soon provide security with the aid of fingerprint scans. The airline plans to introduce biometric passenger handling in 2006. A fingerprint scanned at check-in will again be compared with the passenger’s fingerprint on boarding. www.siemens.de

Medical Gases: When injections don’t work fast enough, Linde’s INOmax gas can help. Every second counts for newborn babies with pulmonary hypertension. The nitric oxide mixture enters the body extremely fast and enables the lungs to recover more rapidly. www.linde.de

MP3 Format: Increasing numbers of radio enthusiasts are receiving transmissions from all over the world over the Internet – thanks to the MP3 format. A team led by Karlheinz Brandenburg at the Fraunhofer Institute in Erlangen compressed audio files using the new format for the first time in 1987. www.fraunhofer.de

Liquid Crystals: Thanks to the innovative liquid crystal mixtures developed by the Merck chemical company, two years ago it became possible to present sharper television images on flat screens than ever before. The researchers who work for the Darmstadt-based world market leader are known for their ingenuity. They hold more than 2,500 patents on liquid crystals. www.merck.de

Future Store: Supermarket trolleys that display shopping lists, shelves that automatically asked to be refilled – the Metro Group’s Future Store is full of innovative technology. The supermarket of the future has been a reality in Rheinsberg since 2004. www.metro.de

Crop Protection: Using a natural ingredient of a fungus as a chemical model for a fungicide had never been done until three years ago. The F500 fungicide developed by BASF not only protects against pests, but also improves overall plant health. www.basf.de

Alloy: A new silicon-aluminium alloy is ensuring that the world’s largest telescope can look into the depths of space. Development work by a German research team from the Max Planck and Fraunhofer Societies ensured that the mirror of the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, USA, always retains its shape – despite changes in position and temperature. www.fraunhofer.de

DVB-T: Today, millions of television viewers worldwide receive their programmes digitally – thanks to Ulrich Reimer’s vision of an international standard for digital TV. The professor at the Technical University Braunschweig began development work in 1993. www.tu-bs.de

Automation: The apparently chaotic system of an anthill can also be successfully applied to the unloading of ships in a harbour. In 2003, HHLA, the company that runs Hamburg’s port, developed a software package to automate its cargo terminal on the basis of this biological model. Since then, ships arriving at the largest German sea port are unloaded much faster. The time it takes to transport a container from the quay to the warehouse has been cut by half. www.hhla.de

Acoustic Camera: The Society for the Promotion of Applied Computer Science is helping to combat noise pollution with a combined digital/video camera and highly sensitive microphones. Fitted to a motor, the camera produces a photograph showing a kind of sound map on which loud components appear as red and quiet ones as blue. www.gfai.de

Special Effects: Nine out of ten Hollywood films rely on software from Mental Images. Without the realistic shadow and light effects produced by the Berlin software firm, box-office hits like The Matrix could never have been filmed. The digital wizzards from Germany have also presented Star Wars heroes in their best light. www.mentalimages.com