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Developers and expert users benchmark three leading open-source thermal conductivity calculation packages

Mechanical Engineering Professor Alan McGaughey of Carnegie Mellon University recently coordinated the Phonon Olympics, bringing togetherAlthough there’s no medal at the end of the Phonon Olympics, for McGaughey, the collaboration required to evaluate the accuracy of three widely used open-source thermal conductivity packages was worth more than gold.

For the last decade, researchers seeking to understand the properties of new materials have turned to open-source packages to perform thermal conductivity calculations. These packages enable a broader community to study , but until now users had no way of knowing whether or not each package would produce consistent and accurate results.

Quantum Route Redirect PhaaS targets Microsoft 365 users worldwide

A new phishing automation platform named Quantum Route Redirect is using around 1,000 domains to steal Microsoft 365 users’ credentials.

The kit comes pre-configured with phishing domains to allow less skilled threat actors to achieve maximum results with the least effort.

Since August, analysts at security awareness company KnowBe4 have noticed Quantum Route Redirect (QRR) attacks in the wild across a wide geography, although nearly three-quarters are located in the U.S.

Research drives commercialization of energy-efficient solar cell technology toward 40% efficiency milestone

Third-generation solar cell technology is advancing rapidly. An engineering research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has achieved a breakthrough in the field of perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells (TSCs), focusing on addressing challenges that include improving efficiency, stability and scalability.

The team has conducted a comprehensive analysis of TSC performance and provided strategic recommendations, which aim to raise the energy conversion efficiency of this new type of solar cell from the current maximum of approximately 34% to about 40%.

The team hopes to accelerate the commercialization of /silicon TSCs through industry-academia-research collaboration, while aligning with the nation’s strategic plan of carbon peaking and neutrality and promoting the development of innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence through .

Cloud droplet microphysics challenges accuracy of current climate models

The way clusters of differently sized water droplet populations are distributed within clouds affects larger-scale cloud properties, such as how light is scattered and how quickly precipitation forms. Studying and simulating cloud droplet microphysical structure is difficult. But recent field observations have provided crucial, centimeter-scale data on cloud droplet size distributions in stratocumulus clouds, giving researchers an opportunity to better match their models to reality.

The simulations of characteristic droplet size distributions that those models are providing are likely too uniform, say Nithin Allwayin and colleagues. This muddled microphysical structure could be leading cloud simulations, and the that use them, astray. Their paper is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The authors compare the new observed data on cloud microphysical structure with results from large-eddy simulations (LES) of stratocumulus . At convective scales, the model showed intriguing correlations between droplet cluster characteristics and overall cloud physics. For example, regions of the clouds dominated by drizzle tended to have larger drops but not necessarily more total water content, and the updraft regions of clouds tended to have smaller drops and a narrower distribution of droplet size.

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